CHAPTER XV
_There Is a Meteor_
His face set and cold, Carse ran to the stores cabin, just as theEurasian must have hurried there a few minutes before. He took one ofDr. Ku's self-propulsive space-suits down from the rack and slippedinto it, sticking a raygun in the belt. Still not speaking, he glidedto the rear port-lock, Leithgow and Friday running alongside andattempting to dissuade him from the dangerous pursuit. Their wordswere wasted. Carse gave them only a faint smile and a few directions.
"Keep the ship as close as you can without danger. No, Eclipse; I'mgoing by myself; there's no need to risk two. If I don't come out,you've everything needed to prove your case. Eliot--the re-embodiedbrains, Ku Sui's four white assistants--"
"I tell you you're going to your death! You'll be caught inside!Earth's attracting the asteroid now, and in a few minutes it will beplunging through the atmosphere with terrific speed! The friction willmake it a meteor, and you'll burn. Carse! You'll die in flames! Youhaven't but a few minutes to do the whole thing!"
"Have to risk that, Eliot." He swung open the inner door of the lockand stepped into the chamber. "Remember, keep as close to the asteroidas possible, and a steady watch for Ku Sui and me." He looked levellyat them, white man and black, for a moment, then turned his face away."That's all. Good-by," he said.
The door swung shut in their faces with a hiss of compressed air.
The Hawk closed the face-plate of his helmet and rapidly spun over thecontrols. Another hiss, and the outer door moved wide. He stepped withforce into space.
* * * * *
The panorama below him was breath-taking: Earth seemed almost to hithim in the face. He had not realized it was so close. The sheer,mighty stretch of the globe filled his eyes, and for seconds he couldnot focus on anything else, so overwhelming to his vision was thecolossal map. It reached away to left and right, before and behind,and he was so near that it seemed almost flat, a sun-gleaming plain onwhich stood out in sharp outline the continent of Europe, the AtlanticOcean and, bordering it, the edge of North America.
To his left was the flaming orb of the sun; and directly underfoot,rotating against the vast background of the North Atlantic, he now sawthe asteroid, glinting metallically along its craggy length as itswung over. Carse centered every bit of power he had on it, and atmaximum acceleration began to overhaul his objective.
The asteroid was plunging free to Earth, and the rate of itsuncontrolled plunge was second by second mounting tremendously; butCarse's power-fall quickly enabled him to overtake it. As the domeswooped up in front of him, and the sunlight washed briefly over itsdesolate buildings, he looked hard for a shape moving amongst them,without success. Doubtless the Eurasian was well inside by now.
The job of getting into the dome was a hazardous one. About everythirty seconds the asteroid described a complete rotation, making therim turn at a speed of half a mile a second, and that made the task ofentering extremely dangerous to a man whose only protection was themetal and fabric of a space-suit. Misjudgment would either rip thesuit or dash him to instant death. He had to slip cleanly down throughthe jagged tear in the dome, planning his swoop accurately to thefraction of a second.
Never cooler, the Hawk made it. Building a parallel speed equal tothat of the rotating dome, he followed it over in a dizzy whirl; andas the rent came below he shot curving down and in with sufficientprecision, and at once swiftly adjusted his gravity to offset theasteroid's great centrifugal force.
* * * * *
For alternating fifteen-second periods the sunlight filled the domeand its buildings; and on the tail of the first of these, even as thesable tide swept all vision from him, the Hawk arrived at the door ofone wing of the central building. He had not seen Ku Sui, and he hadno time for exploration, but he did have a hunch as to where theEurasian had gone, and he followed that hunch. A silent, giant-graything in the black silence of the corridor, grim, intent and seemingirresistible, he swept along it; and every second he knew that araygun might spit from where it had been waiting in ambush to puncturehis suit and kill him. For whether or not Ku Sui was aware that he wasbeing tracked by his old, bitter foe, Carse did not know.
The asteroid plunged down faster and faster. Earth's atmosphere, withall its perils of friction, coming ever closer, and the great bosom ofthe planet lying waiting to receive and bury the rock hurtling towardsit. Throughout most of the leagues of space that asteroid had trackedon its master's diverse errands, and in many distant places the trailsof Hawk Carse and Ku Sui had crossed and left blood and crossed again;and now those three--asteroid, Eurasian and the Hawk--were drawn oncemore together for the spectacular and epic climax, now only minutesaway. No power in the universe was to stop the plunge of the asteroid;it remained to be seen how one or both of the two living humans on itcould get out in time....
But of all this, nothing was in Hawk Carse's mind except the beating,driving realization that few minutes were left in which to play outthe last scene. With reckless haste he sped to where his hunch ledhim, the secret panel in Dr. Ku's laboratory. As he reached it, faintsunlight came filtering in from somewhere and he saw that the panelwas open.
He looked within and dimly saw a ladder reaching down into blackdepths. Without hesitation he thrust through the opening and droppedinto the blackness. He dared not lose a second.
* * * * *
He hit bottom with a thud, changed his glove controls and reached outin the darkness. He felt that he was in one end of a passageway. Asrapidly as he could, his arms stretched wide, all his nerves andmuscles and senses alert, he pressed along it.
Continually he was thrown into the rough wall at his right by thecentrifugal force of the asteroid. How far did the passageway extend?Was Ku Sui at the end of it? It occurred to the Hawk that the asteroidwas a developing shooting star, eating up the few hundred miles oflife that remained, streaking down into the atmosphere, where waitedquick friction and incandescence--and he down in the heart of it,blind, without clue to what lay in front of him, ignorant ofeverything, and with only minutes in which to achieve his end. There'dbe no heat-warning through his insulated suit. Even now, perhaps,there was no time to get out; already the deadline might have beencrossed; he could not know. He went on....
How far? A hundred yards; two hundred? Easily that, he thought, andstill no variation in the blackness around him! The passageway seemedstraight, so he might now be past the rim of the dome above.
Then, for just a second, he saw a faint wisp of light ahead!
Automatically Carse's raygun came up, but in the time that simplemotion took the light was gone and the blackness was as deep andlifeless as before. But he was coming to something. He went on,perhaps a little faster, hot to discover the last emergency resourceof Dr. Ku. He took no pains to avoid making noise, for he knew Ku Suicould not hear him through the airless space between.
After another hundred yards or so the light from ahead winked again.It was stronger. Only a second of it, but he now suspected that itcame at regular intervals. It was a machine, perhaps, working underthe hands of the Eurasian. On--on! With the seconds fleeting by,building to the small total which would bring friction to theasteroid, and incandescence, and scalding death for him within it!
Again, suddenly, the mysterious light. It left instantly as usual, butnot before it revealed, well ahead, the end of the passage. Quickly hetraversed the remaining distance and felt around with his hands. Hefound what he half expected. There was an opening, a doorway, to hisright. The room beyond surely held the final secret of the asteroid.And if Dr. Ku Sui were anywhere, he was in there.
* * * * *
Carse restrained an impulse to rush in, deciding to wait for therecurring light. Everything in him told him that this was the climax,that through the door to his right lay the object of his chase; and inspite of his consciousness of the plunging asteroid, and theup-leaping skin of Earth's atm
osphere, now so close, he stood full inthe doorway, gun ready, waiting. Seconds were precious, but this wasthe part of common sense. He needed the light to show him what perilshe must face; he could not go into that chamber ignorant of thesituation there.
For what seemed ages the fantastic figure stood there. The great rockturning over and over, with awful speed dropping down. Earth nearing,death ever closer--and he standing in silence and darkness, waiting tofinish the feud! He might never escape; he knew that; it might alreadybe too late to try; but the core of the man, his grim and steely will,would not let him think of retreating towards safety until he hadfaced Dr. Ku Sui and decided the account between them forever.
The wall of darkness melted. A ghostly light filtered through. Hestared, and in its brief maximum saw before him a high, barerectangular room, hewn out of the rock--and at its far side a man in aspace-suit. Ku Sui, brought to bay!
But Carse, for one of the few times in his life, doubted his eyes.What trick were they playing him? For it was not a real, sharp figurethat he saw; it was an indefinite one, shimmering and elusive, like amirage. A prank of the strange light, perhaps. But Ku Suinevertheless! Ku Sui trapped!
The Hawk leaped forward with outstretched arms to seize and hold theEurasian's motionless figure. As he moved, the second of ghostly lightdissolved away, and in the blackness his eager reaching arms closedon--nothing!
Surely Ku Sui had been there! Surely he had not just imagined he sawhim!
* * * * *
Baffled and coldly raging, the Hawk whirled and groped frantically.The centrifugal force caught him off balance and hurled him into awall, but dizzy he continued his desperate search, sweeping his armsall around him, over walls and floor and, rising, the ceiling. Thetumbling asteroid banged him unmercifully into the six sides of theroom, but even as he was flung he reached and felt in everydirection--felt without result.
In some incredible way, Ku Sui had eluded him. The second the lightfailed, he must have slipped by and escaped down the passagewaybehind. The Hawk could hardly understand how it might have beenachieved, but there was no other explanation. So, with lips firm setin his cold, grim face, he felt to the doorway, ready to track backthrough the long, unlit passage. He might still overhaul and capturethe other. If there was still time....
But _was_ there?
The passing seconds had not been idle. Inexorably they had brought himto Earth's atmosphere. He stared around the room in sheer horror.
For its blackness was relieved by the faintest of glows. It was notthat of the recurring light; it came from the whole rock ceilingabove. Carse was overwhelmed by the realization that within numberedseconds the surface of the asteroid would reach incandescence.
Thoughts raced like lightning through his head. He could not get freethrough the corridor and dome behind: that would take at least threeminutes, and not a quarter of a minute was left. Ku Sui too, if hewere in the corridor trying to reach the dome, was trapped andfinished. A meteor flaming to Earth would be their common grave!
A searing, hideous death! Trapped within fiery walls of melting rock!
At that moment the regularly re-recurring flash of light came, andunder pressure of his great need the phenomenon meshed withunderstanding in Carse's mind. That light was sunlight! It come atdefinite intervals as the dome side of the asteroid rotated to facethe sun.
And that light could reach the room only by way of some channel in theceiling!
* * * * *
In the waxing glow of the rock above him, Carse swiftly found thechannel--a vertical bore several feet wide, in one corner of theceiling. Its rock sides glowed redly, and at their end was a roundblack patch that caused his heart to leap with hope. Outer space!--anda short, straight escape to it! In a flash he saw how Ku Sui perhapshad eluded him.
The Eurasian's prepared emergency exit would also be his!
He lost not a fraction of a second. Turning his glove controls tomaximum acceleration, he rose with a rush into the bore. Despite hisgood aim the asteroid's centrifugal force threw him heavily into onered-hot side. His heart went cold; would the fabric of the suit burnthrough? No time for such worries--must make the frigid airoutside--fast--fast--never mind bumps--quick out--and must stayconscious--_must_ stay conscious to exert repulsion against Earth!
Like a projectile Hawk Carse shot out of that tunnel of hell at atangent to the asteroid and in a direction away from Earth, and in aninstant the doomed body was far below him, and streaking faster andever faster to the annihilation now so near.
He fought to come out of his dizziness. Shaking his head, he glancedback for sight of a minute, suit-clad figure. Had Ku Sui preceded himthrough the emergency exit, his shape should be visible somewhere,etched by the sunlight.
There was no sign of him.
Carse's eyes dropped to the asteroid. He saw it already miles below,a breath-taking celestial object, a second sun, brilliant andincreasingly brilliant as it diminished over the watery plain waitingto receive it. His mind saw the Eurasian, caught in the long corridorto the dome, already dead on this last flight of his extraordinaryvehicle of space....
The end came at once. The sun was quickly a great, brilliant shootingstar, then a blinding smaller one: then its straight mad flightthrough the heavens was over, and it was received in the waters of theAtlantic Ocean and buried deep.
A cataclysmic burial. A titanic meteor, an incandescent, screamingstreak in the night--a cloud of billowing steam--a wall of waterrearing back from the strange grave of the asteroid, so far come fromits accustomed orbit around Mars.... The thought came to Carse thatDr. Ku Sui had died as he lived, spectacularly, with a brilliance anda tidal wave and an earthquake to disturb the lives of men....
And a sadness fell over the heart of the Hawk....
* * * * *
He roused from it in a moment. He felt heat! In the rush of events hehad not before noticed that his space-suit had started to burn fromthe friction of his own passage through the atmosphere. Fortunately,it was already cooling off.
For in spite of his own leaving speed and the added centrifugalvelocity the asteroid had given him, he had hurtled down after thedoomed rock; and only then was his building repulsion neutralizingEarth's gravity and his initial Earthward velocity. He had slowed downjust in time to keep his space suit intact.
He came to rest, in relation to the Earth, and hovered there. Again hescrutinized the black untenanted wastes of space above. Far out,approaching as rapidly as it dared, was the _Sandra_.
He wanted to be sure, so he cut in his mike and asked Leithgow if theyhad, through their electelscope, seen, Ku Sui leave the asteroid.
The anxious scientist told him they had not.
With a slight sigh Hawk Carse snapped off his contact and waited tillthe sharp, growing spot that was the _Sandra_ should come droppingdown to pick him up, and his friends learn from his own lips the storyof the passing of Ku Sui....
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