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GOLD IN THE SKY
By ALAN E. NOURSE
ILLUSTRATOR LLEWELLYN
BOOK-LENGTH NOVEL COMPLETE IN THIS ISSUE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Amazing ScienceFiction Stories September 1958. Extensive research did not uncover anyevidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
CONTENTS
1. TROUBLE TIMES TWO
2. JUPITER EQUILATERAL
3. TOO MANY WARNINGS
4. "BETWEEN MARS AND JUPITER..."
5. THE BLACK RAIDER
6. THE LAST RUN OF THE SCAVENGER
7. PRISONERS
8. THE SCAVENGERS OF SPACE
9. THE INVISIBLE MAN
10. THE TRIGGER
11. THE HAUNTED SHIP
12. THE SINISTER BONANZA
13. PINPOINT IN SPACE
14. THE MISSING ASTEROID
15. THE FINAL MOVE
YOU WILL MEET--
Greg Hunter. Test pilot--happy only when his life hung in the balance.
Tom Hunter. A pioneer--his frontier was hidden in test tubes.
Johnny Coombs. A prospector--he returned from the asteroids too soon.
Merrill Tawney. An industrialist--he sought plunder even beyond thestars.
Major Briarton. A government man--his creed was law and order.
They fought with whatever was handy, not bothering tofigure the odds.]
1. Trouble Times Two
The sun was glowing dull red as it slipped down behind the curvinghorizon of Mars, but Gregory Hunter was not able to see it.
There was no viewscreen in the ship's cabin; it was too tiny for that.Greg twisted around in the cockpit that had been built just big enoughto hold him, and shifted his long legs against the brace-webbing, tryingto get them comfortable.
He knew he was afraid ... but nobody else knew that, not even thecaptain waiting at the control board on the satellite, and in spite ofthe fear Greg Hunter would not have traded places at this moment withanyone else in the universe.
He had worked too hard and waited too long for this moment.
He heard the count-down monitor clicking in his ears, and his handsclenched into fists. How far from Mars would he be ten minutes from now?He didn't know. Farther than any man had ever traveled before in thespace of ten minutes, he knew, and faster. How far and how fast woulddepend on him alone.
"All set, Greg?" It was the captain's voice in the earphones.
"All set, Captain."
"You understand the program?"
Greg nodded. "Twenty-four hours out, twenty-four hours back, ninetydegrees to the ecliptic, and all the accelleration I can stand bothways."
Greg grinned to himself. He thought of the months of conditioning he hadgone through to prepare for this run ... the hours in the centrifuge tobuild up his tolerance to accelleration, the careful diet, the rigoroushours of physical conditioning. It was only one experiment, one tinystep in the work that could someday give men the stars, but to GregoryHunter at this moment it was everything.
"Good luck, then." The captain cut off, and the blastoff buzzer sounded.
He was off. His heart hammered in his throat, and his eyes achedfiercely, but he paid no attention. His finger crept to the air-speedindicator, then to the cut-off switch. When the pressure became toogreat, when he began to black out, he would press it.
But not yet. It was speed they wanted; they had to know how muchaccelleration a man could take for how long and still survive, and nowit was up to him to show them.
Fleetingly, he thought of Tom ... poor old stick-in-the-mud Tom, workingaway in his grubby little Mars-bound laboratory, watching bacteria grow.Tom could never have qualified for a job like this. Tom couldn't even gointo free-fall for ten minutes without getting sick all over the place.Greg felt a surge of pity for his brother, and then a twinge ofmalicious anticipation. Wait until Tom heard the reports on _this_ run!It was all right to spend your time poking around with bottles and testtubes if you couldn't do anything else, but it took something special topilot an XP ship for Project Star-Jump. And after this run was over,even Tom would have to admit it....
There was a lurch, and quite suddenly the enormous pressure was gone.
Something was wrong. He hadn't pushed the cut-off button, yet the ship'sengines were suddenly silent. He jabbed at the power switch. Nothinghappened. Then the side-jets sputted, and he was slammed sideways intothe cot.
He snapped on the radio speaker. "Control ... can you hear me?Something's gone wrong out here...."
"Nothing's wrong," the captain's voice said in his earphones. "Just sittight. I'm bringing you back in. There's a call here from Sun Lake City.They want you down there in a hurry. We'll have to scratch you on thisrun."
"_Who_ wants me down there?"
"The U.N. Council office. Signed by Major Briarton himself and I can'targue with the Major. We're bringing you in."
Greg Hunter sank back, disappointment so thick he could taste it in hismouth. Sun Lake City! That meant two days at least, one down, one back,maybe more if connections weren't right. It meant that the captain wouldsend Morton or one of the others out in his place. It meant....
Suddenly he thought of what else it meant, and a chill ran up his back.
There was only one reason Major Briarton would call him in like this.Something had happened to Dad.
Greg leaned back in the cot, suddenly tense, as a thousand frightfulpossibilities flooded his mind. It could only mean that Dad was in somekind of trouble.
And if anything had happened to Dad....
* * * * *
The sun was sinking rapidly toward the horizon when the city finallycame into sight in the distance, but try as he would, Tom Hunter couldnot urge more than thirty-five miles an hour from the huge lurchingvehicle he was driving.
On an open paved highway the big pillow-wheeled Sloppy Joe would dosixty in a breeze, but this desert route was far from a paved road.Inside the pressurized passenger cab, Tom gripped the shock-bars withone arm and the other leg, and jammed the accelerator to the floor. Theengine coughed, but thirty-five was all it would do.
Through the windshield Tom could see the endless rolling dunes of theMartian desert stretching to the horizon on every side. They called Marsthe Red Planet, but it was not red when you were close to it. There weremultitudes of colors here ... yellow, orange, brown, gray, occasionalpatches of gray-green ... all shifting and changing in the fadingsunlight. Off to the right were the worn-down peaks of the Mesabi II,one of the long, low mountain ranges of almost pure iron ore that helpedgive the planet its dull red appearance from outer space. And behindhim, near the horizon, the tiny sun glowed orange out of a blue-blacksky.
Tom fought the wheel as the Sloppy Joe jounced across a dry creek bed,and swore softly to himself. Why hadn't he kept his head and waited forthe mail ship that had been due at the Lab to give him a lift back? He'dhave been in Sun Lake City an hour ago ... but the urgency of themessage had driven caution from his mind.
A summons from the Mars Coordinator of the U.N. Interplanetary Councilwas the same as an order ... but there was more to Tom's haste thanthat. There was only one reason that Major Briarton would be calling himin to Sun Lake City, and that reason meant trouble.
Something was wrong. Something had happened to Dad.
Now Tom peered up at the dark sky, squinting into the sun. Somewhere outthere between Mars and Jupiter was a no-man's-land of danger, a greatcircling ring of space dirt and debris, the Asteroid belt. And so
mewhereout there, Dad was working.
Tom thought for a moment of the pitiful little mining rig that RogerHunter had taken out to the Belt ... the tiny orbit-ship to be used forheadquarters and storage of the ore; the even tinier scout ship, PeteRacely's old _Scavenger_ that he had sold to Roger Hunter for back taxesand repairs when he went broke in the Belt looking for his Big Strike.It wasn't much of a mining rig for anybody to use, and the dangers of asmall mining operation in the Asteroid Belt were frightening. It tookskill to bring a little scout-ship in for a landing on an asteroid rockhardly bigger than the ship itself; it took even more skill to rig thecontrolled-Murexide charges to blast the rock into tiny fragments, andthen run out the shiny magnetic net to catch the explosion debris andbring it in to the hold of the orbit-ship....
Tom Hunter scowled, trying to shake off the feeling of uneasiness thatwas nibbling at his mind. Asteroid mining was dangerous ... but Dad wasno novice. Nobody on Mars knew how to handle a mining rig better thanRoger Hunter did. He knew what he was doing out there, there was no realdanger for him or was there....
Roger Hunter, a good man, a gentle and peaceful man, had finally seenall he could stomach of Jupiter Equilateral and its company miningpolicies six months before. He had told them so in plain, simplelanguage when he turned in his resignation. They didn't try to stophim ... a man was still free to quit a job on Mars if he wanted to, evena job with Jupiter Equilateral. But it was an open secret that the bigmining outfit had not liked Roger Hunter's way of resigning, taking halfa dozen of their first-rate mining engineers with him. There had beenveiled threats, rumors of attempts to close the markets to RogerHunter's ore, in open violation of U.N. Council policies on Mars....
Tom fought the wheel as the big tractor lumbered up another rise, andthe huge plastic bubble of Sun Lake City came into view far down thevalley below.
He thought of Greg. Had Greg been summoned too? He closed his lipstightly as a wave of anger passed through his mind. If anything hadhappened, no matter what, he thought, Greg would be there. Taking overand running things, as usual. He thought of the last time he had seenhis brother, and then deliberately blocked out the engulfing bitterness.
That had been more than a year ago. Maybe Greg had changed since then.
But somehow, Tom didn't think so.
The Sloppy Joe was on the valley floor now, and ahead the bubblecovering the city was drawing closer. The sun was almost gone; lightswere appearing inside the plastic shielding. Born and raised on Mars,Tom had seen the teeming cities of Earth only once in his life ... butto him none of the splendors of the Earth cities could match the simple,quiet beauty of this Martian outpost settlement. There had been a timewhen people had said that Sun Lake City could never be built, that itcould never survive if it were, but with each successive year it grewlarger and stronger, the headquarters city for the planet that hadbecome the new frontier of Earth.
The radiophone buzzed, and the airlock guard hailed him when he returnedthe signal. Tom gave his routine ID. He guided the tractor into thelock, waited until pressure and atmosphere rose to normal, and thenleaped out of the cab.
Five minutes later he was walking across the lobby of the InterplanetaryCouncil building, stepping into the down elevator. Three flights belowhe stepped out into the office corridor of the U.N. InterplanetaryCouncil on Mars.
If there was trouble, this was where he would find it.
He paused for a minute before the gray plastic door marked MAJOR FRANKBRIARTON in raised stainless steel letters. Then he pushed open the doorand walked into the ante-room.
It was empty. Suddenly he felt a touch on his shoulder. Behind him, afamiliar voice said, "Hello, Twin."
* * * * *
At first glance they looked like carbon copies of each other, althoughthey were no more identical than identical twins ever are. Greg stood agood two inches taller than Tom. His shoulders were broad, and there wasa small gray scar over one eye that stood out in contrast to the healthytanned color of his face. Tom was of slighter build, and wirier, hisskin much more pale.
But they had the same dark hair, the same gray eyes, the same square,stubborn line to the jaw. They looked at each other for a moment withoutspeaking. Then Greg grinned and clapped his brother on the shoulder.
"So you got here, finally," he said. "I was beginning to think I'd haveto go out on the desert and find you."
"Oh, I got here, all right," Tom said. "I see you did too."
"Yes," Greg said heavily. "Can't argue with the major, you know."
"But what does he want?"
"How should I know? All he said was to get down here fast. And now heisn't even here himself."
"Is Dad on Mars?" Tom asked.
Greg looked at him. "I don't know."
"We could check the register."
"I already checked it. He has not logged in, but that doesn't meananything."
"I suppose not," Tom said glumly.
They were silent for a moment. Then Greg said, "Look, what are youworried about? Nothing could have happened to Dad. He's been mining theBelt for years."
"I know. I just wish he were here, that's all. If he's in some kind oftrouble...."
"What kind of trouble? You're looking for spooks."
"Spooks like Jupiter Equilateral, maybe," Tom said. "They could makeplenty of trouble for Dad."
"With the U.N. in the driver's seat here? They wouldn't dare. Why do youthink the major rides them so hard with all the claim-filingregulations? He'd give his right arm for a chance to break that outfitinto pieces."
"I still wish somebody had gone out to the Belt with Dad," Tom said.
Just then the door opened. The newcomer was a tall, gray-haired man withU.N. Council stripes on his lapel, and major's rockets on his shoulders."Sorry I'm late, boys," Major Briarton said. "I'd hoped to be here whenyou arrived. I'm sorry to pull you in here like this, but I'm afraid Ihad no choice. When did you boys hear from your father last?"
They looked at each other. "I saw him six weeks ago," Tom said. "Justbefore he left to go out to the Belt again."
"Nothing since then?"
"Not a word."
The major chewed his lip. "Greg?"
"I had a note at Christmas, I think. But what...."
"What did he say in the note?"
"He said Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Dad isn't much of a letterwriter."
"Nothing at all about what he was doing?"
Greg shook his head. "Look, Major, if there's some sort of trouble...."
"Yes, I'm afraid there's trouble," the major said. He looked up at them,and spread his hands helplessly. "There isn't any easy way to tell you,but you've got to know. There's been an accident, out in the Belt."
"Accident?" Greg said.
"A very serious accident. A fuel tank exploded in the scooter yourfather was riding back to the _Scavenger_. It must have been verysudden, and by the time help arrived...." The major broke off, unable tofind words.
For a long moment there was utter silence in the room. Outside, anelevator was buzzing, and a typewriter clicked monotonously somewhere inthe building.
Then Tom Hunter broke the silence. "Who was it, Major?" he said. "Whokilled Dad? Tell us, or we'll find out!"