CHAPTER TWELVE - MERCURY TRANSIT
The long hours passed, and only Rip's chronometer told him when the end ofa day was reached. The Planeteers alternately worked on the surface andrested in the air of the landing boat compartment while the asteroid spedsteadily on its way.
When a series of sightings over several days gave Rip enough exact data towork on, he recalculated the orbit, found the amount that the course hadto be corrected, and supervised the cutting of new and smaller holes inthe metal.
Tubes of ordinary rocket fuel were placed in these and fired, and thethrust moved the asteroid slightly, just enough to make the correctionsRip needed. It was not necessary to take to the landing boat for theseblasts. The Planeteers retired to their cave, which was now lined withnuclite as a protection against radiation.
Rip watched his dosimeter climb steadily as the radiation dosage mounted.Then he took the landing boat to the _Scorpius_, talked the problem overwith the ship's medical department and arranged for his men to takeinjections that would keep them from coming down with radiation sickness.
They left the asteroid belt far behind, and passed within ten thousandmiles of Mars. The _Scorpius_ sent its entire complement of snapper-boatsto the asteroid for protection, in case Consops made another try, thenflamed off to Marsport to put in new supplies to replace those damagedwhen Rip had forced sudden and disastrous acceleration.
The asteroid had reached earth's orbit before the cruiser returned. Ofcourse, earth was on the other side of the sun. Rip ordered a survey andfound the best place on the dark side to make a new base. The Planeteerscut out a cave with the torch, lined it with nuclite, and moved in theirsupplies. It would be their permanent base to the end of the trip.
The sun was very hot now. On the sunny side of the asteroid thetemperature had soared far past the boiling point of water. But on thedark side, Rip measured temperatures close to absolute zero.
When the _Scorpius_ returned he arranged with Commander O'Brine for thePlaneteers to take turns going to the cruiser for showers and decentmeals.
The asteroid approached the orbit of Venus, but the bright planet was somedistance away, at its greatest elongation to the east of the sun. Mercury,however, loomed larger and larger. They would pass close to the hotplanet.
O'Brine recalled Rip to the _Scorpius_ and handed him a message.
ASTEROID NOW WITHIN PROTECTION REACH OF MERCURY AND TERRA BASES. YOUR ESCORT NO LONGER REQUIRED. PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TITAN, TAKE ON CARGO AND PERSONNEL.
The commander sighed. "Looks like I'll never get to earth long enough tosee my family."
Rip sympathized. "Tough, sir. Perhaps the cargo from Titan will bescheduled for Terra."
"That's what I hope," O'Brine agreed. "Well, here's where we part. Isthere anything you need?"
Rip made a mental check on supplies. He had more than enough. "The onlything we need is a long-range communicator, sir. If you're leaving, we'llhave no way to contact the planet bases."
"I'll see that you get one." The Irishman thrust out his hand. "Stay outof high vack, Foster. Too bad you didn't join us instead of thePlaneteers. I might have made a decent officer out of you."
Rip grinned. "That's a real compliment, sir. I might return it by sayingI'd be glad to have you as a Planeteer corporal any time."
O'Brine chuckled. "All right. Let's declare a truce, Planeteer. We'll meetagain. Space isn't very big."
A short time later Rip stood in front of his asteroid base and watched thegreat cruiser drive into space. A short distance away a snapper-boat waslashed to the landing boat. O'Brine had insisted on leaving it, with aword of warning.
"These Connies are plenty smart. I don't like leaving you unprotected,even within reach of Mercury and Terra, but orders are orders. Keep thesnapper-boat and you'll at least be able to put up a fight if you bumpinto trouble."
The asteroid sped on its lonely way for two days and then a cruiser cameout of space, its nuclear drive glowing. The Planeteers manned the rocketlauncher and Rip and Santos stood by the snapper-boat just in case, butthe cruiser was the _Sagittarius_, out of Mercury.
Captain Go Sian-tek, a Chinese Planeteer officer, arrived in one of thecruiser's landing boats accompanied by three enlisted Planeteers. Theywere all from the Special Order Squadron on Mercury.
Captain Go greeted Rip and his men, then handed over a plastic stylusplate ordering Rip to deliver six cubic meters of thorium for use onMercury. While Koa supervised the cutting of the block, Rip and thecaptain chatted.
The Mercurian Planeteer base was in the twilight zone, but the Planeteersdid all their work on the sun side, using special alloy suits to mine theprecious nuclite that only the hot planet provided.
At some time during its first years, Mercury had been so close to the sunthat its temperature was driven high enough to permit a subatomicthermo-nuclear reaction. The reaction had shorn some elements of theirelectrons and left a thin coating of material composed almost entirely ofneutrons. The nuclite was incredibly dense. It could be handled only inlow gravity because of its weight. But nothing else provided the shieldingagainst radiation and meteors half so well and it was in great demand forspaceship skins.
"Things aren't so bad," Go told Rip. "The base is comfortable and we onlywork a two hour shift out of each ten. We've had a plague of silly dilliesrecently. They got into one man's suit while we were working, but mostlythey're just a nuisance."
Rip had heard of the creatures. They were like earth armadillos, exceptthat they were silicon animals and not carbon like those of earth. Theywere drawn to oxygen like iron to a magnet, and their diamond hardtongues, used for drilling rock in order to get the minerals on which theylived, could drive right through a space suit. Or, if they could workundetected for a short while, they could drill through the shell of aspace station.
_Scralabus primus_ was the scientific name of the creature, but the factthat it looked like a silicon armadillo had given it the popular name of"silly dilly." Apart from its desire for oxygen it was harmless.
Koa reported, "Sir, the block of thorium is ready. We've hung it on a linebehind the landing boat. The blast won't hurt it, and it's too big to getinside the boat."
"Fine, Koa. Well, Captain, that does it."
The Mercurian Planeteers got into their craft and blasted off, trailingthe block of thorium in their exhaust. Rip watched the cruiser take thecraft and thorium aboard, then drive toward Mercury, brilliant sunlightreflecting from its sleek sides. The planet was only a short distance awayby spaceship. It was the largest thing in space, except for the sun, asseen from the asteroid. To Rip it looked about three times the size of themoon as seen from earth.
Past the orbit of Mercury, the sun side of the asteroid grew dangerouslyhot for men in space suits. Rip and the Planeteers stayed in the bittercold of the dark side, which ceased to be entirely dark. Even thetemperature rose somewhat. They were close enough to the sun so that theprominences, great flaming tongues of hydrogen that sped many thousands ofmiles into space, gave them light and enough heat to register on Rip'sinstruments.
Mercury was left far behind, and earth could not be seen because of thesun. There was nothing to do now but ride out the rest of the trip ascomfortably as possible until it was time to throw the asteroid into anever-tightening series of elliptical orbits around earth, known as brakingellipses. The method would use earth's gravity to slow them down to theproper speed. A single atomic bomb and a half dozen tubes of rocket fuelremained.
Then, as Rip was enjoying the comfort of air during his off-watch hour inthe boat compartment, Koa beat an alarm on the door.
Rip and the Planeteers with him hurriedly got into space suits and openedup.
"It's Terra base calling on the communicator, sir," Koa reported. "Urgentmessage, they said, and they want to talk to you, personally."
Rip hurried to the base cave. The communicator indicator light was glowingred. He plugged in his helmet circuit and said, "This is LieutenantFoster. Go a
head."
A voice crackled across space from earth. "This is Terra base. Foster, aConsops cruiser has apparently been hiding behind the sun waiting for you.Our screens just picked it up, heading your way. We've sent orders to the_Sagittarius_ on Mercury to give you cover, and the _Aquila_ has taken offfrom here. But get this, Foster. The Consops cruiser will reach you first.You have about one hour. Do you understand?"
Rip understood all right. He understood too well. "Got you," he saidshortly. "Now what?"
The communicator buzzed. "Take any appropriate action. You're on your own,Foster. Sorry. Sending the cruisers is all we can do. We'll stand by forword from you. If you think of any way we can help, let us know."
Rip asked, "How long before the cruisers arrive?"
"You're too close to us for them to move fast. They'll have to use timeaccelerating and decelerating. The _Sagittarius_ should arrive insomething less than two hours and the _Aquila_ a few minutes later."
The communicator paused, then continued. "One thing more, Foster. TheConnies know how badly we want that asteroid, but they also know we don'twant it enough to start a war. Got that?"
"Got it," Rip stated wryly. "I got it good. Thanks for the warning, Terrabase. Foster off."
"Terra base off. Stay out of high vack."
Fine advice, if it could be taken. Rip stared up at the brilliant stars,thinking fast. The Connie would have almost an hour's lead on the spacepatrol cruisers. In that hour, if the Connie were willing to pay the pricein blasted snapper-boats, Consops would have the asteroid. And Terra basehad made it clear that the space patrol would not try to blast the Conniecruiser and take back the asteroid, because that would mean war.
Added together, the facts said just one thing: they had one hour in whichto think of some way to hold off the Connies for an additional hour.
The Planeteers were clustered around him. Rip asked grimly, "Any of youever study the ancient art of magic?"
The Planeteers remained silent and tense.
"Magic is what we need," Rip told them. "We have to make the wholeasteroid disappear, or else we have to conjure up a space cruiser out ofthe thorium. Otherwise, we have a little more than an hour before we'reeither prisoners or dead!"