Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids
Chapter 5 The Hermit On The Rock

Lucky was on Dingo's back now and it was his thighs that gripped the other's waist. He spoke softly and grimly. "You can hear me, Dingo, can't you? I don't know where we are or where we're going, but neither do you. So we need each other now, Dingo. Are you ready to make a deal? You can find out where we are because your radio will reach the ships, but you can't get back without carbon dioxide. I have enough for both of us, but I'll need you to guide us back."
"To space with you, you scupper," yelled Dingo. "When I'm done with you, I'll have your push-tubes."
"I don't think you will," said Lucky coolly.
"You think you'll let them loose, too. Go ahead! Go ahead, you loshing ripper! What good will that do? The captain will come for me wherever I am while you're floating around with a busted helmet and frozen blood on your face."
"Not exactly, my friend. There's something in your back, you know. Maybe you can't feel it through the metal, but it's there, I assure you."
"A push-gun. So what. It doesn't mean a thing as long as we're held together." But his arms halted their writhing attempt to seize Lucky.
"I'm not a push-gun duelist." Lucky sounded cheerful about it. "But I still know more than you do about push-guns. Push-gun shots are exchanged miles apart. There's no air resistance to slow and mess up the gas stream, but there's internal resistance. There's always some turbulence in the stream. The crystals knock together, slow up. The line of gas widens. If it misses its mark, it finally spreads out in space and vanishes, but if it finally hits, it still kicks like a mule after miles of travel."
"What in space are you talking about? What are you running off about?" The pirate twisted with bull strength, and Lucky grunted as he forced him back.
Lucky said, "Just this. What do you suppose happens when the carbon dioxide hits at two inches, before turbulence has done anything at all to cut down its velocity or to broaden the beam. Don't guess. I'll tell you. It would cut through your suit as though it were a blowtorch, and through your body, too."
"You're nuts! You're talking crazy!"
Dingo swore madly, but of a sudden he was holding his body stiffly motionless.
"Try it, then," said Lucky. "Move! My push-gun is hard against your suit and I'm squeezing the trigger. Try.,." it out.
"You're fouling me," snarled Dingo. "This isn't a clean." win.
"I've got a crack in my face plate," said Lucky. "The men will know where the foul is. You have half a minute to make up your mind."
The seconds passed in silence. Lucky caught the motion of Dingo's hand.
He said, "Good-by, Dingo!"
Dingo cried thickly, "Wait! Wait! I'm just extending my sending range." Then he called, "Captain Anton... Captain Anton..."
It took an hour and a half to get back to the ships.
* * *
The At las was moving through space again in the wake of its pirate captor. Its automatic circuits had been shifted to manual controls wherever necessary, and a prize crew of three controlled its power. As before, it had a passenger list of one-Lucky Starr.
Lucky was confined to a cabin and saw the crew only when they brought him his rations. The Atlas's own rations, thought Lucky. Or, at least, such as were left. Most of the food and such equipment that wasn't necessary for the immediate maneuvering of the ship had already been transferred to the pirate vessel.
All three pirates brought him his first meal. They were lean men, browned by the unsoftened rays of the sun of space.
They gave him his tray in silence, inspected the cabin cautiously, stood by while he opened the cans and let their contents warm up, then carried away the remains.
Lucky said, "Sit down, men. You don't have to stand while I eat."
They did not answer. One, the thinnest and lankest of the three, with a nose that had once been broken and was now bent sideways, and an Adam's-apple that jutted sharply outward, looked at the others as though he felt inclined to accept the invitation. He met with no response, however.
The next meal was brought by Broken Nose alone. He put down the tray, went back to the door, which he opened. He looked up and down the corridor, closed the door again, and said, "I'm Martin Maniu."
Lucky smiled. "I'm Bill Williams. The other two don't talk to me, eh?"
"They're Dingo's friends. But I'm not. Maybe you're a government man like the captain thinks, and maybe you're not. I don't know. But as far as I'm concerned, anyone who does what you did to that scupper, Dingo, is all right. He's a wise guy and he plays rough. He got me into a push fight once when I was new. He nearly pushed me into an asteroid. For no reason, either. He claimed it was a mistake, but listen, he doesn't make any mistakes with a pusher. You made quite a few friends, mister, when you dragged back that hyena by the seat of his pants."
"I'm glad of that, anyway."
"But watch out for him. He'll never forget it. Don't ever be alone with him even twenty years from now. I'm telling you. It isn't just beating him, you see. It's bluffing him with the story about cutting through an inch of metal with the carbon dioxide. Everyone's laughing at him and he's sick about it. Man, I mean sick! It's the best thing that's ever happened. Man, I sure hope the Boss gives you a clean bill."
"The Boss? Captain Anton?"
"No, the Boss. The big fellow. Say, the food you've got on board ship is good. Especially the meat." The pirate smacked his lips loudly. "You get tired of all these yeast mashes, especially when you're in charge of a vat yourself."
Lucky was brushing up the remainder of his meal. "Who is this guy?"
"Who?"
"The Boss."
Maniu shrugged. "Space! I don't know. You don't think a guy like me would ever meet him. Just someone the fellows talk about. It stands to reason someone's boss."
"The organization is pretty complicated."
"Man, you never know till you join. Listen, I was dead broke when I came out here. I didn't know what to do. I thought, well, we'll bang up a few ships and then I'll get mine and it'll be over. You know, it would be better than starving to death like I was doing."
"It wasn't that way?"
"No. I've never been on a raiding expedition. Hardly any of us are. Just a few like Dingo. He goes out all the time. He likes it, the scupper. Mostly we go out and pick up a few women sometimes." The pirate smiled. "I've got a wife and a kid. You wouldn't believe that now, would you? Sure, we've got a little project of our own. Have our own vats. Once in a while I draw space duty, like now, for instance. It's a soft life. You could do all right, if you join up. A good-looking fellow like you could get a wife in no time and settle down. Or there's plenty of excitement if that's what you want.
"Yes, sir, Bill. I hope the Boss takes you."
Lucky followed him to the door. "Where are we going, by the way? One of the bases?"
"Just to one of the rocks, I guess. Whichever is nearest.
You'll stay there till the word comes through. It's what they usually do."
He added as he closed the door, "And don't tell the fellows, or anybody, I've been talking to you. Okay, pal?"
"Sure thing."
Alone again, Lucky pounded a fist slowly and softly into his palm. The Boss! Was that just talk? Scuttlebutt? Or did it mean something? And what about the rest of the conversation?
He had to wait. Galaxy! If only Conway and Henree had the good sense not to interfere for a while longer.
* * *
Lucky did not get a chance to view the "rock" as the Atlas approached. He did not see it until, preceded by Martin Maniu and followed by a second pirate, he stepped out of the air-lock into space and found it a hundred yards below.
The asteroid was quite typical. Lucky judged it to be two miles across the longest way. It was angular and craggy, as though a giant had torn off the top of a mountain and tossed it out into space. Its sunside glimmered gray-brown, and it was turning visibly, shadows shifting and changing.
He pushed downward toward the asteroid as he left the air-lock, flexing his leg muscles against the ship's hull. The crags floated up slowly toward himself. When his hands touched ground, his inertia forced the rest of his body on downward, tumbling him in slowest motion until he could grasp a projection and bring himself to a halt.
He stood up. There was almost the illusion of a planetary surface about the rock. The nearest jags of matter, however, had nothing behind them, nothing but space. The stars, moving visibly as the rock turned, were hard, bright glitters. The ship, which had been put into an orbit about the rock, remained motionless overhead.
A pirate led the way, some fifty feet, to a rise in rock in no way distinguished from its surroundings. He made it in two long steps. As they waited a section of the rise slipped aside, and from the opening a space-suited figure stepped out.
"Okay, Herm," said one of the pirates, gruffly, "here he is. He's in your care now."
The voice that next sounded in Lucky's receiver was gentle and rather weary. "How long will he be with me, gentlemen?"
"Till we come to get him. And don't ask questions."
The pirates turned away and leaped upward. The rock's gravity could do nothing to stop them. They dwindled steadily and after a few minutes, Lucky saw a brief flash of crystals as one of them corrected his direction of travel by means of a push-gun; a small one, routinely used for such purposes, that was part of standard suit equipment. Its gas supply consisted of a built-in carbon dioxide cartridge.
Minutes passed and the ship's rear jets gleamed redly. It, too, began dwindling.
It was useless to try to check the direction in which it was leaving, Lucky knew, without some knowledge of his own location in space. And of that, except that he was somewhere in the asteroid belt, he knew nothing.
So intense was his absorption that he was almost startled at the soft voice of the other man on the asteroid.
He said, "It is beautiful out here. I come out so rarely that sometimes I forget. Look there!"
Lucky turned to his left. The small Sun was just poking above the sharp edge of the asteroid. In a moment it was too bright to look at. It was a gleaming twenty-credit gold piece. The sky, black before, remained black, and the stars shone undiminished. That was the way on an airless world where there was no dust to scatter sunlight and turn the heavens a deep, masking blue.
The man of the asteroid said, "In twenty-five minutes or so it will be setting again. Sometimes, when Jupiter is at its closest, you can see it, too, like a little marble, with its four satellites like sparks lined up in military formation. But that only happens every three and a half years. This isn't the time."
Lucky said bluntly, "Those men called you Herm. Is that your name? Are you one of them?"
"You mean am I a pirate? No. But I'll admit I may be an accessory after the fact. Nor is my name Herm. That's just a term they use for hermits in general. My name, sir, is Joseph Patrick Hansen, and since we are to be companions at close quarters for an indefinite period, I hope we shall be friends."
He held out a metal-sheathed hand, and Lucky grasped it.
"I'm Bill Williams," he said. "You say you're a hermit? Do you mean by that that you live here all the time?"
"That's right."
Lucky looked about the poor splinter of granite and silica and frowned. "It doesn't look very inviting."
"Nevertheless I'll try to do my best to make you comfortable."
The hermit touched a section of the slab of rock out of which he had come and a piece of it wheeled open once again. Lucky noted that the edges had been beveled and lined with lastium or some similar material to insure air tightness.
"Won't you step inside, Mr. Williams?" invited the hermit.
Lucky did so. The rock slab closed behind them. As it closed, a small Fluoro lit up and shone away the obscurity. It revealed a small air-lock, not much larger than was required to hold two men.
A small red signal light flickered, and the hermit said, "You can open your face-plate now. We've got air." He did so himself as he spoke.
Lucky followed suit, dragging in lungfuls of clear, fresh air. Not bad. Better than the air on shipboard. Definitely.
But it was when the inner door of the air-lock opened that the wind went out of Lucky in one big gasp.