One of our asteroids is missing by Calvin M. Knox

Author:Calvin M. Knox [Knox, Calvin M.]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science fiction
Publisher: Ace Books Inc.
Published: 1964-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

Seeing the asteroid again was almost like coming home.

They hadn't meddled with its orbit yet. Storm came upon the precious little rock just where his ship's computer said it would be. He cut in the manual controls, and brought the ship down. Instead of matching orbits at first, he put himself in a moving orbit around the asteroid, and peered at it from a distance of a hundred miles.

He didn't have to worry about being detected. Space-ships don't make any noise, not out in space where nothing carries sound waves. And his tiny ship was no more visible from the asteroid at a hundred miles than a gnat would have been.

It wasn't hard to see the activity going on down on the asteroid. With his scanners on fine, he could plainly make out the work area. A crew was busy on the side of the as-teroid facing Jupiter, and even at a hundred miles up Storm could make out pretty clearly what they were doing. They were putting in a rocket installation.

There was a big ship in parking orbit around the asteroid, and it was emblazoned boldly enough with the UMC mono-gram. On the surface of the asteroid itself, Storm saw what looked like ants, and knew that they were work-trucks and crawlers, unloaded from the mother ship.

He circled the asteroid in his orbit a couple of dozen times, scanning the whole surface of the asteroid to make sure the intruders were gathered all in one place. Although he still had no strategy for coping with them, he knew he had to remain unnoticed as long as possible.

There was no sense in making a direct challenge. A fool might march up to the UMC men and order them off, but Storm was no fool. He knew how quickly and quietly they would dispose of him if he tried anything like that. He was armed with a gun, but they probably outnumbered him fifty or sixty to his one, and he suspected they had guns, too.

About the best he could hope for was to get a series of three-dee camera shots showing the men at work. It wouldn't be much, but the pictures would help bolster his contention that UMC had whisked the asteroid out of his possession by sheer craftiness. He didn't think he'd get far in court against UMC's battery of lawyers, but at least he'd make the giant cartel look silly as it tried to explain why they were building a rocket installation on an asteroid they had already claimed. He knew what would happen. They would wiggle out of it somehow, and the asteroid would be theirs. Then, all smiles and blandness, they'd come around to him and say, "Would you like to work for us, Mr. Storm? That job offer is still open." And he'd disappear forever into the maw of the UMC organization, all dreams of fortune exploded.

Storm scowled. He studied his keyboard for a moment, and began to pick out the programming instructions for his computer.

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