The Best of Murray Leinster by Murray Leinster

Author:Murray Leinster [Leinster, Murray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-01-18T07:08:01.655000+00:00

Pipeline to Pluto

FAR, FAR OUT on Pluto, where the sun is only a very bright star and a frozen, airless globe circles in emptiness; far out on Pluto, there was motion. Theperpetual faint starlight was abruptly broken. Yellow lights shone suddenly ina circle, and men in spacesuits waddled to a space tug-absurdly marked Betsy- Anne in huge white letters. They climbed up its side and went in the air lock. Presently a faint, jetting glow appeared below its drive tubes. It flaredsuddenly and the tug lifted, to hover expertly a brief distance above whatseemed an unmarred field of frozen atmosphere. But that field heaved andbroke. The nose of a Pipeline carrier appeared in the center of a cruciformopening. It thrust through. It stood half its length above the surface of the dead and lifeless planet. The tug drifted above it. Its grapnel dropped down,

jetted minute flames, and engaged in themonster tow ring at the carrier'sbow.

The tug's drive tubes flared luridly. The carrier heaved abruptly up outof its hiding place and plunged for the heavens behind the tug. It had a hugeclass mark and number painted on its side, which was barely visible as itwhisked out of sight. It. went on up at four gravities acceleration, while the space tug lined out on themost precise of courses and drove fiercely foremptiness.

A long, long time later, when Pluto was barely a pallid disk behind, the tug cast off. The carrier went on, sunward. Its ringed nose pointedunwaveringly to the sun, toward which it would drift for years. It was one of a long, long line of carriers drifting through space, a day apart in time butmillions of miles apart in distance.

They would go on until a tug from Earth came out and grappled them andtowed them in to their actual home planet.

But the Betsy-Anne, of Pluto, did not pause for contemplation of the two-billion-mile-long line of ore carriers taking themetal of Pluto back toEarth. It darted off from the line its late tow now followed. Its radio locator beam flickered invisibly in emptiness. Presently its course changed. It turned about. It braked violently, going up to six gravities decelerationfor as long as half a minute at a time. Presently it came to rest and the refloated toward it an object from Earth, a carrier with great white numerals onits sides. It had been hauled off Earth and flung into an orbit which wouldfetch it out to Pluto. The Betsy-Anne's grapnel floated toward it and jettedtiny sparks until the towring was engaged. Then the tug and its new tow fromEarth started back to Pluto.

There were two long lines of white-numbered carriers floating sedatelythrough space. One line drifted tranquilly in to Earth. One drifted no lesstranquilly out past the orbits of six planets to reach the closed-in, underground colony of themines on Pluto.

Togethe r they made up the Pipeline.

The evening Moon-rocket took off over to thenorth and went straight upto the zenith. Its blue-white rocket-flare changed color as it fell behind, until the tail end was a deep, rich crimson.

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