He knew the asteroid to be about the right size. It was roughly the shape he remembered it to be. It was jagged enough and the sunlit portion looked the right color. All that, however, might have held true for any asteroid.
But there was the other item. That was not likely to be duplicated very often.
From his waist pouch he took out a small instrument that looked like a compass. Actually it was a pocket radar unit. Its enclosed emission source could put out radio short waves of almost any range. Certain octaves could be partially reflected by rock and partially transmitted through reasonable distances.
In the presence of a thick layer of rock the reflection of radiation activated a needle on the dial. In the presence of a thin layer of rock, as, for instance, on a surface under which lay a cave or hollow, some radiation was reflected, but some penetrated into the hollow and was reflected from the further wall. In this way a double reflection occurred, one component of which was much weaker than the second. In response to such a double reflection the needle responded with a characteristic double quiver.
Lucky watched the instrument as he leaped easily over the stony peaks. The needle's smooth pulsing gained a quiver, and then a distinct subsidiary movement. Lucky's heart bounded. The asteroid was hollow. Find where the subsidiary movements were strongest and there the hollow would be nearest the surface. There would be the air-lock.
For a few moments all of Lucky's faculties were concentrated on the needle. He was unaware of the magnetic cable snaking its way toward him from the near horizon.
He was unaware of it until it snapped about him in coil after coil, clinging close, its momentum tossing his nearly weightless body first clear of the asteroid and then down to the rock, where he lay helpless.
Chapter 11
At Close Quarters
Three lights came over the horizon and toward the prostrate Lucky. In the darkness of the asteroid's night he could not see the figures that accompanied the lights.
Then there was a voice in his ear and the voice was the well-known hoarseness of the pirate, Dingo. It said, "Don't call your pal upstairs. I've got a jigger here that can pick up your carrier wave. If you try to, I'll blast you out of your suit right now, nark!"
He spat out the final word; the contemptuous term of all lawbreakers for those they considered to be spies of the law-enforcement agencies.
Lucky kept silent. From the moment he had first felt the tremor of his suit under the lash of the magnetic cable he knew that he had fallen into a trap. To call Bigman before he knew more about the nature of the trap would have been putting the Shooting Starr into danger, and that without helping himself.
Dingo stood over him, a foot on either side. In the light of one of the flashes Lucky caught a quick glimpse of Dingo's face-plate and of the stubby goggles that covered his eyes. Lucky knew those to be infrared translators, capable of converting ordinary heat radiation into visible light. Even without flashes and in the asteroid's
dark night they had been able to watch him by the energy of his own heaters.
Dingo said, "What's the matter, nark? Scared?" He lifted a bulky leg with its bulkier metal swathing and brought his heel down sharply in the direction of Lucky's face-plate. Lucky turned his head swiftly away to let the blow fall on the sturdier metal of the helmet, but Dingo's heel stopped midway. He laughed whoop-
ingly.
"You won't get it that easy, nark," he said.
His voice changed as he spoke to the other two pirates. "Hop over the jag and get the air-lock open."
For a moment they hesitated. One of them said, "But, Dingo*, the captain said you were too-"
Dingo said, "Get going, or maybe I'll start with him and finish with you."
In the face of the threat the two hopped away. Dingo said to Lucky, "Now suppose we get you to the air-lock."
He was still holding the butt end of the magnetic cable. With a flick at the switch he turned off its current and momentarily demagnetized it. He stepped away and pulled it sharply toward himself. Lucky dragged along the rocky floor of the asteroid, bounced upward, and rolled partly out of the cable. Dingo touched the switch again and the remaining coils suddenly clung and held.
Dingo flicked the whip upward. Lucky traveled with it, while Dingo maneuvered skillfully to maintain his own balance. Lucky hovered in space and Dingo walked with him as though he were a child's balloon at the end of a string.
The lights of the other two were visible again after five minutes. They were shining into a patch of darkness of which regular boundaries were proof enough that it was an open air-lock.
Dingo called, "Watch out! I've got a package to deliver."
He demagnetized the cable again, and flicked it downward, rising six inches into the air as he did so. Lucky rotated rapidly, spinning completely out of the cable.
Dingo leaped upward and caught him. With the skill of a man long used to weightlessness, he avoided Lucky's attempts to break his hold, and hurled him in the direction of the air-lock. He broke his own backward tumble by a quick double spurt of his suit's push-gun and righted himself in time to see Lucky enter the air-lock cleanly.
What followed was clearly visible in the light of the pirates' flashes. Caught in the pseudo-grav field that existed within the air-lock, Lucky was hurled suddenly downward, hitting the rocky floor with a clatter and force that knocked the breath out of him. Dingo's braying laughter filled his helmet.
The outer door closed, the inner opened. Lucky got to his feet, actually thankful for the normality of gravity.
"Get in, nark." Dingo was holding a blaster.
Lucky paused as he entered the asteroid's interior. His eyes shifted quickly from side to side while the frost gathered at the rims of his face-plate. What he saw was not the soft-lit library of the hermit, Hansen, but a tremendously long hallway, the roof of which was supported by a series of pillars. He could not see to the other end. Openings to rooms pierced the wall of the corridors regularly. Men hurried to and fro and there was the smell of ozone and machine oil in the air. In the distance he could hear the characteristic drum-drum of what must have been gigantic hyperatomic motors.
It was quite obvious that this was no hermit's cell, but a large industrial plant, inside an asteroid.
Lucky bit his lower lip thoughtfully and wondered despondently if all this information would die with him now.
Dingo said, "In there, nark. Get in there."
It was a storeroom he indicated, its shelves and bins well filled, but empty of human beings other than themselves.
"Say, Dingo," said one of the pirates nervously, "why are we showing him all this? I don't think-"
"Then don't talk," said Dingo, and laughed. "Don't worry, he won't tell anyone about anything he sees. I guarantee that. Meanwhile I have a little something to finish with him. Get that suit off him."
He was removing his own suit as he spoke. He stepped out, monstrously bulky. One hand rubbed slowly over the hairy back of the other. He was savoring the moment.
Lucky said firmly, "Captain Anton never gave you orders to kill me. You're trying to finish a private feud and it will only get you into trouble. I'm a valuable man to the captain and he knows it."
Dingo sat down on the edge of a bin of small metal objects, with a grin on his face. "To listen to you, nark, you'd think you had a case. But you didn't fool us, not for one minute. When we left you on the rock with the hermit, what do you think we did? We watched. Captain Anton's no fool. He sent me back. He said, 'Watch that rock and report back.' I saw the hermit's dinghy leave. I could have blasted you out of space then, but the order was to follow.
"I stayed off Ceres for a day and a half and spotted the hermit's dinghy hitting out for space again. I waited some more. Then I caught this other ship coming out to meet it. The man off the dinghy got on to the other ship and I followed you when you took off."