“What’s happening?” Tom said. “The crazy fools are fumbling all over the place!” Ben Trefon chuckled, and hit the drive switch, moving swiftly on in toward the Maze. “It’s hard to home in on a shadow,” he said. “Remember how hard it was to see the Searchers’ ship, even when we knew exactly where it was?”
“But we don’t have any screening devices!”
“I think we do. Something’s hooked into the emergency power circuits, and we didn’t touch those circuits when we were repairing. But we were away from the ship for several hours while we were aboard the Searchers’ ship.”
“You think they installed something?”
“Our friends out there can’t see us,” Ben replied. “What do you think? There’s going to be some tall explaining in blockade headquarters tonight, I’ll bet you on that.” Now the blockade was thinning out on the tracking screen, and ahead the great disk of Asteroid Central was clearly visible, with its company of satellite rocks whizzing about it in dizzying confusion. As they approached, a warning signal buzzed on the control panel. “Overloading the generators,” Ben said.
“Whatever their gadget is, it sucks up power. We’d better try to do without it now.” Snapping the emergency switches off again, Ben nosed the little ship into the Maze. “Hold on, now. You’re going to have a rough trip.”
Deftly he moved the ship into a tangential arc, sliding into the edge of the Maze just as a large asteroid fragment came whirling by, rolling end-over-end. There were half a dozen possible keys to the Maze; Ben chose the avenue he knew best from experience, using the computers to outline his directional changes and maneuvers, but making the fine adjustments by the seat of his pants. Suddenly the ship was surrounded by rapidly whirling rock fragments going in all directions, some coming uncomfortably close, but none quite approaching in collision course. This was no job for a machine, when split-second errors in timing might throw a huge chunk of granite directly in a ship’s path. On each orbit, each fragment in the Maze shifted its position infinitesimally; only an alert human brain behind the controls of the ship aided by sharp eyes and reflexes could make the fine corrections necessary, using the computer’s key as a guide.
Behind them now the blockading ships had again picked up their position. Three fast pursuit ships broke from formation and headed in after them. There was no time for Ben to keep an eye on them; he needed full concentration to weave his way between the hurtling rocks as he guided the ship deeper in to the Maze. With one arm hooked around a shock bar for support he held on for dear life as he fired side jets and breaking jets. In response, the little ship dodged and darted, dropped and skidded like a thing alive.
“Ben, they’re trying to follow you in!” Tom said suddenly.
Ben jerked the ship sideways to avoid a huge rock that had loomed up ahead. Beyond the Maze the Great Central asteroid was looming larger now; it was an enormous temptation to break from the key and try to make a run for it when an opening appeared, but Ben held tight to the plotted course. “They’re crazy,” he said.
“Maybe so, but they must have tracked you. They’re following your course.”
“Okay.” Once again Ben snapped down the emergency generator switches, heard the whine of the screening devices rise again in his ears. “What now?” he asked after a moment.
“They don’t go for this on-again-off-again stuff one bit,” Tom said. “One’s trying to follow, but the other two are turning back.”
For a few seconds Ben turned his eyes to the view screen. The pursuit ship that had chosen to follow was in trouble. Once off the track, there were too many moving fragments to watch at once. In the process of dodging one of the Maze asteroids, the pilot moved his ship directly into the path of another.
The ship ricocheted into a third, which tore the whole front out of it, and then bounced from one rock to another, gradually beaten to pieces before their eyes.
It looked for a moment as if the two retreating ships would make it back, but one made the mistake of running for freedom when it had reached the edge. A huge rock caught it broadside, smashing it into a thousand pieces which were hurled in every direction. The rock continued rolling along, not even budged from its course by the impact.
A moment later Ben Trefon let out a shout of glee. The innermost of the Maze asteroids passed by just ahead of the S-80, and suddenly they were in the clear, with the great landing ports of Asteroid Central stretching out below them. Ben switched off the screening devices once again, and circled in toward the main receiving port. As the little ship hovered on null-gravity for landing, the great hatchways swung open to receive it; after a brief exchange of identification, Ben dropped the ship down into the waiting berth.
Moments later a crowd of jubilant Spacers were greeting him on the landing ramp, pounding his back and hoisting him up on their shoulders to carry him into the stronghold, with the Barrons following under somewhat suspicious guard behind him.
The first step of their mission was accomplished.
10. The Mauki Chant
THERE HAD BEEN a time, in the ages before men came into space, when Asteroid Central was no more than another moderate sized chunk of asteroidal rock, one of thousands like it making their way relentlessly in their orbits around the sun near the center of the Asteroid Belt. It was not a large asteroid, originally. Perhaps a hundred miles in diameter, it had been one of the hundreds of asteroid discoveries that had harried Earth astronomers in the 1800’s, so far down the list that it was not even given a name.
It had been utterly undistinguished in appearance and size, but it had chanced to lie far enough away from mighty Jupiter, the herdsman of the Rings, to have a relatively stable and reliable orbit, and it was this chance of celestial geography that had first led the Spacers to its ragged surface in the early days of their exile.
They had needed a way-station, far enough away from Earth to be difficult to find, yet close enough for use as a supply dump and storage warehouse. As the years passed it became increasingly important as a communications center, and then as a headquarters, roughly central in location, for the blossoming business and economic life that Spacers were building for themselves with the doors of Earth closed to them.
Slowly, bit by bit, Asteroid Central had been molded to their needs. Controlled murexide bombs stolen from Earth warehouses during raids were used to cut tunnels into the surface of the asteroid to provide pressurized storage and supply areas, and drydocks for the repair of Spacer ships. As methods of mining and smelting iron under space conditions were developed, shipyards were built on Asteroid Central’s surface, and the ore from other asteroids provided girders and I-beams to build up more useable areas on the surface. Once the body of the asteroid had been tunneled and honeycombed, structural steel formed the basis for the growth of a great city of steel on the surface, and an industrial center for the Spacers began to grow.
Furnishings were built or stolen from Earth. Laboratory space was built for the Spacer scientists, fabrication shops and other manufacturing facilities were painstakingly built up over the centuries, with each decade bringing new growth to the asteroid-city.
As the years passed, it became more and more clear that the Spacers’ exile was not destined to come to an end, that they were doomed to become outcasts in the solar system, with no choice but to provide for their needs as best they could, or die. Throughout all history necessity had spurred men on to incredible accomplishments; it was a tribute to man’s greatness, perhaps, that the Spacer culture did not shrivel and die as the vengeful Earthmen who had forced their exile had intended it to do. Instead it had grown and flourished, and in flourishing had become steadily more hateful to the people on Earth as guilt gnawed away at their minds.