With the gyros he switched his tiny ship end for end.
He knew that on the cruiser they were already deciding that Wink Midas was going beyond the asteroid belt — that it was too late for deceleration.
His blunt finger on the jet controls, he waited. The seconds ticked by. The time came. He forced his big body back against the plastic foam cushions, tightened all the belts to the limit of his strength, shoved his head back so that his neck wouldn’t snap, set the controls for a full five seconds of jet.
He flicked the control switch. His eyeballs were glowing flames forced back into the soft tissue of his brain. His tongue plugged his throat and his mighty ribs cracked. One foot had been an inch away from the chair brace. It smashed against the brace with a thud that numbed his leg. He screamed in agony, felt the tiny, angry rip of tissues, and it was as though he were being crushed between two steel walls.
The pain ceased. A spear of fire, jets foremost, went by him fifty miles away, unable to decelerate at that rate, forbidden by safety devices built into the ship itself, even if the commanding officer had been willing to accept a fifty percent mortality among his small crew.
He still moved backward, but at far less than the speed of light. The pain with the second burst was not so great, and for a moment the dials told him that his ship was nearly motionless with respect to the asteroid belt, moving rearward at less than fifty miles a second. By now the light cruiser would be far beyond the asteroids, straining to come to a stop, to reverse and return once more to pick up his trail.
He spun the little ship to the proper angle, gave the merest touch to the jets, looked anxiously in all screens for the friendly bulk of an asteroid. One grew on the port screen, looming through nothingness, touched vaguely with the light of distant stars, giving the familiar effect that it was he who was motionless, that the asteroid, some thirty miles in diameter, was a massive stone hurled at him by angry gods.
Once more he corrected course, adjusted his velocity to that of the asteroid, approaching its course at not more than a three-degree angle. There was no sign of pursuit. He watched all screens. The rough face of the asteroid filled the port screen.
At last the mass of it caused a minute alteration, and the small black ship drifted slowly toward it. The asteroid moved slowly on its axis. The hull of the little ship clanged hollowly against the zero rock, the rough desolation, bounced, clanged more softly, at last came to rest, rocking.
He yanked at the anchor lever. The spearhead drove down into the rock, expanded. The ship rebounded sharply to the end of the short length of cable, settled slowly down to the surface again.
With motions oddly deft for so large a man, he slipped into the space armor, tightened the globular helmet with a practiced twist, set the oxygen supply, then cracked the valve on the ship itself. The air screamed out, forming tiny solid pellets that slid slowly down the hull, drifted to the rock.
He spun the hatch free, swung it aside, clambered metallically through the narrow port and floated, almost weightless, to the bare rock of his new world. Most of his fear was gone. The suit he wore was so designed that a man could live for two weeks in it — in considerable discomfort, but he could live.
And in two weeks they would give up.
To his belt was slung a slim, tubular weapon. It was useless against the cruiser — but if they came after him in suits...
He looked around him. He saw a miniature world, a black, hard world of shattered rock. A hundred yards away was a cliff fifty feet high, pocked holes in the face of it. On such a world, this was a mountain range.
With the ease of long practice, he reached the cliff in two bounds. He slid into one of the holes in the cliff face, sat so that his back was against one wall, and he could see the black heavens.
Let them look.
“Maybe it killed him,” George Bolles said sullenly. But as he said it, he knew that he had been out-generaled. He shuddered to think of the report he would have to turn in. Pursuing the great Wink Midas, and then evaded as though he were a child of ten. When he had known that it was no longer possible for the human frame to bear the deceleration necessary to enter the asteroid belt, Midas had done exactly that, while they had shot by, helpless, frustrated and angry.
“It didn’t kill him, sir,” Arnold King said. “Not that one.” He pointed to the chart. “He entered the belt at about this point. The asteroid bodies in the belt have almost a constant orbit. Three hours have passed. He should be in there somewhere.”
“There covers four million cubic miles, Arnold.”
“It would be difficult to explain if we fail to find him, sir.”
“I see what you mean. All right. We’ll cruise up to that point right there, and use that asteroid as reference point for the search.”
There was no day or night, and no way of knowing the time without going back to the ship. Wink Midas had slept twice.
He awoke, glanced up, saw the faint starlight glimmering from the sleek hull of the cruiser, and cursed bitterly. The search was over. They hung five hundred yards above his ship, settling slowly.
He heard the tiny buzz of the communicator. He lifted the metallic left hand of the space suit, palm toward his face, thumbed aside the small screen cover, pushed the nub toward the end of the slot which would enable him to receive without transmitting.
A young face filled the tiny screen. He saw by the collar insignia that the young man was a senior lieutenant.
“Wink Midas. Come in Wing Midas. Resistance is useless. This is the Security Cruiser Genesee. Come in Midas. Come out of your ship with your arms up. We are blanketing your jets. You cannot escape.”
Midas felt a sudden surge of hope. They thought he was in the ship. With his smaller ship anchored, they would be unable to settle low enough to fasten their airlock to his port. They would have to don suits and while they were exposed...
He slid the panel over the screen so that they would not see that he was out of his ship. He pushed the nub over, said, “Come and get me, lieutenant.”
Taking it off ‘send,’ he opened the panel. The young face was still there, but it was in profile. “I’ll go in and get him, Arnold,” the young man said.
“It’s my job,” the senior lieutenant said.
“I have better reason,” another voice said.
Wink Midas grinned, glanced from the screen up at the ship which slowly settled. He moved further back.
Glancing back at the screen, his eyes widened as he saw the senior lieutenant try to avoid a blow. A fist smashed solidly against his jaw and he fell back out of range of the screen. A new face filled the screen. An older face; a face in which there was cold hate and fury.
“You don’t know me, Midas. I’m Arnold King. Remember the Denver, Midas? This is a personal score I’m settling. I’ve locked the compartment door. The rest of the crew is trapped. I’m coming out after you, Wink Midas. And you won’t live for a fancy court trial. You’ll die on that pretty little world you’ve picked for a grave.”
The screen went blank. Midas chuckled. It would be a pleasure to wipe out a hero. Maybe if he could do it quickly enough, he could enter the cruiser through the air lock, kill the senior officer and take over the control room.
As he settled himself into a more comfortable position, the cruiser scraped, touched, rebounded, settled gently on the far side of his tiny ship.