In the faint light he saw the slow revolutions of the circular hatch on the airlock. It opened inward. The interior lights in the air lock were off. At least the man was that smart. Midas lifted the tubular weapon.
Suddenly he stiffened, and then began to curse. A thin cable lowered a small object down toward his ship. The man was cleverer than be had thought. The object dangled, touched the smooth Hack hull of Midas’ ship, then rested quietly.
Swiftly it was redrawn. He slid the cover off the small screen. The familiar face, this time shielded in the distinctive space helmet of a Security officer, smiled.
“Very clever, Midas. Even you can’t stop your heart from beating. And there’s no heartbeat in your ship. Ergo, you are outside your ship. Which hole are you in, rat?”
“Come and get me, hero.”
For a long time there was no answer. The airlock door closed, and he wondered as he saw it revolve into tight position.
The face of Arnold King in the tiny screen was suddenly brighter. Midas heard the rush of air inside the cruiser, saw King twist the helmet, lift it free.
“Come on, hero,” he said to King. “Lift your ship and slam your jets on this cliff. Maybe you’ll get me and maybe you won’t. If you do, it’s better than any other kind of death; I’ll never know what hit me. The people on the Denver — they knew what hit them.”
King’s face convulsed with a fury as great as any Midas had even seen. In anticipation of the Hast, be wiggled further back into the natural cave. It was even deeper than he had hoped.
Suddenly, with a blue-white flash from the jets, the cruiser sped away.
Midas felt the fear again — fear of the unknown; fear of the madman who guided the cruiser, the fat-faced man with death in his eyes. But a clean death would be better than the courts.
The cruiser was out of sight. Ten minutes passed. He felt a dull jar that seemed to shake the rock floor of his cave. He frowned. It made no sense to him. He could not imagine what the man was doing.
In a very few minutes he felt another shock. Then something completely inexplicable happened. He floated, rose against the cave roof. Another shock, and yet another. He was held firmly against the roof of the cave. He twisted his head so that he could see his ship. It stood straight out from the asteroid, the anchor line tight. The shocks came faster.
Then his ship pulled free, arrowed, without power, into the darkness and was lost. Suddenly he understood, and he screamed. His scream filled the helmet, tore at his ears. The man had backed the cruiser off, had blasted with his jets at an angle against the surface of the asteroid. With each blast of the jets, the asteroid had begun to spin faster on its axis, until, when centrifugal force on his body had outbalanced the weak gravity, he had floated to the roof of the small cave. Faster and faster.
And Wink Midas knew that the accelerated rate of spin would continue throughout all the rest of time.
There was one solution. Trembling, he slid back the protective cover of the palm screen. There were two faces in the small screen. The senior lieutenant, white and angry. The fleshy junior lieutenant, abject and apologetic.
“I... I lost my head, sir. I’m sorry. Temporary insanity, I guess. But when I saw what I had done, I suddenly realized that we didn’t have to go outside to get him. I just spun the asteroid with full power until the rate of spin flung him and his ship free. See, his ship is right ahead, still blanketed. We can grapple it, and tow him in.”
His lips trembling with anxiety, Wink Midas said, “But I’m not in my ship. I’m here. Back on the asteroid!”
They paid no attention to him. Obviously the screen was set to send, not receive. The senior lieutenant lost his look of anger. “All right, Arnold.” He fingered his bruised jaw. “Officially, I’ll forget it. But I thought you wanted to kill him.”
Midas wondered if it was his imagination that showed Arnold King giving a quick glance of sardonic amusement at the screen. “No sir. I can see that it will be better if he stands trial.”
The screen slowly became less distinct as the cruiser reached the outer limits of the communicator. In shrill hysteria, Midas screamed, “Don’t! Don’t leave! You’ll never find me again!”
The screen went dead.
For nearly an hour he made futile attempts to claw his way toward the cave mouth, but it was as though he’d been welded to the roof of the cave — welded by centrifugal force.
He took the tubular weapon, aimed it at himself. But he could not pull the trigger.
A spinning coffin for Wink Midas!
Slowly at first, almost with humor, he began to laugh.