Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet Page 17

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - RIDE THE GRAY PLANET!

  A mighty hand reached out and shoved Rip, sweeping him through space likea dust mote. He clutched his propulsion tube with both hands and fought tohold it steady.

  He swiveled his head quickly, searching for Santos, and saw the Filipino adozen rods away, still holding fast to his tube.

  From the far horizon of the asteroid the incandescent fire of the nuclearblast stretched into space, turning from silver to orange to red as itcooled.

  Rip knew they had escaped the heat and blast of the explosion, but therewas a question of how much of the prompt radiation they had absorbed.During the first few seconds, a nuclear blast vomited gamma radiation andneutrons in all directions. He and Santos certainly had gotten plenty. Buthow much? Putting their dosimeters into a measuring meter aboard a cruiserwould tell them. His low-level colorimeter had long since reached maximumred, and his high-level dosimeter could be read only on a measuringdevice.

  Meanwhile, he had other worries. Radiation had no immediate effect. Atworst, it would be a few hours before he felt any symptoms.

  As he sized up his position and that of the asteroid, he let out a yell oftriumph. His gamble would succeed! He had estimated that going into thedirect gravity pull of the sun at the proper moment, and lighting offtheir last tubes, would put them into a landing position. The asteroid wasswerving rapidly, moving into a new orbit that would intersect the coursehe and Santos were on. He had planned on the asteroid's change of orbit.In a minute at most they would be back on the rock.

  His propulsion tube flared out and he released it. It would travel alongwith him, but his hands would be free. He watched closely as the asteroiddrew nearer and estimated they would land with plenty of room to spare.

  Then he saw something else. The blast had started the asteroid turning!

  He reacted instantly. Turning up his communicator he yelled, "Koa! Therock is spinning! Cut the prisoners loose, grab the equipment, and run forit! You'll have to keep running to stay in the shadow. If sunlight hitsthose fuel tanks or the tubes of rocket fuel, they'll explode!"

  Koa replied tersely, "Got it. We're moving."

  The Planeteers and their prisoners would have to move fast, running tostay out of direct sunlight. A moment or two in the sun wouldn't hurt themen, but the chemical fuels in the cutting tanks and rocket tubes wouldexplode in a matter of seconds.

  At least the Connie cruiser couldn't harm them now, Rip thought grimly. Helooked for the cruiser and failed to find it for several seconds. It hadmoved. He finally saw its exhausts some distance away.

  He forgot his own predicament in a grin. The Connie cruiser had moved, butnot because its commander had wanted to. It had been right in the path ofthe nuclear blast, although some distance from it. The Connie had beenliterally shoved away.

  Then Rip forgot the cruiser. His suit ventilator was whining under theterrific heat and his whole body was bathed in perspiration. The sun wasgetting them. It was only a short time until the ventilator overloaded andburned out. They had to reach the asteroid before then. The trouble was,there was nothing further he could do about it. He had only air bottlesleft, and their blast was so weak that the effect wouldn't speed him upmuch. Nevertheless, he called to Santos and directed him to use hisbottles. Then he did the same.

  Santos spoke up. "Sir, we're going to make it."

  In the same instant, Rip saw that they would land on the dark side. Theasteroid was turning over and over, and for a second he had the impressionhe was looking at a turning globe of the earth, the kind used inelementary school back home. But this gray planet was scarcely bigger thanthe giant globe at the entrance of the Space Council building on Terra.

  The gray metal world suddenly leaped into sharp focus and seemed to rushtoward him. It was an optical illusion. The ability of the eyes toperceive depth sharply--the faculty known as depth perception--didn't appearto operate normally until the eyes were within a certain distance of anobject.

  He knew he was going to hit hard. The way to keep from being hurt was toturn the vertical energy of his arrival into motion in another direction.As he swept down to the metal surface he started running, his legs pumpingwildly in space. He hit with a bone-jarring thud, lost his footing andfell sideways, both hands cradling his helmet. He got to his feetinstantly and looked for Santos. A good thing his equipment wasshock-mounted, he thought. Otherwise the communicator would be knocked fora line of galaxies.

  "You all right, sir?" Santos called anxiously.

  "Yes. Are you?"

  "I'm fine. I think the others are over there." He pointed.

  "We'll find them," Rip said. His hip hurt like fury from smashing againstthe unyielding metal, and the worst part was that he couldn't rub it. Theblow had been strong enough to hurt through the heavy fabric and airpressure, but his hand wasn't strong enough to compress the suit. Just thesame, he tried.

  And while he was trying, he found himself in direct sunlight!

  He had forgotten to run. Standing still on the asteroid meant turning withit, from darkness into sunlight and back again. He yelled at Santos andlegged it out of there, moving in long, gliding steps. He regained theshadow and kept going.

  The first order of business was to stop the rock from turning. Otherwisethey couldn't live on it.

  Rip knew that they had only one means of stopping the spin. That was touse the tubes of rocket fuel left over from correcting the course. Theyhad three tubes left, but he didn't know if that was enough to do the job.

  Moving rapidly, he and Santos caught up to Koa and the Planeteers.

  The Connie prisoners were pretty well bunched up, gliding along like aherd of fantastic sheep. Their shepherds were Pederson, Nunez, and Dowst.The three Planeteers had a pistol in each hand. The spares were probablythose taken from prisoners.

  The Planeteers were loaded down with equipment. A few Connie prisonerscarried equipment, too.

  Trudeau had the rocket launcher and the remaining rockets. Kemp had historch and two tanks of oxygen. Bradshaw had tied his safety line to thesquat containers of chemical fuel for the torch and was towing them behindlike strange balloons. The only trouble with that system, Rip thought, wasthat Bradshaw could stop, but the containers would have a tendency to keepgoing. Unless the English Planeteer were skillful, his burdens would draghim right off his feet.

  Dominico had a tube of rocket fuel under each arm. The Italian was smalland the tubes were bulky. Each was about ten feet long and two feet indiameter. With any gravity or air resistance at all, the Italian couldn'thave carried even one.

  Rip smiled as Dominico glided along. He looked as though the tubes werefloating him over the asteroid, instead of the other way around.

  Santos took the radiation detection instruments and the case with theastrogation equipment from Koa. Rip greeted his men briefly, then took hiscomputing board and began figuring. He knew the men were glad he andSantos had made it. But they kept their greetings short. A spinningasteroid was no place for long and sentimental speeches.

  He remembered the dimensions of the asteroid and its mass. He computed itsinertia, then figured out what it would take to overcome the inertia ofthe spin.

  The mathematics would have been simple under normal conditions, but doingthem on the run, trying to watch his step at the same time, made things alittle complicated. He had to hold the board under his arm, run alongsideSantos while the new sergeant held the case open, select the book hewanted, open it and try to read the tables by his belt light and thentransfer the data to the board.

  His ventilator had quieted down once he got into the darkness, but now itstarted whining slightly again because he was sweating profusely. Finallyhe figured out the thrust needed to stop the spin. Now all he had to dowas compute how much fuel it would take.

  He had figures on the amount of thrust given by the kind of rocket fuel inthe tubes. He also knew how much fuel each tube contained. But the figureswere not in his head. They were on reference sheets.

  He c
ollected the data on the fly, slowing down now and then to readsomething, until a yell from Santos or Koa warned that the sun line wascreeping close. When he had all data noted on the board, he started hismathematics. He was right in the middle of a laborious equation when hestumbled over a thorium crystal. He went headlong, shooting like a rocketthree feet above the ground. His board flew away at a tangent. His stylussped out of his glove like a miniature projectile, and the slide ruleclanged against his bubble.

  It happened so fast neither Koa nor Santos had time to grab him. Theaction had given him extra speed and he saw with horror that he was goingto crash into Trudeau. He yelled, "Frenchy! Watch out!" Then put bothhands before him to protect his helmet. His hands caught the FrenchPlaneteer between the shoulders with a bone-jarring thud.