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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
mag-
THE ASTEROID THAT WAS 121
netic 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.
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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 theShooting 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.
AT CLOSE QUARTERS 125
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."
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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
126 LUCKY STARR
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,
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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? Wewatched. Cap-
AT CLOSE QUARTERS 127
tain 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."
Lucky could not help smiling. "Tried to follow, you mean."
Dingo's face turned a blotchy red. He spat out, "All right. You were faster. Your kind is good at running.
What of it? I didn't have to chase you. I just came here and waited. I knew where you were heading. I've
got you, haven't I?"
Lucky said, "All right, but what have you got? I was unarmed on the hermit's rock. I didn't have any
weapons, while the hermit had a blaster. I had to do what he said. He wanted to get back to Ceres and
he forced me along so he could claim he was being kidnapped if the men of the asteroids stopped him.
You admit yourself that I got off Ceres as fast as I could and tried to get back here."
"In a nice, shiny government ship?"
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