They looked quite a bit like the Terrestrial marine sort. Each humped up in a hard conoidal shell of blackish-brown material. Beneath them was a layer of excreted metal, chiefly ferrous, plated onto the aluminum hull.
I’d hate to try landing through an atmosphere, thought Bull. Of course, that wouldn’t be necessary. We would go into orbit around Earth and call for someone to lay alongside and take us off… But heading back sunward, we’ll have one sweet time controlling internal temperature… No, I can simply slap some shiny paint on. That should do the trick. I’d have to paint anyway, to maintain constant radiation characteristics when micrometeorites are forever scratching our metal. Another chore. Space flight is nothing but one long round of chores. The next poet who recites in my presence an ode to man’s conquest of the universe can take that universe—every galaxy and every supernova through every last, long light-year—and put…
If we get home alive.
He tossed the barnacle into a metal canister for later study. It was still red hot, and doubtless the marvelously intricate organism within the shell had suffered damage. But the details of the lithophagic metabolism could be left for professional biologists to figure out. All they wanted aboard Holy Ole was enough knowledge to base a decision on.
Before taking more specimens, Bull made a circuit of the hull. There were many hummocks on it, barnacles growing upon barnacles. The foresection had turned into a hill of shells, under which the radio transceiver boom lay buried. Another could be built when required for Earth approach. The trouble was, with the interior radiation still mounting—while a hasty retreat seemed impossible—Bull had started to doubt he ever would see Earth again.
He scrubbed down the radar, then paused to examine the spot where he had initially cut off a few dozen samples. New ones were already burgeoning on the ferroplate left by their predecessors—little fellows with delicate glasslike shells which would soon grow and thicken, becoming incredibly tough. Whatever that silicate material was, study of it should repay Terrestrial industry. Another bonanza from the Asteroid Belt, the modern Mother Lode.
«Ha!» said Bull.
It had sounded very convincing. The proper way to exploit space was not to mine the planets, where you must grub deep in the crust to find a few stingy ore pockets, then spend fabulous amounts of energy hauling your gains home. No, the asteroids had all the minerals man would ever need, in developing his extraterrestrial colonies and on Earth herself. Freely available minerals, especially on the metallic asteroids from the core of the ancient planet. Just land and help yourself. No elaborate apparatus needed to protect you from your environment. Just the spaceship and space armor you had to have anyway. No gravitational well to back down into and climb back out of. Just a simple thrust of minimum power.
Given free access to the asteroids, even a small nation like Norway could operate in space, with all the resulting benefits to her economy, politics, and prestige. And there was the Hellik Olav, newly outfitted, with plenty of volunteers—genuine ones—for an exploratory mission and to hell with the danger.
«Ha!» repeated Bull.
He had been quite in favor of the expedition, provided somebody else went. But he was offered a berth and made the mistake of telling his girl.
«Ohhhh, Erik!» she exclaimed, enormous-eyed.
After six months in space helping to rig and test the ship, Bull could have fallen in love with the Sea Hag. However, this had not been necessary. When he had returned to Earth, swearing a mighty oath never to set foot above the stratosphere again, he met Marta. She was small and blond and deliciously shaped. She adored him right back. The only flaw he could find in her was a set of romantic notions about the starry universe and the noble Norwegian destiny therein.
«Oh, oh,» he said, recognizing the symptoms. In haste: «Don’t get ideas, now. I told you I’m a marine reclamation man, from here on forever.»
«But this, darling! This chance! To be one of the conquerors! To make your name immortal!»
«The trouble is, I’m still mortal myself.»
«The service you can do—to our country!»
«Uh, apart from everything else, do you realize that, uh, even allowing for acceleration under power for part of the distance, I’d be gone for more than two years?»
«I’ll wait for you.»
«But—»
«Are you afraid, Erik?»
«Well, no. But—»
«Think of the Vikings! Think of Fridtjof Nansen! Think of Roald Amundsen!»
Bull dutifully thought of all these gentlemen. «What about them?» he asked.
But it was a light summer night, and Marta couldn’t imagine any true Norwegian refusing such a chance for deathless glory, and one thing sort of led to another. Before he recovered his wits, Bull had accepted the job.
There followed a good deal of work up in orbit, readying the ship, and a shakedown cruise lasting some weeks. When he finally got pre-departure leave, Bull broke every known traffic law and a few yet to be invented, on the way to Marta’s home. She informed him tearfully that she was so sorry and she hoped they would always be good friends, but she had been seeing so little of him and had met someone else but she would always follow his future career with the greatest interest. The someone else turned out to be a bespectacled writer who had just completed a three-volume novel about King Harald Hardcounsel (1015-1066). Bull didn’t remember the rest of his furlough very clearly.
A shock jarred through him. He bounced from the hull, jerked to a halt at the end of his life line, and waited for the dizziness to subside. The stars leered.
«Hallo! Hallo, Erik! Are you all right?»
Bull shook his head to clear it. Helledahl’s voice, phoned across the life line, was tinny in his earphones. «I think so. What happened?»
«A small meteorite hit us, I suppose. It must have had an abnormal orbit to strike so hard. We can’t see any damage from inside, though. Will you check the outer hull?»
Bull nodded, though there was no point in doing so. After he hauled himself back, he needed a while to find the spot of impact. The pebble had collided near the waist of the ship, vaporizing silicate shell material to form a neat little crater in a barnacle hummock. It hadn’t quite penetrated to the ferroplate. A fragment remained, trapped between the rough lumps.
Bull shivered. Without that overgrowth, the hull would have been pierced. Not that that mattered greatly in itself. There was enough patching aboard to repair several hundred such holes. But the violence of impact was an object lesson. Torvald Winge was almost certainly right. Trying to cut straight across the Asteroid Belt would be as long a chance as men had ever taken. The incessant bombardment of particles, mostly far smaller than this but all possessing a similar speed, would wear down the entire hull. When it was thin enough to rip apart under stress, no meteor bumpers or patches would avail.
His eyes sought the blue-green glint of Earth, but couldn’t find it among so many stars. You know, he told himself, I don’t even mind the prospect of dying out here as much as I do the dreariness of it. If we turned around now and somehow survived, I’d be home by Christmas. I’d only have wasted one extra year in space, instead of more than three—counting in the preparations for this arduous cruise. I’d find me a girl, no, a dozen girls. And a hundred bottles. I’d make up for that year in style, before settling down to do work I really enjoy.
But we aren’t likely to survive, if we turn around now.
But how likely is our survival if we keep going—with the radiation shield failing us? And an extra two years on Holy Ole? I’d go nuts!