Isaac Asimov
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids
(Lucky Starr – 2)
Preface
Back in the 1950s, I wrote a series of six derring-do novels about David "Lucky" Starr and his battles against malefactors within the Solar System. Each of the six took place in a different region of the system and in each case I made use of the astonomical facts-as they were then known.
Now, a quarter-century later, Gregg Press is bringing out the novels in new hardcover editions; but what a quarter-century it has been! More has been learned about the worlds of our Solar System in this last quarter-century than in all the thousands of years of earlier observations.
Prior to the 1950s, you see, we could only look from Earth's surface; since then, we have been able to send out rocket probes to take photographs and make studies at close range.
The only one of the six Lucky Starr novels that has remained untouched by this-at least so far-is LUCKY STARR AND THE PIRATES OF THE ASTEROIDS, which was written in 1953. There is evidence that many of the asteroids may be a little darker and just a little larger than had been thought earlier, but that makes very little difference.
Therefore, Lucky can fight the pirates and engage in his deadly duels right now just as he did a quarter-century ago, when this book was written. It I had to write the novel today, I would hardly have to change a word.
Isaac Asimov
DEDICATION
To Frederik Pohl,
That contradiction in terms-
A lovable agent.
Chapter 1
The Doomed Ship
Fifteen minutes to zero time! The Atlas waited to take off. The sleek, burnished lines of the space-ship glittered in the bright Earthlight that filled the Moon's night sky. Its blunt prow pointed upward into empty space. Vacuum surrounded it and the dead pumice of the Moon's surface was under it. The number of its crew was zero. There wasn't a living person aboard.
Dr. Hector Conway, Chief Councilor of Science, said, "What time is it, Gus?"
He felt uncomfortable in the Moon offices of the Council. On Earth he would have been at the very top of the stone and steel needle they called Science Tower. He would have been able to look out the window toward International City.
Here on the Moon they did their best. The offices had mock windows with brilliantly designed Earth scenes behind them. They were colored naturally, and lights within them brightened and softened during the day, simulating morning, noon, and evening. During the sleep periods they even shone a dim, dark blue.
It wasn't enough, though, for an Earthman like Con-way. He knew that if he broke through the glass of the windows there would be only painted miniatures before his eyes, and if he got behind that, then there would be just another room, or maybe the solid rock of the Moon.
Dr. Augustus Henree, whom Conway had addressed, looked at his wrist. He said, between puffs at his pipe, "There's still fifteen minutes. There's no point in worrying. The Atlas is in perfect shape. I checked it myself yesterday."
"I know that." Conway's hair was pure white and he looked older than the lank, thin-faced Henree, though they were the same age. He said, "It's Lucky I'm worried about."
"Lucky?"
Conway smiled sheepishly. "I'm catching the habit, I'm afraid. I'm talking about David Starr. It's just that everyone calls him Lucky these days. Haven't you heard them?"
"Lucky Starr, eh? The name suits him. But what about him? This is all his idea, after all."
"Exactly. It's the sort of idea he gets. I think he'll tackle the Sirian Consulate on the Moon next."
"I wish he would."
"Don't joke. Sometimes I think you encourage him in his idea that he ought to do everything as a one-man job. It's why I came here to the Moon, to keep an eye on him, not to watch the ship."
"If that's what you came here for, Hector, you're not on the job."
"Oh well, I can't follow him about like a mother hen. But Bigman is with him. I told the little fellow I would skin him alive if Lucky decided to invade the Sirian Consulate singlehanded."
Henree laughed.
"I tell you he'd do it," grumbled Conway. "What's worse, he'd get away with it, of course."
"Well, then."
"It would just encourage him, and then someday he'll take one risk too many, and he's too valuable a man to lose!"
John Bigman Jones teetered across the packed clay flooring, carrying his stein of beer with the utmost care. They didn't extend the pseudo-gravity fields outside the city itself, so that out here at the space-port you had to do the best you could under the Moon's own gravity field. Fortunately John Bigman Jones had been born and bred on Mars, where the gravity was only two fifths normal anyway, so it wasn't too bad. Bight now he weighed twenty pounds. On Mars he would have weighed fifty, and on the Earth one hundred and twenty.
He got to the sentry, who had been watching him with amused eyes. The sentry was dressed in the uniform of the Lunar National Guard, and he was used to the gravity.
John Bigman Jones said, "Hey. Don't stand there so gloomylike. I brought you a beer. Have it on me."
The sentry looked surprised, then said regretfully, "I can't. Not when I'm on duty, you know."
"Oh well. I can handle it myself, I guess. I'm John Bigman Jones. Call me Bigman." He only came up to the sentry's chin and the sentry wasn't particularly tall, but Bigman held out his hand as though he were reaching down with it.
"I'm Bert Wilson. You from Mars?" The sentry looked at Bigman's scarlet and vermilion hip boots. Nobody but a Martian farm boy would let himself be caught dead in space with them.
Bigman looked down at them proudly. "You bet. I'm stuck here for about a week. Great space, what a rock the Moon is. Don't any of you guys ever go out on the surface?"
"Sometimes. When we have to. There isn't much to see there."
"I sure wish I could go. I hate being cooped up."
"There's a surface lock back there."
Bigman followed the thumb that had been jerked back across the sergeant's shoulder. The corridor (rather poorly lit at this distance from Luna City) narrowed into a recess in the wall.
Bigman said, "I don't have a suit."
"You couldn't go out even if you had one. No one's allowed out without a special pass for a while."
"How come?"
Wilson yawned. "They've got a ship out there that's getting set to go," he looked at his watch, "in about twelve minutes. Maybe the heat will be off after it's gone. I don't know the story on it."
The sentry rocked on the balls of his feet and watched the last of the beer drain down Bigman's throat. He said, "Say, did you get the beer at Patsy's Port Bar? Is it crowded?"
"It's empty. Listen, tell you what. It'll take you fifteen seconds to get in there and have one. I've got nothing to do. I'll stay right here and make sure nothing happens while you're gone."
Wilson looked longingly in the direction of the Port Bar. "I better not."
"It's up to you."
Neither one of them, apparently, was conscious of the figure that drifted past behind them along the corridor and into the recess where the space-locks huge door barred the way to the surface.
Wilson's feet took him a few steps toward the Bar, as though they were dragging the rest of him. Then he said, "Nah! I better not."
Ten minutes to zero time.
It had been Lucky Starr's idea. He had been in Con-way's home office the day the news arrived that the T.S.S. Waltham Zachary had been gutted by pirates, its cargo gone, its officers frozen corpses in space and most of the men captives. The ship itself had put up a pitifully futile fight and had been too damaged to be worth the pirate's salvage. They had taken everything movable though, the instruments, of course, and even the motors.