Which was just as well for the moment, Ben thought wryly. It kept them from asking him a lot of unanswerable questions, and gave him time to search out some answers for himself… answers that had to be found and found quickly. With the ship’s course returned to its original direction, Ben sat back at the controls, trying to push confusion and bafflement out of his mind and make sense out of nonsense.
Certain things, he knew, were beyond argument. The ship had been there. Nothing but a manned craft could have behaved the way the phantom had behaved. Crude as his computations had been, he was certain that they had given him at least a rough estimate of its size. And there was no question but that it had been concealed most effectively from observation. These were things he would testify to. But put them together and they spelled nothing but nonsense.
There simply could not be any such ship. He knew, of course, that the Spacer military council did not make public all the weapons in the arsenal on Asteroid Central, but Spacers were too small and close-knit a group for secrets to keep long. The discovery of null-gravity had been common knowledge among Spacers before the first prototype engine had been completed. Whenever new defensive missiles had been developed, the whole Spacer clan knew about them in a matter of weeks. And even if the phantom had been a Spacer ship developed in secrecy, it surely would have recognized the S-80 as a Spacer ship and at least exchanged recognition signals.
But the other alternative—that it was an Earth ship—was even more ridiculous. Suppose Earth science could have developed such a craft, what could explain its strange behavior after contact? It too would have been able to recognize a Spacer scout. Then why had Ben’s ship not been attacked? Even if a crew of Earthmen aboard had known of Ben’s prisoners, they certainly would have made an effort to grapple his ship and unload his hostages. And for that matter, where could Earthmen have learned such skill in maneuvering, especially in maneuvering such a huge ship?
Either way it made no sense, and it was this very senselessness that sent a cold chill up Ben Trefon’s back and brought sweat out on the palms of his hands. The phantom ship had not behaved like an aggressor, or like a friend either. Its behavior had seemed more curious than warlike, as though it had been trying to observe him without being observed, and then had zoomed off again as soon as it knew it was detected.
But zoomed off to where? That, of course, was the big question. If the intruder had been curious, perhaps he was still curious enough to follow Ben’s ship from some point beyond effective radar range.
That in itself was a disquieting thought. If Ben were to pursue his original plans to reach one of the outpost asteroids near Asteroid Central he did not care to bring unexpected company with him.
Carefully, he turned other possibilities over in his mind. He could, of course, change course and make his way directly to Asteroid Central. And if his encounter had been with an orthodox ship, he might well have done that. He knew the kind of ingenious fortification that surrounded Asteroid Central; prior to his encounter with the phantom ship he had been supremely confident that no enemy ship could follow him through the Maze to the surface of Central and survive, no matter how hard they tried. But this ship might be a different kind of pursuer altogether, a pursuer with totally unexpected capabilities in space.
Ben scratched his jaw and glanced back at the Barrons who were now entranced by some tapes of mauki songs. Whatever else it did, the encounter changed his mind about trying to go it alone to Asteroid Central. For a moment he seemed to hear his father’s voice in his ear: “Never insist on doing it alone if you can’t handle it. Admit your limitations and don’t be ashamed to get help. Remember, a whole army of men have died in space just because they were too stiff-necked to ask for help, or too stupid to tell when they needed it in the first place.”
Ben was certain now that he needed help, needed it badly enough to take chances to get it. Other Spacer ships would be converging on Outpost 5, his immediate target destination, a medium-sized asteroid moving in its orbit some two hundred thousand miles in from Asteroid Central. Outpost 5 was a Spacer utility station: a fuel and ammunition dump, orbit-ship drydock, laying-over station for Spacers in transit and repair station for the Spacer fleet. Ben had originally intended to move into contact with Outpost 5 as silently as possible. Now it was imperative that he establish contact with other Spacer ships before the outpost was reached.
This meant breaking radio silence in order to flag the attention of other ships which might be in the same segment of space. A risky business, for Earth ships also would be traveling in this sector, but at least Earth ships could be understood and dealt with.
And Ben Trefon was not at all too certain about the phantom ship he had encountered.
He made contact with another Spacer some six hours later, as the little S-80 moved closer and closer to contact orbit with the Outpost 5 asteroid.
With every passing hour Ben’s tension had been growing. He had not dared to throw open his radio with a standard distress signal. Instead, he had beamed out five-minute periods of signaling, trying to cover all quadrants briefly with a signal that would be identifiable to any Spacer craft without continuing long enough for an enemy ship to fix his position and acceleration in space. After each signal period he had waited, straining to catch even the weakest response signal. It had been a long and weary vigil. Over eighteen hours had passed since the sleep period on Mars, and the Barrons had finally grown bored and retired; Ben’s body ached with fatigue, and he longed for a few moments’ rest, but knew that those few moments could lose him his chance for contact.
So he stuck it out in the silence of the little ship’s cabin. The view screen showed an unchanging panorama of pinpoint stars on a velvet black canopy; Ben felt utterly alone and abandoned as his repeated efforts to raise a friendly signal failed.
Then, unexpectedly, there was a tiny blip on the radar scanner. As he drew closer the blip resolved into two, and then into a dozen. With the telescope he scanned the area of the contact, and decelerated the ship as rapidly as the null-gravs would permit. Moments later he saw the objects his radar had picked up, and drew in his breath sharply.
It was no wonder there had been no radio response from Outpost 5.
He had wandered into a cosmic battlefield. Far and wide over a four-hundred-mile radius the debris of shattered space ships was spread. A great Spacer cruiser was reeling end-over-end, its side split open like a pea-pod with bits and pieces strewn around it like a halo. Looking more closely, he spotted an Earth ship, also of cruiser size, literally torn into shreds. Fragments of other ships, fuel tanks, oxygen bottles and bombarded lifeboats came into view as he approached. At least half a dozen ships had been involved in the battle. Now there was no sign of life anywhere in the vicinity .
But a demand signal from Ben’s transmitter brought a feeble response. Scanning the area again, Ben saw another Spacer ship well beyond the debris-scattered area. It was a small, three-man ship, one of the SD-7’s that Spacers so often used as family craft, and it was under power in spite of the gaping hole torn in the engine-room hull and the drunken roll that signified that its stabilizing gyros were no longer functioning properly. As Ben moved closer, he recognized the brilliant black-and-white decoration and insignia of a ship that he had seen many times in the hangar of the House of Trefon. It was the ship owned by Roger Petro, one of the men in the Spacer Council and one of Ivan Trefon’s closest friends.
Now the response to Ben’s signal was stronger as he moved into orbit alongside the Spacer ship. He could see movement on the hull; two or three men were working there with welding torches, obviously trying to repair the hole in the ship’s skin. Locking his ship’s controls in parallel with the SD-7, Ben checked to be certain the Barrons were still sleeping. Then he donned a pressure suit, climbed aboard the little scooter that served as the S-80’s lifeboat, and piloted himself across the intervening space to Petro’s ship.