And on that, at least, Ben Trefon was ready to agree.
The next few hours were tense as the two ships began accelerating together toward the rendezvous point with Outpost 5 asteroid, Ben Trefon’s little S-80 in the lead, followed closely by the crippled cruiser manned by Petro’s crew. The ships kept close contact by means of tight-beam transmitter in order to minimize the chances of ships beyond them picking up the signals. Working together, they set the course that would intersect the orbit of the outpost at the precise point in space and time necessary for contact.
And then they sat back and waited.
They knew, of course, that the course would not be a hundred per cent accurate, no matter how carefully it was plotted. Precise as their calculations were, they could not take into account every one of the minor variables in an asteroid’s orbit. Theoretically it was possible to calculate such an orbit down to inches for any given instant in time; but on board a ship it just wasn’t practical. Asteroids followed elliptical orbits around the sun, just like all other planetary bodies, and their speed in orbit varied from moment to moment, gradually increasing as they moved in toward perihelion and slowing down bit by bit as they moved out toward aphelion. In addition, the asteroids affected each other’s orbital velocities slightly, exerting weak but significant gravitational attraction for one another as they passed. Finally there was mighty Jupiter to take into account; in the Asteroid Belt, Jupiter was king, its powerful gravitational field pulling and tugging at the asteroids in its titanic effort to bring them under control.
Astronomers had their pet theories. Some insisted that at some time in the distant future mighty Jupiter would win the struggle and ultimately capture many of the asteroidal fragments. Others would destroy themselves in collisions with each other and still others would be kept from wandering by gravitational forces until each asteroid had a completely predictable orbit. But other scientists insisted that the turbulence of movement in the Asteroid Belt would never cease; that any effort to pinpoint exactly where a given asteroid was going to be at a given time would be doomed to failure to the end of time.
These things did not disturb Ben Trefon. Space navigators had long since discovered that their targets were never precisely where they were supposed to be, no matter how fine the course was calculated.
Ben knew that he would have to rely upon visual sighting, radar contact and radio guideposts when he reached the near vicinity of the outpost. But outpost asteroids were well equipped with powerful transmitters to guide in any approaching Spacer ship.
After Ben returned from Petro’s ship, he found the Barrens burning with curiosity. Ben set the course and started acceleration; then he reviewed for them what he and Petro had discussed. He told them about Petro’s encounter with the Earth ships, and the outline of the plan they were following.
Tom Barron’s forehead creased with worry. “I don’t understand,” he said. “If our ships have actually located your Asteroid Central, then you must be under attack there right now. Why aren’t you going there?”
“Because we need organization first,” Ben said. “Anyway, there’s no way Earth ships can be attacking, even if they’re on all sides of Central. That’s what the Maze is there for.”
“What maze?” Tom Barron said.
“The maze of asteroids surrounding Asteroid Central,” Ben said. “When Earth started sending out pirates against us a century or so ago, our Council realized that a couple of well-placed nuclear bombs could blow Central to pieces, so they built a maze of small rocks around Central to detonate any shells that might strike home. Quite a feat of planetary engineering, hauling in mile-wide rocks and launching them in orbit around Central with Central as the primary. But now Central is surrounded by a regular swarm of satellites, moving in all directions and angles, at a dozen or more rates of speed. Any ship that tries to approach Central now without knowing the safe navigation key doesn’t stand a chance in three billion of actually reaching target. It would have fifteen or twenty collisions with smaller asteroids first, and when a space ship collides with an asteroid, believe me, the asteroid wins.” Tom thought that over. “How many asteroids are there in the Maze?”
“About three thousand, spread out in a hundred-mile radius.”
“But how do you get through it?”
“Well, we know the safe navigation key, for one thing. It’s taped into our ships’ computers. Even so it’s a tricky navigational problem, since the key is never one hundred per cent right. We have to know how to handle our ships. In fact, approach to Asteroid Central is required navigation training for any Spacer who wants to operate a ship, sort of a graduation exercise. As for a ship that doesn’t know the key, or one with a poor navigator, the Maze is doubly treacherous. It’s a one-way road; once a ship starts in, it’s certain death to try to back out again, and just as deadly to try to sit still. Once you start in, you keep going or you get smashed. It doesn’t pay to get cold feet halfway through.” Tom was still puzzled. “And you mean to say you went to all that trouble just because of the patrol ships we sent up?”
“What else could we do if one ship could carry one bomb that would split Central into fragments if it were launched without warning?”
Joyce, who had been following the conversation silently, joined in now. “I just can’t believe that an Earth captain would fire on a city without warning,” she said.
“Mars didn’t get much warning,” Ben said.
“But that was in war.”
“Do you think we were at peace before?” Ben asked. “Did you ever hear the things your pirate ships did when they came out here looking for us?”
Joyce shook her head. “Just that they’d recovered food stores that had been stolen. Of course, before we had radiation shielding on our ships, those crews had to be interned for months, and sometimes reports were slow.”
Ben nodded grimly. “And incomplete, I’ll bet. You never heard about the time Outpost 7 was bombed to rubble a few years ago, women, children, and all? They never told you about the maukis that were kidnapped? About the two-year-old baby they took back to Earth and kept in a completely black room for fourteen years without contact with another human being? Or about the children they jettisoned into space through the rocket tubes without space suits?”
Tom and Joyce Barron just stared at him. “There never were any such stories.”
“I don’t imagine there were,” Ben said bitterly. “Don’t you see that you’ve only been told what your government wanted you to know? But the truth is the truth. Your expeditionary ships would murder every Spacer child they came across; there was no limit to the torment they spread before they could be driven back. We knew we couldn’t barricade all space, but maybe you can understand why we barricaded Asteroid Central with the Maze.”
Under their feet they could feel the throbbing hum of the null-gravity generators; on the control panel the computer clucked occasionally like a worried hen, and the radio beam to Petro’s ship chattered its contact signal at periodic intervals. The Barrons were silent for a moment, and Ben realized that once again they were at loggerheads; they could not believe him, yet neither could they believe that he was lying to them. Finally Joyce Barron sighed. “You make us sound beastly,” she said. “But you just ignore our side of the picture. You don’t pay any attention to how we felt, never knowing when another raid would come. You don’t understand how our people dreaded those raids, knowing they were coming and knowing that sisters or daughters would be stolen away and disappear forever. And you don’t say anything about the murder and mayhem your own raiders were responsible for on Earth.” Ben nodded. “I know people were killed in the raids,” he said. “But it was never murder for the sake of murder. And that was why we developed the tangle-guns, so we could defend ourselves on Earth raids without hurting people. As for the kidnappings, if Earth had let us come down in peace to find our wives, there wouldn’t have been any kidnappings, and no kidnapped girl was every forced into marriage against her will. None of the girls liked the idea at first, but when they heard the songs and stories and saw the way we lived—” He spread his hands. “You would have to look far and wide today to find a disloyal mauki.”