Satellite System Read online

finding me byinstruments?"

  Peters clubbed Tremont's foot from the tank rack he had hooked withthe toe.

  "How could I go? Leave the ship without a pilot? An' the screens arefor pickin' up meteorites far enough out to mean somethin' at thespeeds they travel. So you were too close to register, leastways tillit was way too late. You must have suffocated when your air ran out."

  Tremont scrabbled about with his feet for some kind of hold. The outerhatch began to open. He could see stars out there.

  "Wait!" shouted Tremont.

  It was too late. He felt himself shoot forward as if Peters had thrusta foot into the small of his back and shoved. Tremont tried to grab atthe edge of the air lock, but it was gone. A puff of air frosted abouthim, its human bullet.

  * * * * *

  The stars spun slowly before his eyes. After a moment, the gleaminghull of the _Annabel_ swam into his field of view. It was alreadythirty feet away and the air lock was closing. He caught a glimpse ofa spacesuited figure with the light behind it.

  Then he was looking at the stars again.

  The small, distant brilliance of Alpha Centauri made him squint in thesplit second before the suit's photoelectric cells caused filters toflip down before his eyes. Then it was stars again, and the filtersretracted.

  "They can't do this!" said Tremont. "_Peters!_ Do you hear me? Youcan't get away with this!"

  There was no answer.

  The rocket came into view again, farther away. He had to get backsomehow. Forgetting the bound position of his hands, he attempted tocheck his belt equipment. Holding his arms as far as possible from hisbody was not enough to let him get a look at the harness from withinhis helmet.

  He tugged violently at the cord holding the thumbs of his gauntlets,and thought it gave slightly.

  _Maybe it just tightened_, he thought.

  To free his hands, he drew his arms in through the wide armpits of thesuit sleeves, built that way to enable the wearer to feed himself,wipe his brow, or adjust clothing or heating units within the suit. Hefelt more comfortable but that got him nowhere except for the chanceto consult his wrist watch.

  Set at the lunar time of Centauri VII-4, it told him that when he hadgone out of the airlock five minutes before the time had been 17:36.It did not strike Tremont as being a very promising bit ofdata--warning him merely that when he began to feel the want of air,it would be about 21:30. He longed for a pen-knife.

  "_There's_ one thing I'm going to ask about on my next trip to Sol--ifI make one!" he muttered. "Has anyone developed a reliable, small_suit_ air lock, so you can pass things out from your pockets?"

  He thrust his hands once more into the arms of the suit, and felt asfar along his belt as he could. He did manage to reach the usualposition of the standard rocket pistol. The hook was empty.

  "Well, that's that!" he groaned. "They didn't forget. I have nothingto maneuver with."

  He pondered worriedly. Perhaps the air--if he dared to waste any, itwould make a small jet. Slow, but he had all the rest of his life!

  He settled down to picking at the cord about his thumbs with the tipsof the other fingers in his gauntlets. It seemed possible that hemight in time chew it up to the point where it could be snapped.

  The stars streamed slowly past his line of vision as he spun throughthe emptiness. Two or three little bits of the cord chipped off anddrifted away. Tremont realized that it was frozen and brittle. Heredoubled his efforts. After a few minutes of clumsy clicking offingertips against thumbs, he strained to pull his hands apart.

  The cord parted and his arms jerked out to their full spread with suchsuddenness that he felt his backbone creak. For a moment, he hungmotionless inside his suit, wondering if he had hurt himself.

  Recovering, he groped about, checking for his equipment. He discoveredthat nothing had been left. No knife, no rocket pistol, no line withmagnet for securing oneself to a hull.

  _Well, at least I can reach the valves of the air tanks_, he reassuredhimself.

  He watched for the ship, so as to judge his direction. Several minutespassed before he allowed himself to recognize the truth of hissituation: he could no longer see the gleam of Alpha Centauri on thehull!

  He was already too far out to dare to waste air. He might give awayhis last four hours of life just to send himself in the wrongdirection.

  "How did I get myself into this?" he groaned.

  * * * * *

  He set himself to thinking back to his meetings with the others.Dorothy Stauber had landed from the same starship after passage fromSol, but he had not become acquainted with her during the trip exceptto pass the time of day. He seemed to remember that she had turned upin the Customs dome to ask his advice on travel....

  "Ye-ah!" he growled to himself. "_After_ I phoned to lease a rocket.She must have known, but how?"

  Someone in the shipping office? Well, why not Peters, the pilot? Andthen Braigh had come along, pretending to have been on his way back toCentauri VI and hoping to buy a fast passage on a small vessel forbusiness reasons. He had been free and ready with his money, leadingTremont to consider cutting his own expenses on the charter.

  It seemed, on the face of it, that the three of them had never metuntil the _Annabel_ lifted.

  "But they had, all right!" Tremont told himself. "That was no chance,anywhere along the line. I've been very neatly highjacked!"

  The girl must have trailed him to make sure they picked up the rightman. Braigh had never explained exactly what he was doing on thesatellite; he could have arranged for the assignment of the rocket, orperhaps of the pilot, when Tremont called. Then they had gatheredaround to hitch rides, and had been in control ever since.

  Tremont looked at the slowly progressing constellations and cursedhimself. He began to have the feeling that there would be no way outof this. They would regret pitching him into space in such an offhandmanner, he reminded himself, when they opened his case. It would betoo late as far as he was concerned.

  _Come to think of it_, he considered, _that Braigh looks pretty smart,under that idiot-kid pose. He might just break my code, given time.And the parts made up of model photos or drawings he can sell almostas is._

  When he came to think of it, Tremont was surprised that no one hadtried the same racket before. He had laid out a fortune for what thethree thieves were stealing from him.

  He drew in his left arm again and raised the wrist to the neck of hishelmet. By looking down his nose, he discovered to his surprise thathe had been out nearly an hour. He had wasted more time than hethought in reviewing his earlier encounters with Dorothy aboard thestarship and the others at the spaceport.

  He raised the water tube to his mouth and sucked in a mouthful. Thetaste was stale.

  _I could do with a beer, if this is the way I'm going out_, hethought. _They can joke all they want about dying in bed aftertraveling to the stars; but you could order a beer even if it killedyou._

  It gradually dawned upon him that the hazy light he had accepted asbeing a nebula must be something closer. He watched for it, anddiscovered after a few moments that it was growing brighter. Itcontinued to do so for half an hour.

  "It might be another ship!" he breathed, then he began to shout,"Mayday! Mayday!" over his radio.

  He kept it up for nearly a quarter of an hour, even after the outlinewas definitely recognizable as a rocket. He found himself driftingacross its course near the bow. It was hard to estimate the distance,but he guessed it to be something like a hundred yards.

  _Drifting?_ he asked himself. _It should be going past me like ashooting star! Unless they took exactly the same curve from CentauriVII--_

  Then he could read the numbers he feared to see. AC7-4-525. His ownship.

  He had gone out of the air lock mainly on a puff of air, with somefumbling help from Peters. That had been enough to send him out ofsight of the ship--in space, not necessarily very far--and now he wasback, after two hours.

  _A
long, flat orbit in relation to the ship_, he told himself,remembering in time to avoid speaking aloud that Braigh might be atthe ship's radio, _but actually weaving back and forth across therocket's course, just nipping it at this end_.

  He edged a hand inside the suit again and turned off his radio. If hefound an answer, it would be fatal to be overheard mumbling about it.

  * * * * *

  The ship now seemed to be rushing at him, and Tremont deduced that hisorbital speed had increased as he approached the focus represented bythe _Annabel_. He would doubtless pass near the air lock at about hisexpulsion speed.

  "Here's the chance!" he exulted. "A little air let out to slow down ... oreven just to veer close enough to lay hands on something! You launched me,Peters, but you didn't lose me."

  Getting through the airlock should be easy enough. He might be well upthe shaft before the others emerged from the control room. In