Asteroid Forma

by Rand Le Page, Denis Hughes

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact; Space Opera

Synopsis

The Galaxy is a big place, made up of thousands of millions of worlds, and the work of exploration will probably never be entirely completed. But various systems within the Galaxy, each with its own particular humanoid race if intelligent beings, have joined in galactic federation for the mutual good of all concerned. Once major snag remained: speedy communication. When space travel velocities were increased by the introduction of 5C drive on all but local planetary working vessels the way was opened to enormously expanded regions of movement. Piet Tek, captain of a space tramp, tells of what happened when the secret of instantaneous communication was prematurely exploited by unscrupulous people in search of power.

Release date: April 26, 2018

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 160

Sample

“How much longer, pilot?” asked Erok restlessly. “I shall be glad when this trip is over, I can tell you!”

Erok had been saying the same kind of things for the last three months. I was getting rather tired of him; I was tired of all Mendarians and promised myself never to ship another of the race as long as I operated. Now I turned in my seat and eyed him bleakly, summoning all the unfriendly expressions I could muster. For weeks past he had been poking his lizard-skinned face into the control room at too frequent intervals, always with the same question, the same complaining tone. If he hadn’t been paying me good money I’d have turned back and dumped him on Crantzor 3 after the first couple of light-days travel. As it was … well, I was running a three world circuit with passengers and freight and a man in my position couldn’t afford to be finicky as regards the social attributes of any human cargo that might be carried. It represented the currency Len and I needed to keep things going with a reasonable profit. The new 5C propulsion units we had recently fitted to the two ships had not been cheap; our fund against possible accidents was pretty small. So up till now I’d been gentle in my handling of Erok, and his unpleasant habits had been partly offset by the far more congenial company of Traa, a Binene business man returning to his own world. They weren’t a bad lot, the Binenes, being humanoid and very closely akin to Terramen both in appearance and temperament. I could almost feel friendly towards Traa. But Erok …! No, he was sticking in my throat.

“Look, Erok,” I said quite calmly, “this is the control room and therefore a place no passenger is permitted to enter without permission. You’ve been repeatedly breaking that rule for the past three months — ever since we blasted off from Crantzor 3. If you violate the rule again I shall lock you in your cabin and you’ll stay there till we land on Bine. Now get out!”

If I’d told him to take a holiday on one of Jupiter’s moons he could not have been more annoyed. The scaly ruff round his ugly neck fanned out and he hissed like a serpent. It wasn’t surprising really. Mendarians are not true humans. They retain too much of the reptile in their characters, and the ability to speak galactic esprazo doesn’t really make all that difference — they’re still reptiles at heart.

“I ask a question!” he whispered. He was dangerously quiet and I kept one eye on him just in case.

“You ask a question, do you?” I retorted. “Yes, Erok, I seem to remember you’ve been asking it ever since we started. And the answer is still the same. We’ll land on Bine when we get there! This is my ship and I’m running it, and I’ve told you before that exact schedules cannot be kept over the distances involved in galactic travel. If I said we’d be there in two light-days I might be right—or I might just as well be wrong. Now please have the goodness to respect the unwritten rules. I’m busy.”

And I was busy. I didn’t tell Erok so, but I was on the run in to Bine even then. As a matter of fact we were a couple of days ahead of my original estimate for the journey. The new 5C drive would pay off dividends this time. Some of my freight was in urgent demand. I’d made a separate contract with the shipper to pay me one thousand gries for every day short of four months delivery. I hadn’t told him about our new drive when I made the deal. I grinned when I thought of Len’s face as soon as I told him about it. I hoped Len was making out as well as I was, though I hadn’t heard from him for over six months. However, according to the very rough schedule we worked between us, he ought to turn up Bine during the time I myself was grounded there. As brothers, we got on well, perhaps because we didn’t see a great deal of each other.

While I was thinking up unpleasant fates for Erok I was working at me course and check computer. By the time I pulled the lever and the finalised figures shot out into my hand I’d reached the conclusion that the best thing to do was forget Erok completely once I was shot of him on Bine.

I put the freshly computed figures into the robot relay gear, pushed the necessary buttons and sat back to wait. Thank the stars that all that kind of thing is done automatically nowadays. There was a time when astrogation was a full-time job for an over-sized brain. Now even a man like myself can do it with a fair degree of accuracy.

A sheet of information slid quietly from the second robot calculator, telling me exactly when the old Calypso was due to enter the orbital path of Bine. Until then we could along in the fifth continuum, covering space as fast as any other ship and a good deal faster than most. There were still a lot of ships using obsolete drives that gave them no better than light-plus, and only a small plus at that! How they ever hoped to contend for the really long distance freight work was a mystery. The answer was that they didn’t and never would. Instead they were restricted to local service almost within the bounds of their own separate planetary systems. But with 5C drive it was a different matter entirely. Only when 5C was introduced were vessels able to journey right across the galaxy—300,000 light-years or more—within the span of a human life. It’s not surprising when you think about it that generations have passed in which progress has marked time in this respect. We had to wait for 5C drive to cut down travelling time. And when it did the field was wide open. What a story of exploration it makes! For the first time men were able to venture to the nearer star-clusters such as Centauri, 21,000 light-years from Terra. Here was a field indeed a cluster containing something like 50,000 stars some of them inhabited worlds in planetary systems not that of which Terra is a member. Those pioneers with the new drive found other animate life, other worlds, other people. And so it spread, commerce and communion and the slow building up of intelligent links between the worlds. Within the island universe of the Galaxy the bonds were severed and beings began to mingle more freely. When those first proving journeys were made it must have to the men who made them that a new era was established, an era with possibilities bounded only by the limits of space. When the Galaxy had been explored there would be infinitely more to do. Other island universes, galaxies in their own right such as Andromeda nebula, would remain to conquer. But first another form of drive must be discovered for the ships of future pioneers. The Andromeda nebula lies one million light-years away from our own galaxy, and that’s an awful lot of distance! But I suppose it’ll be visited one day, and in the meantime I for one am content with present limits. The Galaxy is quite big enough for me. I’m quite content with 5C drive, too, which is just as well because I don’t think for, a moment it will be improved on in any major respect for several centuries to come.

The thoughts ran through my mind in a confused jumble as I put the finishing touches to the plot and switched the calypso on to its own generative beam, locking it to run in on Bine.

I grinned to myself, thinking that it was all very well for me to meditate on what the future might hold. I wondered how the first men who ever broke, away from Terra’s gravitational field had felt. Had they pondered on the vast future of that then-new mode of travel they had at last developed? Of course they had! I For years and years centuries in fact, they were bound to the limits of their own planetary system, gradually building ships capable of higher and higher speeds. The first tremendous step must have been when they finally started work on the adaptation of electronic stream propulsion. But even that didn’t give them light velocity because electrons don’t move at faster speeds than point nine nine eight of light velocity. It must have caused a lot of headaches stepping up and boosting electronic streams from fissioned titanium to emission velocities of the order supra-light. But that was how 5C drive was born. Someone should write a history book about that development—in language people could understand.

Erok stuck his head through the control room door again.

“Is there any news yet?” he demanded curtly.

I stood up, really mad with him this time. Everything was going smoothly; there was no reason for him to be allowed to annoy me as he had done. After all, he’d already paid a substantial proportion of his fare, which was all I was interested in as far as Mendarians were concerned.

“The only news you’ll get that’s fresh is the news that your freedom in this ship is terminated!” I told him. I had a gun at my belt and was holding the butt. This was going to be a showdown.

He drew himself up, his ugly reptilian head thrust forward a little, his unblinking black beady eyes fixed on me balefully.

“And how do you propose to limit my movements, pilot?”

“Like this, Erok!” I grabbed him by the collar and hustled him fast down the port gallery to the door of his bunk. From the’ corner of my eye I caught sight of Traa the Binene watching the operation with amusement in his eyes. He had about as much love for Erok as I had.

Erok struggled a bit, but Mendarians are not physically strong. And the man was unarmed so I didn’t have a lot to worry about.

“You’ll stay in there and behave yourself,” I told him.

He cursed me in his own incomprehensible tongue. For answer I locked the door and left him to it. When I turned there was Traa standing grinning at me from a few yards away.

“A commendable decision on your part,” he said. “A pity perhaps that you did not do it earlier.”

I shrugged. “Someone has to feed the brute now,” I pointed out.

“How long for?”

I shot him a glance. Traa was just as keen to reach Bine as Erok, or I for that matter, but he hadn’t asked how long we should he, not directly.

“In about fifteen hours we shall be running into Bine,” I told him. “That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it? We feed Erok only once during that period. These Mendarians have slow digestive functions, as you know. One meal in the twenty-four hours, which wouldn’t suit me!”

“Nor me!” He showed a tendency to linger and talk.

“Come in and park yourself for a while,” I suggested. I was back at the door of the control room by now, and not being unfriendly with the man I didn’t mind him coming in.

“You are kind. It is lonely this travelling in space. I have always found it so, though I am no stranger to it.” He followed me in and-sat down in one of the padded seats while I went to check the plot and note the readings of the reagent screen. Everything was in order.

“We’re ahead of schedule,” I said conversationally. “Don’t tell Erok so! He wouldn’t appreciate the news.”

“Time saved is money saved,” he answered. “You are a wise man not to waste time. I congratulate you on making such a speedy journey. It saves me money.”

“Hmmm … We haven’t landed yet.”

“We shall. I have every faith in you, my friend!”

I wasn’t sure that I liked listening to praise for too long at a stretch. There was always the danger of growing conceited about it, and if there was one thing a space operator could not afford to indulge in it was self-complacency.

“Everything’s okay here,” I said. “What about a bite to eat, Traa? Will you join me?”

He nodded his willingness. We left the control room and went to the lounge. Every article in it was familiar to us. We’d been using the place for over three months on this trip from Crantzor 3 to Bine. But I’d lived on the old Calypso for much longer than that, longer than I cared to think about. It almost felt as if I’d been born in space; and certainly I was more at home here than on any of the known worlds I’d visited during the previous twenty years.

“You are an experienced operator?” said Traa quietly.

I shrugged. “You could call me that,” I admitted. “Len—that’s my brother—and I have been tramping on a three world circuit for five years now. Terra to Crantzor 3 to Bine and round again back to Terra. Before that we were prospecting on and off with our own ship. A man never makes much money that way, but he has a lot of fun!”

Traa nodded thoughtfully. “You must lose track of people, never being grounded for long. Can you ever form attachments?”

I poured myself some coffee and sipped it. “Oh yes. One makes friends; one even sees them again—sometimes. I have a few friends on Bine.”

“How long do you propose to remain there?”

“A week, maybe a month, it all depends on what cargo plans I can make with the agency I deal with. And I’m meeting my brother there, too, which may spin out the stay a bit. We haven’t seen each other for quite a while.”

Again he nodded. “And how often do you visit these three worlds on your circuit run?”

“Roughly once a year. We could extend if we liked and cover another dozen ports of call, but we don’t think it’s worth the higher running costs. Even with 5C drive it takes a ship close to five years to cross half the Galaxy, you know. And then, you seen, there’s the difficulty of long range communication. That’s the bane of galactic travel. Even the latest ultra transmitters are so slow that a ship can miss a valuable cargo because the skipper doesn’t feel like hanging about on the ground for six or seven weeks while a message comes through fixing him a special freight. He’s more likely to take whatever the agency offers in the way of local stuff and so save himself non-operational time.”

“To say . . .