Trapped in space (8 page)

*'Ben doesn't know we are here/' he said. "That wasn't an answer to our call. It was the same distress message, repeated. I think we will have to call Ben again."

"If we do, won't the hoppers shoot?"

*'I don't know." He peered out into the darkness. "We've come 50 million miles beyond where they were—"

Buzz woke up in Lupe's lap. He blinked his green eyes at Topaz, and whined at Lupe.

"He thinks the hoppers followed us," she said. "He thinks they'll shoot. But he thinks we ought to call anyway."

"Why are the hoppers after us?"

Buzz chirped at Lupe.

"He doesn't know," she said. "He doesn't understand them. But he says we have to call."

"Get ready," Jeff warned. "I don't know what will happen. And report this to the admiral."

Buzz squeaked the message.

Jeff spoke slowly and clearly into the speaker. "Ben, this is Jeff—"

He never finished. Something exploded and rocked the ship. A red blaze flashed through the cock pit. For a while Jeff was deaf and blind. Before he could see, his ringing ears began to pick out sounds.

The dying sound, like a toy running down, was Buzz. The rising sigh, changing to a wild scream, was air leak-

ing out of the ship. The slam was the door, seahng off the rear part of the star ship.

''They are close," Jeff whispered. "They hit us hard.''

"Are you hurt, Jeff?" Lupe asked.

"I can't see yet," he said. "Everything's green. Is Buzz all right?"

"Yes," Lupe answered. "He went back in his cocoon."

Jeff wiped the tears out of his eyes. Shapes were coming back into the green. He bhnked at the instrument board.

"We got hit twice," he said at last. "One bolt knocked out the sending set, so we can't call Ben again. The other hit the rear of the ship and killed our power." He tried to see Lupe, but she was only a pale green shape. "We are drifting now, out of control."

The green shape made a frightened gasp.

"What can we do?"

"You can watch the instruments and keep the admiral posted," he said. "But first check to see about Ty. I will try to get the power on. That safety door sealed off the rear of the ship. I can go out in a space suit."

He squeezed her hand and scrambled quickly down the ladder.

Everything was still a dim green, but Jeff felt his way into the" forward air lock. His training had made him at home in it, so he didn't need to see. He squeezed into the jet suit, sealed the helmet, and pulled the ring

that would push him out of the ship. Tlie lock moved and shot him into space.

For a second he thought he was really blind, because all he saw was darkness. Then he found the gleam of his safety line and followed it.

Jeff turned his head and found the star Topaz. Huge and blue, it hurt his aching eyes. Its ring was a terrible rainbow of white fire curving across the dusty dark.

His old fear caught him for a moment, when he saw Topaz. But now he had no time for fear.

He turned his eyes away. Twisting in space like a falling cat, he found the ship, floating close behind him.

The suit was powered like a small ship with its own jets, but he didn't need them now. A tug at the safety line sent him floating back to the star ship. He found a long, ugly cut punched into the rear of their ship.

The hole was too big for his sealing gun. He had to go back to the lock for a repair pod. Working fast, he sprayed the skin of the ship around the long wound, and rolled out a thick sealing strip over it like a bandage.

When the strip had set, he went into the ship through the rear lock to test the seal. It held. With air pressure back to normal, he climbed out of the suit and went to work on the power cables.

It took a long time to put them all together again. At last the dead ship came back to life. Lights came on.

The safety door opened itself. He climbed back through the cabin to the cock pit.

Lupe jumped when he touched her. "Is Ty okay?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "He never moves or anything. He's so still that he frightens me."

"That's the deep sleep," Jeff assured her. "He will be all right unless something hits him."

Jeff had a moment of panic when he glanced at the instrument board. The repairs had taken too long. Tliey were too close to the ring of Topaz, flying far too fast.

He dived past Lupe into the pilot's seat and hauled back the mass-reduction lever, changing speed to normal mass. Firing all jets at full thrust, he fought to slow the star ship.

Dust hissed and thundered against the shield. He tried to steer around the thickest clouds, and the roaring died back to a whisper as the ship slowed. The ring loomed near.

"We are slamming into the rainbow," he shouted to Lupe. "Better have Buzz tell the admiral what it is. It isn't dust or ice. It's rocks. Dry, broken rocks!"

CHAPTER 8

The Rock Hopper's Web

The screen flickered red.

Fighting to stop the ship, Jeff didn't see it until Lupe caught his arm and pointed. Then he picked up the signal. Ben's voice rang loud and clear.

"—lost air and power. Now we are in the rocks around Topaz, caught in a rock hopper's web—"

The signal was cut off sharply, but Jeff had already marked its source on the charts. He swung the ship toward it.

"That's the same call." He turned to Lupe, with a worried frown. "Ben still doesn't seem to know we are here."

Buzz had come up the ladder, whistling to Lupe. Buzz

lOl

and Lupe were now constantly in touch with the admiral.

A loud sound suddenly killed the thrust that pushed the ship forward. They drifted dead in space, too near that wall of flying rocks. For a second Jeff thought they had hit some stray rock from the ring. He listened for the sound of leaking air, but all he heard was silence.

"The boosters." He peered at the instrument board. "Those boosters that the admiral said we would have to nurse along. They're gone. Let me see if I can fix them."

Jeff crawled along the ladder to the rear. "They're really gone," he said when he came back. "We've no parts or tools to repair them."

"We are a long way from any spare parts." Lupe tried hard to smile. "What now?"

"I see just one thing to try," Jeff said. "The ship's dead, but my jet suit still works. Maybe I can reach Ben in that—"

"And leave us here?"

"We can't just wait for the ship to crash into those rocks," he said. "If I can find Ben—if Ben and his men are still alive—maybe we can use his boosters. Maybe we can use parts from them to repair our ship."

"Be honest, Jeff!" she whispered. "Do we have a chance?"

"Not much of one," he said, "but we can't just quit."

She nodded slowly. "I guess you have to go. I—I will stay with Buzz and Ty."

''Watch the screen/' he told her. "Keep in contact with the admiral. The way the ship is drifting, you ought to have about ten hours before you crash into those rocks. I will try to get back before that time. If I don't make it, you and Buzz had better take deep sleep.''

He found an aid kit for her. She let him put it in her hand, without looking at it.

"And the hoppers?" she asked, her voice shaking. "If they attack—"

Jeff wanted to tell her they wouldn't attack. He wanted to say he would find them and make peace with them, the way the admiral wanted it. But he couldn't say anything. He left her in the cock pit, without looking back. He checked the jet suit and crawled inside. The lock shot him out of the ship.

He drifted outside, feeling lost and small. Half the sky was darkness. The other half was rocks, shining in the bright, cold light of Topaz.

The rocks all looked alike at first, except that some were large and some were small. They were all sharp. He was falling toward them, and fear swept through him like a freezing wind.

He shook his head in the space helmet, trying to get back his sense of mass and force and motion. Each rock,

he knew, was moving around Topaz like a tiny planet— a planet with no air or water or any common kind of life. Each rock was a mass.

Thinking of it that way made Jeff feel better. Each rock was now itself. He knew where he was, and he had a good idea of the point in the rocks from which Ben had called. He threw off the safety line and made for that point.

The suit flew like a toy ship. Though it had no mass-reduction gear to multiply its speed, the rocks were near enough. The star ship shrank to a silver spark that went out in the endless dark behind. The rocks grew larger, pouring out of space like an icy waterfall.

He searched them with the laser in his helmet, hoping for another call from Ben. He needed the signal to guide him toward the lost ship. No signal came.

He considered calling Ben. The sending machine was a thick black tube, like a heavy flash light, snapped to the belt of his suit. Once he aimed it at the rocks and prepared to speak, but then he changed his mind.

Ben had never answered the other signals he had sent, and he didn't want the sort of answer the hoppers had been making. He snapped the tube back to his belt and flew on toward the blazing wall.

It was thinner than he had thought. The ring of Topaz was nearly two billion miles across, from rim to rim, but

no more than ten miles thick. Now he could see through it, between the scattered swarms of broken stone, to scraps of black sky beyond.

He circled outside the whirling wall, near the rocks from which Ben had called. Or were these really the same rocks? He couldn't be sure, within a dozen miles. He had no way to know how deep in the ring Ben had been.

He searched the rocks for Ben, for the lost ship, for any sort of web. He listened, and heard no signal. Shading his eyes from the hot glare of Topaz, he looked through the glasses built into his helmet. He saw only rocks, pouring around the big blue sun like broken ice in an endless shallow river.

Yet he knew he had to go on.

If the rock hopper's web wasn't in sight, it must be deeper in the rocks. Jeff dived into the strange river. Splintered rocks spun past him. Bits of rock filled the black sky behind him. The blue blaze of Topaz dimmed to a cold, blue gloom. Still he saw no star ship.

He flew on, looking for a web, listening for Ben. He dodged flying chips the size of bullets and flying rocks the size of houses, until they grew thin in the dark space ahead.-He had come all the way through the cloud, and still he hadn't found the lost ship.

Something hit the leg of his suit like an electric shock.

Blue sparks showered around him. He tried to pull free from the thing against him, but it hung on.

He twisted the stiff suit and found a wire.

One bright strand, smaller than his little finger, stretched away to his right and left as far as he could see. Here and there, bits of rock stuck to it. They marked out a line through the cloud, even where he couldn't see the wire itself.

Shaken, he kicked at the wire. Bright sparks danced around his boot. A new shock hit his foot. His boot stuck fast. Before he could think, he grabbed the wire with his right hand. He meant to push it off, but new sparks sprayed him. A sharper shock hit his arm. His armored glove stuck fast.

He gasped for breath and tried to understand. The wire was a trap. The electric current had made it stick to the metal of his suit. He was trapped like a fly in a spider's web—

A rock hopper's web! This was the web that had caught Ben's crippled star ship. For that first moment, all Jeff could do was wonder what kind of creature would weave a metal web in a cloud of flying rocks and make electric shocks to kill its prey.

Trembling in the heavy suit, he twisted around to look back and forth along the wire. Far away, he saw a flying

stone strike it and bounce. That puzzled him, even in his state of shock.

Why had the rock bounced, while he stuck fast? Why did some rocks stick? His eyes traced the wire to the nearest rock and saw a dull gleam of metal. So that was the answer!

Metal ores were fused by the current and stuck to the wire. Plain rock was not. The web, he saw, was a kind of tool, useful to collect bits of rich ore out of the flying rocks, and it had collected him.

With all his strength, Jeff twisted against the shining wire. He tried to kick with his boot. He tried to open his frozen glove. All he did was hurt himself.

Hot sparks whirled around him. Heavy shocks struck and his body jumped with pain. He couldn't break free. The wire stuck to his leg and his boot and his glove.

When the shocks stopped at last, he hung from the wire limp and worn out. Gasping for breath, he felt damp with sweat and a little sick from the shocks.

He tried to decide what to do. One hand was still free. He had the suit itself, with its equipment. He still had more than half a tank to fuel his jets.

Maybe the jets could pull him free. At least they were something he could try. Using the padded controls inside the helmet, he didn't even need his hands to work them. He moved around so that the jet thrust would be

straight away from the wire and pushed the chin button for full power.

The pale blue jets licked out around the wire, but nothing else happened. There wasn't even another shock. The push of the jets had been too weak, he thought, for the keeper of the web to notice it at all.