Wait a minute! Maybe he got tired of rooting and put in a Group IV slug just out of laziness and ignorance. I made my way back to the power shack, cracked the case, and took a look through the periscope. The IV on the can was as big as a house. Well, when I got back I would be able to prove to Betty that I was right about trained personnel not being wasted in the engineering department. If I got back.
Seven and a half years in a space can is a horrible thought, but to do it in free fall is out of the question. I swung a pair of steering rockets to tangent position and cranked up enough rotation to give me a few pounds of weight. That made a mess out of the visual screens, but the radek would still let me know if anything came close enough to worry about, and this way a cup of coffee would at least stay in the cup. I brewed a pot of it, stuffed a pipe full of tobacco, and started to settle down to do my time.
I don't know how many days later it was that the radek began to groan. I quit counting days after the first week—if I needed the date I could get it off the chronograph. The signal was feeble, but I took the twist off her to get a fix on what it was. The radek gave the range as extreme—nearly a million miles—and anything that would trip the relay at that range must be big. After a few sweeps I found it in the scope, and it showed a perceptible disk. That meant an asteroid. I didn't know which one—the General Emphemeris of the asteroids hasn't been published yet.
During the next day or two I spent a good deal of my time at the scope, and most of the rest figuring orbits. It was pleasant to have something to do to keep my mind off my predicament. I hardly minded even when it became obvious that I would come so close to the asteroid as to be perturbed out of all possibility of making the contact with Mars that I had projected. I hadn't really believed in that anyway. And, when I discovered that I was in a collision orbit, it was more of a relief than otherwise. Get it over with in a hurry. Starvation is a slow and tedious way to blast off. A short life and a merry one, Denby, that's what you always said. Or did you? Well, it doesn't matter, you're going to get it anyway.
It was a fine sight. I don't know anything more impressive to watch than a planet, even a little two-hundred-mile chunk of rock like this one, swinging up out of empty space and taking on size and form. White and round as a snowball, and spinning lazily like a snowball thrown through the air. This one was going to hit me right on the knob.
The twelve-hour rotation of the asteroid must have swung the spot past me three or four times before I paid any attention to it. A black smudge it was, round, but with ragged edges like a starfish. A jet scorch if I ever saw one. I swallowed my stomach on the third gulp, and as soon as I stopped being dizzy I looked again. A jet scorch it was, and a few hundred yards away the sunlight glittered on a round lump that couldn't be anything but a Mitchell blister. Of all the rocks in the Belt, I would bump into one with a station on it. Nice catch, Denby!
I crawled into the bulger again in case I might set her down a little heavy, and got at the controls. Landing on the steering jets is tricky, especially when there is no atmosphere to help you brake down. I never would have made it if it had been a full-sized planet.
I set her down heavy, all right, but I'm not ashamed of it. Try it yourself some time. We crashed in a gully some sixty feet deep, about a mile from the station. The shock broke my belt and threw me against the control panel, and I felt a couple of ribs crack. That was cheap. When my head cleared a little I could hear rocks rattling on the hull and air whistling out through a hole in her somewhere. I made a dash for the lock and kicked the emergency hatch release and blew outside with the rest of the air.