In any event, all its approaches would be thoroughly screened and equipped with lookouts on the ultra-violet and on the infra-red, as well as on the visible. His detector nullifier wouldn't help him much there. Those screens and lookouts were bad—very, very bad. Question: could anything get into that base without setting off an alarm?
His speedster could not even get close; that was certain. Could he, alone? He would have to wear armor, of course, to hold his air, and it would radiate. Not necessarily—he could land out of range and walk, without power; but there were still the screens and the lookouts. If the pirates were on their toes it simply wasn't in the cards; and he had to assume that they would be alert.
What, then, could pass those barriers? Prolonged consideration of every facet of the situation gave definite answer and marked out clearly the course he must take. Something admitted by the pirates themselves was the only thing that could get in. The vessel ahead of his was going in. Therefore, he must and would enter that base within the pirate vessel itself. With that point decided there remained only the working out of a method, which proved to be almost ridiculously simple.
Once inside the base, what should he—or rather, what could he—do? For days he made and discarded plans, but finally he tossed them all out of his mind. So much depended upon the location of the base, its personnel, its arrangement, and its routine, that he could develop not even the rough draft of a working plan. He knew what he wanted to do, but he had not even the remotest idea as to how he could go about doing it. Of the opening that appeared, he would have to choose the most feasible and fit his actions to whatever situation then and there obtained.
So deciding, he shot his spy ray toward the planet and studied it with care. It was, indeed, as he had remembered it—or worse. Bleakly, hotly arid, it had no soil whatever, its entire surface being composed of igneous rock, lava, and pumice. Stupendous ranges of mountains crisscrossed and intersected each other at random, each range a succession of dead volcanic peaks and blown-off craters. Mountainside and rocky plain, crater wall and valley floor, alike and innumerably were pock-marked with subcraters and with immensely yawning shell holes, as though the whole planet had been, throughout geologic ages, the target of an incessant cosmic bombardment.
Over its surface and through and through its volume he drove his spy ray, finding nothing. He bored into its substance with his detectors and his tracers, with results completely negative. Of course, closer up, his electromagnetics would report iron—plenty of it—but that information would also be meaningless. Practically all planets had iron cores.
As far as his instruments could tell—and he had given Aldebaran I a more thorough going over, by far, than any ordinary surveying ship would have given it—there was no base of any kind upon or within the planet. Yet he knew that a base was there. So what? So—maybe—Helmuth's base might be inside the galaxy after all, protected from detection in the same way, probably by solid miles of iron or of iron ore. A second line upon that base had now become imperative. But they were approaching the system fast; he had better get ready.
He belted on his personal equipment, including a nullifier, then inspected his armor, checking its supplies and apparatus carefully before he hooked it ready to his hand. Glancing into the plate, he noted with approval that his chaser was functioning perfectly. Pursued and pursuer were now both well inside the solar system of Aldebaran; and, as slowed the pirate, so slowed the speedster.
Finally, the leader went inert in preparation for his spiral. But Kinnison was no longer following. Before he went inert he flashed down to within fifty thousand miles of the planet's forbidding surface. He then cut his Bergenholm, threw the speedster into an almost circular orbit, well away from the landing orbit selected by the pirate, cut off all his power, and drifted. He stayed in the speedster, observing and computing, until he had so exactly defined its path that he could find it unerringly at any future instant. Then he went into the air lock, stepped out into space, and, waiting only to be sure that the portal had snapped shut behind him, set his course toward the pirate's spiral.