George St. George spoke up. “What if the pirates overhear your transmission, Zip? Won’t they know we’ve escaped and be able to locate us?”
“I think it’s worth the risk, George. They probably think we’re still inside the asteroid and won’t be looking for us out here. Even if they do overhear the transmission, I doubt they’d send some ships after us. The distance between us is growing rapidly, and if we have to we’ve got plenty of time to hide in the Belt. I’m worried about our dwindling supplies; we need some relief soon, and SE needs our information as soon as we can get it to them. Go ahead, Mark.”
“I’m on it,” said Mark.
“Provide them with a concise but complete report,” Zip went on. “Tell them about the destruction of Z25, describe the asteroid with an estimate of the number of pirates and their ships, and especially the asteroid’s location. Don’t worry about details of our escape, other than to say that we are in an alien spacecraft and heading for O344 with a minimum of supplies. Ask Sim Sala Bim to send someone to O344 with the Star Ranger and another ship to take St. George and his men back to Ceres or wherever they want to go.”
“Got it,” said Mark and began to prepare his report. In less than five minutes he had sent it, but due to the interplanetary distance he didn’t expect a response for nearly half an hour.
“Sure wish we had that realtime transmission equipment on board,” mused Zip out loud, thinking about how his encounter with the pirates had begun with the experiment in the control tower in Eagle City. “But I guess it’ll be a few years before the miniaturization is worked out so that spaceships can carry it.”
“We’ll get to the base a little faster than we thought, Zip,” said Joe. “This ship is cruising very efficiently. We can learn a lot from it, in time.” The sleek, forest green cruiser sped through the vacuum, rapidly approaching the edge of the Asteroid Belt.
Six hours and 23 minutes after the destruction of the atmosphere-generating plant on the edge of the Red Sea on Mars, a small iron asteroid struck the plant located just south of the Oxia Palus on an open plain about five degrees north of the equator and fifteen degrees west of the central meridian. It was a few minutes past 4:00 a.m. local time. Six miles away was the settlement of Westcott.
Most of the local populace had not heard Lurton Zimbardo’s radiocast, since it had come in just before midnight. The second asteroid followed a near-vertical course and slammed with tremendous force into the ground a half mile from the atmosphere-generating plant. The sun rose onto a land choked with dust. When the dust settled back to the surface about midday, the people of Westcott saw only a crater a mile and a half wide. There was no sign that any human artifice had ever existed on the spot.
Almost sixteen hours later, on an overcast afternoon in the empty northwest, the third asteroid struck. Its target was the atmosphere plant located 51 degrees north of the equator and 141 degrees west of the central meridian-southwest of a small crater which was the home of a town called Morris. It was centrally located for miners, prospectors, farmers, arborists, and mobile scientists, who lived near or roamed throughout the locale.