Men into space

by Murray Leinster

So two years ago Colonel Ed McCauley had landed a ship on the asteroid, then close to Earth. He'd led a work crew which drove drill holes into the asteroid's solid metal substance. They made anchorages to fasten supplies to, and McCauley'd anchored the supplies. Then he took his ship back to Earth. On the way he'd passed other ships going out to Eros. They also anchored supplies on it. In one hectic month, the Space Service unloaded on the tiny asteroid all the supplies and equipment—some two hundred-odd tons of it—that the First Martian Expedition would need not only on Mars, but in getting back from Mars, which was equally important. Then the Space Service waited.

Nearly two years later, but now some months ago, the ship that was now moored to Eros took off from Earth. Enormous amounts of fuel were required for the journey out to Mars. No ship could carry fuel for the trip and the landing, much less a return trip. But if a ship made a rendezvous with Eros when the asteroid was close to Mars, it could refuel from the stores waiting on Eros. It could guide drone rockets from Eros to landings on Mars, carrying more supplies. The drones would not even need to be ships. They could be mere outlines of ships, with motors and guidance systems, their cargo lashed to their framework. So the asteroid would serve as a cargo carrier for the supplies the Expedition required, and also as the landing craft needed to put them ashore on the red planet.

So far, everything had worked out. Very shortly the first of the drones would be sent off to land the first cargo near an oasis close to the summer pole of Mars. Others would follow till all had been sent out; then the ship, refueled, would leave Eros and overtake the equipment that had preceded it. Its crew would recover the landed rocket cargoes, set up a base, be well equipped and amply supplied for several months of Martian exploration, and then have adequate fuel for the voyage home. More than that, it would leave a base that was ready to function, and fuel for return flights, for a reasonable number of other ships in the future. In fact, the passage of Eros close to Earth and then to Mars had provided a freight service that meant the difference between men going to Mars and staying home.

But there was a thief among the six men making the first trip. There was McCauley and Randy Hall and Fallon and Brett and Soames. Hathaway was the meteorologist who would learn all that was to be known about Mars' atmosphere. Fallon was the atom-power mechanic. Brett and Soames had their specialties, but all had been trained in the remote control of drone rockets with their loads of precious material. All were needed.

"Hmmm," said McCauley, frowning. "You say Hathaway and Fallon lost things, the one a watch and the other a wallet. You and I ... I lost an electric watch. It runs on a battery the size of a pea. I never have to wind it." He looked up. "Are you sure Brett and Soames haven't lost anything?"

Randy looked curiously at McCauley.

"Come to think of it, Brett asked me if I'd seen his fancy gold pen. That was weeks ago. He uses an issue pen now. And I think—I think Soames was turning things upside down once, looking for some sort of gold luck-piece he carries. Yes. He did."

"I'll find the stuff," said McCauley, frowning, "but I'm bothered."

He looked out a port at the crew members on the surface of the asteroid. Randy followed his eyes. The four other members of the Expedition, in bulky space suits, worked busily in a landscape—or an Eros-scape—too fantastic to be real. All of them now accepted the view that Eros was an explosion-created fragment of something much larger, and that that something must have been remarkable. Nine-tenths of the surface of Eros was solid metal such as forms the core of all the heavier planets. Now, metal rods stuck here and there out of drill holes in the raw, glistening crystalline mass. Between the drill rods ran cables holding nets under which objects were tethered. There were drone rockets by the dozen, and bales and boxes and tanks seemingly by the hundred. They would drift away to nowhere but for the nets which held them fast. They'd been held thus during two years of unaccompanied, uneventful cartage from the orbit of Earth out to the orbit of Mars. Most of the stuff needed only to be sorted and loaded on the drones, which would take off under control by the drone-master keyboard on the ship. There was an enormous mass of supplies. There could be a loss of up to fifty per cent in transit without irreparable damage being done to the Expedition's purposes.

When Randy looked back from the laboring, space-suited figures outside, he was alone. McCauley had gone to the ship's small workshop, all of whose tools would be left in the base on Mars. Frowning, he connected a microphone and an audio amplifier and a headset and went back to explain to Randy. But Randy was no longer there. He'd gone outside to carry on as second-in-command. His business was largely finding things to worry about and telling McCauley, who made them turn out all right.