ASTEROID of FEAR
By RAYMOND Z. GALLUN
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
All space was electrified as that harsh challenge rang out ... but John Endlich hesitated. For he saw beyond his own murder—saw the horror and destruction his death would unleash—and knew he dared not fight back!
The space ship landed briefly, and John Endlich lifted the huge Asteroids Homesteaders Office box, which contained everything from a prefabricated house to toothbrushes for his family, down from the hold-port without help or visible effort.
In the tiny gravity of the asteroid, Vesta, doing this was no trouble at all. But beyond this point the situation was—bitter.
His two kids, Bubs, seven, and Evelyn, nine—clad in space-suits that were slightly oversize to allow for the growth of young bodies—were both bawling. He could hear them through his oxygen-helmet radiophones.
Around him, under the airless sky of space, stretched desolation that he'd of course known about beforehand—but which now had assumed that special and terrible starkness of reality.