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Updated: May 14, 2025
"I hope you’ll be able to carry out your orders, Lieutenant," he said stiffly. "I hope, but not much. I don’t think you can." Rip asked, "What are my orders, sir?" O’Brine waved in the general direction of the wall. "Out there, somewhere in the asteroid belt, Foster, there is a little chunk of matter about one thousand yards in diameter. A very minor planet.
The mass measurements are correct. This is your asteroid. Estimated twelve minutes before we reach it. Your data will be ready by the time you get back here. Show an exhaust!" Rip found Koa and the men and asked the sergeant major for a report. "We're ready, sir," Koa told him. "We can get out in three minutes. It will take us that long to get into space gear. Your stuff is laid out, sir."
Commander O’Brine will never have time to get off a message, because he’ll be dead before he knows there is danger." The logic of it sent chill fear down Rip’s spine. The Connie could get the Scorpius with one nuclear blast and then clean up the asteroid at leisure. The Federation would suspect, but it would be unable to prove anything, because there would be no witnesses.
Or, to be juster still, it is the fault of that unfortunate asteroid which so deplorably altered our first direction." "Good!" answered Michel Ardan; "as that business is settled let us have our breakfast. After a night entirely passed in making observations, we want something to set us to rights a little." This proposition met with no contradiction. Michel prepared the repast in a few minutes.
The Connie cruiser decelerated, went into reverse, and came to a full stop about a mile from the asteroid. The Planeteers saw fire in two places along the hull, marking the exhausts of two small craft. "Snapper-boats," Koa said tonelessly. "Five men in each, if those are the regular Connie kind." Rip made a quick decision. With only one launcher they couldn’t guard the whole asteroid.
Maybe they thought that they would be located and picked up the gang that had robbed and dumped them had found them easily enough. But there, again, was a paradox of enormity. Bands might wait for suckers somewhere beyond Mars. Elsewhere, there could be nobody for millions of miles. They saw their first asteroid a pitted, mesoderm fragment of nickel-iron from middle-deep in the blasted planet.
They were in no-weight. Rip grabbed for a hand cord that hung from the wall and hauled himself out into the engine control room. The deputy commander was at his post, waiting tensely for orders. Rip thrust against a bulkhead with one foot and floated to his side. "I need two landing boats, sir," he requested. "One stays on the asteroid with us." "Take numbers five and six.
What element is there whose density exceeds the mean density of the earth in about that proportion?" "Gold," exclaimed one of the party. The Golden Asteroid! For a moment we were startled beyond expression. The truth had flashed upon us. This must be a golden planet this little asteroid.
Rip sent in his recommendations for promotions, and looked over the last nuclear crater to see why the blast had started the asteroid spinning. The reason could only be guessed. The blast probably had opened a fault in the crystal, allowing the explosion to escape partially in the wrong direction. Once the course was corrected, Rip calculated the position for the final nuclear charge.
In a smaller globe, and it has never been estimated that the original asteroid was even as large as the moon, such a catastrophe would, perhaps, be more easily conceivable; but since we are compelled in this case to assume that there was a series of successive explosions, steam would hardly answer the purpose; it would be more reasonable to suppose that the cause of the explosion was some kind of chemical reaction, or something affecting the atoms composing the exploding body.
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