He fitted himself into the tight pilot seat of the snapper-boat while Santos climbed in behind. Then, handling the controls with the skill of long practice, he lifted the tiny fighting rocket above the asteroid and waited for the landing boat. When it joined up, Rip led the way to safety. As he cut his exhaust to wait for the explosion, he sighted past the snapper-boat"s nose to the asteroid.
Even though both boats had been careful to match velocity with the asteroid as closely as possible, the slight difference remaining caused them to drift sunward. Rip cut his jets in to compensate, and saw Dowst do the same.
Another few miles toward the sun, and the landing boat wouldn"t have the power to get away from Sol"s gravity. A few miles beyond that, even the powerful little snapper-boat would be caught.
Below, the timer reached zero. A mighty fan of fire shot into s.p.a.ce. The asteroid shuddered from the blast, then swerved gradually, picking up speed as well as new direction.
Rip swallowed hard. Now they were committed. They would reach a new perihelion far beyond the limits of safety. _P_ for perihelion and _P_ for peril. In this case, they were the same thing!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Between Two Fires
Back on the asteroid, the Planeteers started laying the second atomic charge. Rip selected the spot, found a nearby crystal that would serve to house the bomb, and Kemp started cutting.
The Planeteers knew what to do now, and the work went rapidly. Rip kept an eye on his chronometer. According to the message from Terra base, he had about fifteen minutes before the Consops cruiser arrived.
"We have one advantage we didn"t have back in the asteroid belt," he remarked to Koa. "Back there they could have landed anywhere on the rock. Now they have to stick to the dark side. Snapper-boats could last on the sun side, but men in ordinary s.p.a.ce suits couldn"t."
"That"s good," Koa agreed. "We have only one side to defend. Why don"t we put the rocket launcher right in the middle of the dark side?"
"Go ahead. And have all men check their pistols and knives. We don"t know what"s likely to happen when that Connie flames in."
Rip walked over to the communicator and plugged his suit into the circuit. "This is the asteroid calling Terra base. Over."
"This is Terra base. Go ahead, Foster. How are you doing?"
"If you need anything cooked, send it to us," Rip replied. "We have heat enough to cook anything, including tungsten alloy." He explained briefly what action they had taken.
A new voice came on the communicator. "Foster, this is Colonel Stevens."
Rip responded swiftly, "Yes, sir!" Stevens was the top Planeteer, commanding officer of all the Special Order Squadrons.
"We"ve piped this circuit into every channel in the system," the colonel said. "Every Planeteer in the Squadrons is listening and rooting for you.
Is there anything we can do?"
"Yes, sir," Rip replied. "Do you know if Terra base has been plotting our course this far?"
There was a brief silence, then the colonel answered, "Yes, Foster. We have a complete track from the time you started showing on the Terra screens, about halfway between the orbits of Mars and Earth."
"Did you just get our change of direction?"
"Yes. We"re following you on the screens."
"Then, sir, I"d appreciate it if you"d put the calculators to work and make a time-distance plot for the next few hours. The blast we"re saving to push to escape velocity is about three kilotons. Let us know the last moment when we can fire."
"You will have it within fifteen minutes. Anything else, Foster?"
"Nothing else I can think of, sir."
"Then, good luck. We"ll be standing by."
"Yes, sir. Foster off."
Rip disconnected and turned up his helmet communicator, repeating the conversation to his men. Koa came and stood beside him. "Lieutenant, how do we set off this next charge?"
There was only one way. When the time came to blast, they would be too close to the sun to take to the boats. The blast had to be set off from the asteroid.
"We"ll get underground as far away from the bomb as we can," Rip said. He surveyed the dark side, which was rapidly growing less dark. "I think the second crater will do. Kemp can square it off on the side toward the blast to give us a vertical wall to hide behind."
Koa looked doubtful. "Plenty of radiation left in those holes, sir."
Rip grinned mirthlessly. "Radiation is the least of our problems. I"d rather get an overdose of gamma then get blasted into s.p.a.ce."
A yell rang in his helmet. "Here comes the Connie!"
Rip looked up, startled. The Consops cruiser pa.s.sed directly overhead, about ten miles away. It was decelerating rapidly. Rip wondered why they hadn"t spotted it earlier, then realized the Connie had come from the direction of the hot side.
The enemy cruiser was probably the same one that had attacked them before. He must have lain in wait for days, keeping between the sun and Terra. That way, the screens wouldn"t pick him up, since very few observatories scanned the sun with regularity. To the observatories, the cruiser would have been only a tiny speck, too small to be noticed.
Or, if they had noticed it, the astronomers probably decided it was just a very tiny sunspot.
The Planeteers worked with increased speed. Kemp welded the final plug into place, then hurried to the crater from which they would set off the charge. Dominico and Dowst connected wires from the rocket head to a reel of wire and rolled it toward the crater. Nunez got a hand-driven dynamo from the supplies and tested it for use in setting off the charge.
Santos stood by the rocket launcher, with Pederson ready to put another rack of rockets into the device when necessary.
Rip and Koa watched the Connie cruiser. It decelerated to a stop for a brief second, then started moving again, with no jets showing.
"That"s the sun pulling," Rip said exultantly.
"They"ll have to keep blasting to maintain position."
The Consops commander didn"t wait to trim ship against the sun"s drag.
His air locks opened, clearly visible to Rip and Koa because that side of the cruiser was brilliant with sunlight. Ten snapper-boats sped forth.
Rip was certain now that this was the enemy cruiser they had fought off back in the asteroid belt. Two Connie snapper-boats had been destroyed in that clash, which explained why the commander was sending out only ten boats instead of a full quota of twelve.
The squadron instantly formed a V, like a strange s.p.a.ce letter made up of globes. The sun"s gravity pulled at them, dragging them off course. Rip watched as flames poured from their stern tubes. They were firing full speed ahead, but the drag of the sun distorted their line of flight into a great arc.
Rip saw the strategy instantly. The Connie commander knew the situation exactly, and he was staking everything on one great gamble, sending his snapper-boats to land on the asteroid--to crash-land if necessary.
The asteroid was so close to the sun that even the powerful fighting rockets would use most of their fuel in simply combating its gravity.
"All hands stand by to repel Connies," Rip shouted, and he drew his pistol. He looked into the magazine, saw that the clip was full, and then charged the weapon.
Santos was crouched over the rocket launcher, his s.p.a.ce gloves working rapidly as he kept the rockets pointed at the enemy.
Rip called, "Santos, fire at will."