The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B Read Free Page B

out for a hundred miles or
more. One spurt, then another, then another, as the Scavenger ship moved out of
its stable trajectory and took up a course tangential to that of the shell.
    "It's moving like a comet at perihelion!" yelled
Rioz. "Those damned Grounder pilots knock the shells off that way on
purpose. I'd like to—"
    He swore his anger in a frustrated frenzy as he kicked steam
backward and backward recklessly, till the hydraulic cushioning of his chair
had soughed back a full foot and Long had found himself all but unable to
maintain his grip on the guard rail.
    "Have a heart," he begged.
    But Rioz had his eye on the pips. "If you can't take
it, man, stay on Mars!" The steam spurts continued to boom distantly.
    The radio came to fife. Long managed to lean forward through
what seemed like molasses and closed contact. It was Swenson, eyes glaring.
    Swenson yelled, "Where the hell are you guys going?
You'll be in my sector in ten seconds."
    Rioz said, "I'm chasing a shell."
    "In my sector?"
    "It started in mine and you're not in position to get
it. Shut off that radio, Ted."
    The ship thundered through space, a thunder that could be
heard only within the hull. And then Rioz cut the engines in stages large
enough to make Long flail forward. The sudden silence was more ear-shattering
than the noise that had preceded it.
    Rioz said, "All right. Let me have the 'scope."
    They both watched. The shell was a definite truncated cone
now, rumbling with slow solemnity as it passed along among the stars.
    "It's a Class A shell, all right," said Rioz with
satisfaction. A giant among shells, he thought. It would put them into the
black.
    Long said, "We've got another pip on the scanner. I
think it's Swenson taking after us."
    Rioz scarcely gave it a glance. "He won't catch
us."
    The shell grew larger still, filling the visiplate.
    Rioz's hands were on the harpoon lever. He waited, adjusted
the angle microscopically twice, played out the length allotment. Then he
yanked, tripping the release.
    For a moment, nothing happened. Then a metal mesh cable
snaked out onto the visiplate, moving toward the shell like a striking cobra.
It made contact, but it did not hold. If it had, it would have snapped
instantly like a cobweb strand. The shell was turning with a rotational
momentum amounting to thousands of tons. What the cable did do was to set up a
powerful magnetic field that acted as a brake on the shell.
    Another cable and another lashed out. Rioz sent them out in
an almost heedless expenditure of energy.
    "I'll get this one! By Mars, I'll get this one!"
    With some two dozen cables stretching between ship and
shell, he desisted. The shell's rotational energy, converted by breaking into
heat, had raised its temperature to a point where its radiation could be picked
up by the ship's meters.
    Long said, "Do you want me to put our brand on?"
    "Suits me. But you don't have to if you don't want to.
It's my watch."
    "I don't mind."
    Long clambered into his suit and went out the lock. It was
the surest sign of his newness to the game that he could count the number of
times he had been out in a suit. This was the fifth time.
    He went out along the nearest cable, hand over hand, feeling
the vibration of the mesh against the metal of his mitten.
    He burned their serial number in the smooth metal of the
shell. There was nothing to oxidize the steel in the emptiness of space. It
simply melted and vaporized, condensing some feet away from the energy beam,
turning the surface it touched into a gray, powdery dullness.
    Long swung back toward the ship.
    Inside again, he took off his helmet, white and thick with
frost that collected as soon as he had entered.
    The first thing he heard was Swenson's voice coming over the
radio in this almost unrecognizable rage: ". . . straight to the
Commissioner. Damn it, there are rules to this game!"
    Rioz sat back, unbothered. "Look, it hit my sector. I
was late spotting it and I chased it into yours. You couldn't