CHAPTER 2.

Asteroid 487 was the usual thing. A torn, jagged, airless fragment. It was no paradise yet, unless it was a paradise of devils. Nick had a thousand men hired—space roustabouts, and a lot of mechanics and technicians, mostly fresh from Earth. Sure, it's hard handling a bunch like that, but there was nothing in this difficulty that we didn't know was part of the job. Some of our outfit gave us horse-laughs, but they worked. The pay was good.

The ships came through with the packed loads of machinery. Atomic forges blazed, purifying native meteoric iron to complete the vast gravity-generating machine, sunk in a shaft at the center of the planetoid, ten miles down. Geedeh directed most of the work. Nick and I saw that orders were carried out, swearing, sweating, and making speeches intended to inspire.

And then the trouble started.

A rocket, bringing in food, and money to pay our crews, blew up in space, just as it was coming close. The light of the blast was blinding and awesome, making even the bright stars seem to vanish for a moment. Atomic rocket fuel going up. Gobs of molten metal dripped groundward, like real meteors heated in an atmosphere which still didn't exist.

It could have been an accident. You can't always control titanic atomic power, and space ships fly to pieces quite frequently. But then I had a suspicion that maybe this wasn't an accident.

Nick and I were in the open plain to see it happen. He'd just come from the airtight barracks we'd built. His face didn't change much behind the quartz crystal of his oxygen helmet—it only sobered a trifle. While the fiery wreckage of the rocket was still falling in shreds and fragments, he spoke, his voice clicking in my receptor phones:

"Yeah, Chet.... And there's trouble on asteroid 439, too, where our mines are located. I just got the radio message, back at the office. Sabotage, and some men killed. It seems that some of the workmen are trying to break things up for us. Harley's in charge. I think he can handle matters—for a while."

"I hope so," I answered fervently. "If the work only turns out right at this end. With that ship smashed, we'll be on short rations for a week. And we've lost some important machinery. The pay money's insured, but the men won't like the delay."

I didn't expect much trouble from the crew—yet. It was Irene that really helped the most—mastered the situation. She'd taken over the management of the kitchens since the start of the work.

But now she had an additional job. She talked to that rough crew of ours. "We're going to win, boys!" she told them. "We know what we've got to do: Our task is for the good of every one of us—and for many people yet to come!"

Simple, straightforward, inspiring talk. Funny what men will do for a pretty girl—against hell itself. But that wasn't all of it. The paintings of hers, that she'd hung in our recreation room, showed what asteroid 487 could be, when we were finished with it.

Space men are the toughest kind of adventurers that ever lived. But adventurers are always optimists, sentimentalists, romanticists, no matter how hard the exterior. And space men, by the very nature of the appalling region to which they belong, believe in miracles.

They cheered the thought—most of those tough men. I cheered, too. But the miracle hadn't happened yet, and in the back of my mind, there was always the fear that it wouldn't happen. Those crags were still bleak and star-washed. Deader than any tomb! It wasn't an impossible wonder—technically—to change all this. But perhaps it was impossible, anyway—because of Norman Haynes! He was the only person who had the power and the reason to stop all that we were attempting. The sabotage and killings must be incited by him—certain members of our crews must be in his hire. Quite probably the rocket that had blown up had been secretly mined with explosive, under his orders, too.

But there is nothing harder to fight than those subtle methods. We had no proof, and no easy means of getting it. We could only go on with our task. Geedeh and the rest of us worked hopefully. One segment of asteroid 487, had been part of the surface of that old world that had exploded. From here we spread the dry soil over the planetoid's jagged terrain, drawing it in atom trucks. More soil was brought in from other asteroids. The great rock-roasting furnaces were put up. Gypsum was heated in them, releasing its water in great clouds of steam, which the artificial gravity kept from drifting off into space. Some of the water, under electrolysis, yielded oxygen. Nitrogen came from nitrates.

Our gravity machine needed readjustments now and then. To a large extent, the thousands of parts that composed it were electrical. Great coils converted magnetic force into gravitation.

One ship reached us all right, bringing seeds and food. Another didn't. It blew up in space, the second to go. Then somebody tried to get Geedeh, the Martian, with a heat ray. Another food ship failed to arrive.

Then Norman Haynes came to visit us. He landed before we had a chance to refuse to receive him. He had a body-guard of a dozen men. He was our enemy, but we couldn't prove it. He seemed to have forgotten the little brush between himself and me, at his office.

"Splendid layout you've got, Wallace and Mavrocordatus!" he said to Nick and me, pronouncing Nick's name perfectly. He sounded very much like his usual self. "Of course there's bound to be difficulties. Trouble with crews, and so on. It's hard to get people to believe in a project as fantastic as this. I didn't quite believe in it, either, at first. But the facts are proved, now that the groundwork is laid. You'll need help, fellows. I can give it to you."

He was smiling, but under the smile I could see a snaky smirk, which probably he didn't know showed. I felt fury rising inside me. He was trying to get control of our project, now that he saw for sure that it could amount to something. Competition he feared, but if he had control he could enforce his high prices, keep his empire, and expand his wealth by millions of dollars. His dirty work must have been partly an attempt to force the issue.

"Thanks," Nick told him quietly. "But we prefer to do everything alone."

Our visitor shrugged, standing there at the door of his space boat. "Okay," he breezed. "Get in touch with me, if you feel you need me!"

Some hours later, a radiogram came through from Earth. "Congratulations!" it read. "Stick to your guns! I like people with imagination. Maybe I'll be back in harness soon myself.—Art Haynes."

"He's probably just being sarcastic," I said bitterly.

"Old devil!" Pa Mavrocordatus growled.

Two men were killed just thirty minutes after the message was received. A little thin-faced fellow named Sparr did it. But he got away in a space boat before we could catch him. A paid killer and trouble maker.

The incident put our crew more on edge than before. A half dozen of the newcomers—mechanics from Earth—quit abruptly. Our food was almost gone. We got another shipload in, but the growing unrest didn't abate, though we kept on for another month. There was similar trouble on 439, where the Mavrocordatus money came from. But maybe we'd make the grade, anyway.

We had a pretty dense atmosphere already, on Paradise Asteroid. The black sky had turned blue now. The ground was moist with water. Earthly buildings were going up. Pa Mavrocordatus had had seeds and small trees and things planted. It was that deceptive moment of success, before the real blow came.

After sunset one night, I heard shots. I raced out of the barracks, Geedeh, Irene, and Pa Mavrocordatus following me. We all carried blast tubes.

We found Nick in a gorge, his body half burned through, just above his right hip. But he was still alive. He had a blast tube in one hand. Two men lay on the rocks and earth in front of him, dead. Beside them, glinting in our flashlight beams, was an aluminum cylinder.

"It's a bacteria culture container, Chet," Nick whispered. "They had me caught, and they bragged a little before I did some fast moving, and got one of their blast tubes. Venutian Black-Rot germs. They were going to dump them in the drinking water supply. They mentioned—Haynes...."

Nick couldn't say much more than that. But he'd saved our lives. He died there in my arms, a hero to progress, a little breeze in the new atmosphere he'd helped to create rumpling his curly hair. He'd died for his dream of beauty and betterment.

Poor little Irene couldn't even cry. Her face was white, and she was stricken mute. Her pa was shaken by great sobs, and he babbled threats. I told him to shut up. Geedeh cursed in his own language, his voice a soft, deadly hiss, his little fists clenching and unclenching.

"Too bad Nick had to kill these men!" I growled. "We could have made 'em talk. We'd have evidence. The law would take care of Norman Haynes!"

"But we ain't got nothing!" Pa Mavrocordatus groaned. "Nothing!"

Geedeh's face was twisted into a Martian snarl of hate. Irene stared, as though she were somewhere far away. I tried putting my arm around her, to bring her back to us. It was a minute before she seemed to realize I was there.

"Irene," I said. "I love you. We all love you. Buck up, kid. We can't quit now—ever! We'd be letting Nick down."

She just nodded. She couldn't talk.

A couple of hours later I was meeting our workers in our office. Most of them tried to be decent about it. "We'd like to stick, Wallace. But how can we? Nothing to eat...." That was what most of them said, in one way or another.

And how could I answer them?

Some were not so regretful, of course. Some were downright ugly. A little crazy with space perhaps, or else hopped up with propaganda that secret agents in Haynes' hire had been spreading among them.

"Why should we work for you anyway?" they snarled. "Even for good money, most of which we haven't collected? You're probably like what we're used to. Just fixing up another place here, to clip us in the end, charging us prices sky high. Your 'Paradise' is just a little fancier, that's all."

So they turned away, and the exodus began. The freight ships blasted off, one by one, with loads of men. We couldn't stop them. And soon the silence closed in. We were left alone to bury Nick. The small sun was bright on the rough pinnacles, and their naked grey stone was bluely murky in the new air. There was a humid warmth of summer around us.

Just then, I didn't even feel exactly angry, in the blackness of failure, Norman Haynes had won, so far. What would be his next step in completing our final defeat?

I spent some time in the office, going over records. Presently Pa Mavrocordatus came rushing from the barracks. His whole fat body sagged, as he paused before me. His face was like paste. He didn't seem quite alive.

"Irene," he croaked. "She's gone ... too...."

I ran with him to her quarters. There was some disorder. A picture of her mother was tipped over on a little metal dressing table. A rug was rumpled, and there was some clothing scattered on the floor. That was all.

Geedeh had entered her quarters, too. "Kidnapped," he hissed.

What Haynes meant to accomplish by having his agents, carry off Irene, I couldn't imagine. The hate I felt blurred all but the thought of getting her back to safety. The urge was like a dagger-point, sharp and clear in the chaos of memories. I knew how much she meant to me now.

"I need a rocket," I said quietly. "The fastest we've got. I want to radio the Space Patrol, too."

"There are no ships left here," Geedeh returned. "The men took them all, except a little flier, which they meant us to have. But somebody has smashed it. Our big radio transmitter is smashed, also."

A minute later I was clawing in the wreckage of tubes and wires, there in the radio room. The apparatus was completely beyond repair. For the time being we were helpless, stranded on our asteroid. For a moment I felt little shouts of madness shrieking in my brain. But Geedeh's stabbing glance warned me that this was not the way. I fought back, out of that flash of mania.

"We'd better break out all of our weapons, Geedeh," I said. "Haynes has gone too deep to back out now. He's in danger of the Patrol if we talk, so he'll have to strike at us soon."

Thus we prepared ourselves as well as we could, for attack. Geedeh, Pa Mavrocordatus, and I. We equipped ourselves with our best armament—atomic rifles. Pa Mavrocordatus had gotten over most of his confusion. He was still sick with grief, but necessity seemed to have steadied him. He clutched his rifle grimly as we took up positions behind rock masses at the edge of the landing field.