The Runaway Asteroid Part 1

The Runaway Asteroid.

by Michael D. Cooper.

INTRODUCTION

The Starman Team dedicated its first book, a.s.sault On Mars, to Joseph Greene, the late author of the Dig Allen series which was the inspiration for the Starman series. A complimentary copy was sent to his son Paul, who was moved by the tribute. We then asked Paul to write an introduction to The Runaway Asteroid. The following is his response-surely one of the most unusual introductions in any book anywhere, and one we are privileged to share with our readers.

Dear Dad,

A most remarkable invention is weaving the world together in a way we never antic.i.p.ated while you were on Earth, and it netted your writing.

Fans of your books for juveniles, The Digby Allen series, were able to connect to each other, share their enthusiasm for your novels, and were inspired to continue the voyage. Led by Jonathan Cooper, the intrepid mastermind of the creative crew, they made a commitment to write their own vision of the future. Thoughtfully, they credit you as having shoulders broad enough for them to stand on and see the centuries beyond. The invention that has made this possible is called the internet. There seems no need to explain what it is here, but part of its magic is that it can permit people to connect to each other independently of time and s.p.a.ce.

The themes of Dig Allen from the 1960's have worked like the internet in that they functioned independently of time and s.p.a.ce, only much more slowly. You presented your ideas in books as ideas are posted on the internet. The authors of Starman were drawn to the themes in your books and then each other in cybers.p.a.ce, which acts as both the bookshelf and cafa? for today's ideas and authors. The creators of Starman saw value in your stories and tried to get the publisher to renew the series.

Sadly, your old publisher ignored them and blocked the revival, as though they were so much s.p.a.ce junk.

No one owns a theme. But the creators of Starman have shown that they share some of the beliefs that you express in your subjects. Their young men of the stars prove that they too are brave, adventurous and willing to sacrifice for freedom and justice. With a loyalty toward each other that would create envy in every generation, they test themselves against cunning scoundrels. As they conquer villains, they, and we along with them, learn whether they measure up. Will they prove themselves worthy as young people have done for all time? Young readers can have a chance to preview something about their own lives and the world they will live in. And just as you believed, somehow the human race survives. If the world of Starman is an accurate guess on the future, then the good guys, the ones in the white s.p.a.cesuits, will continue to prevail and produce more young people to keep the dream alive. I hope that some of the next generation of courageous young people will read this series.

Your fans don't know that you started writing seriously relatively early in life, in the 1920's and '30's, first as a teen for your personal pleasure and then on your school newspaper at New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn, New York. Did having to learn the English language after speaking Russian until the age of seven help you become a better writer? Were your poems and letters to Mom valuable both to her and to your professional development? Did the comic books you auth.o.r.ed during the Golden Age of comics give you a better sense of story-telling and dialogue or did it degrade your love of language? I know that writing television scripts and other creative projects supported the family during the difficult years of the 1950's, but how did it affect your later work with Digby Allen? So many of your themes are repeated and reworked in several of your creations right through to the late 1980's.

Who would guess that you once wrote a paper on the use of the raven in several of Shakespeare's plays? Or that you wrote biology text to accompany a new medium, slides made from strips of 35-mm film? Would admirers realize that you were most interested in world events, but read the sports section of the New York Times first, everyday? I'm certain your fans wouldn't have read the American Elsewhen Almanac, a compilation of bits of Americana and commentary that you published in the 1980's.

I want to thank the authors of Starman for giving me the opportunity to write the introduction to their second novel. If there is a way to communicate to you across the veil between our dimensional world and the one in which you now reside, then it must be through the pages of a book. After the love of family, I don't believe anything was more precious to you than books, so maybe this letter will be able to cross the divide. Just as I proofread the drafts of Digby Allen before you sent them to the publisher, your granddaughter and grandson proofread this. Perhaps that will act like a mystical booster rocket to get these pages to you.

And to future s.p.a.ce pioneers, may the solar winds be at your back.

Love,

Paul

October 20, 2000

THE RUNAWAY ASTEROID

1: Controlled Fury

"THEY'RE getting closer! They're almost on us! We won't make it into the Belt on time!" The navigator of the Silver Spear was on the verge of panic. His frenzied hands moved over the controls.

"Keep going! Keep up full speed! Make sure that we get there ahead of them!" Lurton Zimbardo's voice was even and controlled, but it was obvious that he was barely containing his volatile fury. His commands were not to be questioned. His nostrils flared, the muscles around his lips were taut, he kept his fists clenched and pounded a persistent rhythm on his ship's control panel. His breath sounded as if he could inhale and exhale the room's entire atmosphere. It was only his iron self-control that kept his crew from giving in to their fears.

Behind them just moments away Starman David "Zip" Foster's ship, the Star Ranger, was closing the gap. The pursuit had been going on for two days, since the Silver Spear had blasted off from Eagle City on Mars and escaped while the rest of the pirates were rounded up by Earth's forces. Zip Foster, accompanied by Starmen Mark Seaton and Joe Taylor and their companion Steve Cliff, had followed less than fifteen minutes later. The brief lead that Lurton Zimbardo's ship had was enough to keep the Silver Spear out of the clutches of their pursuers, but not by much. The crew of the Spear was suffering acutely from sleeplessness and mounting anxiety.

Only days earlier, Lurton Zimbardo had been second-in-command under Troy Putnam. Together they had organized over 500 men and attempted to take control of the capital city of Mars in a sudden attack. Had they succeeded, the pirates could have held the people of the Earth-Moon system hostage to their demands. The Starmen and their allies had thwarted the pirates' plan. Most of the pirates, including their leader, had been captured. Zimbardo, however, had escaped with a few others. With the Starmen in close pursuit, he was desperately trying to outrun them and return to the pirates' base in the Asteroid Belt.

The Belt loomed up. The first few chunks of rock were visible now to the unaided eyes of those on the deck of the Silver Spear. In seconds, they were among them. The navigator screamed as the ship whipped by a pitted rock a quarter of a mile long, missing it by a few yards.

"Fool!" shouted Zimbardo. "Turn on the automatic pilot!" The navigator's eyes were the size of saucers. Immobile with terror, he didn't respond to Zimbardo's command. The former second-in-command of the pirates pushed him out of the chair, took over, and activated the switch that cut in the automatic pilot. Lurton Zimbardo was not physically imposing, but more than made up for his slight build with an immensely strong will and a decisive nature that was merciless whenever it served him.

He knew they were going too fast even for the automatic pilot to keep the ship safe once they entered the thick sweep of the asteroids. He also knew that the Belt was their only hope of escaping the Starmen on their trail. Powered by adrenaline, his senses were functioning at their peak. With amazing alacrity and intensity, Zimbardo aided the automatic pilot and threaded the Silver Spear through the weaving asteroids. It almost seemed as if he were in a trance.

Soon a dark asteroid loomed ahead, roughly shaped like a potato, forty-five miles long and twenty-five wide, rotating slowly around its longest axis. It was nearly invisible both to the eye and to the instruments, but Zimbardo knew where it was. He barked out a command.

The Silver Spear slowed quickly, and moments later a huge airlock door opened in one of the poles of the asteroid. Zimbardo piloted the ship into the airlock, through the stone tunnel that led into the interior of the asteroid, and then touched down.

The thin, wiry man raced for the control room as fast as he could run, pushing men out of the way and heeding no one who called out to him.

Once inside, he quickly pressed a series of b.u.t.tons and entered a numeric code. Once it was entered and confirmed, he made a fist and slammed it hard on a large red b.u.t.ton. Immediately all the radar screens were covered with snow.

Zimbardo relaxed for the first time in days. He exhaled quietly and actually smiled. He took a deep breath and smiled more broadly.

"Sir?" asked one of the technicians who had watched the procedure.

"I detonated a hydrogen bomb on a neighboring asteroid a couple of hundred miles from here. Part of a backup plan for keeping this place hidden. It will clog all radar screens for a few minutes. By the time they clear, no one will be able to find us or this asteroid."

Zimbardo's relaxed state did not last long. He swelled up with energy again, strode to another console, and tapped in a series of commands.

"Come here, Gene," he ordered as his fingers flew over the keyboard.

The man he addressed quickly came to stand by the pirate leader. He was a well-built young man in his late twenties with short curly brown hair, finely chiseled features, and an obvious desire to please. He was well trained in the technology of s.p.a.ce control systems. After he had proven his competence in the field, Troy Putnam had made him his chief control officer.

Zimbardo continued. "Follow these coordinates at this speed. Don't alter the course for any reason without my permission."

Gene looked at the planning board where the numbers were posted in a pleasant green light. "That course will take us out of the Belt, Mr.

Zimbardo. Is that what you want?"

"That's what I want. It's time to move away from here. If anything out of the ordinary happens, let me know immediately. Find me by using my personal code on the communicator-no general announcement. Keep watch especially for any s.p.a.cecraft-especially any s.p.a.cecraft!"

"Yes sir!" Gene took his place and the others returned to their duties.

Once he saw that the crew members were well settled, he picked up the intercom and ordered his leaders to a.s.semble in a meeting room in five minutes. From the few dozen pirates left, he had hand-selected five competent leaders to be his lieutenants: Gebbeth, Cra.s.s, Lather, Bolcher, and Slant.

In less than that time, Lurton Zimbardo was sitting at a table with the five other men. All but Zimbardo looked haggard. The pirates were demoralized and upset. Victory on Mars and beyond had been within their grasp, but it had all been blundered away. A band of several hundred men who had planned and worked for several years had been reduced to a few dozen. Their dreams of power and prominence, shaped and fueled by their captain Troy Putnam, had been utterly destroyed. Now Putnam was in custody on Mars, along with the rest of the pirates who had been captured by Earth's forces.

"Troy Putnam was a fool," Zimbardo announced in a quiet voice edged with steel. "His plan might have worked-might have worked, if I had had more part in planning-but he was no more than a conceited ignoramus!

The Starmen walked in on him and took him completely by surprise! I can just imagine how his face must have looked as he realized his plan was over and he was led off to jail. A fool! We are better off without him!"

"Better off without him?" asked one man in a dull voice. "What do you mean, Lurton? Better off for what?"

"Don't be a fool yourself, Cra.s.s!" Zimbardo sneered. "You think we're finished here? We will still get what we want and it won't be very difficult! We don't need Putnam and we don't need a few hundred men, either! You can be thankful you're here instead of locked in a stone room in Eagle City eating square, plain, healthy meals off of a metal tray! The collapse of Putnam's big dream is the best thing that could have happened for us!"

A muscular, unsmiling man on Zimbardo's right swung his gaze to the speaker. "It sounds as if you have a plan, Mr. Zimbardo." The man was in his early thirties and resembled a street fighter. His carefully combed dark hair made him look almost strikingly handsome, but his eyes were black and humorless.

Zimbardo turned toward the man. "Yes, I have a plan. You, Gebbeth, will be my chief a.s.sistant and the pilot of the Tartarus, my personal ship.

I can depend on you. s.p.a.ce Command's celebration on Mars will be extremely short-lived."

"You were always the strong one, Lurton," said another. "I kind of always figured you for the real leader, and I always wished it was you instead of Putnam."

"Now you got your wish, Bolcher. I've taken charge. I'm moving this asteroid out of its...o...b..t into a place outside the Belt. Here's my plan."