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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of X Marks the Asteroid, by Ross Rocklynne

+

+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and

+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms

+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you

+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before

+using this eBook.

+

+Title: X Marks the Asteroid

+

+Author: Ross Rocklynne

+

+Release Date: September 3, 2021 [eBook #66211]

+

+Language: English

+

+Character set encoding: UTF-8

+

+Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

+             Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

+

+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK X MARKS THE ASTEROID ***

+

+

+

+

+X MARKS THE ASTEROID

+

+By Ross Rocklynne

+

+Deep in space Ralph's ancestors lay in suspended

+animation--a price on their heads. They left him a

+map and a problem: awaken them--or collect the reward!...

+

+[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

+Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy

+January 1954

+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

+the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

+

+

+The Unterzuyder map was out of hiding. Relayed on a grapevine that

+spanned the planets, the news caught on big in Marsport.

+

+Bigger Bailes sat at a beer-bottle-colored glass desk in his underworld

+retreat, announcing his intent to claim the reward money that for

+eighty-five years had been piling up at compound interest in the

+Terra-First National Bank of New York.

+

+"Ralph Unterzuyder is here in Marsport," he stated. "Like all

+Unterzuyders, he's clever and he's dangerous and he's shifty. He'll

+travel the crookedest course you ever saw. At the moment, he's got his

+identity pretty well covered up under the name of Carruthers Straley.

+In the last three weeks he's organized a band of settlers from

+Satterfield City who call themselves Titan Settlers, Ltd.

+

+"Not that I'm fooled! I'm not saying the Unterzuyder hibernaculum is

+on Titan. I'm not even saying Unterzuyder has the map. But I'm willing

+to bet he's got a pretty good idea where the map is. I'm also willing

+to bet that his father died without leaving him a cent, and that he

+organized Titan Settlers, Ltd., just to get himself a free ride out

+Saturn-way. He's capable of that kind of reasoning."

+

+Bigger Bailes smiled rosily and reached for his hat. One of his men

+held the door open for him.

+

+"Right now, I'm on my way to see Carruthers Straley. Maybe he will cut

+in with me. If not--" he thoughtfully rubbed at the fat of his big jaw

+"--if not, I'll help him hang himself."

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+Ralph Unterzuyder, fourth generation descendant of the infamous

+Unterzuyders, emerged testily from the Glass & Sand Bldg. where he

+had just set up a law office under the name of Carruthers Straley. No

+sooner had he set foot to the glass sidewalk than he was aware a big,

+smiling man had fallen into step beside him. He backed up against the

+wall of the building, his eyes wide and cautious behind dark glasses.

+

+"What do you want?" he snapped.

+

+Bigger Bailes smiled, introduced himself. Unterzuyder looked around as

+if ready to make a break for it. Bailes stood in front of him. He shook

+his head.

+

+"I'm not going to hurt you, Mr. Unterzuyder."

+

+At mention of the name, Unterzuyder smiled arrogantly.

+

+"Really, does one have no privacy? But perhaps one of your caliber is

+well acquainted with the advantages of using an alias!"

+

+"There are advantages," Bigger nodded. "Your advantage lies in heading

+a group of settlers who don't know you're using them to help you find

+the asteroid where your ancestors have been sleeping for the past

+eighty-odd years."

+

+Unterzuyder's cane whipped around nervously. "I know nothing about a

+map!"

+

+Bigger's jowls quivered with mirth. "Seven weeks ago," he pointed out,

+"your father died. He told you the map was hidden in an old book called

+_Tertium Organum_, A Key To The Enigmas Of The World. By somebody named

+Ouspensky."

+

+Unterzuyder's eyes moved desperately to the street, down which a single

+gyromobile moved.

+

+"I have an appointment," he said stiffly. "Now if you will permit me to

+be on my way before they turn the rain-makers on--"

+

+"It won't rain for ten minutes. Better let me finish--if you don't want

+your precious settlers to know who you really are!

+

+"As soon as your aunt heard about your father's death, she put the

+old Unterzuyder house up for auction to pay your father's creditors.

+The furniture went mostly to junk-dealers, the rest to museums. All

+the books, some ten thousand of them, were bought by a big New York

+used-book company, Frangy & Sons, Ltd.

+

+"Half of these books, the ones whose titles all began with the letters

+of the alphabet up through 'M', were kept in their New York branch. The

+remainder were sent to open a book store in Marsport. By the time you

+got to Marsport from Earth, the book was reported already sold--to a

+person unknown. That's all true, _isn't_ it?

+

+"After having failed to find the map, Mr. Unterzuyder, you then sent

+the story to a newspaper--anonymously."

+

+"I did?" Unterzuyder looked arrogantly at Bailes.

+

+"Yes." Bigger's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

+

+Unterzuyder surged angrily away from the wall. "I am not interested in

+your questions. I have my chosen mission in life. It is not the making

+of money!"

+

+He brandished his cane. "I warn you, Mr. Bailes," he cried, "I am a

+nervous man. If I am not permitted to leave--"

+

+Bigger spread his hands, astonished. "Don't think for a minute I'm

+keeping you. The only suggestion I wanted to make was that you and I

+could work together."

+

+Unterzuyder took off his glasses. There were red marks around his eyes

+where the glasses had taken hold. He had inherited the famous thin

+nose and receding chin of the Unterzuyders. His pale thin lips worked

+nervously.

+

+"I work alone, Mr. Bailes," he said haughtily. "And I work best when

+such as you try to set your pitiful little traps! Threaten me as you

+will, nothing can keep me from my purpose. And now good-day."

+

+Bigger's voice was filled with disgust. "Your purpose being, of course,

+to find asteroid X and free your ancestors so they can go to work on

+the Solar System again!"

+

+Unterzuyder glared, primly returned his glasses to his nose, and

+stalked off.

+

+"Scoundrel!" he muttered, putting his hand over his heart. He gasped.

+It was racing. And he was sweating. Trembling. His mother, the

+Unterzuyder matriarch, had been quite right. He should take care of his

+health.

+

+By the time he caught a one-wheeled gyromobile that came bowling down

+the glass street, he was feeling much better.

+

+"Take me to the Hotel de Mars," he told the driver. He leaned back

+comfortably, gloved hands resting on the head of his cane while he

+looked around him. A strange, glass-domed city, set in the heart of

+Mars' desert wastelands. A thriving city, with low buildings touching

+the glass roof of the dome.

+

+The rain-maker went on, the first drops splattering down from the

+overhead sprinkler system. Unterzuyder cringed.

+

+"Driver, driver!" he cried, rapping smartly with his cane. "Do you want

+me to catch my death?"

+

+The driver hurriedly caused the separate halves of the glassteel cupola

+to fold over the car. Unterzuyder settled back injuredly.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+At the registration desk of the Hotel de Mars, he asked for, and was

+shown to the room of, Mr. Nathaniel and Miss Fayette Beecher. The door

+was thrown open by a tanned blonde girl in smart gray jodhpurs and

+slick boots.

+

+Her face at first registered a nervousness. Then it smoothed.

+

+"Oh!" she sang out, blue eyes widening and taking him in from head to

+toe. "You must be Mr. Straley." She cocked her lively face cutely to

+one side. "_Are_ you?"

+

+Unterzuyder's heart banged. He bit his lip. This was exactly the kind

+of girl his dead mother warned him to stay away from. Coquettish. Sexy.

+Treacherous, like most females. And he had lately noticed, to his

+dismay, that he, an Unterzuyder, was becoming far too susceptible to

+such unhealthy influences.

+

+"I am Mr. Straley," he said coldly. "Carruthers Straley, founder of

+Titan Settlers, Ltd. Shall I come in?"

+

+"Please _do_. For a moment, I lost my wits."

+

+She's making a play for me, like all females, he thought.

+Discouragedly, Unterzuyder went in. He sat down on a sponge-plastic

+chair, resting his gloved hands on his cane and looking upon the girl

+sternly.

+

+"Daddy!" she sang out. "Mr. Straley is here!"

+

+A man with a half-bald head and a deep tan lunged into the room

+carrying a heavy rocket-gun. His grin was wide, his voice reedy and

+enthusiastic. He was happy to know Mr. Straley. He laid the gun

+tenderly on the floor. Unterzuyder looked at it distrustfully.

+

+Beecher's reedy laugh sounded. "It's not cocked," he explained. "You

+caught me right in the middle of a clean-and-polish job. That ol' gun

+o' mine's been everywhere, mister. Most of the Moons of Jupiter, out

+on the deserts--even Africa. Yessir, our exploring expeditions have

+taken us into every corner of the Solar System that's available."

+

+The girl whipped open a drawer in the bottom of a boxy chair made of

+crystal glassteel. "And here's _my_ pet!" She reached in to pull out

+a long-snouted neutron gun with a triple trigger. Unterzuyder's heart

+banged for the third time in an hour. In the drawer was one other

+object: _Tertium Organum_, A Key To The Enigmas Of The World.

+

+An old book. A musty book. The book from his beloved dead father's

+library. The book that held the Unterzuyder map.

+

+His breath hissed. Beecher leaned solicitously forward. "Anything

+wrong, Mr. Straley?"

+

+"Oh, no, nothing," said Unterzuyder, pain wrenching his face. "But I'm

+not a healthy man. My heart--"

+

+"Oh, what a shame." Fayette leaned over him, dizzying him with her

+perfume. She put her warm little hand on his forehead. She held his

+wrist to feel his pulse. She shook her blonde curls vigorously. "Nope.

+No fever. The pulse _did_ seem to race a little when I held your hand.

+Outside of that--" She surveyed him judicially. "I'll bet you're as

+healthy as a Venusian peat-dog!"

+

+"Oh, come now," protested Beecher. "If the man says he's got a

+galloping heart, that's what he's got. Think of the courage, the

+idealism, the sheer fortitude of this man, who has gathered together a

+group of settlers to brave the dangers of a jungle-world like Titan--a

+planet no one has ever attempted to colonize! I personally _hand_ it to

+the man!"

+

+There was a fawning admiration on his unshaven, grinning face.

+

+Unterzuyder settled back in his chair, feeling put upon.

+

+"I'm afraid of guns," he told Fayette petulantly. "If you'd please put

+it away--Besides--" He drew a clipping from his bill-fold. "--I am

+already convinced of your prowess as explorers."

+

+The headlines on the clipping read:

+

+                         EXPLORERS RETURN FROM

+                          GANYMEDE ICE TUNDRA

+                          Father and daughter

+                           make unique team

+

+"It says quite a bit about the expeditions you two have headed.

+Needless to say, I'm impressed! I am here, of course, to make you a

+proposition."

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+He explained his purpose at some length. For several weeks he had been

+engaged on a project dear to his heart. He believed in the future of

+the human race. He wanted to spread mankind's dominion even beyond the

+Moons of Jupiter. Titan had been viewed by only two men, both of whom

+stated it was livable. It had soil. It had vegetation. Also, it had

+dangerous animal life.

+

+"That's for us!" said Fayette stoutly. She accidentally pointed the

+neutron gun at Unterzuyder. She was squirming around on her chair with

+repressed vitality. Her eyes melted on him. He wished he could get over

+the feeling that she was laying it on too thick. That perfume. He must

+not allow himself to be affected.

+

+He cringed from the gun. She hastily put it on the floor. He wondered

+how accidental it might have been. Probably these cheap opportunists

+were perfectly capable of killing.

+

+He would have to watch his step. They had the map, all right. The

+bookseller's description of Fayette had been quite correct and helpful.

+

+Fortunately, the bookseller had been willing to accept a bribe not to

+give anybody else the information.

+

+He spoke again.

+

+"When I received your viso-call, Miss Beecher, I at once felt that

+Titan Settlers could work with you. I seriously discussed with them

+the possibility of giving you and your father titular command of the

+expedition."

+

+"Uh--" said Fayette. "You've already been capitalized?"

+

+Unterzuyder coughed delicately. "My intrepid settlers are composed

+of young husbands and wives and their children. I was able to sell

+them--that is--the magic allure of a new world was really all that

+was necessary to convince them that Titan is where their destiny lay.

+They sold all their belongings, and--ah--invested the funds with me as

+Treasurer of the organization."

+

+Beecher smacked his hands together enthusiastically.

+

+"Fine, fine! There's nothing the daughter and I like better than to

+push on into a new frontier. Mr. Straley, for twenty thousand credits

+we're bought!"

+

+Unterzuyder sat bolt upright. "Ten thousand credits," he said severely,

+"is the top amount we can offer. That is final. With one thousand

+credits in advance!"

+

+He whipped out a check book. He adjusted his glasses. Primly, he wrote

+a check and extended it with a jabbing motion, holding it for perhaps

+thirty seconds before Beecher's crestfallen face turned toward his

+daughter. Fayette was looking with intense interest at the check.

+

+"Why not? Mr. Straley, like you, we're idealists. Money means hardly

+anything. I think you've made a deal!"

+

+Beecher stowed the check in his wallet with satisfaction. "Now we'll

+get busy. Of course, we'll have to have a drawing account. We'll have

+to discuss details, such as the number of settlers to be transported

+so I can buy or charter the proper type of space ship. There's the

+matter of building supplies to be bought--grain seeds--food--a thousand

+details which you can leave entirely in our hands, Mr. Straley!

+

+"And while we're at it, I'd like to shake your hand! It's very few

+people who'd endanger their own lives to further the progress of

+mankind!"

+

+The experience left Unterzuyder weak. He looked appealingly at Fayette.

+"I wonder if a glass of water--" he said feebly.

+

+Hurriedly she disappeared to the apartment kitchen. Unterzuyder slumped

+lower in the seat, breathing hard.

+

+"Maybe," he told Beecher helplessly, "a shot of whiskey would do the

+trick better."

+

+"Sure thing!" Beecher went after his daughter. As soon as they were

+both out of the room, Unterzuyder got up and pulled open the drawer

+containing _Tertium Organum_, A Key To The Enigmas Of The World.

+Quickly he unfolded the chart in the back of the book. The map should

+be there.

+

+It wasn't.

+

+He slapped the drawer shut, sank feebly back to his seat. The Beechers

+were gone an inordinately long time. He thought he heard them

+whispering in the kitchen. Then Beecher lunged back into the room

+bearing a jigger of no doubt cheap rye. Unterzuyder gulped it down and

+put the glass to one side.

+

+Fayette was admiring. "For a man in poor health," she exclaimed, "you

+take it without a whimper--or a chaser!"

+

+"Eh?" Unterzuyder blinked, then drew himself up stiffly. "Whiskey is

+the only medicine my doctor permits. And now, let's get down to the

+matter of the contract!"

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+One month later.

+

+Ralph Unterzuyder was furious. He stalked the darkened decks of the

+trembling space ship _Ares_--a slick hundred-tonner with sixty square

+feet of firing surface--and reflected that the Beechers were making a

+worse sucker out of him than he'd expected them to.

+

+First, they were a pair of fakers. That much had been obvious from the

+start, with that phony newspaper write-up, all that bragging about

+their knowledge of fire-arms when they didn't even know enough to keep

+a weapon pointed toward the floor. Well, he'd expected that much. But

+to discover they did not even have _basic_ knowledge of how to outfit

+an expedition!

+

+They had actually begun ordering _lumber_ for building, until he

+pointed out the climate of Titan might be kinder to prefabricated

+glassteel sections.

+

+They had actually paid out money for seeds, bulbs, and saplings until

+he showed that all farming on Titan must for the present be on an

+experimental or at best highly speculative basis.

+

+Not only that, they had attempted to charter a ship twice as big

+as needed, one that used large quantities of chemical fuels. That

+ridiculous error had been amended with a smaller ship sporting

+atomic gas-thrust. As for the captain and crew, they had been hired

+by Unterzuyder himself--and, by means of the secret passage of one

+thousand credits from Titan Settlers' funds to Captain Foshag, the

+captain and crew were bought.

+

+Unterzuyder balanced himself angrily down a companionway. As he

+passed a hanging ventilator, the drum-beat and skittering rhythm of

+a jury-rigged orchestra echoed up from the ballroom. A dance was in

+progress. Unterzuyder smiled sentimentally. Nothing like giving the

+settlers a run for their money.

+

+Of course, he reflected dourly, Fayette Beecher had got the best of

+him in the matter of using the drawing account. Unterzuyder scowled.

+What had got into him? Somehow, Fayette's roving blue eyes and fiery

+touch did their work on him. Next thing he knew, he was in duress,

+being dragged on the arm of that fluffy creature from one dress shop to

+another.

+

+An expense account to buy swirling party dresses?--with a smidgin here

+and there for fancy explorers' outfits? The memory of his folly made

+Unterzuyder squirm.

+

+He sighed heavily as he came to C deck. Anyway, by his own cleverness,

+he had a ship, he had the Beechers--who had the map!

+

+And the hibernaculum asteroid, where his dozen infamous ancestors were

+sleeping away the decades under the influence of a potent, forbidden

+drug called somnolene, was somewhere out near Titan. Or _had been_.

+

+That was the one thing he remembered when, as a child, his father

+showed him the legendary map. At least he was headed for the area where

+the asteroid _might be_.

+

+And so might, he reflected glumly, that arrogant, impossible Bigger

+Bailes!

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+The Beecher's double-state-room was on C deck. Just as he turned an L

+in the corridor, he ran head-on into a gaily running figure clad in a

+fluffy party dress.

+

+For a moment they struggled in an attempt to regain their balance,

+and when Unterzuyder came out of it he was holding Fayette Beecher

+tightly, and he was kissing her warm little face. She responded just as

+energetically. And suddenly he woke up to the horror of the role he had

+assumed.

+

+He shoved her away. She stumbled backward and there was a glassy

+tinkling sound.

+

+"Ooh, your glasses!" cried Fayette, making a grab for them. He grabbed,

+too, suddenly convinced he had gone blind. "They're broken, Ralph,

+honey!" she said. "You look so much better without them." She flung her

+arms around him again, pressing him back to the wall. Her lips drooped

+disappointedly.

+

+"I--I'm fond of you," she said unhappily. "But you're so darned

+peculiar. You fell all over yourself kissing me. Now you're backing

+off. What's wrong?"

+

+Unterzuyder was scared. It came as a shock to him that the extreme

+emergency of the situation had given him, by some hypnotic process,

+better vision than he'd ever had. In spite of the darkness of the hall,

+he could see that Fayette was ravishing. She could make a strong man

+weak. Well, he would not give her that opportunity.

+

+Besides, something she'd said just now, something he couldn't put his

+finger on, had subconsciously frightened him. What?

+

+These treacherous Beechers!

+

+Maybe she was using her indomitable weapon to win him over. To what?

+

+Perhaps to cut him in on the map. X marks the spot, indeed! X was a

+moving asteroid. It had been moving for some eighty-odd years since the

+map was made. To find its present location was a problem in celestial

+mechanics. The map would have to be deciphered. Not only that, the

+original maker of the map, being an Unterzuyder, had undoubtedly

+confused the issue by making the job hard even for a mathematician.

+

+Naturally, the Beechers hadn't dared take the map to anybody for

+deciphering. To do so, might have brought the whole criminal element

+in the Solar System after them. That of course, was a little thing

+Unterzuyder himself had arranged--when he anonymously gave the details

+of the story to the press.

+

+The Beechers had been boxed in.

+

+Now, in desperation, the Beechers probably figured that if Fayette

+could make Carruthers Straley fall in love with her, that he, being a

+lawyer, might have a devious enough mind to think like an Unterzuyder

+and decipher the map! _And_ not betray them.

+

+They did not understand that Ralph Unterzuyder, alias Carruthers

+Straley, worked alone.

+

+They would find it out. And so would Bigger Bailes.

+

+He answered her direct question stiffly. "I shall continue to back

+off, Fayette. Love is an emotion which can be defined in various

+unflattering terms. I would not care to tumble your romantic castles!

+My mother--"

+

+"Aha! Your mother!" She leaped upon the word with a knowing and very

+wide grin. Then she took advantage of his pinned position against the

+bulkhead to kiss him again, determinedly and hard. For a wild half of

+eternity, his senses were swept away on a skittering whirlwind. Then by

+main force he tore away and lunged down the corridor.

+

+"Mr. Straley!" There was a bubble of repressed laughter. "I was going

+to ask if you'd take me to the dance!"

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+He did not answer. His flight was precipitous. It was not for several

+minutes that he realized the loss of his glasses had not impeded his

+vision. He leaned weakly against a bulkhead. Very early in life, his

+parents had insisted that the inherited weak eyes of the Unterzuyders

+be made normal with ocular aids. Indeed, powerful, dark eye-glasses had

+grown, over the generations, to be a symbol of Unterzuyder autocracy.

+

+His parents had been wrong.

+

+Perhaps they had been wrong in other things.

+

+He shuddered. Without his eye-glasses, he hardly felt himself to be an

+Unterzuyder.

+

+Slowly, memory of his original purpose in ordering Captain Foshag to

+throw a dance came back.

+

+In the ballroom, Beecher would be strutting to win the favor of

+somebody's wife.

+

+With a bit more success, Fayette would have a dozen young husbands

+circling her moth-like.

+

+Intrigue, thought Unterzuyder, and subtlety, is ever the adventurer's

+most potent weapon. The great general indirectly entices the foe away

+from his own most strongly held point!

+

+Several minutes later, he was fitting his pass-key into the door of the

+Beechers' stateroom. He closed the door, switched on the radi-lights.

+The efficiently furnished little rooms were brightly illumined.

+

+The map. Where? Start at the beginning. At first glance, _Tertium

+Organum_ was not in the bookcase. Then he reached in back of the row of

+lurid fiction titles and knew he had guessed correctly.

+

+A little too correctly!

+

+He felt one of the few cold chills of his life traveling on his spine.

+He opened the book and the map fell out. He sat down weakly. His

+fingers trembled as he smoothed out the heavy rag parchment.

+

+A map of the Solar System. He dizzied. X marks the asteroid. Just as he

+remembered seeing it that long ago day when his great father showed it

+to him.

+

+His father, that stern-faced giant in whom the valiant blood of the

+hibernating Unterzuyders flowed, had been most explicit. One of these

+years, the map would be given to Ralph. He would guard it with his

+blood. In the course of time, Ralph would give it to _his_ son.

+

+At long last, the hibernaculum would be opened, the dozen

+hibernating Unterzuyders would be brought to life with injections of

+anti-somnolene, and would once more take over their rightful place of

+dominance in the Solar System.

+

+The position they had been scourged from by a relentless political

+regime which had smashed the Unterzuyders' fabulous tri-planet cartels,

+leaving the remnants in the form of a thousand rigidly controlled small

+holding companies.

+

+The position they had been forced to flee from, leaving only their

+children--and a hidden map.

+

+Unterzuyder's fingers still shook. Sweat dribbled down his blonde

+hair-line. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong. The map itself

+was hideously out of scale.

+

+The traced orbits of the planets were circular, _not_ elliptical.

+

+And the map itself.

+

+_I should not have found it so easily_.

+

+Counter-intrigue?

+

+No time to lose.

+

+From his inside pocket, he took the flat little duplico-camera,

+adjusted the frame over the map. He flipped the shutter. Seconds later,

+the map was back exactly where he'd taken it from.

+

+There was only one sound in this quiet room, the tremor of the

+gas-thrust shoving the ship through dark void into the spaces beyond

+Jupiter. Suddenly, there was the scuffle of moving feet beyond the door.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+Unterzuyder found himself in the position of a traveler in an alien

+city where savage little children had switched all the street signs.

+Nonetheless, he lunged for the door, threw off the lights in the

+stateroom, opened the door, closed it, stood with his back pressed

+against it.

+

+Hurrying footsteps. Unterzuyder was after the sound.

+

+The big, hurrying frame of Captain Foshag. Unterzuyder grabbed his

+arm, whipped him around. Foshag's hairy, dignified face was wrenched

+with astonishment.

+

+"Mr. Straley," he said uncertainly. His brow clouded. He looked at

+Unterzuyder's grip on his heavy arm and frowned with displeasure. He

+shook off the hand. "I'm not used to being manhandled, sir! You've

+perhaps imbibed too much at the party?" He was being sternly insulting.

+

+Unterzuyder crumbled. He could be wrong.

+

+"I--haven't been well. My heart--" He touched at his chest

+apologetically. It wasn't too far from the truth. Pains in his chest.

+His mother had always assured him the Unterzuyders were prone to heart

+trouble. Just as she'd got around to making him wear glasses. Terrible

+uncertainties were crowding him. He was surrounded by treachery. Had

+Foshag been shadowing him?

+

+Foshag's great frame rocked judicially on its toes.

+

+"If you truly have a bad heart," he said measuredly, "you'd have

+taken the long trail when the _Ares_ hit heaven. We humans often are

+plagued with strange influences. Words spoken to the unguarded mind of

+the child sometimes become fact to the grownup. I'd not worry about

+the heart. And now, the reason I am away from the turret. I've been

+looking for you."

+

+He cleared his throat. "There's a king-sized ship of the Silver type

+on our tail, Mr. Straley. I'm not the worrying kind, however. Worry is

+indeed the prime cause of most kidney troubles, and, besides, beclouds

+the mind when there's work to be done. Therefore, not until I observed

+that the pursuing craft was indeed pursuing--"

+

+"Come to the point!" Everything else was swept away. Unterzuyder was

+suddenly furious at this big, stupid, philosophizing blunderer. "You're

+trying to excuse yourself for not telling me right away. Let's get to

+the turret!"

+

+Unterzuyder went at full stride, his brain in high gear. They were

+being pursued. That arrogant Bigger Bailes, no doubt! So what? Add one

+more menace to those he was collecting. In fact, mess up the mess a

+little more.

+

+"Captain Foshag," he said, "you are a well-read man. Ever read

+Ouspensky?"

+

+Foshag nodded his square bearded chin. "A man of vast creative mental

+power, Mr. Straley. A man who seemed able to step off our three

+dimensions and look at the universe from a new viewpoint." Tentatively:

+"You have an interest in the classical philosophers, perhaps?"

+

+Unterzuyder muttered something garbled. He trotted ahead of Foshag up

+the ramp to the glassed-in control turret, went past several instrument

+men to the viewing disk assembly. Foshag hurriedly got the pursuing

+ship on the cross-hairs. It was a great globoid catching golden-green

+sun on one half, black interstellar shadow on the other.

+

+"Raise it on the beam!" Unterzuyder ordered.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+Moments later, Ralph Unterzuyder was looking into the detested face of

+Bigger Bailes.

+

+"That's me," smiled Bigger, his rosy face creasing. "Bigger Bailes. And

+how are you, Mr. Ralph Unterzuyder?" His smile became even more rosy.

+

+Unterzuyder gulped. He was completely dismayed. Captain Foshag showed

+no reaction at the unmasking. Captain Foshag kept his face turned

+studiously away.

+

+Unterzuyder felt himself going into a spin.

+

+But he drew himself up and said haughtily, "Kindly keep your inside

+information to yourself, Mr. Bigger Bailes. I travel under the name of

+Carruthers Straley merely because there is an unsavory flavor to the

+name of Unterzuyder!

+

+"Now, why are you following us?"

+

+"Following you?" Bigger Bailes appeared injured. "I'm trying to catch

+up with you. I intend to come aboard--"

+

+"_You will not!_" Unterzuyder yelled the words so loud the crew members

+in back of him half-jumped from their charts.

+

+Bigger's image wavered on the screen as he leaned forward and settled

+back.

+

+"I didn't expect such a reaction, Mr.--Straley," he said. His little

+eyes, almost hidden by fat, were penetrating. "I'd almost think you

+were hiding something. Are you?"

+

+Foshag raised a commanding hand. "That'll be enough of that," he

+commanded. "We're a law-abiding ship. I myself am an honest man.

+Secrecy gives rise to certain nervous disorders which I avoid. If you

+wish to come aboard, perhaps you are taking advantage of some Space

+Article?"

+

+"Taking advantage? If you want to put it that way. Two of my men

+are down sick. The usual spastic seizures. We've run out of ATG.

+We're coming aboard your ship to get some. Article 10b of the Space

+Constitution gives us that right."

+

+Unterzuyder brushed Foshag aside.

+

+"I warn you, Mr. Bailes," he said thickly, "if you have any ulterior

+motive, such as looting this ship, we will put up a fight! Our

+settlers were chosen for their intrepid qualities. We have guns. We

+have bombs. We have a flare-cannon. You will not find us easy prey!"

+

+Bailes leaned back easily. "Relax, Unterzuyder. As far as guns

+go, we've got our share. And we have got a brace of flare-cannons

+embrasured into the bulkheads of the _Space-Queen_ ourselves, if you

+want to get tough."

+

+He spread his fat hands. "But who wants to get tough? See you

+gentlemen, aboard your ship, twenty-four hours from now." With which

+remark he broke contact.

+

+Unterzuyder was at Foshag instantly.

+

+"Not a word about my identity," he breathed. "After all, I did pay you

+a thousand credits!"

+

+"And for which I thanked you! Mr. Unterzuyder, I am not a secretive

+man. If asked a direct question, I seldom impair my health by lying.

+Now permit me to return to my duties."

+

+Fuming, Unterzuyder left the control turret, went straight to the

+ballroom. Here, without any hesitation whatever, he cut in on Fayette,

+taking her away from the handsomest husband in the lot. No word of

+apology.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+He held her very close, very tight. He danced with a mathematical

+precision. Even the soul of the dance, he reflected grimly, derives

+from a mathematical formula. The dummy four-piece band haggered out

+its hag-strut very effectively. He was rewarded as Fayette lost her

+surprised stiffness, and began to melt into him in perfect rhythm to

+the tune. Her blonde head gradually nestled into his shoulder, her eyes

+closed, a small, sweet smile on her lips.

+

+At the first opportunity, he swung her without a break to a small

+observation lounge, and in the cold green glow of a million stars drew

+her to him, letting himself be stunned by the warmth of her and the

+drugging quality of her perfume. He kissed her. He was carried away

+into a land of intricate enchantment where Love is All, and the Girl in

+my Arms is You.

+

+She opened her eyes, looking at him dreamily. "I love you," she

+murmured.

+

+"I know," said Unterzuyder.

+

+"I don't know what your intentions are. I don't care what kind of a

+sneaky, underhanded person you are, I still love you."

+

+He kissed her again. She was crying. Unterzuyder took out his

+handkerchief and wiped away her tears. "Now don't worry, Fayette," he

+soothed. "Everything will turn out all right." He took her back to the

+dance floor. By luck he found the young husband she'd been dancing

+with. He gave her back.

+

+"Sorry!" he said. He gave Fayette a fleeting smile and hurriedly took

+off.

+

+He went to his cabin and feverishly got to work. Plug up the loopholes

+as you go along! A favorite axiom of the Unterzuyders. Now that Fayette

+was in love with him, he could draw on her for any emergency.

+

+Apparently the time was coming when he would need an ally.

+

+He ran the negative through the hypo, put it in the dryer and paced

+the floor. He rubbed at his lips with the back of his hand. He could

+still smell Fayette's perfume. He could still feel her bare warm back.

+Careful, careful. He went to a mirror and looked at his face. Weak. The

+glassless eyes red-rimmed. Thin nose and lips. His spirits dropped. How

+could Fayette be in love with him? Particularly when he was one of the

+outlawed Unterzuyders.

+

+The finished photograph went into the automatic pantograph. He blew

+it up six times onto a square of Mirac paper. He smoothed the new map

+onto the desk. Instantly he saw why at first the map had appeared so

+impossibly distorted. The circles did not indicate the orbits of the

+planets. They were merely a logarithmic indication of the scale of the

+map.

+

+Mercury, being some 43,000,000 miles from the Sun, was the basic unit.

+And that was necessary.

+

+The Solar System could not be drawn to scale unless the inner planets

+were crowded in fractionally close to the Sun.

+

+Here, the positions of the planets were indicated by dots whose

+map-distance from the Sun receded inward in logarithmic ratio to actual

+distance.

+

+Pluto, for instance, being one hundred times farther from the Sun than

+Mercury in real distance, appeared by the map to be only, roughly,

+twenty times as far.

+

+The position of the dot-planets on the map of course indicated the

+_exact_ date of the day when the map was drawn.

+

+The finely drawn X showed the position of the hibernaculum asteroid _on

+that day_.

+

+Since then, roughly eighty-two years ago, X had moved in its orbit.

+Where to?

+

+That was the problem.

+

+Unterzuyder sweated. It was said by the Unterzuyders, with possible

+justification, that only an Unterzuyder could think like an

+Unterzuyder. How often his father had told him that. But he was

+confused.

+

+Naturally. The map was meant to confuse.

+

+What were the figures at the bottom of the map?

+

+    s-1   .7452

+    c-1  -.202

+

+and

+

+    (0, 3, 2)

+    (1, 1, 8)

+

+And why, at the top corner, was the name unterzuyder printed _with a

+small u_?

+

+Nobody but an Unterzuyder would know.

+

+Well, he didn't know.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+Puzzled, he paced the room. Tomorrow Bigger Bailes would force his

+way aboard ship. Little could be done to stop him, partly because he

+insisted he needed ATG, a chemical staff of life necessary for muscular

+action, but mostly because he had superior fire-power. Actually, he

+wanted the map. If he didn't get it, he would inevitably loot the ship.

+

+He paused before the mirror, again. Glassless, he didn't feel like an

+Unterzuyder. Looking upon himself naked of face, he cringed. If only

+the whole thing were over. If only he were in the observatory under the

+greenly burning stars with--

+

+Frantically he stopped that line of thought.

+

+He hauled out a sheaf of maps. He had come prepared. He had brought the

+duplico-camera, the film developing equipment, the pantograph, other

+odds and ends. He had a shelf-full of celestial mechanic manuals, as

+well as books on the more ordinary arithmetics.

+

+But he had had only one year of math. Somewhere along the line, he had

+outguessed his patriarch of a father and his matriarch of a mother: law

+had been the result.

+

+Well suited, he had felt at the time, to the trickery, the deceit, and

+the orneriness of the typical Unterzuyder mind!

+

+Anyway, he needed a slide-rule before he could tackle the equations.

+For the present, he would work out the date the map was made. Then it

+would be possible to discover X's present position.

+

+All that was necessary was, mathematically, to rotate the present-time

+position of the planets backward in time--clockwise, that is--until

+they coincided with map-position.

+

+The star-maps, the Emphemeris, and the Planet Catalogue should make

+that fairly simple.

+

+After an hour, his nerves began to quiver. He ran his hands

+distractedly through his awry blonde hair. He had the answer. And it

+was impossible. Except that it was correct.

+

+Apparently, the map had been drawn up in prehistoric times.

+

+50,000 years ago!

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+After a virtually sleepless sleep-period, he went to breakfast. The

+settlers were in a happy chattering mood. Titan was only ten days away.

+Unterzuyder ate with the pressure of the Beechers' eyes on him.

+

+Nathaniel Beecher showed quiet menace on a face that ordinarily held

+grinning, shifty-eyed comraderie. Fayette had sullen, angry shadows

+under her eyes. Perhaps she was smarting under a humiliation that

+might make her do dangerous things. He had left her rather abruptly at

+the dance. Unterzuyder bit his lip. Perhaps he had not covered that

+situation as well as he might.

+

+Remorse was an emotion new to Unterzuyder. But then he had suffered

+some kind of mental upset when his glasses shattered under Fayette's

+heel. He could see as well as the next man, and consequently was

+beginning to have some shattering doubts about the wisdom of his

+immediate ancestors. And he _was_ a man.

+

+He gulped. All these were dangerous thoughts. He must continue to think

+like an Unterzuyder.

+

+Something devious. Something tricky. Something that would competently

+accomplish the task of fooling the Beechers, Bigger Bailes, and

+possibly Foshag!

+

+As he started out of the dining room, Beecher lunged after him,

+trailing a rocket-stream of cigar smoke.

+

+"A minute, Straley!" Beecher held him from the door, his close-set

+eyes full of dislike. "Foshag told me Bigger Bailes is back there."

+He jerked a shoulder. "You're a man with many small tricks, Straley,"

+he went on slowly. "Probably you're the most dangerous man I've ever

+encountered. I've been around."

+

+"I'll bet you have!"

+

+Beecher gestured with the cigar, turned on his grin, apparently to

+convince anybody watching that this was a friendly conversation.

+

+"But I'm not letting you get away with anything. We have to do

+something about Bailes. I don't intend to be hi-jacked. Truthfully,

+mister, I don't see why the settlers shouldn't be forewarned. They're a

+decent bunch. We're not.

+

+"In fact," his eyes were boring, "I've known from the first that you've

+been using these people."

+

+"As you have--and as you've attempted to use me!"

+

+"Yes." Beecher's lips moved hesitantly. "You and I and Fayette are all

+three getting a free ride to Titan, aren't we? No expenses. So now

+that we've _almost_ laid our cards on the table, why shouldn't we join

+forces?"

+

+Unterzuyder drew himself up disdainfully. "I work alone, Beecher."

+

+"Yeah." Beecher showed disgust. "You mean you're working for something

+no decent person would help you with."

+

+"And you mean by that?"

+

+Beecher's eyes simmered. He said nothing.

+

+Unterzuyder snapped. "I still work alone--unless forced to recruit

+help. That condition may occur. In the meantime, use some of those

+qualities of leadership an _explorer_ should have. Inform these people

+what's up. Tell them Bailes will probably attempt to loot the ship.

+Line the men up at the arsenal and load them down with weapons. Make

+arrangements so the women and children will keep to the cabins. Can you

+handle that?"

+

+Beecher flushed until his face was bright red.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+Leaving him properly insulted, Unterzuyder went to the control turret

+where he cornered Foshag, drew him to the Solar Chart.

+

+Unterzuyder picked up a pencil, made an indentation at random. It was

+considerably to the east of the _Ares'_ present position.

+

+"Change course immediately. To that point."

+

+Foshag huffed rebelliously. "That won't help us outrun Bailes. The new

+course will but give him a hypotenuse to travel. He'll run us down

+quicker."

+

+Unterzuyder's lips turned thinner. Muttering, Foshag sat down to the

+computations. On the way out of the turret, Unterzuyder slipped a

+slide-rule out of an instrument case so deftly that nobody noticed.

+

+Another hour's work showed him that the two sets of figures,

+respectively, indicated X's _point of origin_ and _direction of

+travel_. _c_ stood for cosine, of course, _s_ for sine.

+

+X had been, when the map was made, some degrees below the plane of the

+ecliptic. Its orbit was at a steep slant to that plane.

+

+So what? So the point of origin was located in time 50,000 years ago?

+

+The map was a fake!

+

+He sat at the desk a long time, thinking, and thinking fast. Foshag

+must have known who he was from the first. He was an observing man, but

+he was also a close-mouthed man, who answered only to direct questions.

+And the Beechers knew his identity too. Fayette had accidentally called

+him by his real name. Treachery!

+

+Undoubtedly, Bigger Bailes had tipped off the Beechers, just before

+Unterzuyder arrived at the Beechers' apartment in Marsport. Bigger

+Bailes thought Unterzuyder knew where the map was, but didn't know the

+Beechers had it. Bigger intended to let the situation stir itself up so

+the asteroid's location would more easily come out of hiding.

+

+Yes, everything was wrong. Bigger would loot the ship when he learned

+the map was a practical joke. Taking a ship this far beyond Jupiter

+would have to pay off. And there was nobody to stop him.

+

+What was it his father told him about Unterzuyder techniques? Sell

+short at the top, buy long at the bottom. All events, good or bad,

+could be used to build a firmer superstructure!

+

+Well, face it! Ship's course had been changed. The settlers by this

+time had demanded to know why. Beecher would tell them Carruthers

+Straley was Ralph Unterzuyder, hunting for a hibernaculum!

+

+The settlers by this time were up in arms against him.

+

+He paled. He leaped to the door, listened. Footsteps. Patrolling his

+room.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+He returned to the table. Make use of the situation. Dredge it for

+what it's worth! He crossed shakily to the audio and called Fayette's

+number. Luckily, Fayette and not her father answered.

+

+"Fayette--darling." The word came out huskily. It was hard to say. It

+sounded real.

+

+"_Who?_" Then her voice was uneven. "You called me darling. Are you

+sure you're in your right mind?"

+

+"I mean it, dear." _Did he?_ "I couldn't forget last night."

+

+He was falling into the self-made trap of the dishonest, unable to tell

+his own truth from his own falsehood.

+

+"All right," she said unevenly. "So you couldn't forget it? So what?"

+

+He spoke softly. Please, he had to see her in his room right away. It

+was urgent. Would she come now? A long silence. Yes, she would come.

+No, she wouldn't tell her father. Positively. Five minutes later

+she slipped into the room. She barely opened the door. He took her

+instantly into his arms. When he figured he had kissed her enough, he

+let her drop limply into a chair.

+

+The circles under her eyes were worse. She looked miserable. He drew up

+a chair, tenderly took her hands in his.

+

+"Look at me, Fayette. I'm going to make a confession that will shock

+you. I'm not Carruthers Straley. I'm Ralph Unterzuyder."

+

+She didn't look shocked. He pretended not to notice.

+

+He told her selected portions of the story. "I suspected you had the

+map. I examined _Tertium Organum_ in your apartment yesterday when you

+and your father were in the kitchen."

+

+_And you wanted me to examine it! So I'd be sure to hire you and

+Beecher and take you with me to Saturn. That was the reason you posed

+as explorers, so Titan Settlers would give you a free ride to the

+vicinity of X!_

+

+"I broke into your room last night, Fayette, and made a copy of the

+map."

+

+_And you left it wide open for me, so I could put my Unterzuyder brains

+to work deciphering it!_

+

+"And now that I've deciphered the map--"

+

+That shocked her. "You _did_? But Daddy figured out it was made roughly

+50,000 years ago!"

+

+His heart fell to the bottom of his stomach. The Beechers hadn't got

+over that stumbling block either. He'd made a mistake in trying to pump

+her. He smiled feebly. But salvage _something_ out of it!

+

+"50,000 years," he said druggedly, "seems to be correct--"

+

+She was on her feet, laughing half hysterically. "You're trying to say

+the Unterzuyders invented a time-machine? That they aren't hibernating

+at all? After all the trouble we've gone to--" She giggled. "That's

+rich, Ralph--"

+

+Female instability. He held her tightly. A lie, a good solid lie. His

+heart raced. Bigger Bailes. "Of course not, dear. The whole idea of a

+time-machine is fantasy--"

+

+_Is it?_

+

+"--and it'll make you feel better to know the map is purely

+contemporary. You noticed the ship changed course? Well, dear, we are

+headed toward X!"

+

+She pushed away, her eyes amazed.

+

+"And," he added happily, "you will also be glad to know that you and

+I and your father are going to collect the reward for finding the

+hibernaculum!"

+

+"_Really_, Ralph? That was your intention all along? You weren't going

+to _free_ them? Oh, I was hoping so hard you were going only after the

+reward--"

+

+She switched her glance over his shoulder. Pity wrenched her face.

+

+Something hit Ralph Unterzuyder hard on the back of the head. He fell

+straight down ten thousand miles, and lay there for quite a while

+studying patterns of light that squirmed in his head.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+Captain Foshag was dragging him to a chair. His tufted eyebrows came

+close. He put a slopping cloth on Unterzuyder's forehead.

+

+He said, "For the time, you're a prisoner in this cabin. I trust the

+experience will teach you some truths. Wickedness secretes various

+poisons in the body, particularly the heart and the liver. Change your

+ways, and you may indeed live a long life!"

+

+The door burst open and Beecher lunged in. His shrewd eyes rested on

+Unterzuyder.

+

+"Sorry I had to bop you, Unterzuyder," he said in clipped accents. "But

+it was the best way to get you out of the picture and keep you from

+talking to Bigger Bailes. You might have messed up the works. As it

+was, we told him the truth."

+

+"The truth?"

+

+"Certainly. You admitted it to Fayette. That you'd figured out the

+orbit and present position of X. He got the course from Foshag and made

+us turn around toward Titan again. Then he took off for X. So we're

+whipped. But at least it kept us from being looted."

+

+Unterzuyder ripped the wet cloth from his head and threw it somewhere.

+He laughed. He weaved about the room, holding his head and hooting,

+while Foshag and Beecher looked on with open mouths. Then Foshag forced

+him into a chair.

+

+"Out of his head! Mr. Unterzuyder, please be quiet. That's better.

+There, there! Now we're going to leave you here for your own

+protection, Mr. Unterzuyder. The settlers are somewhat provoked. Do you

+agree?"

+

+Unterzuyder grinned widely up at him.

+

+"I'm sick," he groaned. "Tell Fayette I need her."

+

+_There's still X to find._

+

+An idea had come to him.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+He was in bed, the white cloth on his forehead, when Fayette walked in.

+She looked at him without sympathy. Tentatively, she sat on the edge of

+the bed, curling one knee under another.

+

+"I'm sorry if you think I played Delilah, Ralph--" she began.

+

+He patted her knee delicately. "There, there," he soothed. "None of

+that matters. Actually, we're two of a kind. Not that we're naturally

+treacherous, but that we are indirect, the most dangerous weapon in the

+world. I wanted to discuss our plans. You see, marriage is a--"

+

+She gripped his wrist, hard, to make him stop talking.

+

+She said through her teeth, "After this, nothing but the truth!"

+

+Inwardly he groaned.

+

+She went on with determination. "I _do_ love you. I _do_ want to marry

+you. And settle on Titan. The important thing is, do _you_ love me

+and really want to marry me? Are you going to be honest with me about

+things that concern only us? Of course, I don't mind if you're tricky

+with other people. That's life."

+

+_Well, why not?_

+

+Unfortunately, he would be unable to use her anymore for purposes of

+finding X. But apparently, he _was_ in love with her.

+

+He held her warm hands. "We'll get married and live on Titan," he said.

+

+She leaned over and kissed him until he thought he'd be forced down

+through the bed.

+

+He added, "But first I've got to get back in the good graces of the

+settlers." When she smiled incredulously, he said with confidence, "It

+should be easy."

+

+And besides, it was necessary.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+As soon as Fayette left, he leaped out of bed and grabbed an

+encyclopaedia out of the bookcase. He looked up _Unterzuyder_, tracing

+down until he found the expected paragraph:

+

+_The fabulous cartels of the Unterzuyders were built up through their

+amazing instinct on the stock market. When the market was bullish,

+they seemed to know when the crest was reached. Selling short in heavy

+amount at this point, they reaped millions in profit as the market

+fell, then caught the market again on the upswing. Invariably, the

+bulls were caught short by the Unterzuyder bears. The Unterzuyders

+seemed to draw some special inspiration from one famous interpretation

+of their name, i. e._, undersiders, _those who work from the

+underside_....

+

+Unterzuyder sent the book scurrying into a corner. His hunch had been

+right. But now was not the time to work out the rest of the puzzle. He

+dressed quickly.

+

+When he walked into the dining room, where dinner was in progress, he

+was wearing the white bandage pinned around his forehead. He was also

+limping very slightly. Sympathy was nonetheless lacking. Complete quiet

+reigned in the dining room. The settlers kept their faces turned away,

+or looked fixedly at their plates.

+

+Fayette's expression alone showed sympathy. He knew his own face was

+fiery red.

+

+Nonetheless, he told the settlers everything he thought necessary.

+(They knew it anyway.) He apologized. He pointed out deviously that,

+after all, they _were_ on the way to a new world. That much he had done

+for them.

+

+"What you do not realize is that it was I, your leader, who diverted

+Bigger Bailes from looting the ship.

+

+"Quite deliberately, I built up the feeling that the new course was the

+course to X, the hibernaculum of my criminal ancestors. All of you were

+convinced. Therefore Bailes became convinced.

+

+"Had he known the Unterzuyder map was a fake, he would have taken it

+out on you by looting the ship. I sent him off on a wild goose chase!"

+

+Some of the settlers were looking at him with cautious interest.

+Beecher rose at this point.

+

+"I can say something in favor of Mr. Unterzuyder," he said. "His

+intentions were good. Mr. Unterzuyder was only after the reward money.

+He did _not_ intend to free the Unterzuyders, even though he is an

+Unterzuyder himself. And half of the reward money was to go into the

+treasury of Titan Settlers!"

+

+Unterzuyder looked pop-eyed at Beecher. But now the settlers were

+frankly staring at him. After a moment, they began eating again. In

+several minutes more, the hall was full of chatter again.

+

+After the most uncomfortable meal of his life, Unterzuyder headed for

+the door. Beecher caught up with him, grinning companionably.

+

+"We did a good job, mister," he said. "I had my own reasons for backing

+you up. This thing'll blow over. Then I've got some ideas. You and I

+are sharpies, Unterzuyder. We could set up in business on Titan and

+build up one of the biggest fortunes in the System, eventually. What do

+you say?"

+

+Unterzuyder smiled wanly and said he would think it over. Then he went

+to his cabin. In two hours, he had plotted X's location to the dot.

+

+Then he leaned back, nibbling nervously at the pencil eraser.

+

+In five days, with good fortune, the infamous Unterzuyders would be

+awake and free....

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+It took him two days of cautious footwork before the settlers

+completely dropped their hostility toward him. Then one evening he told

+them simply that they still had Bigger Bailes to worry about.

+

+"When he discovers he's been fooled, it's possible he might head for

+Titan and try to loot the settlement. We have to be ready. For several

+weeks we'll have to be on guard. The space ship will be camouflaged.

+For awhile we'll suspend building operations.

+

+"We'll be ready for offense and defense. We have three life boats which

+are maneuverable in empty space or in an atmosphere. These life boats

+must be equipped with food, with water, with weapons. I'm calling for

+volunteers to help me with that job."

+

+It was a rude shock to Unterzuyder when Fayette became the first

+volunteer.

+

+By the fourth day, the life boats were deadly offensive craft.

+

+Unterzuyder paid particular attention to one of the life boats himself.

+Quite accidentally, it became loaded down with extra weapons and

+supplies.

+

+Only one thing bothered him. Fayette was underfoot all the time.

+

+As the time of leaving approached, his nerves began to get the better

+of him. The time, however, _did_ come. At 22:04 on the fifth day, in

+the middle of the sleeping period, he dialed open the airlock door to

+the blister in which the stout little life boat nestled. He closed it

+behind him, turned around. Fayette was standing at the hatch of the

+little ship, slickly dressed in shiny boots, smart beige jodphurs, and

+a blouse open at the throat.

+

+She was holding her pet neutron gun with the snout pointed toward him.

+She was smiling confidently.

+

+"Ralph," she said, "in my hand I hold a weapon. It is not indirect.

+It is not subtle. It does not practice deceit. It does not give

+half-answers. It says 'yes,' and it says 'no'. That's all it says.

+

+"It also _gets_ yes and no answers.

+

+"But don't be afraid of me, Ralph. I'm here to help you!"

+

+He found his voice. "Help me? I need no help! I work alone!"

+

+"Nobody works alone, Ralph. Ask Captain Foshag. Most people run on

+compulsive commands given them by people who might even be dead.

+Parents mostly. Positive suggestion. The mind works that way.

+

+"Sometimes people are made to feel they're unhealthy, only they aren't

+really. Or they're told their eyes are bad. Or that they're superior to

+other people.

+

+"It's just as if--" she frowned hard as if looking for an example "--as

+if _your_ parents were sitting inside that smart blonde head of yours,

+Ralph, and telling you to free the Unterzuyders from their sleep. It's

+something you feel you _have_ to do.

+

+"But you _don't_ have to, Ralph. I'm here to help you."

+

+He stared at her, stunned.

+

+He drew himself up arrogantly. "Put down that gun, Fayette."

+

+If anything, she held the gun more firmly, and moved it three inches

+toward him.

+

+"Don't mistake me, Ralph," she said, her eyes cold. "This is a yes and

+no game. No maybes or ifs. If you say yes when the gun says no, that's

+too bad. If you say no when the gun wants yes, _that's_ too bad. You

+see how straightforward the three of us are?

+

+"But I and my pet neutron gun will give you time to think.

+

+"Tell me how you found X."

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+He slumped weakly against the bulkhead, wiping at his forehead with the

+back of a shaking hand.

+

+"There were enough clues," he said hoarsely.

+

+And there had been, at that. _Tertium Organum_, A Key To The Enigmas Of

+The World, _was_ a key. Its author, Ouspensky, looked at the universe

+from a _different_ viewpoint.

+

+The small _u_ in unterzuyder meant that it was to be taken as a common

+noun.

+

+And certainly the conclusion that the map was made 50,000 years ago was

+itself an obvious clue!

+

+"We made our calculations on the assumption that the map had been made

+looking at the Solar System from the north--from the star Polaris,

+that is. It hadn't been. My ancestors drew the map from the unorthodox

+reference point of the Southern Cross.

+

+"From the underside. I turned the negative upside down and made a new

+map. Then I got right answers."

+

+"Very good," said Fayette. "The tricky Unterzuyders did live up to

+their name. _Didn't_ they, Ralph?"

+

+"Yes," he said shakily.

+

+The gun wavered. Fayette was blinking. "Ralph, do you love me?"

+

+"Yes...."

+

+"Are you being truthful? Will you always tell me the truth, the whole

+truth?"

+

+"Yes...."

+

+"That's a good boy. Please keep on giving my pet the right answers.

+Ralph, don't you know that if you freed the Unterzuyders I couldn't

+ever look at you again?"

+

+There were angry tears in her eyes. Unterzuyder suddenly remembered the

+time at the dance, when he had wiped away her tears. He should wipe

+them away now. He was weakening. He was an Unterzuyder. He should be

+strong. There was his duty....

+

+"Fayette," he said hoarsely.

+

+"Stand back." Her chin came up. "Answer the question! Yes or no."

+

+"Yes."

+

+"Do you want to marry me?"

+

+"Yes, Fayette."

+

+Her mouth opened and closed. Suddenly her shoulders heaved and she

+shook her head blindly. The gun dropped to her side. "Oh, Ralph. I

+can't do it. I was going to ask you if you still wanted to go ahead

+with it. But I can't. I can't force you. You'll have to make up your

+own mind!" She turned away, hiding her face with one arm. Instantly, he

+leaped for her, tearing the gun from her hand.

+

+He looked at it where it lay black and ugly in his hands. He was seeing

+it very well, with his excellent Unterzuyder eyes. It slipped from his

+hand and fell to the floor. He let it lie, and took Fayette into his

+arms.

+

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+

+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of X Marks the Asteroid, by Ross Rocklynne</div>

+

+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>

+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and

+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms

+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online

+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you

+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the

+country where you are located before using this eBook.

+</div>

+

+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: X Marks the Asteroid</p>

+

+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Ross Rocklynne</div>

+

+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: September 3, 2021 [eBook #66211]</div>

+

+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>

+

+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>

+

+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net</div>

+

+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK X MARKS THE ASTEROID ***</div>

+

+<div class="figcenter">

+  <img src="images/illus.jpg" alt=""/>

+</div>

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+

+<div class="titlepage">

+

+<h1>X MARKS THE ASTEROID</h1>

+

+<h2>By Ross Rocklynne</h2>

+

+<p>Deep in space Ralph's ancestors lay in suspended<br />

+animation&mdash;a price on their heads. They left him a<br />

+map and a problem: awaken them&mdash;or collect the reward!...</p>

+

+<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br />

+Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy<br />

+January 1954<br />

+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br />

+the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>

+

+</div>

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+

+<p>The Unterzuyder map was out of hiding. Relayed on a grapevine that

+spanned the planets, the news caught on big in Marsport.</p>

+

+<p>Bigger Bailes sat at a beer-bottle-colored glass desk in his underworld

+retreat, announcing his intent to claim the reward money that for

+eighty-five years had been piling up at compound interest in the

+Terra-First National Bank of New York.</p>

+

+<p>"Ralph Unterzuyder is here in Marsport," he stated. "Like all

+Unterzuyders, he's clever and he's dangerous and he's shifty. He'll

+travel the crookedest course you ever saw. At the moment, he's got his

+identity pretty well covered up under the name of Carruthers Straley.

+In the last three weeks he's organized a band of settlers from

+Satterfield City who call themselves Titan Settlers, Ltd.</p>

+

+<p>"Not that I'm fooled! I'm not saying the Unterzuyder hibernaculum is

+on Titan. I'm not even saying Unterzuyder has the map. But I'm willing

+to bet he's got a pretty good idea where the map is. I'm also willing

+to bet that his father died without leaving him a cent, and that he

+organized Titan Settlers, Ltd., just to get himself a free ride out

+Saturn-way. He's capable of that kind of reasoning."</p>

+

+<p>Bigger Bailes smiled rosily and reached for his hat. One of his men

+held the door open for him.</p>

+

+<p>"Right now, I'm on my way to see Carruthers Straley. Maybe he will cut

+in with me. If not&mdash;" he thoughtfully rubbed at the fat of his big jaw

+"&mdash;if not, I'll help him hang himself."</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>Ralph Unterzuyder, fourth generation descendant of the infamous

+Unterzuyders, emerged testily from the Glass &amp; Sand Bldg. where he

+had just set up a law office under the name of Carruthers Straley. No

+sooner had he set foot to the glass sidewalk than he was aware a big,

+smiling man had fallen into step beside him. He backed up against the

+wall of the building, his eyes wide and cautious behind dark glasses.</p>

+

+<p>"What do you want?" he snapped.</p>

+

+<p>Bigger Bailes smiled, introduced himself. Unterzuyder looked around as

+if ready to make a break for it. Bailes stood in front of him. He shook

+his head.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm not going to hurt you, Mr. Unterzuyder."</p>

+

+<p>At mention of the name, Unterzuyder smiled arrogantly.</p>

+

+<p>"Really, does one have no privacy? But perhaps one of your caliber is

+well acquainted with the advantages of using an alias!"</p>

+

+<p>"There are advantages," Bigger nodded. "Your advantage lies in heading

+a group of settlers who don't know you're using them to help you find

+the asteroid where your ancestors have been sleeping for the past

+eighty-odd years."</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder's cane whipped around nervously. "I know nothing about a

+map!"</p>

+

+<p>Bigger's jowls quivered with mirth. "Seven weeks ago," he pointed out,

+"your father died. He told you the map was hidden in an old book called

+<i>Tertium Organum</i>, A Key To The Enigmas Of The World. By somebody named

+Ouspensky."</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder's eyes moved desperately to the street, down which a single

+gyromobile moved.</p>

+

+<p>"I have an appointment," he said stiffly. "Now if you will permit me to

+be on my way before they turn the rain-makers on&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"It won't rain for ten minutes. Better let me finish&mdash;if you don't want

+your precious settlers to know who you really are!</p>

+

+<p>"As soon as your aunt heard about your father's death, she put the

+old Unterzuyder house up for auction to pay your father's creditors.

+The furniture went mostly to junk-dealers, the rest to museums. All

+the books, some ten thousand of them, were bought by a big New York

+used-book company, Frangy &amp; Sons, Ltd.</p>

+

+<p>"Half of these books, the ones whose titles all began with the letters

+of the alphabet up through 'M', were kept in their New York branch. The

+remainder were sent to open a book store in Marsport. By the time you

+got to Marsport from Earth, the book was reported already sold&mdash;to a

+person unknown. That's all true, <i>isn't</i> it?</p>

+

+<p>"After having failed to find the map, Mr. Unterzuyder, you then sent

+the story to a newspaper&mdash;anonymously."</p>

+

+<p>"I did?" Unterzuyder looked arrogantly at Bailes.</p>

+

+<p>"Yes." Bigger's eyes narrowed. "Why?"</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder surged angrily away from the wall. "I am not interested in

+your questions. I have my chosen mission in life. It is not the making

+of money!"</p>

+

+<p>He brandished his cane. "I warn you, Mr. Bailes," he cried, "I am a

+nervous man. If I am not permitted to leave&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>Bigger spread his hands, astonished. "Don't think for a minute I'm

+keeping you. The only suggestion I wanted to make was that you and I

+could work together."</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder took off his glasses. There were red marks around his eyes

+where the glasses had taken hold. He had inherited the famous thin

+nose and receding chin of the Unterzuyders. His pale thin lips worked

+nervously.</p>

+

+<p>"I work alone, Mr. Bailes," he said haughtily. "And I work best when

+such as you try to set your pitiful little traps! Threaten me as you

+will, nothing can keep me from my purpose. And now good-day."</p>

+

+<p>Bigger's voice was filled with disgust. "Your purpose being, of course,

+to find asteroid X and free your ancestors so they can go to work on

+the Solar System again!"</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder glared, primly returned his glasses to his nose, and

+stalked off.</p>

+

+<p>"Scoundrel!" he muttered, putting his hand over his heart. He gasped.

+It was racing. And he was sweating. Trembling. His mother, the

+Unterzuyder matriarch, had been quite right. He should take care of his

+health.</p>

+

+<p>By the time he caught a one-wheeled gyromobile that came bowling down

+the glass street, he was feeling much better.</p>

+

+<p>"Take me to the Hotel de Mars," he told the driver. He leaned back

+comfortably, gloved hands resting on the head of his cane while he

+looked around him. A strange, glass-domed city, set in the heart of

+Mars' desert wastelands. A thriving city, with low buildings touching

+the glass roof of the dome.</p>

+

+<p>The rain-maker went on, the first drops splattering down from the

+overhead sprinkler system. Unterzuyder cringed.</p>

+

+<p>"Driver, driver!" he cried, rapping smartly with his cane. "Do you want

+me to catch my death?"</p>

+

+<p>The driver hurriedly caused the separate halves of the glassteel cupola

+to fold over the car. Unterzuyder settled back injuredly.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>At the registration desk of the Hotel de Mars, he asked for, and was

+shown to the room of, Mr. Nathaniel and Miss Fayette Beecher. The door

+was thrown open by a tanned blonde girl in smart gray jodhpurs and

+slick boots.</p>

+

+<p>Her face at first registered a nervousness. Then it smoothed.</p>

+

+<p>"Oh!" she sang out, blue eyes widening and taking him in from head to

+toe. "You must be Mr. Straley." She cocked her lively face cutely to

+one side. "<i>Are</i> you?"</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder's heart banged. He bit his lip. This was exactly the kind

+of girl his dead mother warned him to stay away from. Coquettish. Sexy.

+Treacherous, like most females. And he had lately noticed, to his

+dismay, that he, an Unterzuyder, was becoming far too susceptible to

+such unhealthy influences.</p>

+

+<p>"I am Mr. Straley," he said coldly. "Carruthers Straley, founder of

+Titan Settlers, Ltd. Shall I come in?"</p>

+

+<p>"Please <i>do</i>. For a moment, I lost my wits."</p>

+

+<p>She's making a play for me, like all females, he thought.

+Discouragedly, Unterzuyder went in. He sat down on a sponge-plastic

+chair, resting his gloved hands on his cane and looking upon the girl

+sternly.</p>

+

+<p>"Daddy!" she sang out. "Mr. Straley is here!"</p>

+

+<p>A man with a half-bald head and a deep tan lunged into the room

+carrying a heavy rocket-gun. His grin was wide, his voice reedy and

+enthusiastic. He was happy to know Mr. Straley. He laid the gun

+tenderly on the floor. Unterzuyder looked at it distrustfully.</p>

+

+<p>Beecher's reedy laugh sounded. "It's not cocked," he explained. "You

+caught me right in the middle of a clean-and-polish job. That ol' gun

+o' mine's been everywhere, mister. Most of the Moons of Jupiter, out

+on the deserts&mdash;even Africa. Yessir, our exploring expeditions have

+taken us into every corner of the Solar System that's available."</p>

+

+<p>The girl whipped open a drawer in the bottom of a boxy chair made of

+crystal glassteel. "And here's <i>my</i> pet!" She reached in to pull out

+a long-snouted neutron gun with a triple trigger. Unterzuyder's heart

+banged for the third time in an hour. In the drawer was one other

+object: <i>Tertium Organum</i>, A Key To The Enigmas Of The World.</p>

+

+<p>An old book. A musty book. The book from his beloved dead father's

+library. The book that held the Unterzuyder map.</p>

+

+<p>His breath hissed. Beecher leaned solicitously forward. "Anything

+wrong, Mr. Straley?"</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, no, nothing," said Unterzuyder, pain wrenching his face. "But I'm

+not a healthy man. My heart&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, what a shame." Fayette leaned over him, dizzying him with her

+perfume. She put her warm little hand on his forehead. She held his

+wrist to feel his pulse. She shook her blonde curls vigorously. "Nope.

+No fever. The pulse <i>did</i> seem to race a little when I held your hand.

+Outside of that&mdash;" She surveyed him judicially. "I'll bet you're as

+healthy as a Venusian peat-dog!"</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, come now," protested Beecher. "If the man says he's got a

+galloping heart, that's what he's got. Think of the courage, the

+idealism, the sheer fortitude of this man, who has gathered together a

+group of settlers to brave the dangers of a jungle-world like Titan&mdash;a

+planet no one has ever attempted to colonize! I personally <i>hand</i> it to

+the man!"</p>

+

+<p>There was a fawning admiration on his unshaven, grinning face.</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder settled back in his chair, feeling put upon.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm afraid of guns," he told Fayette petulantly. "If you'd please put

+it away&mdash;Besides&mdash;" He drew a clipping from his bill-fold. "&mdash;I am

+already convinced of your prowess as explorers."</p>

+

+<p>The headlines on the clipping read:</p>

+

+<p class="ph1">EXPLORERS RETURN FROM<br />

+GANYMEDE ICE TUNDRA<br />

+Father and daughter<br />

+make unique team</p>

+

+<p>"It says quite a bit about the expeditions you two have headed.

+Needless to say, I'm impressed! I am here, of course, to make you a

+proposition."</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>He explained his purpose at some length. For several weeks he had been

+engaged on a project dear to his heart. He believed in the future of

+the human race. He wanted to spread mankind's dominion even beyond the

+Moons of Jupiter. Titan had been viewed by only two men, both of whom

+stated it was livable. It had soil. It had vegetation. Also, it had

+dangerous animal life.</p>

+

+<p>"That's for us!" said Fayette stoutly. She accidentally pointed the

+neutron gun at Unterzuyder. She was squirming around on her chair with

+repressed vitality. Her eyes melted on him. He wished he could get over

+the feeling that she was laying it on too thick. That perfume. He must

+not allow himself to be affected.</p>

+

+<p>He cringed from the gun. She hastily put it on the floor. He wondered

+how accidental it might have been. Probably these cheap opportunists

+were perfectly capable of killing.</p>

+

+<p>He would have to watch his step. They had the map, all right. The

+bookseller's description of Fayette had been quite correct and helpful.</p>

+

+<p>Fortunately, the bookseller had been willing to accept a bribe not to

+give anybody else the information.</p>

+

+<p>He spoke again.</p>

+

+<p>"When I received your viso-call, Miss Beecher, I at once felt that

+Titan Settlers could work with you. I seriously discussed with them

+the possibility of giving you and your father titular command of the

+expedition."</p>

+

+<p>"Uh&mdash;" said Fayette. "You've already been capitalized?"</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder coughed delicately. "My intrepid settlers are composed

+of young husbands and wives and their children. I was able to sell

+them&mdash;that is&mdash;the magic allure of a new world was really all that

+was necessary to convince them that Titan is where their destiny lay.

+They sold all their belongings, and&mdash;ah&mdash;invested the funds with me as

+Treasurer of the organization."</p>

+

+<p>Beecher smacked his hands together enthusiastically.</p>

+

+<p>"Fine, fine! There's nothing the daughter and I like better than to

+push on into a new frontier. Mr. Straley, for twenty thousand credits

+we're bought!"</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder sat bolt upright. "Ten thousand credits," he said severely,

+"is the top amount we can offer. That is final. With one thousand

+credits in advance!"</p>

+

+<p>He whipped out a check book. He adjusted his glasses. Primly, he wrote

+a check and extended it with a jabbing motion, holding it for perhaps

+thirty seconds before Beecher's crestfallen face turned toward his

+daughter. Fayette was looking with intense interest at the check.</p>

+

+<p>"Why not? Mr. Straley, like you, we're idealists. Money means hardly

+anything. I think you've made a deal!"</p>

+

+<p>Beecher stowed the check in his wallet with satisfaction. "Now we'll

+get busy. Of course, we'll have to have a drawing account. We'll have

+to discuss details, such as the number of settlers to be transported

+so I can buy or charter the proper type of space ship. There's the

+matter of building supplies to be bought&mdash;grain seeds&mdash;food&mdash;a thousand

+details which you can leave entirely in our hands, Mr. Straley!</p>

+

+<p>"And while we're at it, I'd like to shake your hand! It's very few

+people who'd endanger their own lives to further the progress of

+mankind!"</p>

+

+<p>The experience left Unterzuyder weak. He looked appealingly at Fayette.

+"I wonder if a glass of water&mdash;" he said feebly.</p>

+

+<p>Hurriedly she disappeared to the apartment kitchen. Unterzuyder slumped

+lower in the seat, breathing hard.</p>

+

+<p>"Maybe," he told Beecher helplessly, "a shot of whiskey would do the

+trick better."</p>

+

+<p>"Sure thing!" Beecher went after his daughter. As soon as they were

+both out of the room, Unterzuyder got up and pulled open the drawer

+containing <i>Tertium Organum</i>, A Key To The Enigmas Of The World.

+Quickly he unfolded the chart in the back of the book. The map should

+be there.</p>

+

+<p>It wasn't.</p>

+

+<p>He slapped the drawer shut, sank feebly back to his seat. The Beechers

+were gone an inordinately long time. He thought he heard them

+whispering in the kitchen. Then Beecher lunged back into the room

+bearing a jigger of no doubt cheap rye. Unterzuyder gulped it down and

+put the glass to one side.</p>

+

+<p>Fayette was admiring. "For a man in poor health," she exclaimed, "you

+take it without a whimper&mdash;or a chaser!"</p>

+

+<p>"Eh?" Unterzuyder blinked, then drew himself up stiffly. "Whiskey is

+the only medicine my doctor permits. And now, let's get down to the

+matter of the contract!"</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>One month later.</p>

+

+<p>Ralph Unterzuyder was furious. He stalked the darkened decks of the

+trembling space ship <i>Ares</i>&mdash;a slick hundred-tonner with sixty square

+feet of firing surface&mdash;and reflected that the Beechers were making a

+worse sucker out of him than he'd expected them to.</p>

+

+<p>First, they were a pair of fakers. That much had been obvious from the

+start, with that phony newspaper write-up, all that bragging about

+their knowledge of fire-arms when they didn't even know enough to keep

+a weapon pointed toward the floor. Well, he'd expected that much. But

+to discover they did not even have <i>basic</i> knowledge of how to outfit

+an expedition!</p>

+

+<p>They had actually begun ordering <i>lumber</i> for building, until he

+pointed out the climate of Titan might be kinder to prefabricated

+glassteel sections.</p>

+

+<p>They had actually paid out money for seeds, bulbs, and saplings until

+he showed that all farming on Titan must for the present be on an

+experimental or at best highly speculative basis.</p>

+

+<p>Not only that, they had attempted to charter a ship twice as big

+as needed, one that used large quantities of chemical fuels. That

+ridiculous error had been amended with a smaller ship sporting

+atomic gas-thrust. As for the captain and crew, they had been hired

+by Unterzuyder himself&mdash;and, by means of the secret passage of one

+thousand credits from Titan Settlers' funds to Captain Foshag, the

+captain and crew were bought.</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder balanced himself angrily down a companionway. As he

+passed a hanging ventilator, the drum-beat and skittering rhythm of

+a jury-rigged orchestra echoed up from the ballroom. A dance was in

+progress. Unterzuyder smiled sentimentally. Nothing like giving the

+settlers a run for their money.</p>

+

+<p>Of course, he reflected dourly, Fayette Beecher had got the best of

+him in the matter of using the drawing account. Unterzuyder scowled.

+What had got into him? Somehow, Fayette's roving blue eyes and fiery

+touch did their work on him. Next thing he knew, he was in duress,

+being dragged on the arm of that fluffy creature from one dress shop to

+another.</p>

+

+<p>An expense account to buy swirling party dresses?&mdash;with a smidgin here

+and there for fancy explorers' outfits? The memory of his folly made

+Unterzuyder squirm.</p>

+

+<p>He sighed heavily as he came to C deck. Anyway, by his own cleverness,

+he had a ship, he had the Beechers&mdash;who had the map!</p>

+

+<p>And the hibernaculum asteroid, where his dozen infamous ancestors were

+sleeping away the decades under the influence of a potent, forbidden

+drug called somnolene, was somewhere out near Titan. Or <i>had been</i>.</p>

+

+<p>That was the one thing he remembered when, as a child, his father

+showed him the legendary map. At least he was headed for the area where

+the asteroid <i>might be</i>.</p>

+

+<p>And so might, he reflected glumly, that arrogant, impossible Bigger

+Bailes!</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>The Beecher's double-state-room was on C deck. Just as he turned an L

+in the corridor, he ran head-on into a gaily running figure clad in a

+fluffy party dress.</p>

+

+<p>For a moment they struggled in an attempt to regain their balance,

+and when Unterzuyder came out of it he was holding Fayette Beecher

+tightly, and he was kissing her warm little face. She responded just as

+energetically. And suddenly he woke up to the horror of the role he had

+assumed.</p>

+

+<p>He shoved her away. She stumbled backward and there was a glassy

+tinkling sound.</p>

+

+<p>"Ooh, your glasses!" cried Fayette, making a grab for them. He grabbed,

+too, suddenly convinced he had gone blind. "They're broken, Ralph,

+honey!" she said. "You look so much better without them." She flung her

+arms around him again, pressing him back to the wall. Her lips drooped

+disappointedly.</p>

+

+<p>"I&mdash;I'm fond of you," she said unhappily. "But you're so darned

+peculiar. You fell all over yourself kissing me. Now you're backing

+off. What's wrong?"</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder was scared. It came as a shock to him that the extreme

+emergency of the situation had given him, by some hypnotic process,

+better vision than he'd ever had. In spite of the darkness of the hall,

+he could see that Fayette was ravishing. She could make a strong man

+weak. Well, he would not give her that opportunity.</p>

+

+<p>Besides, something she'd said just now, something he couldn't put his

+finger on, had subconsciously frightened him. What?</p>

+

+<p>These treacherous Beechers!</p>

+

+<p>Maybe she was using her indomitable weapon to win him over. To what?</p>

+

+<p>Perhaps to cut him in on the map. X marks the spot, indeed! X was a

+moving asteroid. It had been moving for some eighty-odd years since the

+map was made. To find its present location was a problem in celestial

+mechanics. The map would have to be deciphered. Not only that, the

+original maker of the map, being an Unterzuyder, had undoubtedly

+confused the issue by making the job hard even for a mathematician.</p>

+

+<p>Naturally, the Beechers hadn't dared take the map to anybody for

+deciphering. To do so, might have brought the whole criminal element

+in the Solar System after them. That of course, was a little thing

+Unterzuyder himself had arranged&mdash;when he anonymously gave the details

+of the story to the press.</p>

+

+<p>The Beechers had been boxed in.</p>

+

+<p>Now, in desperation, the Beechers probably figured that if Fayette

+could make Carruthers Straley fall in love with her, that he, being a

+lawyer, might have a devious enough mind to think like an Unterzuyder

+and decipher the map! <i>And</i> not betray them.</p>

+

+<p>They did not understand that Ralph Unterzuyder, alias Carruthers

+Straley, worked alone.</p>

+

+<p>They would find it out. And so would Bigger Bailes.</p>

+

+<p>He answered her direct question stiffly. "I shall continue to back

+off, Fayette. Love is an emotion which can be defined in various

+unflattering terms. I would not care to tumble your romantic castles!

+My mother&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"Aha! Your mother!" She leaped upon the word with a knowing and very

+wide grin. Then she took advantage of his pinned position against the

+bulkhead to kiss him again, determinedly and hard. For a wild half of

+eternity, his senses were swept away on a skittering whirlwind. Then by

+main force he tore away and lunged down the corridor.</p>

+

+<p>"Mr. Straley!" There was a bubble of repressed laughter. "I was going

+to ask if you'd take me to the dance!"</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>He did not answer. His flight was precipitous. It was not for several

+minutes that he realized the loss of his glasses had not impeded his

+vision. He leaned weakly against a bulkhead. Very early in life, his

+parents had insisted that the inherited weak eyes of the Unterzuyders

+be made normal with ocular aids. Indeed, powerful, dark eye-glasses had

+grown, over the generations, to be a symbol of Unterzuyder autocracy.</p>

+

+<p>His parents had been wrong.</p>

+

+<p>Perhaps they had been wrong in other things.</p>

+

+<p>He shuddered. Without his eye-glasses, he hardly felt himself to be an

+Unterzuyder.</p>

+

+<p>Slowly, memory of his original purpose in ordering Captain Foshag to

+throw a dance came back.</p>

+

+<p>In the ballroom, Beecher would be strutting to win the favor of

+somebody's wife.</p>

+

+<p>With a bit more success, Fayette would have a dozen young husbands

+circling her moth-like.</p>

+

+<p>Intrigue, thought Unterzuyder, and subtlety, is ever the adventurer's

+most potent weapon. The great general indirectly entices the foe away

+from his own most strongly held point!</p>

+

+<p>Several minutes later, he was fitting his pass-key into the door of the

+Beechers' stateroom. He closed the door, switched on the radi-lights.

+The efficiently furnished little rooms were brightly illumined.</p>

+

+<p>The map. Where? Start at the beginning. At first glance, <i>Tertium

+Organum</i> was not in the bookcase. Then he reached in back of the row of

+lurid fiction titles and knew he had guessed correctly.</p>

+

+<p>A little too correctly!</p>

+

+<p>He felt one of the few cold chills of his life traveling on his spine.

+He opened the book and the map fell out. He sat down weakly. His

+fingers trembled as he smoothed out the heavy rag parchment.</p>

+

+<p>A map of the Solar System. He dizzied. X marks the asteroid. Just as he

+remembered seeing it that long ago day when his great father showed it

+to him.</p>

+

+<p>His father, that stern-faced giant in whom the valiant blood of the

+hibernating Unterzuyders flowed, had been most explicit. One of these

+years, the map would be given to Ralph. He would guard it with his

+blood. In the course of time, Ralph would give it to <i>his</i> son.</p>

+

+<p>At long last, the hibernaculum would be opened, the dozen

+hibernating Unterzuyders would be brought to life with injections of

+anti-somnolene, and would once more take over their rightful place of

+dominance in the Solar System.</p>

+

+<p>The position they had been scourged from by a relentless political

+regime which had smashed the Unterzuyders' fabulous tri-planet cartels,

+leaving the remnants in the form of a thousand rigidly controlled small

+holding companies.</p>

+

+<p>The position they had been forced to flee from, leaving only their

+children&mdash;and a hidden map.</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder's fingers still shook. Sweat dribbled down his blonde

+hair-line. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong. The map itself

+was hideously out of scale.</p>

+

+<p>The traced orbits of the planets were circular, <i>not</i> elliptical.</p>

+

+<p>And the map itself.</p>

+

+<p><i>I should not have found it so easily</i>.</p>

+

+<p>Counter-intrigue?</p>

+

+<p>No time to lose.</p>

+

+<p>From his inside pocket, he took the flat little duplico-camera,

+adjusted the frame over the map. He flipped the shutter. Seconds later,

+the map was back exactly where he'd taken it from.</p>

+

+<p>There was only one sound in this quiet room, the tremor of the

+gas-thrust shoving the ship through dark void into the spaces beyond

+Jupiter. Suddenly, there was the scuffle of moving feet beyond the door.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>Unterzuyder found himself in the position of a traveler in an alien

+city where savage little children had switched all the street signs.

+Nonetheless, he lunged for the door, threw off the lights in the

+stateroom, opened the door, closed it, stood with his back pressed

+against it.</p>

+

+<p>Hurrying footsteps. Unterzuyder was after the sound.</p>

+

+<p>The big, hurrying frame of Captain Foshag. Unterzuyder grabbed his

+arm, whipped him around. Foshag's hairy, dignified face was wrenched

+with astonishment.</p>

+

+<p>"Mr. Straley," he said uncertainly. His brow clouded. He looked at

+Unterzuyder's grip on his heavy arm and frowned with displeasure. He

+shook off the hand. "I'm not used to being manhandled, sir! You've

+perhaps imbibed too much at the party?" He was being sternly insulting.</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder crumbled. He could be wrong.</p>

+

+<p>"I&mdash;haven't been well. My heart&mdash;" He touched at his chest

+apologetically. It wasn't too far from the truth. Pains in his chest.

+His mother had always assured him the Unterzuyders were prone to heart

+trouble. Just as she'd got around to making him wear glasses. Terrible

+uncertainties were crowding him. He was surrounded by treachery. Had

+Foshag been shadowing him?</p>

+

+<p>Foshag's great frame rocked judicially on its toes.</p>

+

+<p>"If you truly have a bad heart," he said measuredly, "you'd have

+taken the long trail when the <i>Ares</i> hit heaven. We humans often are

+plagued with strange influences. Words spoken to the unguarded mind of

+the child sometimes become fact to the grownup. I'd not worry about

+the heart. And now, the reason I am away from the turret. I've been

+looking for you."</p>

+

+<p>He cleared his throat. "There's a king-sized ship of the Silver type

+on our tail, Mr. Straley. I'm not the worrying kind, however. Worry is

+indeed the prime cause of most kidney troubles, and, besides, beclouds

+the mind when there's work to be done. Therefore, not until I observed

+that the pursuing craft was indeed pursuing&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"Come to the point!" Everything else was swept away. Unterzuyder was

+suddenly furious at this big, stupid, philosophizing blunderer. "You're

+trying to excuse yourself for not telling me right away. Let's get to

+the turret!"</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder went at full stride, his brain in high gear. They were

+being pursued. That arrogant Bigger Bailes, no doubt! So what? Add one

+more menace to those he was collecting. In fact, mess up the mess a

+little more.</p>

+

+<p>"Captain Foshag," he said, "you are a well-read man. Ever read

+Ouspensky?"</p>

+

+<p>Foshag nodded his square bearded chin. "A man of vast creative mental

+power, Mr. Straley. A man who seemed able to step off our three

+dimensions and look at the universe from a new viewpoint." Tentatively:

+"You have an interest in the classical philosophers, perhaps?"</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder muttered something garbled. He trotted ahead of Foshag up

+the ramp to the glassed-in control turret, went past several instrument

+men to the viewing disk assembly. Foshag hurriedly got the pursuing

+ship on the cross-hairs. It was a great globoid catching golden-green

+sun on one half, black interstellar shadow on the other.</p>

+

+<p>"Raise it on the beam!" Unterzuyder ordered.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>Moments later, Ralph Unterzuyder was looking into the detested face of

+Bigger Bailes.</p>

+

+<p>"That's me," smiled Bigger, his rosy face creasing. "Bigger Bailes. And

+how are you, Mr. Ralph Unterzuyder?" His smile became even more rosy.</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder gulped. He was completely dismayed. Captain Foshag showed

+no reaction at the unmasking. Captain Foshag kept his face turned

+studiously away.</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder felt himself going into a spin.</p>

+

+<p>But he drew himself up and said haughtily, "Kindly keep your inside

+information to yourself, Mr. Bigger Bailes. I travel under the name of

+Carruthers Straley merely because there is an unsavory flavor to the

+name of Unterzuyder!</p>

+

+<p>"Now, why are you following us?"</p>

+

+<p>"Following you?" Bigger Bailes appeared injured. "I'm trying to catch

+up with you. I intend to come aboard&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"<i>You will not!</i>" Unterzuyder yelled the words so loud the crew members

+in back of him half-jumped from their charts.</p>

+

+<p>Bigger's image wavered on the screen as he leaned forward and settled

+back.</p>

+

+<p>"I didn't expect such a reaction, Mr.&mdash;Straley," he said. His little

+eyes, almost hidden by fat, were penetrating. "I'd almost think you

+were hiding something. Are you?"</p>

+

+<p>Foshag raised a commanding hand. "That'll be enough of that," he

+commanded. "We're a law-abiding ship. I myself am an honest man.

+Secrecy gives rise to certain nervous disorders which I avoid. If you

+wish to come aboard, perhaps you are taking advantage of some Space

+Article?"</p>

+

+<p>"Taking advantage? If you want to put it that way. Two of my men

+are down sick. The usual spastic seizures. We've run out of ATG.

+We're coming aboard your ship to get some. Article 10b of the Space

+Constitution gives us that right."</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder brushed Foshag aside.</p>

+

+<p>"I warn you, Mr. Bailes," he said thickly, "if you have any ulterior

+motive, such as looting this ship, we will put up a fight! Our

+settlers were chosen for their intrepid qualities. We have guns. We

+have bombs. We have a flare-cannon. You will not find us easy prey!"</p>

+

+<p>Bailes leaned back easily. "Relax, Unterzuyder. As far as guns

+go, we've got our share. And we have got a brace of flare-cannons

+embrasured into the bulkheads of the <i>Space-Queen</i> ourselves, if you

+want to get tough."</p>

+

+<p>He spread his fat hands. "But who wants to get tough? See you

+gentlemen, aboard your ship, twenty-four hours from now." With which

+remark he broke contact.</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder was at Foshag instantly.</p>

+

+<p>"Not a word about my identity," he breathed. "After all, I did pay you

+a thousand credits!"</p>

+

+<p>"And for which I thanked you! Mr. Unterzuyder, I am not a secretive

+man. If asked a direct question, I seldom impair my health by lying.

+Now permit me to return to my duties."</p>

+

+<p>Fuming, Unterzuyder left the control turret, went straight to the

+ballroom. Here, without any hesitation whatever, he cut in on Fayette,

+taking her away from the handsomest husband in the lot. No word of

+apology.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>He held her very close, very tight. He danced with a mathematical

+precision. Even the soul of the dance, he reflected grimly, derives

+from a mathematical formula. The dummy four-piece band haggered out

+its hag-strut very effectively. He was rewarded as Fayette lost her

+surprised stiffness, and began to melt into him in perfect rhythm to

+the tune. Her blonde head gradually nestled into his shoulder, her eyes

+closed, a small, sweet smile on her lips.</p>

+

+<p>At the first opportunity, he swung her without a break to a small

+observation lounge, and in the cold green glow of a million stars drew

+her to him, letting himself be stunned by the warmth of her and the

+drugging quality of her perfume. He kissed her. He was carried away

+into a land of intricate enchantment where Love is All, and the Girl in

+my Arms is You.</p>

+

+<p>She opened her eyes, looking at him dreamily. "I love you," she

+murmured.</p>

+

+<p>"I know," said Unterzuyder.</p>

+

+<p>"I don't know what your intentions are. I don't care what kind of a

+sneaky, underhanded person you are, I still love you."</p>

+

+<p>He kissed her again. She was crying. Unterzuyder took out his

+handkerchief and wiped away her tears. "Now don't worry, Fayette," he

+soothed. "Everything will turn out all right." He took her back to the

+dance floor. By luck he found the young husband she'd been dancing

+with. He gave her back.</p>

+

+<p>"Sorry!" he said. He gave Fayette a fleeting smile and hurriedly took

+off.</p>

+

+<p>He went to his cabin and feverishly got to work. Plug up the loopholes

+as you go along! A favorite axiom of the Unterzuyders. Now that Fayette

+was in love with him, he could draw on her for any emergency.</p>

+

+<p>Apparently the time was coming when he would need an ally.</p>

+

+<p>He ran the negative through the hypo, put it in the dryer and paced

+the floor. He rubbed at his lips with the back of his hand. He could

+still smell Fayette's perfume. He could still feel her bare warm back.

+Careful, careful. He went to a mirror and looked at his face. Weak. The

+glassless eyes red-rimmed. Thin nose and lips. His spirits dropped. How

+could Fayette be in love with him? Particularly when he was one of the

+outlawed Unterzuyders.</p>

+

+<p>The finished photograph went into the automatic pantograph. He blew

+it up six times onto a square of Mirac paper. He smoothed the new map

+onto the desk. Instantly he saw why at first the map had appeared so

+impossibly distorted. The circles did not indicate the orbits of the

+planets. They were merely a logarithmic indication of the scale of the

+map.</p>

+

+<p>Mercury, being some 43,000,000 miles from the Sun, was the basic unit.

+And that was necessary.</p>

+

+<p>The Solar System could not be drawn to scale unless the inner planets

+were crowded in fractionally close to the Sun.</p>

+

+<p>Here, the positions of the planets were indicated by dots whose

+map-distance from the Sun receded inward in logarithmic ratio to actual

+distance.</p>

+

+<p>Pluto, for instance, being one hundred times farther from the Sun than

+Mercury in real distance, appeared by the map to be only, roughly,

+twenty times as far.</p>

+

+<p>The position of the dot-planets on the map of course indicated the

+<i>exact</i> date of the day when the map was drawn.</p>

+

+<p>The finely drawn X showed the position of the hibernaculum asteroid <i>on

+that day</i>.</p>

+

+<p>Since then, roughly eighty-two years ago, X had moved in its orbit.

+Where to?</p>

+

+<p>That was the problem.</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder sweated. It was said by the Unterzuyders, with possible

+justification, that only an Unterzuyder could think like an

+Unterzuyder. How often his father had told him that. But he was

+confused.</p>

+

+<p>Naturally. The map was meant to confuse.</p>

+

+<p>What were the figures at the bottom of the map?</p>

+

+<table summary="map figures">

+<tr><td>s-1</td><td align="right">   .7452</td></tr>

+<tr><td>c-1</td><td align="right"> -.2020</td></tr>

+</table>

+

+<p>and</p>

+

+<table summary="map figures">

+<tr><td>(0, 3, 2)</td></tr>

+<tr><td>(1, 1, 8)</td></tr>

+</table>

+

+<p>And why, at the top corner, was the name unterzuyder printed <i>with a

+small u</i>?</p>

+

+<p>Nobody but an Unterzuyder would know.</p>

+

+<p>Well, he didn't know.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>Puzzled, he paced the room. Tomorrow Bigger Bailes would force his

+way aboard ship. Little could be done to stop him, partly because he

+insisted he needed ATG, a chemical staff of life necessary for muscular

+action, but mostly because he had superior fire-power. Actually, he

+wanted the map. If he didn't get it, he would inevitably loot the ship.</p>

+

+<p>He paused before the mirror, again. Glassless, he didn't feel like an

+Unterzuyder. Looking upon himself naked of face, he cringed. If only

+the whole thing were over. If only he were in the observatory under the

+greenly burning stars with&mdash;</p>

+

+<p>Frantically he stopped that line of thought.</p>

+

+<p>He hauled out a sheaf of maps. He had come prepared. He had brought the

+duplico-camera, the film developing equipment, the pantograph, other

+odds and ends. He had a shelf-full of celestial mechanic manuals, as

+well as books on the more ordinary arithmetics.</p>

+

+<p>But he had had only one year of math. Somewhere along the line, he had

+outguessed his patriarch of a father and his matriarch of a mother: law

+had been the result.</p>

+

+<p>Well suited, he had felt at the time, to the trickery, the deceit, and

+the orneriness of the typical Unterzuyder mind!</p>

+

+<p>Anyway, he needed a slide-rule before he could tackle the equations.

+For the present, he would work out the date the map was made. Then it

+would be possible to discover X's present position.</p>

+

+<p>All that was necessary was, mathematically, to rotate the present-time

+position of the planets backward in time&mdash;clockwise, that is&mdash;until

+they coincided with map-position.</p>

+

+<p>The star-maps, the Emphemeris, and the Planet Catalogue should make

+that fairly simple.</p>

+

+<p>After an hour, his nerves began to quiver. He ran his hands

+distractedly through his awry blonde hair. He had the answer. And it

+was impossible. Except that it was correct.</p>

+

+<p>Apparently, the map had been drawn up in prehistoric times.</p>

+

+<p>50,000 years ago!</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>After a virtually sleepless sleep-period, he went to breakfast. The

+settlers were in a happy chattering mood. Titan was only ten days away.

+Unterzuyder ate with the pressure of the Beechers' eyes on him.</p>

+

+<p>Nathaniel Beecher showed quiet menace on a face that ordinarily held

+grinning, shifty-eyed comraderie. Fayette had sullen, angry shadows

+under her eyes. Perhaps she was smarting under a humiliation that

+might make her do dangerous things. He had left her rather abruptly at

+the dance. Unterzuyder bit his lip. Perhaps he had not covered that

+situation as well as he might.</p>

+

+<p>Remorse was an emotion new to Unterzuyder. But then he had suffered

+some kind of mental upset when his glasses shattered under Fayette's

+heel. He could see as well as the next man, and consequently was

+beginning to have some shattering doubts about the wisdom of his

+immediate ancestors. And he <i>was</i> a man.</p>

+

+<p>He gulped. All these were dangerous thoughts. He must continue to think

+like an Unterzuyder.</p>

+

+<p>Something devious. Something tricky. Something that would competently

+accomplish the task of fooling the Beechers, Bigger Bailes, and

+possibly Foshag!</p>

+

+<p>As he started out of the dining room, Beecher lunged after him,

+trailing a rocket-stream of cigar smoke.</p>

+

+<p>"A minute, Straley!" Beecher held him from the door, his close-set

+eyes full of dislike. "Foshag told me Bigger Bailes is back there."

+He jerked a shoulder. "You're a man with many small tricks, Straley,"

+he went on slowly. "Probably you're the most dangerous man I've ever

+encountered. I've been around."</p>

+

+<p>"I'll bet you have!"</p>

+

+<p>Beecher gestured with the cigar, turned on his grin, apparently to

+convince anybody watching that this was a friendly conversation.</p>

+

+<p>"But I'm not letting you get away with anything. We have to do

+something about Bailes. I don't intend to be hi-jacked. Truthfully,

+mister, I don't see why the settlers shouldn't be forewarned. They're a

+decent bunch. We're not.</p>

+

+<p>"In fact," his eyes were boring, "I've known from the first that you've

+been using these people."</p>

+

+<p>"As you have&mdash;and as you've attempted to use me!"</p>

+

+<p>"Yes." Beecher's lips moved hesitantly. "You and I and Fayette are all

+three getting a free ride to Titan, aren't we? No expenses. So now

+that we've <i>almost</i> laid our cards on the table, why shouldn't we join

+forces?"</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder drew himself up disdainfully. "I work alone, Beecher."</p>

+

+<p>"Yeah." Beecher showed disgust. "You mean you're working for something

+no decent person would help you with."</p>

+

+<p>"And you mean by that?"</p>

+

+<p>Beecher's eyes simmered. He said nothing.</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder snapped. "I still work alone&mdash;unless forced to recruit

+help. That condition may occur. In the meantime, use some of those

+qualities of leadership an <i>explorer</i> should have. Inform these people

+what's up. Tell them Bailes will probably attempt to loot the ship.

+Line the men up at the arsenal and load them down with weapons. Make

+arrangements so the women and children will keep to the cabins. Can you

+handle that?"</p>

+

+<p>Beecher flushed until his face was bright red.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>Leaving him properly insulted, Unterzuyder went to the control turret

+where he cornered Foshag, drew him to the Solar Chart.</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder picked up a pencil, made an indentation at random. It was

+considerably to the east of the <i>Ares'</i> present position.</p>

+

+<p>"Change course immediately. To that point."</p>

+

+<p>Foshag huffed rebelliously. "That won't help us outrun Bailes. The new

+course will but give him a hypotenuse to travel. He'll run us down

+quicker."</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder's lips turned thinner. Muttering, Foshag sat down to the

+computations. On the way out of the turret, Unterzuyder slipped a

+slide-rule out of an instrument case so deftly that nobody noticed.</p>

+

+<p>Another hour's work showed him that the two sets of figures,

+respectively, indicated X's <i>point of origin</i> and <i>direction of

+travel</i>. <i>c</i> stood for cosine, of course, <i>s</i> for sine.</p>

+

+<p>X had been, when the map was made, some degrees below the plane of the

+ecliptic. Its orbit was at a steep slant to that plane.</p>

+

+<p>So what? So the point of origin was located in time 50,000 years ago?</p>

+

+<p>The map was a fake!</p>

+

+<p>He sat at the desk a long time, thinking, and thinking fast. Foshag

+must have known who he was from the first. He was an observing man, but

+he was also a close-mouthed man, who answered only to direct questions.

+And the Beechers knew his identity too. Fayette had accidentally called

+him by his real name. Treachery!</p>

+

+<p>Undoubtedly, Bigger Bailes had tipped off the Beechers, just before

+Unterzuyder arrived at the Beechers' apartment in Marsport. Bigger

+Bailes thought Unterzuyder knew where the map was, but didn't know the

+Beechers had it. Bigger intended to let the situation stir itself up so

+the asteroid's location would more easily come out of hiding.</p>

+

+<p>Yes, everything was wrong. Bigger would loot the ship when he learned

+the map was a practical joke. Taking a ship this far beyond Jupiter

+would have to pay off. And there was nobody to stop him.</p>

+

+<p>What was it his father told him about Unterzuyder techniques? Sell

+short at the top, buy long at the bottom. All events, good or bad,

+could be used to build a firmer superstructure!</p>

+

+<p>Well, face it! Ship's course had been changed. The settlers by this

+time had demanded to know why. Beecher would tell them Carruthers

+Straley was Ralph Unterzuyder, hunting for a hibernaculum!</p>

+

+<p>The settlers by this time were up in arms against him.</p>

+

+<p>He paled. He leaped to the door, listened. Footsteps. Patrolling his

+room.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>He returned to the table. Make use of the situation. Dredge it for

+what it's worth! He crossed shakily to the audio and called Fayette's

+number. Luckily, Fayette and not her father answered.</p>

+

+<p>"Fayette&mdash;darling." The word came out huskily. It was hard to say. It

+sounded real.</p>

+

+<p>"<i>Who?</i>" Then her voice was uneven. "You called me darling. Are you

+sure you're in your right mind?"</p>

+

+<p>"I mean it, dear." <i>Did he?</i> "I couldn't forget last night."</p>

+

+<p>He was falling into the self-made trap of the dishonest, unable to tell

+his own truth from his own falsehood.</p>

+

+<p>"All right," she said unevenly. "So you couldn't forget it? So what?"</p>

+

+<p>He spoke softly. Please, he had to see her in his room right away. It

+was urgent. Would she come now? A long silence. Yes, she would come.

+No, she wouldn't tell her father. Positively. Five minutes later

+she slipped into the room. She barely opened the door. He took her

+instantly into his arms. When he figured he had kissed her enough, he

+let her drop limply into a chair.</p>

+

+<p>The circles under her eyes were worse. She looked miserable. He drew up

+a chair, tenderly took her hands in his.</p>

+

+<p>"Look at me, Fayette. I'm going to make a confession that will shock

+you. I'm not Carruthers Straley. I'm Ralph Unterzuyder."</p>

+

+<p>She didn't look shocked. He pretended not to notice.</p>

+

+<p>He told her selected portions of the story. "I suspected you had the

+map. I examined <i>Tertium Organum</i> in your apartment yesterday when you

+and your father were in the kitchen."</p>

+

+<p><i>And you wanted me to examine it! So I'd be sure to hire you and

+Beecher and take you with me to Saturn. That was the reason you posed

+as explorers, so Titan Settlers would give you a free ride to the

+vicinity of X!</i></p>

+

+<p>"I broke into your room last night, Fayette, and made a copy of the

+map."</p>

+

+<p><i>And you left it wide open for me, so I could put my Unterzuyder brains

+to work deciphering it!</i></p>

+

+<p>"And now that I've deciphered the map&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>That shocked her. "You <i>did</i>? But Daddy figured out it was made roughly

+50,000 years ago!"</p>

+

+<p>His heart fell to the bottom of his stomach. The Beechers hadn't got

+over that stumbling block either. He'd made a mistake in trying to pump

+her. He smiled feebly. But salvage <i>something</i> out of it!</p>

+

+<p>"50,000 years," he said druggedly, "seems to be correct&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>She was on her feet, laughing half hysterically. "You're trying to say

+the Unterzuyders invented a time-machine? That they aren't hibernating

+at all? After all the trouble we've gone to&mdash;" She giggled. "That's

+rich, Ralph&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>Female instability. He held her tightly. A lie, a good solid lie. His

+heart raced. Bigger Bailes. "Of course not, dear. The whole idea of a

+time-machine is fantasy&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p><i>Is it?</i></p>

+

+<p>"&mdash;and it'll make you feel better to know the map is purely

+contemporary. You noticed the ship changed course? Well, dear, we are

+headed toward X!"</p>

+

+<p>She pushed away, her eyes amazed.</p>

+

+<p>"And," he added happily, "you will also be glad to know that you and

+I and your father are going to collect the reward for finding the

+hibernaculum!"</p>

+

+<p>"<i>Really</i>, Ralph? That was your intention all along? You weren't going

+to <i>free</i> them? Oh, I was hoping so hard you were going only after the

+reward&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>She switched her glance over his shoulder. Pity wrenched her face.</p>

+

+<p>Something hit Ralph Unterzuyder hard on the back of the head. He fell

+straight down ten thousand miles, and lay there for quite a while

+studying patterns of light that squirmed in his head.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>Captain Foshag was dragging him to a chair. His tufted eyebrows came

+close. He put a slopping cloth on Unterzuyder's forehead.</p>

+

+<p>He said, "For the time, you're a prisoner in this cabin. I trust the

+experience will teach you some truths. Wickedness secretes various

+poisons in the body, particularly the heart and the liver. Change your

+ways, and you may indeed live a long life!"</p>

+

+<p>The door burst open and Beecher lunged in. His shrewd eyes rested on

+Unterzuyder.</p>

+

+<p>"Sorry I had to bop you, Unterzuyder," he said in clipped accents. "But

+it was the best way to get you out of the picture and keep you from

+talking to Bigger Bailes. You might have messed up the works. As it

+was, we told him the truth."</p>

+

+<p>"The truth?"</p>

+

+<p>"Certainly. You admitted it to Fayette. That you'd figured out the

+orbit and present position of X. He got the course from Foshag and made

+us turn around toward Titan again. Then he took off for X. So we're

+whipped. But at least it kept us from being looted."</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder ripped the wet cloth from his head and threw it somewhere.

+He laughed. He weaved about the room, holding his head and hooting,

+while Foshag and Beecher looked on with open mouths. Then Foshag forced

+him into a chair.</p>

+

+<p>"Out of his head! Mr. Unterzuyder, please be quiet. That's better.

+There, there! Now we're going to leave you here for your own

+protection, Mr. Unterzuyder. The settlers are somewhat provoked. Do you

+agree?"</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder grinned widely up at him.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm sick," he groaned. "Tell Fayette I need her."</p>

+

+<p><i>There's still X to find.</i></p>

+

+<p>An idea had come to him.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>He was in bed, the white cloth on his forehead, when Fayette walked in.

+She looked at him without sympathy. Tentatively, she sat on the edge of

+the bed, curling one knee under another.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm sorry if you think I played Delilah, Ralph&mdash;" she began.</p>

+

+<p>He patted her knee delicately. "There, there," he soothed. "None of

+that matters. Actually, we're two of a kind. Not that we're naturally

+treacherous, but that we are indirect, the most dangerous weapon in the

+world. I wanted to discuss our plans. You see, marriage is a&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>She gripped his wrist, hard, to make him stop talking.</p>

+

+<p>She said through her teeth, "After this, nothing but the truth!"</p>

+

+<p>Inwardly he groaned.</p>

+

+<p>She went on with determination. "I <i>do</i> love you. I <i>do</i> want to marry

+you. And settle on Titan. The important thing is, do <i>you</i> love me

+and really want to marry me? Are you going to be honest with me about

+things that concern only us? Of course, I don't mind if you're tricky

+with other people. That's life."</p>

+

+<p><i>Well, why not?</i></p>

+

+<p>Unfortunately, he would be unable to use her anymore for purposes of

+finding X. But apparently, he <i>was</i> in love with her.</p>

+

+<p>He held her warm hands. "We'll get married and live on Titan," he said.</p>

+

+<p>She leaned over and kissed him until he thought he'd be forced down

+through the bed.</p>

+

+<p>He added, "But first I've got to get back in the good graces of the

+settlers." When she smiled incredulously, he said with confidence, "It

+should be easy."</p>

+

+<p>And besides, it was necessary.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>As soon as Fayette left, he leaped out of bed and grabbed an

+encyclopaedia out of the bookcase. He looked up <i>Unterzuyder</i>, tracing

+down until he found the expected paragraph:</p>

+

+<p><i>The fabulous cartels of the Unterzuyders were built up through their

+amazing instinct on the stock market. When the market was bullish,

+they seemed to know when the crest was reached. Selling short in heavy

+amount at this point, they reaped millions in profit as the market

+fell, then caught the market again on the upswing. Invariably, the

+bulls were caught short by the Unterzuyder bears. The Unterzuyders

+seemed to draw some special inspiration from one famous interpretation

+of their name, i. e.</i>, undersiders, <i>those who work from the

+underside</i>....</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder sent the book scurrying into a corner. His hunch had been

+right. But now was not the time to work out the rest of the puzzle. He

+dressed quickly.</p>

+

+<p>When he walked into the dining room, where dinner was in progress, he

+was wearing the white bandage pinned around his forehead. He was also

+limping very slightly. Sympathy was nonetheless lacking. Complete quiet

+reigned in the dining room. The settlers kept their faces turned away,

+or looked fixedly at their plates.</p>

+

+<p>Fayette's expression alone showed sympathy. He knew his own face was

+fiery red.</p>

+

+<p>Nonetheless, he told the settlers everything he thought necessary.

+(They knew it anyway.) He apologized. He pointed out deviously that,

+after all, they <i>were</i> on the way to a new world. That much he had done

+for them.</p>

+

+<p>"What you do not realize is that it was I, your leader, who diverted

+Bigger Bailes from looting the ship.</p>

+

+<p>"Quite deliberately, I built up the feeling that the new course was the

+course to X, the hibernaculum of my criminal ancestors. All of you were

+convinced. Therefore Bailes became convinced.</p>

+

+<p>"Had he known the Unterzuyder map was a fake, he would have taken it

+out on you by looting the ship. I sent him off on a wild goose chase!"</p>

+

+<p>Some of the settlers were looking at him with cautious interest.

+Beecher rose at this point.</p>

+

+<p>"I can say something in favor of Mr. Unterzuyder," he said. "His

+intentions were good. Mr. Unterzuyder was only after the reward money.

+He did <i>not</i> intend to free the Unterzuyders, even though he is an

+Unterzuyder himself. And half of the reward money was to go into the

+treasury of Titan Settlers!"</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder looked pop-eyed at Beecher. But now the settlers were

+frankly staring at him. After a moment, they began eating again. In

+several minutes more, the hall was full of chatter again.</p>

+

+<p>After the most uncomfortable meal of his life, Unterzuyder headed for

+the door. Beecher caught up with him, grinning companionably.</p>

+

+<p>"We did a good job, mister," he said. "I had my own reasons for backing

+you up. This thing'll blow over. Then I've got some ideas. You and I

+are sharpies, Unterzuyder. We could set up in business on Titan and

+build up one of the biggest fortunes in the System, eventually. What do

+you say?"</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder smiled wanly and said he would think it over. Then he went

+to his cabin. In two hours, he had plotted X's location to the dot.</p>

+

+<p>Then he leaned back, nibbling nervously at the pencil eraser.</p>

+

+<p>In five days, with good fortune, the infamous Unterzuyders would be

+awake and free....</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>It took him two days of cautious footwork before the settlers

+completely dropped their hostility toward him. Then one evening he told

+them simply that they still had Bigger Bailes to worry about.</p>

+

+<p>"When he discovers he's been fooled, it's possible he might head for

+Titan and try to loot the settlement. We have to be ready. For several

+weeks we'll have to be on guard. The space ship will be camouflaged.

+For awhile we'll suspend building operations.</p>

+

+<p>"We'll be ready for offense and defense. We have three life boats which

+are maneuverable in empty space or in an atmosphere. These life boats

+must be equipped with food, with water, with weapons. I'm calling for

+volunteers to help me with that job."</p>

+

+<p>It was a rude shock to Unterzuyder when Fayette became the first

+volunteer.</p>

+

+<p>By the fourth day, the life boats were deadly offensive craft.</p>

+

+<p>Unterzuyder paid particular attention to one of the life boats himself.

+Quite accidentally, it became loaded down with extra weapons and

+supplies.</p>

+

+<p>Only one thing bothered him. Fayette was underfoot all the time.</p>

+

+<p>As the time of leaving approached, his nerves began to get the better

+of him. The time, however, <i>did</i> come. At 22:04 on the fifth day, in

+the middle of the sleeping period, he dialed open the airlock door to

+the blister in which the stout little life boat nestled. He closed it

+behind him, turned around. Fayette was standing at the hatch of the

+little ship, slickly dressed in shiny boots, smart beige jodphurs, and

+a blouse open at the throat.</p>

+

+<p>She was holding her pet neutron gun with the snout pointed toward him.

+She was smiling confidently.</p>

+

+<p>"Ralph," she said, "in my hand I hold a weapon. It is not indirect.

+It is not subtle. It does not practice deceit. It does not give

+half-answers. It says 'yes,' and it says 'no'. That's all it says.</p>

+

+<p>"It also <i>gets</i> yes and no answers.</p>

+

+<p>"But don't be afraid of me, Ralph. I'm here to help you!"</p>

+

+<p>He found his voice. "Help me? I need no help! I work alone!"</p>

+

+<p>"Nobody works alone, Ralph. Ask Captain Foshag. Most people run on

+compulsive commands given them by people who might even be dead.

+Parents mostly. Positive suggestion. The mind works that way.</p>

+

+<p>"Sometimes people are made to feel they're unhealthy, only they aren't

+really. Or they're told their eyes are bad. Or that they're superior to

+other people.</p>

+

+<p>"It's just as if&mdash;" she frowned hard as if looking for an example "&mdash;as

+if <i>your</i> parents were sitting inside that smart blonde head of yours,

+Ralph, and telling you to free the Unterzuyders from their sleep. It's

+something you feel you <i>have</i> to do.</p>

+

+<p>"But you <i>don't</i> have to, Ralph. I'm here to help you."</p>

+

+<p>He stared at her, stunned.</p>

+

+<p>He drew himself up arrogantly. "Put down that gun, Fayette."</p>

+

+<p>If anything, she held the gun more firmly, and moved it three inches

+toward him.</p>

+

+<p>"Don't mistake me, Ralph," she said, her eyes cold. "This is a yes and

+no game. No maybes or ifs. If you say yes when the gun says no, that's

+too bad. If you say no when the gun wants yes, <i>that's</i> too bad. You

+see how straightforward the three of us are?</p>

+

+<p>"But I and my pet neutron gun will give you time to think.</p>

+

+<p>"Tell me how you found X."</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>He slumped weakly against the bulkhead, wiping at his forehead with the

+back of a shaking hand.</p>

+

+<p>"There were enough clues," he said hoarsely.</p>

+

+<p>And there had been, at that. <i>Tertium Organum</i>, A Key To The Enigmas Of

+The World, <i>was</i> a key. Its author, Ouspensky, looked at the universe

+from a <i>different</i> viewpoint.</p>

+

+<p>The small <i>u</i> in unterzuyder meant that it was to be taken as a common

+noun.</p>

+

+<p>And certainly the conclusion that the map was made 50,000 years ago was

+itself an obvious clue!</p>

+

+<p>"We made our calculations on the assumption that the map had been made

+looking at the Solar System from the north&mdash;from the star Polaris,

+that is. It hadn't been. My ancestors drew the map from the unorthodox

+reference point of the Southern Cross.</p>

+

+<p>"From the underside. I turned the negative upside down and made a new

+map. Then I got right answers."</p>

+

+<p>"Very good," said Fayette. "The tricky Unterzuyders did live up to

+their name. <i>Didn't</i> they, Ralph?"</p>

+

+<p>"Yes," he said shakily.</p>

+

+<p>The gun wavered. Fayette was blinking. "Ralph, do you love me?"</p>

+

+<p>"Yes...."</p>

+

+<p>"Are you being truthful? Will you always tell me the truth, the whole

+truth?"</p>

+

+<p>"Yes...."</p>

+

+<p>"That's a good boy. Please keep on giving my pet the right answers.

+Ralph, don't you know that if you freed the Unterzuyders I couldn't

+ever look at you again?"</p>

+

+<p>There were angry tears in her eyes. Unterzuyder suddenly remembered the

+time at the dance, when he had wiped away her tears. He should wipe

+them away now. He was weakening. He was an Unterzuyder. He should be

+strong. There was his duty....</p>

+

+<p>"Fayette," he said hoarsely.</p>

+

+<p>"Stand back." Her chin came up. "Answer the question! Yes or no."</p>

+

+<p>"Yes."</p>

+

+<p>"Do you want to marry me?"</p>

+

+<p>"Yes, Fayette."</p>

+

+<p>Her mouth opened and closed. Suddenly her shoulders heaved and she

+shook her head blindly. The gun dropped to her side. "Oh, Ralph. I

+can't do it. I was going to ask you if you still wanted to go ahead

+with it. But I can't. I can't force you. You'll have to make up your

+own mind!" She turned away, hiding her face with one arm. Instantly, he

+leaped for her, tearing the gun from her hand.</p>

+

+<p>He looked at it where it lay black and ugly in his hands. He was seeing

+it very well, with his excellent Unterzuyder eyes. It slipped from his

+hand and fell to the floor. He let it lie, and took Fayette into his

+arms.</p>

+

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