Айзек Азимов - Before The Golden Age

The mirror was perfect. Colbie took various readings on it, after the first mighty upsurge of awe had ebbed away. He found the diameter, about two miles less than a thousand; the depth, an approximate three hundred; and the shape, perfectly circular, perfectly curved. The albedo was so close to 1 that his instruments could not measure the infinitesimal fraction that it lacked!

And thereat, Colbie sat down and whistled loud and long. Man knew of no perfect reflector; it was deemed impossible, in fact. All materials will reflect light in some small degree, but more often the greater amount is absorbed. But the material of this colossus among reflectors reflected all light save an absolutely negligible amount of that which impinged on its surface. For Colbie knew that some of it was certainly absorbed—he did not believe in impossibilities. It was impossible that that mirror didn’t absorb some light. His instruments had been unable to measure it, but of course there were instruments on Earth that would measure that absorption when the time came for it. But they would have to be delicate indeed. Even at that, however, the albedo of this mirror was a thing almost beyond belief, and certainly beyond comprehension.

The mirror disappeared around the curve of the planet as Colbie’s ship plunged on, decreasing its velocity slowly but surely. Colbie forced his thoughts once more to the issue paramount in his mind—that of locating Deverel. But his exciting discovery of the mirror stayed in the back of his mind, and he was determined to know more about it. And he did; more thoroughly, in fact, than he liked at the time.

He now had his velocity under control. Hoping that Deverel had not detected his presence above the new planet, he gave himself up to the one problem that was perplexing him—where would Deverel have landed? Near the mirror; that was a certainty. Somewhere near the rim of the giant reflector—but that was anywhere on a circle three and a half thousand miles in circumference.

He finally resolved to scour the area in which Deverel would have landed. Training his single telescope downward so that it would sweep the entire area, he applied his photo-amplifiers to the light received, and then, keeping at a distance of about fifty miles from the surface of the planet so that Deverel could not possibly sight him with the naked eye, he darted around that circle at low speed, eye glued to the eyepiece of the telescope. He hoped thus to see the outlaw’s ship.

And he did. It lay at the base of one of those mountains of Cyclops that flaunted a sharp peak thousands of feet up into the sky. That mountain swept down to foothills that terminated abruptly in a level plain scarcely more than seven or eight miles from the rim of the great mirror.

Colbie sighed in lusty relief, entirely glad that his assumption of Deverel’s destination had now been proven absolutely correct.

Shooting the ship upward, and then, keeping that single landmark— the mountain—in view, he came up behind it, and, by dint of much use of forward, stern, and under jets, jockeyed the cruiser to rest far enough around the curve of the mountain so that the outlaw should not note his advent.

He put out a vial to draw in a sample of the planet’s atmosphere, but as he had with good reason suspected, that atmosphere was nonexistent. The undistorted brightness of the stars had almost made him sure of it. He struggled into a spacesuit, buckled on his weapons, attached oxygen tank, screwed down his helmet, opened the air-lock and jumped down to the planet’s surface. It was hard. Examining it, he found that it consisted of ores in a frozen, earthy state. Whether this was true of the entire planet he did not know.

He started around the curved base of the mountain, and, after the first mile, discovered that traveling across the surface of Cyclops was a terrific task. The planet was seamed and cracked in dozens of places; great gaping cracks which presented definite handicaps to a safe journey of any length. He found that he had to take precautions indeed, and often searched extensively for crevices narrow enough to leap with safety. He worried along, taking his time, but he was beginning to realize that he might not have as much of that at his disposal as he had indicated to the dome commander back on Jupiter.

So that, after a good many hours, he rounded the breast of the mountain and caught the black shine of Deverel’s falsely acquired ship.

But he saw nothing of Deverel.

He threw himself to the ground. Suddenly he was painfully conscious that his heart was thumping. The thought of physical danger in no way caused this condition—he was simply afraid that Deverel might elude capture again by putting his tricky mentality to work. The competition between these two—law and disorder personified—had become a personal contest. Truth to tell, the IP man respected and rather admired Deverel’s uncanny ability to escape him, not the fact that he had escaped. Colbie had to bring him back, but respected Deverel’s unusual genius at escaping tight spots. But—he had to bring the man in, or admit the outlaw a better man than he.

In this uneasy state of mind, he lay there, projector out. It could shoot explosive missiles at thousands of feet per second, and was, in this, the twenty-third century, the ultimate in destructive hand weapons.

Now, as he lay there, his eyes constantly on the ship and the area about, he turned his thoughts in a new direction. In the name of all that was holy, why had Deverel come here? Hadn’t he realized it was the first place Colbie would look? Certainly he must have known it. Then why had he come?

Colbie thought he saw the answer. Deverel had planned on leaving this planet long before the space policeman had arrived. He had had a full thirty-six hours’ start on Colbie, and he decided that would give him enough time for the opportunity he so craved—to visit this new planet, and determine to his own satisfaction whether or not there was anything about it which would satisfy that love he had for the bizarre.

He had had sufficient time. Sufficient time to satisfy himself as to the nature of the mirror; sufficient time to leave again, and break up his trail in the trackless wastes of space.

But he hadn’t left.

Why?

And then Colbie began to feel acute mental discomfort. And the longer he lay there, the worse it became. He became conscience stricken. And why? Because Deverel might be lying in there sick, and Colbie could not risk coming out into the open until he knew absolutely Deverel’s whereabouts. And perhaps Deverel lay in there dying. Space sickness is a recognized malady, and it is not infrequent. It is ascribed to any number of causes, among which are noted positive and negative deceleration, a missing vital element in synthetic air, and the lack of gravitation. Its only cure is absolute rest under a decent gravitation. And—such a cure was impossible for a man who was dependent on no one but himself.

Colbie squirmed uncomfortably. “The fool might be dying!” he snapped angrily to himself. “While I’m lying here. But I can’t give myself away.”

But his nerves grew more and more tense. He dreaded the thought of Deverel sick in there while he was able to give him help. And in the end he sprang to his feet, determined he wouldn’t let the uncertainty of the situation wear on him any longer.

And then his radio receiver woke to life, and screeched calmly though waveringly, “You’re out there, Colbie. You would be there. Listen—” the voice dwindled away, and then came back in renewed strength. “I’m sick, Colbie, rottenly sick. I think I’m going to do the death act. It’s the stomach that really hurts, though there’s the ears too. They hurt, too, and they send the blind staggers right through the brain. I’m sweating—” The voice ebbed, rushed back. “If you want to—come in and give me a hand—will you? Then you can take me back—” The voice groaned off, and sliding sounds came through the receiver.