The Metal Moon

The three men in the tiny space ship showed their apprehension as they watched the gravity meters. Something was distinctly wrong with the ship.

"Are you sure that there isn't some undiscovered moon of Jupiter?" asked the youngest of them. He was only about 25, which was very young indeed when his scientific attainments were considered, even for the human race's stage of intellectual development in 1,000,144 A. D. His figure was stocky, powerful, his face rather thin, bold, with piercing black eyes. He was naked, save for short, brilliantly red trunks of metalsilk. His name, "Sine," followed by a numerical identification code, was tattooed indelibly in thin, sharp characters on his broad, bronze-hard chest.

The man at the ampliscope removed his head from the eyepiece and shook his head impatiently. His body was bronzed and spare, but the complete absence of hair on his head made him look older than the 48 years indicated by the code following the name on his chest, "Kass."

"I tell you, Sine, this pull is no gravity effect. No body of such mass could be invisible, unless it were composed entirely of protons. And even then it would yank Jupiter out of shape, making it look like a pear, but there--"

Jupiter presented its usual appearance. The solar system's largest planet seemed enormous at this distance of only a few million miles. It showed its usual marked depression at the poles, but no distortion such as might be caused by a nearby body of enormous mass.

"What do you think, Lents?" Kass turned to the third occupant of the little space ship. Lents raised his broad placid face from the pad upon which he had been figuring a complicated equation. He was a large man, slow-moving, and fat. He was sensitive to that fact, so that, besides the usual trunks, he also wore a toga-like garment. His brown eyes blinked in folds of flesh.

"No doubt you're right, Kass," Lents rumbled in a deep voice. "I can't see how such a body could exist without pulling all of Jupiter's moons to itself. No, we seem to be specially honored by its attention."

They looked at one another soberly.

"The question is, can it out-pull us?" Sine remarked.

"You ought to know," Kass said. "You designed and built her."

Sine made his way forward. It was no longer necessary to use the handholds, for the pull of the mysterious body was already so powerful that it entirely eliminated the free floating so familiar to space travelers. Sine looked through the grated outlook windows, past the gracefully curved bow of the ship. At the very tip was the ether screw of his invention, resembling the screws used for water propulsion in ancient times, except that the pitch was extremely sharp. The tachometer showed that the screw had slowed down to 50,000 revolutions a minute, although the thermometer indicated that the molecular bearings were still reasonably cool. But how long could she stand the strain? How long, indeed, could the sturdy little atomic motor keep those blades turning? It was designed to pull directly away at a distance of only a million miles from the sun, and yet it was being beaten far out here in space by an object as yet invisible.

"What a crash that'll be!" Sine murmured, watching the agony of tortured metal.

Amidship, Kass was again studying the eyepiece of the ampliscope. Suddenly he stiffened.

"I see it! Why, it can't be over a couple of hundred feet in diameter. Cylindrical, I think. Head on to us now."

They crowded around him. Lents, with hasty computations, determined that they were still about three thousand miles from the object.

"No chance to pull away from it, if we pull straight," and his heavy voice was full of energy as his sleepiness vanished with the need for action. "Set her over, Sine, about 40 degrees. Try for a circular orbit around it--if we can get up enough speed centrifugal force will save us!"

Sine did as he was told, and the ship heeled over so that it presented its side to the sinister object, which was still invisible to the unassisted eye. While Kass watched it through the ampliscope, his companions stared through the thick ports at the velvet, gem-studded firmament. They could feel the attraction growing with terrifying speed.

"It's turning with us," Kass announced, "and getting closer. If we can swing around it, it will be a very sharp ellipse indeed!"

"Try and see if you can get a few more revs out of the screw," Lents suggested, and Sine crept forward, his powerful muscles straining against the pull. He lifted the leaden weight of his arm to the lever. He must get a little more power out of the motor, or they would crash to their deaths in a few minutes! A fine ending for their daring dash to Jupiter--the first space flight since the great comet swarm of 800,768 A. D.

Sine pulled back hard on the lever, and the motor gamely responded, moaned and shuddered under the tremendous overload. The tachometer needle quivered, began to climb, 52,000, 55,000, 56,000----

The ship gave a lurch--there was a dull grinding, a hollow, metallic groan. The men picked themselves up from the floor--realizing at once the fatal significance of the lack of effort required. Their movement carried them off the floor--made them grasp handholds. Floating free! That meant falling free!

Sine glanced at the tachometer. The dead needle stood at zero. Through the forward window he could see one of the four screw blades, black, motionless.

Lents, obeying the habits of a lifetime, elbow hooked in a handhold, was figuring the time required for them to strike. He looked up with a puzzled frown.

"We should have struck about right now! Check on that body's position, will you, Kass?"