After that, the big nations decided there was no need for haste in such expensive undertakings. But Norway had just outfitted her own spaceship, and all true Norwegians are crazy. The Hellik Olav went out.

  Winge stirred. “I believe I can tell you what happened to the Chinese,” he said.

  “Sure,” said Bull. “They stayed on orbit till it was too late. Then the radiation got them.”

  “No. They saw themselves in our own situation, panicked, and started back.”

  “So?”

  “The meteorites got them.”

  “Excuse me,” said Langnes, obviously meaning it the other way around. “You know better than that, Professor Winge. The hazard isn’t that great. Even at the highest possible density of material, the probability of impact with anything of considerable mass is so low—”

  “I am not talking about that, captain,” said the astronomer. “Let me repeat the facts ab initio, to keep everything systematic, even if you know most of them already.

  “Modern opinion holds that the asteroids, and probably most meteorites throughout the Solar System, really are the remnants of a disintegrated world. I am inclined to suspect that a sudden phase change in its core caused the initial explosion—this can happen at a certain planetary mass and then Jupiter’s attraction gradually broke up the larger pieces. Prior to close-range study, it was never believed the asteroidean planet could have been large enough for this to happen. But today we know it must have been roughly as big as Earth. The total mass was not detectable at a distance, prior to space flight, because so much of it consists of small dark particles. These, I believe, were formed when the larger chunks broke up into lesser ones which abraded and shattered each other in collisions, before gravitational forces spread them too widely apart.”

  “What has this to do with the mess we’re in?” asked Bull.

  Winge looked startled. “Why…that is—” He blushed. “Nothing, I suppose.” To cover his embarrassment, he began talking rapidly, repeating the obvious at even greater length:

  “We accelerated from Earth, and a long way beyond, thus throwing ourselves into an eccentric path with a semi-major axis of two Astronomical Units. But this is still an ellipse, and as we entered the danger zone, our velocity gained more and more of a component parallel to the planetary orbits. At our aphelion, which will be in the very heart of the Asteroid Belt, we will be moving substantially with the average meteorite. Relative velocity will be very small, or zero. Hence collisions will be rare, and mild when they do occur. Then we’ll be pulled back sunward. By the time we start accelerating under power toward Earth, we will again be traveling at a large angle to the natural orbits. But by that time, also, we will be back out of the danger zone.

  “Suppose, however, we decided to turn back at this instant. We would first have to decelerate, spending fuel to kill an outward velocity which the sun would otherwise have killed for us. Then we must accelerate inward. We can just barely afford the fuel. There will be little left for maneuvers. And…we’ll be cutting almost perpendicularly across the asteroidal orbits. Their full density and velocity will be directed almost broadside to us.

  “Oh, we still needn’t worry about being struck by a large object. The probability of that is quite low. But what we will get is the fifteen kilometer-per-second sandblast of the uncountable small particles. I have been computing the results of my investigations so far, and arrive at a figure for the density of this cosmic sand which is, well, simply appalling. Far more than was hitherto suspected. I don’t believe our hull can stand such a prolonged scouring, meteor bumpers or no.”

  “Are you certain?” gulped Helledahl.

  “Of course not,” said Winge testily. “What is certain, out here? I believe it highly probably, though. And the fact that the Chinese never came back would seem to lend credence to my hypothesis.”

  * * *

  The barnacles had advanced astoundingly since Bull last looked at them. Soon the entire ship would be covered, except for a few crucial places toilfully kept clean.

  He braced his armored self against the reactive push of his cutting torch. It was about the only way to get a full-grown barnacle loose. The things melded themselves with the hull. The flame drowned the sardonic stars in his vision but illuminated the growths.

  They looked quite a bit like the Terrestrial marine sort. Each humped up in a hard conoidal shell of blackish-brown material. Beneath them was a layer of excreted metal, chiefly ferrous, plated onto the aluminum hull.

  I’d hate to try landing through an atmosphere, thought Bull. Of course, that wouldn’t be necessary. We would go into orbit around Earth and call for someone to lay alongside and take us off…But heading back sunward, we’ll have one sweet time controlling internal temperature…No, I can simply slap some shiny paint on. That should do the trick. I’d have to paint anyway, to maintain constant radiation characteristics when micrometeorites are forever scratching our metal. Another chore. Space flight is nothing but one long round of chores. The next poet who recites in my presence an ode to man’s conquest of the universe can take that universe—every galaxy and every supernova through every last, long light-year—and put…

  If we get home alive.

  He tossed the barnacle into a metal canister for later study. It was still red hot, and doubtless the marvelously intricate organism within the shell had suffered damage. But the details of the lithophagic metabolism could be left for professional biologists to figure out. All they wanted aboard Holy Ole was enough knowledge to base a decision on.

  Before taking more specimens, Bull made a circuit of the hull. There were many hummocks on it, barnacles growing upon barnacles. The foresection had turned into a hill of shells, under which the radio transceiver boom lay buried. Another could be built when required for Earth approach. The trouble was, with the interior radiation still mounting—while a hasty retreat seemed impossible—Bull had started to doubt he ever would see Earth again.

  He scrubbed down the radar, then paused to examine the spot where he had initially cut off a few dozen samples. New ones were already burgeoning on the ferroplate left by their predecessors—little fellows with delicate glasslike shells which would soon grow and thicken, becoming incredibly tough. Whatever that silicate material was, study of it should repay Terrestrial industry. Another bonanza from the Asteroid Belt, the modern Mother Lode.

  “Ha!” said Bull.

  It had sounded very convincing. The proper way to exploit space was not to mine the planets, where you must grub deep in the crust to find a few stingy ore pockets, then spend fabulous amounts of energy hauling your gains home. No, the asteroids had all the minerals man would ever need, in developing his extraterrestrial colonies and on Earth herself. Freely available minerals, especially on the metallic asteroids from the core of the ancient planet. Just land and help yourself. No elaborate apparatus needed to protect you from your environment. Just the spaceship and space armor you had to have anyway. No gravitational well to back down into and climb back out of. Just a simple thrust of minimum power.

  Given free access to the asteroids, even a small nation like Norway could operate in space, with all the resulting benefits to her economy, politics, and prestige. And there was the Hellik Olav, newly outfitted, with plenty of volunteers—genuine ones—for an exploratory mission and to hell with the danger.

  “Ha!” repeated Bull.

  He had been quite in favor of the expedition, provided somebody else went. But he was offered a berth and made the mistake of telling his girl.

  * * *

  “Ohhhh, Erik!” she exclaimed, enormous-eyed.

  After six months in space helping to rig and test the ship, Bull could have fallen in love with the Sea Hag. However, this had not been necessary. When he had returned to Earth, swearing a mighty oath never to set foot above the stratosphere again, he met Marta. She was small and blond and deliciously shaped. She adored him right back. The only flaw he could find in her was a set of romantic notions about the starry universe and the noble Norwegian destiny therein.

  “Oh, oh,” he said, recognizing the symptoms. In haste: “Don’t get ideas, now. I told you I’m a marine reclamation man, from here on forever.”

  “But this, darling! This chance! To be one of the conquerors! To make your name immortal!”

  “The trouble is, I’m still mortal myself.”

  “The service you can do—to our country!”

  “Uh, apart from everything else, do you realize that, uh, even allowing for acceleration under power for part of the distance, I’d be gone for more than two years?”

  “I’ll wait for you.”

  “But—”

  “Are you afraid, Erik?”

  “Well, no. But—”

  “Think of the Vikings! Think of Fridtjof Nansen! Think of Roald Amundsen!”

  Bull dutifully thought of all these gentlemen. “What about them?” he asked.

  But it was a light summer night, and Marta couldn’t imagine any true Norwegian refusing such a chance for deathless glory, and one thing sort of led to another. Before he recovered his wits, Bull had accepted the job.

  There followed a good deal of work up in orbit, readying the ship, and a shakedown cruise lasting some weeks. When he finally got pre-departure leave, Bull broke every known traffic law and a few yet to be invented, on the way to Marta’s home. She informed him tearfully that she was so sorry and she hoped they would always be good friends, but she had been seeing so little of him and had met someone else but she would always follow his future career with the greatest interest. The someone else turned out to be a bespectacled writer who had just completed a three-volume novel about King Harald Hardcounsel (1015-1066). Bull didn’t remember the rest of his furlough very clearly.

  * * *

  A shock jarred through him. He bounced from the hull, jerked to a halt at the end of his life line, and waited for the dizziness to subside. The stars leered.

  “Hallo! Hallo, Erik! Are you all right?”

  Bull shook his head to clear it. Helledahl’s voice, phoned across the life line, was tinny in his earphones. “I think so. What happened?”

  “A small meteorite hit us, I suppose. It must have had an abnormal orbit to strike so hard. We can’t see any damage from inside, though. Will you check the outer hull?”

  Bull nodded, though there was no point in doing so. After he hauled himself back, he needed a while to find the spot of impact. The pebble had collided near the waist of the ship, vaporizing silicate shell material to form a neat little crater in a barnacle hummock. It hadn’t quite penetrated to the ferroplate. A fragment remained, trapped between the rough lumps.

  Bull shivered. Without that overgrowth, the hull would have been pierced. Not that that mattered greatly in itself. There was enough patching aboard to repair several hundred such holes. But the violence of impact was an object lesson. Torvald Winge was almost certainly right. Trying to cut straight across the Asteroid Belt would be as long a chance as men had ever taken. The incessant bombardment of particles, mostly far smaller than this but all possessing a similar speed, would wear down the entire hull. When it was thin enough to rip apart under stress, no meteor bumpers or patches would avail.

  His eyes sought the blue-green glint of Earth, but couldn’t find it among so many stars. You know, he told himself, I don’t even mind the prospect of dying out here as much as I do the dreariness of it. If we turned around now and somehow survived, I’d be home by Christmas. I’d only have wasted one extra year in space, instead of more than three—counting in the preparations for this arduous cruise. I’d find me a girl, no, a dozen girls. And a hundred bottles. I’d make up for that year in style, before settling down to do work I really enjoy.

  But we aren’t likely to survive, if we turn around now.

  But how likely is our survival if we keep going—with the radiation shield failing us? And an extra two years on Holy Ole? I’d go nuts!

  Judas priest! Was ever a man in such an ugh situation?

  Langnes peered at the sheaf of papers in his hand. “I have drafted a report of our findings with regard to the, ah, space barnacles,” he said. “I would like you gentlemen to criticize it as I read aloud. We have now accounted for the vanishing of the previous ships—”

  Helledahl mopped his brow. Tiny beads of sweat broke loose and glittered in the air. “That doesn’t do much good if we also vanish,” he pointed out.

  “Quite,” Langnes looked irritated. “Believe me, I am more than willing to turn home at once. But that is impracticable, as Professor Winge has shown and the unfortunate Chinese example has confirmed.”

  “I say it’s just as impracticable to follow the original orbit,” declared Bull.

  “I understand you don’t like it here,” said Winge, “but really, courting an almost certain death in order to escape two more years of boredom seems a trifle extreme.”

  “The boredom will be all the worse, now that we don’t have anything to work toward,” said Bull.

  The captain’s monocle glared at him. “Ahem!” said Langnes. “If you gentlemen are quite through, may I have the floor?”

  “Sure,” said Bull. “Or the wall or the ceiling, if you prefer. Makes no difference here.”

  “I’ll skip the preamble of the report and start with our conclusions. ‘Winge believes the barnacles originated as a possibly mutant life form on the ancient planet before it was destroyed. The slower breakup of the resulting super-asteroidal masses gave this life time to adapt to spatial conditions. The organism itself is not truly protoplasmic. Instead of water, which would either boil or freeze in vacuo at this distance from the sun, the essential liquid is some heavy substance we have not been able to identify except as an aromatic compound.’ ”

  “Aromatic is too polite,” said Bull, wrinkling his nose.

  The air purifiers had still not gotten all the chemical stench out.

  Langnes proceeded unrelenting: “ ‘The basic chemistry does remain that of carbon, of proteins, albeit with an extensive use of complex silicon compounds. We theorize the life cycle as follows. The adult form ejects spores which drift freely through space. Doubtless most are lost, but such wastefulness is characteristic of nature on Earth, too. When a spore does chance on a meteorite or an asteroid it can use, it develops rapidly. It requires silicon and carbon, plus traces of other elements; hence it must normally flourish only on stony meteorites, which are, however, the most abundant sort. Since the barnacle’s powerful, pseudo-enzymatic digestive processes—deriving their ultimate energy from sunlight—also extract metals where these exist, it must eliminate same, which it does by laying down a plating, molecule by molecule, under its shell. Research into the details of this process should interest both biologists and metallurgists.

  “ ‘The shell serves a double function. To some extent, it protects against ionizing radiation of solar or cosmic origin. Also, being a nonconductor, it can hold a biologically generated static charge, which will cause nearby dust to drift down upon it. Though this is a slow method of getting the extra nourishment, the barnacle is exceedingly long-lived, and can adjust its own metabolic and reproductive rates to the exigencies of the situation. Since the charge is not very great, and he himself is encased in metal, a spaceman notices no direct consequences.

  “ ‘One may well ask why this life form has never been observed before. First, it is doubtless confined to the Asteroid Belt, the density of matter being too low elsewhere. We have established that it is poisoned by water and free oxygen, so no spores could survive on any planet man has yet visited, even if they did drift there. Second, if a meteorite covered with such barnacles does strike an atmosphere, the surface vaporization as it falls will destroy all evidence. Third, even if barnacle-crusted meteorites have been seen from spaceships, they look superficially like any other stony objects. No one has captured them for closer examination.’ ”

  He paused to drink water from a squeeze bottle. “Hear, hear,” murmured Bull, pretending the captain stood behind a lectern.

  “That’s why the unmanned probe ships never were found,” said Helledahl. “They may well have been seen, more or less on their predicted orbits, but they weren’t recognized.”

  Langnes nodded. “Of course. That comes next in the report. Then I go on to say: ‘The reason that radio transmission ceased in the first place is equally obvious. Silicon components are built into the boom, as part of a transistor system. The barnacles ate them.

  “ ‘The observed increase in internal irradiation is due to the plating of heavy metals laid down by the barnacles. First, the static charges and the ferromagnetic atoms interfere with the powerful external magnetic fields which are generated to divert ions from the ship. Second, primary cosmic rays coming through that same plating produce showers of secondary particles.

  “ ‘Some question may be raised as to the explosive growth rate of barnacles on our hull, even after all the silicon available in our external apparatus had been consumed. The answer involves consideration of vectors. The ordinary member of the Asteroid Belt, be it large or small, travels in an orbit roughly parallel to the orbits of all other members. There are close approaches and occasional collisions, but on the whole, the particles are thinly scattered by Terrestrial standards, isolated from each other. Our ship, however, is slanting across those same orbits, thus exposing itself to a veritable rain of bodies, ranging in size from microscopic to sand granular. Even a single spore, coming in contact with our hull, could multiply indefinitely.’ ”

  “That means we’re picking up mass all the time,” groaned Bull. “Which means we’ll accelerate slower and get home even later than I’d feared.”

  “Do you think we’ll get home at all?” fretted Helledahl. “We can expect the interference with our radiation shield, and the accumulation of heavy atoms, to get worse all the time. Nobody will ever be able to cross the Belt!”

  “Oh, yes, they will,” said Captain Langnes. “Ships must simply be redesigned. The magnetic screens must be differently heterodyned, to compensate. The radio booms must be enclosed in protective material. Or perhaps—”