Nine Rarities Read online

  Nibley caught the look. "What ever happens," he cried. "Will be worth it, won't it? It's better than turnin' back to Mars, ain't it? Well, ain't it?"

  "It's better," said Douglas. They shook hands.

  "Now all of you, get!"

  * * *

  Nibley watched the ship fire away and his eyes saw it and the Asteroid Swarm and that brilliant point of light that was massive Jupiter. He could almost feel the hunger and want and waiting up there in that star flame.

  He looked out into space and his eyes widened and space came in, opened out like a flower, and already, natural as water flowing, Nibley's mind, tired as it was, began to shiver out calculations. He started talking.

  "Captain? Take the ship straight out now. You hear?"

  "Fine," answered the captain.

  "Look at your dials."

  "Looking."

  "If number seven reads 132:87, okay. Keep 'er there. If she varies a point, counteract it on Dial Twenty to 56.90. Keep her hard over for seventy thousand miles, all that is clear so far. Then, after that, a sharp veer in number two direction, over a thousand miles. There's a big sweep of meteors coming in on that other path for you to dodge. Let me see, let me see—" He figured. "Keep your speed at a constant of one hundred thousand miles. At that rate — check your clocks and watches — in exactly an hour you'll hit the second part of the Big Belt. Then switch to a course roughly five thousand miles over to number 3 direction, veer again five minutes on the dot later and—"

  "Can you see all those asteroids, Nibley. Are you sure?"

  "Sure. Lots of 'em. Every single one going every which way! Keep straight ahead until two hours from now, after that last direction of mine — then slide off at an angle toward Jupiter, slow down to ninety thousand for ten minutes, then up to a hundred ten thousand for fifteen minutes. After that, one hundred fifty thousand all the way!"

  Flame poured out of the rocket jets. It moved swiftly away, growing small and distant.

  "Give me a read on dial 67!"

  "Four"

  "Make it six! And set your automatic pilot to 61 and 14 and 35. Now— everything's okay. Keep your chronometer reading this way — seven, nine, twelve. There'll be a few tight scrapes, but you'll hit Jupiter square on in 24 hours, if you jump your speed to 700,000 six hours from now and hold it that way."

  "Square on it is, Mr. Nibley."

  Nibley just lay there a moment. His voice was easy and not so high and shrill any more. "And on the way back to Mars, later, don't try to find me. I'm going out in the dark on this metal rock. Nothing but dark for me. Back to perihelion and sun for you. Know — know where I'm going?"

  "Where?"

  "Centaurus!" Nibley laughed. "So help me God I am. No lie!"

  He watched the ship going out, then, and he felt the compact, collected trajectories of all the men in it. It was a good feeling to know that he was guiding theme. Like in the old days…

  Douglas' voice broke in again.

  "Hey, Pop. Pop, you still there?"

  A little silence. Nibley felt blood pulsing down inside his suit. "Yep." he said.

  "We just gave Bruno your little note to read. Whatever it was, when he finished reading it, he went insane."

  Nibley said, quiet-like. "Burn that there paper. Don't let anybody else read it."

  A pause. "It's burnt. What was it?"

  "Don't be inquisitive," snapped the old man. "Maybe" I proved to Bruno that he didn't really exist. To hell with it!"

  The rocket reached its constant speed. Douglas radioed back: "All's well. Sweet calculating, Pop. I'll tell the Rocket Officials back at Marsport. They'll be glad to know about you. Sweet, sweet calculating. Thanks. How goes it? I said— how goes it? Hey, Pop! Pop?"

  Nibley raised a trembling hand and waved it at nothing. The ship was gone. He couldn't even see the jet-wash now, he could only feel that hard metal movement out there among the stars, going on and on through a course he had set for it. He couldn't speak. There was just emotion in him. He had finally, by God, heard a compliment from a mechanic of radar-computators!

  He waved his hand at nothing. He watched nothing moving on and on into the crossed orbits of other invisible nothings. The silence was now complete.

  He put his hand down. Now he had only to chart that one last personal orbit. The one he had wanted to finish only in space and not grounded back on Mars.

  It didn't take lightning calculation to set it out for certain.

  Life and death were the parabolic ends to his trajectory. The long life, first swinging in from darkness, arcing to the inevitable perihelion, and now moving back out, out and away—

  Into the soft, encompassing dark.

  "By God," he thought weakly, quietly. "Right up to the last, my reputation's good. Never fluked a calculation yet, and I never will…"

  He didn't.

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