Protector

She had heard, long ago, that there was no prejudice against women in the Belt. And it was true! On Earth women still held lower-paying jobs. Employers claimed that physical strength was needed for certain jobs, or that a woman would quit to get married at the most crucial time, or even that her family suffered when a woman worked. Things were different in the Belt; and Tina had been more surprised than elated. She had expected to be disappointed.

And now a woman and a computer programmer was the most crucial Ox’s perso

But what was Nate doing aboard the singleship?

She helped Einar out of his suit — he was a mountain of flesh; he could never have lifted himself against Earth’s gravity — then let him do the same for her. She said, “I thought Nate would be the one to board the Outsider.”

Einar looked surprised. “What? No. You.”

“But—” She searched for words, and found them, to her horror. But I’m a girl. She said nothing.

“Think it through,” Einar said with forced patience. “The ship might not be empty. Boarding it could be dangerous.”

“Right.” With emphasis.

“So we give whoever boards it all the protection we’ve got. The Ox is part of that protection. I’ll keep the drive warm; it should vaporize the bastard if he tries anything, and the com laser should punch holes in him at this range. But there’s a chance the Ox will be blasted too.”

“So the singleship stands guard.” Tina made a dismissing gesture. “I worked it out that far. I thought I’d—”

“No, don’t be silly. You’ve never flown a singleship in your life. I don’t have much free choice here. I thought of leaving Nate to fly the Ox, but hell, she’s my ship, and he knows singleships. I couldn’t put you in either job.”

“I suppose not.” She was outwardly calm, but a cold lump of fear grew in her belly.

“You’d be the best choice anyway. You’re the one who will make contact with the Outsider, try to learn his language. Aside from that, you’re a flatlander. You’re physically the strongest of us.”

Tina nodded jerkily.

“You could have stayed behind, you know.”

“Oh, it’s not that. I hope you don’t think I was trying to chicken out. I just — hadn’t—”

“No, you just hadn’t bothered to think it through. You’ll get used to doing that, living in the Belt,” Einar said kindly. Damn him.

The dust of Mars is unique.

Its uniqueness is the result of vacuum cementing. Once vacuum cementing was the bugaboo of the space industries. Small space probe components which would slide easily over one another in air would weld solidly in vacuum, just as soon as the gas absorbed by their surfaces could evaporate away. Vacuum cementing fused parts in the first American satellites and in the first Soviet interplanetary probes. Vacuum cementing keeps the Moon from being fathoms deep in meteor dust. The particles weld into crunchy rock, into natural cement, under the same molecular attraction that fuses Johanssen blocks and turns the mud of sea bottoms to sedimentary rock.

But on Mars there is just enough atmosphere to stop that process, and not nearly enough to stop a meteor. Meteor dust covers most of the planet. Meteors can fuse the dust into craters, but it does not cement, though it is fine enough to flow like viscous oil.

“That dust is going to be our biggest problem,” said Luke. “The Outsider didn’t even have to dig a hole for himself. He could have sunk anywhere on Mars.”

Nick turned off the laser transmitter. It was hot from two days of use in blasting a locator beam at Earth. “He could have hidden anywhere in the system, but he picked Mars. He must have had a reason. Maybe it’s something he couldn’t do under the dust. That puts him in a crater or on a hill.”

“He’d have been spotted.” Luke keyed a photograph from the autopilot memory. It was one of a group from the smuggler trap. It showed a dimly shining metal egg with the small end pointed. The egg moved big-end first, and it moved as if rocket-propelled. But there was no exhaust, at least none that any instrument could detect.

“It’s big enough to see from space,” said Luke, “and easy to recognize, with that silver hull.”

“Yah. All right, he’s under the dust. It’ll take a lot of ships with deep-radar to find him, and even then there’s no guarantee.” Nick ran his hands back along his depilated scalp. “We could quit now. Your flatlander government has finally picked up its feet and sent us some ships. I got the impression they aren’t too happy about us joining their search.” His tone was noncommittal.

“I’d like to go on. How do you feel?”

“I’m game. Hunting strange things is what I do on my vacation.”

“Where would you start looking?”

“I don’t know. The deepest dust on the planet is in Tractus Albus.”

“He’d have been stupid to pick the deepest. He’d have picked his place at random.”

“You’ve got other ideas?”

“Lacis Solis.”

“—Oh. The old flatlander base. That’s good thinking. He might need a life support system for Bre

“I wasn’t even thinking that. If he needs anything there — human technology, water, anything — there’s only one place on the planet he can go. If he’s not there we can at least pick up some dustboats—”

“Blue Ox calling U Thant. This is Blue Ox calling U Thant out of Death Valley Port.”

There would be a directional signal in that message. Nick set the autopilot to aiming his own com laser. “It’ll take a few minutes,” he said. Then, “I wonder what’s happening to Bre

“Can we take the deep-radar out of this heap?”

“Let’s hope. I don’t know what else we can use for a finder.”

“A metal detector. There must be one aboard.”

“This is Nicholas Brewster Sohl aboard U Thant calling any or all aboard Blue Ox. What’s new? Repeating. This is Nicholas—”

Einar flicked to transmit. “Einar Nilsson commanding Blue Ox. We have matched with the Outsider ship. Tina Jordan is preparing to board. I will switch you to TIna.” He did.

And settled back to wait.

He liked Tina. He was half certain she would find a way to get herself killed. Nate had protested mightily, but Einar’s own arguments had no holes to crawl through. He sat watching the picture transmitted from Tina’s helmet camera.

The Outsider ship looked deserted, with its attitude skewed and its tow lines slack and begi

“Tina speaking. I am outside what seems to be a control module. I can see an acceleration couch through the glass — if it’s glass — and controls around it. The Outsider must be roughly hominid.

“The drive module is too hot to get near. The control module is a smooth sphere with a big porthole, and cables trailing off in both directions. You should be able to see all this, U Thant.”

She did a slow loop around the big eyeball. Taking her time. Belters only hurried when there was need. “I can find no sign of an airlock. I’ll have to burn my way through.”

“Through the porthole. You don’t want to burn through anything explosive,” said Einar’s voice behind her ear.

The transparent stuff had a two-thousand Kelvin melting point, and a laser was obviously out of the question. Tina used a hot point, tracing a circle over and over. Gradually she wore it down. “I’m getting fog through the cracks,” she reported. “Ah, I’m through.”