The Project Gutenberg EBook of Asteroid of Fear, by Raymond Zinke Gallun

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Title: Asteroid of Fear

Author: Raymond Zinke Gallun

Release Date: June 12, 2010 [EBook #32780]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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ASTEROID of FEAR

By RAYMOND Z. GALLUN

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March
1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: _All space was electrified as that harsh challenge rang
out ... but John Endlich hesitated. For he saw beyond his own murder--saw
the horror and destruction his death would unleash--and knew he dared
not fight back!_]

The space ship landed briefly, and John Endlich lifted the huge
Asteroids Homesteaders Office box, which contained everything from a
prefabricated house to toothbrushes for his family, down from the
hold-port without help or visible effort.

In the tiny gravity of the asteroid, Vesta, doing this was no trouble at
all. But beyond this point the situation was--bitter.

His two kids, Bubs, seven, and Evelyn, nine--clad in space-suits that
were slightly oversize to allow for the growth of young bodies--were
both bawling. He could hear them through his oxygen-helmet radiophones.

Around him, under the airless sky of space, stretched desolation that
he'd of course known about beforehand--but which now had assumed that
special and terrible starkness of reality.

At his elbow, his wife, Rose, her heart-shaped face and grey eyes framed
by the wide face-window of her armor, was trying desperately to choke
back tears, and be brave.

"Remember--we've _got_ to make good here, Johnny," she was saying.
"Remember what the Homesteaders Office people told us--that with modern
equipment and the right frame of mind, life can be nice out here. It's
worked on other asteroids. What if we are the first farmers to come to
Vesta?... Don't listen to those crazy miners! They