The Project Gutenberg EBook of Acid Bath, by Vaseleos Garson

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Title: Acid Bath

Author: Vaseleos Garson

Illustrator: Herman Vestal

Release Date: June 19, 2009 [EBook #29159]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

ACID BATH

By VASELEOS GARSON

_The starways' Lone Watcher had expected some odd developments in
his singular, nerve-fraught job on the asteroid. But nothing like
the weird twenty-one-day liquid test devised by the invading
Steel-Blues._

Jon Karyl was bolting in a new baffle plate on the stationary rocket
engine. It was a tedious job and took all his concentration. So he
wasn't paying too much attention to what was going on in other parts of
the little asteroid.

He didn't see the peculiar blue space ship, its rockets throttled down,
as it drifted to land only a few hundred yards away from his plastic
igloo.

Nor did he see the half-dozen steel-blue creatures slide out of the
peculiar vessel's airlock.

It was only as he crawled out of the depths of the rocket power plant
that he realized something was wrong.

By then it was almost too late. The six blue figures were only fifty
feet away, approaching him at a lope.

Jon Karyl took one look and went bounding over the asteroid's rocky
slopes in fifty-foot bounds.

When you're a Lone Watcher, and strangers catch you unawares, you don't
stand still. You move fast. It's the Watcher's first rule. Stay alive.
An Earthship may depend upon your life.

As he fled, Jon Karyl cursed softly under his breath. The automatic
alarm should have shrilled out a warning.

Then he saved as much of his breath as he could as some sort of power
wave tore up the rocky sward to his left. He twisted and zig-zagged in
his flight, trying to get out of sight of the strangers.

Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut back and head for the
underground entrance to the service station.

He glanced back finally.

Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting after him,