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                             COSMIC YO-YO

                           By ROSS ROCKLYNNE

             "Want an asteroid in your backyard? We supply
           'em cheap. Trouble also handled without charge."
                Interplanetary Hauling Company. (ADVT.)

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Planet Stories Summer 1945.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Bob Parker, looking through the photo-amplifiers at the wedge-shaped
asteroid, was plainly flabbergasted. Not in his wildest imaginings had
he thought they would actually find what they were looking for.

"Cut the drive!" he yelled at Queazy. "I've got it, right on the nose.
Queazy, my boy, can you imagine it? We're in the dough. Not only that,
we're rich! Come here!"

Queazy discharged their tremendous inertia into the motive-tubes in
such a manner that the big, powerful ship was moving at the same rate
as the asteroid below--47.05 miles per second. He came slogging back
excitedly, put his eyes to the eyepiece. He gasped, and his big body
shook with joyful ejaculations.

"She checks down to the last dimension," Bob chortled, working with
slide-rule and logarithm tables. "Now all we have to do is find out if
she's made of tungsten, iron, quartz crystals, and cinnabar! But there
couldn't be two asteroids of that shape anywhere else in the Belt, so
this has to be it!"

He jerked a badly crumpled ethergram from his pocket, smoothed it out,
and thumbed his nose at the signature.

"Whee! Mr. Andrew S. Burnside, you owe us five hundred and fifty
thousand dollars!"

Queazy straightened. A slow, likeable smile wreathed his tanned face.
"Better take it easy," he advised, "until I land the ship and we use
the atomic whirl spectroscope to determine the composition of the
asteroid."

"Have it your way," Bob Parker sang, happily. He threw the ethergram
to the winds and it fell gently to the deck-plates. While Queazy--so
called because his full name was Quentin Zuyler--dropped the ship
straight down to the smooth surface of the asteroid, and clamped it
tight with magnetic grapples, Bob flung open the lazarette, brought
out two space-suits. Moments later, they were outside the ship, with
star-powdered infinity spread to all sides.

In the ship, the ethergram from Andrew S. Burnside, of Philadelphia,
one of the richest men in the world, still lay on the deck-plates. It
was addressed to: Mr. Robert Parker, President Interplanetary Hauling &
Moving Co., 777 Main Street, Satterfield City, Fontanaland, Mars. The
ethergram read:

    _Received your advertising literature a week ago. Would like to
    state that yes I would like an asteroid in my back yard. Must meet
    following specifications: 506 feet length, long enough for wedding
    procession; 98 feet at base, tapering to 10 feet at apex; 9-12
    feet thick; topside smooth-plane, underside rough-plane; composed
    of iron ore, tungsten, quartz crystals, and cinnabar. Must be in
    my back yard before 11:30 A.M. my time, for important wedding
    June 2, else order is void. Will pay $5.00 per ton._

       *       *       *       *       *

Bob Parker had received that ethergram three weeks ago. And if The
Interplanetary Hauling & Moving Co., hadn't been about to go on the
rocks (chiefly due to the activities of Saylor & Saylor, a rival firm)
neither Bob nor Queazy would have thought of sending an answering
ethergram to Burnside stating that they would fill the order. It
was, plainly, a hair-brained request. And yet, if by some chance
there was such a rigidly specified asteroid, their financial worries
would be over. That they had actually discovered the asteroid, using
their mass-detectors in a weight-elimination process, seemed like
an incredible stroke of luck. For there are literally millions of
asteroids in the asteroid belt, and they had been out in space only
three weeks.

The "asteroid in your back yard" idea had been Bob Parker's originally.
Now it was a fad that was sweeping Earth, and Burnside wasn't the first
rich man who had decided to hold a wedding on top of an asteroid.
Unfortunately, other interplanetary moving companies had cashed in on
that brainstorm, chiefly the firm of the Saylor brothers--which persons
Bob Parker intended to punch in the nose some day. And would have
before this if he hadn't been lanky and tall while they were giants.
Now that he and Queazy had found the asteroid, they were desperate to
get it to its destination, for fear that the Saylor brothers might get
wind of what was going on, and try to beat them out of their profits.
Which was not so far-fetched, because the firm of Saylor & Saylor made
no pretense of being scrupulous.

Now they scuffed along the smooth-plane topside of the asteroid, the
magnets in their shoes keeping them from stepping off into space. They
came to the broad base of the asteroid-wedge, walked over the edge and
"down" the twelve-foot thickness. Here they squatted, and Bob Parker
happily clamped the atomic-whirl spectroscope to the rough surface.
By the naked eye, they could see iron ore, quartz crystals, cinnabar,
but he had the spectroscope and there was no reason why he shouldn't
use it. He satisfied himself as to the exterior of the asteroid, and
then sent the twin beams deep into its heart. The beams crossed, tore
atoms from molecules, revolved them like an infinitely fine powder. The
radiations from the sundered molecules traveled back up the beams to
the atomic-whirl spectroscope. Bob watched a pointer which moved slowly
up and up--past tungsten, past iridium, past gold--

Bob Parker said, in astonishment, "Hell! There's something screwy about
this business. Look at that point--"

Neither he nor Queazy had the opportunity to observe the pointer any
further. A cold, completely disagreeable feminine voice said,

"May I ask what you interlopers are doing on my asteroid?"

Bob started so badly that the spectroscope's settings were jarred and
the lights in its interior died. Bob twisted his head around as far as
he could inside the "aquarium"--the glass helmet, and found himself
looking at a space-suited girl who was standing on the edge of the
asteroid "below."

"Ma'am," said Bob, blinking, "did you say something?"

Queazy made a gulping sound and slowly straightened. He automatically
reached up as if he would take off his hat and twist it in his hands.

"I said," remarked the girl, "that you should scram off of my asteroid.
And quit poking around at it with that spectroscope. I've already taken
a reading. Cinnabar, iron ore, quartz crystals, tungsten. Goodbye."

       *       *       *       *       *

Bob's nose twitched as he adjusted his glasses, which he wore even
inside his suit. He couldn't think of anything pertinent to say. He
knew that he was slowly working up a blush. Mildly speaking, the
girl was beautiful, and though only her carefully made-up face was
visible--cool blue eyes, masterfully coiffed, upswept, glinting brown
hair, wilful lips and chin--Bob suspected the rest of her compared
nicely.

Her expression darkened as she saw the completely instinctive way he
was looking at her and her radioed-voice rapped out, "Now you two boys
go and play somewhere else! Else I'll let the Interplanetary Commission
know you've infringed the law. G'bye!"

She turned and disappeared.

Bob awoke from his trance, shouted desperately, "Hey! Wait! _You!_"

He and Queazy caught up with her on the side of the asteroid they
hadn't yet examined. It was a rough plane, completing the rigid
qualifications Burnside had set down.

"Wait a minute," Bob Parker begged nervously. "I want to make some
conversation, lady. I'm sure you don't understand the conditions--"

The girl turned and drew a gun from a holster. It was a spasticizer,
and it was three times as big as her gloved hand.

"I understand conditions better than you do," she said. "You want
to move this asteroid from its orbit and haul it back to Earth.
Unfortunately, this is my home, by common law. Come back in a month. I
don't expect to be here then."

"A month!" Parker burst the word out. He started to sweat, then his
face became grim. He took two slow steps toward the girl. She blinked
and lost her composure and unconsciously backed up two steps. About
twenty steps away was her small dumbbell-shaped ship, so shiny and
unscarred that it reflected starlight in highlights from its curved
surface. A rich girl's ship, Bob Parker thought angrily. A month would
be too late!

He said grimly, "Don't worry. I don't intend to pull any rough stuff.
I just want you to listen to reason. You've taken a whim to stay on
an asteroid that doesn't mean anything to you one way or another. But
to us--to me and Queazy here--it means our business. We got an order
for this asteroid. Some screwball millionaire wants it for a backyard
wedding see? We get five hundred and fifty thousand dollars for it!
If we don't take this asteroid to Earth before June 2, we go back to
Satterfield City and work the rest of our lives in the glass factories.
Don't we, Queazy?"

Queazy said simply, "That's right, miss. We're in a spot. I assure you
we didn't expect to find someone living here."

The girl holstered her spasticizer, but her completely inhospitable
expression did not change. She put her hands on the bulging hips of her
space-suit. "Okay," she said. "Now I understand the conditions. Now we
both understand each other. G'bye again. I'm staying here and--" she
smiled sweetly "--it may interest you to know that if I let you have
the asteroid you'll save your business, but I'll meet a fate worse than
death! So that's that."

Bob recognized finality when he saw it. "Come on, Queazy," he said
fuming. "Let this brat have her way. But if I ever run across her
without a space-suit on I'm going to give her the licking of her life,
right where it'll do the most good!"

He turned angrily, but Queazy grabbed his arm, his mouth falling open.
He pointed off into space, beyond the girl.

"What's that?" he whispered.

"What's wha--_Oh!_"

Bob Parker's stomach caved in. A few hundred feet away, floating
gently toward the asteroid, came another ship--a ship a trifle bigger
than their own. The girl turned, too. They heard her gasp. In another
second, Bob was standing next to her. He turned the audio-switch to his
headset off, and spoke to the girl by putting his helmet against hers.

"Listen to me, miss," he snapped earnestly, when she tried to draw
away. "Don't talk by radio. That ship belongs to the Saylor brothers!
Oh, Lord, that this should happen! Somewhere along the line, we've been
double-crossed. Those boys are after this asteroid too, and they won't
hesitate to pull any rough stuff. We're in this together, understand?
We got to back each other up."

The girl nodded dumbly. Suddenly she seemed to be frightened.
"It's--it's very important that this--this asteroid stay right where it
is," she said huskily. "What--what will they do?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Bob Parker didn't answer. The big ship had landed, and little blue
sparks crackled between the hull and the asteroid as the magnetic
clamps took hold. A few seconds later, the airlocks swung down, and
five men let themselves down to the asteroid's surface and stood
surveying the three who faced them.

The two men in the lead stood with their hands on their hips; their
darkish, twin faces were grinning broadly.

"A pleasure," drawled Wally Saylor, looking at the girl. "What do you
think of this situation Billy?"

"It's obvious," drawled Billy Saylor, rocking back and forth on his
heels, "that Bob Parker and company have double-crossed us. We'll have
to take steps."

The three men behind the Saylor twins broke into rough, chuckling
laughter.

Bob Parker's gorge rose. "Scram," he said coldly. "We've got an
ethergram direct from Andrew S. Burnside ordering this asteroid."

"So have we," Wally Saylor smiled--and his smile remained fixed,
dangerous. He started moving forward, and the three men in back came
abreast, forming a semi-circle which slowly closed in. Bob Parker gave
back a step, as he saw their intentions.

"We got here first," he snapped harshly. "Try any funny stuff and we'll
report you to the Interplanetary Commission!"

It was Bob Parker's misfortune that he didn't carry a weapon. Each of
these men carried one or more, plainly visible. But he was thinking of
the girl's spasticizer--a paralyzing weapon. He took a hair-brained
chance, jerked the spasticizer from the girl's holster and yelled at
Queazy. Queazy got the idea, urged his immense body into motion. He
hurled straight at Billy Saylor, lifted him straight off the asteroid
and threw him away, into space. He yelled with triumph.

At the same time, the spasticizer Bob held was shot cleanly out of his
hand by Wally Saylor. Bob roared, started toward Wally Saylor, knocked
the smoking gun from his hand with a sweeping arm. Then something
crushing seemed to hit him in the stomach, grabbing at his solar
plexus. He doubled up, gurgling with agony. He fell over on his back,
and his boots were wrenched loose from their magnetic grip. Vaguely,
before the flickering points of light in his brain subsided to complete
darkness, he heard the girl's scream of rage--then a scream of pain.

What had happened to Queazy he didn't know. He felt so horribly sick,
he didn't care. Then--lights out.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bob Parker came to, the emptiness of remote starlight in his face. He
opened his eyes. He was slowly revolving on an axis. Sometimes the Sun
swept across his line of vision. A cold hammering began at the base of
his skull, a sensation similar to that of being buried alive. There was
no asteroid, no girl, no Queazy. He was alone in the vastness of space.
Alone in a space-suit.

"Queazy!" he whispered. "Queazy! I'm running out of air!"

There was no answer from Queazy. With sick eyes, Bob studied the
oxygen indicator. There was only five pounds pressure. Five pounds!
That meant he had been floating around out here--how long? Days at
least--maybe weeks! It was evident that somebody had given him a dose
of spastic rays, enough to screw up every muscle in his body to the
snapping point, putting him in such a condition of suspended animation
that his oxygen needs were small. He closed his eyes, trying to fight
against panic. He was glad he couldn't see any part of his body. He was
probably scrawny. And he was hungry!

"I'll starve," he thought. "Or suffocate to death first!"

He couldn't keep himself from taking in great gulps of air. Minutes,
then hours passed. He was breathing abnormally, and there wasn't enough
air in the first place. He pleaded continually for Queazy, hoping
that somehow Queazy could help, when probably Queazy was in the same
condition. He ripped out wild curses directed at the Saylor brothers.
Murderers, both of them! Up until this time, he had merely thought of
them as business rivals. If he ever got out of this--

He groaned. He never would get out of it! After another hour, he was
gasping weakly, and yellow spots danced in his eyes. He called Queazy's
name once more, knowing that was the last time he would have strength
to call it.

And this time the headset spoke back!

Bob Parker made a gurgling sound. A voice came again, washed with
static, far away, burbling, but excited. Bob made a rattling sound in
his throat. Then his eyes started to close, but he imagined that he saw
a ship, shiny and small, driving toward him, growing in size against
the backdrop of the Milky Way. He relapsed, a terrific buzzing in his
ears.

He did not lose consciousness. He heard voices, Queazy's and the
girl's, whoever she was. Somebody grabbed hold of his foot. His
"aquarium" was unbuckled and good air washed over his streaming face.
The sudden rush of oxygen to his brain dizzied him. Then he was lying
on a bunk, and gradually the world beyond his sick body focussed in his
clearing eyes and he knew he was alive--and going to stay that way, for
awhile anyway.

"Thanks, Queazy," he said huskily.

Queazy was bending over him, his anxiety clearing away from his
suddenly brightening face.

"Don't thank me," he whispered. "We'd have both been goners if it
hadn't been for her. The Saylor brothers left her paralyzed like
us, and when she woke up she was on a slow orbit around her ship.
She unstrapped her holster and threw it away from her and it gave
her enough reaction to reach the ship. She got inside and used the
direction-finder on the telaudio and located me first. The Saylors
scattered us far and wide." Queazy's broad, normally good-humored face
twisted blackly. "The so and so's didn't care if we lived or died."

Bob saw the girl now, standing a little behind Queazy, looking down at
him curiously, but unhappily. Her space-suit was off. She was wearing
lightly striped blue slacks and blue silk blouse and she had a paper
flower in her hair. Something in Bob's stomach caved in as his eyes
widened on her.

The girl said glumly, "I guess you men won't much care for me when you
find out who I am and what I've done. I'm Starre Lowenthal--Andrew S.
Burnside's granddaughter!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Bob came slowly to his feet, and matched Queazy's slowly growing anger.

"Say that again?" he snapped. "This is some kind of dirty trick you and
your grandfather cooked up?"

"No!" she exclaimed. "No. My grandfather didn't even know there was an
asteroid like this. But I did, long before he ordered it from you--or
from the Saylor brothers. You see--well, my granddad's about the
stubbornest old hoot-owl in this universe! He's always had his way, and
when people stand in his way, that's just a challenge to him. He's been
badgering me for years to marry Mac, and so has Mac--"

"Who's Mac?" Queazy demanded.

"My fiancé, I guess," she said helplessly. "He's one of my granddad's
protégés. Granddad's always financing some likely young man and giving
him a start in life. Mac has become pretty famous for his Mercurian
water-colors--he's an artist. Well, I couldn't hold out any longer.
If you knew my grandfather, you'd know how absolutely _impossible_ it
is to go against him when he's got his mind set! I was just a mass of
nerves. So I decided to trick him and I came out to the asteroid belt
and picked out an asteroid that was shaped so a wedding could take
place on it. I took the measurements and the composition, then I told
my grandfather I'd marry Mac if the wedding was in the back yard on top
of an asteroid with those measurements and made of iron ore, tungsten,
and so forth. He agreed so fast he scared me, and just to make sure
that if somebody _did_ find the asteroid in time they wouldn't be able
to get it back to Earth, I came out here and decided to live here.
Asteroids up to a certain size belong to whoever happens to be on them,
by common law.... So I had everything figured out--except," she added
bitterly, "the Saylor brothers! I guess Granddad wanted to make sure
the asteroid was delivered, so he gave the order to several companies."

Bob swore under his breath. He went reeling across to a port, and was
gratified to see his and Queazy's big interplanetary hauler floating
only a few hundred feet away. He swung around, looked at Queazy.

"How long were we floating around out there?"

"Three weeks, according to the chronometer. The Saylor boys gave us a
stiff shot."

"_Ouch!_" Bob groaned. Then he looked at Starre Lowenthal with
determination. "Miss, pardon me if I say that this deal you and your
granddad cooked up is plain screwy! With us on the butt end. But I'm
going to put this to you plainly. We can catch up with the Saylor
brothers even if they are three weeks ahead of us. The Saylor ship and
ours both travel on the HH drive--inertia-less. But the asteroid has
plenty of inertia, and so they'll have to haul it down to Earth by a
long, spiraling orbit. We can go direct and probably catch up with them
a few hundred thousand miles this side of Earth. And we can have a
fling at getting the asteroid back!"

Her eyes sparkled. "You mean--" she cried. Then her attractive face
fell. "Oh," she said. "_Oh!_ And when you get it back, you'll land it."

"That's right," Bob said grimly. "We're in business. For us, it's a
matter of survival. If the by-product of delivering the asteroid is
your marriage--sorry! But until we do get the asteroid back, we three
can work as a team if you're willing. We'll fight the other problem out
later. Okay?"

She smiled tremulously. "Okay, I guess."

Queazy looked from one to another of them. He waved his hand scornfully
at Bob. "You're plain nuts," he complained. "How do you propose to go
about convincing the Saylor brothers they ought to let us have the
asteroid back? Remember, commercial ships aren't allowed to carry
long-range weapons. And we couldn't ram the Saylor brothers' ship--not
without damaging our own ship just as much. Go ahead and answer that."

Bob looked at Queazy dismally. "The old balance-wheel," he groaned at
Starre. "He's always pulling me up short when I go off half-cocked. All
I know is, that maybe we'll get a good idea as we go along. In the
meantime, Starre--ahem--none of us has eaten in three weeks...?"

Starre got the idea. She smiled dazzlingly and vanished toward the
galley.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bob Parker was in love with Starre Lowenthal. He knew that after five
days out, as the ship hurled itself at breakneck speed toward Earth;
probably that distracting emotion was the real reason he couldn't
attach any significance to Starre's dumbbell-shaped ship, which trailed
astern, attached by a long cable.

Starre apparently knew he was in love with her, too, for on the fifth
day Bob was teaching her the mechanics of operating the hauler, and she
gently lifted his hand from a finger-switch.

"Even _I_ know that isn't the control to the Holloway vacuum-feeder,
Bob. That switch is for the--ah--the anathern tube, you told me. Right?"

"Right," he said unsteadily. "Anyway, Starre, as I was saying, this
ship operates according to the reverse Fitzgerald Contraction Formula.
All moving bodies contract in the line of motion. What Holloway
and Hammond did was to reverse that universal law. They caused the
contraction first--motion had to follow! The gravitonic field affects
every atom in the ship with the same speed at the same time. We could
go from zero speed to our top speed of two thousand miles a second just
like that!"

He snapped his fingers. "No acceleration effects. This type of ship,
necessary in our business, can stop flat, back up, ease up, move in
any direction, and the passengers wouldn't have any feeling of motion
at--Oh, hell!" Bob groaned, the serious glory of her eyes making him
shake. He took her hand. "Starre," he said desperately, "I've got to
tell you something--"

She jerked her hand away. "No," she exclaimed in an almost frightened
voice. "You can't tell me. There's--there's Mac," she finished,
faltering. "The asteroid--"

"You _have_ to marry him?"

Her eyes filled with tears. "I have to live up to the bargain."

"And ruin your whole life," he ground out. Suddenly, he turned back to
the control board, quartered the vision plate. He pointed savagely to
the lower left quarter, which gave a rearward view of the dumbbell ship
trailing astern.

"There's your ship, Starre." He jabbed his finger at it. "I've got a
feeling--and I can't put the thought into concrete words--that somehow
the whole solution of the problem of grabbing the asteroid back lies
there. But how? _How?_"

Starre's blue eyes followed the long cable back to where it was
attached around her ship's narrow midsection.

She shook her head helplessly. "It just looks like a big yo-yo to me."

"A yo-yo?"

"Yes, a yo-yo. That's all." She was belligerent.

"A _yo-yo_!" Bob Parker yelled the word and almost hit the ceiling, he
got out of the chair so fast. "Can you imagine it! A yo-yo!"

He disappeared from the room. "Queazy!" he shouted. "_Queazy, I've got
it!_"

       *       *       *       *       *

It was Queazy who got into his space-suit and did the welding job,
fastening two huge supra-steel "eyes" onto the dumbbell-shaped ship's
narrow midsection. Into these eyes cables which trailed back to
two winches in the big ship's nose were inserted, welded fast, and
reinforced.

The nose of the hauler was blunt, perfectly fitted for the job. Bob
Parker practiced and experimented for three hours with this yo-yo of
cosmic dimensions, while Starre and Queazy stood over him bursting into
strange, delighted squeals of laughter whenever the yo-yo reached the
end of its double cable and started rolling back up to the ship. Queazy
snapped his fingers.

"It'll work!" His gray eyes showed satisfaction. "Now, if only the
Saylor brothers are where we calculated!"

They weren't where Bob and Queazy had calculated, as they had
discovered the next day. They had expected to pick up the asteroid
on their mass-detectors a few hundred thousand miles outside of the
Moon's orbit. But now they saw the giant ship attached like a leech to
the still bigger asteroid--inside the Moon's orbit! A mere two hundred
thousand miles from Earth!

"We have to work fast," Bob stammered, sweating. He got within
naked-eye distance of the Saylor brothers' ship. Below, Earth was
spread out, a huge crescent shape, part of the Eastern hemisphere
vaguely visible through impeding clouds and atmosphere. The enemy ship
was two miles distant, a black shadow occulting part of the brilliant
sky. It was moving along a down-spiraling path toward Earth.

Queazy's big hand gripped his shoulder. "Go to it, Bob!"

Bob nodded grimly. He backed the hauler up about thirty miles, then
sent it forward again, directly toward the Saylor brothers' ship at ten
miles per second. And resting on the blunt nose of the ship was the
"yo-yo."

There was little doubt the Saylors' saw their approach. But,
scornfully, they made no attempt to evade. There was no possible harm
the oncoming ship could wreak. Or at least that was what they thought,
for Bob brought the hauler's speed down to zero--and Starre Lowenthal's
little ship, possessing its own inertia, kept on moving!

It spun away from the hauler's blunt nose, paying out two rigid
lengths of cable behind it as it unwound, hurled itself forward like a
fantastic spinning cannon ball.

"It's going to hit!"

The excited cry came from Starre. But Bob swore. The dumbbell ship
reached the end of its cables, falling a bare twenty feet short of
completing its mission. It didn't stop spinning, but came winding back
up the cable, at the same terrific speed with which it had left.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bob sweated, having only fractions of seconds in which to maneuver
for the "yo-yo" could strike a fatal blow at the hauler too. It was
ticklish work completely to nullify the "yo-yo's" speed. Bob used
exactly the same method of catching the "yo-yo" on the blunt nose of
the ship as a baseball player uses to catch a hard-driven ball in
his glove--namely, by matching the ball's speed and direction almost
exactly at the moment of impact. And now Bob's hours of practice paid
dividends, for the "yo-yo" came to rest snugly, ready to be released
again.

All this had happened in such a short space of time that the Saylor
brothers must have had only a bare realization of what was going on.
But by the time the "yo-yo" was flung at them again, this time with
better calculations, they managed to put the firmly held asteroid
between them and the deadly missile. But it was clumsy evasion, for
the asteroid was several times as massive as the ship which was towing
it, and its inertia was great. And as soon as the little ship came
spinning back to rest, Bob flung the hauler to a new vantage point and
again the "yo-yo" snapped out.

And this time--collision! Bob yelled as he saw the stern section of the
Saylor brothers' ship crumple like tissue paper crushed between the
hand. The dumbbell-shaped ship, smaller, and therefore stauncher due to
the principle of the arch, wound up again, wobbling a little. It had
received a mere dent in its starboard half.

Starre was chortling with glee. Queazy whispered, "Attaboy, Bob! This
time we'll knock 'em out of the sky!"

The "yo-yo" came to rest and at the same moment a gong rang excitedly.
Bob knew what that meant. The Saylor brothers were trying to establish
communication.

Queazy was across the room in two running strides. He threw in the
telaudio and almost immediately, Wally Saylor's big body built up in
the plate. Wally Saylor's face was quivering with wrath.

"What do you damned fools think you're trying to do?" he roared.
"You've crushed in our stern section. You've sliced away half of our
stern jets. Air is rushing out! You'll kill us!"

"Now," Bob drawled, "you're getting the idea."

"I'll inform the Interplanetary Commission!" screamed Saylor.

"_If_ you're alive," Bob snarled wrathfully. "And you won't be unless
you release the asteroid."

"I'll see you in Hades first!"

"Hades," remarked Bob coldly, "here you come!"

He snapped the hauler into its mile-a-second speed again, stopped it at
zero. And the "yo-yo" went on its lone, destructive sortie.

For a fraction of a second Wally Saylor exhibited the countenance of a
doomed man. In the telaudio plate, he whirled, and diminished in size
with a strangled yell.

The "yo-yo" struck again, but Bob Parker maneuvered its speed in
such a manner that it struck in the same place as before, but not as
heavily, then rebounded and came spinning back with perfect, sparkling
precision. And even before it snugged itself into its berth, it was
apparent that the Saylor brothers had given up. Like a wounded terrier,
their ship shook itself free of the asteroid, hung in black space for
a second, then vanished with a flaming puff of released gravitons from
its still-intact jets.

The battle was won!

       *       *       *       *       *

As soon as the hauler had grappled itself onto the prized asteroid, Bob
Parker jumped to his feet with a grin on his face as wide as the void.
Queazy grabbed his arm and pounded his shoulder. Bob shook him off,
losing his elation.

"Cut it," he snapped. "It's too early for the glad-hand business. We've
solved one problem, but we've run into another, as we knew we would."

He crossed determinedly to Starre, tipped up her downcast face.

"Starre," he said, "I guess you know I love you. If I asked you to
marry me--"

She quivered. "_Are_ you asking me, Bob?" she breathed.

"No! Couldn't ask you to marry me unless I had money. Starre, if it was
up to me I'd drop the asteroid on the Moon, and you wouldn't have to
take a chance on marrying a man you don't love. But I'm in partnership
with Queazy and Queazy has his due--"

Queazy intervened, his grey eyes troubled. "No," he said quietly. "Hold
on. I'll willingly forego any interest in the asteroid, Bob."

Bob laughed. "Nuts to you, Queazy! Don't get gallant. We'll be so deep
in debt we'll never be independent again the rest of our lives if we
don't land the asteroid. Thanks, anyway."

He took a deep breath. "Starre, you'll have to trust me. Today's the
last of May. We've got two more days before we have to fill the order.
In those two days, I think I can evolve a procedure to put all of us
in the clear--with the exception of your fiancé and your grandfather.
Which, I think, is as it should be, because these days people pick out
their own husbands and wives. In other words, a few minutes before your
wedding, the asteroid will be delivered--on schedule!"

"I'll trust you, Bob," Starre said huskily, after a moment of quiet.
"But whatever you've got in mind, to put one over on my grandfather,
it better be good...."

       *       *       *       *       *

For a day and a half, ship and attached asteroid pursued a slow,
unpowered orbit around Earth. For a day and a half, Bob Parker hardly
slept. He gave Queazy charge of the ship entirely, had him send an
ethergram to Andrew S. Burnside announcing that his asteroid would show
up in time for the wedding, and that the bride would be there too.

Most of Bob's time was spent on the surface of the asteroid. He
took spectroscopic readings from every possible angle, made endless
notations on a pad. Sometimes, he worked in his cabin, and Queazy,
ambling puzzledly into Bob's presence, could make nothing of the
countless pages of calculation strewn about the room--figures which
dealt with melting points, refractive indices, atmospheric velocities.

And finally, when Bob tore the ship and prisoned asteroid from their
orbit, sent them into Earth's atmosphere, Queazy could make nothing of
that either.

For Bob Parker apparently had a rigid schedule to follow in reference
to the hour set for Starre's wedding. He hit the atmosphere at a
certain second, at a certain speed. He followed a definite route
through the atmosphere, slowly moving downward as he crossed the great
Asiatic continents. He passed as slowly over the Atlantic, passed above
New York City scarcely a dozen miles, and hovered over Philadelphia at
last, a mile up.

Then he called Starre into the control room. She looked distracted,
pale. She was wearing slacks and was as completely unprepared for
her marriage as she could manage. Bob grinned, took her cold hand
affectionately.

"We're over Philadelphia, Starre. You can point out the general section
of the city of your granddad's home and estate for me. We'll be landing
at 11:15 A.M. That's in about a half-hour. Whatever you do,
make certain you aren't--ah--married before 12 o'clock. Okay?"

She extracted her hand from his, nodding dumbly. She sat down at the
photo-amplifiers, and for the next fifteen minutes studied the streets
below and guided him south. Then Bob dropped the ship until it was
only a few hundred feet from the ground. Around them pleasure craft
circled, and on the streets and fields below people ran excitedly,
pointing upward at the largest asteroid ever to be brought to the
planet.

The ship labored over the fields with its tremendous burden, finally
hovered over a clearing bordered by leafy oak and sycamore trees, part
of Burnside's tremendous "back yard." There was a man with a red flag
down there. Bob followed his directions, slowly brought the asteroid,
rough side down, onto the carefully tended lawn. Then he lifted the
hauler, placed it firmly on the opposite side of the clearing. Bob
relaxed, wiped his sweating face, and felt a cool breeze as Queazy
opened the airlock.

Minutes later, Starre Lowenthal was the center of an excited, mystified
group of wedding guests. Among them was her grandfather, a wrinkled,
well-preserved old gentleman who alternately kissed her and flew
into rages. Another man, handsome, blond, came rushing up, sweeping
everybody out of his way. He took Starre in his arms, fervently. Bob
Parker hated him at sight.

       *       *       *       *       *

Burnside cornered Starre and some sort of an argument ensued. Starre
was insisting that she dress for the wedding, and finally her
grandfather gave in. Starre flung a final, pleading look at Bob,
and then disappeared toward the great white house with the Georgian
pillars. Most of the guests trailed after her, and Burnside came
stomping up to Bob. He thrust a slip of green paper into his hands.

"There's your check, young man!" he puffed. "Now you can get your
greasy ship out of here. What do you mean by waiting until the last
minute to bring the asteroid?"

Bob didn't answer. He said politely, "I'd like very much to stay for
the wedding, sir."

The old man looked distastefully at his dirty coveralls. "You may," he
said testily. "But please view it from a distance."

He started away, then suddenly turned back. "Would you mind telling me,
young man, how it is that my granddaughter was in your ship?"

"I'll be glad to, sir," Bob said politely, "after the wedding. It's a
long story."

"I've no doubt, I've no doubt," Burnside said, glaring. "But if it's
anything scandalous, I don't want to hear it. This is an important
wedding." He stomped away, limping.

Bob whirled toward Queazy, tensely, thrust the check into his hands. He
jerked it back, hastily endorsed it and thrust it at Queazy again.

"Cash it! Quick! I'll meet you in the Somers Hotel."

Queazy asked no questions, but lifted the ship, and left.

At twenty minutes of twelve, somebody having rushed Starre into a
hurried preparation for the wedding, the minister climbed a ladder
to the apex of the asteroid, and the wedding march sounded out. Bob
saw Starre, walking slowly on her grandfather's arm, her eyes looking
straight ahead.

"Now!" Bob prayed. "_Now!_"

He groaned inwardly. It wasn't going to happen! He'd been a fool to
think--

Then a yell, completely uninhibited, escaped his lips. The asteroid
was quivering, precisely like gelatine dessert. Pieces of iron ore,
tungsten, quartz and cinnabar began to fall from its sides. Little
rivulets of a silvery-white liquid gushed outward in streams.

The wedding guests leapt to their feet with startled cries, starting
running back toward higher ground. The wedding march ended in a
clatter of discords. And Bob reached the asteroid as it went to pieces
completely. He found himself ankle-deep in rivulets of liquid metal.
He was swept off his feet, came up hanging onto a jagged boulder of
floating iron ore. He looked around on a mad scene. Screams, yells,
tangled legs.

"_Bob!_"

Starre's voice. Bob plunged toward her, yelling above the general
tumult. For a radius of several hundred feet, there was a sluggishly
moving liquid. People were floating on it, or standing in it
ankle-deep, dumbfounded. Bob reached Starre, swept her up in his
arms, went slushing off to the edge of the pool. Starre was laughing
uncontrollably.

"There's a helicopter on the other side of the house," she cried. "We
can get away before they get organized."

       *       *       *       *       *

They found Queazy in a room at the Somers Hotel. He opened the door,
and the worry on his face dissipated as he saw them. Behind him on
a table were stacks of five-thousand-dollar bills. Before he could
say anything, Starre demanded of him, "I couldn't get married on an
asteroid if the asteroid wasn't there any more, could I, Queazy? One
minute the asteroid was there and the next minute I was wading in a
metal lake."

"Quicksilver," Bob Parker agreed happily. "The asteroid was almost
entirely frozen mercury, except for an outer solid layer of iron ore,
tungsten, quartz, cinnabar."

"I just took exterior readings," Starre explained, sheepishly.

"So I figured," continued Bob, "that if I took a lot of spectroscopic
readings of the interior I could determine exactly how big a mass of
frozen quicksilver there was. And how long it would take to thaw out
once it was inside Earth's atmosphere!

"That's the reason I had things scheduled to the dot, Queazy. I coaxed
the asteroid along until the mercury was almost thawed out. When the
wedding started, it melted all at once, being the same temperature all
the way through. Satisfied?"

Queazy looked grave. As gravely, he moved back to the table, gestured
to the money. "I hate to spoil your fun, Bob," he said slowly. "We'll
have to give this back to Burnside. He didn't ask for quicksilver, you
know."

"Didn't he?" Bob grinned smugly. "But he asked for cinnabar, didn't he?
Wherever you find quicksilver you find cinnabar. Cinnabar is a source
of quicksilver. And vice versa. Cinnabar is a sulphide of quicksilver!
Nope, we earned that money, Queazy, my boy. It's ours legally. Hands
off!"

He put Starre's shoe on her foot after emptying it of some more
quicksilver. She stood up then, moved very close. "You can ask me now,
can't you, Bob?" she whispered. She kissed him. "And if you do, that's
my answer."

Which, of course, made the question totally unnecessary.