THE MINUS WOMAN
By
Russ Winterbotham
What made the mass of thistiny asteroid fluctuate in defianceof all known physicallaws? It was an impossiblefact—but then, so was the girlwho they knew couldn't exist!
Red Brewer had pluggedhis electric razor into the labcircuit and he was running itover his pink jowls while I tried todiscover what was haywire aboutthe balance scales.
"Have you noticed," Red saidabove the clatter of his shaver,"how much less you have to shaveon an asteroid?"
"I still shave every day," I said.There was something definitelywrong with the scales. The ten-gramweight didn't balance twofive-gram weights. Instead itweighed 7.5 grams. And then,suddenly, the cockeyed scaleswould get ornery and the two five-gramweights would weigh 7.5grams and the ten-gram slugwould weigh what it should.
"I don't," said Red. "I shaveonce a week. Back on terra Ishaved every day, but not here.And I don't even have a beardto show for it."
I didn't answer. There weretougher problems on my mind thanwhiskers, but of course Red Brewerwouldn't understand them. Hewas good at machinery, and witha camera, and for company on alonely asteroid which right nowwas 300,000,000 miles from theearth, but he certainly wasn't abrain.
"What do you make of it, Jay?"he asked. "Oh, Mr. Hayling, I'mspeaking to you."
"Maybe it's your thyroid," Isaid. "Shut up."
"I'm twenty-seven," said Red."Too old to have thyroids."
"You mean adenoids."
Red growled and shut off therazor. He ran his hand over hisface. "I've got a face like aschool-kid's," he said. "If therewas only a girl on this god-forsakenpiece of rock to see it."
There were no girls on Asteroid57GM. This place didn't haveanything excepting a lonely shackwith paper-thin walls made of specialheat-insulating material. Therewasn't a blade of grass; not apuff of wind; no soil for violets;not even a symmetrical shape, itwas lopsided like a beaten-up baseball.Or at least that was what Ithought until something happenedto the balance scales.
The idea of sending Jay Hayling,which is me, and ruddy Red Brewerto Asteroid 57GM, was simplyto check up on some figures whichsaid that this little 10-mile chunkof rock didn't have the right mass.Twice it had been clocked on nearpassages to Jupiter and twice ithad behaved differently, as if ithad suddenly lost some of its mass.So Red and I had been sentenced tofifteen months alone in space onan asteroid just to find out thatsomebody had made a mistake inarithmetic.
The sonar equipment showedwhat kind of rock it was—iron andbasalt. And I'd made boringswhich checked. We'd tested thespeed of escape which was a goodpush so we had to be careful, andits force of gravity, which wasn'tmuch. And then I'd discoveredthat the balance in the lab had ahabit of being 25 per cent wrongone way or the other every timeI tried to use it.
Red put away his razor andwent through the little door leadingto the living quarters. Thepartition was crystal clear plasticso I could see him pulling himselfalong by the hand rail toward thebookcase. I knew he would presentlyfind himself something toread while I worked.
We seldom walked in the laboratory.Our muscles, conditionedby terrestrial gravity,were too strong for walking. We'dhave bumped our heads on theceiling at every step and possiblywe might even have punched a ho