COSMIC YO-YO
By ROSS ROCKLYNNE
"Want an asteroid in your backyard? We supply
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-shapedasteroid, was plainly flabbergasted. Not in his wildest imaginings hadhe 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 insuch a manner that the big, powerful ship was moving at the same rateas the asteroid below—47.05 miles per second. He came slogging backexcitedly, put his eyes to the eyepiece. He gasped, and his big bodyshook with joyful ejaculations.
"She checks down to the last dimension," Bob chortled, working withslide-rule and logarithm tables. "Now all we have to do is find out ifshe's made of tungsten, iron, quartz crystals, and cinnabar! But therecouldn't be two asteroids of that shape anywhere else in the Belt, sothis 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 fiftythousand dollars!"
Queazy straightened. A slow, likeable smile wreathed his tanned face."Better take it easy," he advised, "until I land the ship and we usethe atomic whirl spectroscope to determine the composition of theasteroid."
"Have it your way," Bob Parker sang, happily. He threw the ethergramto the winds and it fell gently to the deck-plates. While Queazy—socalled because his full name was Quentin Zuyler—dropped the shipstraight down to the smooth surface of the asteroid, and clamped ittight with magnetic grapples, Bob flung open the lazarette, broughtout two space-suits. Moments later, they were outside the ship, withstar-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. Itwas addressed to: Mr. Robert Parker, President Interplanetary Hauling &Moving Co., 777 Main Street, Satterfield City, Fontanaland, Mars. Theethergram read:
Received your advertising literature a week ago. Would like to statethat yes I would like an asteroid in my back yard. Must meet followingspecifications: 506 feet length, long enough for wedding procession;98 feet at base, tapering to 10 feet at apex; 9-12 feet thick; topsidesmooth-plane, underside rough-plane; composed of iron ore, tungsten,quartz crystals, and cinnabar. Must be in my back yard before 11:30A.M. my time, for important wedding June 2, else order is void. Willpay $5.00 per ton.
Bob Parker had received that ethergram three weeks ago. And if TheInterplanetary Hauling & Moving Co., hadn't been about to go on therocks (chiefly due to the activities of Saylor & Saylor, a rival firm)neither Bob nor Queazy would have thought of sending an answeringethergram to Burnside stating that they would fill the order. Itwas, plainly, a hair-brained request. And yet, if by some chancethere was such a rigidly specified asteroid, their financial worrieswould be over. That they had actually discovered the asteroid,