Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 51: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

KINDNESS built to be operated by one man, even a cripple, in an emergency, and nearly every- thing was automatic. Only the proolem of a destination had remained, since the planets were ail swarming with the others, but the ship’s logs had suggesteu the answer even to that. Once there had been rich men among his people who sought novelty and seciusion, and found them among the larger asteroids; money and science had built them artificial gravities and given them atmospheres, powered by atomic-energy plants that should last forever. Now the rich men were undoubtedly dead, and the new race had abandoned such useless things. Surely, some- where among them, there should have been a haven for him, made safe by the very numbers that could baffle almost any search. . Danny heard a guard go by, and slowly got to his feet, to go out again into a world that would no longer hold even that hope. It had been a lovely plan to dream on, a necessary dream. Then the sound of the great doors came to his ears, closing! The professor had forgotten to tell them of his presence! And— |! All right, so he didn’t know the history of all those little worlds; perhaps he would have to hunt through them, one by one, to find a suitable home. Did it matter? In every other way, he could never be more ready. For a moment only, he hesitated; then his hands fumbled with the great lock’s control switch, and it swung to quietly in the dark, shutting the sound of his running feet back from outside ears. The little lights came on silently as he found the navigation chair and sank into it. “Ship Sealed ... Air O.K. ... Power, Auto- matic ... Engine, Automatic...” Half a hundred little lights and dials that told the story of a ship ready for a touch of his hand. He moved the course plotter slowly along the tiny atmospheric map until it reached the top of the stratosphere; the big star map moved slowly out, with the pointer in his fingers tracing an irregular, jagged line that would lead him somewhere toward the asteroids, well away from the present position of Mars, and yet could offer no clue. Later he could set the analyzers to finding the present orbit and location of some chosen asteroid and determine his course more accurately, but all that mat- tered now was to get away, beyond all trac- ing, before his loss could be reported. Seconds later his fingers pressed down 49 savagely on the main power switch, and there was a lurch of starting, followed by another slight one as the walls of the Museum crumpled before the savage force on the great ion rockets. On the map, a tiny spot of light appeared, marking the ship’s changing position. The world was behind him now, and there was no one to look at his efforts in kindly pity or remind him of his weakness. Only blind fate was against him, and his ancestors had met and conquered that long before. A bell rang, indicating the end of the atmosphere, and the big automatic pilot began clucking contentedly, emitting a louder cluck now and then as it found the irregularities in the unorthodox course he had charted and swung the ship to follow. Danny watched it, satisfied that it was work- ing. His ancestors may have been capable of reason only, but they had built machines that were almost intuitive and had managed, as the ship about him testified. His head was higher as he turned back to the kitchen, and there was a bit of a swagger to his walk. The food was still good. He wolfed it down, remembering that supper had been forgotten, and studying slowly through the big log books of the long voyages made by the ship, searching through it for each casual reference to the asteroids. Ceres, Palas, Vesta, some of the ones referred to by nicknames or numbers? But he had decided when he stood once again in the navigation room, watching the aloof immensity of space; out here it was relieved only by the tiny hot pinpoints that must be stars, colored, small, and intense as no stars could be through an atmos- phere. It would be one of the numbered planetoids, referred to also as “The Dane’s” in the log. The word was meaningless, but it seemed to have been one of the newer and more completely terrenized, though not the very newest, where any search would surely start. He set the automatic analyzer to running from the key numbers in the manual and watched it for a time, but it ground on slowly, tracing through all the years that had passed. For a time, he fiddled with the radio, before he remembered that it operated on a wave form no longer used. It was just as well; his severance from the new race would be all the more final. Still the analyzer ground on. Space lost its novelty, and the operation of the pilot ceased to interest him. He wandered back through the ship toward the lounge, to spy comiclooks ©)