Collision Orbit

Tom Denby expected a lonely death. When the drive tube of his small ship blows out millions of miles from help, the numbers leave him only one grim certainty: a drifting orbit that ends far from rescue. Then an asteroid appears in his path, and Denby decides to meet the collision head-on rather than wait years to starve. But the asteroid isn’t empty. A research station sits on its surface, and the first face Denby sees there belongs to Betty Day—the brilliant classmate who once convinced him he was wasting his talent playing it safe. Their reunion lasts only moments before armed raiders storm the station and seize control. The intruders aren’t ordinary bandits. They’re the remnants of a vanished war fleet, hiding beyond the asteroid belt and hunting for the power they need to escape. Denby quickly realizes the pirates’ ship is running on borrowed time. One wrong fuel choice will destroy their engine hours after departure—if he can persuade them to take it. The plan requires trading their only bargaining chip, sending Betty into the darkness of space alone, and convincing killers that his offer is genuine. If Denby’s calculations are wrong, the pirates will return and finish the job they started. If he’s right, the most dangerous men in space are already doomed—they just don’t know it yet. Clyde Beck wrote a small number of science-fiction stories during the early 1950s, publishing in magazines that fed the growing appetite for space exploration adventures in the postwar era. “Collision Orbit” appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, the influential magazine edited by John W. Campbell that launched and shaped much of modern science fiction. Beck’s story blends engineering realism with frontier-style space drama, placing a lone pilot, an isolated asteroid station, and a band of fugitives into a situation where quick thinking matters more than firepower.