Dead Man's Planet

Dead Man's Planet by Russ Winterbotham - For unmarked ages a dead man kept his ghostly vigil on that barren, frozen asteroid. "A life-saver!" Mick said, bringing the space freighter down with a gentle bump on the huge, shapeless mass of rock and iron that floated between Mars and Jupiter. The term huge was purely relative, for the asteroid was scarcely ten miles in diameter at its thickest point, and its axis could not have been more than twelve miles long. Mick switched off the rockets, opened a locker and pulled forth a suit of heavy, furlined, airtight garments which he slipped over his uniform. The communication speaker buzzed. "Hey, Mick! Are you still on the bridge?" Alf Rankin was calling from the charting room. "Yes, Alf. What's the trouble." Mick Conner was sealing his space suit. "This isn't an ordinary asteroid, Mick. It isn't barren. There's stuff growing on it." "That's nothing to get goggle-eyed about, Alf. There's moss on Eros which is smaller than this. And there are 142 different kinds of plants and one intermediate—animal-vegetable—organism on Juno." "Hm-m!" Of course this was a surprise to Alf, who had never made a landing on the asteroids before. Science had rather neglected the asteroids during the rapid development of interplanetary flight, yet there were many interesting sights to be seen on the 4,000 minor planets that floated between Jupiter and Mars. "Get on your space togs and oxygen helmet and we'll fix that broken jet," Mick said. "We'll be ready to go in three hours." Mick sealed his helmet and stepped into the automatic lock leading from the control bridge to the roof of the streamlined rocket.