ACID BATH
By VASELEOS GARSON
The starways' Lone Watcher had expected some odd developmentsin his singular, nerve-fraught job on the asteroid. But nothing like theweird twenty-one-day liquid test devised by the invading Steel-Blues.
Jon Karyl was bolting in a new baffleplate on the stationary rocket engine.It was a tedious job and took all hisconcentration. So he wasn't paying too muchattention to what was going on in otherparts of the little asteroid.
He didn't see the peculiar blue spaceship, its rockets throttled down, as it driftedto land only a few hundred yards away fromhis plastic igloo.
Nor did he see the half-dozen steel-bluecreatures slide out of the peculiar vessel'sairlock.
It was only as he crawled out of thedepths of the rocket power plant that herealized something was wrong.
By then it was almost too late. The sixblue figures were only fifty feet away, approachinghim at a lope.
Jon Karyl took one look and went boundingover the asteroid's rocky slopes in fifty-footbounds.
When you're a Lone Watcher, andstrangers catch you unawares, you don'tstand still. You move fast. It's the Watcher'sfirst rule. Stay alive. An Earthship may dependupon your life.
As he fled, Jon Karyl cursed softly underhis breath. The automatic alarm should haveshrilled out a warning.
Then he saved as much of his breath ashe could as some sort of power wave toreup the rocky sward to his left. He twistedand zig-zagged in his flight, trying to getout of sight of the strangers.
Once hidden from their eyes, he could cutback and head for the underground entranceto the service station.
He glanced back finally.
Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbitingafter him, and rapidly closing thedistance.
Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistolat his side, turned the oxygen dial up forgreater exertion, increased the gravity pullin his space-suit boots as he neared theravine he'd been racing for.
The oxygen was just taking hold whenhe hit the lip of the ravine and begansprinting through its man-high bush-strewncourse.
The power ray from behind ripped outgreat gobs of the sheltering bushes. Butrunning naturally, bent close to the bottomof the ravine, Jon Karyl dodged the barespots. The oxygen made the tremendousexertion easy for his lungs as he sped downthe dim trail, hidden from the two steel-bluestalkers.
He'd eluded them, temporarily at least,Jon Karyl decided when he finally edged offthe dim trail and watched for movementalong the route behind him.
He stood up, finally, pushed aside theleafy overhang of a bush and looked forlandmarks along the edge of the ravine.
He found one, a stubby bush, shaped likea Maltese cross, clinging to the lip of theravine. The hidden entrance to the servicestation wasn't far off.
His pistol held ready, he moved quietlyon down the ravine until the old watercourse made an abrupt hairpin turn.
Instead of following around the sharpbend, Jon Karyl moved straight aheadthrough the overhanging bushes until hecame to a dense thicket. Dropping to hishands and knees he worked his way underthe edge of the thicket into a hollowed-outspace in the center.
There, just ahead of him, was the lockleading into the service station. Slippinga key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,he jabbed it into the center of the lock,opening the lever housing.
He pulled