Master of the Moondog, Page 5

company."

  "Maybe I have. Lend me your gun, Ike?"

  "Sure, I've eaten. I'm going back to sleep. If you don't need the gun,leave it on the tool-locker. If you do, I want my name in the papers.They'll misspell it, but the old lady will get a kick. So long. Goodluck. If it's a boy, Ike's a good, old-fashioned name."

  Tod Denver and Darbor ran the length of the illuminated hangar to thetake-off pits at the far end. His space sled was the last in line.That would help for a quick blast-off.

  Darbor was panting, ready to drop from exhaustion. But she draggedgamely on. Gun ready, he reached up to the airlock flap.

  Inside the ship was sudden commotion. A scream was cut off sharply.Scurried movement became bedlam. Uproar ceased as if a knife had cutthrough a ribbon of sound.

  Denver flung open the flap and scrabbled up and through the valve tothe interior.

  Two of Big Ed's trigger men lay on the floor. One had just connectedwith a high-voltage charge from Charley. The other had quietlyfainted. Denver dumped them outside, helped Darbor up and closed theship for take-off. He switched off cabin lights.

  He wasted no time in discussion until the ship was airborne and hadnosed through the big dome-valves into the airless Lunar sky.

  A fat hunk of Earth looked like a blueberry chiffon pie, but wasbrighter. It cast crazy shadows on the terrain unreeling below.

  Darbor sat beside him. She felt dazed, and wondered briefly what hadhappened to her.

  Less than an hour before she had entered the _Pot o' Stars_ withnothing on her mind but assessing the clients and the possiblereceipts for the day. Too much had happened and too rapidly. She couldnot assimilate details.

  Something launched itself through darkness at her. It snugged tightlyto shoulder and neck and made chuckling sounds. Stiff fur nuzzled herskin. There was a vague prickling of hot needles, but it wasdisturbing rather than painful. She screamed.

  "Shut up!" said Denver, laughing. "It's just Charley. But don't excitehim or you'll regret it."

  From the darkness came a confused burble of sounds as Charley exploredand bestowed his affections upon a new friend still too startled toappreciate the gesture. Darbor tried vainly to fend off the lavishdemonstrations.

  Denver gunned the space sled viciously, and felt the push ofacceleration against his body. He headed for a distant mountain range.

  "Just Charley, my pet moondog," he explained.

  "What in Luna is that?"

  "You'll find out. He loves everybody. Me, I'm more discriminating, butI can be had. My father warned me about women like you."

  "How would he know?" Darbor asked bitterly. "What did he say aboutwomen like me?"

  "It's exciting while it lasts, and it lasts as long as your moneyholds out. It's wonderful if you can afford it. But Charley'sharmless. He's like me, he just wants to be loved. Go on. Pet him."

  "All males are alike," Darbor grumbled. Obediently, she ran fingersover the soft, wirelike pseudo-fur. The fingers tingled as if weakcharges of electricity surged through them.

  "Does it--er, Charley ever blow a fuse?" she asked. "I'd like to havemet your father. He sounds like a man who had a lot of experience withwomen. The wrong women. By the way, where are we going?"

  * * * * *

  Tod Denver had debated the point with himself. "To the scene of thecrime," he said. "It's not good, and they may look for us there. Butwe can hole up for a few days till the hunt dies down. It might be thelast place Big Ed would expect to find us. Later, unless we findsomething in the Martian workings, we'll head for the far places.Okay?"

  Darbor shrugged. "I suppose. But then what. I don't imagine you'll bea chivalrous jackass and want to marry me?"

  The space sled drew a thin line of silver fire through darkness as hedebated that point.

  "Now that I'm sober, I'll think about it. Give me time. They say a mancan get used to to anything."

  A ghostly choking sounded from the seat beside him. He wondered ifCharley had blown something.

  "Do they say what girls have to get used to?" she asked, her voiceoddly tangled.

  Tod Denver tempered the wind to the shorn lamb. "We'll see how theworkings pan out. I'd want my money to last."

  What Darbor replied should be written on asbestos.

  * * * * *

  Their idyl at the mines lasted exactly twenty-seven hours. Denvershowed Darbor around, explained some of the technicalities ofmoon-mining to her. The girl misused some precious water to trywashing the alley-filth from her clothes. Her experiment was not asuccess and the diaphanous wisps of moonsilver dissolved. She stood inthe wrapped blanket and was too tired and depressed even to cry.

  "I guess it wasn't practical," she decided ruefully. "It did bunch upin the weirdest places in your spare spacesuit. Have you any old rag Icould borrow?"

  Denver found cause for unsafe mirth in the spectacle of her blanketeddisaster. "I'll see." He rooted about in a locker and found a wornpair of trousers which he threw to the girl. A sweater, too shrunkenand misshapen for him to wear again, came next. Dismayed, sheinspected the battered loot; then was inspired to quick alterations.Pant-legs cut off well above the baggy knees made passable shorts; thesweater bulged a trifle at the shoulders, it fit adequatelyelsewhere--and something more than adequately.

  Charley fled her vicinity in extremes of voluble embarrassment as shechanged and zipped up the substitute garments.

  "Nice legs," Denver observed, which was an understatement.

  "Watch out you don't skin those precious knees again," she warneddarkly.

  Time is completely arbitrary on the Moon as far as Earth people areconcerned. One gets used to prolonged light and dark periods. Earthpoked above the horizon, bathing the heights of the range with intensesilver-blue light. But moonshadows lay heavily in the hollows and thedeep gorges were still pools of intense gloom. Clocks are set to themeaningless twenty-four hour divisions of day and night on Earth,which have nothing to do with two-week days and nights on Luna. Aftersunset, with Earthlight still strong and pure and deceptivelywarm-looking, the landscapes become a barren, haunted wasteland.

  Time itself seems unreal.

  Time passed swiftly. The idyl was brief. For twenty-seven Earth-hoursafter their landing at the mines came company...!

  An approaching ship painted a quick-dying trail of fire upon the blackvault of sky. It swooped suddenly from nowhere, and the trappedfugitives debated flight or useless defense.

  Alone, Denver would have stayed and fought, however uneven andhopeless the battle. But he found the girl a mental block to allthoughts of open, pitched battle on the shadowy, moonsilvered slopes.He might surprise the pursuers and flush them by some type of ambush.But they would be too many for him, and his feeble try would endeither in death or capture.

  Neither alternative appealed to him. With Darbor, he had suddenlyfound himself possessed of new tenacity toward life, and he haddesperate, painful desire to live for her.

  He chose flight.

  IV

  The ship dropped short-lived rocket landing flares, circled and camein for a fast landing on the cleared strip of brittle-crusted ash.

  Some distance from the hastily-patched and now hastily abandoned minebuildings, Tod Denver and Darbor paused and shot hasty, fearfulglances toward the landed ship. By Earthlight, they could distinguishits lines, though not the color. It was a drab shadow now against thevivid grayness of slopes. Figures tiny from distance emerged from itand scattered across the flat and up into the clustered buildings. Afew stragglers went over to explore and investigate Denver's spacesled in the unlikely possibility that he and the girl had trusted toits meager and dubious protection.

  Besides the ship, the hunters would find evidence of recent occupationin the living quarters, from which Denver had removed the frozencorpse before permitting Darbor to assist with the crude remodelingwhich he had undertaken. Afterward, when the mine buildings andexposed shafts had been turned out on futile quest for the fug
itives,the search would spread. Tracks should be simple enough to follow,once located. Denver had anticipated this potential clue to thepursuit, and had kept their walking to the bare, rocky heights of thespur as long as possible.

  He hoped to be able to locate the old Martian working, but the chancewas slim. Calculating the shadow-apex of Mitre Peak at 2017 ET wascomplicated by several unknown quantities. Which peak was Mitre Peak?Was that shadow-apex Earth-shadow or Sun-shadow? And had he startedout in the correct direction to find the line of deep-cut arrowmarkings at all?

  The first intangible resolved itself. One mitre-shaped peak stood outalone and definite above the sharply defined silhouettes of themountains. It must be Mitre Peak. It had to be.

  The next question was the light source casting the shadow-apex. Therewere two possible answers. It