Master of the Moondog, Page 7

voicestrange. "Sure, I'm mercenary. I've been broke in Venusport, and againhere on Luna. It's no fun. Poverty is not all the noble things thecopybooks say. It's undignified and degrading. You want to stopwashing after a while, because it doesn't seem to matter. Yes, I wantmoney. Am I different from other people?"

  Denver laughed harshly. "No. I just thought for a few minutes that youwere. I hoped I was at the head of your list. But let's not quarrel.We're friends in a jam together. No miracle is going to happen. It'sstupid to fight over a salt mine, empty at that, when we're going todie. I'm like you; I wanted a miracle to happen, but mine didn'tconcern money. We both got what we asked for, that's all. If you bendover far enough somebody will kick you in the pants. I'm going out,Darbor. Pray for me."

  The blankness of her face-plate turned toward him. A glitter, dark andopaque, was all he could make out.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I know it was the wrong answer. But don't be afool. He'll kill you, and I'm afraid to be in the dark, alone."

  "I'll leave Charley with you."

  Denver broke the girl's clasp on his arm and edged slow to thedoorway. He shouted.

  "Hey, Caltis!"

  There was stunning silence. Then a far, muted crackle in hisearphones.

  A voice answered, "Yes? I'm here. What's on your mind, funny boy?"

  "A parley."

  "Nuts, but come on out. I'll talk."

  "You come up," Denver argued. "I don't trust you."

  Big Ed Caltis considered the proposition. "How do I know you won't tryto nail me for hostage?"

  "You don't. But I'm not a fool. What good would it do even if I killedyou. Your men are down there. They'd still want the mine. I don'tthink they care enough about you to deal. They'd kill us anyhow. Bringyour gun if it makes you feel more like a man."

  After an interval Big Ed Caltis appeared in the doorway. As he enteredDenver retreated into the shadow-zone until he stood close beside therude barricade.

  "I'll bargain with you, Caltis. You can have the workings. Let us gofree, with an hour's start in my space sled. I'll sign over any sharewe could claim and agree never to bother you again. It's no use to acorpse. Just let us go."

  Caltis gave a short laugh. In the earphones, it sounded nasty.

  "No deal, Denver. I hate your guts. And I want Darbor. I've got bothof you where I want you, sewed up. We can sit here and wait. We'veplenty of air, food and water. You'll run short. I want you to comeout, crawling. She can watch you die, slowly, because I'm not givingyou any air, water or food. Then I want her to squirm a while before Ikick her back into the sewers. You can't bargain. I have her, you, theworkings. I've got what I want."

  Hate and anger strangled Denver's reply. Caltis skulked back out ofsight. Without moving, Denver hailed him again.

  "Okay, puttyface!" Denver screamed. "You asked for it. I'm coming out.Stand clear and order off your thugs or I'll squeeze you till yourguts squirt out your nose like toothpaste from a tube. I'll see howmuch man there is left in you. It'll be all over the slope when I'mthrough."

  His taunt drew fire as he had hoped it would. He dodged quickly behindthe shelter of the barricade. A beam of dazzling fire penciled therock wall. It crackled, spread, flaring to incredible heat and light.It exploded, deluging the gallery with glare and spattering rock.

  After the glare, darkness seemed thick enough to slice.

  In that second of stunned reaction blindness, Denver was leaping thebarricade and sprinting toward the entrance. Caltis came to meet him.Both fired at once. Both missed. The random beams flicked at therough, timbered walls and lashed out with thunderous violence.

  Locked together, the men pitched back and forth. They rocked andswayed, muscles straining. It was deadlock again. Denver was youth andfury. Caltis had experience and the training of a fighter. It wassavage, lawless, the sculptured stance of embattled champions. Almostmotionless, as forces canceled out. The battle was equal.

  V

  While they tangled, both blocked, Darbor slipped past them and stoodoutside the entrance. She was exposed, a clear target. But the menbelow dared not fire until they knew where Caltis was, what hadhappened to him. She held the enemy at bay. Gun ready, Darbor faceddown the slopes. It was not necessary to pull trigger. Not for themoment. She waited and hoped and dared someone to move.

  Neither man gave first. It was the weakened timbering that supportedthe gallery roof. Loose stones rained down. Dry, cold and brittle woodsagged under strain. Both wild shots had taken shattering effect.Timbers yielded, slowly at first, then faster. Showering of loosestones became a steady stream. A minor avalanche.

  Darbor heard the sound or caught some vibration through her helmetmicrophones. The men were too involved to notice. Caltis heard her. Hegot a cruel nosehold, twisted Denver's nose like an instrument dial.Denver screamed, released his grip. In the scramble, his foot slipped.Darbor cried out shrill warning.

  Breaking free, Caltis bolted in panic toward the entrance.

  The fall of rock was soundless. It spilled down in increasingtorrents. Larger sections of ceiling were giving away.

  Above the prostrate Denver hovered a poised phantom of eerie light.Charley, bored, had gone to sleep. Awakening, he found a game stillgoing on. A fine new game. It was fascinating. He wanted to join thefun. Like an angle of reflected light cast by a turning mirror, hedarted.

  The running figure aroused his curiosity. Charley streamed through thecollapsing gallery. He caught up with Caltis just inside the entrance.With a burble of insane, twittering glee, he went into action. It wasall in the spirit of things. Just another delightful game.

  Like a thunderbolt he hurtled upon Caltis, tangled with him. It wasabsurd, insane. Man and moondog went down together in a silly sprawl.Sparks flew, became a confused tesseract of luminous motion. Radianceblazed up and danced and flickered and no exact definition of theintertwined bodies was possible. Glowing lines wove fat webs of livingcolor. It was too swift, too involved for any sane perception.

  A wild, sprawling of legs, arms and body encircled and became part ofthe intricacies of speeding, impossible light.

  It was a mess.

  Some element or combination of forces in Charley, inspired byexcitement and sheer delight, made unfortunate contact with groundcurrents of vagrant electricity. Electricity ceased to be invisible.It became sizzling, immense flash, in which many complexities madepart of a simple whole. It was spectacular but brief. It was a flamingvortex of interlocked spirals of light and color and naked force. Itwas fireworks.

  And it was the end of Big Ed Caltis. He fried, and hot greasespattered about him. He sizzled like a bug on a hot stove.

  When Denver reached the entrance, man and moondog lay in a curioushuddle of interrupted action. It was over.

  Charley was tired, but he still lived and functioned after his curiousfashion. For the moment, he had lost interest in further fun andgames. He lay quietly in a corner of rough rock and tried to rebuildhis scattered and short-circuited energies. He pulsed and crackled andsound poured in floods of muffled static from the earphones inDenver's helmet.

  But this was no time for social amenities. Big Ed Caltis was dead,very dead. But the others down the slope were still alive.

  Like avenging angels, Denver and Darbor charged together down theslope. Besiegers scattered and fled in panic as twinned beams ofdreadful light and heat scourged their hiding places. They fledthrough the grotesque shadow patterns of Lunar night. They fled back,some of them, to the black ship which had brought them. And there,they ran straight into the waiting arms of a detail from Space Patrolheadquarters.

  * * * * *

  Tod Denver's friend, the watchman, had talked. From spaceport he hadcalled the Space Patrol and talked where it would do some good. A bitlate to be of much use, help had arrived. It took the Space Patrolsquads a half hour to round up the scattered survivors.

  Darbor went back to the mine-buildings with the Space Patrollieutenant as escort. Denver trudged wearily back up the slope
torecover Charley.

  The moondog was in a bad way. He bulged badly amidships and seemedgreatly disturbed, not to say temperamental. With tenderness andgentle care, Denver cradled the damaged Charley in his arms and madehis way back to the living shack at the mine. Space Cops were justhustling in the last of the prisoners and making ready to return tocivilization. Denver thanked them, but with brief curtness, forCharley's condition worried him. He went inside and tried to make hispet comfortable, wondering where one would look on the Moon for aveterinary competent to treat a moondog.

  Darbor found him crouched over Charley's impoverished couch upon themetal table.

  "I want to say goodbye," she told him. "I'm sorry about Charley. Thelieutenant says I can go back with them.