A World is Born
Page 3
profile hard against the flickeringaurora. Then he slammed the lock shut.
The ship roared out into the tearing winds of the plain. Gray cut in hisrockets and blasted up, into the airless dark among the high peaks.
Jill Moulton hadn't moved or spoken.
Gray snapped on the space radio, leaving his own screen dark. Presentlyhe picked up signals in a code he didn't know.
"Listen," he said. "I knew there was some reason for Ward's running outon me."
His Indianesque face hardened. "So that's the game! They want to maketrouble for you by letting me escape and then make themselves heroes bybringing me in, preferably dead.
"They've got ships waiting to get me as soon as I clear Mercury, andthey're getting stand-by instructions from somebody on the ground. Thesomebody that Ward was making for."
Jill's breath made a small hiss. "Somebody's near the Project...."
Gray snapped on his transmitter.
"Duke Gray, calling all ships off Mercury. Will the flagship of yourreception committee please come in?"
His screen flickered to life. A man's face appeared--the middle-aged,soft-fleshed, almost stickily innocent face of one of the Solar Systemsgreatest crusaders against vice and crime.
Jill Moulton gasped. "Caron of Mars!"
"Ward gave the game away," said Gray gently. "Too bad."
The face of Caron of Mars never changed expression. But behind thoseflesh-hooded eyes was a cunning brain, working at top speed.
"I have a passenger," Gray went on. "Miss Jill Moulton. I'm responsiblefor her safety, and I'd hate to have her inconvenienced."
The tip of a pale tongue flicked across Caron's pale lips.
"That is a pity," he said, with the intonation of a preaching minister."But I cannot stop the machinery set in motion...."
"And besides," finished Gray acidly, "you think that if Jill Moultondies with me, it'll break John Moulton so he won't fight you at all."
His lean hand poised on the switch.
"All right, you putrid flesh-tub. Try and catch us!"
The screen went dead. Gray hunched over the controls. If he could getpast them, lose himself in the glare of the Sun....
He looked aside at the stony-faced girl beside him. She was studying himcontemptuously out of hard gray eyes.
"How," she said slowly, "can you be such a callous swine?"
"Callous?" He controlled the quite unreasonable anger that rose in him."Not at all. The war taught me that if I didn't look out for myself, noone would."
"And yet you must have started out a human being."
He laughed.
The ship burst into searing sunlight. The Sunside of Mercury blazedbelow them. Out toward the velvet dark of space the side of a waitingship flashed burning silver.
Even as he watched, the flare of its rockets arced against theblackness. They had been sighted.
Gray's practised eye gauged the stranger's speed against his own, and hecursed softly. Abruptly he wheeled the ship and started down again,cutting his rockets as the shadow swallowed them. The ship was eerilysilent, dropping with a rising scream as the atmosphere touched thehull.
"What are you going to do?" asked Jill almost too quietly.
He didn't answer. Maneuvering the ship on velocity between thosestupendous pinnacles took all his attention. Caron, at least, couldn'tfollow him in the dark without exhaust flares as guides.
They swept across the wind-torn plain, into the mouth of the valleywhere Gray had worked, braking hard to a stop under the cables.
"You might have got past them," said Jill.
"One chance in a hundred."
Her mouth twisted. "Afraid to take it?"
He smiled harshly. "I haven't yet reached the stage where I kill women.You'll be safe here--the men will find you in the morning. I'm goingback, alone."
"Safe!" she said bitterly. "For what? No matter what happens, theProject is ruined."
"Don't worry," he told her brutally. "You'll find some other way to makea living."
Her eyes blazed. "You think that's all its means to us? Just money andpower?" She whispered, "I hope they kill you, Duke Gray!"
* * * * *
He rose lazily and opened the air lock, then turned and freed her. And,sharply, the valley was bathed in a burst of light.
"Damn!" Gray picked up the sound of air motors overhead. "They must havehad infra-red search beams. Well, that does it. We'll have to run forit, since this bus isn't armed."
With eerie irrelevancy, the teleradio buzzed. At this time of night,after the evening storms, some communication was possible.
Gray had a hunch. He opened the switch, and the face of John Moultonappeared on the screen. It was white and oddly still.
"Our guards saw your ship cross the plain," said Moulton quietly. "Themen of the Project, led by Dio, are coming for you. I sent them, becauseI have decided that the life of my daughter is less important than thelives of many thousands of people.
"I appeal to you, Gray, to let her go. Her life won't save you. And it'svery precious to me."
Caron's ship swept over, low above the cables, and the grindingconcussion of a bomb lifted the ship, hurled it down with the stern endtwisted to uselessness. The screen went dead.
Gray caught the half stunned girl. "I wish to heaven I could get rid ofyou!" he grated. "And I don't know why I don't!"
But she was with him when he set out down the valley, making for thecliff caves, up where the copper cables were anchored.
Caron's ship, a fast, small fighter, wheeled between the cliffs andturned back. Gray dropped flat, holding the girl down. Bombs pelted themwith dirt and uprooted vegetables, started fires in the wheat. The pilotfound a big enough break in the cables and came in for a landing.
Gray was up and running again. He knew the way into the exploredgalleries. From there on, it was anybody's guess.
Caron was brazen enough about it. The subtle way had failed. Now he wasgoing all out. And he was really quite safe. With the broken cables toact as conductors, the first thunderstorm would obliterate all proof ofhis activities in this valley. Mercury, because of its high electricalpotential, was cut off from communication with other worlds. Moulton,even if he had knowledge of what went on, could not send for help.
Gray wondered briefly what Caron intended to do in case he, Gray, madegood his escape. That outpost in the main valley, for which Ward hadbeen heading, wasn't kept for fun. Besides, Caron was too smart to haveonly one string to his bow.
Shouts, the spatter of shots around them. The narrow trail loomed above.Gray sent the girl scrambling up.
The sun burst up over the high peaks, leaving the black shadow of thevalley still untouched. Caron's ship roared off. But six of its crewcame after Gray and Jill Moulton.
* * * * *
The chill dark of the tunnel mouth swallowed them. Keeping right toavoid the great copper posts that held the cables, strung through holesdrilled in the solid rock of the gallery's outer wall, Gray urged thegirl along.
The cleft his hand was searching for opened. Drawing the girl inside,around a jutting shoulder, he stopped, listening.
Footsteps echoed outside, grew louder, swept by. There was no light. Butthe steps were too sure to have been made in the dark.
"Infra-red torches and goggles," Gray said tersely, "You see, but yourquarry doesn't. Useful gadget. Come on."
"But where? What are you going to do?"
"Escape, girl. Remember? They smashed my ship. But there must be anotherone on Mercury. I'm going to find it."
"I don't understand."
"You probably never will. Here's where I leave you. That Martian Galahadwill be along any minute. He'll take you home."
Her voice came soft and puzzled through the dark.
"I don't understand you, Gray. You wouldn't risk my life. Yet you'returning me loose, knowing that I might save you, knowing that I'll huntyou down if I can. I thought you were a hardened cynic."
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"What makes you think I'm not?"
"If you were, you'd have kicked me out the waste tubs of the ship andgone on. You'd never have turned back."
"I told you," he said roughly, "I don't kill women." He turned away, buther harsh chuckle followed him.
"You're a fool, Gray. You've lost truth--and you aren't even true toyour lie."
He paused, in swift anger. Voices the sound of running men, came up fromthe path. He broke into a silent run, following the dying echoes ofCaron's men.
"Run, Gray!" cried Jill. "Because we're coming