Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  Then he grinned to himself. That's it. Kor wants him dead, and that is the way to do it. Pin him under a big rock, then bury him alive under more rocks. A few at a time, stretched out nicely. While his oxygen supply gives out. That should put enough stress on his nervous system to hospitalize him, at least. Then he can assassinated by more conventional means. Perhaps he will even be as obliging as Massan, and have a fatal stroke.

  A large rock. One that is light enough to lift and throw, yet also big enough to pin him for a few moments. Once he is down, it will be easy enough to bury him under more rocks.

  The Kerak major spotted a boulder of the proper size, a few yards away. He backed toward it, throwing small stones in Hector's direction to keep the Watchman busy. In return, a barrage of stones began striking all around him. Several hit him, one hard enough to knock him slightly off-balance.

  Slowly, patiently, Odal reached his chosen weapon--an oblong boulder, about the size of a small chair. He crouched behind it and tugged at it experimentally. It moved slightly. Another stone zinged off his arm, hard enough to hurt. Odal could see Hector clearly now, standing atop a small rise, calmly firing pellets at him. He smiled as he coiled, catlike, and tensed himself. He gripped the boulder with his arms and hands.

  Then in one vicious uncoiling motion he snatched it up, whirled around, and hurled it at Hector. The violence of his action sent him tottering awkwardly as he released the boulder. He fell to the ground, but kept his eyes fixed on the boulder as it tumbled end over end, directly at the Watchman.

  For an eternally-long instant Hector stood motionless, seemingly entranced. Then he leaped sideways, floating dreamlike in the low gravity, as the stone hurtled inexorably past him.

  Odal pounded his fist on the ground in fury. He started up, only to have a good-sized stone slam against his shoulder, and knock him flat again. He looked up in time to see Hector fire another. The stone puffed into the ground inches from Odal's helmet. The Kerak major flattened himself. Several more stones clattered on his helmet and oxygen tank. Then silence.

  Odal looked up and saw Hector squatting down, reaching for more ammunition. The Kerak warrior stood up quickly, his own fists filled with throwing stones. He cocked his arm to throw--

  But something made him turn to look behind him. The boulder loomed before his eyes, still tumbling slowly, as it had when he had thrown it. It was too close and too big to avoid. It smashed into Odal, picked him off his feet and slammed against the upjutting rocks a few yards away.

  Even before he started to feel the pain in his midsection, Odal began trying to push the boulder off. But he could not get enough leverage. Then he saw the Star Watchman's form standing over him.

  "I didn't really think you'd fall for it," Odal heard Hector's voice in his earphones. "I mean ... didn't you realize that the boulder was too massive to escape completely after it had missed me? You could've calculated its orbit ... you just threw it into a, uh, six-minute orbit around the planetoid. It had to come back to perigee ... right where you were standing when you threw it, you know."

  Odal said nothing, but strained every cell in his pain-wracked body to get free of the boulder. Hector reached over his shoulder and began fumbling with the valves that were pressed against the rocks.

  "Sorry to do this ... but I'm not, uh, killing you, at least ... just defeating you. Let's see ... one of these is the oxygen valve, and the other, I think, is the emergency rocket pack ... now, which is which?" Odal felt the Watchman's hands searching for the proper valve. "I should've dreamed up suits without the rocket pack ... confuses things ... there, that's it."

  Hector's hand tightened on a valve and turned it sharply. The rocket roared to life and Odal was hurtled free of the boulder, shot uncontrolled completely off the planetoid. Hector was bowled over by the blast and rolled halfway around the tiny chink of rock and metal.

  Odal tried to reach around to throttle down the rocket, but the pain in his body was too great. He was slipping into unconsciousness. He fought against it. He knew he must return to the planetoid and somehow kill the opponent. But gradually the pain overpowered him. His eyes were closing, closing--

  And, quite abruptly, he found himself sitting in the booth of the dueling machine. It took a moment for him to realize that he was back in the real world. Then his thoughts cleared. He had failed to kill Hector.

  And at the door of the booth stood Kor, his face a grim mask of anger.

  XVI

  The office was that of the new prime minister of the Acquataine Cluster. It had been loaned to Leoh for his conversation with Sir Harold Spencer. For the moment, it seemed like a great double room: half of it was dark, warm woods, rich draperies, floor-to-ceiling bookcases. The other half, from the tri-di screen onward, was the austere, metallic utility of a starship compartment.

  Spencer was saying, "So this hired assassin, after killing four men and nearly wrecking a government, has returned to his native worlds."

  Leoh nodded. "He returned under guard. I suppose he is in disgrace, or perhaps even under arrest."

  "Servants of a dictator never know when they will be the ones who are served--on a platter." Spencer chuckled. "And the Watchman who assisted you, this Junior Lieutenant Hector, what of him?"

  "He's not here just now. The Dulaq girl has him in tow, somewhere. Evidently it's the first time he's been a hero--"

  Spencer shifted his weight in his chair. "I have long prided myself on the conviction that any Star Watch officer can handle almost any kind of emergency anywhere in the galaxy. From your description of the past few weeks, I was beginning to have my doubts. However, Junior Lieutenant Hector seems to have won the day ... almost in spite of himself."

  "Don't underestimate him," Leoh said, smiling. "He turned out to be an extremely valuable man. I think he will make a fine officer."

  Spencer grunted an affirmative.

  "Well," Leoh said, "that's the complete story, to date. I believe that Odal is finished. But the Kerak Worlds have made good their annexation of the Szarno Confederacy, and the Acquataine Cluster is still very wobbly, politically. We haven't heard the last of Kanus--not by a long shot."

  Spencer lifted a shaggy eyebrow. "Neither," he rumbled, "has he heard the last from us."

  * * *

  Contents

  A WORLD IS BORN

  By Leigh Brackett

  The first ripples of blue fire touched Dio's men. Bolts of it fastened on gun-butts, and knuckles. Men screamed and fell. Jill cried out as he tore silver ornaments from her dress.

  Mel Gray flung down his hoe with a sudden tigerish fierceness and stood erect. Tom Ward, working beside him, glanced at Gray's Indianesque profile, the youth of it hardened by war and the hells of the Eros prison blocks.

  A quick flash of satisfaction crossed Ward's dark eyes. Then he grinned and said mockingly.

  "Hell of a place to spend the rest of your life, ain't it?"

  Mel Gray stared with slitted blue eyes down the valley. The huge sun of Mercury seared his naked body. Sweat channeled the dust on his skin. His throat ached with thirst. And the bitter landscape mocked him more than Wade's dark face.

  "The rest of my life," he repeated softly. "The rest of my life!"

  He was twenty-eight.

  Wade spat in the damp black earth. "You ought to be glad--helping the unfortunate, building a haven for the derelict...."

  "Shut up!" Fury rose in Gray, hotter than the boiling springs that ran from the Sunside to water the valleys. He hated Mercury. He hated John Moulton and his daughter Jill, who had conceived this plan of building a new world for the destitute and desperate veterans of the Second Interplanetary War.

  "I've had enough 'unselfish service'," he whispered. "I'm serving myself from now on."

  Escape. That was all he wanted. Escape from these stifling valleys, from the snarl of the wind in the barren crags that towered higher than Everest into airless space. Escape from the surveillance of the twenty guards, the forced companionship of the ninety-ni
ne other veteran-convicts.

  Wade poked at the furrows between the sturdy hybrid tubers. "It ain't possible, kid. Not even for 'Duke' Gray, the 'light-fingered genius who held the Interstellar Police at a standstill for five years'." He laughed. "I read your publicity."

  Gray stroked slow, earth-stained fingers over his sleek cap of yellow hair. "You think so?" he asked softly.

  Dio the Martian came down the furrow, his lean, wiry figure silhouetted against the upper panorama of the valley; the neat rows of vegetables and the green riot of Venusian wheat, dotted with toiling men and their friendly guards.

  Dio's green, narrowed eyes studied Gray's hard face.

  "What's the matter, Gray? Trying to start something?"

  "Suppose I were?" asked Gray silkily. Dio was the unofficial leader of the convict-veterans. There was about his thin body and hatchet face some of the grim determination that had made the Martians cling to their dying world and bring life to it again.

  "You volunteered, like the rest of us," said the Martian. "Haven't you the guts to stick it?"

  "The hell I volunteered! The IPA sent me. And what's it to you?"

  "Only this." Dio's green eyes were slitted and ugly. "You've only been here a month. The rest of us came nearly a year ago--because we wanted to. We've worked like slaves, because we wanted to. In three weeks the crops will be in. The Moulton Project will be self-supporting. Moulton will get his permanent charter, and we'll be on our way.

  "There are ninety-nine of us, Gray, who want the Moulton Project to succeed. We know that that louse Caron of Mars doesn't want it to, since pitchblende was discovered. We don't know whether you're working for him or not, but you're a troublemaker.

  "There isn't to be any trouble, Gray. We're not giving the Interplanetary Prison Authority any excuse to revoke its decision and give Caron of Mars a free hand here. We'll see to anyone who tries it. Understand?"

  * * * * *

  Mel Gray took one slow step forward, but Ward's sharp, "Stow it! A guard," stopped him. The Martian worked back up the furrow. The guard, reassured, strolled back up the valley, squinting at the jagged streak of pale-grey sky that was going black as low clouds formed, only a few hundred feet above the copper cables that ran from cliff to cliff high over their heads.

  "Another storm," growled Ward. "It gets worse as Mercury enters perihelion. Lovely world, ain't it?"

  "Why did you volunteer?" asked Gray, picking up his hoe.

  Ward shrugged. "I had my reasons."

  Gray voiced the question that had troubled him since his transfer. "There were hundreds on the waiting list to replace the man who died. Why did they send me, instead?"

  "Some fool blunder," said Ward carelessly. And then, in the same casual tone, "You mean it, about escaping?"

  Gray stared at him. "What's it to you?"

  Ward moved closer. "I can help you?"

  A stab of mingled hope and wary suspicion transfixed Gray's heart. Ward's dark face grinned briefly into his, with a flash of secretive black eyes, and Gray was conscious of distrust.

  "What do you mean, help me?"

  Dio was working closer, watching them. The first growl of thunder rattled against the cliff faces. It was dark now, the pink flames of the Dark-side aurora visible beyond the valley mouth.

  "I've got--connections," returned Ward cryptically. "Interested?"

  Gray hesitated. There was too much he couldn't understand. Moreover, he was a lone wolf. Had been since the Second Interplanetary War wrenched him from the quiet backwater of his country home an eternity of eight years before and hammered him into hardness--a cynic who trusted nobody and nothing but Mel 'Duke' Gray.

  "If you have connections," he said slowly, "why don't you use 'em yourself?"

  "I got my reasons." Again that secretive grin. "But it's no hide off you, is it? All you want is to get away."

  That was true. It would do no harm to hear what Ward had to say.

  Lightning burst overhead, streaking down to be caught and grounded by the copper cables. The livid flare showed Dio's face, hard with worry and determination. Gray nodded.

  "Tonight, then," whispered Ward. "In the barracks."

  * * * * *

  Out from the cleft where Mel Gray worked, across the flat plain of rock stripped naked by the wind that raved across it, lay the deep valley that sheltered the heart of the Moulton Project.

  Hot springs joined to form a steaming river. Vegetation grew savagely under the huge sun. The air, kept at almost constant temperature by the blanketing effect of the hot springs, was stagnant and heavy.

  But up above, high over the copper cables that crossed every valley where men ventured, the eternal wind of Mercury screamed and snarled between the naked cliffs.

  Three concrete domes crouched on the valley floor, housing barracks, tool-shops, kitchens, store-houses, and executive quarters, connected by underground passages. Beside the smallest dome, joined to it by a heavily barred tunnel, was an insulated hangar, containing the only space ship on Mercury.

  In the small dome, John Moulton leaned back from a pile of reports, took a pinch of Martian snuff, sneezed lustily, and said.

  "Jill, I think we've done it."

  The grey-eyed, black-haired young woman turned from the quartzite window through which she had been watching the gathering storm overhead. The thunder from other valleys reached them as a dim barrage which, at this time of Mercury's year, was never still.

  "I don't know," she said. "It seems that nothing can happen now, and yet.... It's been too easy."

  "Easy!" snorted Moulton. "We've broken our backs fighting these valleys. And our nerves, fighting time. But we've licked 'em!"

  He rose, shaggy grey hair tousled, grey eyes alight.

  "I told the IPA those men weren't criminals. And I was right. They can't deny me the charter now. No matter how much Caron of Mars would like to get his claws on this radium."

  He took Jill by the shoulders and shook her, laughing.

  "Three weeks, girl, that's all. First crops ready for harvest, first pay-ore coming out of the mines. In three weeks my permanent charter will have to be granted, according to agreement, and then....

  "Jill," he added solemnly, "we're seeing the birth of a world."

  "That's what frightens me." Jill glanced upward as the first flare of lightning struck down, followed by a crash of thunder that shook the dome.

  "So much can happen at a birth. I wish the three weeks were over!"

  "Nonsense, girl! What could possibly happen?"

  She looked at the copper cables, burning with the electricity running along them, and thought of the one hundred and twenty-two souls in that narrow Twilight Belt--with the fierce heat of the Sunside before them and the spatial cold of the Shadow side at their backs, fighting against wind and storm and heat to build a world to replace the ones the War had taken from them.

  "So much could happen," she whispered. "An accident, an escape...."

  The inter-dome telescreen buzzed its signal. Jill, caught in a queer mood of premonition, went to it.

  The face of Dio the Martian appeared on the screen, still wet and dirty from the storm-soaked fields, disheveled from his battle across the plain in the chaotic winds.

  "I want to see you, Miss Moulton," he said. "There's something funny I think you ought to know."

  "Of course," said Jill, and met her father's eyes. "I think we'll see, now, which one of us is right."

  * * * * *

  The barracks were quiet, except for the mutter of distant thunder and the heavy breathing of exhausted men. Tom Ward crouched in the darkness by Mel Gray's bunk.

  "You ain't gonna go soft at the last minute, are you?" he whispered. "Because I can't afford to take chances."

  "Don't worry," Gray returned grimly. "What's your proposition?"

  "I can give you the combination to the lock of the hangar passage. All you have to do is get into Moulton's office, where the passage door is, and go to it. The ship's a two-seater. You ca
n get her out of the valley easy."

  Gray's eyes narrowed in the dark. "What's the catch?"

  "There ain't none. I swear it."

  "Look, Ward. I'm no fool. Who's behind this, and why?"

  "That don't make no difference. All you want ... ow!"

  Gray's fingers had fastened like steel claws on his wrist.

  "I get it, now," said Gray slowly. "That's why I was sent here. Somebody wanted me to make trouble for Moulton." His fingers tightened agonizingly, and his voice sank to a slow drawl.

  "I don't like being a pawn in somebody else's chess game."

  "Okay, okay! It ain't my fault. Lemme go." Ward rubbed his bruised wrist. "Sure, somebody--I ain't sayin' who--sent you here, knowin' you'd want to escape. I'm here to help you. You get free, I get paid, the Big Boy gets what he wants. Okay?"

  Gray was silent, scowling in the darkness. Then he said.

  "All right. I'll take a chance."

  "Then listen. You tell Moulton you have a complaint. I'll...."

  Light flooded the dark as the door clanged open. Ward leaped like a startled rabbit, but the light speared him, held him. Ward felt a pulse of excitement beat up in him.

  The long ominous shadows of the guards raised elongated guns. The barracks stirred and muttered, like a vast aviary waking.

  "Ward and Gray," said one of the guards. "Moulton wants you."

  Gray rose from his bunk with the lithe, delicate grace of a cat. The monotony of sleep and labor was ended. Something had broken. Life was once again a moving thing.

  * * * * *

  John Moulton sat behind the untidy desk. Dio the Martian sat grimly against the wall. There was a guard beside him, watching.

  Mel Gray noted all this as he and Ward came in. But his cynical blue eyes went beyond, to a door with a ponderous combination lock. Then they were attracted by something else--the tall, slim figure standing against the black quartz panes of the far wall.