by Anthology
We were in position again. I flung my last missile, watched its light as it dropped. On the dome roof two of Miko's men were crouching. My bomb was truly aimed--perhaps one of the few in all our bombardment which landed directly on the dome roof. But the waiting marksmen fired at it with short range heat projectors and exploded it harmlessly while it was still above them.
We swung up and away. I saw, high above us, Grantline's platform, recognizing its red signal light. There seemed a lull. The enemy fire had died down to only a very occasional bolt. In the confusion of my whirling impressions, I wondered if Miko were in distress. Not that! We had not hit his ship; perhaps we had done little damage indeed! It was we who were in distress. Two of our platforms had fallen--two out of six. Or more, of which I did not know.
I saw one rising off to the side of us. Grantline was over us. Well, we were at least three. And then I saw the fourth.
"Grantline is calling us up, Gregg."
Grantline's signal light was summoning us from the attack. He was a thousand feet or more above us.
I was suddenly shocked with horror. The searchray from our camp suddenly vanished! Anita wheeled us to face the distant ledge. The camp lights showed, and over one of the buildings was a distress light!
Had the crack in our front wall broken, threatening explosion of all the buildings? The wild thought swept me. But it was not that. I could see light stabs from the cliff outside the main building. Miko had dared to send some men to attack our almost deserted camp!
Grantline realized it. His red helmet light semaphored the command to follow him. His platform soared away, heading for the camp, with the other two behind him.
Anita lifted us to follow. But I checked her.
"No! Off to the right, across the valley."
"But Gregg!"
"Do as I say, Anita."
She swung us diagonally away from both the camp and the brigand ship. I prayed that we might not be noticed by the brigands.
"Anita, listen: I've got an idea!"
The attack on the brigand ship was over. It lay enveloped in the darkness of the powder gas cloud and its own darkness bombs. But it was uninjured.
Miko had answered us with our own tactics. He had practically unmanned the ship, no doubt, and had sent his men to our buildings. The fight had shifted. But I was now without ammunition, save for two or three bullet projectors.
Of what use for our platform to rush back? Miko expected that. His attack on the camp was undoubtedly made just for that purpose: to lure us back there.
"Anita, if we can get down on the rocks somewhere near the ship, and creep up unobserved in that blackness...."
I might be able to reach the manual hull lock, rip it open and let the air out. If I could get into its pressure chamber and unseal the inner slide....
"It would wreck the ship, Anita: exhaust all its air. Shall we try it?"
"Whatever you say, Gregg."
We seemed to be unobserved. We skimmed close to the valley floor, a mile from the ship. We headed slowly toward it, sailing low over the rocks.
Then we landed, left the platform. "Let me go first, Anita."
I held a bullet projector. With slow, cautious leaps, we advanced. Anita was behind me. I had wanted to leave her with the platform, but she would not stay. And to be with me seemed at least equally safe.
The rocks were deserted. I thought that there was very little chance that any of the enemy would lurk here. We clambered over the pitted, scarred surface; the higher crags, etched with Earthlight, stood like sentinels in the gloom.
The brigand ship with its surrounding darkness was not far from us. No one was out here. We passed the wreckage of broken projectors, and gruesome, shattered human forms.
We prowled closer. The hull of the ship loomed ahead of us. All dark.
We came at last close against the sleek metal hull side, slid along it to where I was sure the manual lock would be located.
Abruptly I realized that Anita was not behind me! Then I saw her at a little distance, struggling in the grip of a giant helmeted figure! The brigand lifted her--turned, and ran.
I did not dare fire. I bounded after them along the hull-side, around under the curve of the pointed bow, down along the other side.
I had mistaken the hull port location. It was here. The running, bounding figure reached it, slid the panel. I was only fifty feet away--not much more than a single leap. I saw Anita being shoved into the pressure lock. The Martian flung himself after her.
I fired at him in desperation, but missed. I came with a rush. And as I reached the port, it slid closed in my face, barring me!
XXXVII
With puny fists I pounded the panel. A small pane in it was transparent. Within the lock I could see the blurred figures of Anita and her captor--and it seemed, another figure there. The lock was some ten feet square, with a low ceiling. It glowed with a dim tube-light.
I strained at it with futile, silent effort. The mechanism was here to open this manual; but it was now clasped from within so would not operate.
A few seconds, while I stood there in a panic of confusion, raging to get in. This disaster had come so suddenly. I did not plan: I had no thought save to batter my way in and rescue Anita. I recall that I finally beat on the glassite pane with my bullet projector until the weapon was bent and useless. And I flung it with a wild despairing rage at my feet.
They were letting the ship's air-pressure into this lock. Soon they would open the inner panel, step into the secondary chamber--and in a moment more would be within the ship's hull corridor. Anita, lost to me!
The outer panel suddenly opened! I had lunged against it with my shoulder; the giant figure inside slid it. It was taken by surprise! I half fell forward.
Huge arms went around me. The goggled face of the helmet peered into mine.
"So it is you, Haljan! I thought I recognized that little device over your helmet bracket. And here is my little Anita, come back to me again!"
Miko!
This was he. His great bloated arms encircling me, bending me backward, holding me helpless. I saw over his shoulder that Anita was clutched in the grip of another helmeted figure. No giant, but tall for an Earth man--almost as tall as myself. Then the tube light in the room illumined the visor. I saw the face, recognized it. Moa!
I gasped, "So--I've got you--Miko--"
"Got me! You're a fool to the last, Haljan! A fool to the last! But you were always a fool."
I could scarcely move in his grip. My arms were pinned. As he slowly bent me backward, I wound my legs around one of his: it was as unyielding as a steel pillar. He had closed the outer panel; the air pressure in the lock was rising. I could feel it against my suit.
My helmeted head was being forced backward; Miko's left arm held me. In his gloved right hand as it came slowly up over my throat I saw a knife blade, its naked, sharpened metal glistening blue-white in the light from overhead.
I seized his wrist. But my puny strength could not hold him. The knife, against all of my efforts, came slowly down.
A moment of this slow, deadly combat--the end of everything for me.
I was aware of the helmeted figure of Moa casting off Anita--and then the two girls leaping upon Miko. It threw him off his balance, and my hanging weight made him topple forward. He took a step to recover himself; his hand with the knife was flung up with an instinctive, involuntary balancing gesture. And as it came down again, I forced the knife-blade to graze his throat. Its point caught in the fabric of his suit.
His startled oath jangled in my ears. The girls were clawing at him; we were all four scrambling, swaying. With despairing strength I twisted at his wrist. The knife went into his throat. I plunged it deeper.
His suit went flabby. He crumpled over me and fell, knocking me to the floor. His voice, with the horrible gurgling rasp of death in it, rattled my ear-grids.
"Not such a fool--are you, Haljan--"
Moa's helmeted head was close over us. I saw that
she had seized the knife, jerked it from her brother's throat. She leaped backward, waving it.
I twisted from beneath Miko's lifeless, inert body. As I got to my feet, Anita flung herself to shield me. Moa was across the lock, back up against the wall. The knife in her hand went up. She stood for the briefest instant regarding Anita and me, holding each other. I thought that she was about to leap upon us. But before I could move, the knife came down and plunged into her breast. She fell forward, her grotesque helmet striking the grid-floor almost at my feet.
"Gregg!"
"She's dead."
"No! She moved! Get her helmet off! There's enough air here."
My helmet pressure indicator was faintly buzzing to show that a safe pressure was in the room. I shut off Moa's Erentz motors, unfastened her helmet and raised it off. We gently turned her body. She lay with closed eyes, her pallid face blue. With our own helmets off, we knelt over her.
"Oh, Gregg--is she dead?"
"No. Not quite--but dying."
"Gregg, I don't want her to die! She was trying to help you there at the last."
She opened her eyes. The film of death was glazing them. But she saw me, recognized me.
"Gregg--"
"Yes, Moa. I'm here."
Her vivid lips were faintly drawn in a smile. "I'm--so glad--you took the helmets off, Gregg. I'm--going--you know."
"No!"
"Going--back to Mars--to rest with the fire-makers--where I came from. I was thinking--maybe you would kiss me, Gregg?"
Anita gently pushed me down. I pressed the white, faintly smiling lips with mine. She sighed, and it ended with a rattle in her throat.
"Thank you--Gregg--closer--I can't talk so loudly--"
One of her gloved hands struggled to touch me, but she had no strength and it fell back. Her words were the faintest of whispers:
"There was no use living--without your love. But I want you to see--now--that a Martian girl can die with a smile--"
Her eyelids fluttered down; it seemed that she sighed and then was not breathing. But on her livid face the faint smile still lingered, to show me how a Martian girl could die.
We had forgotten for the moment where we were. As I glanced up I saw through the inner panel, past the secondary lock, that the hull's corridor was visible. And along its length a group of Martians was advancing! They saw us, and came running.
"Anita! Look! We've got to get out of here!"
The secondary lock was open to the corridor. We jammed on our helmets. The unhelmeted brigands by then were fumbling at the inner panel. I pulled at the lever of the outer panel. The brigands were hurrying, thinking that they could be in time to stop me. One of the more cautious fumbled with a helmet.
"Anita, run! Try and keep your feet."
I slid the outer panel and pushed at Anita. Simultaneously the brigands opened the inner port.
The air came with a tempestuous rush. A blast through the inner port--through the small pressure lock--a wild rush, out to the airless Moon. All the air in the ship madly rushing to escape....
Like feathers, we were blown with it. I recall an impression of the hurtling brigand figures and swift flying rocks under me. A silent crash as I struck.
Then soundless, empty blackness.
XXXVIII
"Is he conscious? We'd better take him back: get his helmet off."
"It's over. We can get back to the camp now. Venza dear, we've won--it's over."
"He hears us!"
"Gregg!"
"He hears us. He'll be all right!"
I opened my eyes, I lay on the rocks. Over my helmet, other helmets were peering, and faint, familiar voices mingled with the roaring in my ears.
"--back to the camp and get his helmet off."
"Are his motors smooth? Keep them right, Snap--he must have good air."
I seemed unhurt. But Anita....
She was here. "Gregg, dear one!"
Anita safe! All four of us here on the Earthlit rocks, close outside the brigand ship.
"Anita!"
She held me, lifted me. I was uninjured. I could stand: I staggered up and stood swaying. The brigand ship, a hundred feet away, loomed dark and silent, a lifeless hulk, already empty of air, drained in the mad blast outward. Like the wreck of the Planetara--a dead, useless, pulseless hulk already.
We four stood together, triumphant. The battle was over. The brigands were worsted, almost the last man of them dead or dying. No more than ten or fifteen had been available for that final assault upon the camp buildings. Miko's last strategy. I think perhaps he had intended, with his few remaining men, to take the ship and make away, deserting his fellows.
All on the ship, caught unhelmeted by the explosion, were dead long since.
I stood listening to Snap's triumphant account. It had not been difficult for the flying platforms to hunt down the attacking brigands on the open rocks. We had only lost one more platform.
Human hearts beat sometimes with very selfish emotions. It was a triumphant ending for us, and we hardly gave a thought that half of Grantline's men had perished.
We huddled on Snap's platform. It rose, lurching drunkenly barely carrying us.
As we headed for the Grantline buildings, where still the rift in the wall had not quite broken, there came the final triumph. Miko had been aware of it, and knew he had lost. Grantline's searchlight leaped upward, swept the sky, caught its sought-for object--a huge silver cylinder, bathed brightly in the white searchbeam glare.
The police ship from Earth.
* * *
Contents
POLICE YOUR PLANET
by Lester del Rey
Chapter I
ONE WAY TICKET
There were ten passengers in the little pressurized cabin of the electric bus that shuttled between the rocket field and Marsport. Ten men, the driver--and Bruce Gordon.
He sat apart from the others, as he had kept to himself on the ten-day trip between Earth and Mars, with the yellow stub of his ticket still stuck defiantly in the band of his hat, proclaiming that Earth had paid his passage without his permission being asked. His big, lean body was slumped slightly in the seat. There was no expression on his face.
He listened to the driver explaining to a couple of firsters that they were actually on what appeared to be one of the mysterious canals when viewed from Earth. Every book on Mars gave the fact that the canals were either an illusion or something which could not be detected on the surface of the planet.
He glanced back toward the rocket that still pointed skyward back on the field, and then forward toward the city of Marsport, sprawling out in a mess of slums beyond the edges of the dome that had been built to hold air over the central part. And at last he stirred and reached for the yellow stub.
He grimaced at the ONE WAY stamped on it, then tore it into bits and let the pieces scatter over the floor. He counted them as they fell; thirty pieces, one for each year of his life. Little ones for the two years he'd wasted as a cop. Shreds for the four years as a kid in the ring before that--he'd never made the top. Bigger bits for two years also wasted in trying his hand at professional gambling; and the six final pieces that spelled his rise from a special reporter helping out with a police shake-up coverage, through a regular leg-man turning up rackets, and on up like a meteor until.... He'd made his big scoop, all right. He'd dug up enough about the Mercury scandals to double circulation.
And the government had explained what a fool he'd been for printing half of a story that was never supposed to be printed until all could be revealed. They'd given Bruce Gordon his final assignment.
He shrugged. He'd bought a suit of airtight coveralls and a helmet at the field; he had some cash, and a set of reader cards in his pocket. The supply house, Earthside, had assured him that this pattern had never been exported to Mars. With them and the knife he'd selected, he might get by.
The Solar Security office had given him the knife practice, to make sure he could use it, just as they'd made
sure he hadn't taken extra money with him beyond the regulation amount.
"You're a traitor, and we'd like nothing better than seeing your guts spilled," the Security man had told him. "That paper you swiped was marked top secret. But we don't get many men with your background--cop, tinhorn, fighter--who have brains enough for our work. So you're bound for Mars, rather than the Mercury mines. If..."
It was a big if, and a vague one. They needed men on Mars who could act as links in their information bureau, and be ready to work on their side when the expected trouble came. They wanted men who could serve them loyally, even without orders. If he did them enough service, they might let him back to Earth. If he caused trouble enough, they could still ship him to Mercury.
"And suppose nothing happens?" he asked.
"Then who cares? You're just lucky enough to be alive."
"And what makes you think I'm going to be a spy for Security?"
The other had shrugged. "Why not, Gordon? You've been a spy for a yellow scandal sheet. Why not for us?"
Gordon had been smart enough to realize that perhaps Security was right.
They were in the slums around the city now. Marsport had been settled faster than it was ready to receive. Temporary buildings had been thrown up, and then had remained, decaying into deathtraps. It wasn't a pretty view that visitors got as they first reached Mars. But nobody except the romantic fools had ever thought frontiers were pretty.
The drummer who had watched Gordon tear up his yellow stub moved forward now. "First time?" he asked.
Gordon nodded, mentally cataloguing the drummer as the cockroach type, midway between the small-businessman slug and the petty-crook spider types that weren't worth bothering with. But the other took it as interest.
"Been here dozens of times, myself. Risking your life just to go into Marsport. Why Congress doesn't clean it up, I'll never know!"
Gordon's mind switched to the readers in his bag. The cards were plastic, and should be good for a week or so of use before they showed wear. During that time, by playing it carefully, he should have his stake. Then, if the gaming tables here were as crudely run as an oldtimer he'd known on Earth had said, he could try a coup.