Masters stammered, “I didn’t see it! I . . . I was just—”
“The hell you say!” Tony whirled on the other two, transfixing them with cold eyes.
“Cut it out,” he said, lips barely moving. “Either you’re letting your nerves override you, or either one or both of you is blaming the other for a move he made himself. You might as well know the skeleton I saw was intact. What do you think a blow torch would do to a skeleton?” His lips curled.
Braker slowly picked up his torch with a poisonous glance at Yates. Yates as slowly picked his sledgehammer. He turned on Tony.
“You said the skeleton was intact?” Eagerness, not evident from his carefully sullen voice, was alive in his eyes.
Tony’s glance passed over the man’s broken, protruding jaw.
“The head,” he replied, “was in shadow.”
He winced. The passing of hope was a hard thing to watch, even in a man like Jawbone Yates.
He turned, releasing his breath in a long, tired sigh. What a man-sized job this was. Outwitting fate – negating what had happened!
Tony worked longer than he expected that day, tracing down the web of asbestos-covered rocket fuel conduits, marking breaks down on the chart. The sun sank slowly. Darkness swept over the plain, along with a rising wind. He turned on the lights, worked steadily on, haggard, nerves worn. Too much work to allow a slowing up. The invading planet rose each night a degree or more larger. Increasing tidal winds and rainstorms attested to a growing gravitational attraction.
He put an x-mark on the check – and then froze. A scream had gone blasting through the night.
Tony dropped pencil and chart, went flying up the ramp to the upper corridor. He received the full impact of Masters’ second scream. Masters had left his room, was running up the corridor, clad in pajamas. There was a knife sticking out of his shoulder.
Tony, gripped with horror, impelled himself after the man, caught up with him as he plunged face downward. He dropped to one knee, staring at a heavy meat knife that had been plunged clear through the neck muscles on Masters’ left shoulder, clearly a bid for a heart stroke.
Masters turned on his side. He babbled, face alive with horror. Tony rose, went with the full power of his legs toward the lounge.
A figure showed, running ahead of him. He caught up with it, whipped his arm around the man’s neck.
“You!”
Yates squirmed tigerishly. He turned, broke loose, face alive with fury. Tony’s open palm lashed out, caught Yates full on the face. Yates staggered and fell. He raised himself to one elbow.
“Why’d you do it?” Tony rasped, standing over him.
Yates’ face was livid. “Because I’d rather live than anything else I can think of!” His booted foot lashed out. Tony leaped back. Yates rose. Tony brought his bunched fist up from his knees with all the ferocity he felt. Yates literally rose an inch off the floor, sagged, and sopped to the floor.
Tony picked him up in one arm, and flung him bodily into the lounge.
Braker rose from his sleeping position on a cushioned bench, blinking.
Tony said cuttingly, “Your pal ran a knife through Masters shoulder.”
“Huh?” Braker was on his feet. “Kill him?” In the half-light his eyes glowed.
“You’d be glad if he did!”
Braker looked at Yates. Then, slowly, “Listen, copper. Don’t make the mistake of putting me in the same class with a rat like Yates. I don’t knife people in the back. But if Masters was dead, I’d be glad of it. It might solve a problem that’s bothering the rest of us. What you going to do with him?”
“I already did it. But tell Yates he better watch out for Masters, now.”
Braker grunted scornfully. “Huh. Masters’ll crack up and down his yellow back.”
Tony left.
Laurette and Overland were taking care of Masters in his room. The wound was clean, hardly bleeding.
Overland, somewhat pale, was hanging onto the door. “It’s not serious, honey,” he said, as her fingers nimbly wound bandages.
“Not serious?” She turned stricken eyes up to Tony. “Look at him. And Daddy says it’s not serious!”
Tony winced. Masters lay face down on the bed, babbling hysterically to himself, his eyes preternaturally wide. His skin was a pasty white, and horror had etched flabby lines around his lips.
“Knifed me,” he gasped. “Kniffed me. I was sleeping, that was the trouble. But I heard him—” He heaved convulsively, and buried his face in his pillow.
Laurette finished her job, face pale.
“I’ll stay here the rest of the night,” Tony told her.
Overland gnawed painfully at his lower lip.
“Who did it?”
Tony told him.
“What?” Tony laughed scornfully. “Masters had the same trick pulled on him that he pulled on me. He isn’t any angel himself.”
Overland nodded wearily. His daughter helped him out of the room.
During the night, Masters tossed and babbled. Finally he fell into a deep sleep. Tony leaned back in a chair, moodily listening to the sough of the wind, later on watching the sun come up, staining the massed clouds with running, changing streaks of color.
Masters awoke. He rolled over. He saw Tony, and went rigid. He came to his feet, and huddled back against the wall.
“Get out,” he gasped, making a violent motion with his hand.
“You’re out of your head,” said Tony angrily. “It was Yates.”
Masters panted, “I know it was. What difference does it make? You’re all in the same class. I’m going to watch myself after this. I’m going to keep my back turned the right way. I’m going to be sure that none of you—”
Tony put his hands on his hips, eyes narrowed.
“If you’ve got any sense, you’ll try to forget this and act like a human being. Better to be dead than the kind of man you’ll turn into.”
“Get out. Get out!” Masters waved his hand again, shuddering.
Tony left, shaking his head slowly.
Tony stood outside the ship, smoking a cigarette. It was night. He heard a footstep behind him. He fell back a step, whirling.
“Nerves getting you, too?” Laurette Overland laughed shakily, a wool scarf blowing back in the heavy, unnatural wind.
Tony relaxed. “After two weeks of watching everybody watching everybody else, I guess so.”
She shivered. He sensed it was not from the bite of the wind. “I suppose you mean Erle.”
“Partly. Your father’s up and around today, isn’t he? He shouldn’t have gotten up that night.”
“He can get around all right.”
“Maybe he better lock himself in his room.” He smiled with little amusement. “The others are certain the ring will come back.”
She was silent. Through the ominous gloom, lit now by a crescent planet that was visible as a small moon, and growing steadily larger, he saw a rueful, lopsided smile form on her face. Then it was gone.
She said, “Erle was telling me the jets are in bad condition. A trial blast blew out three more.”
“That’s what happened.”
She went on: “He also told me there was a definite maximum weight the jets could lift in order to get us free of the gravity. We’ll have to throw out everything we don’t need. Books, rugs, clothing, beds.” She drew a deep breath. “And in the end, maybe a human being.”
Tony’s smile was frozen. “Then the prophecy would come true.”
“Yes. It is a prophecy, isn’t it?” She seemed childishly puzzled. She added, “And it looks like it has to come true. Because—Excuse me, lieutenant,” she said hurriedly, and vanished toward the air lock.
Tony stared after her, his mind crawling with unpleasant thoughts. It was unbelievable, fantastic. So you couldn’t outwit fate. The ship would have to be lightened. Guesswork might easily turn into conviction. There might be one human being too many—
Professor Overland came slowly from
the air lock, wincing from the cold after his two weeks of confinement. His haggard eyes turned on Tony. He came forward, looking up at the growing planet of destruction.
“Erle has calculated three days, eight hours and a few minutes. But it’s ample time, isn’t it, lieutenant?”
“One jet will straighten out with some man-size labor. Then we can start unloading extra tonnage. Lots of it.”
“Yes. Yes. I know.” He cleared his throat. His eyes turned on Tony, filled with a peculiar kind of desperation. “Lieutenant,” he said huskily, “there’s something I have to tell you. The ring came back.”
Tony’s head jerked. “It came back?” he blurted.
“In a fish.”
“Fish?”
Overland ran a trembling hand across his brow. “Yesterday a week ago, Laurette served fried fish. She used an old dress for a net, I found the ring in what she brought to my room. Well, I’m not superstitious about the ring. One of us is the skeleton – up there. We can’t avoid it. I put the ring on – more bravado than anything else. But this morning” – his voice sank to a whisper – “the ring was gone. Now I’m becoming superstitious, unscientifically so. Laurette is the only one who could – or would – have taken it. The others would have been glad it was on my finger rather than theirs. Even Erle.”
Tony stared through him. He was remembering Laurette’s peculiar smile. Abruptly, he strode toward the ship, calling back hurriedly:
“Better go inside, sir.”
In the ship, he knocked sharply on Laurette’s door.
She answered nervously, “Yes.”
“May I come in?”
“No. No. Do you have to?”
He thought a moment, then opened the door and stepped inside. She was standing near her bed, her eyes haunted.
Tony extended a hand imperatively. “Give me the ring.”
She said, her voice low, controlled, “Lieutenant, I’ll keep the ring. You tell that to the others. Then there won’t be any of this nervous tension and this murder plotting.”
He said ominously, “You may wind up a skeleton.”
“You said the skeleton was not a woman.”
“I was lying.”
“You mean,” she said, “it was a woman?”
Tony said patiently, “I mean that I don’t know. I couldn’t tell. Do I get the ring, or don’t I?”
She drew a deep breath. “Not in the slightest can it decide who will eventually die.”
Tony advanced a step. “Even your father doesn’t believe that now,” he grated.
She winced. “I’ll keep the ring and stay in my room except when I cook. You can keep everybody out of the ship. Then there won’t be anybody to harm me.”
Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Masters entered the room. Tension had drawn hollow circles under eyes that refused to stay still.
“You,” he said to Laurette, his voice thin, wavering. He stood with his back to the wall. He wet his lips. “I was talking with your father.”
“All right, all right,” she said irritably. “I’ve got the ring, and I’m keeping it.”
“No, you can’t, Laurette. We’re going to get rid of it, this time. The six of us are going to watch.”
“You can’t get rid of it!” Then, abruptly, she snatched it off her finger. “Here!”
Imperceptibly, he shrank back against the wall.
“There’s no use transferring it now. You’ve got it, you might as well carry it.” His eyes swiveled, lighted with a sudden burst of inspiration. “Better yet, let Crow carry it. He represents the law. That would make it proper.”
She seemed speechless.
“Can you imagine it? Can you imagine a sniveling creature like him—I’ll keep the ring. First my father gets weak in the knees, and then—” She cast a disdainful look at Masters. “I wish you’d both leave me alone, please.”
Tony shrugged, left the room, Masters edging out after him.
Tony stopped him.
“How much time have we got left?”
Masters said jerkily, “We’ve been here fourteen days. It happens on the twenty-fifth. That’s eleven days from now, a few hours either way.”
“How reliable are your figures?”
Masters muttered, “Reliable enough. We’ll have to throw out practically everything. Doors, furniture, clothes. And then—”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know,” Masters muttered, and slunk away.
It was the twenty-fourth of December.
Tidal winds increased in savagery in direct proportion to the growing angular diameter of the invading planet. Heavy, dully colored birds fought their way overhead. On the flanks of abruptly rising cliff edges, gnarled trees lashed. Rain fell spasmodically. Clouds moved in thoroughly indiscriminate directions. Tentacular leaves whirlpooled. Spray, under the wind’s impact, cleared the river gorge. The waterfall was muted.
Rushing voluminous air columns caught at the growing pile emerging from the ship’s interior, whisked away clothing, magazines, once a mattress. It did not matter. Two worlds were to crash in that momentous, before-history forming of the asteroids. There was but one certainty. This plain, these mountains – and a cave – were to stay intact through the millions of years.
Inside the air lock, Masters stood beside a heavy weight scale. Light bulbs, dishes, silverware, crashed into baskets indiscriminately, the results weighed, noted, discarded. Doors were torn off their hinges, floors ripped up. Food they would keep, and water, for though they eventually reached Earth, they could not know whether it yet supported life.
The ship, devoid of furnishings, had been a standard eleven tons for an H–H drive. Furnishing, food, et cetera, brought her to over thirteen tons. Under a one and a half gravity, it was twenty tons. Masters’ figures, using the firing area the ship now had, with more than half the jets beyond use, were exact enough. The maximum lift the jets would or could afford was plus or minus a hundred pounds of ten and three quarter tons.
Masters looked up from his last notation, eyes red-rimmed, lips twitching. Braker and Yates and Tony were standing in the air lock, watching him.
Fear flurried in Masters’ eyes. “What are you looking at me like that for?” he snarled. Involuntarily, he fell back a step.
Yates giggled.
“You sure do take the fits. We was just waiting to see how near we was to the mark. There ain’t anything else to bring out.”
“Oh, there isn’t?” Masters glared. “We’re still eight hundred pounds on the plus side. How about the contraction machinery?”
Tony said: “It’s our only hope of getting back to the present. Overland needs it to rebuild the drive.”
“Pressure suits!”
“We’re keeping six of them, in case the ship leaks.”
“Doors!” said Masters wildly. “Rugs!”
“All,” said Tony, “gone.”
Masters’ nails clicked. “Eight hundred pounds more,” he said hoarsely. He looked at his watch, said, “Eleven hours plus or minus,” took off his watch and threw it out. He made a notation on his pad, grinning crookedly. “Another ounce gone.”
“I’ll get Overland,” Tony decided.
“Wait!” Masters thrust up a pointing finger. “Don’t leave me alone with those two wolves. They’re waiting to pounce on us. Four times one hundred and fifty is six hundred.”
“You’re bats,” said Braker coldly.
“Besides,” said Yates, “where would we get the other two hundred pounds?”
Masters panted at Tony, “You hear that? He wants to know where they’d get the other two hundred pounds!”
“I was joking,” said Yates.
“Joking! Joking! When he tried to knife me once!”
“Because,” concluded Yates, “the cards call for only one skeleton. I’ll get him.”
He came back shortly with Laurette and her father.
Overland fitted his glasses over his weak eyes while he listened, glancing from face to face.
“Not a bad idea,” said Braker slowly. “We can wear pressure suits. The ship might leak anyway.”
Masters waved a hand. “Then get at it! Laurette, come here. You’ve got the ring. You don’t want to be the skeleton, do you? Put your back to this wall with me.”
“Oh, Erle,” she said in disgust, and followed her father out.
Tony brought three hack saws from the pile of discarded tools. Working individual rooms, the three of them went through the ship, sawing the ports off at the hinges, pulling out the port packing material. The ship was now a truly denuded spectacle, the floors a mere grating of steel.
The ports and packing were placed on the scale.
“Five hundred – five twenty-five – five sixty-one. That’s all!” Masters sounded as if he were going to pieces.
Tony shoved him aside. “Five sixty-one it is. There may be a margin of error, though,” he added casually. “Braker, Yates – out with this scale.”
The two stooped, heaved. The scale, its computed weight already noted, went out—
Tony said, “Come on, Masters.”
Masters trotted behind, doglike, as if he had lost the power of thought. Tony got the six pressure suits out of the corner of the control room, and gestured toward them. Everybody got into the suits.
Tony buckled his helmet down. “Now give her the gun.”
Masters stood at the auxiliary rocket control board, face pale, eyes unnaturally wide.
He made numerous minor adjustments. He slowly depressed a plunger. A heavy, vibrating roar split the night. The ship leaped. There was a sensation of teetering motion. In the vision plates, the plain moved one step nearer, as if a new slide had been inserted in a projector. The roar swept against them voluminously. The picture remained the same.
Masters wrenched up the plunger, whirled.
“You see?” he panted. “I could have told you!”
Professor Overland silenced him with a wave of the hand, pain showing in his eyes.
The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF Page 5