Comet's Burial
Page 4
couldn't be just a futile blank. You had tofollow a thing started through to the end, didn't you? Brinker wanted toimprove the Moon, which certainly needed that. Okay--finish the job thathad gone so far. Damn desolation everywhere! Fight it! Smash it! Suddenrage made Copeland's thin blood pound. Dimly he realized that he wasdriven by the same dreariness-disease that motivated Brinker. So what?Who cared about smashed lunar equipment, after all. And besideexperience, prison would be paradise.
Copeland fired a Martian rocket-launcher, aiming behind the ship. He sawthe blaze of atomic fission. Jets flaming, the craft fled.
In his phones he heard a voice that he remembered: "That you, Brinker?Trying your father's trick, eh? Idiot! You'll kill yourself, or beexecuted. And now you even shoot!"
Fury at Krell clinched Copeland's decision. He did not answer him. Butwhen Brinker woke up he said savagely, without friendship orforgiveness, yet with cooperation: "We're on the same side, now. Let'saim Brulow's Comet."
Concentrating was hard, but they had their instruments and calculators.Velocity, position, and course of both comet and Moon had to becoordinated to make them arrive in the same place at the same moment. Itwas a problem in astrogation, but a comet was not as easily directed asa space ship. Copeland had once thought that the necessary fine guidingcouldn't be done. The jet-system they had rigged in that inconvenientlywhirling nucleus was crude.
But one thing was in their favor; they had ample time. They could adjusttheir course with the jets, check with instruments, and re-adjust--againand again. Copeland found himself doing the vital part of the job; hewas better at math than Brinker.
They still had plenty of Martian food left--for what it was worth tohuman insides. Perhaps unified purpose and action brightened theiroutlook a little, helping their bodies. They could never work verylong--even in the almost total absence of gravity. But--at least--theirweakness wasn't increasing now.
During those last four months they drove several ships away. Earth andMoon swelled to spheres, ahead. Brulow's Comet lengthened its tail underincreased solar light-pressure. Intensified radiation made its shiftingcolors glorious.
Brinker and Copeland lined their gigantic missile up on its target asperfectly as they could. Fifty hours before the crash was due, theysmashed most of the jets. The remaining ones they tried, feebly, torefit into their ship, meaning thus to escape.
* * * * *
Three Space Patrol craft showed up, and they had to man their weapons.Copeland hated to be an outlaw; but now he could not see effort broughtto nothing. Brinker and he had survived so far, accomplishing much--farbetter results than he had expected; it made him surer that theirpurpose was generally sound.
More missiles were fired carefully--not to do damage, but to discouragethe intruders; the latter were held at bay for another twelve hours.Copeland and Brinker left radio commands and threats unanswered, so itwas hard for their opponents to get a fix on their position in thewhirling nucleus.
Explosions blazed around them, but never very close. Masses of iron andstone were shattered and half vaporized, cooling subsequently to finedust. The nucleus of Brulow's Comet expanded a bit under the batteringthat went on within it.
At an opportune moment, Copeland and Brinker clung to one of theirjet-tubes and, gunning it very lightly, rode it from the centralcore-mass of the nucleus to a lesser meteor, and hid in a cleft. Adust-poll had concealed their change of position. And now, with so manyother large meteors around them, they would be almost impossible tofind.
They glimpsed the Patrol craft invading the heart of the comet. Menpoured forth, struggling to set up jets in the hope of still deflectingthis juggernaut from the Moon. But the comet was already much too close;before the setting-up was half completed it had to be abandoned. Still,the ships remained almost to the last.
Copeland wondered tensely if they'd ever go. His withered palmsperspired.
"We could still yell for help--have them take us off," Brinker suggestedwhen they had left. He spoke by sound-channel contact.
The Moon loomed huge and ugly ahead. Copeland gave it a scared glance,and then laughed grimly. "Ironic, that would be," he snapped, "No--we'vegot this jet to ride, and we're still at liberty."
From space, lashed to the flaming propulsion tube, they saw the crashhappen. It was a terrific spectacle. Copeland's hopes now had jaggedcracks of worry. The comet seemed to move slowly, its coma flatteningover the Moon's spaceward hemisphere. There were blinding flashes as thechunks of its nucleus bit into the lunar crust, their energy of velocityconverting largely to heat. Then dust masked the region of impact. Thecomet's tail collapsed over the Moon like a crumbling tower.
Copeland gulped. He saw that Brinker had gone limp--fainted. Weaknesswas enough to cause that; but the fact of a plan carried out had a shockin it, too.
Copeland worked the jury-rigged controls of the jet, continuing todecelerate. At spotty intervals, under the terrible thrust of reducingspeed, he was unconscious, too.
* * * * *
There was no such thing as picking a landing-spot. Checking velocitysoon enough, so close to the Moon, took all of the propulsion tube'spower--so he just followed the comet down. Almost at a stand-still atlast, balanced on a streamer of flame, he toppled into hot dust Feeblyhe worked to unlash himself from the tube. Brinker, jolted back tosemi-consciousness, managed to do the same.
Weakened and spent, they could not even lift themselves against theslight lunar gravity for a while.
The darkness around them was Stygian. But as more dust settled, the skycleared, and the normal stars of the lunar night blazed out. Theirattention was drawn in one direction inevitably.
Red-hot lava glowed there, in scattered areas over what was clearly anextensive expanse of territory. White vaporous plumes spurted high abovethe ground, and against the sides of new-formed meteor-craters, a whitelayer was collecting.
Copeland staggered erect. "Frost and snow!" he stammered. "From volcanicsteam! The first frost and snow on the Moon in a billion years! We'vedone it, Brinker! Brulow's Comet really did crack the thick lunarcrust...."
He heard Brinker's grunt of premature enthusiasm.
The Patrol picked them up hours later, wandering dazedly. They wereemaciated ghosts of men--almost skeletons in armor. They gave theirnames, but didn't really come to their senses until the prison doctor inTycho Station treated them, and they had slept for a long time.
"Don't worry, fellas. Relax," he said--with fury in his eyes.
Other faces were grim.
* * * * *
At the speedy trial in Tycho Station, sharp-featured Krell was amongmany who flung accusations.
"In the impact-zone itself--an area a hundred miles across--mininginstallations and machinery of tremendous value were utterly destroyed,"he said. "But lesser damage extends to a far wider circle. Thousands ofclaims have been buried in dust, till much of the far lunar hemispherewill have to be resurveyed. Luckily, miners and explorers were warned intime, and sought safety. But the charge of wholesale vandalism--terribleenough--does not stand alone. These men are to be remembered as accusedrobbers and murderers."
In rebuttal, Brinker's defiance was a little uncertain, as if under somuch blame, he had lost his assurance.
"Men who know the Moon know that its barrenness is poison, and not rightfor people!" he growled. "I tried to change it with Brulow's Comet--whenI had no success by other means. Anyway, Copeland is blameless. I forcedhim to help me."
Embitted, there was no warmth in Copeland for his older codefendant andjinx. Still, even without Brinker's attempt to shield him, he would havebeen loyal.
"During all important parts of mine and Jess Brinker's joint project,"he told the court, "I was in full agreement with his purpose."
Their attorney accomplished one considerable victory before these angrypeople. The charge of previous murders and robbery was barred; it wasadmitted that footprints were easy to duplicate, and that
the presenceof some bearing the names of the guilty was unlikely.
Brinker got fifty years in the mine-pits, and Copeland thirty.
"You always figured I might get you in a jam, didn't you, Cope?" Brinkersaid. "I'll keep trying to fix that."
* * * * *
Copeland found nothing to grin about, in a thirty-year sentence. It wasgoodbye wandering, goodbye girls, goodbye everything. He'd get outmiddle-aged, finished, and marked. He might as well stay another twentywith Brinker--complete a sour association with him.
Copeland had another recent jolt to brood over. A bunch of old lettersfrom his Frances had been delivered to him. His inability to receive oranswer any of them had brought the worst result. She had married anotherguy, and who could blame her?
Arne Copeland wanted to kill Brinker. Getting