“More chance to find a vein in a surface fault,” Sam explained briefly. “That’s the way it lies on Phobos.”
They got silently into their clumsy spacesuits, picked up the long, spiked rods of the toughest dural-steel. Within their hollow interiors were heating and boring units, so that the rods, placed spiked end down upon the ice, would melt sizable holes within seconds; and then, with the boring unit attached, would grind through the solid rock.
Once outside, they stood momentarily motionless on the slippery surface of the orb. They were in a ravine, and the upended crags of ice glimmered ghostly in the dim Saturnian shine. Already one of Sam’s hopes had been dashed. The ice proved to be solid carbon dioxide, without the slightest admixture of water. That meant Japetus, too, would very likely be as uninhabitable as Titan.
But just now he wasn’t thinking of that. It was a weird, unforgettable scene at which he gazed. The strange ice boulders, tossed into the ravine as though a race of giants had once heaved them there, the bluish smoothness of their surfaces, hard as rock and unpitted by either heat or wind—just as they had been for unending millenniums. Above, however, was the sight that caught his breath. Saturn was in full crescent, with the rings tilted upward at an angle of almost thirty degrees.
Against the black backdrop of space, against the eerie waste in which they stood, two solitary human beings who hated each other, alone in the immensities, Saturn glowed with an overwhelming effulgence. Vague thoughts stirred in Sam; emotions, he had deemed, long dead. On such a night as this, in such unfathomable surroundings, one needed a comrade, a loyal friend—
Garth’s voice sounded queerly in his space phone. “It gets you, doesn’t it?” Then, as though ashamed of himself, he added harshly: “We’ve got work to do, White. We didn’t come here to moon.”
Sam gritted his teeth. The spell had been broken. Yet Garth was right. There was work to do.
Painfully, slowly, they moved over the slippery ground. Wherever Sam indicated, they placed their rods, and set the heating units into operation. The spiked tips glowed white-hot, and the ice sizzled into a boiling steam of carbon dioxide that froze in the subglacial void almost immediately back to a fine swirl of falling snow.
Sometimes the rods plunged deeper and deeper into endless ice; other times they hit bedrock within a short distance. Then the boring units started. The rock flew and powdered under the hard, whirling tips. Sam checked personally each sample. He had been careful not to divulge the appearance of the miraculum to Garth. If he ever found it—
But Japetus seemed as sterile of the precious ore as Titan. For three Earth days they lifted the little space craft and set it down again in haphazardly chosen gullies. It was hard, hopeless work. Sam felt his muscles cry out for rest; the air in the tiny ship was thinning out at a dangerous rate; and the oxygen tubes were running alarmingly low within the heavy spacesuits.
Yet Garth kept going, tirelessly, without a wimper of complaint. Sam set his teth. He wouldn’t let anyone, and especially not Garth, outdo him. So he, too, kept on going.
On the fourth day, however, even Garth seemed to realize that this could not go on. There was barely enough air left, with the shallowest of breathing, to take them back to Titan. His black brows were furrowed, and his lips tight, as he donned the clumsy armor. “This is the last time, White,” he said. “Either we find the stuff today, or we’re through.”
Sam shrugged and said nothing. He was saving his breathing. Every cubic centimeter counted now.
All morning the prospecting was but a weary duplication of other days. Nothing but snow, ice and sterile rock. Nothing to show that the rare miraculum existed anywhere in the universe except in that pocket on Phobos.
They stumbled heavily into a deeper ravine than any they had yet seen. The ice lifted like mountains all around. Huge boulders of frozen carbon dioxide strewed the ground.
“Small chance of finding anything here,” Garth grunted. “The ice seems a mile thick.”
“Maybe,” Sam said wearily in his helmet. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. His body seemed a huge, single ache. “But we’ll try.” His armor-inclosed hand gestured. “You try under that big boulder, Garth. It looks a bit thin there.” He poked with his heating rod at a thin glaze that covered an outcropping. “And I’ll work here.”
About two hundred yards separated them. The space boat was out of sight, around a bend in the ravine.
He saw the dazzle of red in the gloom as Garth started work. He was digging with his tool directly under the overhang of jagged ice. Then he, too, went to work.
The fierce heat scattered the glaze as if it were the thinnest tissue. It sucked up into an invisible swirl of gas, and precipitated down upon him in a frozen drive of snow. Sam brushed it impatiently away, stared dully at the uncovered rock. More of that damned granite! Smooth, featureless, unbroken. Was the whole universe composed of that sterile rock?
He turned away with a hopeless gesture. In the dim distance, Garth was still digging. Endless ice, no doubt. No more success than here. It was no go. Might as well quit, return to Titan before the last gasp of oxygen was sucked in; and wait there for death to come within a period of months.
A fierce rage filled him; a sense of overwhelming futility. Granite! Granite! He began to hate it; even more than he hated Garth. The beginning of delirium; the air was foul within the helmet. He lifted the borer, thrust it against the damnable rock; turned on the boring unit full blast. The instrument would be useless from now on; get rid of it in one grand orgy! The rock glowed and blistered and melted away under the violence of his attack. It gave him a strange sadistic satisfaction. In his semidelirium he personalized the granite; he felt that he was plunging a lethal weapon deep into its shuddering hardness.
The gray rock split and fell away. Deeper, deeper, bit the borer. It drove through as easily as though it were a soft, ripe cheese.
Then, suddenly, the long rod jiggled in his gloved hands; slackened its furious pace. It almost crashed out of his numbed fingers.
Sam wished he could wipe the sweat out of his eyes. His head was swimming; his brain was on fire. But even in his dazed state he felt that something was wrong. The sharp spike of specially treated steel was guaranteed to go through anything but diamond. His lips opened in a feverish grin. It would be ironic to find on this waste planet a huge diamond embedded in the rock that back on Earth would be worth an incalculable fortune; but here was just so much crystallized carbon.
Nevertheless, he edged the cutting tool through the surrounding rock that overlaid the strange, hard substance. Around and around, uncovering its roughened surface more and more. His senses were whirling; it was harder and harder to breathe. A mad whim to uncloak this mighty gem seized him.
Hot sparks showered around him. Something loosened, dropped out upon the frozen ice beneath. He blinked at it. An irregular mass, metallic gray in texture, streaked through with a curious network of fine red lines.
His first thought was one of hazy disappointment. It wasn’t a diamond, after all. Strange how his semidelirium had fixed upon that as the goal of his hopes. His second was to peer closer.
He jerked erect. His vision cleared; his sluggish heart began to pump with a mad recklessness; he forgot all his former caution; a wild whoop echoed within the confines of his helmet.
A lump of pure miraculum, such as had never been found even on Phobos! A solid nugget, from which a thousand firing pins could be fashioned!
In his phones Captain Johnny Garth heard that whoop. He jerked his bent back erect, whirled around.
“What’s the matter, White?”
Sam cursed under his breath. All along he had been steeling himself for just such an eventuality. There was a certain course he had mapped in the event he stumbled upon the precious element. Now he had spoiled everything with his damned yell.
He knew Garth too well. Garth would know what had happened; with his deadly Allertons and the will to use them, Sam wouldn’t have a chance to
proceed with his program.
He saw Garth peering at him through the gloom. He was leaning on his boring rod, with the unit still operating. The white-hot glow bit deeper into the ice.
“What’s the matter, White?” Garth repeated, his voice edged with suspicion.
Sam grimaced hopelessly. He could pick up the infinitely valuable nugget and run for it. But an Allerton discharge could outpace his ungainly gait. And the space boat was in back of Garth.
“Speak up,” rasped the captain, “or I’ll—”
There was a blaze of light. The huge overhang of ice tottered—fell with ominous silence. A startled yell came from Garth. Then he disappeared in a foam of hurtling chunks of ice.
For a moment there was silence. Sam stood rooted to the spot. It had all happened with such terrifying suddenness that he was caught off balance. Garth had undermined the precariously balanced overhang. It had collapsed upon him, and buried him under tons of ice as hard and solid as any rock.
Sam took a deep breath, unmindful that his supply of oxygen was perilously low. A miracle had happened; as miraculous in its way as the discovery of the justly named miraculum. Garth, the bully, the hard, soulless commander, was dead. Back on Titan his crew were fraternizing with the unfortunate exiles. Green, the kindly chief engineer, would assume command under the rules. He, Sam White, had the space boat and the miraculum that could take them all back to Earth. He would bargain with the Council by radio. In exchange for a sensible quarantine until the plague receded, he would lead a new expedition to mine this fabulous bed of the precious metal.
He laughed happily, cradled the heavy nugget in the crook of his arm, and started toward the space boat.
Then he stopped. A low groan had whispered in his earphones. His heart missed a beat; raced again.
Good God! Was Garth alive?
The groan was repeated. “White!” the voice moaned. “My leg . . . it’s caught . . . crushed!”
Sam stared through the weird Saturnian shine. It was dark and shadowy ahead. The sputter of the borer had faded. The mechanism had been smashed by the avalanche. Yet he could see the huge ice boulder thrust on its side, and underneath, a prone, sprawling mass that resembled a man.
Sam’s first reaction was one of fury that Garth had not conveniently been killed. His second was that it made no difference. In fact, it was a perfect case of retribution. The captain had been callously willing to abandon several hundred men, women and children, innocent of any crime except their birth, to a collective fate more horrible in its potentialities than that to which he had now fallen victim. Let him stew in his own juice. There could be no pity for him. Alive, he meant the death of hundreds; pinned helplessly here on Japetus, he meant life, freedom and future laughter to them all.
Sam’s laugh was ugly. “To hell with him!” Still holding the precious find, he started his ungainly, slippery march toward the space boat. He made a detour. He didn’t want to see the pinned body, near hear whining pleas for help. All bullies whined when their turn came.
He passed on the other side, along the frowning rampart of the upflung ice. Directly ahead, around the bend in the ravine, he could see the little craft. Once inside, a flick of the controls, and he’d be off to Titan, the bearer of glad tidings. He’d have no trouble explaining the death of Garth. He’d tell the truth, that was all. Such accidents were a most usual accompaniment of space exploration. Nor was Garth so popular that anyone would bother about it. Even if they did, by the time the Ellie May was fixed, and returned, Garth would be truly dead. The fall of ice upon him, the crushed leg, would be proof positive of the truth of Sam’s story.
At the entrance port he paused. It was funny. Since that second groan, Garth had been strangely silent. No whines, no further pleas for help. Had he died then? Or had he just fainted?
Sam placed the nugget carefully on the snow next the boat, and retraced his steps. Might as well make sure. If Garth was dead, that was the end of it. His conscience would be wholly clear.
Balancing himself on the spiked point of the borer he reached the motionless body. He bent to peer down. There was no question that Garth’s leg was pinned tight under the tremendous weight of fallen ice. He could never have pulled free, even if alive. But he was—
The goggling helmet turned with infinite effort. Through the clear quartzite Sam saw Garth’s eyes staring up at him. They were pools of pain, but the lips were tight and did not open.
Startled, words spilled from Sam. “Then you’re alive?”
The wounded man nodded feebly. “Yes.”
“But you can’t move?”
“No.”
Wonder flooded the reporter. “You called for help only once. You saw me go and leave you. Why didn’t you beg; call me back?”
A certain grim steeliness replaced the pain in Garth’s dark eyes. The words came with difficulty. “I never beg—especially not from you.”
“Yet you know you’ll die, unless I rescue you.”
“Yes.”
In spite of himself Sam felt a compelling wave of admiration for the hardbitten, tough old space captain. He would die as he lived; showing no mercy; asking none.
“You know I won’t help you, Garth. You know the lives of hundreds are endangered if I do.”
“Yes.”
Sam heaved a sigh. Now that he had his enemy helpless at his feet, the victory tasted of dust and ashes. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said suddenly. “I’ll make a deal with you. The one I offered you before. I’ll release you if you agree.”
Their eyes locked in the dim light. Garth’s face was gray with suffering. His crushed leg must be hurting like hell. His strength was ebbing. But when he spoke his voice was harsh, domineering. “I make no deals, White.”
A wave of anger blasted over Sam. “You damn fool,” he cried. “You’ll die then. I’m leaving you. This is your last chance. Will you promise?”
“No.”
Sam sighed. The man was mad; an idiot. Back on Titan hundreds of innocents must die if Garth came back. He lifted his dural-steel borer. He did not recognize his own voice when he spoke.
“O.K., you blasted idiot!” he growled. “You win. You must have known I was a soft-headed sap. Here goes.”
He placed the tip carefully over the prone body, set the heat unit.
The ice sizzled and glowed into furious gas. Swinging in long, parallel arcs Sam cut the encumbering boulder swiftly away. Snow piled thickly over the motionless body. Only the helmet was free. There was a soundless split. The ice settled lower on the crushed leg. Garth’s lips locked tight to strangle the cry of pain; then his eyes clouded and closed. He had fainted.
Sam worked on with feverish haste. After minutes that seemed uncounted hours the leg was free. He brushed the encumbering drift of reprecipitated snow away. The leg was badly smashed but luckily the plioid fabric of the suit had not been pierced. No air had escaped.
Cursing himself for a fool, the reporter heaved the limp body over his shoulder, staggered to the space boat. There he managed to open the safety lock, thrust the still-unconscious man inside, retrieved the lump of miraculum, and closed the slides behind him.
But before he went to work to restore Garth to life and minister to his hurts, he removed the brace of Allertons from his belt and buckled them to his own.
Halfway back to Titan, Sam sat grimly at the controls. Garth lay propped up on the tiny berth, his leg bandaged, his face still gray, watching.
“I’ve been a hundred different kinds of an idiot,” Sam snarled. “I don’t know why I went so soft over a lug like you. I’ve a good mind to kill you right now, Garth. When I think of those poor people—”
Garth shifted slightly. “It’s too late now, Sam White,” he said calmly.
Sam whirled. “Why is it?” he started; and stopped.
He was staring straight into the cone of a little Allerton, held with rocklike steadiness in the captain’s hand. “Why, where did you get that?” he gasped.
�
�I always carry a spare,” Garth smiled. “Inside my shirt. You missed it when you searched me.”
Sam stared down at his own weapons, so near and yet so far. “All right,” he groaned. “You win again. Serves me right. What are you going to do now.”
A strange grin lit up the wasted face. “I’ll tell you, Sam, something I hadn’t intended to tell anyone yet.” It was the first time he had ever called the reporter by his first name. “I didn’t want to raise too high hopes until I got results. Do you remember Doc Semmes’ report several weeks out from Jupiter?”
“You mean about the volume of the space plague?”
“Yes. He’d been making careful charts of its presence all the way. It seemed to him, and to me, too, that the horde of ultravirus molecules was-traveling in a definite stream through space at a definite velocity. We plotted the course. The graphs showed that within several months at the most the invasion should have passed over Earth and the System, and vanished into interstellar space again. I radioed my findings to the Council, and told them to check up on them. I gave my position, and demanded authority to bring back my cargo as soon as the danger had passed. But just then we hit into the zone of Saturn’s interference; and the radio went dead.”
Sam stared at him incredulously. “Why the devil didn’t you say so, then?”
“I dared not raise any false hopes. My orders were specific. I’m a spaceman.”
The reporter exploded. “You blithering idiot! Then why, at least, didn’t you tell me, when you knew I was leaving you to die on Japetus?”
The big man lifted himself painfully in his berth. “Do you think I’d crawl and beg for my life from an enemy? I’d die first.” Then a grin suddenly illumined his craggy face. He dropped his weapon to the bedclothes. “But now, Sam, we’re friends. Will you fix up my blasted leg, so it’ll stay comfortable? You’re one hell of a nurse!”
The End
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When The Future Dies Page 26