Bo uncoiled himself. "Valeria," he whispered, as if the name were holy.
"Yes?" She arched her brows expectantly.
"I can't stop to explain now. I've got to do something dangerous. Get
back aft of the gyro housing."
"What?"
"Get back!" Command blazed frantically in him. "And stay there,
whatever happens."
Something like fear flickered in her eyes. It was a very long way to
human help. Then she nodded, puzzled but with an obedience which held
gallantry, and slipped out of sight behind the steel pillar.
Bo launched himself across the room in a single null-gee bound. One
hand ripped aside Lundgard's curtain, the other got him by the throat.
"What the hell--"
Lundgard exploded into life. His fist crashed against Bo's cheek. Bo
held on with one hand and slugged with the other. Knuckles bounced on
rubbery muscle. Lundgard's arm snaked for the tunic stretched on his
bunk wall; his body came lithely out of the sack. Bo snatched for that
wrist. Lundgard's free hand came around, edged out to slam him in the
larynx.
Pain ripped through Bo. He let go and sailed across the room. Lundgard
was pulling out his needler.
Bo hit the opposite wall and rebounded--not for the armed man, but
for the control panel. Lundgard spat a dart at him. It burst on the
viewport over his shoulder, and Bo caught the acrid whiff of poison.
Then the converter was roaring to life and whining gyros spun the ship
around.
Lundgard was hurled across the room. He collected himself, catlike,
grabbed a stanchion, and raised the gun again. "I've got the drop," he
said. "Get away from there or you're a dead man."
It was as if someone else had seized Bo's body. Decision was like
lightning through him. He had tried to capture Lundgard, and failed,
and venom crouched at his back. But the ship was pointed for the
asteroid now, where it hung gloomily a dozen miles off, and the rockets
were ready to spew.
"If you shoot me," said Bo, "I'll live just long enough to pour on the
juice. We'll hit that rock and scatter from hell to breakfast."
Valeria emerged. Lundgard swung the needler to cover her. "Stay where
you are!" he rapped.
"What's happening?" she said fearfully.
"I don't know," said Lundgard. "Bo's gone crazy--attacked me--"
Wrath boiled black in the pilot. He snarled, "You killed my partner.
You must'a been fixing to kill us too."
"What do you mean?" whispered Valeria.
"How should I know?" said Lundgard. "He's jumped his orbit, that's all.
Look, Bo, be reasonable. Get away from that panel--"
"Look in his suitcase, Valeria." Bo forced the words out of a tautened
throat. "A Venusian shot my partner. You'll find his face and his
clothes in Lundgard's things. I'd know that face in the middle of the
sun."
She hung for a long while, not moving. Bo couldn't see her. His eyes
were nailed to the asteroid, keeping the ship's nose pointed at it.
"Is that true, Einar?" she asked finally.
"No," he said. "Of course not. I do have Venusian clothes and a mask,
but--"
"Then why are you keeping me covered too?"
Lundgard didn't answer at once. The only noise was the murmur of
machinery and the dense breathing of three pairs of lungs. Then his
laugh jarred forth.
"All right," he said. "I hadn't meant it to come yet, or to come this
way, but all right."
"Why did you kill Johnny?" Tears stung Bo's eyes. "He never hurt you."
"It was necessary." Lundgard's mouth twitched. "But you see, we knew
you were going to Achilles to pick up Valeria and her data. We needed
to get a man aboard your ship, to take over when her orbit brought
her close to our asteroid base. You've forced my hand--I wasn't going
to capture you for days yet. I sabotaged the _Drake's_ fuel tanks to
get myself stranded there, and shot your friend to get his berth. I'm
sorry."
"Why?" Horror rode Valeria's voice.
"I'm a Humanist. I've never made a secret of that. What our secret is,
is that some of us aren't content just to talk revolution. We want to
give this rotten, over-mechanized society the shove that will bring
on its end. We've built up a small force, not much as yet, not enough
to accomplish anything lasting. But if we had a solar power beam it
would make a big difference. It could be adapted to direct military
uses, as well as supplying energy to our machines. A lens effect, a
concentration of solar radiation strong enough to burn. Well, it seems
worth trying."
"And what do you intend for us?"
"You'll have to be kept prisoners for a while, of course," said
Lundgard. "It won't be onerous. We aren't beasts."
"No," said Bo. "Just murderers."
"Save the dramatics," snapped Lundgard. "I have the gun. Get away from
those controls."
Bo shook his head. There was a wild hammering in his breast, but his
voice surprised him with steadiness: "No. I've got the upper hand. I
can kill you if you move. Yell if he tries anything, Valeria."
Lundgard's eyes challenged her. "Do you want to die?" he asked.
Her head lifted. "No," she said, "but I'm not afraid to. Go ahead if
you must, Bo. It's all right."
* * * * *
Bo felt cold. He knew he wouldn't. He was bluffing. In the final
showdown he could not crash her. He had seen too many withered space
drained mummies in his time. But maybe Lundgard didn't realize that.
"Give up," he said. "You can't gain a damn thing. I'm not going to see
a billion people burned alive just to save our necks. Make a bargain
for your life."
"No," said Lundgard with a curious gentleness. "I have my own brand of
honor. I'm not going to surrender to you. You can't sit there forever."
Impasse. The ship floated through eternal silence while they waited.
"All right," said Bo. "I'll fight you for the power beam."
"How's that?"
"I can throw this ship into orbit around the asteroid. We can go down
there and settle the thing between us. The winner can jump up here
again with the help of a jet of tanked air. The lump hasn't got much
gravity."
Lundgard hesitated. "And how do I know you'll keep your end of the
bargain?" he asked. "You could let me go through the airlock, then
close it and blast off."
Bo had had some such thought, but he might have known it wouldn't work.
"What do you suggest?" he countered, never taking his eyes off the
planetoid. "Remember, I don't trust you either."
Lundgard laughed suddenly, a hard yelping bark. "I know! Valeria, go
aft and remove all the control-rod links and spares. Bring them back
here. I'll go out first, taking half of them with me, and Bo can follow
with the other half. He'll have to."
"I--no! I won't," she whispered. "I can't let you--"
"Go ahead and do it," said Bo. He felt a sudden vast weariness. "It's
the only way we can break this deadlock."
She wept as she went toward the engine room.
Lundgard's thought was good. Without linked control-rods, the converter
couldn't operate five minutes, it would flare up and melt itself and
kill everyone aboard in a flood of radiation. Whoever won the duel
could quickly re-install the necessary parts.
There was a waiting silence. At last Lundgard said, almost
abstractedly: "Holmgang. Do you know what that means, Bo?"
"No."
"You ought to. It was a custom of our ancestors back in the early
Middle Ages--the Viking time. Two men would go off to a little island,
a holm, to settle their differences; one would come back. I never
thought it could happen out here." He chuckled bleakly. "Valkyries in
spacesuits?"
The girl came back with the links tied in two bundles. Lundgard counted
them and nodded. "All right." He seemed strangely calm, an easy
assurance lay over him like armor. Bo's fear was cold in his belly, and
Valeria wept still with a helpless horror.
The pilot used a safe two minutes of low blast to edge up to the
asteroid. "I'll go into the airlock and put on my spacesuit," said
Lundgard. "Then I'll jump down and you can put the ship in orbit. Don't
try anything while I'm changing, because I'll keep this needler handy."
"It won't work against a spacesuit," said Bo.
Lundgard laughed. "I know," he said. He kissed his hand to Valeria and
backed into the lock chamber. The outer valve closed behind him.
"Bo!" Valeria grabbed the pilot by the shoulders, and he looked around
into her face. "You can't go out there, I won't let you, I--"
"If I don't," he said tonelessly, "we'll orbit around here till we
starve."
"But you could be killed!"
"I hope not. For your sake, mostly, I hope not," he said awkwardly.
"But he won't have any more weapon than me, just a monkey wrench."
There was a metal tube welded to the leg of each suit for holding
tools; wrenches, the most commonly used, were simply left there as a
rule. "I'm bigger than he is."
"But--" She laid her head on his breast and shuddered with crying. He
tried to comfort her.
"All right," he said at last. "All right. Lundgard must be through. I'd
better get started."
"Leave him!" she blazed. "His air won't last many hours. We can wait."
"And when he sees he's been tricked, you think he won't wreck those
links? No. There's no way out."
It was as if all his life he had walked on a road which had no
turnings, which led inevitably to this moment.
He made some careful calculations from the instrument readings,
physical constants of the asteroid, and used another minute's
maneuvering to assume orbital velocity. Alarm lights blinked angry eyes
at him, the converter was heating up. No more traveling till the links
were restored.
Bo floated from his chair toward the lock. "Good-bye, Valeria," he
said, feeling the bloodless weakness of words. "I hope it won't be for
long."
She threw her arms about him and kissed him. The taste of tears was
still on his lips when he had dogged down his helmet.
Opening the outer valve he moved forth, magnetic boots clamping to the
hull. A gulf of stars yawned around him, a cloudy halo about his head.
The stillness was smothering.
When he was "over" the asteroid he gauged his position with a practiced
eye and jumped free. Falling, he thought mostly of Valeria.
As he landed he looked around. No sign of Lundgard. The man could be
anywhere in these square miles of cosmic wreckage. He spoke tentatively
into his radio, in case Lundgard should be within the horizon: "Hello,
are you there?"
"Yes. I'm coming." There was a sharp cruel note of laughter. "Sorry
to play this dirty, but there are bigger issues at stake than you or
me. I've kept a rifle in my tool-tube all the time ... just in case.
Good-bye, Bo."
A slug smashed into the pinnacle behind him. Bo turned and ran.