As he rose over the lip of the crater, his head swung, seeking his
enemy. There!
It was almost a reflex which brought his arm back and sent the wrench
hurtling across the few yards between. Before it had struck, Bo's feet
lashed against the pit edge, and the kick arced him toward Lundgard.
Spacemen have to be good at throwing things. The wrench hit the lifted
rifle in a soundless shiver of metal, tore it loose from an insecure
gauntleted grasp and sent it spinning into shadow. Lundgard yelled,
spun on his heel, and dove after it. Then the flying body of Bo Jonsson
struck him.
Even in low-gee, matter has all its inertia. The impact rang and boomed
within their armor, they swayed and fell to the ground, locking arms
and hammering futilely at helmets. Rolling over, Bo got on top, his
hands closed on Lundgard's throat--where the throat should have been,
but plastic and alloy held fast; instinct had betrayed him.
Lundgard snarled, doubled his legs and kicked. Bo was sent staggering
back. Lundgard crawled erect and turned to look for the rifle. Bo
couldn't see it either in the near-solid blackness where no light fell,
but his wrench lay as a dark gleam. He sprang for that, closed a hand
on it, bounced up, and rushed at Lundgard. A swing shocked his own
muscles with its force, and Lundgard lurched.
Bo moved in on him. Lundgard reached into his tool-tube and drew out
his own wrench. He circled, his panting hoarse in Bo's earphones.
"This ... is the way ... it was supposed to be," said Bo.
He jumped in, his weapon whirling down to shiver again on the other
helmet. Lundgard shook a dazed head and countered. The impact roared
and echoed in Bo's helmet, on into his skull. He smashed heavily.
Lundgard's lifted wrench parried the blow, it slid off. Like a fencer,
Lundgard snaked his shaft in and the reverberations were deafening.
Bo braced himself and smote with all his power. The hit sang back
through iron and alloy, into his own bones. Lundgard staggered a
little, hunched himself and struck in return.
They stood with feet braced apart, trading fury, a metal rain on
shivering plastic. The stuff was almost unbreakable, but not quite, not
for long when such violence dinned on it. Bo felt a lifting wild glee,
something savage he had never known before leaped up in him and he
bellowed. He was stronger, he could hit harder. Lundgard's helmet would
break first!
The Humanist retreated, using his wrench like a sword, stopping the
force of blows without trying to deal more of his own. His left hand
fumbled at his side. Bo hardly noticed. He was pushing in, hewing,
hewing. Again the shrunken sun rose, to flash hard light off his club.
Lundgard grinned, his face barely visible as highlight and shadow
behind the plastic. His raised tool turned one hit, it slipped along
his arm to rap his flank. Bo twisted his arm around, beat the other
wrench aside for a moment, and landed a crack like a thunderbolt.
Then Lundgard had his drinking hose free, pointing in his left hand. He
thumbed down the clamp, exposing water at fifty degrees to naked space.
It rushed forth, driven by its own vapor pressure, a stream like a
lance in the wan sunshine. When it hit Bo's helmet, most of it boiled
off ... cooling the rest, which froze instantly.
Blindness clamped down on Bo. He leaped away, cursing, the front of his
helmet so frosted he could not see before him. Lundgard bounced around,
playing the hose on him. Through the rime-coat, Bo could make out only
a grayness.
He pawed at it, trying to wipe it off, knowing that Lundgard was using
this captured minute to look for the rifle. As he got some of the ice
loose, he heard a sharp yell of victory--found!
Turning, he ran again.
Over that ridge! Down on your belly! A slug pocked the stone above him.
Rolling over, he got to his feet and bounded off toward a steep rise,
still wiping blindness off his helmet. But he could not wipe the bitter
vomit taste of defeat out of his mouth.
His breathing was a file that raked in his throat. Heart and lungs were
ready to tear loose, and there was a cold knot in his guts. Fleeing up
the high, ragged slope, he sobbed out his rage at himself and his own
stupidity.
At the top of the hill he threw himself to the ground and looked down
again over a low wall of basalt. It was hard to see if anything moved
down in that valley of night. Then the sun threw a broken gleam off
polished metal, the rifle barrel, and he saw Einar Lundgard walking
around, looking for him.
The voice came dim in his earphones. "Why don't you give up, Bo? I tell
you, I don't want to kill you."
"Yeh." Bo panted wearily. "I'm sure."
"Well, you can never tell," said Lundgard mildly. "It would be rather
a nuisance to have to keep not only the fair Valeria, but you, tied
up all the way to base. Still, if you'll surrender by the time I've
counted ten--"
"Look here," said Bo desperately, "I've got half the links. If you
don't give up I'll hammer 'em all flat and let you starve."
"And Valeria?" The voice jeered at him. He knew his secret was read. "I
shouldn't have let you bluff me in the first place. It won't happen a
second time. All right: one, two, three--"
Bo could get off this asteroid with no more than the power of his own
legs; a few jets from the emergency blow valve at the bottom of an
air tank would correct his flight as needed to bring him back to the
_Sirius_. He wanted to get up there, and inside warm walls, and take
Valeria in his hands and never let her go again. He wanted to live.
"--six, seven, eight--"
He looked at his gauges. A lot of oxy-helium mixture was gone from
the tanks, but they were big and there was still several atmospheres'
pressure in each. A couple of hours' life. If he didn't exert himself
too much. They screwed directly into valves in the back of his armor,
and--
"--ten. All right, Bo." Lundgard started moving up the slope, light and
graceful as a bird. It was wide and open, no place to hide and sneak up
behind him.
* * * * *
Figures reeled through Bo's mind, senselessly. Mass of the asteroid,
effective radius, escape velocity only a few feet per second, and he
was already on one of the highest points. Brains! he thought with a
shattering sorrow. A lot of good mine have done me!
He prepared to back down the other side of the hill, run as well as
he could, as long as he could, until a bullet splashed his blood or
suffocation thickened it. But I want to fight! he thought through a
gulp of tears. I want to stand up and fight!
Orbital velocity equals escape velocity divided by the square root of
two.
For a moment he lay there, rigid, and his eyes stared at death walking
up the slope but did not see it.
Then, in a crazy blur of motion, he brought his wrench around, closed
it on a nut at one side, and turned.
The right hand air tank unscrewed easily. He held it in his hands, a
three foot cylinder, blind while calculation raced through his head.
What would the centrifugal and Coriolis forces be? It was the roughest
sort of estimate. He had neither time nor data, but--
Lundgard was taking it easy, stopping to examine each patch of shadow
thrown by some gaunt crag, each meteor scar where a man might hide. It
would take him several minutes to reach the hilltop.
Bo clutched the loosened tank in his arms, throwing one leg around it
to make sure, and faced away from Lundgard. He hefted himself, as if
his body were a machine he must use. Then, carefully, he jumped off the
top of the hill.
It was birdlike, dreamlike, thus to soar noiseless over iron
desolation. The sun fell behind him. A spearhead pinnacle clawed after
his feet. The Southern Cross flamed in his eyes.
Downward--get rid of that downward component of velocity. He twisted
the tank, pointing it toward the surface, and cautiously opened the
blow valve with his free hand. Only a moment's exhaust, everything
gauged by eye. Did he have an orbit now?
The ground dropped sharply off to infinity, and he saw stars under
the keel of the world. He was still going out, away. Maybe he had
miscalculated his jump, exceeded escape velocity after all, and was
headed for a long cold spin toward Jupiter. It would take all his
compressed air to correct such a mistake.
Sweat prickled in his armpits. He locked his teeth and refused to open
the valve again.
It was like endless falling, but he couldn't yet be sure if the fall
was toward the asteroid or the stars. The rock spun past him. Another
face came into view. Yes, by all idiot gods, its gravity was pulling
him around!
He skimmed low over the bleakness of it, seeing darkness and starlit
death sliding beneath him. Another crag loomed suddenly in his path,
and he wondered in a harsh clutch of fear if he was going to crash.
Then it ghosted by, a foot from his flying body. He thought he could
almost sense the chill of it.
He was a moon now, a satellite skimming low above the airless surface
of his own midget world. The fracture plain where Lundgard had shot
at him went by, and he braced himself. Up around the tiny planet, and
there was the hill he had left, stark against Sagittarius. He saw
Lundgard, standing on its heights and looking the way he had gone.
Carefully, he aimed the tank and gave himself another small blast to
correct his path. There was no noise to betray him, the asteroid was a
grave where all sound was long buried and frozen.
He flattened, holding his body parallel to the tank in his arms. One
hand still gripped the wrench, the other reached to open the blow
valve wide.
The surge almost tore him loose. He had a careening lunatic moment of
flight in which the roar of escaping gas boiled through his armor and
he clung like a troll to a runaway witch's broom. The sun was blinding
on one side of him.
He struck Lundgard with an impact of velocity and inertia which sent
him spinning down the hill. Bo hit the ground, recoiled, and sprang
after his enemy. Lundgard was still rolling. As Bo approached, he came
to a halt, lifted his rifle dazedly, and had it knocked loose with a
single blow of the wrench.
Lundgard crawled to his feet while Bo picked up the rifle and threw it
off the asteroid. "Why did you do that?"
"I don't know," said Bo. "I should just shoot you down, but I want you
to surrender."
Lundgard drew his wrench. "No," he said.
"All right," said Bo. "It won't take long."
* * * * *
When he got up to the _Sirius_, using a tank Lundgard would never need,
Valeria had armed herself with a kitchen knife. "It wouldn't have done
much good," he said when he came through the airlock. She fell into his
arms, sobbing, and he tried to comfort her. "It's all over. All taken
care of. We can go home now."
He himself was badly in need of consolation. The inquiry on Earth would
clear him, of course, but he would always have to live with the memory
of a man stretched dead under a wintery sky. He went aft and replaced
the links. When he came back, Valeria had recovered herself, but as
she watched his methodical preparations and listened to what he had to
tell, there was that in her eyes which he hardly dared believe.
Not him. Not a big dumb slob like him.