"Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady
herself as she climbed out of the machine.
"I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun.
From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty
soon."
"What happened?"
"I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of
the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone
who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders."
She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter.
"They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said.
"The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam."
Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He
eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort
it would make.
"Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here
and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me
to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was
here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and
there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run
things to suit myself and he walked off."
She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things.
"And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could
hardly believe it yet.
"Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used
to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up
straight?"
Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of
the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in
the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held
it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up.
"We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if
that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle
the machine-gun."
"Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before
we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought
while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men
who went out today?" he asked.
"They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of
them may not have got back yet."
Asa started talking into his radio.
"Calling all muck men. This is Asa Graybar. All muck men, listen. This
is Graybar. I am five miles out with Miss Hazeltyne, who came to rescue
me after I saved Kershaw from a Slider. The helicopter is smashed.
We're slogging in."
He looked at her for a nod of confirmation and repeated the message.
"Graybar?" came a voice in his earphones. "What do you want?"
Asa grinned at Harriet as he continued.
"Go on back to the settlement. Tell the others. Then organize a party
to come help us. Bearing 150 degrees."
"Right," said the unidentified voice.
"I got it too," said another voice in the headset. "Muck men stick
together."
Good, Asa thought. At least two muckers were still out. They would
tell the others.
"Cancel all that," said a third voice. "This is Dorr speaking. Nobody
goes out until I give the word."
Asa didn't fancy waiting.
"By authority of Miss Hazeltyne," he said rapidly, "Dorr is no longer
manager. I am acting manager." He saw Harriet's eyebrows go up, for she
couldn't hear the other end of what was going on. "Disregard Dorr,"
he continued. "If you can help us get back, Miss Hazeltyne will make
changes to benefit all of us."
Before he could say any more his ear was stricken with the noise of
loud static. Dorr was making sure no more radio messages got through.
Asa quickly told Harriet what had happened.
The girl smiled with one side of her mouth.
"Fine," she said, "but how am I supposed to cross the muck?"
"On my back," Asa turned and entered the helicopter cabin. All the time
he had been talking he had been worrying about the fact that he had
only three rockets left for his gun. Quickly he checked the ammunition
for the machine-gun, found it was the same caliber, and felt that at
last one break had gone his way. He took the plastic ammunition belts
outside.
"Load your pockets with these," he told the girl, pulling the rockets
from their loops. Then, tying the plastic belts together, he fashioned
a sling she could sit in with her legs at his sides. Finally he handed
her his gun.
"If you see a Slider," he said, "shoot for the head. Now climb on and
hold tight to my gun harness and we'll try our luck."
When she was astride his back Asa checked his compass and started
jumping. At once he knew that the going would be much harder than he
had imagined. Alone he could leap twenty-five yards, but her weight cut
him down to about five yards. He kept going, realizing that the task
was almost beyond his strength and not daring to tell her that even if
his strength held out they might not even find the settlement in this
drizzle.
Hopping, sometimes staggering, skirting the wider pools in the swamp.
Asa managed to go about a mile before he had to stop and rest. Harriet
climbed out of the sling and settled down on a patch of weeds, a wet
and slippery mat upon the mud.
"We're going to make it," she said cheerfully.
"I hope so," he said. "Not just for ourselves. A lot of changes should
be made. There must be millions of eggs on this planet. You're getting
only a couple hundred a year."
He was panting between sentences and stopped talking until he could
catch his breath.
"For one thing," he continued, "rockets are the wrong weapon against
the Sliders. Flame throwers would be better. Of course they're a
lot heavier than guns. But everything about the way you go after
eggs is wrong. It's criminal to send one man out alone. It's utterly
irresponsible to have only one helicopter. You're putting a price on
eggs in terms of human lives. Muck men are human, you know, no matter
what we look like."
"You are very human," she said softly, "and very brave."
He returned her smile, adding, "And we'll both be very dead unless we
get going."
They had traveled considerably less than a mile when he had to stop
again.
"How would you run things here?" Harriet asked.
"Start with new premises. There's no need to make monsters out of the
muck men. Double their strength, and perhaps give them web feet, but
why legs like a frog? If I could walk normally I could be pulling you
on a sled. And why shovel hands instead of proper tools? Of course you
would still have to give them a skin for this weather."
Harriet's clothing was sodden and streaked with mud, and her hair
was hanging down her head in wet, dark tangles that looked like so
much boiled spinach. The bump when the helicopter fell had raised a
blue-black swelling around her left eye. Yet, it occurred to Asa, she
hadn't voiced the slightest complaint. She was listening intently to
his advice.
"I would send parties of three men out in a helicopter," he continued.
"One would guard the ship while the other two hunted eggs. As soon as
they found an egg they'd hop into the ship and be safe."
They started off again. At the first leap Asa saw a Slider a hundred
yards away. As soon as his feet hit the ground he whispered to Harriet.
She climbed out of the sling and held her gun ready while he drew his
knife to wait. Long minutes passed before he decided they had not been
seen and it was safe to continue.
Next time they stopped the girl turned to Asa with a frown and asked,
"Just how does Dorr think he can get away with this?"
"Simple." Asa shrugged. "He'll say the Sliders got us despite all he
could do. No muck man who could tell a different story will live long
enough to get back to Earth."
The sound of a rocket explosion came from somewhere off to their right.
It was the loveliest sound Asa had ever heard.
"The rescue party!" he shouted. "Let's go!"
Knowing that rockets meant Sliders, but knowing also that no Slider was
a match for a team of armed men, Asa leaped forward with renewed vigor.
Once he misjudged his strength and landed in a puddle, splashing both
of them with slimy water, but the girl on his back only laughed. They
heard the sound of another rocket, and Harriet fired three shots of
her own to attract attention. In a few more minutes they were happily
welcoming six muck men.
"I heard your message," said one of them, "and back at the settlement
Kershaw told us what had happened. Furston tried to stop us and wound
up with a knife in his belly. A couple of the others were afraid to
come, and two were shot from the tower by Dorr, but the rest are with
you."
"Tom Dorr will be tried for murder," Harriet promised grimly.
With different men taking turns carrying Harriet for short distances
they began to make progress rapidly. The Slider the men had been firing
at was dead and no more were sighted before they came to the settlement.
Dorr was waiting for them. He fired from the tower, his machine-gun
burst of rockets cutting through one man in mid-leap. Asa's party
hugged the mud and fired back. Plastic showered from the tower window,
and dust spurted from the concrete around it.
"Keep me covered," Asa shouted. He took the gun from Harriet and leaped
madly forward until he was under the shelter of the side of the dome.
He waited for one more salvo from his party and jumped to the tower
itself.
Dorr had vanished, driven out of the tower by the rockets. Asa waved
to the others to come forward and hopped into the main quarters of the
dome.
He had never been in this part of the settlement. Dorr could be lying
in ambush for him. Asa moved cautiously, but he was confident that
his own adjustment to the gravity of the planet would give him the
advantage in any sudden meeting.
He looked around the corner and down some stairs just in time to see
the discredited manager, holding a sack in one hands, struggle to open
a door. Asa fired and missed. The next moment Dorr was outside. Asa
leaped to the floor below.
One of the normal humans who lived in the settlement came out of
another room, saw Asa and dodged back out of sight.
Outside, Asa could see Dorr laboring to run along the paved road that
led to the spaceship a quarter of a mile away. The fugitive turned once
and fired wildly as Asa leaped after him. The mist was turning into
heavy rain, and it was getting harder to see.
Another rocket exploded somewhere out in front of Asa. The sound was
followed by a scream. One more leap and Asa began firing himself.
A Slider was gently taking into its mouth three eggs spilled from the
sack lying beside what was left of Tom Dorr.
One of Asa's shots destroyed the Slider, destroying the eggs, too as
the monster's head exploded. Asa didn't think the eggs mattered much
right now.
He shuffled slowly back to the settlement, deciding to accept when
Harriet offered him the managership. Some day, if he had his way,
Slider eggs would be as common on Earth as diamonds.