_Tossed into the trackless Cosmos by his
mortal enemy, shipwrecked on an unfriendly
star, he determined to defy the dangers of
numberless nights, and, hunted turned
hunter, keep a tryst with Hate...._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Famous Fantastic Mysteries, February 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Illustration: He debated straggling farther under the shelter of the
monstrous roof....]
There was bright, pitiless light in the prison corridor of the
_Stallifer_. There was the hum of the air-renewal system. Once in every
so often there was a cushioned thud as some item of the space ship's
machinery operated some relay somewhere. But it was very tedious to be
in a confinement cell. Stan Buckley--Lieutenant, J.G., Space Guard,
under charges and under restraint--found it rather more than tedious.
He should have been upheld, perhaps, by the fact that he was innocent
of the charges made against him by Rob Torren, formerly his immediate
superior officer. But the feeling of innocence did not help. He sat in
his cell, holding himself still with a grim resolution. But a deep, a
savage, a corrosive anger grew and grew and grew within him. It had
been growing in just this manner for weeks.
The _Stallifer_ bored on through space. From her ports the cosmos
was not that hostile, immobile curtain of unwinking stars the early
interstellar travelers knew. At twelve hundred light-speeds, with the
Bowdoin-Hall field collapsing forty times per second for velocity
control, the stars moved visibly. Forty glimpses of the galaxy about
the ship in every second made it seem that the universe was always in
view.
And the stars moved. The nearer ones moved swiftly and the farther ones
more slowly, but all moved. And habit made motion give the feeling of
perspective, so that the stars appeared to be distributed in three
dimensions and from the ship seemed very small, like fireflies. All the
cosmos seemed small and almost cosy. The Rim itself appeared no more
than a few miles away. But the _Stallifer_ headed for Earth from Rhesi
II, and she had been days upon her journey, and she had come a distance
which it would stagger the imagination to compute.
In his cell, though, Stan Buckley could see only four walls. There was
no variation of light; no sign of morning or night or afternoon. At
intervals, a guard brought him food. That was all--except that his deep
and fierce and terrible anger grew until it seemed that he would go mad
with it.
He had no idea of the hour or the day when, quite suddenly, the
pitiless light in the corridor dimmed. Then the door he had not seen
since his entrance into the prison corridor clanked open. Footsteps
came toward his cell. It was not the guard who fed him. He knew that
much. It was a variation of routine which should not have varied until
his arrival on Earth.
He sat still, his hands clenched. A figure loomed outside the cell
door. He looked up coldly. Then fury so great as almost to be frenzy
filled him. Rob Torren looked in at him.
There was silence. Stan Buckley's muscles tensed until it seemed that
the bones of his body creaked. Then Rob Torren said caustically:
"It's lucky there are bars, or there'd be no chance to talk! Either
you'd kill me and be beamed for murder, or I'd kill you and Esther
would think me a murderer. I've come to get you out of this if you'll
accept my terms."
Stan Buckley made an inarticulate, growling noise.
"Oh, surely!" said Rob Torren. "I denounce you, and I'm the witness
against you. At your trial, I'll be believed and you won't. You'll
be broken and disgraced. Even Esther wouldn't marry you under such
circumstances. Or maybe," he added sardonically, "maybe you wouldn't
let her!"
Stan Buckley licked his lips. He longed so terribly to get his hands
about his enemy's throat that he could hardly hear his words.
"The trouble is," said Rob Torren, "that she probably wouldn't marry me
either, if you were disgraced by my means. So I offer a bargain. I'll
help you to escape--I've got it all arranged--on your word of honor to
fight me. A duel. To the death." His eyes were hard. His tone was hard.
His manner was almost contemptuous. Stan Buckley said hoarsely:
"I'll fight you anywhere, under any conditions!"
"The conditions," Rob Torren told him icily, "are that I will help you
to escape. You will then write a letter to Esther, saying that I did
so and outlining the conditions of the duel as we agree upon them. I
will, in turn, write a letter to the Space Guard brass, withdrawing my
charges against you. We will fight. The survivor will destroy his own
letter and make use of the other. Do you agree to that?"
"I'll agree to anything," said Stan Buckley fiercely, "that will get my
hands about your throat!"
Rob Torren shrugged.
"I've turned off the guard photocells," he said calmly. "I've a key for
your cell. I'm going to let you out. I can't afford to kill you except
under the conditions I named, or I'll have no chance to win Esther. If
you kill me under any other conditions, you'll simply be beamed as a
murderer." He paused, and then added, "And I have to come and fight you
because a letter from you admitting that I've behaved honorably is the
only possible thing that would satisfy Esther. You give your word to
wait until you've escaped and I come for you before you try to kill me?"
Stan Buckley hesitated a long, long time. Then he said in a thick
voice, "I give my word."
Without hesitation, Rob Torren put a key in the cell door and turned
it. He stood aside. Stan Buckley walked out, his hands clenched. Torren
closed the door and re-locked it. He turned his back and walked down
the corridor. He opened the door at its end. Again he stood aside. Stan
Buckley went through. Torren closed the door, took a bit of cloth from
his pocket, wiped off the key, hung it up again on a tiny hook, with
the same bit of cloth threw a switch, and put the cloth back in his
pocket.
"The photocells are back on," he said in a dry voice. "They say you're
still in your cell. When the guard contradicts them, you'll seem to
have vanished into thin air."
"I'm doing this," said Stan hoarsely, "to get a chance to kill you. Of
course I've no real chance to escape!"
That was obvious. The _Stallifer_ was deep in the void of interstellar
space. She traveled at twelve hundred times the speed of light. Escape
from the ship was impossible. And concealment past discovery when the
ship docked was preposterous.
"That remains to be seen," said Torren coldly. "Come this way."
* * * * *
Torren went down a hallway. He slipped into a narrow doorway,
unnoticeable unless one was looking for it. Stan followed. He found
himself in that narrow, compartmented space between the ship's inner
and outer skins. A door; another compartment; another door. Then a tiny
air-lock--used for the egress of a single man to inspect or repair such
exterior apparatus as the scanners for the ship's vision screens. There
was a heap of assorted apparatus beside the air-lock door.
"I prepared for this," said Torren curtly. "There's a space suit.
Put it on. Here's a meteor miner's space skid. There are supplies. I
brought this stuff as luggage, in water-tight cases. I'll fill the
cases with my bath water and get off the ship with the same weight of
luggage I had when I came on. That's my cover-up."
"And I?" asked Stan harshly.
"You'll take this chrono. It's synchronized with the ship's navigating
clock. At two-two even you push off from the outside of the ship. The
drive field fluctuates. When it collapses, you'll be outside it. When
it expands--"
Stan Buckley raised his eyebrows. This was clever! The Bowdoin-Hall
field, which permits of faster-than-light travel, is like a pulsating
bubble, expanding and contracting at rates ranging from hundreds of
thousands of times per second to the forty-per-second of deep-space
speed. When the field is expanding, and bars of an artificial allotrope
of carbon are acted upon by electrostatic forces in a certain
scientific fashion, a ship and all its contents accelerate at a rate
so great that it simply has no meaning. As the field contracts, a ship
decelerates again. That is the theory, at any rate. There is no proof
in sensation or instrument readings that such is the case. But velocity
is inversely proportional to the speed of the field's pulsations, and
only in deep space does a ship dare slow the pulsations too greatly,
for fear of complications.
However, a man in a space suit could detach himself from a space ship
traveling by the Bowdoin-Hall field. He could float free at the instant
of the field's collapse, and be left behind when it expanded again. But
he would be left alone in illimitable emptiness.
"You'll straddle the space skid," said Torren shortly. "It's full
powered--good for some millions of miles. At two-two exactly the
_Stallifer_ will be as close to Khor Alpha as it will go. Khor Alpha's
a dwarf white star that's used as a course marker. It has one planet
that the directories say has a breathable atmosphere, and list as a
possible landing refuge, but which they also say is unexamined. You'll
make for that planet and land. You'll wait for me. I'll come!"