Randy said, "One more thing, friend," and there was an undefinable
something in his voice. "I'll need a gun. You'll lend me yours, won't
you? They'll think I took it." He reached over and slid Hale's blaster
from his holster, and brought the glowing coal of his cigarette close
to the dial on the butt. "Fully charged. Well, I may need every shot--"
his eyes met Hale's, and that undefinable something was in them
too--"for those meddling bastards outside. I owe them for tonight.
Now--" He took a step toward Hale, hefting the gun and raising it to
strike.
Without thought, with only a sick feeling all over, Hale stepped back.
The twin-stones clicked on the floor at his feet. "Wait, Randy. You
should've slugged me first ... I don't think I want to let you go after
all."
Randy's grin was frozen, and Hale now had a name for that something, a
kind of shame. "I know," Randy said, "I was waiting for that," and he
brought the gun down in a calculated arc.
[Illustration: _"I know," Randy said, "I was waiting for that," and he
brought the gun down in a calculated arc._]
Hale tried to duck, but Randy had the edge. The gun-barrel slammed into
his temple. Agonized, he threw up an arm. It chopped against Randy's
wrist, and fire and thunder erupted in the blackness. The gun clattered
on stone and from somewhere came Randy's furious cursing, "Damn you,
Hale, you did that! Now I'll never--" Then Hale was alone in the temple
with his pain.
He heard the click of bootheels as Randy leaped over the trench, the
hollow thudding down the corridor doorway--then the shouts and the
roar of blasters and the intolerable glare, a stark wavering white
rectangle that washed across the floor from the doorway to flicker upon
the stony wings and beast-face of _Lhrai_--and the spasmic scream of a
man dissolved in flame.
He got to his feet and leaned wearily against the wall, face gaunted by
pain, wondering if Randy had known only at the last how ruthless he had
become. Life was cheap enough out here on a red world where red insects
bred in your eyes and red beasts swallowed you and let their juices
do the killing, and it took a good man to fight the alien fight. But
when the wrong kind of man came along, it was a knife in the back and
life had no price at all. That kind of man had to be reckoned on, Hale
thought bleakly--the bad penny that wouldn't even go away, hard and
shiny and newly made, like Randy--for values slipped in the rat-race
that was any frontier, and the urge to prey, for profit, for power, lay
close under a man's skin. Hale sighed. He had hoped for a while--but
no; Randy's stamp had been the bloody stamp of the canals, and that
stamp would sooner or later have cancelled out other lives, on Venus or
wherever he took it.
Better now, Hale thought, than hunted down the years....
George Weiss said, from close by in the darkness, "We got him, Hale.
Are you bad hurt?"
Hale pressed his temple, and said, "I'll get over it," and meant the
pain in his head. Time would have to work to erase the deeper ache.