_Idiotic pets rate idiotic masters. Tod Denver and Charley,
the moondog, made ideal companions as they set a zigzag
course for the Martian diggings--paradise for fools._
* * * * *
It was Charley's fault, of course; all of it....
Temperature outside was a rough 280 degrees F., which is plenty rough
and about three degrees cooler than Hell. It was somewhere over the
Lunar Appenines and the sun bored down from an airless sky like an
unshielded atomic furnace. The thermal adjustors whined and snarled
and clogged-up until the inside of the space sled was just bearable.
[Illustration]
Tod Denver glared at Charley, who was a moondog and looked like one,
and Charley glared back. Denver was fond of Charley, as one might be
of an idiot child. At the moment they found each in the other's
doghouse. Charley had curled up and attached himself to the instrument
panel from which be scowled at Denver in malignant fury.
[Illustration]
Charley was a full-grown, two yard-long moondog. He looked like an
oversized comma of something vague and luminous. At the head end he
was a fat yellow balloon, and the rest of him tapered vaguely to a
blunt apex of infinity. Whatever odd forces composed his weird
physiology, he was undoubtedly electronic or magnetic.
In the physically magnetic sense, he could cling for hours to any
metallic surface, or at will propel himself about or hang suspended
between any two or more metallic objects. As to his personality, he
was equally magnetic, for wherever Denver took him he attracted
curious stares and comments. Most people have never seen a moondog.
Such creatures, found only on the moons of Saturn, are too rare to be
encountered often as household or personal pets.
But Tod Denver had won Charley in a crap game at Crystal City; and
thereafter found him both an inseparable companion and exasperating
responsibility. He had tried every available means to get rid of
Charley, but without success. Either direct sale or horse-trade proved
useless. Charley liked Denver too well to put up with less interesting
owners so Charley always came back, and nearly always accompanied by
profanity and threats. Charley was spectacular, and a monstrous care
but Denver ended by becoming fond of the nuisance. He would miss the
radiant, stupid and embarrassingly affectionate creature.
Charley had currently burned out a transformer by some careless and
exuberant antic; hence the mutual doghouse. Scolding was wasted
effort, so Denver merely sighed and made a face at Charley.
"Mad dogs and Martians go out in the Lunar sun," he sang as a
punishment. Charley recognized only the word "dog" but he considered
the song a personal insult; as if Denver's singing were not sufficient
punishment for a minor offense. Charley was irritated.
Charley's iridescence flickered evilly, which was enough to
short-circuit two relays and weld an undetermined number of hot
switches. Charley's temper was short, and short-circuiting all
electrical units within range was mere reflex.
Tod Denver swore nobly and fluently, set the controls on
automatic-neutral and tried to localize the damage. But for Charley
and his overloaded peeve, they would have been in Crystal City inside
the hour.
So it was Charley's fault, of course; all of it....
* * * * *
It was beyond mere prank. Denver calculated grimly that his isolated
suit would hold up less than twenty minutes in that noon inferno
outside before the stats fused and the suiting melted and ran off him
in droplets of metal foil and glass cloth. The thermal adjustors were
already working at capacity, transmitting the light and heat that
filtered through the mirror-tone hull into stored, useful energy.
Batteries were already overcharged and the voltage regulators snapped
on and off like a crackling barrage of distant heat-guns.
Below was a high gulch of the Lunar Appenines, a pattern of dazzling
glare and harsh moonshadows. Ramshackle mine-buildings of
prefabricated plastic straggled out from the shrouding blackness under
a pinnacled ridge. Denver eyed the forbidding terrain with
hair-raising panic. He checked the speed of the racing space sled,
circled once, and tried to pick out a soft spot. The ship swooped down
like a falling rock, power off. Denver awaited the landing shock.
It was rough. Space was too cramped and he overshot his planned
landing. The spacer set down hard beyond the cleared strip, raising
spurting clouds of volcanic ash which showered his view-ports in
blinding glare.
Skids shrilled on naked rock, causing painful vibrations in the cabin.
Denver wrenched at controls, trying to avoid jagged tongues of broken
lava protruding above the dust-floor. Sun-fire turned the disturbed
dust into luminous haze blanketing ship and making vision impossible.
The spacer ground to an agonized stop. Denver's landing was rough but
he still lived.
He sat blankly and felt cold in the superheated cabin. It was nice and
surprising to be alive. Without sustaining air the dust settled almost
instantly. Haze cleared outside the ports.
Charley whined eagerly. He detached himself from the tilting control
panel and sailed wildly about like a hydrophobic goldfish in a bowl of
water. A succession of spitting and crackling sounds poured from him
as he batted his lunatic face to the view-ports to peer outside.
Pseudo-tendrils formed around his travesty of mouth, and he wrinkled
his absurd face into yellow typhoons of excitement. This was fun.
Let's do it again!
Denver grunted uncomfortably. He studied the staggering scene of Lunar
landscape without any definite hope. Something blazing from the peak
of the largest mine-structure caught his eye. With a snort of bitter
disgust he identified the dazzle.
Distress signals in Interplanetary Code! That should be very helpful
under the poisonous circumstances. He swore again, numbly, but with
deep sincerity.
Charley danced and flicked around the cabin like a free electron with
a careless disregard for traffic regulations and public safety. It was
wordless effort to express his eagerness to go outside and explore
with Denver.
In spite of himself, Tod Denver grinned at the display.
"Not this time, Charley. You wait in the ship while I take a quick
look around. From the appearance of things, I'll run into trouble
enough without help from you."
The moondog drooped from disappointment. With Charley, any emotion
always reached the ultimate absurdity. He was a flowing, flexible
phantom of translucent color and radiance. But now the colors faded
like gaudy rags in caustic solution. Charley whined as Denver went
through the grotesque ritual of donning space helmet and zipping up
his glass cloth and metal foil suiting before he dared venture
outside. Charley even tried to help by pouring himself through the
stale air to hold open the locker where the tool-belts and holstered
heat guns were kept.
Space suiting bulged with internal pressure as Denver slid through the
airlock and left the ship behind. Walking carefully against the
treachery of moonweak gravity, he made cautious way up the slope
toward the clustered buildings. Footing was bad, with the feeling of
treading upon brittle, glassy surfaces and breaking through to bury
his weighted shoes in inches of soft ash. A small detour was necessary
to avoid upthrusting pinnacles of lavarock. In the shadow of these
outcroppings he paused to let his eyes adjust to the brilliance of
sunlight.
A thin pencil-beam of light stabbed outward from behind the nearer
building. Close at hand, one of the lava-needles vanished in soundless
display of mushrooming explosion. Sharp, acrid heat penetrated even
the insulating layers of suit. A pressure-wave of expanding gas
staggered him before it dissipated.
Denver flung himself instinctively behind the sheltering rocks. Prone,
he inched forward to peer cautiously through a V-cleft between two
jagged spires. Heat-blaster in hand, he waited events.
Again the beam licked out. The huddle of lava-pinnacles became a core
of flaming destruction. Half-molten rock showered Denver's precarious
refuge. He ducked, unhurt, then thrust head and gun-arm above the
barricade.
* * * * *
Two dark figures, running awkwardly, detached themselves from the
huddled bulk of buildings. Like leaping, fantastic shadows, they
scampered toward the mounds of deep shadow beneath the ridge. The
route took them away from Denver, making aim difficult. He fired
twice, hurriedly. Missed. But near misses because he had not focused
for such range.
By the time he could reset the weapon, the scurrying figures had
disappeared into the screening puddles of shadow. Denver tried to
distinguish them against the blackness, but it lay in solid, covering
mass at the base of a titanic ridge. Faintly he could see a ghostly
outline, much too large for men. It might be a ship, but it would have
to be large enough for a space-yacht. No stinking two-man sled like
his spacer. And he could not be sure in that eerie blankness if it
even were a ship.
Besides, the range was too great. Uncertainty vanished as a circle of
light showed briefly. An airlock door opened and closed swiftly.
Denver stood clear of the rocks and wondered if he should risk
anything further. Pursuit was useless with such arms as he carried. No
question of courage was involved. A man is not required to play
quixotic fool under such circumstances. And there might not be time to
return to his spacer for a long-range heat gun. If he tried to reach
the strange ship, its occupants could smoke him down before he covered
half the distance. If he continued toward the buildings, they might
return and stalk him. They would, he knew, if they guessed he was
alone.
Decision was spared him. Rockets thundered. The ridge lighted up as
with magnesium flares. A big ship moved out of the banked shadows,
accelerating swiftly. It was a space-yacht, black-hulled, and showed
no insignia. It was fast, incredibly fast. He wasted one blaster
charge after it, but missed focus by yards. He ducked out of sight
among the rocks as the ship dipped to skim low overhead. Then it was
gone, circling in stiff, steep spiral until it lost itself to sight in
distant gorges.
"Close!" Denver murmured. "Too close. And now what?"
He quickly recharged the blaster. A series of sprawling leaps ate up
the remaining distance to the mine's living quarters. One whole side,
where airlock doors had been, was now a gaping, ragged hole. A haze of
nearly invisible frost crystals still descended in slow showers. It
was bitterly cold on the sharp, opaque edge of mountain-shadow.
Thermal adjustors in his suiting stopped their irregular humming.
Automatic units combined chemicals and began to operate against the
biting cold. With a premonition of ugly dread, Denver clambered into
the ruined building.
Inside was airless, heatless cell, totally dark. Denver's gloved hand
sought a radilume-switch. Light blinked on as he fumbled the button.
Death sat at a metal-topped table. Death wore the guise of a tall,
gaunt, leathery man, no longer young. It was no pretty sight, though
not too unfamiliar a sight on Luna.
The man had been writing. Frozen fingers still clutched a cylinder
pen, and the nub adhered to the paper as the flow of ink had
stiffened. From nose, ears and mouth, streams of blood had congealed
into fat, crimson icicles. Rimes of ruby crystals ringed
pressure-bulged eyes. He was complete, perfect, a tableau of cold,
airless death.
The paper was a claim record, registered in the name of Laird Martin,
Earthman. An attached photograph matched what could be seen of face
behind its mask of frozen blood. Across the foot of the sheet was a
hurried scrawl:
_Claim jumpers. I know they'll get me. If I can hide this
first, they will not get what they want. Where Mitre Peak's
apex of shadow points at 2017 ET is the first of a series of
deep-cut arrow markings. Follow. They lead to the entrance.
Old Martian workings. Maybe something. Whoever finds this,
see that my kid, Soleil, gets a share. She's in school on
Earth. Address is 93-X south Palma--_
The pen had stopped writing half-through the word. Death had
intervened hideously. Imagination could picture the scene as that
airlock wall disappeared in blinding, soundless flash. Or perhaps
there had been sound in the pressured atmosphere. His own arrival may
have frightened off the claim jumpers, but too late to help the
victim, who sat so straight and hideous in the airless tomb.
There was nothing to do. Airless cold would embalm the body until some
bored official could come out from Crystal City to investigate the
murder and pick up the hideous pieces. But if the killers returned
Denver made sure that nothing remained to guide them in their search
for the secret mine worked long-ago by forgotten Martians. It was
Laird Martin's discovery and his dying legacy to a child on distant
Earth.
Denver picked up the document and wadded it clumsily into a
fold-pocket of his spacesuit. It might help the police locate the
heir. In Martin's billfold was the child's picture, no more.
Denver retraced his steps to the frosty airlock valve of his ship.
Inside the cabin, Charley greeted his master's return with extravagant
caperings which wasted millions of electron volts.
"Nobody home, Charley," Denver told the purring moondog, "but we've
picked up a nasty errand to run."
It was a bad habit, he reflected; talking to a moondog like that, but
he had picked up the habit from sheer loneliness of his prospecting
among the haunted desolations of the Moon. Even talking to Charley
was better than going nuts, he thought, and there was not too much
danger of smart answers.
He worked quickly, repairing the inadvertent damage Charley's pique
had caused. It took ten full minutes, and the heat-deadline was too
close for comfort. He finished and breathed more freely as
temperatures began to drop. He peeled off the helmet and unzipped the
suit which was reaching the thermal levels of a live-steam bath.
He ran tape through the charger to impregnate electronic setting that
would guide the ship on its course to Crystal City. "We were on our
way, there, anyhow," he mused. "I hope they've improved the jail. It
could stand air-conditioning."