Denver began a long bill of particulars against Big Ed Caltis of
Crystal City. He omitted little, though some of it was mere scandalous
gossip with which solo-prospectors who had been the objects of a
squeeze-play consoled themselves and took revenge upon their tormentor
from safe distance. Denver paused once, briefly, to re-assess and
recapture the delight he took in gazing at Darbor's beauty seated
opposite. Then he resumed his account of the life and times of Big Ed,
an improvised essay into the folly and stupidity of untamed greed
which ended upon a sustained note of vituperation.
Big Ed smiled with sardonic amusement. He was in his late forties,
running a bit to blubber, but still looked strong and capable. He
waited until Tod Denver ran down, waited and smiled patiently.
"If you've finished," he said. "I should compliment you on the
completeness of the picture you paint of me. When I need a biographer,
I'll call on you. Just now I have another business proposition. I
understand you know the location of some ancient Martian
mine-workings. You need a partner. I'm proposing myself."
Denver paled. "I have a partner," he said, nodding toward the girl.
Big Ed smiled thinly. "That's settled then. Her being your partner
makes it easy. What she has is mine. I bought her. She works for me
and everything she has is mine."
Darbor's eyes held curious despair. But hatred boiled up in her.
"Not altogether," she corrected him evenly. "You never got what you
wanted most--me! And you never will. I just resigned. Get yourself
another dummy."
But Ed stood up. "Very good. Maudlin but magnificent. Let me offer my
congratulations to both of you. But you're mistaken. I'll get
everything I want. I always do. I'm not through with either of you."
Darbor ignored him. "Dance?" she asked Denver. He rose and gallantly
helped her from her chair.
Big Ed Caltis, after a black look, vanished toward the offices and
gambling rooms upstairs. He paused once and glanced back.
Denver laughed suddenly. Darbor studied him and caught the echo of her
own fear in his eyes. He mustered a hard core of courage in himself,
but it required distinct effort.
"When I was a kid I liked to swing on fence-gates. Once, the hinges
broke. I skinned my knee."
Her body was trembling. Some of it got into her voice. "It could
happen again."
He met the challenge of her. She was bright steel, drawn to repel
lurking enemies.
"I have another knee," he said, grinning. "But yours are too nice to
bark up. Where's the back door?"
The music was Venusian, a swaying, sensuous thing of weirdest melodies
and off-beat rhythms. Plucked and bowed strings blended with wailing
flutes and an exotic tympany to produce music formed of passion and
movement. Tod Denver and Darbor threaded their way through
stiffly-paired swaying couples toward the invisible door at the rear.
"I hope you don't mind scar tissue on your toes," he murmured, bending
his cheek in impulsive caress. He wished that he were nineteen again
and could still dream. Twenty-seven seemed so aged and battered and
cynical. And dreams can become nightmares.
They were near the door.
"Champagne tastes like vinegar if it's too cold," she replied. "My
mouth is puckery and tastes like swill. I hope it's the blank
champagne. Maybe I'm scared."
They dropped pretense and bolted for the door.
In the alley, they huddled among rubbish and garbage cans because the
shadows lay thicker there.
* * * * *
The danger was real and ugly and murderous. Three thugs came boiling
through the alley door almost on their heels. They lay in the stinking
refuse, not daring to breathe. Brawny, muscular men with faces that
shone brutally in the blazing, reflected Earthlight scurried back and
forth, trying locked doors and making a hurried expedition to scout
out the street. Passersby were buttonholed and roughly questioned. No
one knew anything to tell.
One hatchetman came back to report.
Big Ed's voice could be heard in shrill tirade of fury.
"You fools. Don't let them get away. I'll wring the ears off the lot
of you if they get to the spaceport. He was there; he was the one who
spotted us. He can identify my ship. Now get out and find them. I'll
pay a thousand vikdals Martian to the man who brings me either one.
Kill the girl if you have to, but bring him back alive. I want his
ears, and he knows where the stuff is. Now get out of here!"
More dark figures spurted from the dark doorway. Darbor gave
involuntary shudder as they swept past in a flurry of heavy-beating
footsteps. Denver held her tightly, hand over her mouth. She bit his
hand and he repressed a squeal of pain. She made no outcry and the
pounding footsteps faded into distance.
Big Ed Caltis went inside, loudly planning to call the watch-detail at
the spaceport. His word was law in Crystal City.
"Can we beat them to the ship?" Denver asked.
"We can try," Darbor replied....
The spaceport was a blaze of light. Tod Denver expertly picked the
gatelock. The watchman came out of his shack, picking his teeth. He
looked sleepy, but grinned appreciatively at Darbor.
"Hi, Tod! You sure get around. Man just called about you. Sounded mad.
What's up?"
"Plenty. What did you tell him?"
The watchman went on picking his teeth. "Nothing. He don't pay my
wages. Want your ship? Last one in the line-up. Watch yourself. I
haven't looked at it, but there've been funny noises tonight. Maybe
you've got company."
"Maybe I have. Lend me your gun, Ike?"
"Sure, I've eaten. I'm going back to sleep. If you don't need the gun,
leave it on the tool-locker. If you do, I want my name in the papers.
They'll misspell it, but the old lady will get a kick. So long. Good
luck. If it's a boy, Ike's a good, old-fashioned name."
Tod Denver and Darbor ran the length of the illuminated hangar to the
take-off pits at the far end. His space sled was the last in line.
That would help for a quick blast-off.
Darbor was panting, ready to drop from exhaustion. But she dragged
gamely on. Gun ready, he reached up to the airlock flap.
Inside the ship was sudden commotion. A scream was cut off sharply.
Scurried movement became bedlam. Uproar ceased as if a knife had cut
through a ribbon of sound.
Denver flung open the flap and scrabbled up and through the valve to
the interior.
Two of Big Ed's trigger men lay on the floor. One had just connected
with a high-voltage charge from Charley. The other had quietly
fainted. Denver dumped them outside, helped Darbor up and closed the
ship for take-off. He switched off cabin lights.
He wasted no time in discussion until the ship was airborne and had
nosed through the big dome-valves into the airless Lunar sky.
A fat hunk of Earth looked like a blueberry chiffon pie, but was
brighter. It cast crazy shadows on the terrain unreeling below.
Darbor sat beside him. She felt dazed, and wondered briefly what had
happened to her.
Less than an hour before she had entered the _Pot o' Stars_ with
nothing on her mind but assessing the clients and the possible
receipts for the day. Too much had happened and too rapidly. She could
not assimilate details.
Something launched itself through darkness at her. It snugged tightly
to shoulder and neck and made chuckling sounds. Stiff fur nuzzled her
skin. There was a vague prickling of hot needles, but it was
disturbing rather than painful. She screamed.
"Shut up!" said Denver, laughing. "It's just Charley. But don't excite
him or you'll regret it."
From the darkness came a confused burble of sounds as Charley explored
and bestowed his affections upon a new friend still too startled to
appreciate the gesture. Darbor tried vainly to fend off the lavish
demonstrations.
Denver gunned the space sled viciously, and felt the push of
acceleration against his body. He headed for a distant mountain range.
"Just Charley, my pet moondog," he explained.
"What in Luna is that?"
"You'll find out. He loves everybody. Me, I'm more discriminating, but
I can be had. My father warned me about women like you."
"How would he know?" Darbor asked bitterly. "What did he say about
women like me?"
"It's exciting while it lasts, and it lasts as long as your money
holds out. It's wonderful if you can afford it. But Charley's
harmless. He's like me, he just wants to be loved. Go on. Pet him."
"All males are alike," Darbor grumbled. Obediently, she ran fingers
over the soft, wirelike pseudo-fur. The fingers tingled as if weak
charges of electricity surged through them.
"Does it--er, Charley ever blow a fuse?" she asked. "I'd like to have
met your father. He sounds like a man who had a lot of experience with
women. The wrong women. By the way, where are we going?"
* * * * *
Tod Denver had debated the point with himself. "To the scene of the
crime," he said. "It's not good, and they may look for us there. But
we can hole up for a few days till the hunt dies down. It might be the
last place Big Ed would expect to find us. Later, unless we find
something in the Martian workings, we'll head for the far places.
Okay?"
Darbor shrugged. "I suppose. But then what. I don't imagine you'll be
a chivalrous jackass and want to marry me?"
The space sled drew a thin line of silver fire through darkness as he
debated that point.
"Now that I'm sober, I'll think about it. Give me time. They say a man
can get used to to anything."
A ghostly choking sounded from the seat beside him. He wondered if
Charley had blown something.
"Do they say what girls have to get used to?" she asked, her voice
oddly tangled.
Tod Denver tempered the wind to the shorn lamb. "We'll see how the
workings pan out. I'd want my money to last."
What Darbor replied should be written on asbestos.
* * * * *
Their idyl at the mines lasted exactly twenty-seven hours. Denver
showed Darbor around, explained some of the technicalities of
moon-mining to her. The girl misused some precious water to try
washing the alley-filth from her clothes. Her experiment was not a
success and the diaphanous wisps of moonsilver dissolved. She stood in
the wrapped blanket and was too tired and depressed even to cry.
"I guess it wasn't practical," she decided ruefully. "It did bunch up
in the weirdest places in your spare spacesuit. Have you any old rag I
could borrow?"
Denver found cause for unsafe mirth in the spectacle of her blanketed
disaster. "I'll see." He rooted about in a locker and found a worn
pair of trousers which he threw to the girl. A sweater, too shrunken
and misshapen for him to wear again, came next. Dismayed, she
inspected the battered loot; then was inspired to quick alterations.
Pant-legs cut off well above the baggy knees made passable shorts; the
sweater bulged a trifle at the shoulders, it fit adequately
elsewhere--and something more than adequately.
Charley fled her vicinity in extremes of voluble embarrassment as she
changed and zipped up the substitute garments.
"Nice legs," Denver observed, which was an understatement.
"Watch out you don't skin those precious knees again," she warned
darkly.
Time is completely arbitrary on the Moon as far as Earth people are
concerned. One gets used to prolonged light and dark periods. Earth
poked above the horizon, bathing the heights of the range with intense
silver-blue light. But moonshadows lay heavily in the hollows and the
deep gorges were still pools of intense gloom. Clocks are set to the
meaningless twenty-four hour divisions of day and night on Earth,
which have nothing to do with two-week days and nights on Luna. After
sunset, with Earthlight still strong and pure and deceptively
warm-looking, the landscapes become a barren, haunted wasteland.
Time itself seems unreal.
Time passed swiftly. The idyl was brief. For twenty-seven Earth-hours
after their landing at the mines came company...!
An approaching ship painted a quick-dying trail of fire upon the black
vault of sky. It swooped suddenly from nowhere, and the trapped
fugitives debated flight or useless defense.
Alone, Denver would have stayed and fought, however uneven and
hopeless the battle. But he found the girl a mental block to all
thoughts of open, pitched battle on the shadowy, moonsilvered slopes.
He might surprise the pursuers and flush them by some type of ambush.
But they would be too many for him, and his feeble try would end
either in death or capture.
Neither alternative appealed to him. With Darbor, he had suddenly
found himself possessed of new tenacity toward life, and he had
desperate, painful desire to live for her.
He chose flight.