Slow anger and resentment ate at Meek. Who was this Hoffman to order
him out of Asteroid City? This was a free Solar System, wasn't it? No
wonder the Rev. Brown was jittery. No wonder the decent people wanted a
clean-up.
Meek's anger mounted, a cold deadly anger that shook him like a frigid
hand. An anger that almost frightened him, for very seldom in his life
had he been really angry.
He rose slowly from the table, hitched his gun belt to a comfortable
position.
"The town's been without a marshal for a long time, hasn't it?" he
asked.
Hoffman's laugh boomed out. "You bet it has. And it's going to stay
that way. The last one took it on the lam. The one before that got
killed. The one before that sort of disappeared...."
Meek spoke slowly, weak eyes burning.
"Horrible condition," he said. "Something's got to be done about it."
* * * * *
The streets were deserted, quiet, a deadly quiet that lurked and
hovered, waiting for something to happen.
Oliver Meek polished his marshal's star with his coat sleeve, glanced
up at the dome. Stars glittered, their light distorted by the heavy
quartz. Stars in a dead black sky.
Bathed in the weak starlight, the mighty walls of the canyon reared
above the dome. A canyon, the only sort of place where a city could
rise on one of the planetoids. For the walls protected the dome against
the deadly barrage of whizzing debris that continually shrieked down
from space. Those mighty cragged mountains and dizzy cliffs were pocked
with the blows dealt, through long eons, by that hail of armor-piercing
projectiles.
Meek returned his gaze to the street, saw the lights of the Silver
Moon. Nervously he felt of the papers in his inside pocket. Warrants
for the arrest of John Hoffman for murder, Luke Blaine for murder, Jim
Smithers for reckless shooting, Jake Loomis for assault and battery,
Robert Blake for robbery.
And suddenly, Oliver Meek was afraid. For death waited him, he knew,
inside the swinging doors of the Silver Moon. A death preluded by this
quiet street.
Almost as if he were awaking from a dream, he found questions filling
his brain. What was he doing here? Why had he gotten himself into a jam
like this? What difference did it make to him what happened to Asteroid
City?
It had been anger that had made him do it ... that unaccountable anger
which had flared when Hoffman told him to get out.
After all, what difference would a few days make? He was going to leave
anyhow. He'd seen about all there was to see in Asteroid City. He
wanted to see the Prowler and the stones with the strange inscriptions
on them, but they were sights he could get along without.
If he turned around and walked the other way he could reach his space
ship in just a few minutes. There was fuel enough to take him to
Ganymede. No one would know until he was already gone. And after he was
gone, what would he care what anybody thought?
He stood irresolutely, arguing with himself. Then he shook his head,
resumed his march toward the Silver Moon.
A figure stepped from a dark doorway. Meek saw the threatening gleam of
steel. His hands streaked toward his gun-butts, but something prodded
him in the back and he froze, fingers touching metal.
"All right, marshal," said a mocking voice. "You just turn around and
walk the other way."
He felt his guns lifted from their holsters and he turned around and
walked. Footsteps crunched beside him and behind him, but otherwise he
walked in silence.
"Where are you taking me?" he asked, his voice just a trifle shaky.
One of the men laughed.
"Just on a little trip, marshal. Out to take a look at Juno. It's a
right pretty sight at night."
* * * * *
Juno wasn't pretty. For the most part, there was little of it one could
see. The stars shed little light and the depressions were in shadow,
while the cragged mountain tops seemed like shimmering mirages in the
ghostly starlight.
The ship lay on a plateau between a needle-like range and a deep,
shadowed valley.
"Now, marshal," said one of the men, "you stay right here. You'll see
the Sun come up over that mountain back there. Interesting. Dawn on
Juno is something to remember."
Meek started forward, but the other waved him back with his pistol.
"You're leaving me here?" shrieked Meek.
"Why sure," the man said. "You wanted to see the Solar System, didn't
you?"
They backed away from him, guns in hand. Frozen in terror, he watched
them enter the ship, saw the port close. An instant later the ship
roared away, the backwash of its tubes buffeting Meek to the ground.
He struggled to his feet, watching the blasting tubes until they were
out of sight. Clumsily he stepped forward and then stopped. There was
no place to go ... nothing to do.
Loneliness and fear swept over him in terrible waves of anguish. Fear
that dwarfed any emotion he had ever felt. Fear of the ghostly shimmer
of the peaks, fear of the shadow-blackened valley, fear of space and
the mad, cold intensity of unwinking stars.
He fought for a grip on himself. It was fear such as this that
drove men mad in space. He'd read about that, heard about it. Fear
of the loneliness and the terrible depths of space ... fear of the
indifference of endless miles of void, fear of the unknown that always
lurked just at elbow distance.
"Meek," he told himself, "you should have stayed at home."
Dawn came shortly, but no such dawn as one would see on Earth. Just a
gradual dimming of the stars, a gradual lifting of the blacker darkness
as a larger star, the Sun, swung above the peaks.
The stars still shone, but a gray light filtered over the landscape,
made the mountains solid things instead of ghostly shapes.
Jagged peaks loomed on one side of the plateau, fearsome depths on the
other. A meteor thudded somewhere to his right and Meek shuddered.
There was no sound of the impact but he could feel the vibrations of
the blow as the whizzing mass struck the cliffs.
But it was foolish to be afraid of meteors, he told himself. He had
greater and more immediate worries.
There were less than eight hours of air left in the tanks of his space
suit. He had no idea where he was, although he knew that many miles of
rugged, fearsome country stretched between him and Asteroid City.
The space suit carried no food and no water, but that was of minor
moment, he realized, for his air would give out long before he felt the
pangs of thirst or hunger.
He sat down on a massive boulder and tried to think. There wasn't much
to think about. Everywhere his thoughts met black walls. The situation,
he told himself, was hopeless.
If only he hadn't come to Asteroid City in the first place! Or
having come, if he had only minded his business, this never would
have happened. If he hadn't been so anxious to show off what he knew
about card dealing tricks. If only he hadn't agreed to be sworn in as
marshal. If he'd swallowed his pride and left when Hoffman told him to.
He brushed away such thoughts as futile, took stock of his surroundings.
The cliff on the right hand side was undercut, overhanging several
hundred feet of level ground.
Ponderously, he heaved himself off the boulder, wandered aimlessly up
the wider tongue of plateau. The undercut, he saw, grew deeper, forming
a deep cleft, as if someone had furrowed out the mountain side. Heavy
shadows clung within it.
Suddenly he stopped, riveted to the ground, scarcely daring to breathe.
Something was moving in the deep shadow of the undercut. Something that
seemed to glint faintly with reflected light.
The thing lurched forward and, in the fleeting instant before he turned
and ran, Oliver Meek had an impression of a barrel-like body, a long
neck, a cruel mouth, monstrous eyes that glowed with hidden fires.
There was no speculation in Oliver Meek's mind. From the description
given him by Stiffy, from the very terror of the thing, he knew the
being shambling toward him was the Asteroid Prowler.
With a shriek of pure fear, Meek turned and fled and behind him came
the Prowler, its head swaying on the end of its whip-like neck.
* * * * *
Meek's legs worked like pistons, his breath gasping in his throat, his
body soaring through space as he covered long distances at each leap
under the influence of lesser gravity.
Thunderous blasts hammered at the earphones in his helmet and as he ran
he craned his head skyward.
Shooting down toward the plateau, forward rockets braking, was a small
spaceship!
Hope rose within him and he glanced back over his shoulder. Hope died
instantly. The Prowler was gaining on him, gaining fast.
Suddenly his legs gave out. Simply folded up, worn out with the
punishment they had taken. He threw up his arms to shield his helmet
plate and sobbed in panic.
The Asteroid Prowler would get him now. Sure as shooting. Just at the
minute rescue came, the Prowler would get him.
But the Prowler didn't get him. Nothing happened at all. Surprised, he
sat up and spun around, crouching.
The ship had landed, almost at the edge of the plateau and a man was
tumbling out of the port. The Prowler had changed his course, was
galloping toward the ship.
The man from the ship ran in leaping bounds, a pistol in one gloved
hand, and his yelp of terror rang in Meek's earphones.
"Run, dang you. Run! That dad-blamed Prowler will be after us any
minute now."
"Stiffy," yelled Meek. "Stiffy, you came out to get me."
Stiffy landed beside him, hauled him to his feet.
"Dang right I came to get you," he panted. "I thought them hoodlums
would be up to some dirty tricks, so I stuck around and watched."
He jerked at Meek's arm.
"Come on, Oliver, we got to get along."
But Meek jerked his arm away.
"Look what he's doin!" he shouted. "Just look at him!"
The Prowler seemed to be bent on systematic destruction of the space
ship. His jaws were ripping at the steel plating.... Ripping at it and
tearing it away, peeling it off the frame as one might peel an orange.
"Hey," howled Stiffy. "You can't do that. Get out of there, you
danged...."
The Prowler turned to look at them, a heavy power cable in its mouth.
"You'll be electrocuted," yelped Stiffy. "Danged if it won't serve you
right."
But, far from being electrocuted, the Prowler seemed to be enjoying
himself. He sucked at the power cable and his eyes eyes glowed
blissfully.
Stiffy flourished his pistol.
"Get away," he yelled. "Get away or I'll blister your danged hide."
[Illustration: _The Prowler whirled from the shattered ship._]
Almost playfully the Prowler minced away from the ship, feet dancing.
"He did it!" said Meek.
"Did what?" Stiffy scowled bewilderedly.
"Got away from that ship, just like you told him to."
Stiffy snorted. "Don't ever kid yourself he did it because I told him
to. He couldn't even hear me, probably. Living out here like this,
he wouldn't have anything to hear with. Probably he's just trying to
decide which one of us he'll catch first. Better be ready to kick you
up some dust."
The Prowler trotted toward them, head bobbing up and down.
"Get going," Stiffy yelled at Meek and brought up his pistol. A blue
shaft of light whipped out, smacked the Prowler in the head, but the
Prowler didn't even falter in his stride. The energy charge seemed to
have no power at all. It didn't even spatter ... it looked as if the
blue pencil of raging death was boring straight into the spread of
forehead between the monstrous eyes.
"Run, you danged fool," Stiffy screeched at Meek. "I can't hold him
off."
But Meek didn't run ... instead he sprang straight into the Prowler's
path, arm upraised.
"Stop!" he yelled.