IV.

Moran responded instantly. His hands flew to Hallet's throat, blind fury

making him unaware of any thought but a frantic lust to kill. It was

very strange that Moran somehow noticed Hallet's hand insanely pulling

the trigger of the blast-pistol over and over and over without result.

He remembered it later. Perhaps he shared Hallet's blank disbelief that

one could pull the trigger of a blaster and have nothing at all happen

in consequence. But nothing did happen, and suddenly he dropped the

weapon and clawed desperately at Moran's fingers about his throat. But

that was too late.

There was singularly little disturbance at the luncheon-table. The whole

event was climax and anticlimax together. Hallet's intention was so

appallingly murderous and his action so shockingly futile that the four

who were to have been his victims tended to stare blankly while Moran

throttled him.

Burleigh seemed to recover first. He tried to pull Moran's hands loose

from Hallet's throat. Lacking success he called to the others. "Harper!

Brawn! Help me!"

It took all three of them to release Hallet. Then Moran stood panting,

shaking, his eyes like flames.

"He--he--" panted Moran. "He was going to kill Carol!"

"I know," said Burleigh, distressedly. "He was going to kill all of us.

You gave me an inkling, so while he was packing bessendium between the

hulls, and had his space-suit hanging in the airlock, I doctored the

blaster in the space-suit pocket." He looked down at Hallet. "Is he

still alive?"

Brawn bent over Hallet. He nodded.

"Put him in the airlock for the time being," said Burleigh. "And lock

it. When he comes to, we'll decide what to do."

* * * * *

Harper and Brawn took Hallet by the arms and hauled him along the

passageway. The inner door of the lock clanged shut on him.

"We'll give him a hearing, of course," said Burleigh conscientiously.

"But we should survey the situation first."

To Moran the situation required no survey, but he viewed it from a

violently personal viewpoint which would neither require or allow

discussion. He knew what he meant to do about Hallet. He said harshly;

"Go ahead. When you're through I'll tell you what will be done."

* * * * *

He went away. To the control-room. There he paced up and down, trying to

beat back the fury which rose afresh at intervals of less than minutes.

He did not think of his own situation, just then. There are more

important things than survival.

He struggled for coolness, with the action before him known. He didn't

glance out the ports at the half-mile circle in which vision was

possible. Beyond the mist there might be anything; an ocean, swarming

metropoli of giant insects, a mountain-range. Nobody on the _Nadine_ had

explored. But Moran did not think of such matters now. Hallet had tried

to murder Carol, and Moran meant to take action, and there were matters

which might result from it. The matter the crew of the _Malabar_ had

forgotten to attend to--.

He searched for paper and a pen. He found both in a drawer for the

yacht's hand-written log. He wrote. He placed a small object in the

drawer. He had barely closed it when Carol was at the control-room door.

She said in a small voice;

"They want to talk to you."

He held up the paper.

"Read this later. Not now," he said curtly. He opened and closed the

drawer again, this time putting the paper in it. "I want you to read

this after the Hallet business is settled. I'm afraid that I'm not going

to look well in your eyes."

She swallowed and did not speak. He went to where the others sat in

official council. Burleigh said heavily;

"We've come to a decision. We shall call Hallet and hear what he has to

say, but we had to consider various courses of action and decide which

were possible and which were not."

Moran nodded grimly. He had made his own decision. It was not too much

unlike the one that, carried out, had made him seize the _Nadine_ for

escape from Coryus. But he'd listen. Harper looked doggedly resolved.

Brawn seemed moody as usual.

"I'm listening," said Moran.

"Hallet," said Burleigh regretfully, "intended to murder all of us and

with your help take the _Nadine_ to some place where he could hope to

land without space-port inspection."

Moran observed;

"He didn't discuss that part of his plans. He only asked if I'd make a

deal to escape being marooned."

"Yes," said Burleigh, nodding. "I'm sure--"

"My own idea," said Moran, "when I tried to seize the _Nadine_, was to

try to reach one of several newly-settled planets where things aren't

too well organized. I'd memos of some such planets. I hoped to get to

ground somewhere in a wilderness on one of them and work my way on foot

to a new settlement. There I'd explain that I'd been hunting or

prospecting or something of the sort. On a settled planet that would be

impossible. On a brand-new one people are less fussy and I might have

been accepted quite casually."

"Hallet may have had some such idea in his mind," agreed Burleigh. "With

a few bessendium crystals to show, he would seem a successful

prospector. He'd be envied but not suspected. To be sure!"

"But," said Moran drily, "he'd be best off alone. So if he had that sort

of idea, he intended to murder me too."

* * * * *

Burleigh nodded. "Undoubtedly. But to come to our decision. We can keep

him on board under watch--as we did you--and leave you here. This has

disadvantages. We owe you much. There would be risk of his taking

someone unawares and fighting for his life. Even if all went as we

wished, and we landed and dispersed, he could inform the space-port

officials anonymously of what had happened, leading to investigation and

the ruin of any plans for the future revival of our underground. Also,

it would destroy any hope for your rescue."

Moran smiled wryly. He hadn't much hope of that, if he were marooned.

"We could leave him here," said Burleigh unhappily, "with you taking his

identity for purposes of landing. But I do not think it would be wise to

send a ship after him. He would be resentful. If rescued, he would do

everything possible to spoil all our future lives, and we are

fugitives."

"Ah, yes!" said Moran, still more wryly amused.

"I am afraid," said Burleigh reluctantly, "that we can only offer him

his choice of being marooned or going out the airlock. I cannot think of

any other alternative."

"I can," said Moran. "I'm going to kill him."

Burleigh blinked. Harper looked up sharply.

"We fight," said Moran grimly. "Armed exactly alike. He can try to kill

me. I'll give him the same chance I have. But I'll kill him. They used

to call it a duel, and they came to consider it a very immoral business.

But that's beside the point. I won't agree to marooning him here. That's

murder. I won't agree to throwing him out the airlock. That's murder,

too. But I have the right to kill him if it's in fair fight. That's

justice! You can bring him in and let him decide if he wants to be

marooned or fight me. I think he's just raging enough to want to do all

the damage he can, now that his plans have gone sour."

Burleigh fidgeted. He looked at Harper. Harper nodded grudgingly. He

looked at Brawn. Brawn nodded moodily.

Burleigh said fretfully. "Very well ... Harper, you and Brawn bring him

here. We'll see what he says. Be careful!"

Harper and Brawn went down the passageway. Moran saw them take out the

blasters they'd worn since he took over the ship. They were ready. They

unlocked and opened the inner airlock door.

There was silence. Harper looked shocked. He went in the airlock while

Brawn stared, for once startled out of moodiness.

Harper came out.

"He's gone," he said in a flat voice. "Out the airlock."

* * * * *

All the rest went instantly to look. The airlock was empty. By the most

natural and inevitable of oversights, when Hallet was put in it for a

temporary cell, no one had thought of locking the outer door. There was

no point in it. It only led out to the nightmare world. And out there

Hallet would be in monstrous danger; he'd have no food. At most his only

weapon would be the torch Moran had carried to the _Malabar_ and brought

back again. He could have no hope of any kind. He could feel only

despair unthinkable and horror undiluted.

There was a buzzing sound in the airlock. A space-suit hung there. The

helmet-phone was turned on. Hallet's voice came out, flat and metallic

and desperate and filled with hate:

"_What're you going to do now? You'd better think of a bargain to offer

me! You can't lift off! I took the fuel-block so Moran couldn't afford

to kill me after the rest of you were dead. You can't lift off the

ground! Now give me a guarantee I can believe in or you stay here with

me!_"

Harper bolted for the engine-room. He came back, his face ashen. "He's

right. It's gone. He took it."

Moran stirred. Burleigh wrung his hands. Moran reached down the

space-suit from whose helmet the voice came tinnily. He began to put it

on. Carol opened her lips to speak, and he covered the microphone with

his palm.

"I'm going to go out and kill him," said Moran very quietly. "Somebody

else had better come along just in case. But you can't make a bargain

with him. He can't believe in any promise, because he wouldn't keep

any."

Harper went away again. He came back, struggling into a space-suit.

Brawn moved quickly. Burleigh suddenly stirred and went for a suit.

"We want torches," said Moran evenly, "for our own safety, and blasters

because they'll drop Hallet. Carol, you monitor what goes on. When we

need to come back, you can use the direction-finder and talk us back to

the yacht."

"But--but--"

"_What are you going to do?_" rasped the voice shrilly. "_You've got to

make a bargain! I've got the fuel-block! You can't lift off without the

fuel-block! You've got to make a deal._"

* * * * *

The other men came back. With the microphone still muffled by his hand,

Moran said sharply, "He has to keep talking until we answer, but he

won't know we're on his trail until we do. We keep quiet when we get the

helmets on. Understand?" Then he said evenly to Carol. "Look at that

paper I showed you if--if anything happens. Don't forget! Ready?"

Carol's hands were clenched. She was terribly pale. She tried to speak,

and could not. Moran, with the microphone still covered by the palm of

his hand, repeated urgently;

"Remember, no talking! He'll pick up anything we say. Use gestures.

Let's go!"

He swung out of the airlock. The others followed. The one certain thing

about the direction Hallet would have taken was that it must be away

from the wreck. And he'd have been in a panic to get out of sight from

the yacht.

Moran saw his starting-point at once. Landing, the _Nadine_ had used

rockets for easing to ground because it is not possible to make delicate

adjustments of interplanetary drive. A take-off, yes. But to land even

at a space-port one uses rockets to cushion what otherwise might be a

sharp impact. The _Nadine's_ rockets had burned away the yeasty soil

when she came to ground. There was a burnt-away depression down to

bed-rock in the stuff all around her. But Hallet had broken the

scorched, crusty edge of the hollow as he climbed up to the blanket-like

surface-skin.

Moran led the way after him. He moved with confidence. The

springy, sickeningly uncertain stuff underfoot was basically

white-that-had-been-soiled. Between the _Nadine's_ landing-spot and the

now-gutted wreck, it happened that only that one color showed. But,

scattered at random in other places, there were patches of red mould and

blue mould and black dusty rust and greenish surface-fungi. Twenty yards

from the depression in which the _Nadine_ lay, Hallet's footprints were

clearly marked in a patch of orange-yellow ground-cover which gave off

impalpable yellow spores when touched. Moran gestured for attention and

pointed out the trail. He gestured again for the others to spread out.

Hallet's voice came again. He'd left the _Nadine's_ lock because he

could make no bargain for his life while in the hands of his companions.

He could only bargain for his life if they could not find him or the

precious fuel-block without which the _Nadine_ must remain here forever.

But from the beginning he knew such terror that he could not contrive,

himself, a bargain that could possibly be made.

He chattered agitatedly, not yet sure that his escape had been

discovered. At times he seemed almost hysterical. Moran and the others

could hear him pant, sometimes, as a fancied movement aroused his panic.

Once they heard the noise of his torch as he burned a safety-hole in the

ground. But he did not use it. He hastened on. He talked desperately.

Sometimes he boasted, and sometimes he tried cunningly to be reasonable.

But he hadn't been prepared for the absolute failure of what should have

been the simplest and surest form of multiple murder. Now in a last

ditch stand, he hysterically abused them for taking so long to realize

that they had to make a deal.

* * * * *

His four pursuers went grimly over the elastic surface of this world

upon his trail. The _Nadine_ faded into the mist. Off to the right a

clump of toadstools grew. They were taller than any of the men, and

their pulpy stalks were more than a foot thick. Hallet's trail in the

colored surface-moulds went on. The giant toadstools were left behind.

The trail led straight toward an enormous object the height of a

three-storey house. When first glimpsed through the mist, it looked

artificial. But as they drew near they saw that it was a cabbage;

gigantic, with leaves impossibly huge and thick. There was a spike in

its middle on which grew cruciform faded flowers four feet across.

Then Hallet screamed. They heard it in their helmet-phones. He screamed

again. Then for a space he was silent, gasping, and then he uttered

shrieks of pure horror. But they were cries of horror, not of pain.

Moran found himself running, which was probably ridiculous. The others

hastened after him. And suddenly the mistiness ahead took on a new

appearance. The ground fell away. It became evident that the _Nadine_

had landed upon a plateau with levels below it and very possibly

mountains rising above. But here the slightly rolling plateau fell sheer

away. There was a place where the yeasty soil--but here it was tinted

with a purplish overcast of foleate fungus--where the soil had given

way. Something had fallen, here.

It would have been Hallet. He'd gone too close to a precipice, moving

agitatedly in search of a hiding-place in which to conceal himself until

the people of the _Nadine_ made a deal he could no longer believe in.

His cries still came over the helmet-phones. Moran went grimly to look.

He found himself gazing down into a crossvalley perhaps two hundred feet

deep. At the bottom there was the incredible, green growing things. But

they were not trees. They were some flabby weed with thick reddish

stalks and enormous pinnate leaves. It grew here to the height of oaks.

But Hallet had not dropped so far.

From anchorages on bare rock, great glistening cables reached downward

to other anchorages on the valley floor. The cables crossed each other

with highly artificial precision at a central point. They formed the

foundation for a web of geometrically accurate design and unthinkable

size. Crosscables of sticky stuff went round and round the center of the

enormous snare, following a logarithmic spiral with absolute exactitude.

It was a spider's web whose cables stretched hundreds of feet; whose

bird-limed ropes would trap and hold even the monster insects of this

world. And Hallet was caught in it.

* * * * *

He'd tumbled from the cliff-edge as fungoid soil gave way under him.

He'd bounced against a sloping, fungus-covered rocky wall and with

fragments of curdy stuff about him had been flung out and into the

snare. He was caught as firmly as any of the other creatures on which

the snare's owner fed.

His shrieks of horror began when he realized his situation. He

struggled, setting up insane vibrations in the fabric of the web. He

shrieked again, trying to break the bonds of cordage that clung the more

horribly as he struggled to break free. And the struggling was most

unwise.

"We want to cut the cables with torches," said Moran sharply. "If we can

make the web drop we'll be all right. Webspiders don't hunt on the

ground. Go ahead! Make it fast!"

Burleigh and the others hastened to what looked like a nearly

practicable place by which to descend. Moran moved swiftly to where one

cable of the web was made fast at the top. It was simple sanity to break

down the web--by degrees, of course--to get at Hallet. But Hallet did

not cooperate. He writhed and struggled and shrieked.

His outcry, of course, counted for nothing in the satanic cacophony that

filled the air. All the monsters of all the planet seemed to make

discordant noises. Hallet could add nothing. But his struggles in the

web had meaning to the owner of the trap.

They sent tiny tremblings down the web-cables. And this was the fine

mathematical creation of what was quaintly called a "garden spider" on

other worlds. _Epeira fasciata._ She was not in it. She sat sluggishly

in a sheltered place, remote from her snare. But a line, a cord, a

signal-cable went from the center of the web to the spider's retreat.

She waited with implacable patience, one foreleg--sheathed in ragged and

somehow revolting fur--resting delicately upon the line. Hallet's

frantic struggles shook the web. Faintly, to be sure, but distinctively.

The vibrations were wholly unlike the violent, thrashing struggles of a

heavy beetle or a giant cricket. They were equally unlike those

flirtatious, seductive pluckings of a web-cable which would mean that an

amorous male of her own species sought the grisly creature's affection.

Hallet made the web quiver as small prey would shake it. The spider

would have responded instantly to bigger game, if only to secure it

before the vast snare was damaged by frenzied plungings. Still, though

there was no haste, the giant rose and in leisurely fashion traversed

the long cable to the web's center. Moran saw it.

"Hallet!" he barked into his helmet-phone, "Hallet! Hold still! Don't

move!"

He raced desperately along the edge of the cliff, risking a fall more

immediately fatal than Hallet's. It was idiotic to make such an attempt

at rescue. It was sheer folly. But there are instincts one has to obey

against all reason. Moran did not think of the fuel-block. Typically,

Hallet did.

"_I've got the fuel-block_," he gasped between screams. "_If you don't

help me--_"

But then the main cable nearest him moved in a manner not the result of

his own struggles. It was the enormous weight of the owner of the web,

moving leisurely on her own snare, which made the web shake now. And

Hallet lost even the coherence of hysteria and simply shrieked.

* * * * *

Moran came to a place where a main anchor-cable reached bed-rock. It ran

under yeasty ground-cover to an anchorage. He thrust his torch deep,

feeling for the cable. It seared through. The web jerked wildly as one

of its principal supports parted. The giant spider turned aside to

investigate the event. Such a thing should happen only when one of the

most enormous of possible victims became entangled.

Moran went racing for another cable-anchorage. But when he found where

the strong line fastened, it was simply and starkly impossible to climb

down to it. He swore and looked desperately for Burleigh and Brawn and

Harper. They were far away, hurrying to descend but not yet where they

could bring the web toppling down by cutting other cables.

The yellow-banded monster came to the cut end of the line. It swung

down. It climbed up again. Hallet shrieked and kicked.

The spider moved toward him. Of all nightmarish creatures on this

nightmare of a planet, a giant spider with a body eight feet long and

legs to span as many yards was most revolting. Its abdomen was obscenely

swollen. As it moved, its spinnerets paid out newly-formed cord behind

it. Its eyes were monstrous and murderously intent. The ghastly,

needle-sharp mandibles beside its mouth seemed to move lustfully with a

life of their own. And it was somehow ten times more horrible because of

its beastly fur. Tufts of black hairiness, half-yards in length,

streamed out as its legs moved.

There was another cable still. Moran made for it. He reached it where it

stretched down like a slanting tight-rope. He jerked out his torch to

sever it,--and saw that to cut it would be to drop the spider almost

upon Hallet. It would seize him then because of his writhings. But not

to cut it--

He tried his blaster. He fired again and again. The blaster-bolts hurt.

The spider reacted with fury. The blaster would have killed a man at

this distance, though it would have been ignored by a chitin-armored

beetle. But against the spider the bolts were like bites. They made

small wounds, but not serious ones. The spider made a bubbling sound

which was more daunting than any cry would have been. It flung its legs

about, fumbling for the thing that it believed attacked it. It continued

the bubbling sounds. Its mandibles clashed and gnashed against each

other. They were small noises in the din which was the norm on this mad

world, but they were more horrible than any other sounds Moran had ever

heard.

* * * * *

The spider suddenly began to move purposefully toward the spot where

Hallet jerked insanely and shrieked in heart-rending horror.

Moran found himself attempting the impossible. He knew it was

impossible. The blast-pistol hurt but did not injure the giant because

the range was too long. So--it was totally unjustifiable--he found

himself slung below the downward-slanting cable and sliding down its

slope. He was going to where the range would be short enough for his

blast-pistol to be effective. He slid to a cross-cable, and avoided it

and went on.

Burleigh and Brawn and Harper were tiny figures, very far away. Moran

hung by one hand and used his free hand to fire the blaster once more.

It hurt more seriously, now. The spider made bubbling noises of infinite

ferocity. And it moved with incredible agility toward the one object it

could imagine as meaning attack.

It reached Hallet. It seized him.

Moran's blast-pistol could not kill it. It had to be killed. Now! He

drew out his torch and pressed the continuous-flame stud. Raging, he

threw it at the spider.

It spun in the air, a strange blue-white pinwheel in the gray light of

this planet's day. It cut through a cable that might have deflected it.

It reached the spider, now reared high and pulling Hallet from the

sticky stuff that had captured him.

The spinning torch hit. The flame burned deep. The torch actually sank

into the spider's body.

And there was a titanic flame and an incredible blast and Moran knew

nothing.

* * * * *

A long time later he knew that he ached. He became aware that he hurt.

Still later he realized that Burleigh and Brawn and Harper stood around

him. He'd splashed in some enormous thickness of the yeasty soil, grown

and fallen from the cliff-edge, and it was not solid enough to break his

bones. Harper, doubtless, had been most resolute in digging down to him

and pulling him out.

He sat up, and growled at innumerable unpleasant sensations.

"That," he said painfully, "was a very bad business."

"It's all bad business," said Burleigh in a flat and somehow exhausted

tone. "The fuel-block burned. There's nothing left of it or Hallet or

the spider."

Moran moved an arm. A leg. The other arm and leg. He got unsteadily to

his feet.

"It was bessendium and uranium," added Burleigh hopelessly. "And the

uranium burned. It wasn't an atomic explosion, it just burned like

sodium or potassium would do. But it burned fast! The torch-flame must

have reached it." He added absurdly. "Hallet died instantly, of course.

Which is better fortune than we are likely to have."

"Oh, that ..." said Moran. "We're all right. I said I was going to kill

him. I wasn't trying to at the moment, but I did. By accident." He

paused, and said dizzily; "I think he should feel obliged to me. I was

distinctly charitable to him!"

Harper said grimly;

"But we can't lift off. We're all marooned here now."

Moran took an experimental step. He hurt, but he was sound.

"Nonsense!" he said. "The crew of the _Malabar_ went off without taking

the fuel-block from the wreck's engines. It's in a drawer in the

_Nadine's_ control-room with a note to Carol that I asked her to read

should something happen to me. We may have to machine it a little to

make it fit the _Nadine's_ engines. But we're all right!"

Carol's voice came in his helmet-phone. It was shaky and desperately

glad.

"_You're--all right? Quite all right? Please hurry back?_"

"We're on the way," said Moran.

* * * * *

He was pleased with Carol's reaction. He also realized that now there

would be the right number of people on the _Nadine_; they would take off

from this world and arrive reasonably near due-time at Loris without

arousing the curiosity of space-port officials.

He looked about him. The way the others had come down was a perfectly

good way to climb up again. On the surface, above, their trail would be

clear on the multi-colored surface rusts. There were four men together,

all with blast-pistols and three with torches. They should be safe.

Moran talked cheerfully, climbing to the plateau on which the _Nadine_

had landed, trudging with the others across a world on which it was

impossible to see more than a quarter-mile in any direction. But the way

was plain. Beyond the mist Carol waited.