Moon Zero Two (17 page)

Harry edged cautiously forward. I kept down, and pulled myself right under the shelter of the engine. Good old Number Four, always right in the middle of trouble.

I looked at the empty pistol. Then, on impulse, I lifted it and cracked it against the engine’s light-up valves.

A few inches away from my head, the engine blazed into life.

Slowly the asteroid began to revolve.

“It’s started!” I heard Whitsun cry. “The whole sequence—it’s off! They’ll all fire in a second.”

“Well, stop them,” rasped Hubbard.

The farther engine fired suddenly. The asteroid lurched and began to pick up speed. I gripped one of the safety lines and peered under the belching breath of Number Four. Hubbard and Whitsun were holding on like grim death, leaning backward, their safety lines as stiff and straight as steel rods.

Whitsun doggedly began to haul himself along the line to get at the firing box.

I carefully unfastened my own safety line, keeping an eye out for Harry.

Whitsun was almost at the box when the other two engines blazed. The asteroid took another spring forward,
and once more Whitsun and Hubbard were thrown out at the end of their lines, being towed behind the sapphire express.

I shoved hard with my feet and sailed clear, out into space.

Harry’s reaction pistol jetted downward, and he came floating up behind me. Another short burst, and he had settled into position a few feet away.

“You won’t find much cover up here,
Mister
Kemp. And you won’t move faster’n one of these.” His gun jutted at me. “Now, bring your pal and his ship back. Tell ’em to get moving.”

“Come for me first, Karminski!” It was Hubbard shouting. And there was a splinter of terror right through his voice. He was really scared, out there on the end of that line.

Whitsun was hauling himself painfully down the line in another attempt to get back to the asteroid.

Harry shouted—-though there was no need to shout into the radio—“Karminski! I’ve got your boss on the end of a gun out here. You pick us up first.”

“Harry, I’m warning you...” Hubbard waved a fist in impotent fury.

Zero Two pivoted, fired, and made another run-in.

“He’s coming back,” I said. “I wonder who he’ll choose?” We floated free in space, waiting. And then I said: “Here we come. Here... no, I think Mr. Hubbard gets it first.”

It was too much for Harry. He turned his head.

I jerked out my reaction pistol, twisted my arm around to fire it backward, and was thrust hard into Harry. We bounced, and turned two slow somersaults in the void. I groped for his gun hand, and spun us into another crazy loop. Harry fought to free himself, and battered on my helmet with his other hand. Then, swinging tortuously around me, he groped for my left shoulder.

I vaguely felt the snap of a switch, but it didn’t mean anything. Until I took a deep breath and found there was precious little left to breathe. He had turned off my airbottle.

The ship swam down toward us.

Below, clinging to the asteroid, Whitsun was hauling himself between two engines toward the firing box.

There was a red haze coming up before my eyes. I gasped, and felt death gagging in my throat. With one desperate heave I fought clear of Harry and kicked out at his gun hand. The gun was knocked away and went floating off. He swore, fumbled for his reaction pistol, and sent himself off in pursuit.

All at once the glitter of the stars was blotted out. The shape of Zero Two was on top of us. I shouted a warning, but Harry didn’t hear; and maybe it was too late anyway. His gun went drifting on, but Harry himself sailed smack into the side of the ship. There was a wisp of vapor from his faceplate, and I heard his dying gasp. His body bounced back and rolled away into infinity.

Zero Two’s engines fired a retro burst, and now I was only a few feet away, still hanging free. Dmitri leaned out and tossed a line toward me. This time I got a good grip on it.

“Always thought you were a good pilot,” said Dmitri, “but not good enough to go space traveling without a ship.”

I pulled myself in through the hatchway.

“Yes. Now let’s pick those two up.”

“What’s the hurry? They’d’ve killed us once we’d got ’em back down again.”

“I know. Now let’s pick ’em up.”

“Look, I used a helluva lot of fuel on this low-flying bit. If Whitsun gets those engines stopped in the next minute, we might catch them. If not... well, they’ll be home before we are.”

From this angle, trying to match the asteroid’s velocity and maintain steady distance, it was hard to see what was going on down there. Whitsun was a dark blob on the surface, blurred by the haze of the engine exhausts.

“Come on, come on,” Hubbard was screeching. “All you have to do is—”

“Shut up, you fat fool!”

Abruptly, as he tried to stand up, perhaps groping for a line or steadying himself against the scorching shell of an engine, he was tugged to one side. We saw the dark blob move and dissolve suddenly into the blast of an engine. We heard his scream.

And we heard Hubbard ranting on, hysterical, lost and terrified. “Whitsun—what did you say to me? What...
eh? You’re fired, Whitsun. Do you get that? Fired.” There was a pause. “Whitsun... answer me. Whitsun, are you dead, man?”

Then a shocked silence.

I said: “Seal her up. We’ll follow as far as we can.”

“Idiot!” Hubbard was wailing. “I’m surrounded by idiots. Always getting themselves killed. I have to do everything myself.”

We closed the hatch and I drifted up to the control deck.

Clem was at the controls. She looked around, and when she saw me she began to cry, then stopped, and I kissed her and she showed signs of crying again.

I said: “How come... ?” I waved at the meters on the panel before her.

Dmitri said: “She used a telephone connection while I was still lashed up. I told her how to operate the old crate. Not a bad pupil, huh?”

“And then when we’d got moving I untied him,” said Clem breathlessly, “and then—”

“Yes,” I said, and kissed her again to stop her talking. I edged into the seat beside her. “Now let’s set up a course, before we chip the edge off a crater.”

She leaned toward me.

Dmitri said: “United Nations Space Charter, section— ah—ninty-nine-B: no sex is permitted in space.”

“Do you make them
all
up?” I asked.

“Most. Nobody else has read it, either.”

I looked at the panel clock. The rate he was going, Hubbard was going to ride his asteroid straight into the Moon four minutes from now.

Dmitri, reading my mind, said: “On target?”

“On target,” I said.

I switched the radio on, and Hubbard’s voice came howling up again.

“Half a million... all mine. All mine. Do you hear me, you... ? All mine...”

Clem shivered. I switched off again.

“No,” I said. “Not all his. Nor his heirs, assigns or successors.”

Clem looked doubtful. “I thought there was no chance now of—”

“We can prove your brother was murdered,” I said.

“And we can prove—have you still got that hunk of rock?”

She produced the nickel sample from a pouch in her belt.

“We can prove,” I went on, “that he found something he’d have reported if he
hadn’t
been murdered. And the law doesn’t let you profit from murder.”

“So who does own... ?”

“You do.” I glanced at the clock again. “In just two minutes. Six thousand tons of sapphire. Let me be the first to seduce you.”

She looked startled, then sly. “Really? What was that little business out in that truck, then, a while back?”

I nodded warningly toward Dmitri. “Not in front of the staff. Don’t embarrass the man.”

We plunged in, holding back from the asteroid and picking up its trail on the screen. The Moon was huge now. The pockmarked surface swung below us, gashed by a vast stygian shadow.

“But what’ll I do with all that money?” Clem asked, dazed.

“You could lend us about half a ton to pay our fines,” said Dmitri sourly.

“What fines?”

“Well, apart from the fight and the jailbreak, they
are
going to find out I agreed to land an asteroid illegally,” I pointed out.

“I’ll pay the fines, of course. But what about the rest?”

I hesitated, then said: “Same as Hubbard planned, almost. Sell the stuff to whoever’s building the first ships to go to Mercury—and so on.”

She smiled ruefully. “As long as they agree a certain pilot makes the first flight—right?”

“If you insist.”

“And a certain engineer,” said Dmitri.

I was surprised. I hadn’t thought he was still keen. “You want to come?”

“You haven’t got me killed yet. Not quite.”

“All right,” said Clem resignedly. “I’ll be waiting.”

We were in close now. I thumbed a couple of bursts to straighten us out and set us in a tight circle above Spectacle Craters. Dmitri slid back the porthole mask.

The asteroid went racing in. We could just pick it out as
we turned. It vanished for a moment, then glittered again in the starshine.

And struck.

From here it was no more than a puff of dust and fragments. An explosion of flying rocks, sapphire, collapsing engines—once and for all the last of my old Mars Explorer—and somewhere in the middle of it, fragments of Mr. Hubbard.

At last one of his schemes had gone really and truly wrong. No profit on this deal. But you had to admit it: he’d certainly made his mark on the Moon.

I set course for the city. Clem watched my hands, and when she saw that I’d noticed her watching, she smiled a secret, contented smile.

“Meant to ask you before,” I said. “How’s your room at the Hilton?”

“Find out,” she said softly.

I gunned the engines. I was in a hurry now.

The claim would wait for us. The sapphire would wait for us. Moon Zero Two raced above the wilderness of Farside, over and around to the domes and comfort and promise of Lunar Center. There were some things that wouldn’t wait.