The two closed warily, eyes alert for the slightest weakness on the other’s part. Strange, deadly battle, these two humans on the seared face of the Moon! In an age of fantastic technological advance, it was to the knife, after all, that humanity had returned for killing. For nothing could be more deadly than a single tiny rent made by one of these razor-sharp space knives in the puffed pressure suit of an enemy. At the tiniest slit the air would flood out, quick as bomb-flash, and the body of the man inside would burst in horrid soundless explosion as the pressures within it sought to expand into the vacuum.
Olcott drove a wicked thrust at Templin’s mid-section, which the bigger man parried with his steel space-gauntlet. He dodged and let the chunky killer jerk free. Templin’s mind was clear, not masked by blinding rage: he would kill Olcott if he had to, yes—but, if possible, Templin would somehow disarm the other and keep him alive.
Olcott feinted to the left, sidestepped and came in with a shoulder-high lunge. Templin shifted lightly away, then seized his chance; he ducked, dived inside Olcott’s murderous thrust, drove against him with the solid shoulder of his pressure suit. The heavy-set man puffed soundlessly, the wind knocked out of him, as he spun away from the blow. Templin followed up with a sledgehammer blow to the forearm; the knife flew out of Olcott’s hand, and Templin pounced.
He bore the other man down by sheer weight and impact, knelt on his chest, knife pressed against the bulge of the pressure suit just where it joined the collar. With his free hand he flicked on his helmet radio and said, “Give up, Olcott. You’re licked and you know it.”
Olcott’s face was strained and suddenly as pale as the disk of the Moon itself. He licked his lips. “All—all right,” he croaked. “Take that knife away, for the love of heaven!”
Templin looked at him searchingly, then nodded and stood up.
“Get up,” he ordered. Olcott sullenly pushed himself up on one arm. Then, abruptly, a flash of pain streaked across his face. “My leg!” he groaned. “Damn you, Templin, you’ve broken it!”
Templin frowned and moved toward him cautiously. He bent to look at the leg, but in the shrouding bulkiness of the air-filled pressure suit there was no way for him to tell if Olcott was lying. He said, “Try and get up.”
Olcott winced and shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “It’s broken.”
Templin bent closer, suspiciously. “Looks all right to me—” he started to say. Then he realized his mistake—but too late to do him any good.
Olcott’s other leg came up with the swiftness of a striking snake, drew back and lashed out in a vicious kick that caught Templin full in the ribs, sent him hurtling helplessly a dozen yards back. He wind-milled his arms, trying to regain his balance…but he had no chance, for at once the ground slid away from under him as he reeled backward into the yawning 500-foot crevasse, and down!
LITHE AS a cat, Templin twisted his body around in space to land on his feet. The fall was agonizingly slow, but he still possessed all the mass, if not the weight, of his two hundred pound body, and if he struck on his helmet it would mean death.
He landed feet-first. The impact was bone-shattering, but his space-trained leg muscles had time to flex and cushion the shock. As it was, he blacked out for a moment, and came to again to looking up into a blinding sun overhead that silhouetted the head and shoulders of Olcott, peering down at him.
They looked at each other for a long moment. Then Templin heard the crackle of Olcott’s voice in his helmet, and realized with a start that his radio was still working. “A hero,” jeered Olcott. “Following after me single-handed. Sorry I couldn’t let you come along with me.”
Templin was silent.
“I’d like to ask you questions,” Olcott continued, “but right now I haven’t got time; I’ve got some urgent affairs to take care of.”
“In Linne,” said Templin. “I know. Go ahead, Olcott. I’ll see you there.”
Olcott’s figure was quite motionless for a second. Then. “No,” he said, “I don’t think you will.” And his head disappeared over the lip of the crevasse.
Templin had just time enough to wonder what Olcott was up to… when he found out.
A giant, jagged boulder, came hurtling down in slow motion from the edge of the chasm.
Slowly as it fell, Templin had just time enough to get out of its way before it struck. It landed with a shattering vibration that he felt through the soles of his feet, sending up splinters of jagged rock that splattered off his helmet and pressure suit. And it was followed by another, and a third, coming down like a giant deadly hail in slow motion.
Then Olcott’s head reappeared, to see what the results of his handiwork has been.
Templin, crouched against a boulder just like the ones that had rained down, had sense enough to play dead. He stared up at Olcott with murder in his heart, disciplining himself, forcing himself not to move. For a long moment Olcott looked down.
Then Templin saw an astonishing thing.
Against the far wall of the crevasse, just below Olcott’s head, a flare of light burst out, and almost at once a second, a few yards away.
Templin could see Olcott leap in astonishment, jerk upright and stare in the direction of Hadley Dome.
Someone was shooting a rocket pistol at Olcott. But whom?
Whoever the person was, he was a friend in need to Steve Templin. Olcott scrambled erect and disappeared; Templin waited cautiously for a long moment, but he didn’t come back. Templin’s unknown friend had driven the other man off, forced him to flee in the direction of the Loonie city at Linne Crater.
Templin, hardly believing in his luck, stood up. For several seconds he stood staring at the lip of the cleft, waiting to see what would happen.
A moment later a new helmet poked over the side of the chasm nearest Hadley Dome. Templin peered up in astonishment. It looked like—
It was.
The voice in his helmet was entirely familiar. “Oh, Temp, you utter idiot,” it said despairingly. “Are you all right?”
It was Ellen Bishop. “Bless your heart,” said Templin feelingly. “Of course I’m all right. Stand by to give me a hand—I’m coming up!”
6
IT WASN’T easy, but Templin finally managed to scramble out of the crevasse—after loping nearly half a mile along the bottom of it, to where the sides were less precipitous. Ellen Bishop, following his progress from above, was there to meet him as he clambered over the edge.
Remembering the genuine anxiety in her voice as it had come over the radio, he peered curiously at her face; but behind the shading helmet it was hard to read expressions. He smiled.
“You win another Girl Scout merit badge,” he observed. “Whatever made you show up in the nick of time like that?”
Ellen’s face colored slightly. “I was watching you,” she said defiantly. “There’s a spotting telescope in the Observatory at Hadley Dome and—well, I was worried about you. I went up and watched. I saw Olcott stop and look around, and then hide…so I figured out that he’d seen you. It looked like an ambush. And of course, you were such a big fool that you didn’t take a rocket gun along with you.”
“Couldn’t afford to,” Templin apologized. “Olcott’s still in the Security Patrol—I didn’t want to be caught following him with a gun tucked in my belt. Besides, he didn’t have one himself.”
“He had something,” Ellen said. “Or did you just go down in that crevasse to look for edelweiss?”
Templin coughed. “Well,” he said ambiguously. “As long as you’re here, you might as well come the rest of the way.“ He craned his neck in the direction of the Loonie city, mockingly near now. Olcott was not in sight.