Torm slammed on his brakes, and shoved the half-track into reverse, his face white as putty. Frantically he backed the machine away from the pillar of fury in the gorge and started it up a flanking path, up a sharp declivity that would take it around the gorge to the right. Tuck held on with both hands as the half-track clambered up the unbroken path, engines roaring, bouncing all its occupants about the inside like dolls in a box, but Anson Torm wrestled the steering bar, gunning the machine as fast as he could make it go. At the top of the rock he slowed, spotted the scooter lying with a crumpled wing and a split-open jet, on the floor of the gorge below the place of the explosion. Torm turned the half-track in that direction, and it roared on down the hill. All three of them watched the wreck, but there was no sign of life from the little scooter. It seemed a lifetime as the half-track made its way down; as they came closer, Tuck felt his stomach muscles tighten. Somehow, David must have known that an ambush might be planned to destroy the half-track as it returned from the ship; when he’d not been allowed to see his father, he had waited, then scouted the pathway for them as they made their way back to the colony. Tuck suddenly felt sick—David had been telling the truth, there on the ship! And Tuck had had to pick that time to be stuffy and suspicious. And he had thought himself very clever the way he had handled the flamboyant visitor! Quite suddenly and incredibly, as they moved down toward the wreckage of the jet plane, Tuck felt deeply ashamed. The blond-haired lad had had the courage to risk his own life to save them from a trap—and now he was down there in the smashed jet—
They reached an outcropping above the jet scooter, and Torm was out of the half-track in an instant. The Colonel and Tuck followed, staring at the crumpled wing and smashed-in undercarriage of the little ship. And then, even as they approached, the cockpit flew open, and David appeared, moving feebly, dragging himself up out of the seat. Torm let out a cry, and helped him down to the ground, checking his helmet for leaks as the boy muttered incoherently. Then Davids knees buckled under him, and they eased him down to the ground.
“It’s unbelievable,” Torm said, his voice choking. “He’s alive. And no bones broken—probably just a slight concussion.” He motioned toward the half-track, and together they carried the youth, pressure suit and all, into the cab of the machine, made a place for him on the floor behind the seats where some oilcans had been stored. They were silent; as they moved the lad, the anger in Anson Torm’s face grew like a gathering storm. “They did it this time,” he muttered as he took his place behind the controls of the half-track. “They went a step too far this time. If it hadn’t been for David they’d have gotten all of us—”
The Colonel stared at Torm, wide-eyed, and there was bewilderment on his face. “I don’t get this,” he said. “I can see somebody ambushing us—Tuck and me—but you were in this half-track too—”
Torm’s eyes were filled with bitter anger. “A remarkable observation,” he said sourly. “Now maybe you’ll believe me when I tell you I’m on your side. This was well-planned—magnetic fuse on a land mine, so that anything metallic that came into that gorge would be gone. Beautiful. Even David missed it, until he brought the scooter in at the same level as the half-track. And it was supposed to kill two birds with one stone.” He turned a bitter grin toward the Colonel and Tuck. “Or maybe I should say three birds—”
“And you know who planted the trap?”
Torm looked up again, and his eyes were not pleasant. “Yes, I know who did it. And I know what to do about it. I think it’s time for a showdown with John Cortell.”
Chapter 6
The Prisoner
The colony lay tight and compact in the long, shallow valley between the two parallel lines of black, lagged peaks. A queer, bulbous, glistening bubble of heavy plexiglass surrounded the entire outpost like an alien cocoon. Tuck stared at the huge bubble wonderingly as the half-track rumbled the last hundred yards down the grade toward the entrance lock. “You mean that that plastic stuff covers the entire colony?”
Anson Torm nodded grimly. “Every crack and leak is sealed off with the stuff, or with the plastic gum we use to seal off and caulk leaks. Remember, we re human beings—were not equipped to live and breathe in a methane atmosphere at 250 degrees below zero.” He swung the half-track around a heap of rocks, and rumbled up to the opening of the lock. Tuck peered with excitement through the glimmering sheathing. The pale sun was almost below the horizon, and the colony bubble caught the dim, ghostly light of Saturn, now almost directly overhead. Inside the dome Tuck could see the pale electric lights beginning to glow, brightening the drab interior as much as anything could brighten the dreary place. The half-track moved into the lock, and Torm began loosening his pressure-suit helmet almost at once, the anger still black on his tired face. Suddenly the inner lock-hatch opened with a loud ping, and the half-track moved forward until the door could close behind it. Torm threw open the top, and sprang out onto the ground.
Tuck followed Torm out, holding up a hand to help his father, his eyes taking in the street in all its details. It was a strange street; the lock opened into a large, clear area, faced by a long, low building of rock and wood that looked like a troops’ barracks. The clearing stretched out to the left and right in a rough unpaved road that curved around, following the course of the curved dome. And lining the road on both sides were strange-looking buildings, mostly thrown together of black stones and coarse mortar—buildings doubly strange because they seemed to have no roofs. The rock walls rose eight or ten feet in the air to end in jagged wall-like tops; on a few Tuck could see brightly colored woven blankets and painted canvas thrown across the tops, but many had nothing of the sort, and through one open door Tuck could see the bright dome shining through from above.
Near the lock, one of the buildings had a large porchlike arrangement, and signs were posted on the black walls—obviously a trading post or store. Several men and women were gathered on the porch, staring at Tuck and his father with dark, suspicious eyes, and a group of children were chattering and pointing. Then a small, deeply tanned man broke from the group and ran across the clearing toward them. He ignored the Earthmen as if they weren’t there, and turned to Anson Torm excitedly. “What happened, Anson? We heard a blast—”
Torm nodded to the man, and gestured toward Tuck and his father. “The Earth delegation, Ned. Colonel Robert Benedict and his son, Tucker. This is Ned Miller.”
The little colonist looked up at the Colonel and Tuck with sharp brown eyes, as if he were trying to penetrate a veil; then he sniffed in disgust and turned back to Torm. “Now I think that’s real nice,” he said sourly. “But what—” His eye caught sight of the boy in the back of the half-track. “Anson! That’s David—what happened, man?”
They helped David out of the cab onto the ground, where he lay, still limp. The man called Ned Miller galvanized into frantic action, waving a couple of the men over, shouting for a stretcher. “We heard the blast half an hour ago,” he said excitedly. “We expected David to be back with some news, but he didn’t come. Is he hurt bad?”
“Not bad. Concussion, or maybe just shaken up a little.” He turned to one of the men. “Send over word to Doc Taber, and ask him to come running, will you?”
“But what happened?” Ned Miller asked again.
Torm’s face darkened as he stood up. “Ambush. One of the mining charges, with a magnetic fuse. David must have gotten wind of it, somehow. He came over in the Snooper, and scouted it out for us—over in Carter’s gorge. Didn’t touch us, but the concussion wave got the Snooper and David.”