Part 2

And that meant he could lock Jonner out of the sphere simply by leaving the inner door of the airlock open!

His laugh was full and genuine now as he pulled the outer door closed.

"Having fun, Kraag?" asked Jonner in his earphones.

"Just looking forward to a good night's sleep, for a change," retorted Kraag triumphantly. "Prowl around all you want to, Jonner. I can wait you out, now."

"The airlock, eh? I wondered when your guilty conscience would settle down and let you remember about that airlock," said Jonner phlegmatically. "You know, Kraag, I had no idea you wouldn't think about a simple thing like that, till I looked through the airlock port last night and saw you huddled up there with a heat-gun. You should have turned out the light."

Jonner was silent for a few minutes. Then he added:

"I don't think I'd laugh yet, though, Kraag. Remember, you're fighting with my weapons."

Kraag wasn't sure what he meant by that: whether he was talking about Kraag's using the projectile pistol or the fact that they were in space, Jonner's natural element. Kraag himself had been in space 10 years, most of it with Jonner, but before then he had never left Earth. Jonner had been born and raised on Mars, where a man needed a suit to go to the next settlement, and he had been on a ship since he was 15.

As for using the pistol, Kraag could see danger for no one but Jonner. He had proved, twice, that he could fire it. He was quite sure the old-fashioned weapon was no more likely to explode than a heat-gun. The only trouble he foresaw was figuring how to reload it if he used up all its projectiles before hitting Jonner.

Kraag shrugged and removed his suit. He was hungry, and he was looking forward to a supper better than Jonner had available in the concentrated supplies in his spacesuit. Jonner's food and water by now had dwindled to less than 60 hours' supply, unless he was weakening himself by going on slim rations.

* * * * *

As he wolfed down his supper, Kraag took stock of his situation. He could see no flaw in his position. All he had to do was sit back and wait.

He decided not to destroy the tanks that were Jonner's supply of extra oxygen. After all, Jonner could not last beyond his food and water supply. The presence of the oxygen made his case airtight. He could dispose of the bodies of Stein and Jonner and tell the crew of the rescue ship they had wandered off on an exploration tour and never returned. With plenty of oxygen for the three of them, no motive could be established against him for the murders.

He began to feel rather sorry for Jonner. They had been companions, and Stein with them, for a long time.

After eating, he went up to the control room and turned Jonner in on the communications system. He was genuinely regretful that Jonner had to die so soon. It would be lonesome on the asteroid with no one to talk to.

"I hope you've been keeping the radio open to Marsport, in case there were any inquiries," said Jonner. "If they get the idea we're all dead out here, they may call off the rescue."

"The last time they called was right after you left the ship," said Kraag. "Stein was going to tell you, but I suppose he forgot it. Marsport knows where we are. A rescue ship should have blasted off by now."

"That's the advantage of being on Ceres instead of in space," Jonner pointed out. "They know Ceres' orbit, but they'd have to have several directional fixes on us, spaced several days apart, to pinpoint us if the ship were in space. What did Stein say the escape velocity here is?"

Surprised at the unexpected question, Kraag consulted the notes Stein had left lying in the control room.

"EV 1,552.41 feet per second," he replied. "Not figuring on jumping off the planet, are you, Jonner?"

"Maybe," said Jonner.

"Well, don't wake me up if you do. I'm really going to pound the pillow tonight."

Jonner laughed shortly, and Kraag heard the click as the captain switched off his helmet radio. He grinned.

Kraag was asleep almost as soon as he hit the bunk.

He came awake slowly, reluctantly, knowing he had not had all the sleep he needed. Something was pounding noisily somewhere, ringing through his head.

He shook his head to clear it. For just an instant there was silence in the utter darkness. Then:

CRASH!

Like a clap of thunder the noise reverberated through the metal hull of the sphere.

Kraag started violently, and only the bunk straps kept him from rocketing to the ceiling. Again:

CRASH!

And Kraag could feel the sphere shiver with the blow.

He switched on the lights just as another terrific crash sounded. This time he could see everything on the central deck quiver with the impact.

One of the four small ports around the central deck was uncovered, and the light threw a beam out into the black night of the asteroid. It brought a temporary cessation of the regular blows. During the interval, Kraag unstrapped himself and tumbled up to the control room, to switch on the communications system.

"Jonner!" he shouted. "Jonner, what in hell?"

"I'm not deaf," said the loudspeaker resentfully. "Give me a chance to turn down my volume, if you're going to holler."

"What the devil are you doing out there, Jonner?"

"What I promised you. I'm coming in after you."

Kraag swore.

"I'm going to blow you off the damned planet," he threatened, and leaped for the gun rack.

"You'll have to come outside to do it," reminded Jonner. "If you try to shoot through the ports, you'll save me a lot of work."

Kraag raced up and down the sphere twice before he had sense enough to turn out all the lights and use the searchlight. Then he located Jonner, clinging to the sphere outside the astrodome on the navigation deck. Jonner had a sledge hammer from the ship's cargo section in his hand.

Jonner grinned at him and moved quickly out of the searchlight's beam. Ten seconds later, another thunderous crash sounded, apparently from the other side of the sphere. Kraag swung the light in a circle, but Jonner could move faster than the beam.

Hastily, Kraag made another tour of the sphere, this time closing all the metal covers over the ports. When he reached the control room, Jonner's voice was calling him over the loudspeaker, repeating his name every few seconds.

"What do you want?" demanded Kraag, panting.

"Just wanted to tell you I could have knocked out the astrodome or one of the ports before you woke up," said Jonner cheerfully. "I don't want to kill you, Kraag. I just want you to surrender, and if you don't I can eventually batter through the meteor shield and the hull, and ruin the sphere for you."

"We'll see about that," gritted Kraag. Hurriedly he donned a spacesuit. Hanging Jonner's pistol at his belt, he took a heat-gun in his right hand and a flashlight in his left and ventured out through the airlock. He did not make the mistake of switching on the airlock light, but Jonner seemed to know when he emerged, possibly from the vibration when the lock opened.

"Nice night out, isn't it, Kraag?" Jonner welcomed him.

Kraag grunted. The night was black as pitch. The only way he could tell where the ground ended and the sky began was that the sky was jewelled with stars.

He turned the light on and flashed it over the sphere. No sign of Jonner. But a rock struck his helmet and bounced off with a clang that nearly knocked him down and left him momentarily dizzy.

"I'm behind you, Kraag," said Jonner pleasantly. "Better go back inside. I promise not to break your shell open tonight."

Kraag twisted around and fired the heat-gun even as he searched for Jonner with the flashlight. Both beams pierced emptiness. Jonner just laughed at him.

Afraid now that Jonner would get into the sphere, Kraag scuttled back around to the airlock. Heat-gun ready, he turned on the light before closing the outer door, and breathed a sigh of relief at finding it empty.

Trembling with reaction, he closed the outer lock, left the inner one open and made his way up to the center deck. He needed coffee.

"I see you've gone back to the heat-gun," said Jonner. "That's smart."

"You'd like to see me exhaust the fuel tank of your pistol shooting it in the dark, when I can't hit you, wouldn't you?" retorted Kraag. "No, thanks. I'll keep it for long distances."

"Fuel tank? Oh, you mean the magazine." Jonner laughed. "I'd stay away from that old .45 of mine if I were you, Kraag. It's been with me too long. It's a lot more likely to turn on my enemies than to do me any harm."

"Rot!" snapped Kraag. "It's a gun. All I have to do is get the hang of aiming it properly."

"I wouldn't use too much power tonight, either," warned Jonner. "You don't get much with the solar mirror this far out. Anyhow, I took the mirror off while you were having your nap. The batteries should give out in a few hours."

Without answering, Kraag switched off his radio and removed his helmet. That last bit of information was a blow. Gradually, Jonner was stripping Kraag down to his own subsistence level.

Power or not, Kraag was determined to have his coffee. But first he went over the sphere again and switched off all unnecessary lights.

Jonner was a man who kept his word, but Kraag couldn't afford to trust him. Jonner might change his mind and try to break open the sphere again before morning. Kraag kept his spacesuit on. He did not sleep too well, for about once every 30 or 40 minutes something--either a large rock or Jonner's sledge hammer--would strike the sphere a resounding blow.

* * * * *

When Kraag's watch told him it was morning, he opened the ports of the center deck and let the weak sunlight stream into the sphere. Off to the east, he saw Jonner digging with a pick from the cargo. Jonner was far enough away for his legs from the knees down to be hidden by the extreme curvature of the little planet.

Kraag's first impulse was to go out and take a pot shot at him. Instead, he switched on the short-wave cooker and prepared some breakfast. Taking it up to the control room, where he could switch on the communications system, he opened the eastern port and watched Jonner. This high, he could see Jonner's feet and the hole he was digging--and Stein's body.

Jonner had taken Stein's body from the spot outside the sphere where Kraag had pushed it. He was burying Stein.

Jonner finished his excavation and laid Stein gently to rest in it. He pushed rocks back in to fill it up, and wrested a boulder that would have weighed a ton over it for a monument. Then he murmured a brief prayer over the grave.

Kraag was ashamed and then, unaccountably, angry. But he stood at the port, drinking his coffee and watching Jonner, and said nothing.

Either with chalk or with some soft rock he had found--Kraag could not tell which--Jonner wrote something on the big stone that was Stein's monument. Then he stood up and turned toward the sphere.

"Kraag," he said. "Kraag, are you tuned in?"

"Yes," replied Kraag shortly.

"You have today to surrender. Tonight I'm going to hatch you out of your comfortable egg."

Kraag switched off the communications system and paced the room, anger burning slowly inside him. This was ridiculous. He held all the cards. He had the guns, he had the sphere. Jonner was outside, weaponless, with a limited supply of food and water. Yet Jonner had him on the defensive.

How had it happened? How could it happen? Kraag lit a cigarette and puffed at it slowly, applying his mind coldly to the situation.

He didn't doubt that Jonner would do as he threatened, but he didn't think it was the recklessness of desperation. More likely, Jonner deliberately, calculatingly, planned to reduce his own chances for comfort, in order to bring Kraag down to more even terms with him.

If Jonner broke the hull of the sphere, it could be repaired--by someone working outside, free from interruption by an enemy. Until it was repaired, it would mean that Kraag, too, would have to live in a spacesuit. And Jonner might knock open a hole, or more than one, big enough to permit him to enter the sphere and attack Kraag in the darkness.

If only he could surround the sphere with light at night, he could keep Jonner at a distance. But with the solar mirror gone, the searchlight, on top of the sphere's other electrical requirements, would discharge the batteries before the night was half gone.

Kraag knew Jonner's stubbornness, his resourcefulness, his raw courage. Jonner was the one of them who was really at bay, when you considered it. Yet Kraag felt that Jonner was closing in on him, gradually, inexorably.

Facing this, Kraag felt the steel enter his own will. He wasn't a coward. He had just been expecting this to be too easy. If Jonner would force him to fight, he would fight. He still had the advantage.

He must abandon the sphere as an asset. Jonner could take that away from him anyhow. On the other hand, if Jonner took over the sphere, Kraag could use the same weapon against him. He could break open the sphere.

So the sphere was no longer a factor. The food and water were no longer a factor, for food and water went with the sphere. He would admit Jonner to equality in those supplies--not full equality, for he could provision himself now more fully than Jonner had been provisioned two Ceres days earlier. He still might pin Jonner down as Jonner tried to get to the sphere for more supplies.

Then Kraag's remaining advantage lay in the guns. They should be enough. If he could get close enough to use a heat-gun, he could blast Jonner. Jonner's own projectile weapon would keep Jonner out of rock-throwing range, and sooner or later he would hit Jonner with it. He couldn't keep on missing; the law of average would give him a hit sooner or later. And all he needed was just one....

Kraag provisioned his spacesuit and hung all three of the heat-guns at his belt. In one of the capacious outside pockets he put two spare flashlights and half a dozen of the extra fuel packets--What was it Jonner had called them? Magazines, that was it--for Jonner's projectile pistol. He took that pistol in his right hand and sallied forth to do battle.

* * * * *

Jonner was nowhere in sight. Kraag shut the outer lock to make it appear he might be still in the sphere if Jonner happened not to spot him. He went over to Stein's new grave.

Jonner had written on the stone: REST IN PEACE. R. STEIN MURDERED BY A. KRAAG. DEC. 12, 2057.

Angrily, Kraag burned the lettering off in a 30-second blast with his heat-gun that left the face of Stein's gravestone cherry red.

He turned to survey the terrain, and saw Jonner. The captain was crouched half a mile away, apparently writing more on a flat rock or on the ground itself.

Jonner was facing him, but his head was down and he hadn't seen Kraag. If Kraag fired the projectile pistol, he probably would miss and might warn Jonner with the shot. He was sure of his accuracy with a heat-gun. Kraag took a heat-gun in his left hand and ran toward Jonner.

Possibly the vibration of the ground warned Jonner. He looked up, jumped to his feet and fled. As soon as he could stop and get his feet planted firmly on the ground, Kraag fired the projectile pistol after him. He was still shooting low and to one side.

Kraag picked himself up from the ground, where the backlash of the weapon had knocked him, and went up to the spot where Jonner had been writing. A mathematical problem had been scratched on the surface with a sharp rock. Kraag had interrupted Jonner in the middle of it.

The figures that had been written were:

11 ------ 1.141 ) 1552.41 141 --- 142 141 --- 1

[Transcriber's note: figures are long division of 1552.41 divided by 1.141]

Kraag stared at it, carrying out the rest of the simple mathematics in his head. The answer was 1101. But what was the problem?

The figure "1.41" was familiar enough. It was the square root of two, carried to two decimal places. But what was Jonner dividing by it, and why?

He frowned in concentration. There was something familiar about the numbers, something that had to do with him and Jonner, and Jonner wouldn't be working arithmetic just for amusement.

He saw Jonner moving on the horizon, just his head visible against the black sky, his body hidden by the curve of the planet. Jonner was circling.

The sudden realization of danger wiped other thoughts from his mind. Until he saw the epitaph Jonner had written for Stein, Kraag had thought Jonner looked at this as he did: one man against the other, and winner take all. But Jonner intended to win even if he lost, because Jonner was not fighting just for Jonner's survival but for due process of law.

Jonner was trying to make certain that, even if Kraag killed him, Martian law would punish Kraag for Stein's death. And if Jonner got into the sphere, he could get his message to Marsport or the rescue ship simply by turning on the radio.

Kraag turned and raced back to the sphere. He arrived, panting heavily. Jonner was nowhere in sight, but he knew Jonner, circling, could not have gotten there ahead of him.

He must kill Jonner before nightfall, if he could, but he must not get far enough from the sphere to let Jonner slip in behind him. He was not ready, yet, to destroy the radio to keep Jonner from it.

He walked around the sphere. There was Jonner on the other side, only his head above the horizon, moving clockwise. The sun flashed and gleamed from Jonner's helmet.

There was no sense in shooting at so small a target as a head. A mile away, Jonner's whole body was a small enough target. A carefully gauged leap carried Kraag to the top of the sphere. Here, 40 feet higher, his range of view was increased considerably. He could see Jonner well.

Jonner could see him, too. Jonner stopped to hurl a stone. It took a while for the missile to cover the distance. It passed below Kraag's level, some distance away from him.

"Why don't you give it up, Jonner?" asked Kraag. "You can't hurt me with a rock, at this distance."

"Why should I?" retorted Jonner. "All I have to do is wait till night."

"Sure, wait. But I'm not waiting, Jonner. One of us is going to win this thing before night, or I'm going to blast the radio so you can't reach Marsport. If I have to do that, I'll track you down tomorrow--and I think I can stay outside and fight you away from the sphere tonight."

"Getting desperate enough to fight like a man now, aren't you, Kraag? If you want a showdown today, I'm willing."

Kraag's mind was clear now. He had the situation under control. He glanced around the landscape at the scattered portions of the wrecked ship. There was the cargo hull, burst open, where Jonner had gotten his sledge hammer and the pick to bury Stein. Over there was a red sphere, ripped by the jagged gash of the meteor collision--one of the two hydrazine fuel tanks. The yellow sphere 30 degrees away from it was an oxygen fuel tank.

Kraag leveled Jonner's gun and fired at the yellow sphere. The kick knocked him off the sphere, but as he somersaulted backwards he saw the projectile hit the ground. Still low and to one side. But he noticed something on the gun, he hadn't seen before.

There were ridges for sighting along the barrel of Jonner's pistol. Regaining his position atop the sphere, Kraag pressed his back against the observatory dome, to brace himself against the gun's backlash. He aimed carefully at the yellow sphere and fired again.

The yellow tank jumped--not from the impact, but from the spout of freed, expanding oxygen through the hole the bullet made. It moved and wobbled about in the weak gravity, like a dying balloon. When it stopped, Kraag knew he had destroyed half of Jonner's oxygen supply.

"Good shot, Kraag," congratulated Jonner, with fatalistic irony in his tone. "Of course, I'm not as big a target as the tanks."

"Each target in its own time," replied Kraag triumphantly, and looked around for the other yellow sphere.

He had been afraid it might be one of the parts that had fallen over the horizon, but it wasn't. It was behind him, a little closer than the first. He hit it with one shot.

Now Jonner had only the oxygen in his spacesuit tanks.

Jonner had made no effort to move farther away. He was still visible on the horizon, from the knees up, moving in a great circle around the personnel sphere.

Kraag aimed carefully and fired. He did not know the projectile's speed, but certainly it would be much faster than Jonner's rocks. After half a minute had passed, he knew he had missed.

There was only one thing to do. He settled himself and fired again, trying to lead Jonner slightly. Again he missed.

Methodically, taking his time, Kraag fired. Jonner walked on unconcernedly, circling. Kraag tried to fire so the path of his projectile would strike at the top of Jonner's strides, for then Jonner rose several feet into the air and his whole body was visible.

Occasionally, Jonner would stop and hurl a stone at Kraag. One man was as inaccurate as the other. Jonner's stones went wide at that distance, and Kraag obviously had not hit Jonner with a bullet.

At last Jonner stopped. He seemed to be fiddling with something that was right on the ground, below Kraag's line of vision. Then a tremendous stone, bigger than Kraag's head, came hurtling toward the sphere. Kraag ducked instinctively, but the missile passed 10 feet above him, still going well.

"What in the devil!" exclaimed Kraag.

"A little innovation of mine, to make things more interesting," said Jonner. "In case you ever want to use the idea, I made me a super-slingshot out of two of the jeep inner tubes from the cargo, and a couple of crowbars I could drive into crevices. Fixed it up yesterday for bombardment purposes."

The duel went on.

There came the time when the hammer of the pistol clicked on an empty chamber.

"How do you refuel this thing, Jonner?" asked Kraag pleasantly. The sun was still high. He could retreat to the interior of the sphere and figure it out if he had to.

"It's pretty hard to do with spacesuit hooks," replied Jonner. "Be glad to demonstrate, if you'll toss me the gun."

Kraag laughed, a laugh with more triumph in it than humor, because in his fumbling he had just hit the button that ejected the magazine. To push in a fresh one was the matter of a moment.

He had hoped Jonner would move in closer when he knew the pistol was empty, but no such luck. Jonner stayed put.

Kraag's first effort with the new magazine brought no results, for he had neglected to prime the weapon by pushing the outer covering back on the barrel. He did this, and resumed his methodical firing.

As the time wore on, Kraag began to appreciate the difficulties involved in hitting a moving target, even a slowly moving one, when the marksman was as inexperienced as he was. The trouble was that, at that distance, he could not see where the bullets were striking and had no way of knowing how wide of his mark he was shooting.

He was on the fourth magazine and the sun had passed the meridian when he felt the sphere vibrate faintly and momentarily beneath him. He twisted around, alarmed. He could see nothing. It wasn't one of Jonner's rocks, because a big one had just missed.

His eye detected a shining streak that stretched a few inches along the curve of the sphere's meteor shield, at about the level of his feet. He bent to examine it. Something had struck it at high speed, a glancing blow.

It couldn't be one of Jonner's rocks. Small meteor?

A jagged hole suddenly appeared in the observatory dome near him. Kraag moved up and examined it closely. It had been made by some small object. Through the glassite he could see a similar hole in the other side of the dome.