Part 2
He almost reached that protection. But suddenly sparks plumed around him, and his armor slumped forward--one leg missing. He fell, fortunately, just within the shelter of the power-plant.
Desperately he struggled to open the armor, so as to get the ray-tube in his own hand. But when he finally crawled forth it was to face three Martians grouped around him, their weapons--six in number--unwaveringly centered on him.
"Earthman," said the mechanical speaker coldly inside his helmet, "you have killed a Martian."
And then, with true Martian decisiveness and cruelty, they pronounced inhuman judgment on him.
"We in our kindness shall not immediately demand your life as forfeit. You shall wander unhindered over Echo, dying slowly, until your oxygen is gone. Do not ask for more; it is sealed from you. Do not again enter the chasm; it is death to you. Now go."
* * * * *
Hours later Bormon was indeed wandering, hopeless as a lost soul, over nighted Echo, awaiting the consummation of his sentence, which now seemed very near. Already his oxygen gauge indicated zero and he was face to face with the "dying slowly" process promised by the Martians--the terrible death of suffocation.
Now, as things began to seem vague and unreal around him, Bormon was drawing near that hidden cave where he and Calbur had often met for like a final flash of inspiration had come the thought that here, if anywhere, he would find Calbur.
It was strange, he reflected, how the life in a man forces him on and on, always hoping, to the very end. For now it seemed that the most important thing in the universe was to find Calbur.
He had husbanded the last of his oxygen to the utmost. But panting, now, for breath, he opened the valve a fraction of a turn and staggered on in the darkness. And suddenly, dimly as in a dream, he knew that at last he had found Calbur....
And Calbur was doing a queer thing. Gauntleted hands moving hastily in the chalky radiance cast by his helmet-light, he was tossing chunks of rhodium from his filled ore-basket--
Then their helmets clicked together, and he heard Calbur's voice, faint, urgent:
"Climb in the basket! I'll cover you with ore so they won't see you. I'll drag you in. Well get your tank filled--I swear it!"
The next instant, it seemed, Bormon felt himself being tumbled into the ore-basket. Chunks of ore began pressing down lightly on his body. Then the basket commenced to pitch and scrape over the rocks.
But his lungs were bursting! Could he last? He had to. He couldn't fool Calbur by passing out--not now. Something like destiny was working, and he'd have to see it through.
Something was tapping on his helmet. Bormon opened his eyes, and light was trickling down between the chunks of ore. No longer was there any scraping vibrations. Something, metallic, snakelike, was being pressed into his hand.
And then Bormon remembered. The oxygen tube! With a final rallying of forces only partly physical, he managed to stab the tube over the intake of his tank. The automatic valve clicked and a stream of pure delight swept into his lungs!
For a time he lay there, his body trembling with the exquisite torture of vitality reawakening, slowly closing the helmet-valve to balance the increase of pressure in the tank.
Suddenly that snakelike tube was jerked away from between the chunks of ore, and again the basket began a scraping advance.
Bormon's new lease on life brought its problems. What was about to happen? In a moment, now, Calbur would be ordered by the guard to dump his ore. They wouldn't have a chance, there on the catwalk. For Bormon's abrupt reappearance would bring swift extinction, probably to both.
The basket stopped. They had reached the ore-dump. Calbur's head and shoulders appeared. Behind the vision plate in his helmet there was a queer, set expression on his thin face. He thrust the ray-tube into Bormon's hands.
Bormon sprang erect, leaped from the basket. For a moment he stared around, locating the guard at the end of the catwalk. As yet the guard appeared not to have noticed anything unusual. But where was Calbur?
"Attention. One-six-nine. Dump your ore," ordered the guard, coldly, mechanically.
Something seemed to draw Bormon's eyes into focus on his own number stencil. One-six-nine, he read. Calbur's number! And then, suddenly, he realized the dreadful, admirable thing Keith Calbur had done....
For Calbur had leaped through the ore-chute, into the cyclotron's maelstromic heart! Despairing, he had chosen a way out. He had forfeited his life so that Bormon could take his place.
"Dump your ore," repeated the Martian guard, coldly.
"To hell with you!" snarled Bormon, and blasted with the tube.
He missed the Martian. Still weakened by the ordeal he had just passed through, and overwrought as an effect of Calbur's last despairing act, his aim was not true. Nevertheless, that coruscating shaft was fraught with far-reaching consequence. Passing three feet to the left of the Martian, it snapped two of the rods which braced the catwalk in position over the cyclotron drum. Thus released at the far end, the metal ribbon--for the catwalk was little more than that--curled and twisted like a tirhco spring, pitching Bormon, as from a catapult, straight along the path so recently chosen by Calbur.
Destiny had indeed provided them both with a strange exit from Echo, for in that split second Bormon realized that he was being hurled squarely into the gaping orifice of the cyclotron.
* * * * *
Far out in the vacuity between Echo and Mars, Captain Dunstan sat in his cabin aboard the Patrol Ship _Alert_--most powerful and, therefore, speediest craft possessed by the Earth-Mars Space Police.
On his desk lay two jagged pieces of ore, whitish-gray in color, which he had been examining.
His speculations were interrupted by the sudden bursting open of the cabin door. An officer, spruce in gray uniform and silver braid, entered hurriedly, his face flushed with excitement.
"Captain Dunstan, the most extraordinary thing has happened! We've just picked up two men--two men drifting with the meteoric stream, and in space suits--and they're alive!"
Captain Dunstan rose slowly. "Alive, and adrift in space? Then it's the first such occurrence in the history of space travel! Who are they?"
"I don't know, sir. So far we've got only one out of his suit. But I have reason to believe they're the men recently reported as missing by the E.M.T. Lines. He babbled something about Echo--that there's hell to pay on Echo. I imagine he means Asteroid No. 60. But--"
"Lead the way," said the captain, stepping quickly toward the doorway. "There's something mighty queer going on."
* * * * *
And so, by a lucky break, Neal Bormon found himself snatched from death and aboard the _Alert_, arriving there by a route as hazardous and strange as was ever experienced by spaceman.
And no less strange and unexpected came the knowledge of Keith Calbur's arrival there ahead of him.
Bormon, who was last to be drawn in by the grapple-ray and helped out of his space suit by the willing hands of the _Alert's_ crew, was still capable of giving an understandable account of things; although Calbur, until the effects of the Martian drug wore off, would be likely to remain in his somewhat neurotic condition of bewilderment.
"These Marts," said Bormon, after a great deal of explaining on both sides, "don't know that you have discovered their stream of ore. They won't know it until their communications have been repaired."
Captain Dunstan nodded. "That explains why we were able, on this occasion, to approach the meteoric stream without its immediate disappearance. But I cannot understand," he confessed, "how two men could have passed through such an apparatus as you describe, and remain alive."
"Perhaps I can offer a possible explanation," said an officer whose insignia was that of Chief Electrobiologist. "If, as we suspect, this Martian invention is founded on the old and well-known cyclotronic principle, then we have nothing but reciprocal interaction of electric fields and magnetic fields. And these fields, as such, are entirely harmless to living organisms, just as harmless as gravitational fields. Moreover, any static charge carried by the bodies of these men would have been slowly dissipated through the grapple-ray with which they were drawn out of the ore stream."
This explanation appeared to satisfy the captain. "You say," he questioned, addressing Bormon, "that there are other men on Echo--Earthmen being used as slaves?"
"Yes, more than a hundred."
Captain Dunstan's mouth became a fighting, grim line. He gave several swift orders to his officers, who scattered immediately.
Somewhat later, Bormon found his way into the surgery where Calbur lay--not sleeping yet, but resting peacefully.
Assuring himself of this, Bormon, too, let his long frame slump down on a near-by cot--not to sleep, either, but to contemplate pleasantly the wiping-up process soon to take place on Echo, and elsewhere.