Part 2

* * * * *

The hours crept by, and the dim light waxed and waned as the planetoid spun in the void. Like clumsy fat robots, like puppets on a puppet master's strings, the two figures advanced, retreated, circled, attacked and fled. They danced their macabre minuet among the twisted, tortured black rocks, and always the soft, mocking laugh was in his earphones as Berne lunged panting after the darting puppet ahead of him. And finally he sank down at his post, breathing in sobbing gasps and tasting the salt of the bitter tears that trickled down his cheeks. The oxygen was sinking; not much more. At the rate they were using it, it would not last much longer.

"Hervey!"

The other stirred in the shadow of a rock pinnacle.

"I'm still with you, Joe."

"Okay, Sam," Berne said. "I've had enough. Come on in."

There was silence, then, from far away, the ghost of a chuckle.

"Don't you want to play any more, Joe?"

Berne snarled, then with an effort regained control of himself.

"No," he said. "We're killing each other. Come on in, Sam. I won't hurt you. I promise."

"Thanks, Joe," Hervey said. "But I don't think I trust you any more. Tell you what. You go on back to the ship, and I'll go to the station. Or vice-versa. Any way you want. But I don't think I want to be in the same place with you."

"You'd call Base," Berne said pettishly.

"Oh, certainly," Hervey answered. "We'd have to report, wouldn't we? And I'd have to tell them that you didn't like me any more, wouldn't I?"

For a moment Berne thought desperately of taking a chance, of letting Hervey into the station, and then trying to brazen it out, of accusing Hervey of being the one who had wanted to murder.... His shoulders sagged. It wasn't any good. He knew that they would believe Hervey--Hervey with his reputation, careful, reliable old Sam Hervey.... It was almost over.

"Damn you," he said. He heard Hervey laugh again.

It went on forever, Berne thought. The little robot figures went on with their dance, they advanced and fled, circled and quartered. His eyelids drooped, his head fell forward in the helmet. With a jerk he pulled himself into wakefulness. Hervey was moving like a shot, racing for the ladder of the ship. Screaming, Berne hurtled toward him. Hervey saw him, wavered while he gauged the distance, and knew that he could not make it. He leaped away. It was close. Berne almost caught him. When the big man finally halted, choking for breath, Hervey was barely a hundred yards away. It might as well have been a mile. Curiously shrunken upon himself, Berne turned and went heavily back to his post. Hervey waited until he sat down, then drifted back a little and sat down beside a rock, watching.

Joe Berne slumped down, waiting for a move. He was starting to gasp for air now, and he was staring hungrily at the inviting open air locks of the ship and of Astarea Station. His head was hurting him, and his eyes were not focussing properly.

Twice he thought he saw Hervey get up and start toward the ship, and both times he struggled to his feet and dashed after him. Both times he had been wrong; Hervey had not moved. Berne shook his aching head. Was he beginning to imagine things? Maybe ... maybe Hervey was dead. He moved toward the fat bulbous bulk that was Hervey. Hervey got up and walked away, looking back. He wasn't dead, then. He was waiting out there in the Jupiter-light for Joe Berne to die.

"You'll die, too!" he screamed into his mike. "You'll die, too!"

The voice that came back was weak, tired, and he realized that his own voice had been choked and almost strangled. The sweat was streaming down his face, mingling with the tears, wet inside his suit. His feet were like lead.

"Yes," the voice said. "I'll die, too, Joe. But will that do you any good? There are no uranium strikes where you're going, Joe--no nothing, Joe, unless you get oxygen quick."

* * * * *

He couldn't, he sobbed to himself. He couldn't go through that inviting lock to the big tanks that held the precious gas. How long? Five minutes, anyhow, maybe more, maybe a little less. But more than enough time for Sam Hervey to reach safety, to lock the air locks, to start his message winging into the sky on its way to the waiting ears at Mars Terminal....

The weird mad light was crazy with moving space-suited figures, laughing at him, mocking him, and they all wore the ugly space-burned face of Sam Hervey. He lurched to his feet and shook his fist at them. He picked up the projector and worked the switch until the rocks were splashed with the flame of bursting rockets. He laughed and cursed and gibbered at the figures, and then understood that there had not been any figures, that Sam Hervey was still beneath the same rock, where he had been for hours, watching him.

He had to control himself, he thought shakily. Every time he lost control, he wasted oxygen, precious beautiful oxygen; his laboring lungs screamed for it. He knew that Hervey was remaining calm, was conserving oxygen. And he knew that the smaller, lighter man would probably not consume as much oxygen as he did, even at rest; there would be little difference, but in the long haul.... That again! Sam Hervey's long haul, that he was always talking about!

"I've got to be calm," he said aloud. "Be calm! Never was calm before. Got to be now!"

Shut up, he told himself. Don't waste breath. He started to weep again, and the dimness was shot with colored lights. In his mouth his tongue was swelling, it was thick and pushing against his teeth. A sip of water from his canteen tube did not help, the tongue remained swollen. He was falling, and he heard the sound of his own retching gasps. Clumsily he fumbled at the intake valve, felt the cool breath of the oxygen, felt the new life trickling through the tube, the pressure almost gone. He sucked at it, swallowing, moaning, great tearing sobs ripping from his chest. The colored lights faded and went away, and he saw Sam Hervey moving slowly toward the ship. Another few seconds...!

Screaming, he leaped at Hervey, his arms flailing wildly, his fingers curled into claws, hating, wanting to rend and kill. He fell heavily, sprawling on his chest, staggered to his feet and ran on. Hervey watched him, then drifted away. Hervey was staggering, too, having difficulty in controlling the long gravityless leaps, but he did not fall. He went away and sat down and watched Joe Berne with great interest, and through the earphones Berne heard the faint mocking chuckle of his enemy.

Joe Berne went mad then. He had been a little mad for hours; perhaps he had been mad since that first crazy chase across the nightmare landscape. He twisted his intake valve all the way and laughed and howled and capered gleefully as the oxygen flooded into his starved heaving lungs. He leaped in the star-hung dimness and shrieked at the banded face of Jupiter in the sky. He gibbered, and he picked up the heavy gun and hurled it at Sam Hervey, and then he laughed with pleasure as it floated away and fell lightly to the rocks.

* * * * *

He was still laughing when the intake valve bubbled and hissed and was silent, and there was no more oxygen. Slowly he turned away, staggering heavily toward the ship, toward the oxygen tanks. The colored lights had been turned on again. A great hammer was crashing against his brain. Someone was pushing his eyeballs out of their sockets; someone had strong fingers locked tight around his throat. He choked and tore at his throat with his own hands. He fell, face downward, and tried to crawl, and in his chest he could hear the sucking and rattling.

Berne was conscious of Sam Hervey standing over him, blotting out the pale cold light of the great planet above. He was conscious of the face peering through the plate into his own darkening features. He tried to reach out, to grasp Hervey, to drag him down into the pain-streaked night with him, but his arms would not move. Through the lightning-shot darkness he heard that soft mocking voice.

"Good night, Joe," Sam Hervey said. "You always were careless."