Master of the Moondog Part 6

There was stunning silence. Then a far, muted crackle in his earphones.

A voice answered, "Yes? I'm here. What's on your mind, funny boy?"

"A parley."

"Nuts, but come on out. I'll talk."

"You come up," Denver argued. "I don't trust you."

Big Ed Caltis considered the proposition. "How do I know you won't try to nail me for hostage?"

"You don't. But I'm not a fool. What good would it do even if I killed you. Your men are down there. They'd still want the mine. I don't think they care enough about you to deal. They'd kill us anyhow. Bring your gun if it makes you feel more like a man."

After an interval Big Ed Caltis appeared in the doorway. As he entered Denver retreated into the shadow-zone until he stood close beside the rude barricade.

"I'll bargain with you, Caltis. You can have the workings. Let us go free, with an hour's start in my s.p.a.ce sled. I'll sign over any share we could claim and agree never to bother you again. It's no use to a corpse. Just let us go."

Caltis gave a short laugh. In the earphones, it sounded nasty.

"No deal, Denver. I hate your guts. And I want Darbor. I've got both of you where I want you, sewed up. We can sit here and wait. We've plenty of air, food and water. You'll run short. I want you to come out, crawling. She can watch you die, slowly, because I'm not giving you any air, water or food. Then I want her to squirm a while before I kick her back into the sewers. You can't bargain. I have her, you, the workings. I've got what I want."

Hate and anger strangled Denver's reply. Caltis skulked back out of sight. Without moving, Denver hailed him again.

"Okay, puttyface!" Denver screamed. "You asked for it. I'm coming out.

Stand clear and order off your thugs or I'll squeeze you till your guts squirt out your nose like toothpaste from a tube. I'll see how much man there is left in you. It'll be all over the slope when I'm through."

His taunt drew fire as he had hoped it would. He dodged quickly behind the shelter of the barricade. A beam of dazzling fire penciled the rock wall. It crackled, spread, flaring to incredible heat and light.

It exploded, deluging the gallery with glare and spattering rock.

After the glare, darkness seemed thick enough to slice.

In that second of stunned reaction blindness, Denver was leaping the barricade and sprinting toward the entrance. Caltis came to meet him.

Both fired at once. Both missed. The random beams flicked at the rough, timbered walls and lashed out with thunderous violence.

Locked together, the men pitched back and forth. They rocked and swayed, muscles straining. It was deadlock again. Denver was youth and fury. Caltis had experience and the training of a fighter. It was savage, lawless, the sculptured stance of embattled champions. Almost motionless, as forces canceled out. The battle was equal.

V

While they tangled, both blocked, Darbor slipped past them and stood outside the entrance. She was exposed, a clear target. But the men below dared not fire until they knew where Caltis was, what had happened to him. She held the enemy at bay. Gun ready, Darbor faced down the slopes. It was not necessary to pull trigger. Not for the moment. She waited and hoped and dared someone to move.

Neither man gave first. It was the weakened timbering that supported the gallery roof. Loose stones rained down. Dry, cold and brittle wood sagged under strain. Both wild shots had taken shattering effect.

Timbers yielded, slowly at first, then faster. Showering of loose stones became a steady stream. A minor avalanche.

Darbor heard the sound or caught some vibration through her helmet microphones. The men were too involved to notice. Caltis heard her. He got a cruel nosehold, twisted Denver's nose like an instrument dial.

Denver screamed, released his grip. In the scramble, his foot slipped.

Darbor cried out shrill warning.

Breaking free, Caltis bolted in panic toward the entrance.

The fall of rock was soundless. It spilled down in increasing torrents. Larger sections of ceiling were giving away.

Above the prostrate Denver hovered a poised phantom of eerie light.

Charley, bored, had gone to sleep. Awakening, he found a game still going on. A fine new game. It was fascinating. He wanted to join the fun. Like an angle of reflected light cast by a turning mirror, he darted.

The running figure aroused his curiosity. Charley streamed through the collapsing gallery. He caught up with Caltis just inside the entrance.

With a burble of insane, twittering glee, he went into action. It was all in the spirit of things. Just another delightful game.

Like a thunderbolt he hurtled upon Caltis, tangled with him. It was absurd, insane. Man and moondog went down together in a silly sprawl.

Sparks flew, became a confused tesseract of luminous motion. Radiance blazed up and danced and flickered and no exact definition of the intertwined bodies was possible. Glowing lines wove fat webs of living color. It was too swift, too involved for any sane perception.

A wild, sprawling of legs, arms and body encircled and became part of the intricacies of speeding, impossible light.

It was a mess.

Some element or combination of forces in Charley, inspired by excitement and sheer delight, made unfortunate contact with ground currents of vagrant electricity. Electricity ceased to be invisible.

It became sizzling, immense flash, in which many complexities made part of a simple whole. It was spectacular but brief. It was a flaming vortex of interlocked spirals of light and color and naked force. It was fireworks.

And it was the end of Big Ed Caltis. He fried, and hot grease spattered about him. He sizzled like a bug on a hot stove.

When Denver reached the entrance, man and moondog lay in a curious huddle of interrupted action. It was over.

Charley was tired, but he still lived and functioned after his curious fas.h.i.+on. For the moment, he had lost interest in further fun and games. He lay quietly in a corner of rough rock and tried to rebuild his scattered and short-circuited energies. He pulsed and crackled and sound poured in floods of m.u.f.fled static from the earphones in Denver's helmet.

But this was no time for social amenities. Big Ed Caltis was dead, very dead. But the others down the slope were still alive.

Like avenging angels, Denver and Darbor charged together down the slope. Besiegers scattered and fled in panic as twinned beams of dreadful light and heat scourged their hiding places. They fled through the grotesque shadow patterns of Lunar night. They fled back, some of them, to the black s.h.i.+p which had brought them. And there, they ran straight into the waiting arms of a detail from s.p.a.ce Patrol headquarters.

Tod Denver's friend, the watchman, had talked. From s.p.a.ceport he had called the s.p.a.ce Patrol and talked where it would do some good. A bit late to be of much use, help had arrived. It took the s.p.a.ce Patrol squads a half hour to round up the scattered survivors.

Darbor went back to the mine-buildings with the s.p.a.ce Patrol lieutenant as escort. Denver trudged wearily back up the slope to recover Charley.

The moondog was in a bad way. He bulged badly amids.h.i.+ps and seemed greatly disturbed, not to say temperamental. With tenderness and gentle care, Denver cradled the damaged Charley in his arms and made his way back to the living shack at the mine. s.p.a.ce Cops were just hustling in the last of the prisoners and making ready to return to civilization. Denver thanked them, but with brief curtness, for Charley's condition worried him. He went inside and tried to make his pet comfortable, wondering where one would look on the Moon for a veterinary competent to treat a moondog.

Darbor found him crouched over Charley's impoverished couch upon the metal table.

"I want to say goodbye," she told him. "I'm sorry about Charley. The lieutenant says I can go back with them. So it's back to the bright lights for me."

"Good luck," Denver said shortly, tearing his attention from Charley's flickering gyrations. "I hope you find a man with a big fat bankbook."

"So do I," Darbor admitted. "I could use a new wardrobe. I wish it could have been you. If things had worked out--"

"Forget it," Denver snapped. "There'd have been Martin's kid. She'd have got half anyhow. You wouldn't have liked that."

Darbor essayed a grin. "You know, I've been thinking. Maybe the old guy was my father. It could be. I never knew who my old man was, and I did go to school on Earth. Reform school."