The Devil's Asteroid Part 5

They tramped away into the gloom, with querulous backward looks. Parr took a lonely trail in an opposite direction. After a moment he paused, tingling with suspense. Heavy feet were following him.

"Who's coming?" he challenged, and ducked to avoid a possible shot. None came. The heavy tread came nearer.

"Boss!" It was Ling.

"I told you to go away," reminded Parr gruffly.

"I not go," Ling retorted. "You no make me."

"Ling, you were boss before I came. Now that I'm gone from you--"

"You not gone from me. You my boss. Those others, they maybe pick new boss."

"Ling, you fool!" Parr put out a hand in the night, and grabbed a mighty s.h.a.ggy arm. "I'll be hunted--maybe killed--"

"Huh!" grunted Ling. "They hunt us, maybe they get killed." He turned and spat over his shoulder, in contempt for all marauding Martians and their va.s.sal Earth folk. "You, me--we stay together, boss."

"Come on, then," said Parr. "Ling, you're all right."

"Good talk!" said Ling.

They went to the other side of the little spinning world, and there n.o.body bothered them. Time and s.p.a.ce were relative, as once Einstein remarked to ill.u.s.trate a rather different situation; anyway, the village under Varina Pemberton numbered only eight men--Parr and Ling could avoid that many easily on a world with nearly nine hundred square miles of brush, rock and gully.

In a grove among grape-vines they built a shelter, and there dwelt for many weeks. Ling wore well as a sole friend and partner. Looking at the big, devoted fellow, Parr did not feel so revolted as at their first glimpse of each other. Ling had seemed so hairy, so misshapen, like a troll out of Gothic legends. But now ... he was only big and burly, and not so hairy as Parr had once supposed. As for his face, all tusk and jaw and no brow, where had Parr gotten such an idea of it? Homely it was, brutal it wasn't....

"I get it," mused Parr. "I'm beginning to degenerate. I'm falling into the beast-man cla.s.s, closer to Ling's type. Like can't disgust like. Oh, well, why bother about what I can't help?"

He felt resigned to his fate. But then he thought of another--Varina Pemberton, the girl who might have been a pleasant companion in happier, easier circ.u.mstances. She had banished him, threatened him, wheedled him out of victory. She, too, would be slipping back to the beast. Her body would warp, her skin grow hairy, her teeth lengthen and sharpen--Ugh!

That, at least, revolted him.

"Look, boss," said Ling, rising from where he lounged with a cl.u.s.ter of grapes in his big hand. "People coming--two of 'em."

"Get your club," commanded Parr, and caught up his own rugged length of tough torn-wood. "They're men, not beast-men--they must be looking for trouble."

"Couldn't come to a better place to find it," rejoined Ling, spitting between his palm and the half of his cudgel to tighten his grip. The two of them walked boldly into view.

"I see you, Sadau!" shouted Parr clearly, for there was no mistaking the gaunt, freckled figure in the lead. "Who's that with you?"

The other man must be a new arrival. He was youngish and merry-faced as he drew closer, with black curly hair and a pointed beard. There was a mental-motive look to him, as if he were a high grade engineer or machinist. He wore a breech-clint of woven gra.s.ses, and looked expectantly at Parr.

"They aren't armed," pointed out Ling, and it was true. The pair carried sticks, but only as staffs, not clubs.

"Parr!" Sadau was shouting back. "Thank heaven I've found you--we need you badly." He came close, and Parr hefted his club.

"No funny business," he challenged, but Sadau gestured the challenge aside.

"I'm not here to fight. I say, you're needed. Things have gone wrong, awfully. The others got to feeling that there was no reason to obey a woman chief, even though Miss Pemberton has many good impulses--"

"I agree to that," nodded Parr, remembering the girl's many strange behaviors. "I daresay she wasn't much of a leader."

Sadau did not argue the point. "Shanklin, as the previous newest man, grabbed back the chieftaincy," he plunged ahead. "Those other fools backed him. When I tried to defend Miss Pemberton, they drove me out. I stumbled among the others--that crowd you used to capture the patroller--and got a line on where you were. I came for help."

One phase had stuck in Parr's mind. "You tried to defend that girl. They were going to kill her?"

"No. Shanklin, as chief and king, figures he needs a queen. She's not bad looking. He's going to marry her, unless--"

Parr snorted, and Sadau's voice grew angry. "Curse it, man, I'm not casting you for a knight of the Table Round, or the valiant s.p.a.ce-hero who arrives in the nick of time at the television drama! Simplify it, Parr. You're the only man who ever had the enterprise to do anything actual here. You ought to be chief still, running things justly. And it isn't justice for a girl to be married unofficially to someone she doesn't like. Miss Pemberton despises Shanklin. Now, do you get my point, or are you afraid?"

It was Ling who made answer: "My boss isn't afraid of anything. He'll straighten that mess out."

Parr glanced at the big fellow. "Thanks for making up my mind for me, Ling. Well, you two have talked me into something. Sadau, shake Ling's big paw. And," he now had time to view the stranger at close hand, "who's this with you?"

The man with the black curls looked genially surprised. "You know me, boss. I'm Frank Rupert."

Parr stared. "Never heard of you."

"You're joking. Why, I almost got that Martian patroller into s.p.a.ce, when Miss Pemberton--"

Parr sprang at him and caught him by his shoulders. "You were Ruba--Rupert! It's only that you didn't talk plain before. What's happened to you, man?"

Sadau hastily answered: "The degeneration force is obviated. Reversed.

All those who were beast-men are coming back, some of the later arrivals completely normal again. Haven't you noticed a change in this big husk?"

Parr turned and looked at Ling. So that was it! Day by day, the change had not been enough to impress him. As Ling had climbed back along his lost evolutionary trail, Parr had thought that he himself was slipping down....

"Don't stop and scratch your head over it, Parr," Sadau scolded him.

"It'll take a lot of explaining, and we haven't time. You said you'd help get Miss Pemberton out of her jam. Come on."

It was like the television thrillers, after all, Parr reflected. But Sadau was right on one count--Parr didn't quite fill the role of the s.p.a.ce-hero. He had neither the close-clipped moustache nor the gleaming top boots. But he did have the regulation deep, unfathomable eyes and the murderous impulse.

It was just after noon. Shanklin, as chief-king, had also set up for a priest. In the center of the village clearing, he stood holding a sullen and pale Varina Pemberton by one wrist, while he recited what garblings of the marriage service he remembered. His subordinates were gathered to leer and applaud. They did not know of the rush until it was all over them.

Parr smote one on the side of the neck and spilled him in a squalling heap. Sadau, Ling and Rupert overwhelmed the rest of the audience, while Parr charged on into Shanklin. His impact interrupted the words "I take this woman" just after the appropriate syllable "wo". As once before with Ling, Parr dusted Shanklin's jaw with his fist, followed with a digging jab to the solar plexus, and swung again to the jaw. Shanklin tottered, reeled back, and Parr closed in again.

"I always knew I could lick you," Parr taunted. "Come on and fight, bridegroom. I'll raise a knot on your head the size of a wedding cake."

Shanklin retreated another two paces, and from his girdle s.n.a.t.c.hed the Martian knife. He opened its longest blade with a snap. Varina Pemberton screamed. Then, above the commotion of battle, sounded the flat smack of an electro-automatic. Shanklin swore murderously, dropping his knife.

His knuckles were torn open by the grazing pellet.

And Parr, glancing in the direction whence the shot came, realized with savage disgust that the s.p.a.ce-hero had come after all. There stood a gorgeous young spark in absolutely conventional s.p.a.ce-hero costume, not forgetting the top-boots or the close-clipped moustache. Parr moved back, as if to allow this young demiG.o.d the center of the stage.

But Varina Pemberton was not playing the part of heroine. Instead of rus.h.i.+ng in and embracing, she set her slim hands on her hips. She spoke, and her voice was acid: "It's high time you came, Captain Worrall. I did my part of the job weeks ago."

The handsome fellow in uniform chuckled. "We weren't late, at least.