Title: Murderer's Base
Author: Brittain, William J.
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Murderer's Base" ***


                            MURDERER'S BASE

                          By WILLIAM BRITTAIN

          They played a ghastly game on that lonely asteroid.
          Killer and victim-to-be danced and feinted between
        space-beacon and ship. Only the stars knew the winner.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Planet Stories Summer 1948.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


He did not remember exactly when the idea of killing Hervey occurred
to him. Probably, though, it had been that day at Hermes Station, when
the wrench had slipped from his grasp as he worked on the tower; it had
drifted lightly down and struck Hervey a glancing blow on the helmet.
They had laughed about it, and Hervey had said, "If we were under grav
conditions, Joe, that probably would have conked me."

It had been funny then, but it wasn't funny any more. Joe Berne watched
Hervey all of the time now, waiting. There had to be an opportunity,
some day, some time. Accidents weren't frequent on the beacon
service-run, but they did happen. And it had to look like an accident.

Berne knew that it wasn't going to be easy. Sam Hervey was a careful,
cautious man. He was a man who checked his equipment before he went
through the air lock, who nursed his jets like they were infants, a
man who had every intention of living a long life in a dirty business
where the careless died young. Berne had been glad when Space Service
had teamed him with Hervey; Personnel had clearly hoped that a tour of
duty with the veteran Hervey would supply the balance and judgment that
the younger man apparently lacked. It had worked out ... Berne, Hervey
and battered old Service Ship 114 had hung up an enviable record of
efficiency and safety. And after their leave, Hervey had asked to work
with Berne on another tour.

Hervey was good at this damned, dull, hateful task. Not many men were
willing to spend nine months out of the year blasting from asteroid to
asteroid, checking and servicing and reporting on the great beacons
that beamed the dangerous spaceway from Mars to the moons of Jupiter.
It was always tedious, often backbreaking and sometimes dangerous, and
even Sam Hervey had said that he would be glad to be out of it.

That had been the start of it, three months before. The wheezing old
SS-114 had burned out two of her ancient aft tubes on the run to Adonis
Station, and Berne had eased her down on a jagged, unnamed chunk of
black slag where they could jury-rig new lining. In between spells on
the tube, they had looked over the tiny planetoid, and on one of their
trips across the space-scarred waste their Cannon counters had begun
to tick ominously. They had fled back to the ship; the rapidity of the
signals warned them that volume of radioactivity was far greater than
even their screened space-garb was designed to withstand.

Berne had rubbed his hands gleefully that day.

"It has to be a damned big deposit to set up radiation like that," he
had chortled, and Sam Hervey, after due deliberation, had agreed with
him. They had started to make their plans then; they would pool their
funds, buy a small ship on Mars, rig it up with equipment, and work the
deposit. Even if it weren't as big as they hoped, it would set them up
for life.

"It won't be easy, Joe," Hervey had warned. "Even with everything we've
got in the bank, plus what we can borrow, we can't swing the deal. If
we sign up with the Service for another trip, the six thousand credits
we'll bank from that will do it."

Berne had argued with that. He could see no point in another tour,
another nine months in the lonely wastes. Maybe they could cut in one
of the big mining companies. Hervey had smiled at him commiseratingly.

"Let's look at the long haul, kid," he had said. "We cut in one of the
companies, and right away they've got a big slice of the deposit. We
could even file for mining rights and then sell out--let someone else
do the hard work. But if we do it ourselves we'll really be in the
chips, and won't have to split with anyone."

He had looked around the cluttered cabin of the SS-114.

"Lord," he said slowly, "don't you think I'd like to get out of this,
too? I've had enough of non-grav conditions, enough of breathing
revamped oxygen. I don't like it any better than you do. But it's been
a living. Another nine months of it, a couple of trips out to our
strike--and then we retire."

Berne had thought about it so much that it was eating a hole in his
brain. Hervey was figuring on two, maybe even three years before they
were in a position to sell their mining rights to one of the big
companies equipped to do a large-scale extraction job. By that time,
Hervey had said, bidding for their rights would be so high they could
afford to be choosy.

Maybe so, Joe thought, but he couldn't see it that way. He knew they
could sell now and make enough to do what they wanted for the rest of
their lives. Sure, they wouldn't make as much, but....

"The hell with the long haul," Joe Berne had said to himself. "I'm
getting mine while I'm still young enough to enjoy it."

So he decided to kill Sam Hervey. With Hervey out of the way, Joe Berne
would own the deposit. There would be no division of the take. The fact
that Sam Hervey had been his friend did not even enter Joe Berne's
mind.

       *       *       *       *       *

Murder in space is not easy. The Space Patrol is nosy about those
things. Joe Berne knew that Sam Hervey's death had to appear
accidental; as soon as Berne filed claim for mining rights, the SP
would be extremely interested in the manner of his partner's death.

There was no question of disposing of the body--not in space. In the
boiling heat of the Venusian jungles, perhaps, it would have been
easy; there the bodies of earthlings rotted and were gone. But out
here in the frigid void between Mars and Jupiter, the dead remain
unchanged through eternity. Neither could Hervey's body be jettisoned
in space; held by the attraction of the ship, it would slowly circle
the SS-114 like a horrible toy on a string, a mute accusation against a
murderer.... Nor could the body be buried on an asteroid; Space Service
demanded that its dead be brought home whenever humanly possible.
Berne could not conceive of any circumstances that could arise in the
Asteroid Belt that could adequately explain to the Service and the SP
why Sam Hervey was not brought home.

SS-114 would have to land at Mars Terminal with her engineer still
aboard, frozen solid in the hold, testifying to the accident that
killed him....

The great beacon of Astarea Station pulsed steadily into the star-hung
void. Sam Hervey finished his service check list and watched Joe Berne
scribbling furiously at his desk, his powerful shoulders hunched over
the paper. Berne looked up and found his partner's pale blue eyes on
him, saw the amusement in the space-burned, homely face.

"Don't you ever get tired of figuring how you're going to spend your
money?" Hervey asked. He pushed away the dinner plates and relaxed
in his seat. He belched quietly, tamped tobacco in his old pipe, and
blew a reflective cloud of blue smoke at Berne. Berne felt a flash of
annoyance.

"No," he said, shortly. "I've been poor too long. There are so many
things I want, I don't even know where to start."

"A new-model helicopter, most likely," Hervey said easily. "You want
a red one or a yellow one? And a permanent membership at one of the
sexier pleasure domes at Luna City, complete with blonde, maybe?"

Hervey was making fun of him. Berne felt his fists clench and the
muscles bunch in his shoulders. Watch it, he told himself.

"Maybe," he replied. "Why not?"

The old man chuckled, watching Berne's dark, flushed face through the
smoke.

"A fool and his money ..." he quoted. "You're no fool, Joe, but you're
apt to be careless. Like the other day, when I asked you to check the
oxygen supply on the suits."

"I forgot," Berne said sullenly. "Anyone can forget."

"Not out here," Hervey said sharply. "There ain't many second chances
in space."

       *       *       *       *       *

Berne looked at the older man, and wondered if he were getting
suspicious. He had not forgotten to check the oxygen supply before
they stepped through the air locks at Adonis Station. He had made
very certain that Hervey's suit tanks had been almost empty. But just
before they left the ship, Sam Hervey had paused, checked all of his
equipment, and of course had discovered from the indicator dials on his
suit control box that his tanks were low. Hervey had said little--just
another lecture on being careful in space--but perhaps he had started
to think about it, had remembered that he himself had filled the tanks
a few days before....

It was time to play smart.

"I know," the big man apologized humbly. "I'm sorry, Sam. Sometimes I
think I'll never learn. If it weren't for you...."

Sam Hervey smiled. "You'll learn," he said. "You're learning all the
time. Make a spaceman yet, before I'm through with you. But you sure
were a wild one when they teamed you up with me. You just needed a
little seasoning."

Who in hell wants to be a spaceman, Berne thought. To hell with that,
and with this busybody of an old maid and his superior airs. He yawned.

"I'm going to hit the sack," he announced.

Hervey nodded. "I'm with you," he said. "We finish here tomorrow,
soon's we run a check on power output. And then the run to Hermes
Station."

He stretched. "Guess I'm getting old, Joe. I need my sleep before I
strap down for blast-off. Seems like those G's hit me a lot harder
than they used to." He looked admiringly at the bulk and muscles of
his younger partner. "Now you're built to take acceleration. Me, I'm
not--too skinny and too old."

Hervey unstrapped himself from his chair and drifted toward his bunk,
pulling himself along by the handgrips.

"Be nice, someday," he uttered, "to walk to bed and go to sleep without
locking myself in. And that reminds me...."

Berne looked up. "Yeah?"

"Joe, make sure you check the acceleration harnesses before we blast
off tomorrow. I felt a little give in mine last time. I don't aim to
get shoved clear through my own firing chamber bulkhead one of these
days."

"Sure, Sam."

Berne had felt the give in his own harness, he remembered. The ship was
getting old; she needed to be refitted before her next trip out. Like
those harnesses, for instance. The strain against them was terrific....
That is when it burst on him, flooding his mind with its perfection and
simplicity. Of course! Why hadn't he thought of it before?

"Going to the john," he told Hervey. He guided himself out of the cabin
and into the pressurized tunnel leading aft, closing the door behind
him.

It would be so easy. In a little two-man ship like the SS-114, the
engineer lay prone in his power control station aft, cushioned in his
webbed harness against the awful shattering thrust of acceleration. A
weakened harness, or an improperly secured one--and a man would hurtle
screaming into the jungle of gears and control levers and junction
boxes that studded the bulkhead of the firing chamber. He would smash
against that unyielding metal and be broken like a child's toy....

Oh, it was simple, but not quite that simple, not with a man like Sam
Hervey. Even if he trusted Joe Berne completely, Sam Hervey would check
his own harness, just to make sure; it was the habit of a lifetime in
space. And especially after the oxygen-tank incident. But there was
another way, a better way. In the dim light of the tunnel, Joe Berne
kneeled beside one of the tool lockers. He found what he wanted, and
his big hand closed reassuringly around the handle of a heavy wrench.
He closed the locker door softly, thrust the wrench into the bellyband
of his dungarees, and drifted back to the cabin.

One smashing blow, and it would be over. Then he would work on the
harness, weakening it further, and before blast-off he would cradle
Sam Hervey's corpse in the webbing. The thrust, the unresisting corpse
straining at the harness--then release and the dead thing smashing
against the bulkhead.... No wounds, no injuries on the battered thing
that could not be explained by the crash into the tangled gears. It had
happened in space before; it would happen again.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sam Hervey was already strapped down when he returned, but he was still
awake, watching Berne. Now? Berne decided to wait until Hervey was
asleep. He kept his back toward the other bunk as he groped along the
handrail toward his own sack; no need of letting Hervey see that bulge
in his middle.... Swiftly he thrust it under the blanket, stripped,
turned off the light and strapped down. In the darkness he heard
Hervey's soft, "'Night, Joe."

"Good night, Sam." He grinned into the darkness, his fingers wrapped
around the wrench, waiting.

It was not a long wait. The breathing across the cabin settled down,
became deep, regular. The momentary tossing ceased. The cabin was
quiet. Slowly, carefully, Joe Berne unsnapped his bunk harness. For
once he was thankful for non-grav condition. He did not have to touch
the floor until the last moment, when he would need solid footing when
he swung the wrench....

Gently he drifted across the cabin, his left hand lightly touching the
handrail, pushing along. He held his breath. Another few feet.... He
lifted the wrench, straining to see in the darkness.

Sam Hervey moved swiftly. His lean wiry body twisted on the narrow
bunk, the harness was thrown off--how had he gotten free so
quickly?--and he was away, sobbing through his teeth, clawing at the
bigger man. Joe Berne gasped in shock, falling back from the fury of
the sudden assault. A hard fist crashed into his belly, and he cursed
and swung the wrench. He cut air, and Hervey was scrambling away from
him. The cabin door was jerked open, and in the dim tunnel light Berne
saw his quarry plunging away, a shocked white face staring back over
his shoulder. Cursing, Berne hurled the wrench. It was futile, of
course. It drifted slowly away from his hand and crashed against the
slammed steel door.

Berne was trembling with rage; waves of sick nausea gripped him. His
dismal failure writhed in his stomach, and he cursed again as he groped
from the cabin. Hervey had turned off the tunnel light; in the darkness
ahead of him, Berne heard Hervey scrambling along the handrails, and
then a clatter as something fell.

He plunged toward the sound, taking great leaps, using the power of
his legs against the floor to hurl himself forward. He did not see the
trap that Hervey had laid, the tangle of armored cable that Hervey had
ripped from a locker and hurled into the narrow tunnel behind him.
Berne smashed the cable, screaming obscenities at Hervey, and fought to
free himself from the twisted mass.

Hervey had bought time with the cabin door slammed in Berne's face,
with the cable hurled from the locker into the tunnel. As Berne freed
himself and leaped forward again, he heard the _woosh_ of escaping air
as the inner air lock door was opened. Then the clang of the lock door
echoed through the ship. Hervey was safe, for awhile.

But he couldn't go far. Sobbing, mouthing curses, sick with anger,
Berne struggled into space garb and opened the gunrack beside the lock.
He saw with satisfaction that the fleeing Hervey had not waited to arm
himself. Berne plunged through the lock.

       *       *       *       *       *

The great banded face of mighty Jupiter seemed to fill the whole
sky, lowering down on the jagged black waste of the asteroid. Five
hundred yards from the ship the gray metal dome of Astarea Station
huddled forlornly at the base of the soaring beacon tower. In the cold
half-light, Berne saw the bulky space-suited figure of Sam Hervey
running toward the station.

Berne kneeled at the top of the ladder, took careful aim, and squeezed
the switch of the heavy rifle. The rocket flame lanced out. Just behind
the fleeing figure, and to the side, the rocket mushroomed in a brief
blinding flare. Berne could see the glint of the face-plate as Hervey
turned his head. He fired again, and cursed the weak light as he
overshot. The running figure wavered, looked back, started again toward
the safety of the station air lock--toward the radio that could call
Mars Base, that could tell the story of murder....

The range was too great. He missed again, but Hervey turned away.
Silhouetted against the circle of the station air lock, he made a good
target--but running amid the nightmare shapes of the black rocks, Berne
could barely see him.

Hervey realized that he would not be able to make it into the safety
of the station. He swerved away, leaping high with each huge step,
and sped into the wild darkness. Berne leaped down the ladder and ran
toward the station, peering into the half-light, finger on the switch.
Then he saw him, sitting calmly on an outcropping, watching. Berne
switched on his communicator.

"You can't get away, Sam," he said.

The answer came back, thin in the earphones.

"I'm going to try, Joe," Hervey said. "Have you gone out of your mind?"

Berne laughed into the throat mike. "No," he said. "I'm sane, Sam. I
just decided that I wasn't going to split the money with you, Sam. Or
wait three years to get it, either."

He heard the other's soft, "Oh." Hervey got up and moved away from
the outcropping, looking back. Berne took up a position about midway
between the ship and the station, watching him. Hervey was finished, he
told himself; it was just a matter of time ... Berne could cover both
havens.

He was so sure of victory that when he heard Sam Hervey starting to
laugh, he was genuinely shocked, and he was a little afraid. What...?

"Joe?" The voice was in his ears.

"Yeah, Sam."

"You wouldn't want to blast an old friend, would you, Joe?"

"It would be a pleasure, Sam."

The laugh sounded again. "Now, Joe, you're not using your head. Always
careless, that's you, Joe. What would the Space Patrol say when they
find me full of rocket fragments? Might be a little tough on you, Joe."

Joe Berne gasped, and then the truth swept over him. Ye Gods, he
thought, what a fool I am! I almost got him, almost brought him down
with the projector. The heavy weapon slipped from his nerveless
fingers. He sat down heavily on a rock, staring bitterly into the
dimness.

"You can't stay out there forever, Sam," Berne said dully. "Maybe I
can't kill you with a rocket, but I can kill you with something else."

"I know I can't fight you," Hervey said reasonably. "You're bigger and
you're stronger. But you've got to catch me, Joe--and I can run faster
than you ever could, you big dumb ox."

Berne shook his head. Everything was wrong. What had happened?

"You can't stay out there forever, Sam," he repeated.

The chuckle came again, thin and ghostly in the earphones. "No," Hervey
said. "But Joe--neither can you!"

What did Hervey mean? Berne looked back at the ship, then at the dull
metallic dome of Astarea Station.

And then it came to him, what Sam Hervey had tried to say.

       *       *       *       *       *

He, Joe Berne, did not dare return to the ship so long as Sam Hervey
lived, for then Hervey could make a dash for the safety of the station.
Nor did Berne dare go to the station, for that would leave the ship
unprotected. If Berne went to either place, Hervey could easily reach
the air lock of the other refuge, slip through, dog down the doors and
sit it out, waiting for the Space Patrol to come.

"Stalemate, Joe," Sam Hervey said softly. "It's your move."

Berne went berserk then. Howling with rage, he picked up a rock and
hurled it toward the voice. Cursing, he plunged into the tortured
rocks, seeking out his tormentor.

"I'll kill you," he sobbed. "I'll kill you!"

Sam Hervey did not hesitate. Bracing himself, he shot away. For half
an hour Berne followed him, panting, raging, almost mad with rage.
They leaped and turned and twisted, two crazy little running figures
under the cold Jupiter-light, gasping in the thin trickle of air from
their suit flasks, blood pounding in their brains. And always Hervey
circled away, trying to get between Berne and the ship, between Berne
and the station, between Berne and the things that the big man had
always wanted, the riches and comfort for which he had been prepared to
murder....

And then the wild dash was over, and Berne sprawled gasping beneath a
black rock finger and glared at the awkward space-garbed figure that
watched him so placidly from another rock five hundred yards away.

"We use up a lot of oxygen that way, Joe," Hervey said quietly. Berne
cursed, looked swiftly at his indicator. No, the tanks had been full.
They had three days' supply. But ... when that was gone? Could he
calmly return to the ship or to the station storage locker and recharge
his tanks? No. Oh, Lord, no! In that brief interval, Hervey would gain
the refuge he sought, the refuge that meant the end of Joe Berne.

Berne got up and started to walk back toward the ship. He turned once;
Hervey was following him, keeping his distance, but following. Berne
spun, made a move toward him. Hervey darted away, and his chuckle was
in the earphones. Hervey paused, waited.

"Tag, Joe," Hervey said. "Who's It? Do you know?"

Berne did not answer. He angled toward the ship, watching over his
shoulder. Suddenly Sam Hervey dashed off toward the station. Berne
shouted, raced towards him. Hervey retreated to safety. When Berne
turned toward the station, Hervey started for the ship. Berne drove him
back.

"This is fun, Joe," Hervey said. He was circling warily, drifting
closer and closer toward the ship this time. Again the big man charged,
again Hervey retreated, waited. When Berne finally reached his post
squarely between the ship and the station, where he had dropped the
rifle, Hervey was still five hundred yards away, but he was closer to
the ship than he had been.

"You can't make it to the ship," Berne warned him. "I'll be on you
before you get the lock closed."

"I know," Hervey agreed soberly. "I wouldn't like that at all, Joe."

"No," Berne said. "You wouldn't."

Stalemate. The two men sat on the black, seared rocks and watched each
other, and the hours crawled. Twice Berne got up and chased Hervey
away, into the outer darkness. It was useless.

"You got yourself in a fine mess, boy," Hervey said. "You should learn
not to be so careless."

"Shut up," Berne gritted.

"I figured that business of the oxygen tanks was funny," Hervey went
on. "Made me sort of stop and think, Joe. Then I knew what you were
up to. And when I mentioned the harness, back there in the cabin, you
didn't remember to hide your face. I had sort of a hunch that you might
try something tonight."

"You weren't strapped down." Berne's voice was sulkily accusing.

"No," Hervey agreed blithely. "I wasn't. When you went out to the
tunnel to get your wrench, I unsnapped. I was holding on to the bunk
with both hands, waiting for you to make up your stupid mind."

"Shut up," Berne said. "Shut up!" His voice raised to a scream,
deafening him in his helmet. "I'm going to break you to pieces."

"Not yet, you ain't," rejoined the mocking voice. "And you forgot
something else, too, I'll bet."

"What?"

"The daily radio report to Base, Joe. Remember?" The voice faded,
chuckling grimly.

For a moment Berne felt panic gripping at him, swinging him wildly
through space. He was dizzy with it. The daily report! If SS-114 did
not come through, Base would start wondering.

"Forget it," he said. "They won't worry for awhile. Maybe reception is
bad."

"Sure," the other agreed readily. "For a little while, Joe. But if
forty-eight hours pass and they don't hear from us, you know damned
well they'll have a cruiser out here fast, investigating. The Service
likes us, Joe. They don't want to lose us."

Berne knew that what Hervey said was true.

"You'll be dead by then," he assured Hervey.

The soft, hated laugh echoed in his helmet. "Will I, Joe?"

       *       *       *       *       *

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.

[Illustration: _Joe Berne went mad then._]

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."



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Murderer's Base" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.