Alan E. Nourse (17 page)

The Closing Ring

"Did you see him with
a gun?"

Tuck
shook his head. "Well, here goes," he whispered. With a crash he
lunged through the opening into the tunnel, bringing an avalanche of rock and
dirt down with him as he went. He got his balance in the tunnel just as the
workman straightened up, alarm written a yard wide across his face. Before he
could make a sound, Tuck was upon him, ripping out the talker-wires with a
well-aimed swipe of his hand. The workman's curse was muffled as he tried to
break from Tuck's grip, and with a powerful heave he threw Tuck down on his
back on the tunnel floor. Like a cat the man was upon him, gripping his neck, lifting
his head helmet and smashing it down on the floor. Tuck gave a wrench, and
wriggled from his grasp, throwing the man off balance; then suddenly David's
helmeted figure appeared from the open tunnel mouth, and caught the worker in a
powerful half nelson. Two quick blows from David's heavy fist doubled him up on
the ground, alive but quite helpless.

"Dirty
fighting," grinned David as they started up the tunnel for the ship.

"Dirty
guys," Tuck snapped back. "Better watch the talking now. I don't know
where the other man is." They approached the
Murexide
strips gingerly, and as they crossed, Tuck noticed that David still carried the
rocks. "What are those for?"

"You
just watch," said David. They reached the opening into the crevice where
the ship was. It was still quite dark and gloomy, but they could see the second
workman up on the ramp near the Rocket Port, sitting on a box, busy scraping
plastic sealer from his huge paws. He was completely oblivious to anything but
his own troubles.

The
boys flattened themselves in the shadow of the wall, slowly edging out of the
tunnel mouth. Still the guard did not look up. Tuck moved along the wall,
getting farther and farther from the tunnel mouth before he realized that
David was still there. And then he saw David raise one of the rocks and heave
it carefully into the tunnel; it struck the ground and rolled, and the guard
looked up in alarm—

And
then there was an earsplitting roar, shaking the ground like an earthquake,
reverberating down the tunnel, and billows of dense, acrid
Murexide
smoke rolled out into the crevice. The guard ran down the ramp, and met a full
body block from David, coming out of the smoke. The guard rolled over and over
on the edge of the crevice as Tuck and David raced for the ramp. It was a short
jump from the ramp to the nearest section of scaffolding, and then the boys
were climbing like monkeys, higher and higher toward the rocky ledge at the top
of the crevice. "Get the ship between us and the guard," Tuck roared,
and they climbed even more frantically.

On
the tunnel ledge below the guard was on his feet again, finally realizing that
he'd been duped. There was a sharp crack, and Tuck heard a bullet whiz by his
ear, followed by another, and another, both of which drove into and through the
thin hull plating of the ship. Tuck scrambled as nimbly as he could, trying to
get behind the ship, but the guard followed on the ledge below, trying to aim
the gun with clumsy fingers on the trigger. A modern high-speed pellet gun
would have succeeded, but this was an old-fashioned, home-forged revolver,
clumsy and inaccurate. The bullets whizzed uncomfortably close, and then suddenly
the guard was climbing after them, shouting hoarsely. David made a jump for the
upper ledge, caught it and held, dragging himself up by brute strength. Then he
leaned over and caught Tuck's wrist, and in an instant they were standing on
top, with just a thin layer of plastic sealer between them and the outside.

David
whipped out a knife, and started slashing the stuff, like putty. There was a
hiss of inrushing gas as the methane broke through the airtight seal. Then
David got his hand into the hole, and gave the stuff a powerful rip; it clung
to his fist and tore like gum rubber, but the hole widened. The boys crawled
through,
then
started ripping the sealer away as fast
as they could. In a moment almost all of the camouflage was gone, leaving the
formerly sealed-in crevice wide open, with the nose of the ship gleaming up at
the purple sky.

And then they were running across the rocks,
making for the
Snooper;
after a few minutes'
climbing, they could see the little jet where they left it, gleaming in the
fading sunlight, and they realized, almost with a shock, that they had been in
the tunnel almost the whole Titan day. The guard finally reached the top of the
scaffolding, and was shooting again, but the boys clambered into the cockpit of
the little ship, and the motor was warmed before the guard got fifty feet. With
a burst of blue flame the ship shot
forward,
and Tuck
leaned back, his heart pounding in his throat as he felt the
Snoopers
nose rise into the sky.

A
few moments later they were landing outside the air lock of the colony bubble,
just as the lights were going on for the Titan night.

The
night, Tuck reflected grimly, which bid fair to be the colony's last—

_{Chapter
JO
••
ƒ'//
Back
You
to a Man!}

fjNSON
torm
paced back and forth in the little stone cabin, his gray head bent,
hands gripped tightly
||
behind his
back. He was alone—he had been alone for over an hour, listening to the minutes
tick by, steadily, certainly. On the table lay a pile of papers; he stopped and
leafed through them wearily. His fingers trembled on the typewritten sheets,
and he thought, here it is—the last duty in a lifetime of work. Here is the dotted
line, Anson, for you to sign your colony's death warrant.
Cortell
has won, in the end, and you have lost, but it is you who must check the supply
lists, it is you who must make sure that all the supplies are stored, all final
details completed. Not far away, a ship stands waiting to carry your people to
limbo, and soon they will wait no longer; soon they will file aboard—

The
old man stared bitterly at the table top. He wanted to smash his fist down and
roar with anger and frustration. If only they would think! If only he could
make them understand what they were doing—
And
yet he
knew it would do no good. This was the

end
of the line. The colonists would no longer
support
him,
they believed
Cortell
when he told them that the time for revolt had come. And perhaps it had. Even
his closest friend, Ned Miller, who fought at his side all these stormy years
of leading the colony, had said, "There's nothing more we can do, Anson.
If we oppose him now,
Cortell
will only kill us, and
carry out the plan anyway—"

"But there must be
some other way!"

"I
don't know what. We knew it would come someday. You knew it, and I knew
it."

And
Torm
had spread his hands helplessly, and sank down
in the chair, a tired, beaten old man. "But it need never have come,"
he said wearily. "It's so senseless, so hopeless—"

It
was true. He knew in his heart that it was hopeless. The Colonel from Earth
had dealt the last blow with his ultimatum, even as
Cortell's
men had moved through the colony, spreading hatred, whispering rebellion,
arousing the colonists to fury. And now the end had come—there was no answer,
no other way.

He
sank down to the table, taking the first supply list from the pile with a heavy
heart. And then the door burst open, and David was in the room, followed by the
son of the Earth Colonel. Anson looked up, startled by the air of excitement
that swept in the door with the boys; he saw their eyes go to the check lists
on the table, and back to his face, and he felt a pang of shame.
"Dad—you've got to come—"

Torm's
eyebrows went up. "Come?
Where?"

"To the Earth ship—now.
Please, Dad, there's no time to waste!"
There was
an urgency
in his son's voice, a frantic
urgency Anson had never heard before. It struck a chord of hope in Anson's
mind, but he shook his head wearily. "There's nothing we can gain at the
Earth ship, son. There's no hope there or anywhere."

"Dad,
we've found the
star-ship—"

Anson
Torm
lurched to his feet as if he had been struck.
"That's enough, David!" he snapped. "What kind of
nonsense—"

David
Torm
shook his head, glancing at Tuck. "He
already knows, Dad, there's no reason to be quiet. We were
together,
we couldn't have done it by ourselves, neither of us. We found the ship, and we
know where
Cortell
is hiding."

Torm's
face was gray. "David, David—"

"Dad,
we've got to see Colonel Benedict. We found
Cortell's
hide-out, we heard what he was saying—" Swiftly he told his father what
they had heard,
Cortell's
plan of treachery. The
Colony leader's face grew darker as he listened; he began trembling so violently
he could hardly control his hands. "There's no mistake, David? You
couldn't have been wrong?"

"There was no mistake,
believe me—"

And
then
Torm
was on his feet, struggling into a pressure
suit, his eyes haunted. "We'll have to get to the Earth ship," he
said. "We can get a half-track—"

"There's
not enough time for that. The
Snooper
will
carry us, if we're lucky."

Approximately five minutes
later the little jet plane was swooping up into the purple sky away from the
colony, leaving a trail of snow in its wake, heading like a carefully aimed
arrow for the rocket ship from Earth at the Rocket Landing—

o
    
o
    
o
    
o
    
o

Cortell
had been sleeping when the guard burst into
the hide-out from the ship tunnel, panting, clutching his side, dragging a leg
after him as he walked. He staggered to a seat, gasping. "They ripped open
the ship's camouflage," he choked, "broke the whole thing open, and
they got away, I couldn't stop them—"

Cortell
had the man by the throat, shaking him
savagely.
"Who?
How did they find it?
Who was it?"

"
Torm's
boy, and someone else, I don't know who. They jumped
us—I don't know how they found us, I don't know where they came from. They blew
up the
Murexide
and tried to cave in the tunnel, but
the beams held—"

Cortell
was on his feet, trembling like a
wildman
when Dan Carver returned. "Get the men,"
he snarled. "Get them, and get their women. The word will be out any
minute—" He pointed silently to the guard.

Dan's
jaw sagged, and his face went white. "I just saw Pete and
Rog
headed this way—"

"Well,
get the others!"
Cortell
screamed. "There's no time—"

"But the leak-"

"Let
it leak, let it leak forever. We'll use the supplies we've got, go aboard in
suits. But we've got to go—" There was fear in his face now, fear that
almost over-

shadowed
the cunning, and as Dan started back for the
colony,
Cortell
began packing a supply bag furiously,
his eyes darting toward the tunnel, with the fear widening every minute—

Because
he knew, coldly, that he was fighting against time now, and time was running
out.

o
    
o
    
a
   
«
    
«

Colonel Benedict's face was white as the two
boys and Anson
Torm
filed into the cabin. He didn't
look at Tuck, but there was anger in his eyes, and a hurt that was more painful
to
Tuck
than any anger could have been. He stared at
them, and when he found his voice, he said, "Did you bring
Cortell
with you?"

And
then the boys were talking, one after another, telling everything.
So very much had happened that they could hardly contain
themselves.
They told him the whole story, and then of their stumbling
upon
Cor-tell's
hiding place, and of the treachery
they had heard as they waited, shivering, in the black tunnel outside.

And
when they were finished, the anger was gone from the Colonel's eyes, the hurt
was vanished. Instead, he looked stunned, shaken beyond belief. He sat down at
the desk and stared at them as though they were ghosts, and twice when he tried
to speak, words failed him. And then, finally, his voice was very low.
"You found this—the two of you, together? David? Tuck?"

The boys nodded.

"It's incredible.
Utterly incredible."

Anson
Torm's
blue eyes caught the Colonel's, held them
bravely. "It's true.
Every word of it."

"You're telling me that this colony of
men and women have been working in secret
for over a century
—to build this ship?"

"I'm telling you
that."

"At the risk of being
caught at any time?"

Torm
nodded. "They recognized that
risk."

The
Colonel shook his head numbly. "But there is no interstellar drive."

"Desperation
and courage would be their interstellar drive."

"It would take
them
centuries! They could never return—"

"It would be better
than to stay here as slaves."

"But
not even knowing that they would find anything when they got there—"

"It
would still be better." Anson
Torm's
voice trembled.
"I fought against it—oh, how I fought against it. But I had to guard the
secret, too. I couldn't tell you about it. I dared not tell you."

The
Colonel shook his head like a man in a dream. "It's incredible. And yet,
it's in the human tradition— to go to any length, if a chance of freedom lies
at the end—"

He
walked slowly across the room. Then he turned to Anson
Torm
,
his eyes on the leader's careworn face. "You colonists must be proud and
brave men," he said. He glanced at the boys, his eyes suddenly proud.
"We've been fools—both of us. It's taken them to show us what fools, but
I'm beginning to see things now that I'd never have believed." He looked
up gravely at Anson
Torm
. "I—I just don't know
what to say. I've