How the Heroes Die Read online

  headlights. The headlight beams were the color of earthly sunlight, but to Carter's Mars-adapted eyes they turned everything blue.

  He had chosen his course well. The desert ahead was flat for more than seven hundred miles. There would be no low hills rising suddenly before him to trap him into jet-jumping in faint moonlight or waiting for Alf to come down on him. Alf's turnover point would come at high noon tomorrow, and then Carter would have won.

  For Alf would turn back toward the bubble, and Carter would go on into the desert. When Alf was safely over the horizon, Carter would turn left or right, go on for an hour, and then follow a course parallel to Alf s. He would be in sight of the bubble an hour later than Alf, with three hours in which to plan.

  Then would come the hardest part. Certainly there would be someone on guard. Carter would have to charge past the guardwho might be armed with a flare pistol-tear the bubble open, and somehow confiscate the supply of O-tanks. Ripping the bubble open would probably kill everyone inside, but there would be men in suits outside. He would have to load some of the O-tanks on his buggy and open the stopcocks of the rest, all before anyone reached him.

  What bothered him was the idea of charging a flare pistol... But perhaps he could just aim the buggy and jump out. He would have to see.

  His eyelids were getting heavy, and his hands were cramped. But he dare not slow down, and he dared not sleep.

  Several times he had thought of smashing the come-hither in his suit radio. With that thing constantly beeping, Alf could find him anytime he pleased. But Alf could find him anyway. His headlights were always behind, never catching up, never dropping away. If he ever got out of Alf's sight, that come-hither would have to go. But there was no point in letting Alf know that. Not yet.

  Stars dropped into the black western horizon. Phobos rose again, brighter this time, and again became too high to watch. Deimos now showed above the steady shine of Alf's headlights.

  Suddenly it was day, and there were thin black shadows pointing to a yellow horizon. Stars still glowed in a red-black sky. There was a crater ahead, a glass dish set in the desert, not too big to circle around. Carter angled left. The buggy behind him also angled. If he

  kept turning like this, Alf couldn't help but gain on him. Carter sucked water and nutrient solution from the nipples in his helmet, and concentrated on steering. His eyes felt gritty, and his mouth belonged to a Martian mummy.

  "Morning," said Alf.

  "Morning. Get plenty of sleep?"

  "Not enough. I only slept about six hours, in snatches. I kept worrying you'd turn off and lose me."

  For a moment Carter went hot and cold. Then he knew that Alf was needling him. He'd no more slept than Carter had.

  "Look to your right," said Alf.

  To their right was the crater wall. And -Carter looked again to be sure-there was a silhouette on the rim, a man-shaped shadow against the red sky. With one hand it balanced something tall and thin.

  "A Martian," Carter said softly. Without thinking he turned his buggy to climb the wall. Two flares exploded in front of him, a second apart, and he frantically jammed the tiller bar hard left.:

  "God damn it, Alf! That was a Martian! We've got to go after it!"

  The silhouette was gone. No doubt the Martian had run for its life when it saw the flares.

  Alf said nothing. Nothing at all. And Carter rode on, past the crater, with a murderous fury building in him.

  It was eleven o'clock. The tips of a range of hills were pushing above the western horizon.

  "I'm just curious," Alf said, "but what would you have said to that Martian?"

  Carter's voice was tight and bitter. "Does it matter?"

  "Yah. The best you could have done was scare him. When we get in touch with the Martians, we'll do it just the way we planned."

  Carter ground his teeth. Even without the accident of Lew Harness's death, there was no telling how long the translation plan would take. It involved three steps: sending pictures of the writings on the crematory wells and other artifacts to Earth, so that computers could translate the language; writing messages in that language to leave near the wells where Martians would find them; and then waiting for the Martians to make a move. But there was no reason to

  believe that the script on the wells wasn't from more than one language, or from the same language as it had changed over thousands of years. There was no reason to assume the Martians would be interested in strange beings living in a glorified balloon, regardless of whether the invaders knew how to write. And could the Martians read their own ancestors' script?

  An idea... "You're a linguist," said Carter.

  No answer.

  "Alf, we've talked about whether the town needed Lew, and we've talked about whether the town needs me. How about you? Without you we'd never get the well-script translated."

  "I doubt that. The Cal Tech computers are doing most of the work, and anyhow I left notes. But so what?"

  "If you keep chasing me you'll force me to kill you. Can the town afford to lose you?"

  "You can't do it. But I'll make you a deal if you want. It's eleven now. Give me two of your 0-tanks, and we'll go back to town. We'll stop two hours from town, leave your buggy; and you'll ride the rest of the way tied up in the air bin. Then you can stand trial."

  "You think they'll let me off?"

  "Not after the way you ripped the bubble open on your way out. That was a blunder, Jack."

  "Why don't you just take one tank?" If Alf did that, Carter would get back with two hours to spare. He knew, now, that he would have to wreck the bubble. He had no alternative. But Alf would be right behind him with the flare gun...

  "No deal. I wouldn't feel safe if I didn't know you'd run out of air two hours before we got back. You want me to feel safe, don't you?"

  It was better the other way. Let Alf turn back in an hour. Let Alf be in the bubble when Carter returned to tear it open.

  "Carter turned him down," said Timmy. He hunched over the radio, holding his earphones with both hands, listening with every nerve for voices which had almost died into the distance.

  "He's planning something," Gondot said uneasily.

  "Naturally," said Shute. "He wants to lose Alf, return to the bubble, and wreck it. What other hope has he?"

  "But he'd die too," said Timmy.

  "Not necessarily. If he killed us all, he could mend the new rip while he lived on the O-tanks we've got left. I think he could keep the bubble in good enough repair to keep one man alive."

  "My Lord! What can we do?"

  "Relax, Timmy. It's simple math." It was easy for Lieutenant-Major Shute to keep his voice light, and he didn't want Timmy to start a panic. "If Alf turns back at noon, Carter can't get here before noon tomorrow. At four he'll be out of air. We'll just keep everyone in suits for four hours." Privately he wondered if twelve men could repair even a small rip before they used up the bottled air. It would be one tank every twenty minutes... but perhaps they wouldn't be tested.

  "Five minutes of twelve," said Carter. "Turn back, Alf. You'll only get home with ten minutes to spare."

  The linguist chuckled. A quarter mile behind, the blue dot of his buggy didn't move.

  "You can't fight mathematics, Alf. Turn back."

  "Too late."

  "In five minutes it will be."

  "I started this trip short of an O-tank. I should have turned two hours ago."

  Carter had to wet his lips from the water nipple before he answered. "You're lying. Will you stop bugging me? Stop it!"

  Alf laughed. "Watch me turn back."

  His buggy came on.

  It was noon, and the chase would not end. At twenty-five miles per, two Marsbuggies a quarter of a mile apart moved serenely through an orange desert. Chemical stains of green rose ahead and fell behind. Crescent dunes drifted by, as regular as waves on an ocean. The ghostly path of a meteorite touched the northern horizon in a momentary white flash. The hills were higher now, humps of smooth r
ock like animals sleeping beyond the horizon. The sun burned small and bright in a sky reddened by nitrogen dioxide and, near the horizon, blackened by its thinness to the color of bloody India ink.

  Had the chase really started at noon? Exactly noon? But it was twelve-thirty now, and he was sure that was too late.

  Alf had doomed himself-to doom Carter.

  But he wouldn't.

  "Great minds think alike," he told the radio.

  "Really?" Alf's tone said he couldn't have cared less.

  "You took an extra tank. Just like me."

  "No I didn't, Jack."

  "You must have. If there's one thing I'm sure of in life, it's that you are not the type to kill yourself. All right, Alf, I quit. Let's go back."

  "Let's not."

  "We'd have three hours to chase that Martian."

  A flare exploded behind his buggy. Carter sighed raggedly. At two o'clock both buggies would turn back to bubbletown, where Carter would probably be executed.

  But suppose I turn back now?

  That's easy. Al f will shoot me with the flare gun.

  He might miss. I f I let him choose my course, I'll die for certain.

  Carter sweated and cursed himself, but he couldn't do it. He couldn't deliberately turn into Alf's gun.

  At two o'clock the base of the range came over the horizon. The hills were incredibly clear, almost as clear as they would have been on the moon. But they were horribly weathered, and the sea of sand lapped around them as if eager to finish them off, to drag them down.

  Carter rode with his eyes turned behind. His watch hands moved on, minute to minute, and Carter watched in disbelief as Alf s vehicle continued to follow. As the time approached and reached two-thirty, Carter's disbelief faded. It didn't matter, now, how much oxygen Alf had. They had passed Carter's turnover point.

  "You've killed me," he said.

  No answer.

  "I killed Lew in a fistfight. What you've done to me is much worse. You're killing me by slow torture. You're a demon, Alf."

  "Fistfight my aunt's purple asterisk. You hit Lew in the throat and watched him drown in his own blood. Don't tell me you didn't know what you were doing. Everybody in town knows you know karate."

  "He died in minutes. I'll need a whole day!"

  "You don't like that? Turn around and rush my gun. It's right here waiting."

  "We could get back to the crater in time to search for that Martian. That's why I came to Mars. To learn what's here. So did you, Alf Come on, let's turn back."

  "You first."

  But he couldn't. He couldn't. Karate can defeat any hand-to-hand weapon but a quarterstaff, and Carter had quarterstaff training too. But he couldn't charge a flare gun! Not even if Alf meant to turn back. And Alf didn't.

  A faint whine vibrated through the bubble. The sandstorm was at the height of its fury, which made it about as dangerous as an enraged caterpillar. At worst it was an annoyance. The shrill, barely audible whine could get on one's nerves, and the darkness made streetlamps necessary. Tomorrow the bubble would be covered a tenth of an inch deep in fine, moon-dry silt. Inside the bubble it would be darker than night until someone blew the silt away with an O-tank.

  To Shute the storm was depressing. Here on Mars was Lieutenant-Major Shute, Boy Hero, facing terrifying dangers on the frontiers of human exploration! A sandstorm that wouldn't have harmed an infant. Nobody here faced a single danger that he had not brought with him.

  Would it be like this forever? Men traveling enormous distances to face themselves?

  There had been little work done since noon today. Shute had given up on that. On a stack of walls sat Timmy, practically surrounding the buggy-pickup radio, surrounded in turn by the bubble's population.

  Timmy stood up as Shute approached the group. "They're gone," he announced, sounding very tired. He turned off the radio. The men looked at each other, and some got to their feet.

  "Tim! How'd you lose them?"

  Timmy noticed him. "They're too far away, Mayor."

  "They never turned around?"

  "They never did. They just kept going out into the desert. Alf must have gone insane. Carter's not worth dying for."

  Shute thought, But he was once. Carter had been one of the best: tough, fearless, bright, enthusiastic. Shute had watched him deteriorate under the boredom and the close quarters aboard ship. He had seemed to recover when they reached Mars, when all of them suddenly had work to do. Then, yesterday morning- murder.

  Alf. It was hard to lose Alf. Lew had been little loss, but Alf-

  Cousins dropped into step beside him. "I've got that red-pencil work done."

  "Thanks, Lee. I'll have to do it all over now."

  "Don't do it over. Write an addendum. Show how and why three men died. Then you can say, `I told you so.'"

  "You think so?"

  "My professional judgment. When's the funeral?"

  "Day after tomorrow. That's Sunday. I thought it would be appropriate."

  "You can say all three services at once. Good timing."

  To all bubbletown, Jack Carter and Alf Harness were dead. But they still breathed-

  The mountains came toward them: the only fixed points in an ocean of sand. Alf was closer now, something less than four hundred yards behind. At five o'clock Carter reached the base of the mountains.

  They were too high to go over on the air jet. He could see spots where he might have landed the buggy while the pump filled the jet tank for another hop. But for what?

  Better to wait for Alf

  Suddenly Carter knew that that was the one thing in the world Alf wanted. To roll up alongside in his buggy. To watch Carter's face until he was sure Carter knew exactly what was to come. And then to blast Carter down in flames from ten feet away, and watch while a bright magnesium-oxidizer flare burned through his suit and skin and vitals.

  The hills were low and shallow. Even from yards away he migh have been looking at the smooth flank of a sleeping beast-excepq that this beast was not breathing. Carter took a deep breath, noticing.;

  how stale the air had become despite the purifier unit, and turned on the compressed-air jet.

  The air of Mars is terribly thin, but it can be compressed; and a rocket will work anywhere, even a compressed-air rocket. Carter went up, leaning as far back in the cabin as he could to compensate for the loss of weight in the O-tanks behind him, to put as little work as possible on gyroscopes meant to spin only in emergencies. He rose fast, and he tilted the buggy to send it skating along the thirty-degree slope of the hill. There were flat places along the slope, but not many. He should reach the first one easily...

  A flare exploded in his eyes. Carter clenched his teeth and fought the urge to look behind. He tilted the buggy backward to slow him down. The jet pressure was dropping.

  He came down like a feather two hundred feet above the desert. When he turned off the jet he could hear the gyros whining. He turned the stabilizer off and let them run down. Now there was only the chugging of the compressor, vibrating through his suit.

  Alf was out of his buggy, standing at the base of the mountains, looking up.

  "Come on," said Carter. "What are you waiting for?"

  "Go on over if you want to."

  "What's the matter? Are your gyros fouled?"

  "Your brain is fouled, Carter. Go on over." Alf raised one arm stiffly out. The hand showed flame, and Carter ducked instinctively.

  The compressor had almost stopped, which meant the tank was nearly full. But Carter would be a fool to take off before it was completely full. You got the greatest acceleration from an air jet during the first seconds of flight. The rest of the flight you got just enough pressure to keep you going.

  But-Alf was getting into his buggy. Now the buggy was rising.

  Carter turned on his jet and went up.

  He came down hard, three hundred feet high, and only then dared to look down. He heard Alf s nasty laugh, and he saw that Alf was still at the foot of the mountai
ns. It had been a bluff!

  But why wasn't Alf coming after him?

  The third hop took him to the top. The first downhill hop was the first he'd ever made, and it almost killed him. He had to do his de-

  celerating on the last remnants of pressure in the jet tank! He waited until his hands stopped shaking, then continued the rest of the way on the wheels. There was no sign of Alf as he reached the foot of the range and started out into the desert.

  Already the sun was about to go. Faint bluish stars in a red-black sky outlined the yellow hills behind him.

  Still no sign of Alf.

  Alf spoke in his ear, gently, almost kindly. "You'll just have to come back, Jack."

  "Don't hold your breath."

  "I'd rather not have to. That's why I'm telling you this. Look at your watch."

  It was about six-thirty.

  "Did you look? Now count it up. I started with forty-four hours of air. You started with fifty-two. That gave us ninety-six breathing hours between us. Together we've used up sixty-one hours. That leaves thirty-five between us.

  "Now, I stopped moving an hour ago. From where I am it's almost thirty hours back to base. Sometime in the next two and a half hours, you've got to get my air and stop me from breathing. Or I've got to do the same for you."

  It made sense. Finally, everything made sense. "Alf, are you listening? Listen," said Carter, and he opened his radio panel and, moving by touch, found a wire he'd located long ago. He jerked it loose. His radio crackled deafeningly, then stopped.

  "Did you hear that, Alf? I just jerked my come-hither loose. Now you couldn't find me even if you wanted to."

  "I wouldn't have it any other way."

  Then Carter realized what he'd done. There was now no possibility of Alf finding him. After all the miles and hours of the chase, now it was Carter chasing Alf. All Alf had to do was wait.

  The dark fell on the west like a heavy curtain.

  Carter went south, and he went immediately. It would take him an hour or more to cross the range. He would have to leapfrog to the top with only his headlights to guide him. His motor would not take him uphill over such a slope. He could use the wheels going down. with luck, but he would have to do so in total darkness. Deimos would not have risen; Phobos was not bright enough to help.