World Beyond Pluto by Stephen Marlowe (classic books to read TXT) 📗

raggedly through his mouth, ran as fast as was feasible.

So did Bartock and the girl.

It was Bartock, spotting Mayhem on the run, who fired first. Mayhem fell prone as the raw zing of energy ripped past. The sea-serpent-like-creature behind him bellowed.

And reared.

It didn't look like a sea-serpent any longer. It looked like a dinosaur, with huge solid rear limbs, small forelimbs, a great head with an enormous jaw—and speed.

Now it could really move.

Subjectively, time seemed normal to Mayhem. Your only basis was subjective: time always seemed normal. But Mayhem knew, as he got up and ran again, that he was now moving slower than the minute hand on a clock. Slower ... as objective time, as measured in the solar system at large, sped by.

He tripped as the creature came behind him. The only thing he could do was prop up an elbow in the snow and fire. Raw energy ripped off the two tiny forelimbs, but the creature didn't falter. It rushed by Mayhem, almost crushing him with the hind limbs, each of which must have weighed a couple of tons. It lumbered toward Bartock and Jane Cummings.

Turning and starting to get up, Mayhem fired again.

His blaster jammed.

Then the bulk of the monster cut off his view of Bartock, the girl and the scout-ship. He heard the girl scream. He ran toward them.

Jane Cummings had never been so close to death. She wanted to scream. She thought all at once, hysterically, she was a little girl again. If she screamed maybe the terrible apparition would go away. But it did not go away. It reared up high, as high as a very tall tree, and its fangs were hideous.

Bartock, who was also frightened, raised his blaster, fired, and missed.

Then, for an instant, Jane thought she saw someone running behind the monster. He had a blaster too, and he lifted it. When he fired, there was only a clicking sound. Then he fired again.

Half the monster's bulk disappeared and it collapsed in the snow.

That was when Bartock shot the other man.

Mayhem felt the stab of raw energy in his shoulder. He spun around and fell down, his senses whirling in a vortex of pain. Dimly he was aware of Bartock's boots crunching on the snow.

They fired simultaneously. Bartock missed.

And collapsed with a searing hole in his chest. He was dead before he hit the snow.

The girl went to Mayhem. "Who—who are you?"

"Got to get you back to the ship. No time to talk. Hurry."

"But you can't walk like that. You're badly hurt. I'll bring help."

"... dangerous. I'll take you."

He'd take her, flirting with death. Because, for all he knew, his time on Pluto, objectively, had already totalled forty-eight hours. If it did, he would never live to get off Pluto. Once his thirty days were up, he would die. Still, there might be danger from other animals between the scout-ship and Mozart's Lady, and he couldn't let the girl go back alone. It was almost ludicrous, since she had to help him to his feet.

He staggered along with her, knowing he would never make it to Mozart's Lady and back in time. But if he left her, she was probably doomed too. He'd sacrifice his life for hers....

They went a hundred yards, Mayhem gripping the blaster and advancing by sheer effort of will. Then he smiled, and began to laugh. Jane thought he was hysterical with pain. But he said: "We're a pair of bright ones. The scout-ship."

Inside, it was very small. They had to lie very close to each other, but they made it. They reached Mozart's Lady.

Mayhem didn't wait to say good-bye. With what strength remained to him, he almost flung the girl from the scout-ship. The pain in his shoulder was very bad, but that wasn't what worried him. What worried him was the roaring in his ears, the vertigo, the mental confusion as his elan drifted, its thirty days up, toward death.

He saw the girl enter Mozart's Lady. He blasted off, and when the space-bound coffin pierced Pluto's heavyside layer, he called the Hub.

The voice answered him as if it were mere miles away, and not halfway across a galaxy: "Good Lord, man. You had us worried! You have about ten seconds. Ten seconds more and you would have been dead."

Mayhem was too tired to care. Then he felt a wrenching pain, and all at once his elan floated, serene, peaceful, in limbo. He had been plucked from the dying body barely in time, to fight mankind's lone battle against the stars again, wherever he was needed ... out beyond Pluto.

Forever? It wasn't impossible.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of World Beyond Pluto, by C. H. Thames