Brightside Crossing by Alan Edward Nourse (detective books to read TXT) 📗

time. Keep your head, but crowd your luck a little, okay?”

“I’ll try,” I said. It was asking the impossible and Mikuta knew it. We were on a long downward slope that shifted and buckled all around us, as though there were a molten underlay beneath the crust; the slope was broken by huge crevasses, partly covered with dust and zinc sheeting, like a vast glacier of stone and metal. The outside temperature registered 547° F. and getting hotter. It was no place to start rushing ahead.

I tried it anyway. I took half a dozen shaky passages, edging slowly out on flat zinc ledges, then toppling over and across. It seemed easy for a while and we made progress. We hit an even stretch and raced ahead. And then I quickly jumped on my brakes and jerked the Bug to a halt in a cloud of dust.

I’d gone too far. We were out on a wide, flat sheet of gray stuff, apparently solid—until I’d suddenly caught sight of the crevasse beneath in the corner of my eye. It was an overhanging shell that trembled under me as I stopped.

McIvers’ voice was in my ear. “What’s the trouble now, Claney?”

“Move back!” I shouted. “It can’t hold us!”

“Looks solid enough from here.”

“You want to argue about it? It’s too thin, it’ll snap. Move back!”

I started edging back down the ledge. I heard McIvers swear; then I saw his Bug start to creep outward on the shelf. Not fast or reckless, this time, but slowly, churning up dust in a gentle cloud behind him.

I just stared and felt the blood rush to my head. It seemed so hot I could hardly breathe as he edged out beyond me, further and further—

I think I felt it snap before I saw it. My own machine gave a sickening lurch and a long black crack appeared across the shelf—and widened. Then the ledge began to upend. I heard a scream as McIvers’ Bug rose up and up and then crashed down into the crevasse in a thundering slide of rock and shattered metal.

I just stared for a full minute, I think. I couldn’t move until I heard Jack Stone groan and the Major shouting, “Claney! I couldn’t see—what happened?”

“It snapped on him, that’s what happened,” I roared. I gunned my motor, edged forward toward the fresh broken edge of the shelf. The crevasse gaped; I couldn’t see any sign of the machine. Dust was still billowing up blindingly from below.

We stood staring down, the three of us. I caught a glimpse of Jack Stone’s face through his helmet. It wasn’t pretty.

“Well,” said the Major heavily, “that’s that.”

“I guess so.” I felt the way Stone looked.

“Wait,” said Stone. “I heard something.”

He had. It was a cry in the earphones—faint, but unmistakable.

“Mac!” The Major called. “Mac, can you hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah. I can hear you.” The voice was very weak.

“Are you all right?”

“I don’t know. Broken leg, I think. It’s—hot.” There was a long pause. Then: “I think my cooler’s gone out.”

The Major shot me a glance, then turned to Stone. “Get a cable from the second sledge fast. He’ll fry alive if we don’t get him out of there. Peter, I need you to lower me. Use the tractor winch.”

I lowered him; he stayed down only a few moments. When I hauled him up, his face was drawn. “Still alive,” he panted. “He won’t be very long, though.” He hesitated for just an instant. “We’ve got to make a try.”

“I don’t like this ledge,” I said. “It’s moved twice since I got out. Why not back off and lower him a cable?”

“No good. The Bug is smashed and he’s inside it. We’ll need torches and I’ll need one of you to help.” He looked at me and then gave Stone a long look. “Peter, you’d better come.”

“Wait,” said Stone. His face was very white. “Let me go down with you.”

“Peter is lighter.”

“I’m not so heavy. Let me go down.”

“Okay, if that’s the way you want it.” The Major tossed him a torch. “Peter, check these hitches and lower us slowly. If you see any kind of trouble, anything, cast yourself free and back off this thing, do you understand? This whole ledge may go.”

I nodded. “Good luck.”

They went over the ledge. I let the cable down bit by bit until it hit two hundred feet and slacked off.

“How does it look?” I shouted.

“Bad,” said the Major. “We’ll have to work fast. This whole side of the crevasse is ready to crumble. Down a little more.”

Minutes passed without a sound. I tried to relax, but I couldn’t. Then I felt the ground shift, and the tractor lurched to the side.

The Major shouted, “It’s going, Peter—pull back!” and I threw the tractor into reverse, jerked the controls as the tractor rumbled off the shelf. The cable snapped, coiled up in front like a broken clockspring. The whole surface under me was shaking wildly now; ash rose in huge gray clouds. Then, with a roar, the whole shelf lurched and slid sideways. It teetered on the edge for seconds before it crashed into the crevasse, tearing the side wall down with it in a mammoth slide. I jerked the tractor to a halt as the dust and flame billowed up.

They were gone—all three of them, McIvers and the Major and Jack Stone—buried under a thousand tons of rock and zinc and molten lead. There wasn’t any danger of anybody ever finding their bones.

Peter Claney leaned back, finishing his drink, rubbing his scarred face as he looked across at Baron.

Slowly, Baron’s grip relaxed on the chair arm. “You got back,” he said.

Claney nodded. “I got back, sure. I had the tractor and the sledges. I had seven days to drive back under that yellow Sun. I had plenty of time to think.”

“You took the wrong man along,” Baron said. “That was your mistake. Without him you would have made it.”

“Never.” Claney shook his head. “That’s what I was thinking the first day or so—that it was McIvers’ fault, that he was to blame. But that isn’t true. He was wild, reckless and had lots of nerve.”

“But his judgment was bad!”

“It couldn’t have been sounder. We had to keep to our schedule even if it killed us, because it would positively kill us if we didn’t.”

“But a man like that—”

“A man like McIvers was necessary. Can’t you see that? It was the Sun that beat us, that surface. Perhaps we were licked the very day we started.” Claney leaned across the table, his eyes pleading. “We didn’t realize that, but it was true. There are places that men can’t go, conditions men can’t tolerate. The others had to die to learn that. I was lucky, I came back. But I’m trying to tell you what I found out—that nobody will ever make a Brightside Crossing.”

“We will,” said Baron. “It won’t be a picnic, but we’ll make it.”

“But suppose you do,” said Claney, suddenly. “Suppose I’m all wrong, suppose you do make it. Then what? What comes next?”

“The Sun,” said Baron.

Claney nodded slowly. “Yes. That would be it, wouldn’t it?” He laughed. “Good-by, Baron. Jolly talk and all that. Thanks for listening.”

Baron caught his wrist as he started to rise. “Just one question more, Claney. Why did you come here?”

“To try to talk you out of killing yourself,” said Claney.

“You’re a liar,” said Baron.

Claney stared down at him for a long moment. Then he crumpled in the chair. There was defeat in his pale blue eyes and something else.

“Well?”

Peter Claney spread his hands, a helpless gesture. “When do you leave, Baron? I want you to take me along.”