A Coffin for Jacob by Edward W. Ludwig (crime books to read .TXT) 📗

Ben brushed away the dust from his face-plate, turned up his helmet's oxygen valve. Then he knelt by the fallen creature.

A new fear came to Ben Curtis—a fear almost as great as that of being caught in Simon's crushing grip. It was the fear that he had killed again.

But even in the near-darkness, he could distinguish the labored rise and fall of the massive chest.

Thank God, he thought.

From the direction of Jacob's ship, a flash of light caught his eye. The black shapes of helmeted men were becoming larger, nearer.

Ben tensed. The spacemen couldn't have heard sounds of the struggle, but they might have noticed movement.

Puffing, Ben plunged into the darkness to his left, slowing only long enough to consult the dial of his compass.

"Sixty-eight degrees," he breathed.

The compass dial was now his only companion and his only hope. It was the one bit of reality in a world of black, screaming nightmare.

At first Ben Curtis fought the wind and the dust and the night. His fists were clenched as they had been while struggling with Simon. Each step forward was a challenge, a struggle and—so far, at any rate—a victory.

But how far was the city? Five miles? Ten? How could you judge distance through a haze of alien sand?

And were Simple Simon or Jacob's men following? How good was a Venusian's vision at night? Would the scaly hands find him even now, descending on him from out of the blackness?

He kept walking, walking. Sixty-eight degrees.

Gradually his senses grew numb to the fear of recapture. He became oblivious to the wailing wind and the beat of dust against his face-plate. He moved like a robot. His mind wandered back through time and space, a pin-wheel spinning with unforgettable impressions, faces, voices.

He saw the white features of a dead man, their vividness fading now and no longer terrifying.

A Space Officer Is Honest. A Space Officer Is Loyal. A Space Officer Is Dutiful. The words were like clear, satisfying music.

He cursed at the image of a pop-eyed Martian boy. A tres fine table, monsieur. Close in the shadows.

And yet, he told himself, the boy really didn't do anything wrong. He was only helping to capture a murderer. Maybe he was lonesome for Mars and needed money to go home.

Ben thought of Maggie: While other gals were dressing for their junior proms, I'd be in sloppy slacks down at the spaceport with Jacob.... If I'd only known her back on Earth—

Maggie, sitting alone now with a wrinkled paper and its mass of scrawled circuits. Alone and hollow with grief and needing help. Ben's throat tightened. Damn it, he didn't want to think about that.

What was it the little big-eared man had said? I've made copies for our own ships and for the brass in Hoover City.

Why had he said that? Why would renegades give their secrets to the Space Corps? The Corps would incorporate the discoveries in their ships. With them, they'd reach the asteroids. Jacob's group would be pushed even further outward.

Ben stopped, the wind whipping at his suit and buffeting his helmet—but not as hard as the answer he had found.

Jacob and his men had an existence to justify, a debt to pay. They justified that existence and paid that debt by helping humanity in its starward advance.

Maggie had said, We carry cargoes of almost pure uranium and tungsten and all the stuff that's getting scarce on Earth and Mars and Venus. If we want to risk our lives getting it, that's our business.... The dome we're in now was designed and built by us a few years ago. We lost a few men in the construction, but with almost every advance in space, someone dies.

The wind pressed Ben back. The coldness of the Venusian night was seeping into his suit. It was as if his body were bathed, at once, in flame and ice.

He slipped, fell, his face turned toward the sandy ground. He did not try to rise.

Yet his mind seemed to soar above the pain, to carry him into a wondrous valley of new awareness.

Man would never be content to stay on nine insignificant globes-not when his eyes had the power to stare into a night sky and when his brain had the ability to imagine. There would have to be pioneers to seek out the unknown horror, to face it and defeat it. There would have to be signposts lining the great road and helping others to follow without fear.

For all the brilliancy of their dreams, those men would be the lonely ones, the men of no return. For all the glory of their brief adventure, they would give not only their cloaks, but ultimately their lives.

Ben lay trembling in the darkness.

His brain cried, You couldn't rig up a radar system or a deceleration compensator, but you could chart those asteroids. You can't bring a man named Cobb back to life, but you could help a thousand men and women to stay alive five or ten or twenty years from now.

Ben knew at last what decision Jacob would have made.

The reverse of sixty-eight on a compass is two-forty-eight.

Like flashing knitting needles, strong hands moved about his face-plate, his windsuit, his helmet. Then they were wiping perspiration from his white face and placing a wet cloth on the back of his neck.

"You were coming back," a voice kept saying. "You were coming back."

His mouth was full of hot coffee. He became aware of a gentle face hovering above him, just as it had a seeming eternity ago.

He sat up on the bed, conscious now of his surroundings.

"Simon says you were coming back, Ben. Why?"

He fought to grasp the meaning of Maggie's words. "Simon? Simon found me? He brought me back?"

"Only a short way. He said you were almost here."

Ben closed his eyes, reliving the whirlwind of thought that had whipped through his brain. He mumbled something about pioneers and a scrawled paper and a debt and a decision.

Then he blinked and saw that he and Maggie were not alone. Simple Simon stood at the foot of his bed—and was that a trace of a smile on his reptilian mouth? And three windsuited spacemen stood behind Maggie, helmets in their hands. One was a lean-boned, reddish-skinned Martian.

Simple Simon said, "Ben—changed. Thinks—like us. Good now. Like—Jacob."

The little big-eared man stepped up and shook hands with Ben. "If Simon says so, that's good enough for me."

A blond-haired Earthman helped Ben from the bed. "Legs okay, fellow? Think you're ready?"

Ben stood erect unassisted. "Legs okay. And I'm ready."

He thought for a moment. "But suppose I wasn't ready. Suppose I didn't want to go with you. I know a lot about your organization. What would you do?"

The blond man shrugged untroubledly. "We wouldn't kill you, if that's what you mean. We'd probably vote on whether to take you with us anyway or let you go." His smile was frank. "I'm glad we don't have to vote."

Ben nodded and turned to Maggie. "You're still coming with us?"

She shook her head, a mist shining in her sad eyes. "Not on this trip. Not without Jacob. I'll get one of our desert taxis back to Hoover City. Then I'll be going to Earth for a while. I've got some thinking to do and thinking is done best on Earth. Out here is the place for feeling." Her eyes lost a little of their pain. "But I'll be back. Jacob wouldn't stay on Earth. Neither will I. I'll be seeing you."

The big-eared man put his hand on Ben's shoulder.

"Think you can get us back to Juno?" he asked.

Ben looked at Maggie and then at the big-eared man. "You're as good as there," he said confidently.