Short Fiction - Ray Bradbury (short story to read .TXT) 📗

air-chrysali. Enough air for two more hours. Our flag ship was attacked unexpectedly yesterday near Mars. We were forced to take to the lifeboats, scattering, Kriere and I in one, the others sacrificing their lives to cover our escape. We were lucky. We got through the Earth cordon unseen. But luck can’t last forever.

“We saw your morgue ship an hour ago. It’s a long, long way to Venus. We were running out of fuel, food, water. Radio was broken. Capture was certain. You were coming our way; we took the chance. We set a small time-bomb to destroy the life-rocket, and cast off, wearing our chrysali-helmets. It was the first time we had ever tried using them to trick anyone. We knew you wouldn’t know we were alive until it was too late and we controlled your ship. We knew you picked up all bodies for brief exams, returning alien corpses to space later.”

Rice’s voice was sullen. “A setup for you, huh? Traveling under the protection of the Purple Cross you can get your damned All-Mighty safe to Venus.”

Lethla bowed slightly. “Who would suspect a Morgue Rocket of providing safe hiding for precious Venusian cargo?”

“Precious is the word for you, brother!” said Rice.

“Enough!” Lethla moved his gun several inches.

“Accelerate toward Venus, mote-detectors wide open. Kriere must be picked up⁠—now!”

Rice didn’t move. Burnett moved first, feeling alive for the first time in years. “Sure,” said Sam, smiling. “We’ll pick him up.”

“No tricks,” said Lethla.

Burnett scowled and smiled together. “No tricks. You’ll have Kriere on board the Constellation in half an hour or I’m no coroner.”

“Follow me up the ladder.”

Lethla danced up, turned, waved his gun. “Come on.”

Burnett went up, quick. Almost as if he enjoyed doing Lethla a favor. Rice grumbled and cursed after him.

On the way up, Burnett thought about it. About Lethla poised like a white feather at the top, holding death in his hand. You never knew whose body would come in through the star-port next. Number ninety-eight was Lethla. Number ninety-nine would be Kriere.

There were two shelves numbered and empty. They should be filled. And what more proper than that Kriere and Lethla should fill them? But, he chewed his lip, that would need a bit of doing. And even then the cargo wouldn’t be full. Still one more body to get; one hundred. And you never knew who it would be.

He came out of the quick thoughts when he looped his long leg over the hole-rim, stepped up, faced Lethla in a cramped control room that was one glittering swirl of silver levers, audio-plates and visuals. Chronometers, clicking, told of the steady dropping toward the sun at a slow pace.

Burnett set his teeth together, bone against bone. Help Kriere escape? See him safely to Venus, and then be freed? Sounded easy, wouldn’t be hard. Venusians weren’t blind with malice. Rice and he could come out alive; if they cooperated.

But there were a lot of warriors sleeping on a lot of numbered shelves in the dim corridors of the long years. And their dead lips were stirring to life in Burnett’s ears. Not so easily could they be ignored.

You may never catch up with the war again.

The last trip!

Yes, this could be it. Capture Kriere and end the war. But what ridiculous fantasy was it made him believe he could actually do it?

Two muscles moved on Burnett, one in each long cheek. The sag in his body vanished as he tautened his spine, flexed his lean-sinewed arms, wet thin lips.

“Now, where do you want this crate?” he asked Lethla easily.

Lethla exhaled softly. “Cooperation. I like it. You’re wise, Earthman.”

“Very,” said Burnett.

He was thinking about three thousand eternal nights of young bodies being ripped, slaughtered, flung to the vacuum tides. Ten years of hating a job and hoping that some day there would be a last trip and it would all be over.

Burnett laughed through his nose. Controls moved under his fingers like fluid; loved, caressed, tended by his familiar touching. Looking ahead, he squinted.

“There’s your Ruler now, Lethla. Doing somersaults. Looks dead. A good trick.”

“Cut power! We don’t want to burn him!”

Burnett cut. Kriere’s milky face floated dreamily into a visual-screen, eyes sealed, lips gaping, hands sagging, clutching emptily at the stars.

“We’re about fifty miles from him, catching up.” Burnett turned to Lethla with an intent scowl. Funny. This was the first and the last time anybody would ever board the Constellation alive. His stomach went flat, tautened with sudden weakening fear.

If Kriere could be captured, that meant the end of the war, the end of shelves stacked with sleeping warriors, the end of this blind searching. Kriere, then, had to be taken aboard. After that⁠—

Kriere, the All-Mighty. At whose behest all space had quivered like a smitten gong for part of a century. Kriere, revolving in his neat, water-blue uniform, emblems shining gold, heat-gun tucked in glossy jet holster. With Kriere aboard, chances of overcoming him would be eliminated. Now: Rice and Burnett against Lethla. Lethla favored because of his gun.

Kriere would make odds impossible.

Something had to be done before Kriere came in.

Lethla had to be yanked off guard. Shocked, bewildered, fooled⁠—somehow. But⁠—how?

Burnett’s jaw froze tight. He could feel a spot on his shoulder-blade where Lethla would send a bullet crashing into rib, sinew, artery⁠—heart.

There was a way. And there was a weapon. And the war would be over and this would be the last trip.

Sweat covered his palms in a nervous smear.

“Steady, Rice,” he said, matter of factly. With the rockets cut, there was too much silence, and his voice sounded guilty standing up alone in the center of that silence. “Take controls, Rice. I’ll manipulate the star-port.”

Burnett slipped from the control console. Rice replaced him grimly. Burnett strode to the next console of levers. That spot on his back kept aching like it was sear-branded X. For the place where the bullet sings and rips. And if you turn quick, catching it in the arm first, why⁠—

Kriere loomed bigger, a white spider