Intergalactic Stories: 60+ SF Classics in One Edition (Illustrated). Leigh Brackett
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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 delicately dancing on a web of stars. His eyes flicked open behind the glassite sheath, and saw the Constellation. Kriere smiled. His hands came up. He knew he was about to be rescued.
Burnett smiled right back at him. What Kriere didn't know was that he was about to end a ten-years' war.
There was only one way of drawing Lethla off guard, and it had to be fast.
Burnett jabbed a purple-topped stud. The star-port clashed open as it had done a thousand times before; but for the first time it was a good sound. And out of the star-port, at Sam Burnett's easily fingered directions, slid the long claw-like mechanism that picked up bodies from space.
Lethla watched, intent and cold and quiet. The gun was cold and quiet, too.
The claw glided toward Kriere without a sound, now, dream-like in its slowness.
It reached Kriere.
Burnett inhaled a deep breath.
The metal claw cuddled Kriere in its shiny palm.
Lethla watched.
He watched while Burnett exhaled, touched another lever and said: "You know, Lethla, there's an old saying that only dead men come aboard the Constellation. I believe it."
* * * * *
And the claw closed as Burnett spoke, closed slowly and certainly, all around Kriere, crushing him into a ridiculous posture of silence. There was blood running on the claw, and the only recognizable part was the head, which was carefully preserved for identification.
That was the only way to draw Lethla off guard.
Burnett spun about and leaped.
The horror on Lethla's face didn't go away as he fired his gun.
Rice came in fighting, too, but not before something like a red-hot ramrod stabbed Sam Burnett, catching him in the ribs, spinning him back like a drunken idiot to fall in a corner.
Fists made blunt flesh noises. Lethla went down, weaponless and screaming. Rice kicked. After awhile Lethla quit screaming, and the room swam around in Burnett's eyes, and he closed them tight and started laughing.
He didn't finish laughing for maybe ten minutes. He heard the retriever claws come inside, and the star-port grind shut.
Out of the red darkness, Rice's voice came and then he could see Rice's young face over him. Burnett groaned.
Rice said, "Sam, you shouldn't have done it. You shouldn't have, Sam."
"To hell with it." Burnett winced, and fought to keep his eyes open. Something wet and sticky covered his chest. "I said this was my last trip and I meant it. One way or the other, I'd have quit!"
"This is the hard way—"
"Maybe. I dunno. Kind of nice to think of all those kids who'll never have to come aboard the Constellation, though, Rice." His voice trailed off. "You watch the shelves fill up and you never know who'll be next. Who'd have thought, four days ago—"
Something happened to his tongue so it felt like hard ice blocking his mouth. He had a lot more words to say, but only time to get a few of them out:
"Rice?"