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The Hunted Heroes By: Robert Silverberg (1935-) |
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By ROBERT SILVERBERG
The planet itself was tough enough barren, desolate,
forbidding; enough to stop the most adventurous and
dedicated. But they had to run head on against a mad
genius who had a motto: Death to all Terrans!
"Let's keep moving," I told Val. "The surest way to die out here on Mars
is to give up." I reached over and turned up the pressure on her oxymask
to make things a little easier for her. Through the glassite of the
mask, I could see her face contorted in an agony of fatigue. And she probably thought the failure of the sandcat was all my fault,
too. Val's usually about the best wife a guy could ask for, but when she
wants to be she can be a real flying bother. It was beyond her to see that some grease monkey back at the Dome was at
fault whoever it was who had failed to fasten down the engine hood.
Nothing but what had stopped us could stop a sandcat: sand in the
delicate mechanism of the atomic engine. But no; she blamed it all on me somehow: So we were out walking on the
spongy sand of the Martian desert. We'd been walking a good eight hours. "Can't we turn back now, Ron?" Val pleaded. "Maybe there isn't any
uranium in this sector at all. I think we're crazy to keep on searching
out here!" I started to tell her that the UranCo chief had assured me we'd hit
something out this way, but changed my mind. When Val's tired and
overwrought there's no sense in arguing with her. I stared ahead at the bleak, desolate wastes of the Martian landscape.
Behind us somewhere was the comfort of the Dome, ahead nothing but the
mazes and gullies of this dead world. [Illustration: He was a cripple in a wheelchair helpless as a
rattlesnake.] "Try to keep going, Val." My gloved hand reached out and clumsily
enfolded hers. "Come on, kid. Remember we're doing this for Earth.
We're heroes." She glared at me. "Heroes, hell!" she muttered. "That's the way it
looked back home, but, out there it doesn't seem so glorious. And
UranCo's pay is stinking." "We didn't come out here for the pay, Val." "I know, I know, but just the same " It must have been hell for her. We had wandered fruitlessly over the red
sands all day, both of us listening for the clicks of the counter. And
the geigers had been obstinately hushed all day, except for their
constant undercurrent of meaningless noises. Even though the Martian gravity was only a fraction of Earth's, I was
starting to tire, and I knew it must have been really rough on Val with
her lovely but unrugged legs. "Heroes," she said bitterly. "We're not heroes we're suckers! Why did I
ever let you volunteer for the Geig Corps and drag me along?" Which wasn't anywhere close to the truth. Now I knew she was at the
breaking point, because Val didn't lie unless she was so exhausted she
didn't know what she was doing. She had been just as much inflamed by
the idea of coming to Mars to help in the search for uranium as I was.
We knew the pay was poor, but we had felt it a sort of obligation,
something we could do as individuals to keep the industries of
radioactives starved Earth going. And we'd always had a roving foot,
both of us. No, we had decided together to come to Mars the way we decided together
on everything. Now she was turning against me. I tried to jolly her. "Buck up, kid," I said. I didn't dare turn up her
oxy pressure any higher, but it was obvious she couldn't keep going. She
was almost sleep walking now. We pressed on over the barren terrain. The geiger kept up a fairly
steady click pattern, but never broke into that sudden explosive tumult
that meant we had found pay dirt. I started to feel tired myself,
terribly tired. I longed to lie down on the soft, spongy Martian sand
and bury myself. I looked at Val. She was dragging along with her eyes half shut. I felt
almost guilty for having dragged her out to Mars, until I recalled that
I hadn't... Continue reading book >>
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Literature |
Science |
Short stories |
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