Amazing Vignettes by Jerry

Author:Jerry [Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-10-03T04:00:00+00:00

Satellite Greed

William Karney

BILL NELSON stared for a long while at the empty metal box. The lid was up and where seven kilos of glittering, sparkling flamestones should have been, was emptiness!

Bill Nelson sat down heavily at the compact astrogating table in the little spaceboat and held his head in his hands. The arduous, back-breaking labor of four months was wasted—all his plans gone and vanished—into thin space.

He should have known, he thought, that there was something wrong about Blake. It was easy to see why Blake had insisted on their working alone, it was clear why Blake had been “at work” on his lode for such a long time and at such odd intervals. The sly devil must have cached a space-boat somewhere, hidden it thoroughly in the billion and one crevices which dotted the surface of Luna—and then struck. Why had he been such a trusting fool!

By now, Nelson thought, Blake will be well on his way to Careen or another of the major lunar dome-cities, and then in a few hours, safely bound for Earth.

For a long time, Bill struggled in his mind, tempted to forget working the lode which still had rather rich deposits, and go after Blake with all he had. But reason took command. Catching the faithless partner was hopeless. The main thing was to get to work.

Wearily, reluctantly, Bill climbed into a space-suit, went through the lock of the little space-boat and started off across the gritty pumice-surface. The thought suddenly struck him—at least see where Blake cached the second space-boat.

After a good hour’s work, Bill stumbled on a canyon-like crevice. He rounded a huge layer of jutting rocky formation—and then saw it! Perched unmoving, well-hidden from above, was a small powerful type-L106 “flitter”, its rockets silent. Bill drew a blaster from his capacious suit and made his way slowly and cautiously toward the space-boat, taking advantage of every out-cropping to protect himself.

But no motion was apparent. If Blake was in the ship, he was mighty slow about moving. Bill keyed the lock and went in slowly. There was not a sign of the errant partner.

Puzzled, he left the little vessel and started to search the surrounding terrain. Then he came upon Blake!

Blake would never play the treacherous partner again. His body, clad in its bulky space-suit, lay sprawled out on a little pumice rise. A hundred feet behind it lay the bag of flame-stones. Blake’s blaster was in his hand, and the right foot of the spacesuit was a gaping hole.

Bill studied the scene carefully. It was easy to reconstruct the event Blake had gotten his foot caught in a crevice, lined with razor-sharp stone. The tough fabric of the suit hadn’t given before his violent struggle. In his mind’s eye, Bill saw the desperate man, thinking of how he had to get away, struggling furiously to disengage his foot. Finally, failing to break loose, he must have decided to chance a blast shot at the rock. He succeeded all right—but he nipped the suit in the process.

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