Ordeal in Space
Date: 2020-11-24T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Short stories; Prisoners -- Fiction

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Title: Ordeal in Space

Author: Ralph Sloan

Release date: November 24, 2020 [eBook #63869]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ORDEAL IN SPACE ***

ORDEAL IN SPACE

By RALPH SLOAN

This was Lieutenant Mike Logan's chance—alone
in space with the man he ached to kill. A man,
bound and helpless, who taunted him, dared him,
goaded him—knowing Mike had to bring him in alive!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1949.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

A needle gun pointed through the cell bars at the hulking form of Edward Snyder, his blue-furred Moon mimic squirming on his lap. Behind it were the cold hands, cropped black hair, and bloodless face of Lt. Mike Logan. It had taken him three hours to slide past the guards of the transient prison. He would leave with the same efficient caution. But first he had to kill!

Snyder looked up and saw him. The flabby face twisted cynically. "Something personal, Lieutenant, or does the gun make it official?"

"Ask your questions in hell," Logan grated. His angular length was bent; gray eyes bloodshot and he fought to keep them open. After two months of tramping over Pluto's ice cliffs, he had returned to Jupiter to find the odor of death and no rest.

A savage desire for revenge had driven him on until now he stood staring almost unseeingly at the killer. The needle gun would be silent and untraceable. "You killed Johnny. This is for him."

Snyder shrugged beefy shoulders. "I've killed many and life is cheap. I can't remember them all."

"He was the last one," Logan choked. "He was my brother—" Something caught his arm in a vice from behind. A stab of pain shot from his wrist to his neck.

"Sorry, Lieutenant, but I got to keep 'im alive," the voice of the prison guard broke in his ear. He felt the gun drop from his fingers and tried to break free. Through the bars he could dimly see Snyder's mocking smile. Then something struck him on the head and he slid a long ways down.

An hour later he stood at attention before the command desk of the Patrol's Jupiter division. His knees were weak, chills of exhaustion tracing his back muscles. He was washed up and he knew it.

"I used to think I could count on you," Commander Bates stormed. "Well, I was wrong. You're nothing but a damned gutless jellyfish. If it weren't for your record I'd have you cashiered here and now."

Logan flinched and tightened his lips.

"There's no room in the Patrol for a man who cracks," Bates raged on. "I'm sorry about Johnny. He had an easy way of getting under the skin and belonging to all of us. Even the natives liked him. You're different, Logan. You live for yourself."

Sand had crawled up under Logan's eyelids. He listened, too tired to be angered by the truth.

The Commander's eyes shifted to a sheaf of papers. "General Winkham sent me your requests for Transportation and Exploration licenses. I'm supposed to endorse them." He swept the papers away and glared. "Snyder dies on an Earth rope in three days and no self-appointed god has the right to make it a minute sooner."

"If you want my resignation—" Those papers had been his future. His and Johnny's ... tattered remnants of a star dream.

"Damned your resignation," Bates roared. "You're going to be taught a lesson. You want Snyder—well, I'm giving him to you."

The room rocked. "You're what—?"

"You heard me." The older man snapped a piece of paper across his desk. "You're taking him to Earth for execution."

"I'll kill—" Mike Logan forgot about sleep.

"Go ahead," Bates challenged him. "He'll die anyway. If it happens while he's your charge, you'll be hanged in his place or psychoed out at the next exam. Johnny deserves a better tombstone. But maybe you haven't the decency to think of him."

Logan was trapped. His future lay on the desk, a crumpled mass of applications under the other's hairy fist. It took an A-1 discharge and a Patrol recommendation to get the needed licenses and he owed it to Johnny to keep trying.

"So this is a last chance," he breathed acidly. A believer in satanic justice, Bates always found a 'last chance' for the man who cracked. They were spawned in hell but never refused because there was no place in society for a Patrol 'wash out'.

The wizened superior looked strange. "It takes guts on the outer planets, Logan. I was born on Neptune. At ten I watched drunken natives work a Mhulo Taag sacrifice on my mother after killing my father and tying me up." He paled. "The priest used a sharp razor. I never forgot it or his face. Twelve years later I brought him in over six thousand miles of ice when I'd have given my soul to kill him."

In the glare of the rocket field's giant arc lamps, Logan looked at his watch. In twenty minutes he was due to blast off. He watched the fueling of the small Patrol spacer and smoked a cigarette. His lips felt numb and the smoke drifted with a will of its own, sometimes drawn to the lungs with a breath, sometimes burning his nostrils. He wasn't aware.

Odd how he had pursued an even course for twenty-eight years, driving toward a goal he and his brother had planned since childhood, then suddenly losing his props. The Patrol had been a prerequisite of the government licenses they needed. For his part, Logan had been able to face hell, crawl through the stink and the mud and the cold of the outer planets. Yet the five years of service had been a task apart from him, a bridge to an end. Even his black Patrol uniform had seemed alien and temporary. But the blood on Johnny's chest and the ugly dirk protruding from the flesh had struck home.

"Tell Mike to make it a good space line. I'll be around to see it," were Johnny's last words when they found him. Two days later the Patrol had smoked Snyder out of a cheap rooming house—trapped, still with the damned cynical smile.

There was movement at the field exit and four figures detached themselves from the darkness. Edward Snyder towered above the others, carrying his opal-eyed pet in his fettered hands; a sad-faced monkey-sized creature that imitated gestures and obeyed mental commands. Logan glanced swiftly at his watch—ten minutes! and moved to intercept the body.

"I'll take over," he said crisply.

Snyder's eyes widened, tiny chip blue flakes lost in flabby flesh. "Is this the pilot?" he demanded. "He'll kill me." But he kept his queer smile.

The guards were Jovians, local police, short, rotund, lobster-faced individuals. One of them stepped forward. "Lieutenant Logan?"

Mike Logan nodded and showed his papers. The Jovian satisfied himself and returned them. His eyes waved on the end of stalks—supple, transparent muscles; never still.

"We are in charge until the moment of take-off, Lieutenant," he said stiffly. "If you will step aside we will chain the prisoner within the ship." He spoke with characteristic hollowness, a racial organic flaw.

"I think I can handle that," Mike said testily. Snyder laughed and he looked up a foot at the mocking face.

"They know you're going to kill me. You can wait till space, can't you, Logan?" He had found out his name.

Hate welled up in Logan's eyes and curdled his soul. But he had to stand with raw nerves and take it. The entourage, pushing past him, entered the Patrol ship. Blood ran down his fingers where the nails had bitten into the palms.

The Jovian guards chained Snyder to the bunk behind the control bucket. When they re-appeared their spokesman approached Logan.

"The prisoner is secure," he reported.

"Then your duty is done."

"Not until you leave," the guard corrected. He hesitated. "We have heard what occasioned at the prison. I knew your brother and mourn his passing. His killer has a strange mind, but he is to die—."

"He'll die," Logan promised dangerously.

"But you will cheat us. He has killed my people too. Have we no share in vengeance? Let him be hanged. Think—"

"Save it for your children," Logan broke in savagely. He turned angrily and climbed into the Patrol ship, his mind blazing with a dozen tangent thoughts. The port clapped shut like the jaws of death behind him. He sank into the control bucket, not looking at his prisoner, only the panel chronometer. The hands met straight up. He touched off the gravity-clearing charge and the breath was sucked from his lungs.

The stars were pinpoints of light poking holes in the consciousness. He looked at them and wondered if Johnny were watching him. He didn't believe in ghosts, but—

It had been a great dream, he and the kid had had. There was little interplanetary transportation; none beyond Jupiter except by the Patrol. It had been the outer planets they had wanted to link. First the Patrol hitch to qualify, then the charting of bases and trajectories. With those they could have gone to the Earth government for financing. Mike wanted to say, "Don't worry, kid. I'll pick up the pieces." But he couldn't.

From behind him he heard the low squealing of the Moon mimic and Edward Snyder's laugh.

"Getting up the courage, Lieutenant?" he mocked. Logan could see him in the panel mirror, head cocked to one side, fat lips parted in an invitation to be smashed. "That gun," Snyder nodded to the holstered blaster. "It could do a neat job if you like intestines and blood."

The Patrolman's hand moved to the blaster's cold butt. His brain told him it could never be proved as murder. He could report an attempted escape and plant the evidence. He half withdrew the gun; shivered and let it slide back. Sweat stood out on his face. There were things that wouldn't let him kill. The kid and his star dream and the unsigned license requests. The little Jovian with his idiotic sense of justice. And there was Bates and his native priest. He could see the picture, snow and glaciers—two men in a motor sled, as alone as a ship in space. And here was Snyder and he couldn't kill him. Maybe they would let him fit the noose about the killer's neck. Maybe he could beg them to let him spring the trap. He could be close then and watch the body dangle. But he would be cheated. It was second best so that Johnny and Bates, gray-haired satanic Bates, could be first. The decision left him weak.

Snyder watched the re-holstering of the gun and his eyes narrowed. "What's wrong? Haven't ya got the guts?"

"You'll get yours."

"I think you're yellow."

The tiredness dissolved as Logan whirled about and showed his teeth. "Don't push me, rat. There's a damn thin line between the worth of killing you myself and letting you hang."

The fat man nodded and so did the mimic. They both seemed pleased. "I'm glad it's a thin line. Do you want to know why?"

"Not interested." Logan kept his eyes on the murderer while he fished Synthetic Sleep capsules from the panel locker. He needed something to dispel the sluggishness of his brain.

"You should be," Snyder taunted. "I love death. In life there's nothing, but there's glory in death." His tiny eyes blazed. "You're not free, Logan. No one is until they've balanced a knife over a being's heart and heard the breath rattle. You listen to the beat of the blood, knowing you can stop it in a second, or make it go slower and slower until it drains away."

Logan sat frozen; incredulous.

"You wonder why I say this," Snyder laughed. "It's because I'm going to choose my death." He looked strange. "I don't want to hang. If I can't escape and be free again, I'll make you kill me." He stared for a minute, then threw back his head and laughed. The mimic laughed, high loonish squeals.

"Hah, the blaster would be good. It has drama." Then the killer and his mimic curled up on the bunk in identical positions and went to sleep.

A feeling of nausea crept over Logan. The sound of the insane babbling struck a sickening note. Snyder was a maniac. No one had told him. At the height of the giant's bloody career he had been in the Plutonian hinterland. But Bates had known. He cursed the gray-haired brother of the devil.

The panel chronometer showed forty-six hours before he would reach Earth. Forty-six hours cooped up with a madman and a squealing mimic, his mind already foggy and with no prospect of rest. Since returning to Jupiter he had gone a long ways in the wrong direction. His logic was shaky and it was hard to tell what was right and wrong. A chill ran over him. Maybe he would be as mad as Snyder before he reached Earth.

Trouble first struck on the fourth hour sunward. Its nature was mechanical and deadly. The instrument panel belched smoke. The roar of the jet engines became erratic and jerky.

The patrolman's eyes swung from the mirror. His hands jumped, the left cutting the current with a blow to the ignition while the right unlocked and swung open the meter studded section. He heard Snyder stir behind him; the whimpering of the mimic. The confident drum of the engines died. Smoke poured upward and was sucked into the dying blades of the ventilator fans. Automatically activated, the blue emergency lights faded on.

The short was deep in the electrical maze. He knew the wiring by heart, could close his eyes and see pages of diagrams he had had to memorize in Patrol school. His fingers burned as he found the bare wire, flecks of molten insulation clinging to the tips. A long jumper-wire was dug from the panel locker.

"We're drifting," Snyder yelled. "Use the auxiliaries, fool."

"Shut up," Logan snapped. The ship pitched and swung end over end, caught in the ether-tides of the asteroid belt. With the current cut they had no detectors, repulsers—even the air could not be replenished. Still he hesitated to expend the auxiliary jets. Their charge was limited. In space, auxiliaries weren't an answer to fate, only a brief postponement.

The defective wire ripped out, he cut his fingers fumbling with the connecting posts. The spacer leveled and flowed stern first. Something, probably a meteor the size of a thumbnail, struck the hull. It shivered and began revolving again.

"For God's sake, this is no way to die," Snyder screamed. The mimic screeched and leaped up and down.

Sweat ran into Mike Logan's eyes. One copper nipple slipped into its socket. Space develops a sixth sense and he felt the urgent nearness of the asteroid maze. One hand reached for the auxiliary switch as the other fought to mate nipple and post. Abruptly the nipple mated and his fist veered to strike the ignition button. An explosive stab of power drove them forward.

"You can stop crying, rat. We're safe." Logan looked in the mirror. His hands shook and he reached for a cigarette despite regulations. Snyder played with the bunk blankets; the mimic described little motions with its eight-fingered paws. He turned wearily back to the controls, re-setting the course. The chronometer showed forty-three more hours.

Mental and physical endurance is limited and Logan's had been drained before returning to Jupiter. The sapping in the transient prison had found him in need of a bed, cool sheets, and a week of sleep. He hadn't completely cracked, only been sick with strain and shock. This last chance was too much. He had reached the emotional saturation point.

Something soft slid over his nose, caught and jerked him backward. The bucket's headrest hit his spine and he struck the deck rolling and cursing himself.

Snyder's laugh boomed as he dropped the improvised blanket-rope and caught Logan's throat in his huge hands. The Patrolman's eyes bulged as he was dragged to the edge of the bunk.

"I can feel the blood in your neck," Snyder gloated. "You're not clever, Logan. You're not strong. Your brother could fight."

The giant was master all the way. Mike could feel his face swell, lights dancing, as the sausage fingers tightened. Somewhere a foot found purchase. He lashed out with the other. The toe cut the edge of a small eye, momentarily relaxing the hold and he squirmed free. Chains crunched as Snyder lunged after him and was jerked back. He pulled himself to his feet, blaster in hand.

He lashed out with his foot, somehow fought free.

"Shoot," Snyder commanded him. "I tried to escape."

Instinct tightened Logan's finger on the trigger. Then he leaned against the hull and swore to the end of his strength while the giant laughed with crying eyes. The mimic imitated him with cracking little screeches.

At eighteen hours sunward he fed his prisoner. A stern locker opened into a compact kitchen and produced Earth meat and beans. He handed a plate and a dull spoon to Snyder, took one himself and sat on a stool. He wasn't hungry.

"You don't understand me, do you?" Snyder said wistfully.

"Shut up."

"Why don't you make me?" he demanded. "Why don't you kill me?" He brightened. "Do you know how I killed your brother?"

The blood drained from Lt. Logan's face.

"It was at the Jovian Feast of the Moons," Snyder related. "I had an argument with a Martian girl and he tried to interfere. I killed them both. She was a little cheat and he was a threat. I had to break both his arms before I could use the knife. He had a strong heart. He bled...."

Somehow the Patrol officer found the control bucket. He swallowed a full handful of Synthetic Sleep capsules. The mirror blurred and he tried to watch Snyder and think of Bates and the native and the motorsled in the snow. He told himself he had guts, but he was too tired and sick to hear his own thoughts. He wanted to kill.

Mars loomed up a swollen orange and swept astern. At thirty-six hours he attached a leash to the Moon mimic's fur hidden collar. It stopped the inane jumping.

The hands of the chronometer spun and there began a series of blank spaces which neither realization nor Synthetic Sleep could stop. He saw Johnny and the spaceline, Bates, the lobster-faced Jovians. The roaring jets became a lullaby.

At forty-one hours he pulled out the blaster and moved to confront Snyder. The fat man looked up with the same cynical smile.

"Give it to me," Logan ordered.

"What?"

"The file. I've been watching you."

The giant shrugged, brought the file in view and continued to saw at his chains. "This is Oscar's donation," he said. "I hid it in his collar. If you want it, take it with that." He nodded to the blaster.

Logan hesitated, licked his lips, then brought the gun down hard along a fleshy temple. The smile faded and the fat man folded. He took the file, searched the surroundings, the blankets in the corner, found nothing and returned to the controls. The odds were mounting against him. Maybe next time....

When Edward Snyder regained consciousness an hour later, Logan's eyes hadn't left the mirror. The giant didn't smile anymore. Shortly he became occupied with his pet, making grabbing motions at the air.

The chronometer moved faster. There was Earth to look at—green, peaceful Earth. He had done it! A few more hours and the nightmare would be over! Lord, how he wanted sleep! He computed his primary orbit and tuned in the Lunar Patrol station.

"Logan calling...."

"Go ahead, Lieutenant." The cherub face of the Moon's radaronics operator appeared on the scanning screen.

"Requesting landing instructions from Earth via Moon." His set was too small to receive through Earth's atmosphere. The Moon acted as a relay station.

"Make ground contact at—"

"Do it—do it." The mental command aimed at the Moon mimic hit Logan's brain like a hot iron. Its hairy little arm shot past him, grabbed the ignition jumper wire as it had watched Snyder grab air, and jerked it loose. As the engines died and the blue emergency lights faded on, Snyder laughed and the mimic screeched, jumping about, waving its prize and dragging the frayed leash the killer had broken.

Logan hit the auxiliary switch. They were within the Moon's gravitational pull and he had no choice. He was exhausted and felt like crying. Lord, was there no end to it? Would the lunatic never stop? Hadn't he paid enough for his own relapse?

The startled face of the radaronics operator flashed on the screen again. "Prepare for crash," Logan shouted at him, then cut the power to conserve fuel.

Through the steering port he could see the soiled craters of the Moon leaping up at him and the Patrol spacer began to whine and vibrate as it hit the three pound air pressure. He sweat over the auxiliary controls, nursing the fuel in short bursts, breaking the rate of fall, juggling the angle. They were west of the Mountains of Caucasus and directly above a narrow strip of plains. Within a thousand feet he hit the jet activator and held it. A single explosive roar sounded; died. There was nothing more he could do. He closed his eyes and began to pray.

The Patrol spacer hit and dug a furrow across the plain for three miles, eight inches of the finest steel fighting lava rock and meteor metal. The base of the Alps range was within leaping distance when the battered hull shivered to a halt. The deck was twisted and friction smoke filled the air.

Logan got up. His legs didn't want to hold him, but he got up anyhow. There was blood on his face and more oozing from his thigh. He heard the high whine of escaping air, moved to a stern locker and pulled out two pressure suits. His arms and legs were like lead. He wanted to lie down on the floor, say to-hell-with-everything—maybe die.

Edward Snyder was quiet but alive and conscious. A trickle of blood ran from his nose and dripped from the second chin. The monkey-like mimic moaned up and down the scale.

"Put this on," Logan whispered. He tossed one of the suits on the bunk. Enough air had escaped to hamper breathing and affect his voice.

"I'm chained," Snyder snarled. "For God's sake, why don't you kill me?"

For a moment Logan stared at him, then swayed and caught himself on the bulkhead. He had reached the end and he knew it. He lifted the blaster toward his captive.

Snyder's expression was ethereal. He threw back his shoulders and braced himself. Then the massive face turned blank as the leg chains were carried away. The second blast freed one arm. Logan dropped the piece of file on the bunk. The fat man stared dumbly, then snatched it up and sawed at the remaining chain with savage joy.

Lt. Mike Logan crawled numbly into his pressure suit, slipped out an escape hatch and dropped to the Moon's cold crust. He couldn't let Snyder die; he couldn't stay with the insane killer free. There was no end to it.

He struck off toward the towering crags of the Alps. His lead wouldn't be much. Snyder with his twisted brain would be after him in a few minutes, but he didn't care how it ended anymore. The giant couldn't escape from the Moon. They'd get him again. But he, Logan, wasn't going to kill.

The horizon was foggy. He could see Bates and the motorsled.

They'd know he'd had the guts....

It was a nightmare, falling, getting up, falling again. He had made it to the first row of foothills when Edward Snyder caught him. The giant had found a knife in the galley and he brandished it over his head, narrowing the distance between them with long leaps. Logan's normal thirty foot Moon strides had fallen to ten. There was nothing left in him. He felt the impact of weight against his back, an arm tighten about his neck and they fell to the rocks. Only a trick of the gravity saved him from the first dipping of the knife.

How long they fought there was no reckoning. Logan could see the giant laughing within his plastic helmet and he thought of Johnny and found the strength to fight. He held his blaster club fashion and struck feebly. He knew it couldn't last long. Nothing as uneven, as unfair as this ever did.

The two pressure-suited bodies bounced over the rocky surface, Snyder's mad thrashing tossing them yards into the air. When they lit the last time something snapped and Logan's arm twisted queerly.

Above them, on a projection of rock, he saw the mimic waving the knife it had acquired to imitate its insane master. Logan summoned all his strength in a desperate gamble on the creature's one virtue. "Do it! Do it! Damn it, do it!"

Snyder grinned and raised his knife for aim.

The blue-furred Moon native hesitated, uncertain, then teetered and dropped downward. It landed on Snyder's shoulder, the knife describing an awkward arc. The giant's pressure suit exploded as a six inch gash was opened behind the neck. The mad leer disappeared and the fat man gasped at the scant air. He flailed about, rolling over and over, pulling Logan with him, then lay still; his eyes pushed upward, fighting to breathe.

A shower of lights hit Logan's brain. A chant pounded accompaniment. "Can't kill 'im. Can't kill 'im. Can't—" The plastic helmet of the mad Cyclops had shattered on the rocks and he found himself hammering feebly at the loose features, tears of exhaustion streaming down his face. The mimic continued to slash with the knife and the Patrolman's suit dissolved, the left shoulder laid open. It grew very dark....

There was a bed and sheets and the smell of tobacco smoke when he came to. The room was in semi-darkness, but he could make out two figures.

"Cigarette?" one of them asked and held a match. The other occupant opened the shades and light filtered in. Immediately he recognized the first. The long thin face and the bright eyes belonged to General Winkham, commanding general of the Patrol.

"Sir—" He tried to sit up, but the arm cast held him.

"No need for formality, Logan." The general smiled. "The radaronics operator tracked your ship down. You were near dead when the searching party spotted that mimic." He chuckled. "They had the devil's own time disarming the little beast."

"What—what about Snyder?"

The general sobered. "You've been asleep for two days. Snyder was hanged yesterday."

The other officer drew himself up stiffly. He wore a captain's bars and was obviously the post commandant. "I think I should point out that the prisoner was assaulted, General. Charges will have to be made."

Winkham frowned. "Is that right, Lieutenant?"

"I don't know." He swallowed hard and then told it from the beginning—Johnny, Bates—everything. "I remember thinking at the last that I couldn't kill him. Maybe I hit him; I don't know."

"The situation is obvious," the captain summarized coldly. "The prisoner was already subdued and therefore the beating was unnecessary and in violation of the Conduct Code. You'll sit on the court martial, of course, General?" The inner planets were hurtfully strict on regulations.

"Get out of here," Winkham snapped. When the other had fled he turned to Logan. "I'm sorry about this, Lieutenant, but the captain is within his rights. I don't hold with these teaparty technicalities, but you can see my position. Why didn't you kill the blasted maniac? It would have been self-defense."

Logan experienced a wave of bitterness. The hell had been for nothing. Something he didn't even remember clearly had caused him to fail Bates, fail Johnny. "Bates told me he had brought in the native that tortured his mother to death," he said weakly. "I tried to show as much guts. I guess I haven't got it."

"Bates, eh?" Winkham mused and looked out the window. "I was his commanding officer then. The native was alive all right, but we always wondered how his ears got sliced off and stuffed in his mouth. We questioned him but couldn't make out his language."

"Neptunian priests all speak English," Logan contradicted.

"I know, but none of us did," the General returned with a wry grin. "And I don't think anyone on this post will either. Even if I have to break a captain to a hangar-monkey." He got up and paced the room. "Bates says you want to start a space line. Says you're a good man with ideas—"

There was a growing spot of warmth in Logan's abdomen as he smoked and listened to the famous "Winks". It was pride at belonging with men as great as Bates and Johnny and Winkham. He could say it to Johnny, now, softly. "Don't worry, kid. I'll pick up the pieces...."

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