DESTINATION—DEATH-4
658 Words
THE AIR GUSHED IN WITH incredible force, shoved the men forcefully against the metal wall, then subsided as the pressure was equalized. Headley stepped forward, felt the icy crystals of snow tapping against his suit. He thrust one arm through the port, gasped, as gravity jerked it groundward. He leaned back, sighed. Inside the ship, with its inertia-stasis gravity, normal movement was possible; but outside, with the super-gravity, even slow walking would be a job.
“Set your suit control for three graves,” he ordered. “That way, we’ll have enough weight to stay on the ground, and will still be able to move.”
Bart Caxton growled an unintelligible reply, drew his right arm from the semi-rigid sleeve of his suit, made an adjustment on the suit’s control-panel. Instantly, weight descended with pile-driving force, and muscles corded in his legs to counteract the tripled gravity.
Headley adjusted his gravity control, then connected himself to Caxton with a ten-foot length of cable. Carefully, he lowered himself from the port, stood erect in the howling wind and snow, waited until Caxton had clambered down to his side. Reaching upward, they closed the port, leaving it uncogged, so that they could easily reenter.
Headley checked his radi-compass bearings, then braced the full force of the wind, Caxton pressing forward at his side. They struggled toward the ice-sheathed cliff a hundred yards away, each step an agony of effort, clumsily dodging a huge boulder that rolled a lazy path of death toward them.
Snow smashed at them, made vision difficult, went whirling away. Even through the radi-heated layers of their suits, they could feel the implacable cold plucking at their lives with skeletal fingers of death. Minutes passed, as they fought through the drifting snow, each minute an age of effort; and when Headley glanced back, he felt a vague surprise to find that they had travelled so short a distance. He grinned at Caxton.
“Like trying to run in a slow-motion dream,” he said, frowned slightly when he heard his partner’s sullen growl of acknowledgment.
They struggled forward again, approaching the cliff of ice and rock that towered overhead. Headley splashed heedlessly through a small pool of semi-liquid, halted with a tiny cry of excitement.
“Look!” he said. “That rock’s alive.”
Bart Caxton tilted his gaze to where several clay-colored rocks lay at the edge of the pool.
“You’re nuts,” he said. “They’re just rocks.”
“I’ll swear I saw one move out of the way of my foot,” Headley insisted stubbornly, bent and lifted the first of the rocks.
It was heavy in his hands, and he had the uncanny sensation that it squirmed impatiently as he lifted it. He examined it carefully, ignoring Caxton’s impatient words for them to hurry. And even as he watched, he saw the living rock split in his hands, opening down the side, disclosing gill-like fringed flesh that looked like slivers of whitish ice.
“It is alive!” he exclaimed excitedly, then dropped the stone as sudden giddiness clutched at his senses.
Caxton caught at his drooping body. “What’s wrong?” he snapped.
Headley blinked his eyes. “Nothing!” he disclaimed. “Just a combination of pressure and lack of oxygen.” He reached for his suit’s panel, opened the oxygen valve another quarter turn.
He shook his head slightly, then bent to study the rock he had dropped. It had not moved, nor had its mouth-like opening closed. It lay at his feet in the shallow liquid, resembling nothing more than a ruptured rock.
“To hell with it!” Caxton said disagreeably. “Let’s find the kronalium.”
Headley nodded, stumbled after Caxton. But jubilation was in his heart. When he and Caxton returned, they would take back several of the rock-creatures as living proof of the success of their mission.
He glanced back, saw squat legs flick from the opening in the rock, saw the creature scurry back to the few others of its kind that rested at the side of the semi-frozen pool of liquid. He grinned again, then pressed forward to lead the way to the cliff.
- - - -
- Writer
