Isaac Asimov - The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF

Braker said casually, “There’s only going to be one lottery held here.”

Yates looked dumfounded. “Why, you blasted fool,” he said. “What if we’re stuck back here before the human race and there ain’t any women?”

“That’s what I mean. I thought we’d include the girl. If she was drawn, then we could ask some gentleman to volunteer in her place.”

He made a sudden motion. Tony made a faster one. His Hampton came out and up.

“Drop it!” he rasped. “I said — drop it! ”

Braker’s eyes bulged. He looked at the Hampton as if he were unable to comprehend it. He cursed rackingly and dropped the automatic as if it were infested with a radioactive element. It clattered on the metal grating of the denuded floor.

A smile froze on Tony’s lips. “Now you can explain where you got that automatic.”

Braker, eyes fuming like those of a trapped animal, involuntarily shot a glance at Masters.

Tony turned his head slightly toward Masters. “It would be you,” he said bitterly.

He whirled — too late. Yates hurtled toward him, struck him in a flying tackle. Tony fell audibly. He tangled furiously with Yates. No good! Braker, face contorted with glee, leaped on top of him, struggled mightily, and then with the main force of his two gloved hands wrenched the Hampton away, rolled from Tony’s reach, then snapped himself to his feet, panting.

“Thanks, Yates!” he exclaimed. “Now get up, Crow. Get up. What a man. What a big hulking man. Weighs two hundred if he weighs an ounce.” His lips curled vengefully. “Now get up and get out!”

Overland made a step forward, falteringly.

Braker waved the weapon all-inclusively.

“Back, you,” he snarled. “This is my party, and it’s a bad-taste party, too. Yates, corner the girl. Masters, stand still — you’re my friend if you want to be. All right, lieutenant, get going — and dig! For the ring!” His face screwed up sadistically. “Can’t disappoint that skeleton, can we?”

Tony came to his feet slowly, heart pounding with what seemed like long-spaced blows against his ribs. Painfully, his eyes ran from face to face, finally centered on Laurette’s.

She surged forward against Yates’ retaining grip.

“Don’t let them do it, lieutenant,” she cried. “It’s a dirty trick. You’re the one person out of the four who doesn’t deserve it. I’ll—” She slumped back, her voice fading, her eyes burning. She laughed jerkily. “I was just remembering what you did when all the Christmas packages came tumbling down on us. You kissed me, and I slapped you, but I really wanted you to kiss me again.”

Yates laughed nastily. “Well, would you listen to that. Masters, you going to stand there and watch them two making love?”

Masters shuddered, his face graying. He whispered, “It’s all right. I wish—”

“Cut out the talk!” Braker broke in irritably.

Tony said, as if the other conversation had not intervened, “I wanted to kiss you again, too.” He held her wide, unbelieving eyes for along moment, then dropped his and bit at his shuddering lower lip. It seemed impossible to stand here and realize that this was defeat and that there was no defense against it! He shivered with an unnatural jerk of the shoulders.

“All right,” Braker said caustically, “get going.”

Tony stood where he was. Braker and everybody else except Laurette Overland faded. Her face came out of the mist, wild, tense, lovely and lovable. Tears were coming from her eyes, and her racking sobs were muted. For a long moment, he hungrily drank in that last glimpse of her.

“Lieutenant!”

He said dully, his eyes adding what his lips did not, “Good-bye, Laurette.”

He turned, went toward the air lock with dragging feet, like a man who leaves the death house only to walk toward a worse fate. He stopped at the air lock. Braker’s gun prodded him.

He stood faintly in the air lock until Braker said, “Out, copper! Get moving.”

And then he stepped through, the night and the wild wind enclosing him, the baleful light of the invading planet washing at him.

Faintly he heard Braker’s jeering voice, “So long, copper.” Then, with grim, ponderous finality, came the wheeze of the closing air lock.

He wandered into the night for a hundred feet, somehow toward the vast pile that had been extracted from the ship’s interior. He seemed lost in unreality. This was the pain that went beyond all pains, and therefore numbed.

He turned. A blast of livid flame burst from the ship’s main tube. Smaller parallels of fire suddenly ringed it. The ship moved. It slid along the plain on its runners, hugged the ground for two hundred feet, plummeting down the slope. Tony found himself tense, praying staccato curses. Another hundred feet. The escarpment loomed.

He thrust his arms forcefully upward.

“Lift!” he screamed. “ Lift! ”

The ship’s nose turned up, as her short wings caught the force of the wind. Then it roared up from the plain, cleared the escarpment by a scant dozen feet. The echoes of the blast muted the very howl of the wind. The echoes died. Then there was nothing but a bright jewel of light receding. Then there was — nothing.

Tony looked after it, conscious that the skin was stretched dry and tight across his cheekbones. His upflung arms dropped. A little laugh escaped his lips. He turned on his heels. The wind was so furious he could lean against it. It was night, and though the small moon this before-the-asteroids world boasted was invisible, the heavens overflowed with the baleful, pale-white glow of the invading planet.

It was still crescent. He could clearly see the ponderous immensity the lighted horns embraced. The leftward sky was occluded a full two-fifths by the falling monster, and down in the seas the shores would be overborne by tidal waves.

He stood motionless. He was at a loss in which direction to turn. An infinity of directions, and there could be no purpose in any. What type of mind could choose a direction?

That thought was lost. He moved toward the last link he had with humanity — with Laurette. He stood near the trembling pile. There was a cardboard carton, addressed to Professor Henry Overland, a short chain of canceled stamps staring up at him, pointing to the nonexistence of everything that would be. America and Christmas and the post office.

He grinned lopsidedly. The grin was lost. It was even hard to know what to do with one’s face. He was the last man on a lost world. And even though he was doomed to death in this unimaginably furious crack-up, he should have some goal, something to live for up to the very moment of death!

He uttered a soft, trapped cry, dashed his gloves to his helmeted face. Then a thought simmered. Of course! The ring! He had to find that ring, and he would. The ring went with the skeleton. And the skeleton went with the ring. Lieutenant Tony Crow — and there could be no doubt of this whatsoever — was to be that skeleton which had grinned up at him so many years ago — no, not ago, acome.

A useless task, of course. The hours went past, and he wandered across the tumbled, howling plain, traversing each square foot, hunting for a telltale, freshly turned mound of earth. He went to the very brink of the river gorge, was immersed in leaping spumes of water. Of the ring that he must have there was no trace.

Where would she have buried it? How would her mind work? Surely, she could not have heartlessly buried the ring, hiding it forever, when Tony Crow needed it for the skeleton he was to turn into!

He knew the hours were flying. Yet, better to go mad with this tangible, positive purpose, than with the intangible, negative one of waiting spinelessly for death from the lowering monster who now owned the heavens.