Clifford Simak - Dusty Zebra - And Other Stories

He jerked his arm above his head and pointed at the ceiling, and through the ceiling, out into the blind darkness of space where among the swarms of celestial lights a red star glowed.

“When they find out,” he shouted, “they’ll fear! Damn them, their stinking little souls will shrivel up inside of them. They will know the blasted hope and the terror that I have known. They are a religious people and I have taken their religion! I, the man they ruined, have taken the thing that is most precious to them. Someday, if they don’t find out, I’ll let them know, let them know that I rattled the musty bones of Kell-Rabin in their holy box and laughed at the sound they made!”

There was no doubt of it. The man was mad, a raving lunatic.

“And if they want them badly, as badly as I think they do,” he said in a whisper, “perhaps I’ll return them…at ten times the worth of my radium mine. I’ll bankrupt them. I’ll make them grub in their dirty soil for the next hundred years to pay the price I’ll ask. And always they will know that a man of the Earth has rattled the bones of Kell-Rabin! That will hurt!”

“Man,” I shouted at him, “are you entirely insane? They know now, they must know. Why, the box is gone. Even now they must be searching throughout the whole solar system for it.”

“They do not know,” replied my friend, “I took steps. I knew I would have no chance, even in my own ship, to make a getaway if they found out at once. There is another box, exactly like the one that holds the bones of Kell-Rabin, in the Temple of Saldebar, but it is an empty box…a box that I made and put there. I secreted myself in the temple and took photographs with an electrocamera and with those photos as my guide, I worked for weeks to make another box just like it, except for one thing. On one corner of that other box there is carved a message, a message to the priests of Mars, and when one of them finds that message, they will know that the bones of Kell-Rabin are gone.”

A sonorous voice filled the room.

“We have found the message, Kenneth Smith,” it said, “and we are here to take the Holy Relic and you.”

We whirled about and there, standing just within the room, was a priest of Mars, dressed in all his picturesque habiliments. In his hand he held a vicious little heat weapon.

Looking beyond him I saw that the lock of the door had been melted away. Funny how a man will notice a little thing like that even in the most exciting moments.

The priest was slow with his gun. I believe that, even with my gun in my pocket, I could have beaten him to it. Priests are not supposed to be compelled to use a gun.

I knew, as I faced him, that quick death from his weapon was preferable to capture, and my hand went to my pocket. It was not more than half way out when a thunderous crash split the air.

Kenneth Smith held his gun in his hand. It was as if it had been there all the time. He was fast with his weapon, too fast for the Martian priest.

The priest was crumpled on the floor, a charred mass of flesh. The odor of burned hair and skin mingled with the sharp tang of ionized air.

There was a scurry in the other room and through the doorway we saw another priest bounding toward the hall. We fired simultaneously and the figure collapsed in mid-air to lie smoking on the floor.

“That’s frying them!” I gasped, the words jerked out of my mouth by the suddenness of the events.

“We have to get out of here,” snapped Ken. “Quick, up to the roof. It’s only two stories up. I have a small flier there.”

Dropping his gun in his pocket, he raced into the adjoining room. While I stood, stunned and hardly knowing where to go, he re-appeared and under his arm was tucked a box about three feet in length.

He grasped me by the arm and we hurdled the two smoking bodies to gain the corridor. Doors were opening and heads were popping out of the rooms. Below us we heard the hurried tramp of feet and one of the elevator dials showed that a cage was rapidly ascending.

We bounded for the stairs and clattered upward. As we gained the roof an excited horde of people burst from the elevator on the floor below us. One man got in our way as we raced across the roof to the little red plane that belonged to Ken. I bowled him over with a straight left and we hurried on.

We scrambled into the plane and Ken stepped on the starter. The motors whined and the machine stirred. Toward us raced a number of people. Two of them, a few feet in advance of the others, reached the plane and threw themselves upon it in a vain attempt to retard its progress. As we gathered speed they rolled off and the machine zoomed up.

We broke every traffic rule that was ever written as we spun crazily off the landing field at the top of the hotel and hurtled into the upper levels. Irate taxi-pilots shouted at us and more than one man at the controls of passenger planes and freighters must have held their breath as we zigzagged past them at a speed that was prohibited in these crowded levels above the city. Twice traffic planes speeded after us and each time we eluded them. No pilot other than Kenneth Smith, space rover extraordinary, could have sent that little red ship on its mad flight and come out with a whole skin.

In half an hour we had cleared the city and were flying over the country. We knew that the murder of the Martian priests had been discovered and that the description of our plane, and possibly a description of our persons, was being broadcast the length and breadth of the land. Every police ship would on an outlook for us.

Night, however, was coming on and it was on this fact that we relied for a clean getaway. A half hour before darkness fell, when twilight was creeping over the lower valleys of the earth, we sighted a golden circle on the wing of a ship far behind us, upon which we had turned our ’scope and knew that the police were on our trail. Before the other ship could gain on us appreciably, darkness cloaked us and, flying without lights, we tore madly on.

An hour later the moon slipped above the horizon and by its light we saw that we had reached the Rocky Mountains and were flying over their jagged ranges.

We held a council of war. A wide search was being conducted for us. The killing of the two priests, on the face of it, must have appeared to be one of the most heinous crimes imaginable, one that was of interplanetary importance, and no stone would be left unturned to apprehend us. The red plane was easily recognizable. There was only one thing to do; abandon the ship before we were sighted.

A moment later two figures, one clutching a wood and metal box, plunged down out of the speeding ship, dropped sickeningly for a moment and then gently floated as the valves of the parachutes were turned on. A red plane, throttle wide open, stick lashed back, and with no occupants plunged on its mad course. Two months later I learned that the wreck had been found the next morning some hundred miles from where we had leaped into space.

It was a wild and desolate place where we had chosen to drop out of the plane. Easily we guided ourselves to earth and closed the parachute valves as our feet touched ground. There was the strong, aromatic scent of pine in the air and a strong breeze sighed dismally through the tree-tops. Rocks rolled under my feet as I moved.

We found a dense thicket of a low growing evergreen shrub and hiding ourselves in it, fell into a troubled sleep, waking when the slanting rays of the sun reached between the needles and touched our faces.

Several times that morning, as we tried to decide what to do, I was tempted to pry loose the cover and view the contents of the box which was reputed to contain the bones of the famous Kell-Rabin. I was afraid to do so, however. I feared that, upon being exposed to the air, the precious bones would disintegrate into dust. The box, when it was opened, must be in a laboratory, where proper preservatives and apparatus would be directly at hand. Opening the box there, in that wild mountainous region, was too much of a gamble. I decided to wait.