Clifford Simak - The Big Front Yard and Other Stories

And suddenly, Oliver Meek was afraid. For death waited him, he knew, inside the swinging doors of the Silver Moon. A death preluded by this quiet street.

Almost as if he were awaking from a dream, he found questions filling his brain. What was he doing here? Why had he gotten himself into a jam like this? What difference did it make to him what happened to Asteroid City?

It had been anger that had made him do it … that unaccountable anger which had flared when Hoffman told him to get out.

After all, what difference would a few days make? He was going to leave anyhow. He’d seen about all there was to see in Asteroid City. He wanted to see the Prowler and the stones with the strange inscriptions on them, but they were sights he could get along without.

If he turned around and walked the other way he could reach his space ship in just a few minutes. There was fuel enough to take him to Ganymede. No one would know until he was already gone. And after he was gone, what would he care what anybody thought?

He stood irresolutely, arguing with himself. Then he shook his head, resumed his march toward the Silver Moon.

A figure stepped from a dark doorway. Meek saw the threatening gleam of steel. His hands streaked toward his gun-butts, but something prodded him in the back and he froze, fingers touching metal.

“All right, marshal,” said a mocking voice. “You just turn around and walk the other way.”

He felt his guns lifted from their holsters and he turned around and walked. Footsteps crunched beside him and behind him, but otherwise he walked in silence.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked, his voice just a trifle shaky.

One of the men laughed.

“Just on a little trip, marshal. Out to take a look at Juno. It’s a right pretty sight at night.”

Juno wasn’t pretty. For the most part, there was little of it one could see. The stars shed little light and the depressions were in shadow, while the cragged mountain tops seemed like shimmering mirages in the ghostly starlight.

The ship lay on a plateau between a needle-like range and a deep, shadowed valley.

“Now, marshal,” said one of the men, “you stay right here. You’ll see the Sun come up over that mountain back there. Interesting. Dawn on Juno is something to remember.”

Meek started forward, but the other waved him back with his pistol.

“You’re leaving me here?” shrieked Meek.

“Why sure,” the man said. “You wanted to see the Solar System, didn’t you?”

They backed away from him, guns in hand. Frozen in terror, he watched them enter the ship, saw the port close. An instant later the ship roared away, the backwash of its tubes buffeting Meek to the ground.

He struggled to his feet, watching the blasting tubes until they were out of sight. Clumsily he stepped forward and then stopped. There was no place to go … nothing to do.

Loneliness and fear swept over him in terrible waves of anguish. Fear that dwarfed any emotion he had ever felt. Fear of the ghostly shimmer of the peaks, fear of the shadow-blackened valley, fear of space and the mad, cold intensity of unwinking stars.

He fought for a grip on himself. It was fear such as this that drove men mad in space. He’d read about that, heard about it. Fear of the loneliness and the terrible depths of space … fear of the indifference of endless miles of void, fear of the unknown that always lurked just at elbow distance.

“Meek,” he told himself, “you should have stayed at home.”

Dawn came shortly, but no such dawn as one would see on Earth. Just a gradual dimming of the stars, a gradual lifting of the blacker darkness as a larger star, the Sun, swung above the peaks.

The stars still shone, but a gray light filtered over the landscape, made the mountains solid things instead of ghostly shapes.

Jagged peaks loomed on one side of the plateau, fearsome depths on the other. A meteor thudded somewhere to his right and Meek shuddered. There was no sound of the impact but he could feel the vibrations of the blow as the whizzing mass struck the cliffs.

But it was foolish to be afraid of meteors, he told himself. He had greater and more immediate worries.

There were less than eight hours of air left in the tanks of his space suit. He had no idea where he was, although he knew that many miles of rugged, fearsome country stretched between him and Asteroid City.

The space suit carried no food and no water, but that was of minor moment, he realized, for his air would give out long before he felt the pangs of thirst or hunger.

He sat down on a massive boulder and tried to think. There wasn’t much to think about. Everywhere his thoughts met black walls. The situation, he told himself, was hopeless.

If only he hadn’t come to Asteroid City in the first place! Or having come, if he had only minded his business, this never would have happened. If he hadn’t been so anxious to show off what he knew about card dealing tricks. If only he hadn’t agreed to be sworn in as marshal. If he’d swallowed his pride and left when Hoffman told him to.

He brushed away such thoughts as futile, took stock of his surroundings.

The cliff on the right hand side was undercut, overhanging several hundred feet of level ground.

Ponderously, he heaved himself off the boulder, wandered aimlessly up the wider tongue of plateau. The undercut, he saw, grew deeper, forming a deep cleft, as if someone had furrowed out the mountain side. Heavy shadows clung within it.

Suddenly he stopped, riveted to the ground, scarcely daring to breathe.

Something was moving in the deep shadow of the undercut. Something that seemed to glint faintly with reflected light.

The thing lurched forward and, in the fleeting instant before he turned and ran, Oliver Meek had an impression of a barrel-like body, a long neck, a cruel mouth, monstrous eyes that glowed with hidden fires.

There was no speculation in Oliver Meek’s mind. From the description given him by Stiffy, from the very terror of the thing, he knew the being shambling toward him was the Asteroid Prowler.

With a shriek of pure fear, Meek turned and fled and behind him came the Prowler, its head swaying on the end of its whip-like neck.

Meek’s legs worked like pistons, his breath gasping in his throat, his body soaring through space as he covered long distances at each leap under the influence of lesser gravity.

Thunderous blasts hammered at the earphones in his helmet and as he ran he craned his head skyward.

Shooting down toward the plateau, forward rockets braking, was a small spaceship!

Hope rose within him and he glanced back over his shoulder. Hope died instantly. The Prowler was gaining on him, gaining fast.

Suddenly his legs gave out. Simply folded up, worn out with the punishment they had taken. He threw up his arms to shield his helmet plate and sobbed in panic.

The Asteroid Prowler would get him now. Sure as shooting. Just at the minute rescue came, the Prowler would get him.

But the Prowler didn’t get him. Nothing happened at all. Surprised, he sat up and spun around, crouching.

The ship had landed, almost at the edge of the plateau and a man was tumbling out of the port. The Prowler had changed his course, was galloping toward the ship.

The man from the ship ran in leaping bounds, a pistol in one gloved hand, and his yelp of terror rang in Meek’s earphones.

“Run, dang you. Run! That dad-blamed Prowler will be after us any minute now.”

“Stiffy,” yelled Meek. “Stiffy, you came out to get me.”

Stiffy landed beside him, hauled him to his feet.

“Dang right I came to get you,” he panted. “I thought them hoodlums would be up to some dirty tricks, so I stuck around and watched.”