Эрл Гарднер - The Human Zero. The Science Fiction Stories of Erle Stanley Gardner

His slithering feet found the slimy mud of the immense clearing in which the shell had landed. He had no very good idea as to his location. Was he on the near side or the far side of that circular clearing? He had no means of ascertaining other than to keep exploring in the hope that he would stumble upon some clew. And stumble upon it he did, for he literally fell over the body of a man.

Swift exploration with his questing fingers disclosed that this was one of the night people, that a bullet hole had accounted for his death. The bullet had torn through his heart and the man had died in his tracks.

The direction of that bullet hole, the way the body was facing, all served to give Click a general idea of the direction he wanted to take.

Of a sudden he realized that it was growing lighter. There was a faint margin of visibility creeping out from the surrounding circle of darkness.

Then to his left, hardly fifteen yards away, there again sounded the deep-throated roar of a rifle. A running figure barely visible in the rapidly increasing light, jumped high in the air, flung up its arms, fell forward, twitching, jerking.

Click saw the outline of the shell, sitting upon the muddy field, the polished sides streaked with moisture, the base spattered with mud. The door was open, and standing just without the door was Badger, the rifle at his shoulder.

Had Badger lowered that rifle and turned, it must have been certain death for Click Kendall. But the cruelty of his nature was too strong. It was not enough that he had merely disabled the runner, Badger wanted to kill him. And so he waited, squinting down the sights of the rifle, his entire face twisted with a ferocious blood lust.

The native struggled to hands and knees, tried to stand, but was unable. He dropped, began to crawl. Badger slammed in another shell. The gun roared forth its summons. The native crashed to the ground, splashing water and mud in a death agony.

Badger lowered the rifle and stepped within the shell. His arm reached to the door, slammed it over.

And Click Kendall managed to just thrust a foot in that door to keep it from slamming shut. His shoulder thrust against it, sent it crashing inward, and charged. His head crashed into the pit of Badger’s stomach. For a moment they hung, locked, poised, then they crashed to the floor.

Badger whipped over his arm, tried to obtain a strangle hold. Click gave no thought to guarding, but sought rather to smash to his objective. He sent his fists in short, jabbing rocking blows, thudding home with all of his shoulder muscles behind them.

His wounded arm sent little shoots of agonized pain racing up his shoulder, stabbing into his very brain. But he persisted.

Badger rolled over, squirmed free, got to his knees. He swung with all his force and the blow caught Click as he came in.

Click felt the nauseating blackness of that blow, but fought grimly to keep his senses. Blood poured from his nose. His eye was swelling. He caught the other off balance, sent his right straight for the chin, a blow that carried momentum behind it.

The fist crashed straight to the button. Badger’s head snapped back. He flung up his hands, crashed over backward. His head thudded against the metal floor of the ship.

Click scrambled to his feet, weak, dizzy, wet.

He floundered to the door, swinging upon its metal ball-bearing hinges. The rain clouds had vanished. The same rosy-hued fog was filling every nook and cranny of the steaming world. Water glistened everywhere.

Click moved to the control table. Had the little men placed the shell out of control? He pushed the slide over to gravitation zero, felt the same sensation of lightness which enabled him to drift about the shell, and sighed his relief. He had a chance, just one chance in a hundred, but he was going to take that chance.

He moved the slide control into the negative segment. The shell slipped upward, bounced from bole to bole, swung from branch to branch as lightly as a bit of thistle. Click possessed himself of the rifle, snapped a shell into the barrel, and searched the unconscious form of Badger.

He found a couple of boxes of shells, found also several rough diamonds of the type which the natives fashioned into knives. Click found a bit of rope, proceeded to tie the man’s hands and feet. Badger fluttered his eyes, groaned.

“Where’s the girl?” demanded Click.

Badger’s swollen lips twisted in an effort to speak.

“Find her!”

Click picked up one of the great diamonds, its hard edge fashioned into a razor edge, held it over Badger’s throat.

“If she’s come to harm—”

The man’s face turned livid with fear.

“No, no. In the inner cone, locked in!”

Click gained the inner door, found it barred, flung it open. Dorothy Wagner was stretched on a cot, bound hand and foot. Her eyes rolled toward the door in an agony of hopelessness, found his, then lit until they were as twin stars.

“Click! You escaped! You came! Father, where’s Father?”

Click would have broken it to her gently, but she read correctly the expression on his face. Tears welled into the eyes.

“Cut me loose, Click. There’s a whole box of those diamond knives there on that table. Badger traded me off for them and his liberty. He told the natives I was his wife. Then he killed my guards and brought me here.”

Click saw the box. The diamonds were unpolished, in the rough, but they caught the light and sent it glittering in brilliant reflections. They were large, some being three inches in length.

He grasped one, cut through the cords which held the girl, assisted her to her feet.

“Could we — Father’s body?”

He shook his head.

“It was in the thick of the fighting. And it’s getting light now. The storm’s over.”

“Where are we?”

Click Kendall led the way to the outer room.

He turned to the window in the floor, began a minute study of the ground below.

Little men were rushing about, splashing through the mud. The ground was carpeted with dead and wounded, showing where the brunt of the fight had taken place, and most of the victims were of the dwarf tribe.

Click had an opportunity to study one of the night men who had been taken captive. He was tall, well over six feet, splendidly muscled. The skin was pale, and the forehead seemed to be all eyes. They were astonishingly large and the man continually kept his crocked arm over them, shielding them from the rays of the sun as these rays filtered through the envelope of mist.

“I think,” said Dorothy, “Father would prefer being left here. It’s his planet, you know.”

And her tapering finger firmly slid the control button to negative gravitation.

Like a rocket hissing through the air, the shell darted through the warm moisture of the fog-filled air, shot past towering trees, and suddenly seemed enshrouded with white radiance. For only a fraction of a second did the white radiance grip the atmosphere, and then the shell, gathering speed with every foot of travel, shot out into the clear open air.

The blazing sunlight seemed the promise of a new world. The blue of the sky, intense, brilliant, deep; the piling billows of cloud below, all seemed clean, an augur of a more happy existence than the life of the fog-drenched planet.

Faster and faster they went. Click moved the lever. The car swung into lateral motion, went skimming over the top of the fog.

The dark rim of twilight loomed before them, showed a crescent of eternal darkness.

“The earth should be about above us now,” said the girl.

Click slammed the control over to extreme negative gravitation, and the car shot into accelerated motion. The planet below began to show the motion of its diminishing perspective, and the outer air grew dark with the darkness of interplanetary space.