Leigh Brackett - Intergalactic Stories - 60+ SF Classics in One Edition (Illustrated)

Click nodded. "Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish. It's irony clean through. That's probably why he planned the meteor and the crash this way."

Marnagan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far down, and the green eyes blazed.

They stopped, together.

"Oops!" Click said.

"Hey!" Marnagan blinked. "Did you feel that ?"

Hathaway's body felt feathery, light as a whisper, boneless and limbless, suddenly. "Irish! We lost weight, coming over that ridge!"

They ran back. "Let's try it again."

They tried it. They scowled at each other. The same thing happened. "Gravity should not act this way, Click."

"Are you telling me? It's man-made. Better than that—it's Gunther! No wonder we fell so fast—we were dragged down by a super-gravity set-up! Gunther'd do anything to—did I say anything ?"

Hathaway leaped backward in reaction. His eyes widened and his hand came up, jabbing. Over a hill-ridge swarmed a brew of unbelievable horrors. Progeny from Frankenstein's ARK. Immense crimson beasts with numerous legs and gnashing mandibles, brown-black creatures, some tubular and fat, others like thin white poisonous whips slashing along in the air. Fangs caught starlight white on them.

Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Sweat broke cold on his body. The immense things rolled, slithered and squirmed after him. A blast of light. Marnagan, firing his proton-gun. Then, in Click's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt the creatures at all.

"Irish!" Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an incline toward the mouth a small cave. "This way, fella!"

Hathaway made it first, Marnagan bellowing just behind him. "They're too big; they can't get us in here!" Click's voice gasped it out, as Marnagan squeezed his two-hundred-fifty pounds beside him. Instinctively, Hathaway added, "Asteroid monsters! My camera! What a scene!"

"Damn your damn camera!" yelled Marnagan. "They might come in!"

"Use your gun."

"They got impervious hides. No use. Gahh! And that was a pretty chase, eh, Click?"

"Yeah. Sure. You enjoyed it, every moment of it."

"I did that." Irish grinned, showing white uneven teeth. "Now, what will we be doing with these uninvited guests at our door?"

"Let me think—"

"Lots of time, little man. Forty more minutes of air, to be exact."

* * * * *

They sat, staring at the monsters for about a minute. Hathaway felt funny about something; didn't know what. Something about these monsters and Gunther and—

"Which one will you be having?" asked Irish, casually. "A red one or a blue one?"

Hathaway laughed nervously. "A pink one with yellow ruffles—Good God, now you've got me doing it. Joking in the face of death."

"Me father taught me; keep laughing and you'll have Irish luck."

That didn't please the photographer. "I'm an Anglo-Swede," he pointed out.

Marnagan shifted uneasily. "Here, now. You're doing nothing but sitting, looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet, so take me a profile shot of the beasties and myself."

Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. "What in hell's the use? All this swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it."

"Then," retorted Marnagan, "we'll develop it for our own benefit; while waitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our rescue!"

Hathaway snorted. "U.S. Cavalry."

Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. "Snap me this pose," he said. "I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped, my capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace negotiations betwixt me and these pixies."

Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running around in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.

Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling for the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without much effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.

When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:

"Gunther drew us down here, sure as Ceres! That gravity change we felt back on that ridge, Irish; that proves it. Gunther's short on men. So, what's he do; he builds an asteroid-base, and drags ships down. Space war isn't perfect yet, guns don't prime true in space, trajectory is lousy over long distances. So what's the best weapon, which dispenses with losing valuable, rare ships and a small bunch of men? Super-gravity and a couple of well-tossed meteors. Saves all around. It's a good front, this damned iron pebble. From it, Gunther strikes unseen; ships simply crash, that's all. A subtle hand, with all aces."

Marnagan rumbled. "Where is the dirty son, then!"

"He didn't have to appear, Irish. He sent—them." Hathaway nodded at the beasts. "People crashing here die from air-lack, no food, or from wounds caused at the crackup. If they survive all that—the animals tend to them. It all looks like Nature was responsible. See how subtle his attack is? Looks like accidental death instead of murder, if the Patrol happens to land and finds us. No reason for undue investigation, then."

"I don't see no Base around."

* * * * *

Click shrugged. "Still doubt it? Okay. Look." He tapped his camera and a spool popped out onto his gloved palm. Holding it up, he stripped it out to its full twenty inch length, held it to the light while it developed, smiling. It was one of his best inventions. Self-developing film. The first light struck film-surface, destroyed one chemical, leaving imprints; the second exposure simply hardened, secured the impressions. Quick stuff.

Inserting the film-tongue into a micro-viewer in the camera's base, Click handed the whole thing over. "Look."

Marnagan put the viewer up against the helmet glass, squinted. "Ah, Click. Now, now. This is one lousy film you invented."

"Huh?"

"It's a strange process'll develop my picture and ignore the asteroid monsters complete."

"What!"

Hathaway grabbed the camera, gasped, squinted, and gasped again: Pictures in montage; Marnagan sitting down, chatting conversationally with nothing ; Marnagan shooting his gun at nothing ; Marnagan pretending to be happy in front of nothing .

Then, closeup—of—NOTHING!

The monsters had failed to image the film. Marnagan was there, his hair like a red banner, his freckled face with the blue eyes bright in it. Maybe—

Hathaway said it, loud: "Irish! Irish! I think I see a way out of this mess! Here—"

He elucidated it over and over again to the Patrolman. About the film, the beasts, and how the film couldn't be wrong. If the film said the monsters weren't there, they weren't there.

"Yeah," said Marnagan. "But step outside this cave—"

"If my theory is correct I'll do it, unafraid," said Click.

Marnagan scowled. "You sure them beasts don't radiate ultra-violet or infra-red or something that won't come out on film?"

"Nuts! Any color we see, the camera sees. We've been fooled."

"Hey, where you going?" Marnagan blocked Hathaway as the smaller man tried pushing past him.

"Get out of the way," said Hathaway.

Marnagan put his big fists on his hips. "If anyone is going anywhere, it'll be me does the going."