Mr. Meek—Musketeer - (3)

Stiffy backed away. But Meek reached out and grasped his arm. "Come on. It's the only way, Stiffy. We have to get there and the Prowler can take us."
    "But ... but ... but...." Stiffy stammered.
    "Give me a leg up," Meek ordered.
    Stiffy complied and Meek leaped astride the broad metal back, reached down and hauled Stiffy aboard.
    "Get going, you flea-bitten nag!" Meek yipped, in sudden elation.
    There was reason for elation. Not until that moment had he stopped to consider the Prowler might object to being ridden. Might consider it an insult.
    The Prowler apparently was astonished, but that was all. He shook his head in bewilderment and weaved his neck around as if he wasn't quite sure just what to do. But at least he hadn't started to take the place apart.
    "Giddap!" yelled Stiffy, bringing the butt of his pistol down.
    The Prowler jigged a little, then gathered himself together and started. The landscape blurred with speed as he leaped a mighty boulder, skipped along a narrow ledge around a slick-faced mountain, skidded a hairpin turn.
    Meek and Stiffy fought desperately to hang on. The metal back was slick and broad and there weren't any handholds. They bounced and thumped, almost fell off a dozen times.
    "Stiffy," yelled Meek, "how do we know he's taking us to Asteroid City?"
    "Don't fret about that," said Stiffy. "He knows where we want to go. He read our mind."
    "I hope so," Meek said, prayerfully.
    The Prowler whished around a right angle turn on a narrow ledge and the distant peaks wheeled sickeningly against the sky.
    Meek lay flat on his belly and hugged the Prowler's sides. The mountains whistled past. He stole a look at the jagged peaks on the near horizon and they looked like a tight board fence.
    *       *       *       *       *
    Oliver Meek fought manfully to get back his composure as the Prowler pranced down the main street of Asteroid City.
    The sidewalks were lined with hundreds of staring faces, faces that drooped in astonishment and disbelief.
    Stiffy was yelling at someone. "Now, doggone you, will you believe there is a Prowler?"
    And the man he yelled at didn't have a word to say, just stood and stared.
    In the swarm of faces, Meek saw those of the Reverend Harold Brown and Andrew Smith and, almost as if in a dream, he waved jauntily to them. At least, he hoped the wave was jaunty. Wouldn't do to let them know his knees were too weak to hold him up.
    Smith waved back and shouted something, but the Reverend Brown's jaw hung open and he seemed too wonder-struck to move.
    This, thought Meek, is the kind of things you read about. The conquering hero coming home astride his mighty charger. Only the conquering hero, he remembered with a sudden twinge, usually was a young lad who sat straight in the saddle instead of an old man with shoulders hunched from thirty years of poring over dusty ledgers.
    A man was stepping out into the street, a man who carried a gun in hand and suddenly Meek realized they were abreast of the Silver Moon.
    The armed man was Blacky Hoffman.
    Here, thought Meek, is where I get it. This is what I get for playing the big shot ... for being a smart alec, for remembering how cards shouldn't be dealt and for shooting a man's gun out of his hand and letting myself be talked into being a marshal.
    But he sat stiff and as straight as he could on the Prowler and kept his eyes on Hoffman. That was the only way to do. That was the way all the heroes did in the stories he had read. And doggone, he was a hero. Whether he liked it or not, he was one.
    The street was hushed with sudden tension and the very air seemed to be crackling with the threat of direful happenings.
    Hoffman's voice rang crisply through the stillness.
    "Go for your blasters, Meek!"
    "I have no blasters," Meek told him calmly. "Your hoodlums took them from me."
    "Borrow Stiffy's," snapped Hoffman, and added, with a nasty laugh: "You won't need them long."
    Meek nodded, watching Hoffman narrowly. Slowly he reached back for Stiffy's gun. He felt it in his hand, wrapped his fingers tightly around it.
    Funny, he thought, how calm he was. Like he had been in the Silver Moon that night. There was something about a gun. It changed him, turned him into another man.
    He didn't have a chance, he knew. Hoffman would shoot before he could ever get the gun around. But despite that, he felt foolishly sure....
    Hoffman's gun flashed in the weak sunlight, blooming with blue brilliance.
    For an instant, a single fraction of a second, Meek saw the flash of the beam straight in his eyes, but even before he could involuntarily flinch, the beam had bent. True to its mark, it would have drilled Meek straight between the eyes ... but it didn't go straight to its mark. Instead, it bent and slapped itself straight between the Prowler's eyes.
    And the Prowler danced a little jig of happiness as the blue spear of energy knifed into its metal body.
    "Cripes," gasped Stiffy, "he draws it! He ain't satisfied with just taking it when you give it to him. He reaches out and gets it. Just like a lightning rod reaching up and grabbing lightning."
    Puzzlement flashed across Hoffman's face, then incredulity and finally something that came close to fear. The gun's beam snapped off and his hands sagged. The gun dropped in the dust. The Prowler stood stock still.
    "Well, Hoffman?" Meek asked quietly and his voice seemed to run all along the street.
    Hoffman's face twitched.
    "Get down and fight like a man," he rasped.
    "No," said Meek, "I won't do that. Because it wouldn't be man to man. It would be me against your entire gang."
    Hoffman started to back away, slowly, step by furtive step. Step by step the Prowler stalked him there in the silent street.
    Then Hoffman, with a scream of terror, broke and ran.
    "Get him!" Meek roared at the Prowler.
    The Prowler, with one lightning lunge, one flip of its whip-like neck, got him. Got him, gently, as Meek had meant he should.
    *       *       *       *       *
    Howling in mingled rage and terror, Hoffman dangled by the seat of his pants from the Prowler's beak. Neatly as any circus horse, the Prowler wheeled and trotted back to the Silver Moon, carrying Hoffman with a certain gentle grace that was not lost upon the crowd.
    Hoffman quieted and the crowd's jeers rang against the dome. The Prowler pranced a bit, jiggled Hoffman up and down.
    Meek raised a hand for silence, spoke to Hoffman. "O.K., Mr. Hoffman, call out your men. All of them. Out into the middle of the street. Where we can see them."
    Hoffman swore at him.
    "Jiggle him some," Meek told the Prowler. The Prowler jiggled him and Hoffman bawled and clawed at empty air.
    "Damn you," shrieked Hoffman, "get out into the street. All of you. Just like he said."
    No one stirred.
    "Blaine," yelled Hoffman. "Get out there! You, too Smithers. Loomis. Blake!"
    They came slowly, shame-faced. At a command from Meek they unholstered their blasters and heaved them in a pile.
    The Prowler deposited Hoffman with them.
    Meek saw Andrew Smith standing at the edge of the sidewalk and nodded to him. "There you are, Mr. Smith. Rounded up, just like you wanted them."
    "Neat," said Stiffy, "but not gaudy."
    Slowly, carefully, bones aching, Meek slid from the Prowler's back, was surprised his legs would hold him up.
    "Come in and have a drink," yelled a dozen voices all at once.
    "Bet your life," agreed Stiffy, licking his chops.
    Men were slapping Meek on the back, yelling at him. Yelling friendly things, calling him an old he-wolf.
    He tried to thrust out his chest but didn't succeed too well. He hoped they wouldn't insist on his drinking of lot of bocca.
    A hand tugged at Meek's elbow. It was the Reverend Brown.
    "You aren't going to leave that beast out here all alone?" he asked. "No telling what he might do."
    "Ah, shucks," protested Stiffy, "he's gentle as a kitten. Stands without hitching."
    But even as he spoke, the Prowler lifted his head, almost as if he were sniffing, started down the street at a swinging trot.
    "Hey," yelled Stiffy, "come back here, you cross-eyed crow-bait!"
    The Prowler didn't falter in his stride. He went even faster.
    Cold fear gripped Meek by the throat. He tried to speak and gulped instead. He'd just thought of something. The power plant that supplied Asteroid City with its power and light, the very oxygen it breathed, was down that way.
    A power plant and an alien robot that was starved for energy!
    "My stars!" gasped Meek.
    He shook off the minister's hand and galloped down the street, shrieking at the Prowler. But the Prowler had no thought of stopping.
    Panting, Meek slowed from a gallop to a trot, then to a labored walk. Behind him, he heard Stiffy puffing along. Behind Stiffy trailed practically the entire population of Asteroid City.
    Far ahead came the sound of rending steel and crashing structure as the Prowler ripped the plant apart to get at the juice.
    Stiffy gained Meek's side and panted at him. "Cripes, they'll crucify us for this. We got to get him out of there."
    "How?" asked Meek.
    "Danged if I know," said Stiffy.
    One side of the plant was a mass of tangled wreckage, surrounding a hole out of which protruded the Prowler's hind quarters. Terrified workers and maintenance men were running for their lives. Live wires spat and crackled with flaming energy.
    IV
    Meek and Stiffy halted a half block away, breath whistling in their throats. The Prowler's tail, protruding from the hole in the side of the plant, twitched happily. Meek regarded the scene with doleful thoughts.
    "I wish," Stiffy declared, "we'd stayed out there and died. It would have been easier than what's liable to happen to us now."
    Feet thumped behind them and a hand grabbed Meek's shoulder, grabbed it. It was Andrew Smith, a winded, apoplectic Andrew Smith.
    "What are you going to do?" he shouted at Meek.
    Meek swallowed hard, tried to make his voice even. "Just studying over the situation, Mr. Smith. I'll figure out something in a minute."
    "Sure he will," insisted Stiffy. "Leave him alone. Give him time. He always does what he says he'll do. He said he'd round up Blacky for you, and he did. He went out single-handed and captured the Prowler. He ..."
    "Yeah," yelled Smith, "and he said the Prowler would stand without hitching, too. And did he stand? I ask you ..."
    "He didn't say that," Stiffy interrupted, testily, "I said that."
    "It don't make a bit of difference who said it," shrieked Smith. "I got stock in that plant there. And the Prowler's ruining it. He's jeopardizing the life of this whole city. And it's all your fault. You brought him here. I'll sue you, the both of you, so help me...."
    "Ah, shut up," snapped Stiffy. "Who can think with you blabbering around?"
    Smith danced in rage. "Who's blabbering? I got a good mind to...."
    He doubled up his fist and started toward Stiffy.
    And once again Oliver Meek did something he never would have thought of doing back on Earth. He put out his gloved hand, deliberately, and pushed Smith in the face. Pushed hard, so hard that Smith thumped down in the dust of the street and sat there, silenced by surprise.
    Without even looking back, Meek strode purposefully down the street toward the Prowler. What he meant to do he did not know. What he possibly could do he had no idea. But anything was better than standing there while the crowd screamed at him and men shook their fists at him.
    Why, they might even lynch him! He shivered at the thought. But men still did things like that. Especially when someone monkeyed around with the very things they depended on for life out here in naked space. Maybe they'd turn him out on Juno with only an hour or two of oxygen. Maybe they'd....
    Stiffy was yelling at him. "Come back, you danged old fool...."
    Suddenly the ground leaped and bucked beneath Meek's feet. The power plant reeled before his startled eyes and then, somehow, he was on his back, watching the dome wheel and weave above him.
    Fighting for breath that had been knocked out of him, he clawed his way to his knees, tried to stand erect, but the ground still was crawling with motion.
    It was like an earthquake, he told himself, startled that he could even think. But it couldn't be an earthquake. Juno didn't have earthquakes, there was no reason for Juno to have earthquakes. The little planetoid eons ago had cooled through and through, each rock, each strata had found its place. Juno was dead, dead as the reaches of space itself, and earthquakes don't happen on dead planets.
    Out of the corner of his eyes he saw the Prowler had backed out of the hole in the power plant, was standing with four legs spread wide, bracing himself. His long neck was stretched high in the air and the ugly, toothy head had the look of quick alertness.
    Meek gained his feet, stood tottering, keeping upright by some fancy footwork. The Prowler started toward him, legs gathering speed, heading down the street.
    With a hoarse whoop, Meek steadied himself, half crouched and held his breath, leaped, leaped so hard he almost vaulted over the beast's broad back. Sprawling, he scrambled into position astride the running robot, saw Stiffy leaping at him. Quickly he shot out a hand, grasped Stiffy and hauled him aboard.
    Ahead of them the crowd rushed for safety, leaving a broad avenue for the storming Prowler and his two riders.
    "Get the locks open," yelled Stiffy. "Here we come!"
    The crowd took up the shriek. "Get the locks open!"
    *       *       *       *       *
    The Prowler swept down the street, hoofs clattering like hammer blows. Ahead of them the inner lock swung open. As the Prowler bulleted into the entrance tunnel, the outer lock swung out and for a few wild seconds air screamed and howled, rushing from the city into the vacuum of space.
    In frantic haste, Meek and Stiffy worked with their helmets, getting them clamped down. Then they were out in the open, the gleaming city behind them.
    Less than half a mile away loomed a massive boulder towering a hundred feet or more above the level of the canyon floor. The Prowler made a beeline for it.
    "Oliver," yelled Stiffy, "that thing wasn't there before. Look, it almost blocks the canyon!"
    The boulder was black but it crawled with a greenish glow, a faint network of somber fire.
    The breath caught in Meek's throat.
    "Stiffy," he whispered.
    Behind him, Stiffy almost sobbed in excitement. "Yeah, I know. It's a meteor. And it's lousy with radium."
    "It just fell," said Meek, voice unsteady. "That's what shook up the place. Wonder is it didn't crack the dome wide open."
    "We better jump for it," urged Stiffy, "if we don't want to get plumb burned. Can't go near that thing without lead sheathing."
    Meek flung himself sidewise, throwing up his arms to shield his helmet, struck on his shoulders and rolled. Slowly, benumbed from the fall, he crept out of the shadow of a high rock wall into the starlight.
    Stiffy was sitting on the ground, rubbing his shins.
    "Barked them up some," he admitted.
    Up the valley the Prowler was arching its back and rubbing against the green-glowing boulder.
    "Just like a dad-blamed cat that has found some catnip," said Stiffy. "Must sort of like that radium."
    He rose slowly, dusted off his suit.
    "Well," he suggested, "let's you and me go into action."
    "Action?"
    "Sure. Let's go back and file us a claim on that meteor. Don't need to worry about anybody else jumping it, cause every dad-blamed one of them is scared speechless of the Prowler. They won't go near the meteor long as he's around."
    Meek stared at the meteor speculatively. "That's worth a lot of money, isn't it, Stiffy? Filled with radium like that."
    "Bet your boots," said Stiffy cheerfully. "We go fifty-fifty on her. Split equal ways. We're pardners."
    "Tell you what you do," Meek said slowly. "You take it all. Just take out enough to fix up the damage back there and call that my share."
    Stiffy's jaw drooped. "Say, what you getting at?"
    "I'm leaving," said Meek.
    "Good gravy! Leaving! And just when we made us a strike."
    "You don't understand," said Meek. "I didn't come out here to find radium. Or to arrest gangs. Or even to capture an Asteroid Prowler. I just came out to look around. Nice and quiet. Didn't want to bother anybody. Didn't want anybody to bother me."
    "Doggone it," said Stiffy, "and I was just figuring maybe, soon as we cleaned up the radium, we might get that Prowler to lead us to the Lost Mine."
    *       *       *       *       *
    Meek brightened. "I have a hunch I know where that Lost Mine is, Stiffy. Remember there was a cut-back in the cliff near where we found the Prowler. Well, when I first saw him, he was in that place. Got a hunch maybe that's the mine."
    Stiffy grinned. "So you're sticking with me."
    Meek shook his head. "No, I'm still leaving."
    "Just like that?" said Stiffy.
    Stiffy held out his hand, "O.K., if that's what you want to do. I'll bank your half in the First Martian back on Earth. Leave my address there. Might want to get in touch with me some time."
    Meek gripped his hand. "You don't need to do that. Take all of it. Just see the plant's fixed up."
    Stiffy's eyes shone queerly, moistly in the starlight. "Shucks, there's enough for both of us. More than enough." His voice was rough. "Now get along with you."
    Meek started to walk away.
    "Goodbye, Stiffy," he called.
    "So long," Stiffy shouted.
    Meek hesitated. It seemed there should have been more he could have said. Some way to let Stiffy know he liked him. Some way to tell him he was a friend in a life which had known few friends.
    He tried to think of ways to put what he felt in words, but there wasn't any way, none that didn't sound awkward and sentimental.
    He wheeled about, headed for the space port. His feet went faster and faster, until finally he was running.
    He had to get out of here, he told himself, before he got into another jam. His luck was stretched too thin already. A fellow just couldn't go on having luck like that.
    And besides, there was all of space to roam in, other places to see. That was what he had set out to do. To see the Solar System in his own ship, to do all the things he'd dreamed about back in the cubby hole at Lunar Exports, Inc.
    And he was going to do just that, he promised himself. Although he hoped the next stop would be more peaceable.
    Oliver Meek sighed happily--this was the life.
    End of Project Gutenberg's Mr. Meek--Musketeer, by Clifford D. Simak