The Judas Valley Read online

the escarpment, digging into the rough rock.

  He kept on climbing until he found the niche for which he had beenheading. He dragged himself in and sat down, as comfortably as possible.He began to wait.

  * * * * *

  Dawn came in less than three hours, as Fomalhaut burst up over thehorizon and exploded in radiance over the valley. With dawn came apatrol of men, slinking surreptitiously across the valley, probably withorders to bring him in. Wayne was ensconced comfortably in his littlerock niche, hidden from the men in the valley below, but with a perfectview of everything that went on. The wind whistled around the cliffs,ceaselessly moaning a tuneless song. He felt like standing up andshouting wildly, "Here I am! Here I am!" but he repressed the perverseurge.

  The patrol group stood in a small clump in the valley below, seeminglywaiting for something. Moments passed, and then it became apparent whatthat something was. Hollingwood, the metallurgist, appeared, draggingwith him the detector. They were going to look for Captain Wayne withit, just as they had searched out the double-nucleus beryllium.

  Wayne frowned. It was a possibility he hadn't thought about. They couldeasily detect the metal in his boots! And he didn't dare take them off;he'd never make it back across that hellish stretch of sand withoutthem. He glanced uneasily at his watch. _How much longer do I have tokeep evading them?_ he wondered. It was a wearing task.

  It looked as though it would be much too long.

  The muzzle of the detector began to swing back and forth slowly andprecisely, covering the valley inch by inch. He heard their whisperedconsultations drifting up from below, though he couldn't make out whatthey were saying.

  * * * * *

  They finished with the valley, evidently concluding he wasn't there, andstarted searching the walls. Wayne decided it was time to get out whilethe getting was good. He crawled slowly out of the niche and wriggledalong the escarpment, heading south, keeping low so the men in thevalley wouldn't see him.

  Unfortunately, he couldn't see them either. He kept moving, hoping theywouldn't spot him with the detector. He wished he had the metamagnetichand grapples with him. For one thing, the sharp rock outcroppingssliced his hands like so much meat. For another, he could have droppedthe grapples somewhere as a decoy.

  _Oh, well, you can't think of everything_, Wayne told himself. Heglanced at his watch. How long was it going to take?

  He heard the scrape of boot leather on a rock somewhere ahead of him. Heglanced up sharply, seeing nothing, and scowled. They had spotted him.

  They were laying a trap.

  Cautiously, he climbed over a huge boulder, making no sound. There wasone man standing behind it, waiting, apparently, for Wayne to steparound into view. He peered down, trying to see who it was. It seemed tobe Hollingwood, the dignified, austere metallurgist.

  Wayne smiled grimly, picked up a heavy rock, and dropped it straightdown, square on the man's helmet. The plexalloy rang like a bell throughthe clear early-morning air, and the man dropped to his knees, dazed bythe shock.

  * * * * *

  Knowing he had just a moment to finish the job, Wayne pushed off againstthe side of the rock and plummeted down, landing neatly on themetallurgist's shoulders. The man reeled and fell flat. Wayne spun himover and delivered a hard punch to the solar plexus. "Sorry, Dave," hesaid softly. The metallurgist gasped and curled up in a tight ball.Wayne stood up. It was brutal, but it was the only place you could hit aman wearing a space helmet.

  _One down_, Wayne thought. _Fifty-eight to go._ He was alone against thecrew--and, for all he knew, against all fifty-nine of them.

  Hollingwood groaned and stretched. Wayne bent and, for good measure,took off the man's helmet and tapped him none too gently on the skull.

  There was the sound of footsteps, the harsh _chitch-chitch_ of feetagainst the rock. "He's up that way," he heard a deep voice boom.

  That meant the others had heard the rock hitting Hollingwood's plexalloyhelmet. They were coming toward him.

  Wayne sprang back defensively and glanced around. He hoped there wereonly five of them, that the rule of six was still being maintained.Otherwise things could become really complicated, as they hunted himrelentlessly through the twisted gulleys.

  He hated to have to knock out too many of the men; it just meant moretrouble later. Still, there was no help for it, if he wanted there to beany later. He thought of the bleached bones of the crew of the _Mavis_,and shuddered.

  It was something of an advantage not to be wearing a helmet. Even withthe best of acoustical systems, hearing inside a helmet tended to bedistorted and dimmed. The men couldn't hear him as well as he could hearthem. And since they couldn't hear themselves too well, they made alittle more noise than he did.

  A space boot came into view around a big rock, and Wayne aimed hisneedle-beam at the spot where the man's head would appear.

  When the head came around the rock, Wayne fired. The man droppedinstantly. _Sorry, friend_, Wayne apologized mentally. _Two down.Fifty-seven to go._ The odds were still pretty heavy.

  He knew he had to move quickly now; the others had seen the man drop,and by now they should have a pretty good idea exactly where Wayne was.

  He picked up a rock and lobbed it over a nearby boulder, then startedmoving cat-like in the other direction. He climbed up onto anotherboulder and watched two men move away from him. They were steppingwarily, their beam guns in their hands. Wayne wiped away a bead ofperspiration, aimed carefully, and squeezed the firing stud twice.

  _Four down. Fifty-five to go._

  * * * * *

  A moment later, something hissed near his ear. Without waiting, he spunand rolled off the boulder, landing cat-like on his feet. Anothercrewman was standing on top of a nearby boulder. Wayne began to sweat;this pursuit seemed to be indefinitely prolonged, and it was beginningto look unlikely that he could avoid them forever.

  He had dropped his pistol during the fall; it was wedged between acouple of rocks several feet away.

  He heard someone call: "I got him. He fell off the rock. We'll take himback down below."

  Then another voice--ominously. "He won't mind. He'll be glad we did itfor him--afterwards."

  "I'll go get him," said the first voice. The man stepped around the sideof the boulder--just in time to have a hard-pitched rock come thunkinginto his midsection.

  "Oof!" he grunted, took a couple of steps backwards, and collapsed.

  _Five down. Fifty-four to go._ It could go on forever this way.

  "What's the matter?" asked the man who had replied to the first one withthose chilling words.

  "Nothing," said Wayne, in a fair imitation of the prostrate crewman'svoice. "He's heavy. Come help me."

  Then he reached down and picked up the fallen man's beam gun. He tookcareful aim.

  When the sixth man stepped around the rock, he fired. The beam wentwide of the mark, slowing the other down, and Wayne charged forward. Hepounded two swift punches into the amazed crewman, who responded with awoozy, wild blow. Wayne ducked and let the fist glide past his ear, thencame in hard with a solid body-blow and let the man sag to the ground.He took a deep breath.

  _Six down and only fifty-three to go._

  * * * * *

  He crawled back to the edge of the precipice and peered down into thevalley. There was no one to be seen. It was obvious that ColonelPetersen was still enforcing the six-man rule.

  As he watched, he saw the airlock door open. A spacesuited figurescrambled down the ladder and sprinted across the deadly sand of thevalley floor.

  It was Sherri! Wayne held his breath, expecting at any moment that oneof the little monsters beneath the sand would sink its vicious needleupward into Sherri's foot. But her stride never faltered.

  As she neared the precipice, another figure appeared at the airlock doorand took aim with a gun.

  Wayne thumbed his own needle-
beam pistol up to full and fired hastilyat the distant figure. At that distance, even the full beam would onlystun. The figure collapsed backwards into the airlock, and Wayne grinnedin satisfaction.

  _Seven down. Fifty-two to go._

  He kept an eye on the airlock door and a finger on his firing stud,waiting to see if anyone else would come out. No one else did.

  As soon as Sherri was safely up to the top of the precipice, Wayne ranto meet her.

  "Sherri! What the devil did you come out here for?"

  "I had to see you," she said, panting for breath. "If you'll come backto the ship before they beam you down, we can prove to Colonel Petersenthat you're all right. We can show them that the Masters--"

  She realized suddenly what she said and uttered a little gasp. She hadher pistol out before the surprised Wayne could move.

  He stared coldly at the pistol, thinking bitterly that this was a hellof a way for it all to finish.