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outcroppings breaking the clifflike face. Sum-mers was a spread-eagled figure, dropping slowly
downward, striking against the face of the rock, and rebounding.
Bigman said, "Let's get lam, Lucky," and jumped far outward, wide of the cliff. Lucky followed.
It would have been a killing leap on Earth, even on Mars. On Io it was little more than a tooth-jarring
drop.
They hit with bent knees and let themselves roll to take up some of the force of impact. Lucky was on
his feet first and made for Summers, who lay prone and unmoving.
Bigman came up panting. "Hey, that wasn't the easiest jump I What's the matter with the cobber?"
Lucky said grimly. "He's dead. I knew his oxygen was low from the way he sounded. He was almost
unconscious. It's why I rushed him."
"You could go a long time being unconscious," said Bigman.
Lucky shook his head. "He made sure. He really didn't want to be taken. Just before he jumped, he
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opened his helmet to id's poison air and he hit the cliff."
He stepped aside and Bigman caught a glimpse of the smashed face.
Lucky said, "Poor fool!"
"Poor traitor!" Bigman raged. "He might have had the answer and he wouldn't tell us. Now he can't
tell us."
Lucky said, "He doesn't have to, Bigman. I think I know the answer now."
16
Robotl
''You do?" The little Martian's voice rose to a squeak. "What is it, Lucky?"
But Lucky said, "Not now." He gazed down at Summers, whose dead eyes stared sightlessly toward
the alien heavens. He said, "Summers has one distinc-tion. He is the first man ever to die on Io."
He looked up. The sun was edging behind Jupiter. The planet was becoming only a faint silvery circle
of twilit atmosphere.
Lucky said, "It will be dark. Let's go back to the ship."
Bigman paced the floor of their cabin. It took only three steps one way, three steps the other, but he
paced. He said, "But if you know, Lucky, why don't you . . ."
Lucky said, "I can't take ordinary action and risk explosion. Let me do it in my own time and my own
way, Bigman."
There was a firmness in Ms tone that quite subdued Bigman. He changed the subject and said, "Well,
then, why waste any more time on Io because of that cobber
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out there? He's dead. There's nothing more to do about him."
"One thing," said Lucky. The door signal flashed and he added, "Open it, Bigman. It should be
Norrich."
It was. The blind engineer stepped in, his dog, Mutt, going before.
Norrich's blue, unseeing eyes blinked rapidly. He said, "I've heard about Summers, Councilman. It's a
terrible thing to think he tried to . . . to . . . Terri-ble that he was a traitor. Yet somehow I'm sorry for
him."
Lucky nodded. "I knew you would be. It's why I asked you to come here. It's dark out on lo now.
The sun's in eclipse. When the eclipse is over, will you come out with me to bury Summers?"
"Gladly. We should do that much for any man, shouldn't we?" Norrich's hand dropped as if for
con-solation on Mutt's muzzle, and the dog came close and moved softly against his master as though
feeling some dim need to offer sympathy.
Lucky said, "I thought you would want to come along. After all, you were his friend. You might want
to pay your last respects."
"Thank you. I would like to." Norrich's blind eyes were moist.
Lucky said to Commander Donahue just before he placed the helmet over his head, "It will be our last
trip out. When we return, we will take off for Jupiter Nine."
"Good," the commander said, and there seemed some unspoken understanding as their eyes met.
Lucky put on his helmet and in another corner of the pilot room, Norrich's sensitive fingers moved
deli-cately over Mutt's flexible space suit, making sure all
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fastenings were secure. Inside the glass-fronted, odd-shaped helmet that fitted over Mutt's head, Mutt's jaws moved in a faintly
heard bark. It was obvious the dog knew he was headed for a trip into low gravity and that he enjoyed the prospect
The first grave on Io was done. It had been dug out of hard, rocky soil by the use of force diggers. It was filled in with a
mound of gravel and topped by an oval boulder as a marker.
The three men stood round it while Mutt wandered off in the distance, trying vainly, as always, to examine his surroundings,
though metal and glass blocked the use of his sense of smell.
Bigman, who knew what Lucky expected him to do but didn't know why, waited tensely.
Norrich stood with his head bowed and said softly, "This was a man who wanted something very much, did wrong for that
reason, and has paid for it."
"He did what the Sirians asked him to do," Lucky added. "That was his crime. He committed sabotage and . . ."
Norrich stiffened as the pause in Lucky's remarks lengthened. He said, "And what?"
"And he got you on board ship. He refused to join the crew without you. You yourself told me that it was only through him
that you were assigned to the Jovian Moon."
Lucky's voice grew stern. "You are a robot spy placed here by the Sirians. Your blindness makes you seem innocent to the
others on the project, but you don't need a sense of sight. You killed the V-frog and covered for Summers to get him off the ship.
Your
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own death meant nothing to you hi the face of orders, as Third Law states. And, finally, you fooled me
by the display of emotion I caught through the V-frog, a synthetic emotion built into you by the Sirians."
This was the cue for which Bigman had been wait-ing. Lifting the butt of his blaster high, he hurled
himself at Norrich, whose incoherent protestations did not coalesce into words.
"I knew it was you," Bigman shrieked, "and I'm smashing you."
"It's not true," Norrich wailed, finding his voice. He threw up his hands and stumbled backward.
And suddenly Mutt was a streak in the pale, white light. He hurled himself furiously across the quarter
mile that separated him from the men, aiming with desperate passion at Bigman.
Bigman paid no attention. One hand caught at Nor-rich's shoulder. The other swung the blaster
upward.
Then Mutt collapsed!
While he was still ten feet from the struggling pair, his legs stiffened uselessly and he tumbled and rolled
past them, coming to a frozen halt at last. Through the glass of his helmet his jaws could be seen hanging
open, as though in mid-bark.
Bigman held his threatening position over Norrich as though he, too, were frozen. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]