fatal.
The crane stopped moving shortly before Jules reached it, as the Chandakhari aboard
realized what was happening. After an initial moment of surprise, they reacted in
accordance with Jules’ suggestion, clambering off the crane as quickly as they could.
Being in suits made it both difficult and dangerous, for quick movement around machinery
could easily lead to a tear in the material, which in turn led to instant death. Still, Jules
was encouraged and relieved to see just how fast they could move.
Jules landed with his knees bent to cushion the impact and grabbed at a nearby strut to
stabilize himself. Then, with the momentum of his leap dispersed, he ran forward to the
crane’s cab and took the controls.
Rask was coming broadside at the crane for maximum impact. There was no way a
crash could be avoided the crane moved entirely too slow to dodge-but it was Jules’ plan
to try to turn the big crane through as large an angle as possible. The collision with the
scraper would not be as catastrophic if the angle of impact were less than ninety
degrees.
There was no sound on the airless surface of Vesa, but the noise of the gears grinding
was very strong in Jules’ imagination as he pushed hard at the controls. Rask’s scraper
was only a couple dozen meters away and closing the distance rapidly. The caterpillar
treads of the crane shuddered as Jules forced them beyond their level of tolerance. Five,
ten degrees the crane turned, and then it was too late. The scraper struck the side of the
crane with the full force of its twenty-metric-ton mass.
Jules abandoned his position the instant before the crash occurred-he had no intention of
being tossed around inside the cab and possibly having his spacesuit ripped. He was out
the open door and standing on the side of the crane when the impact happened. The
force of the collision transmitted itself through his feet and jarred his whole body. His
head was so badly shaken that his teeth threatened to break loose and roll around in his
mouth like dice on a gaming table. A sudden stab of pain lanced through his left leg just
below the knee, where it was still recovering from its previous injury; Jules winced as the
leg buckled slightly under him, and he grabbed a nearby strut for support.
As Rask’s vehicle had hit the crane, he had activated the lift mechanism of the scraper
blade, hoping to be able to overturn the larger machine. The crane rocked and trembled,
and Jules was afraid for one instant that Rask might actually accomplish his goal; but the
crane was simply too massive, and after a couple of seconds Rask abandoned that
effort in favor of new mayhem.
Radapur, the young Chandakhar who had started the fight two days ago, had jumped
away from the crane with the rest of his colleagues, and was now by himself on foot
some fifteen meters away. Rask saw this and, backing away from the crane, he
propelled his scraper in the direction of the lone Chandakhar.
Judging from the relative positions, Jules realized that there was no way anyone else
could reach Radapur before Rask’s scraper did. He would have to act on his own to save
the lad. He tried to yell out a warning, but by this time the radio band was so full of
yelling and epithets that no individual voices could be heard. Giving his left leg a quick
test, he decided it was ready enough for action, so he braced himself to move once
more.
Above and in front of him, some twenty-five meters off the ground, dangled the sky hook
of the crane. Jules took a slight running start and, with legs curled under him like tightly
coiled springs, he leaped upward for it.
Even considering Vesa’s light gravity it would have been an impossible feat for anyone
from an Earthlike world but Jules was a DesPlainian and trained in the expert use of his
physical abilities. Centuries of genetic adaptation and a lifetime of physical conditioning
were implied in the force of his leap, and he made it with energy to spare.
He grabbed at the hook as he would a trapeze, and his forward momentum caused it to
sway a bit. By leaning his body in the proper direction he was able to increase the swing
slightly, although the hook was far more massive than any trapeze he’d even worked
with. Slowly, very slowly, his pendulum was making longer and longer swings, building up
the momentum he would need for one more leap.
Down on the ground, the scraper was closing in on Radapur. Slow as that vehicle was, it
could still outrun a man. The young Chandakhar was using a stall tactic of leaping high
into the air to get out of the machine’s path, but that tactic could only be used for so long,
because he would come down so slowly that Rask bad time to position himself closer to
the landing spot. It would only be a matter of a few seconds before the maddened driver
flattened his quarry.
The hook he was riding was now swinging to Jules’ satisfaction. Holding his timing until
just the proper moment on the downswing, Jules let go of his perch and soared out over
the empty crater toward the moving scraper. His aim bad to be exceedingly accurate,
since be was not working in an atmosphere that would let him make minor course
corrections by adjusting his body position for variable air resistance.
Rask was apparently tiring of his hit-and-run game with Radapur, now, for he had
stopped his vehicle and was standing up, pulling a blaster from his belt. He fired off a
couple of bolts in Radapur’s direction, but missed by wide margins. This erratic firing,
coupled with Rask’s earlier insane driving, led Jules to the inescapable conclusion that
the man was either drunk or drugged.
Rask’s stopping the scraper threw off Jules’ calculations slightly, and his downward
descent was a little forward of the mark. As he came down over Rask’s head, though,
the SOTS agent managed to kick out with his right foot and knock the blaster from the
man’s hand. The gun went sailing through the airless sky to land harmlessly on the
ground some fifteen meters away.
Jules came down two meters in front of the scraper and rolled, being extremely careful
to take the brunt of the shock on the tough parts of his suit-gloves and boots. Springing
once more to his feet, he spun lightly around to face his antagonist.
Most of the yelling over the communications band had died down now, and Jules could
make out Rask’s voice. The man was ranting away at the top of his lungs. “. . .
murderers, all of them. You must be one, too. You all killed Brownsend.” Then he
launched himself at Jules.
The circus star easily sidestepped the oncoming body and grabbed it as it went by.
Flinging it around with one hand like a rag doll, he pulled back with his other hand and
landed a closed-fist blow right under Rask’s ribs. The man’s eyes bugged out inside his
helmet and air was forced from his lungs. His body went limp as all the fight apparently
drained out of him.
Jules lowered Rask’s body gently to the ground and sat straddling him. “What’s gotten
into you, anyhow?” he asked angrily. “I want an explanation for this.
The defeated man gasped several times like a fish out of water before he could speak
again. Finally he got enough air in his lungs to say, “They killed him! Those damned
Chandies killed him!.
“Killed who?.
“Brownsend. I went to his apartment last night. There was no trace of him or his things.
Landlord said he just left a note saying he was leaving, but I know better. Those
drapping Chandies killed him and cleaned him out to cover it up. They never did like him.
I’ll kill them all, every last drapping one of them!” Rask started struggling again, but Jules
held the man’s arms tightly to his sides and thought.
Rask’s hypothesis struck a very surprising note. What he was describing seemed to be
the modus operandi of the very gang Jules had been sent here to investigate.
Could it be that he’d stumbled on the gang totally by accident.
But even as he thought that, he could see that it was not the whole picture. The seven
Chandakhari worked an eight-hour shift here. Assuming they spent another eight hours
on such necessities as eating and sleeping, that meant they would have to be killing the
average thirty-five people a day in only another eight hours. A rampage of death like that
could not be missed even by the tourists, let alone the police. No, the seven Chandakhari
working here were not the entire group he was after.
On the other hand, any doubts he had about their being involved were rapidly