The recoil almost knocked me off my feet, not that it was bad, but I wasn’t expecting it. I got back on target and fired again, and again; and it kept coming. Six feet from Sir Orfeo the thing reared up, tall as a grizzly, and I got a glimpse of a yellow underside covered with shredding hooks, and I fired into it and then it was dropping down on Sir Orfeo and at the last possible second he moved, but not far enough, and the thing struck him and knocked him rolling, and then he and it lay still. I traversed the gun across to the other beast and saw that it was down, ten feet from Milady Raire, bucking and writhing, coiling back on itself. It flopped up against the side wall and rolled back down, half on its back, and lay still and the echoes of its struggle went racketing away up the ravine. I heard Sir Orfeo make a moaning sound where he lay all bloody and the Lady Raire looked up and her eyes met mine and we looked at each other across the terrible silence.
CHAPTER THREE
Sir Orfeo was still alive, with all the flesh torn off the back of his thighs and the glistening white bone showing.
He caught at my arm when I bent over him.
“Jongo—your job now—the Lady Raire . . .”
I was shaking and tears were running down my face. I tried not to look at his horrible wounds.
“Buck up, man,” Sir Orfeo’s voice was a groan of agony. “I’m depending on you . . . keep her safe . . . your responsibility, now. . . .”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll take care of her, Sir Orfeo.”
“Good . . . now . . . water. Fetch water . . . from the car . . . .”
I ran off to follow his orders. When I came back the Lady Raire met me, looking pale and with dust sticking to the perspiration on her forehead. She told me that he’d sent her to investigate a sound and then dragged himself to where his filament pistol had fallen and blown his head off.
2
I used a crater-rifle to blast shallow pockets under the overhanging rock beside the trail; she helped me drag the bodies to them. Then we went back down to the car. We carried our guns at the ready, but nothing moved in all that jumble of broken rock. Sir Orfeo had been lucky about finding game, all right.
The Lady Raire got into the driver’s seat and headed back down the way we’d come. When we reached level ground, she stopped and looked around as if she didn’t know which way to go. I tapped on the glass and her head jerked around. I think she had forgotten I was there. Poor Lady Raire, so all-alone.
“That direction, Milady,” I said, and pointed toward where the yacht was, out of sight over the horizon.
She followed my directions; three hours later we came up over a low ridge and there was the yacht, glittering far away across the desert. Another forty-five minutes and we pulled up in front of the big cargo door.
She jumped down and went to it and twinkled her fingers on a polished metal disc set in the hull beside it. Nothing happened. She went around to the smaller personnel door and the same thing happened. Then she looked at me. Having her look at me was an event even then.
“We cannot enter,” she said in a whisper. “I mind well ’twas Sir Orfeo’s custom to reset the entry code ‘ere each planetfall lest the yacht be rifled by aborigines.”
“There’s got to be a way,” I said. I went up and hammered on the panel and on the control disc and walked all the way around the yacht and back to the door that I had sneaked in by, that first night, and tried again, but with no luck. A terrible, hollow feeling was growing inside me.
“I can shoot a hole in it, maybe,” I said. My voice sounded weak in the big silence. I unslung the crater-rifle and asked her to step back, and then took aim from ten feet and fired. The blast knocked me down, but the metal wasn’t even scorched.
I got to my feet and brushed dust off my shins, feeling the full impact of the situation sinking in like the sun that was beating down on my back. The Lady Raire looked at me, not seeing me.
“We must . . . take stock of what supplies may be in the car,” she said after a long pause. “Then can’st thou make for thyself a pallet here in the shadow of the boat.”
“You mean—we’re just going to sit here?”
“If any rescue comes, we must be close by the yacht, else they’ll not spy us in this endless waste.”
I took a deep breath and swallowed hard. “Milady, we can’t stay here.”
“Indeed? Why can we not?” She stood there, a slim, aristocratic little girl, giving me a level look from those cool gray eyes.
“I don’t know much about the odds against anybody finding us, but we’ve got a long wait, at best. The supplies in the car won’t last long. And the heat will wear us down. We have to try to find a better spot, now, while we’re still strong.” I tried to sound confident, as if I knew what I was doing. But my voice shook. I was scared; scared sick. But I knew I was right about moving on.
“‘Tis a better thing to perish here than to live on in the wilderness, without hope.”
“We’re not dead yet, Milady. But we will be if we don’t do something about it, now.”
“I’ll tarry here,” she said. “Flee if thou wilt, Jongo.”
“Sir Orfeo told me to take care of you, Milady. I’m going to do my best to follow his order.”
She looked at me coolly. “Wouldst force me, then?”
“I’m afraid so, Milady.”
She walked to the car stiffly; I got into my usual seat in back and she started up and we headed out across the desert.
3
We drove until the sun set and a huge, pock-marked moon rose, looking a lot like the old one back home, except that it was almost close enough to touch. We slept then, and went on, still in the dark. Day came again, and I asked the Lady Raire to show me how to drive so I could relieve her at the wheel. After that, we drove shift on, shift off, holding course steady to the northwest. On what I estimated was the third day, Earth-style, we reached a belt of scrub-land. Half an hour later the engine made a gargly sound and died, and wouldn’t go again.
I went forward on foot to a rise and looked over the landscape. The scrub-dotted waste went on, as far as I could see. When I got back to the car, the Lady Raire was standing beside it with a filament pistol in her hand.
“Now indeed is our strait hopeless,” she held the gun out to me. “Do thy final duty to me, Jongo.” Her voice was a breathless whisper.
I took the gun; then I whirled and threw it as far as I could. When I faced her, my hands were shaking.
“Don’t ever say anything like that again!” I said. “Not ever!”
“Would you then have me linger on, to wither in this heat, shrivel under the sun—”
I grabbed her arm. It was cool, as smooth as satin. “I’m going to take care of you, Milady,” I said. “I’ll get you home again safe, you’ll see!”
She shook her head. “I have no home, Jongo; my loyal friends are dead—”
“I’m still alive. And my name’s not Jongo. It’s Billy Danger. I’m human, too. I’ll be your friend.”
She looked straight at me. It was the first time she ever really looked at me. I looked back, straight into her eyes. Then she smiled.
“Thou art valiant, Billy Danger,” she said. “How can I then shrink from duty? Lead on, and I’ll follow while my strength lasts.”
4
The car was stocked with food concentrates, plus a freezer full of delicacies that would have to be eaten first, before they spoiled. The problem was water. The tanks held about thirty gallons, but with the distiller out of action, there’d be no refilling them. There were the weapons and plenty of ammunition, first-aid supplies, some spare communicators, goggles, boots. It wasn’t much to set up housekeeping on.
For the next week, I quartered the landscape over a radius of about five miles, looking for a spring or water hole, with no luck. By that time, the fresh food was gone—eaten or spoiled, and the water was down to two ten-gallon jugs full.