The thought of demure Clara Arnold in the arms of that bulky,
squint-eyed printer, who had shown his true colors at last, and
proved his diabolical cleverness, fairly strangled Harwich. Maybe he
had no right to harbor such an attitude. After all he hardly knew
Clara. He only knew her haunting beauty and friendly amber eyes, with
quiet wisdom and a little of the martyr in them--like her father,
perhaps. But Harwich couldn't help thinking. It was only by exercising
super-human self-control, that he kept himself from turning into a
raving maniac.
Supporting Paul Arnold's feeble, struggling steps, Harwich watched
the sky like a starved, wounded wolf. Sometimes, in sheer, wild
determination, he longed to claw at that cold, forbidding firmament,
and climb out of that hell-pit of a world into which he had fallen.
He yearned with a savagery beyond words to claw his way up there into
space, to wherever George Bayley might be, and feel the fat throat of
the man who had tampered with the Gyon condenser aboard the RQ257,
squeezed between his hooked fingers.
But the frigid sky and the bleak, dying hills, and the weary miles,
mocked all his hate-born desires. His numbed, aching feet could only
plod on and on in this grave-like desert. Ruins, rusted machinery,
silence, and cold that crept even through the heavy insulation of his
space armor.
Still, he could remember another thing. In the far distance to the
south, was something wonderful and strange. Something that made the
deadly and insidious energy barrier of the Forbidden Moon possible.
Where the Tower loomed on the astronomical photographs of Io.
That night came at last when a streak of silver fire traced its way
across the sky. It couldn't be anything but the flames ejected from the
rockets of an approaching space ship.
Paul Arnold saw it too, turning his haggard face upward. "There he is,
Evan," he croaked into his helmet phones. "Bayley's coming at last."
"I see," Harwich returned softly; his teeth gritted and his lips
curling furiously, behind the transparent front of his space headgear.
They dropped down beside the wall of a ruin, to watch. The ship was
coming straight in, toward Io. At its tremendous altitude, nothing but
its rocket blasts could be seen at first. But then there was a sudden
flare of bluish light. It had struck Io's force barrier, and that blue
glow was the evidence of a Penetrator, functioning. The craft seemed to
slow a little, as its pale, protecting shell of counter-energy fought
back that invisible, guardian screen of the devil moon.
"He got through the force shield," Harwich growled after a moment. "We
knew he would, of course, with his Penetrator operating right. Damn
him!"
There was no more blue fire visible now; but the little silver-tailed
path of rocket flame, showed that the ship was coming in safe and
sound, its propelling jets working steadily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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