"Murray Leinster - Planet of Sand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

PLANET OF SAND

I
THERE WAS bright, pitiless light in the prison corridor of the Stallifer, There was the hum of the air
renewal system. Once in every so often there was a cushioned thud as some item of the space ship's
machinery operated a relay somewhere. But it is very tedious to be in a confinement cell. Stan Huckley—
lieutenant, j.g., Space Guard, under charges and restraint—found it rather more than tedious. He should
have been upheld, perhaps, by the fact that he was innocent of the charges made against him by Rob
Torren, formerly his immediate superior officer. But the feeling of innocence did not help. He sat in his
cell, holding himself still with a grim resolution. But a deep, a savage, a corrosive anger grew and grew
and grew within him. It had been growing in just this manner for weeks.
The Stallifer bored on through space. From her ports the cosmos was not that hostile, immobile curtain of
unwinking stars the early interstellar travelers knew. At twelve hundred light-speeds with the Bowdoin-
Hall field collapsing forty times per second for velocity control, the stars moved visibly. Forty glimpses of
the galaxy about the ship in every second made it seem that the .universe were always in view. And the
stars moved. The nearest ones moved swiftly and the farther ones more slowly, but all moved. From force
of habit the motion gave the feeling of perspective, so that the stars appeared to be distributed in three
dimensions. From the ship they seemed very small,
like fireflies. All the cosmos seemed small and almost cosy. The Rim itself appeared no more than a few
miles away. The Stallifer headed for Earth and Rhesi II. She had been days upon her journey; she had
come a distance which it would stagger the imagination to compute.
In his cell, though, Stan Buckley could see only four walls. There was no variation of light; no sign of
morning or night or afternoon. At intervals, a guard brought hurl food. That was all—except that his deep
and fierce and terrible anger grew until it seemed that he would go mad with it.
He had no idea of the hour or the day when, quite suddenly, the pitiless light in the corridor dimmed. Then
the door he had not seen since his entrance into the prison corridor clanked open. Footsteps came toward
the cell. It was not the guard who fed him. He knew that much. It was a variation of routine, which should
not have varied until his arrival on Earth.
He sat still, his hands clenched. A figure loomed outside the cell door. He looked up coldly. Then fury so
great as almost to be frenzy filled him. Rob Torren looked in at him.
There was silence. Stan Buckley's muscles tensed until it seemed that the bones of his body creaked. Then
Rob Torren said caustically:
"It's lucky there are bars, or there'd be no chance to talk! Either you'd kill me and be beamed for
murder, or I'd kill you and Esther would think me a murderer. I've come to get you out of this if you'll
accept my terms."
Stan Buckley made an inarticulate, growling noise.
"Oh, surely!" said Rob Torren. "I denounced you, and I'm the witness against you. At your trial, I'll be
believed and you won't. You'll be broken and disgraced. Even Esther wouldn't marry you under such
circumstances. Or maybe," he added sardonically, "maybe you wouldn't let her."
Stan Buckley licked his lips. He longed so terribly to get his hands about his enemy's throat that he could
hardly hear the other's words.
"The trouble is," said Rob Torren, "that she probably wouldn't marry me either, if you were disgraced by
my
means. So I offer a bargain. I'll help you to escape—I've got it all arranged—on your word of honor to
fight me. A duel. To the death."
His eyes were cold. His tone was cold. His manner was almost contemptuous. Stan Buckley said hoarsely:
"I'll fight you anywhere, under any conditions!"
"The conditions," Rob Torren told him coldly," are that I will help you to escape. You will then write a
letter to Esther, saying that I did so and outlining the conditions of the duel as we agree upon them. I will,
in turn, write a letter to the Space Guard brass, withdrawing my charges against you. We will fight. The