OUT OF THE IRON WOMB (Part Two) by Poul Anderson

Weary Way immedia Wearing Way immediately reseas the astounding taous of the public which flow out of the Iron Womb Part two by Paul Anderson. They found the asteroid where Valeria had left her recording instruments. It was a tiny, drifting fragment of a world which had never been born, turning endlessly between the constellations. The serious moored fast with grapples, and Valeria donned a spacesuit and went out to get her apparatus. Lungard accompanied her, as there was only work for two.

Bow stayed behind. He slumped for a while in the pilot chair, letting his mind pace through a circle of futility. Valeria, Valeria, Valeria, Oh, strong and fair and never to be forgotten. Would he ever see her again? After they made Luna as won't do, he told himself, Dully, I should at least keep busy.

Thank God for work. He wasn't much of a thinker, he knew that, but he had a cleverness in his hands. It was satisfying to watch a machine come right under his tools. Working. He could see the falseness of Lungard's philosophy.

The man could quote history all he wanted. We have a glittering circle of logic around Bou's awkward brain, but it didn't change facts. Maybe the century was headed for trouble. Maybe psychotechnic government was only another human self limitation and should be changed for something else. Nevertheless, the truth remained that most men were workers who wished no more than peace in which to create as best they could.

All the high ideals in the universe weren't worth breaking the union for and smashing the work of human hands in a single burst of annihilating flame. I could feel it down inside me, But why can't I say it? He got up and went over to the baggage track, remembering that Lungard had dozens of book reels along and that reading would help him not to think about what he could never have On a planet. Bou would not have dreamed of helping himself without asking first, But custom is different in space, where there is no privacy, and men must be a unit if they are to survive. He was faintly surprised to see that Lungard's personal suitcase was locked, but it would be hours probably before the owner got back.

Dismantling a recorder set up took time a long time in which to talk and laugh with Valeria. In the chill spatial radiance, her hair would be like frosty fire. Casually, bou stooped across to Lungard's sackhammock and took his key ring off the hook. He opened the suit case and lifted out some of the reels in search of a promising title. Beneath them were neatly folded clothes, fireball uniforms, and fancy dress pajamas.

A tartan edge stuck out from below, and Bow lifted a coat to see what clan That was probably a souvenir of lung Guard's Venusian stay. Next to the kilt was a box, which he recognized. El masks came in such boxes. How the idea came to him, he did not know. He stood there for minutes looking at the box without seeing it.

The ship was very quiet around him. He had a sudden feeling that the walls were closing in. When he opened the box, his hands shook, and there was sweat trickling along his ribs. The mask was of the latest type, meant to fit over the head, snug around the cheeks and mouth and jaws. It was like a second skin, reflecting expression not to be told from a real face.

Bo saw the craggy nose and the shock of dark hair limp now, But suddenly he was back on Achilles, with Riot roaring around him and Johnny Malone's body in his arms. No wonder they never found that Venusian. There never was any. Bou felt a dim shock when he looked at the chronometer. Only five minutes to turn the cosmos inside out.

Very slowly and carefully. He repacked the suit case and put it in the rack, and sat down to think what to do, accused Lungard to his face. No, the man undoubtedly carried that needler, and there was Valeria to think of a ricocheting dart, a scratch on her. No, it took Bou a long time to decide. His brain seemed viscous.

When he looked out of a port to the indifferent stars, he shuddered. They came back, shedding their space suits in the air lock. Frost whitened the armor. As moisture condensed unchilled surfaces, the metal seemed to breathe cold. Valeria went efficiently to work, stowing the boxed instruments as carefully as if they were her children.

There was a laughter on her lips, which turned Bou's heart around inside him. Lungard leaned over the tiny desk where he sat, but he done yes. Recalculating our orbit to Luna, said bo I want to go slow for a few million miles before going up to hyperbolic speed. Why it'll add days to the trip and the fuel. I'm afraid we might barge into Swarm seven seventy supposed to be near now, and the positions of those things are never known for sure perturbations.

Bow's mouth felt dry. You've got a mega mile of safety mansion, or your orbit would never have been approved, argued Languard. Hell damn it, I'm the captain, yelled Bow. All right, all right, take an easy skipper. Lung Guard shot a humorous glance at Valeria.

I certainly don't mind a few extra days in the present company. She smiled at him. Bow felt ill. His excuse was thin. If lung Guard thought to check the ephemerus, it would fall to ruin.

But he couldn't tell the real reason. An ion drive ship does not need to drift along the economical homan A orbit of the big freighters. It can build up such furious speed that the Sun will swing it along on a hyperbola rather than an ellipse, and can still break that speed near its destination. But the critical stage of acceleration has to be just right, or there will not be enough fuel to stop completely. The ship will be pulled into a commentary orbit and run helpless, the crew probably starving before a rescue vessel can locate them.

Bo dared not risk the trouble exploding at full drive. He would drift along, capture and bind lung guard at the first chance, and then head for Earth. He could handle the serious alone, even if it was illegal. He could not handle her if he had to fight simultaneously. His knuckles were white on the controls as he loosed the grapples and nudged away from the asteroid with a whisper of power.

After a few minutes of low acceleration, he cut the rockets, checked position and velocity, and nodded on orbit. He said, mechanically, it's your turn to cook. Guy Einer. Lung guard swooped easily through the air into the cubby hole which served for a galley. Cooking in free fall is an art which not all spaceman master, but he could his meals were even good.

Bow felt a helpless kind of rage at his own clumsy efforts. He crouched in midair, dark of mind, a leg hooked around a stanchion to keep from drifting. When someone touched him, his heart jumped and he whirled around with the matter. Bo asked Valeria. He looked like doomsday.

Ah, He gulped noisily and twisted his mouth into a smile. Just feeling a little off. It's more than that. I think her eyes were grave. You've seemed so unhappy the whole trip.

Is there anything I can do to help? Thanks? Doctor McKittrick. But don't be so formal, she said, almost wistfully. I don't bite too many men think I do.

Can't we be friends with a thick headed clinker like me? His whisper was raw. Don't be silly. It takes brains to be a spaceman. I like a man who knows how to be quiet.

She lowered her eyes. The lashes were long and sooty black. It's something solid about you, something so few people seemed to have these days. I wish you wouldn't go feeling so inferior at any other time it would have been a sunburst in him. Now he thought of death and mumbled something and looked away.

A hurt expression crossed her face. I won't bother you, she said gently, and moved off. The thing was to fall on lung Guard while he slept. The radar alarm buzzed during a dinner in which lung Guard's flow of talk had battered vainly against silence and finally given up. Bow vaulted over to the control panel and checked.

No red light glowed, and the autopilot wasn't whipping them out of danger, so they weren't on a collision course. But the object was getting close. Bow calculated it was an asteroid on an orbit almost parallel to their own relative speed only a few feet per second. It would come within ten miles or so. In the magnifying periscope, it showed as a jagged, dark cue, turning around itself and flashing hard glints of sunlight off mica beds perhaps six miles square, all crags and cracks and fracture faces.

Heatless and lifeless and kindless. Lung Guard yawned elaborately after dinner. Excuse, he said, unless somebody's chess. His hopeful glance met the grimness of Bow and the odd sadness of Valeria, and he shrugged. All right, then pleasant dreams.

After ten minutes now Bow uncoiled himself. Valeria, he whispered, as if the name were holy. Yes, she arched her brows expectantly. I can't stop to explain. Now I've got to do something dangerous.

Get back aft of the gyro housing. What get back? Command blazed frantically in him, And stay there whatever happens. Something like fear flicked in her eyes. It was a very long way to human help.

Then she nodded, puzzled, but with an obedience which held gallantry, and slipped out of sight behind the steel pillar. Bo launched himself across the room in a single nul g bound. One hand ripped aside Lungard's curtain. The other got him by the throat. They hell.

Lungard exploded into life. His fist crashed against Bo's cheek. Bo held on with one hand and slugged with the other. Knuckles bounced on rubbery muscle. Lungard's arms snaked for the tunics, stretched on the his bunk wall.

His body came lightly out of the sack. Bow snatched for that wrist. Lungard's freehand came around, edged out to slam him in the larynx. Pain ripped through Bow. He let go and sailed across the room.

Lungard was pulling out his needler. Bow hit the opposite wall and rebounded, not for the armed man, but for the control panel. Lungard spat a dart at him. It burst on the viewport over his shoulder, and Bow caught the acid whiff of poisons. Then the converter was roaring to lightman whining Gyro spun the ship around.

Lungard was hurled across the room. He collected himself catlike, grabbed a stanchion and raised the gun again. I got the drop, he said. Get away from that, or you're a dead man. It was as if someone had seized Bow's body.

Decision was like lightning through him. He had tried to capture Lungard and failed, and Venom crouched at his back. But the ship was pointed for the asteroid now where it hung gloomily a dozen miles off, and the rockets were ready to spew. If you shoot me, said bo, I'll live just long enough to pour on the juice. We'll hit that rock and scattered from hell to breakfast.

Valeria emerged. Lung Guard swung the needler to cover her. Stay where you are, he rapped. What's happening, she said fearfully. I don't know, said Lungard.

Bo's gone crazy attacked me. Wrath boiled black in the pilot. He snarled, You've killed my partner. You must have been fixing to kill us two. What do you mean, whispered Valeria.

How should I know, said Lungard. He jumped his orbit. That's all. Lookbo, be reasonable, get away from that panel. Look in the suitcase, Valeria Bo forced the words out of a tautened throat of Venusian shot my partner.

You'll find his face and his clothes and lung Guard's things. I'd know that face in the middle of the sun. She hung for a long while, not moving. Bo couldn't see her. His eyes were nailed to the asteroid keeping the ship's nose pointed at it.

Is that trueiner, she asked? Finally, no, he said, of course not. I do have Venusian clothes in a mask. But then why are you keeping me covered too? Lungard didn't answer at once.

The only noise was the murmur of machinery in the dense breathing of three pairs of lawns. Then his laugh jarred forth. All right, he said, I hadn't meant it to come yet, come this way. But all right, why did you kill Janny? Tears stunned Bo's eyes.

He never hurt you. It was necessary. Lunggard's mouth twitched. But you see, we knew you were going to Achilles to pick up Valeria and her data. We needed to get a man aboard your ship to take over when her orbit brought her close enough to our asteroid base.

You've forced my hand. I wasn't going to capture you for days yet I sabotaged the drake's fuel tanks to get myself stranded there, and shot your friend to get his berth. I'm sorry, why horror rode Valeria's voice. I'm a humanist. I've never made a secret of that.

What our secret is is that some of us aren't content just to talk revolution. We want to give this rotten, over mechanized society the shove that will bring on its end. We've built up a small not much as yet, not enough to accomplish anything lasting. But if we had a solo power beam it would make a big difference. It could be adapted to direct military uses as well as supplying energy to our machines.

A lens effect, a concentration of solar radiation strong enough to burn. Well. It seems worth trying. And what do you intend for us? You'll have to be kept prisoners for a while, of course, said Lungard.

It won't be onerous. We are beasts, no, said Bow, Just murderers. Save the dramatics, snapped Lunguard. I have the gun. Get away from those controls.

Bow shook his head. There was a wild hammering in his breast, but his voice surprised him with steadiness. No, I've got the overhand. I can kill you if you move Yellow, he tries anything val lung Guard's eyes challenged her. Do you want to die?

He asked her? Head lifted No, she said, but I'm not afraid to go ahead if you must, Bow, it's all right, felt cold. He knew he wouldn't. He was bluffing in the final showdown. He could not crash her.

He had seen too many withered, space drained mummies in his time. But maybe lung Guard didn't realize that. Give up, he said, you can't gain a damned thing. I'm not going to see a billion people burned alive just to save our necks. Make a bargain for your life, No, said Lungard with a curious gentleness.

I have my own brand of honor. I'm not going to surrender to you. You can't sit there forever impass. The ship floated through eternal silence while they waited. All right, said Bo, I'll fight you for the power being.

How's that I could throw this ship into orbit around the asteroid. We can go down there and settle this thing between us. The winner can jump up here again with the help of a jet of tank dare a lump hasn't got much gravity. Lun Guard hesitated. And how do I know you'll keep your end of the bargain?

He asked. You could let me go through the airlocked the close it and blast off. Bo had had some such thought, but he might have known it wouldn't work. Or do you suggest, he countered, never taking his eyes off the planetoid. Remember, I don't trust you either, Lungard laughed, suddenly, a hard yelping bark.

I know Valeria, go aft and remove all the control rod links and spas. Bring them back here. I'll go out first, taking half of them with me, and Bow can follow with the other half. He'll have to I no, I won't, she whispered. I can't.

Let you go ahead and do it, said Bo. He felt a sudden, vast weariness. It's the only way we can break this deadlock. She wept as she went toward the engine room. Lungard's thought was good.

Without linked control rods, the converter couldn't operate five minutes. It would flare up and melt itself and kill everyone aboard in a flood of radiation. Whoever won the duel could quickly reinstall the necessary parts. There was a waiting silence. At last, Lungard said, almost abstractedly, home, Gang, do you know what that means?

Bo? No, you ought to. It was a custom of our ancestors back the early Middle Ages, the Viking time. Two men would go off to a little island the hole to sell their differences. One would come back.

I never thought it could happen out here, he chumbled, bleakly, vulkyries in space suits. The girl came back with the links tied in two bundles. Lungard counted them and nodded, all right. He seemed strangely calm. An easy assurance lay over him like armor.

Bow's fear was cold in his belly, and Valeria wept still with a helpless horror. The pilot used a safe two minutes of low blast to edge up to the asteroid. I'll go into the airlock and put on my space suit, said Lungard. Then I'll jump down and you can put the ship in orbit. Don't try anything while I'm changing, because I'll keep this needler handy.

It won't work against the space suit, said bo. Lungard laughed, I know, he said. He kissed his hand to Valeria and backed into the lock change. The outer valve closed behind him Bow. Valeria grabbed the pilot by the shoulders, and he looked around into her face.

You can't go out there. I won't let you if I don't, he said tonelessly. We'll orbit here till we starve, but you could be killed. I hope not for your sake. Mostly I hope not, he said awkwardly.

But he won't have any more weapon than me, just a monkey wrench. There was a metal tube welded to the leg of each suit for holding tools. Wrenches, the most commonly used, were simply left there as a rule. I'm bigger than he is. But she laid her head on his breast and shuddered with crying.

He tried to comfort her. All right, he said, at last, all right, lung guard must be through. I better get started. Leave him, She blazed, His air won't last many hours. We can wait, and when he sees he's been tricked, you think he won't wreck those links.

No, there's no way out. It was as if all his life he had walked on a road which had no turnings, which led inevitably to this moment. He made some careful calculations from the instrument readings, physical constance of the asteroid, and used another minute's maneuvering to assume orbital velocity. Alarm lights blinked angry eyes at him. The converter was heating up.

No more traveling till the lynx were restored. Bo floated from his chair toward the lock. My valeria, he said, feeling the bloodless weakness of his words. I hope it won't be for long. She threw her arms about him and kissed him.

The taste of tears was still on his lips when he dogged down his helmet, opening the outer valve. He moved forth, magnetic boots clamping to the hull. A gulf of stars yawned around him, a cloudy halo about his head. The stillness was smothering. When he was over the asteroid, he gaged his position with a practiced eye and jumped, free falling.

He thought mostly of Valeria. As he landed. He looked around. No sign of lung guard. The man could be anywhere in these square miles of cosmic wreckage.

He spoke tentatively into his radio in case lung guard should be within the horizon. Hello, are you there? Yes, I'm coming. There was a sharp, cruel note of laughter. Sorry to play this dirty, but there are bigger issues at stake than you am.

I've kept a rifle in my tool tube all the time, just in case. Goodbye, Bow. A slug smashed into the pinnacle behind him. Bow turned and ran. As he rose over the lip of the crater, his head swung seeking his enemy.

There. It was almost a reflex which brought his arm back and sent the wrench hurtling across the few yards between before it had struck. Bow's feet lashed against the pit edge, and the kick arked him toward lung Guard. Spacemen have to be good at throwing things. The wrench hit the lifted rifle in a soundless shiver of metal, tore it loose from an insecure gauntleted grasp, and scented, spinning into shadow.

Lung Guard yelled, spun on his heel, and dove after it. Then the flying body of bow Johnson struck him. Even in low g matter has all its inertia. The impact rang and boomed within their armor. They swayed and fell to the ground, locking arms and hammering futily at helmets.

Rolling over, Bow got on top, his hands closed on Lungard's throat where the throat should have been, but plastic an alloy held fast instinct had betrayed him. Lungard snarled, doubled his legs, and kicked. Bo was sent staggering back. Lungard crawled erect and turned to look for the rifle. Bo couldn't see it either in the near solid blackness where no light fell, but his wrench lay as a dark gleam.

He sprang for that closed a hand on it, bounced up and rushed at lung Guard. A swan shocked his own muscles with its force, and Lugard lurched. Bou moved in on him. Lungard reached into his tool tube and drew out his own wrench. He circled his panting horse in Bow's earphones.

If it's the way it was supposed to be, said Bow. He jumped in his weapon, whirling down to shiver again on the other helmet. Lungard shook a dazed head and countered The impact roared and echoed in Bow's helmet on into his skull. He smashed heavily. Lungard's lifted wrench parried the blow.

It slid off like a fencer. Lungard snaked his shaft in and the reverberations were deafening. Bow braced himself and smote with all his power. The hit sang back through iron an alloy, into his own bones. Lungard staggered a little, hunched himself, and struck in return.

They stood with feet braced apart, trading fury a metal rain unshivering plastic. The stuff was almost unbreakable, but not quite, not for long. When such violence dinned on it, bo felt a lifting, wild glee, Something savage he had never known before leaped up in him, and he bellowed he was stronger, he could hit harder. Lungard's helmet would break first. The Humanist retreated, using his wrench like a sword, stopping the force of blows without trying to deal more of his own.

His left hand fumbled at his side. Bow hardly noticed he was pushing in, hewing, hewing again. The shrunken sun rose to flash hard light off his club. Lungard grinned, his face, barely visible as highlight and shadow behind the plastic. His raised tool turned one hit.

It slipped along his arm to wrap his flank. Bow twisted his arm around, beat the other wrench aside for a moment, and landed a crack like a thunderbolt. Then Lungard had his drinking hose free pointing in his left hand. He thumbed down the clamp, exposing water at fifty degrees to naked space. It rushed forth, driven by its own vapor pressure, a stream like a lance in the wand sunshine.

When it hit Bow's helmet, most of it boiled off, cooling the rest, which froze instantly, blindness clamped down on Bow. He leaped away, cursing the front of his helmet so frosted he could not see before him. Lungard bounced around, playing the hose on him. Through the rhymecoat, Bow could make out only a grayness. He pawed at it, trying to wipe it off, knowing that Lungard was using this captured minute to look for the rifle.

As he got some of the ice loose, he heard a sharp yell of victory. Found turning, he ran again over that ridge. Down on your belly. A slug pocked the stone above him. Rolling over, he got to his feet and bounded off toward a steep rise, still wiping blindness off his helmet, but he could not wipe the bitter vomit taste of defeat out of his mouth.

His breathing was a file that raked in his throat. Heart and lungs were ready to tear loose, and there was a cold knot in his guts. Fleeing up the high, ragged slope, he sobbed out his rage at himself and his own stupidity. At the top of the hill, he threw himself to the ground and looked down again over a low wall of basalt. It was hard to see if anything moved down in that valley of night.

Then the sun threw a broken gleam off polished metal the rifle barrel, and he saw Einer lung Guard walking around looking for him. The voice came dim in his ear phones. Why don't you give up, Bow, I tell you I don't want to kill you. Yeah, Bow panted wearily. I'm sure well you can never tell, said Lundard mildly.

It would be rather a nuisance to have to keep not only the fair valeria, but you tied up all the way to base. Still, if you'll surrender by the time I've counted ten, look here, said Bow desperately. I've got half the length. If you don't give up, I'll hammer them all flat. It'll let you starve and valeria.

The voice jeered at him. He knew his secret was read. I shouldn't have let you bluff me in the first place. It won't happen a second time, all right, one, two three. Bow could get off this asteroid with no more than the power of his own legs.

A few gents from the emergency blow valve at the bottom of an air tank would correct his flight as needed to bring him back to the serious. He wanted to get up there in inside warm walls and take Valeria in his hands and never let her go again. He wanted to live six seven eight. He looked at his gauges. A lot of oxyhelium mixture was gone from the tanks, but they were big, and there was still several atmospheres pressure in each, a couple of hours life if he didn't exert himself too much.

They screwed directly into valves in the back of his armor, and hen all right. Bow Landguard started moving up the slope, light and graceful as a bird. It was wide and open, no place to hide and sneak up behind him. Figures reeled through Bo's mind senselessly. Mass of the asteroid, effective radius, escape velocity only a few feet per second, and he was already on one of the highest points brains.

He thought, with a shattering sorrow, A lot of good mind have done me. He prepared to back down the other side of the hill, run as well as he could, as long as he could until a bullet splashed his blood or suffocation thickened it. But I want to fight, he thought, through a gulp of tears, I want to stand up and fight. Orbital velocity equals escape velocity divided by the square root of two. For a moment, he lay there, rigid and his eyes stared at death walking up the slope, but did not see it.

Then, in a crazy blur of motion, he brought his wrench around, closed it on a nut at one side, and turned the right hand air tank unscrewed easily. He held it in his hands a three foot cylinder, blind, while calculation raced through his head. What would the centrifugal and correolis forces be? It was the roughest sort of estimate he had neither time nor data, But lung Guard was taking it easy, stopping to examine each patch of shadow thrown by some gaunt crag, each meteor scar where a man might hide. It would take him several minutes to reach the hilltop.

Bow clutched the loosened tank in his arm, throwing one leg around it to make sure, and faced away from Lungguard. He heffed it himself as if his body were a machine he must use. Then carefully he jumped off the top of the hill It was bird like, dream like, Thus to sore, noiseless over iron desolation. The sun fell behind him. A spearhead pinnacle clawed after his feet.

The Southern Cross flamed at his eyes downward. Get rid of that downward component of velocity, he twisted the tank, pointing it toward the surface, and cautiously opened the blow valve with his free hand. Only a moment's exhaust everything gaged by eye. Did he have an orbit? Now?

The ground dropped sharply off to infinity, and he saw stars under the keel of the world. He was still going out away. Maybe he had miscalculated his jump, exceeded escape velocity after all, and was headed for a long, cold spin toward Jupiter. It would take all his compressed air to correct such a mistake. Sweat prickled in his armpits.

He locked his teeth and refused to open the valve again. It was like endless falling, but he couldn't yet be sure if the fall was toward the asteroid or the stars. The rocks spun past him, another face came into view. Yes, by all idiot gods, its gravity was pulling him around. He skimmed low over the bleakness of it, Seeing darkness and starlet death sliding beneath him, Another crag loomed suddenly in his path, and he wondered, in a harsh clutch of fear if he was going to crash.

Then it ghosted by a foot from his flying body. He thought he could almost sense the chill of it. He was a moon, now, a satellite, skimming low above the airless surface of his own midget world. The fractured plain where Lunguard had shot him went by, and he braced himself up around the tiny planet, And there was the hill he had left start against Sagittarius. He saw Lunguard standing on its heights and looking the way he had gone.

Carefully, he aimed the tank and gave himself another small blast to correct his path. There was no noise to betray him. The asteroid was a grave where all sound was long buried and frozen. He flattened, holding his body parallel to the tank in his arms. One hand still gripped the wrench, the other reached to open the blow valve wide.

The surge almost tore him loose. He had a careening, lunatic moment of flight in which the roar of escaping gas boiled through his armor and he clung like a troll to a runaway witch's broom. The sun was blinding on one side of him. He struck lung Guard with an impact of velocity in an inertia, which sent him spinning down the hill. Bo hit the ground, recoiled and sprang after his enemy.

Lung Guard was still rolling as Bo approached. He came to a halt, lifted his rifle dazedly, and had it knocked loose with a single blow of the wrench. Lung Gard crawled to his feet while Bo picked up the rifle and threw it off the asteroid. Why did you do that? I don't, said Bo.

I should just shoot you down, but I want you to surrender. Lung Guard drew his wrench. No, he said, all right, said Bo. Won't take long. When he got up to the serious Using a tank, lung Guard would never need.

Valeria had armed herself with a kitchen knife. Wouldn't have done much good, he said. When he came through the airlock, she fell into his arms, sobbing, and he tried to comfort her. It's all over, it's all taken care of. We can go home.

Now, he himself was badly in need of consolation. The inquiry on Earth would clear him, of course, but he would always have to live with the memory of a man stretched dead under a wintry sky. He went aft and replaced the lynx. When he came back, Valeria had recovered herself. But as she watched his methodical preparations and listened to what he had to tell, there was that in her eyes which he hardly dared believe.

Not him, Not a big dumb slob like him. This episode performed and produced by Father Malone. Music by HP