Reunion on Ganymede Read online

  'But what's the use of fooling ourselves?' the senator cried. 'Our air is nearly gone. We don't even know if we're going in the right direction.'

  Gramp roared at him.

  'Buck up, you spineless jackass. You're a big man. A senator. Remember that. You gotta get back. Who'd they get to make all 'em speeches if you didn't get back?'

  Jurg Tec's voice hissed in Gramp's helmet. 'Listen!'

  Gramp stood still and listened.

  But there was nothing to hear. Just the hiss of the snow against his suit.

  'I don't hear nothin',' Gramp said.

  And then he heard it — a weird thunder that seemed to carry with it an indefinable threat of danger. A thunder like the stamping of many feet, like the measured march of hoofs.

  'Ever hear anything like that, Earthy?' asked the Martian.

  'It isn't anything,' shrieked the senator. 'Nothing at all. We just imagine it. We all are going cra/y.'

  The thunder sounded nearer and nearer — clearer and clearer.

  'There ain't supposed to be a livin' thing on Ganymede,' said Gramp. 'But there's somethin' out there. Somethin' alive.'

  He felt prickles of fear run up his spine and ruffle the hair at the base of his skull.

  A long line of things moved out of the horizon haze and into indistinct vision — a nightmare line of things that shone and glittered in the rays of Jupiter.

  'My Lord,' said Gramp, 'what are they?'

  He glanced around.

  To their left was a deep cut-bank, where erosion of long past ages had scooped out a deep, but narrow depression in the hillside.

  'This way,' Gramp yelled and leaped away, heading for the cut bank.

  The line of charging horrors was nearer when they reached the natural fortress.

  Gramp looked at Jurg Tec.

  'Marshy,' he croaked, 'if you never fit before, get ready for it now.'

  Jurg Tec nodded grimly, his flame pistol in his fist.

  The senator whimpered.

  Gramp swung on him, drew back his fist and let drive a blow that caught the senator in the center of his breast-plate and sent him sprawling.

  Gramp snarled at him.

  'Get out your gun, dang you,' he shrieked, 'and pretend you are a man.'

  The bunched monsters were closing in — a leaping, frightful mass of beasts that gleamed weirdly in the moon- and primary light. Massive jaws and cruel, taloned claw and whipping tentacles.

  Gramp leveled his flame gun.

  'Now,' he shouted, 'let 'em have it.'

  From the jaws of the cut-bank leaped a blast of withering fire that swept the monsters as they charged and seemed to melt them down. But those behind climbed over and charged through the ones the flame had stopped and came on, straight toward the men who crouched in the shadow of the hill.

  Gramp's gun was getting hot. He knew that in a moment it would be a warped and useless thing. That it might even explode in his hand and kill all three of them. For the flame gun is not built to stand continuous fire.

  And still the things came on.

  Before the cut-bank lay a pile of bodies that glowed metal-red where the pistol flames had raked them.

  Gramp dropped his gun and backed away toward the wall of the cut bank.

  Jurg Tec still crouched and worked his pistol with short, sharp, raking jabs, trying to keep it from over-heating.

  In a smaller recess crouched the whimpering senator, his gun still in its holster.

  Cursing him, Gramp leaped at him, hauled out the flame gun and shoved the senator to one side.

  'Let your gun cool, Marshy,' Gramp yelled.

  He aimed the new weapon at a shambling thing that crawled over the barricade of bodies. Calmly he blasted it straight between the eyes.

  'We'll need your gun later,' Gramp yelled at Jurg Tec.

  A shadowy something, with spines around its face and with a cruel beak just below its eyes, charged over the barricade and Gramp blasted it with one short burst.

  The attack was thinning out.

  Gramp held his pistol ready and waited for more. But no more came.

  'What are 'em dog-gone things?' asked Gramp, jerking his pistol toward the pile of bodies.

  'Don't know,' said the Martian. There aren't supposed to be any beasts on Ganymede.'

  They acted dog-gone funny,' Gramp declared. 'Not exactly like animals. Like something you would up and put down on the floor. Like toys. Like the toy animals I got my grandson for Christmas year or two ago. You wound 'em up and the little rascals run around in circles.'

  Jurg Tec stepped outside the cut-bank, nearer to the pile of bodies.

  'You be careful, Marshy,' Gramp called out.

  'Look here, Earthy,' yelled the Martian.

  Gramp strode forward and looked. And what he saw — instead of flesh and bone, instead of any animal structure — were metal plates and molten wire and cogs of many shapes and sizes.

  'Robots,' he said. Til be a bowlegged Marshy if that ain't what they are. Nothin' but dog-gone robot animals.'

  The two old soldiers looked at one another.

  'It was a tight squeeze at that,' said Jurg Tec.

  'We sure licked hell out of 'em,' Gramp exulted.

  'Say,' said Jurg Tec, 'they were supposed to have a robot wild-animal fight at Satellite City. You don't suppose these things were the robots? Got loose some way?'

  'By cracky,' said Gramp, 'maybe that explains it.'

  He straightened from his examination of the heap of twisted, flame-scarred metal and looked at the sky. Jupiter was almost gone.

  'We better get goin',' Gramp decided.

  VI

  'That must be them,' said the pilot.

  He pointed downward and Izzy Newman looked where he pointed.

  He saw two figures.

  One of them was erect, but staggering as it marched along. Beside it limped another, with its arm thrown across the shoulders of the first to keep from falling.

  'But there's only two,' said Izzy.

  'No, there's three,' declared the pilot. 'That one fellow is holding the second one up and he's dragging the third fellow along by his arm. Look at him. Just skidding along the ground like a sled.'

  The pilot dove the plane, struck the ground and taxied close.

  Gramp, seeing the plane, halted. He let go of the senator's arm and eased Jurg Tec to the ground. Then, tottering on his feet, gasping for what little air remained within his oxygen tank, he waited.

  Two men came out of the plane. Gramp staggered to meet them.

  They helped him in and brought in the other two.

  Gramp tore off his helmet and breathed deeply. He helped Jurg Tec to remove his helmet. The senator, he saw, was coming around.

  'Dog-gone,' said Gramp, T did somethin' today I swore I'd never do.'

  'What's that?' asked Jurg Tec.

  'I swore,' said Gramp, 'that if I ever had a chance to help a Marshy, I wouldn't lift a finger. I'd just stand by and watch him kick the bucket.'

  Jurg Tec smiled.

  'You must have forgot yourself,' he said.

  'Dog-gone,' said Gramp, 'I ain't got no will power left, that's what's the matter with me.'

  The reunion was drawing to a close. Meeting in extraordinary convention, the veterans had voted to form an Earth-Mars Veterans' Association. All that remained was to elect the officers.

  Jurg Tec had the floor.

  'Mr. Chairman,' he said, 'I won't make a speech. I'm just going to move a nomination for commander. No speech is necessary.'

  He paused dramatically and the hall was silent.

  'I nominate,' said Jurg Tec, 'Captain Johnny Parker, better known as Gramp.'

  The hall exploded in an uproar. The chairman pounded for order, but the thumping of his gavel was scarcely a whisper in the waves of riotous sound that swept and reverberated in the room.

  'Gramp!' howled ten thousand throats. 'We want Gramp.'

  Hands lifted a protesting Gramp and bore him to the platform.
>
  'Cut it out, dog-gone you,' yelled Gramp, but they only pounded him on the back and yelled at him and left him standing there, all alone beside the chairman's table.

  Before him the convention hall rocketed and weaved in uproar. Bands played and their music did no more than form a background for the boisterous cheering. Newsmen popped up and down, taking pictures. The man beside the microphone crooked a finger at the old man and Gramp, hardly knowing why he did it, stumbled forward, to stand before the mike.

  He couldn't see the crowd so well. There was something the matter with his eyes. Sort of misted up. Funny way for them to act. And his heart was pounding. Too much excitement. Bad for the heart.

  'Speech!' roared the ten thousand down below. 'Speech! Speech!'

  They wanted him to make a speech! They wanted old Gramp Parker to talk into the mike so they could hear what he had to say. He'd never made a speech before in all his life. He didn't know how to make a speech and he was scared.

  Gramp wondered, dimly, what Celia would think of all these goings-on. Hoppin' mad, probably. And little Harry. But Harry would think his grandpa was a hero. And the bunch down at Grocer White's store.

  'Speech,' thundered the convention hall.

  Out of the mist of faces Gramp picked one face — one he could see as plain as day. Jurg Tec, smiling at him, smiling that crooked way the Martians smile. Jurg Tec, his friend. A dog-gone Marshy. A Marshy who had stood shoulder to shoulder with him out on the surface. A Marshy who had stood with him against the metal beasts. A Marshy who had slogged those bitter miles beside him.

  There was a word for it. Gramp knew there was a word. He groped madly in his brain for the single word that would tell the story.

  And then he had it. It was a funny word. Gramp whispered it. It didn't sound right. Not the kind of word he'd say. Not what anyone would expect old Gramp Parker to say. A word that would fit better in the mouth of Senator Sherman Brown.

  Maybe they'd laugh at him for saying it. Maybe they'd think he was just a damn old fool.

  He moved closer to the mike and the uproar quieted, waiting.

  'Comrades — ' Gramp began and then he stopped.

  That was the word. They were comrades now. Marshies and Earthies. They'd fought in bitter hatred, each for what he thought was right. Maybe they had to fight. Maybe that war was something that was needed. But it was forty years ago and all its violence was a whisper in the wind — a dim, old memory blowing from a battlefield where hatred and violence had burned itself out in one lurid blast of strength. But they were waiting. And they hadn't laughed.

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