Moffat had known very well what he was being told. The Frontier Patrol always sent a man to the God-forgotten ends of nowhere under instruction for his first two years of service. The harder the assignment, the greater the compliment to the recruit. That he had drawn “Old Keno” Martin was compliment beyond the highest adulation.
“Good Lord!” his running mate Druid had told him. “Old Keno is more of a legend than a man. You know what’s happened to the only three recruits sent to him for training? He wore them out and did them in. Every one of them came back and turned in his resignation. George, I wish you luck. By golly, you’ll need it!”
Constable Moffat, stepping through the frozen mud of the main street of Meteorville, wasn’t daunted even now. The multicolored icy wastes, the obvious savageness and antagonism of the inhabitants who glowered at him as he passed in his horizon blue and gold, the sagging temperature that registered thirty below at high noon, neither could these daunt him.
Resigned, did they? Well, he was George Moffat and no old, broken-down, untrained ex-peace-officer-made-constable was going to show him up. Old Keno was going to be retired when they found a replacement for him. George Moffat, strong and young, full of morale and training, already considered Old Keno as good as replaced.
He gloried in the obvious fact that the patrol was hated here. Ooglach, furthest outpost of Earth’s commerce, held more than its share of escaped criminals. The men who watched him from windows and walks would meet his cool gaze. He became more and more conscious of what he was and where he was until the problem of Old Keno dwindled to nothing.
A man had to be hard in the patrol. The instructors at school were fond of saying that. He had to be able to endure until endurance seemed his ordinary lot in life. He had to be able to shoot faster and more accurately than any human could be expected to shoot and he had to be able to thrive under conditions which would kill an unconditioned man. George Moffat could do all these things. Question was, at his age could Old Keno?
Constable George Moffat entered the low building which boasted the battered sign: Frontier Constabulary, Ooglach. He entered and at first glance felt pity for the man he was to relieve.
Old Keno Martin, in a patched blue uniform shirt, sat at a rough plank desk. He was scribbling painfully with a pen which kept tripping in the rough official paper and scattering small blots. It was aching cold in the room and the ashes of the fireplace were dead.
He was a spare man of uncertain age, George observed, and he had no more idea of how to keep and wear a uniform than he probably had about grand opera. A battered gray hat sat over his eyes, two blasters were belted about his waist, both on one side, one lower than the other.
The squadroom was bare, without ornament or comforts, the only wall decoration being a mildewed copy of the Constitution of the United States. Some cartridge boxes and several rifles lay upon a shelf, some report books on the desk. This, observed Moffat with a slightly curled lip, was law and order on Ooglach!
Old Keno looked up. He saw the horizon blue and gold and stood.
“I,” said Moffat, “have just been ordered up from base.” He handed his sheaf of official papers and identification over and Old Keno took them and scanned them with disinterest.
To George it seemed that his attitude clearly said, “Here’s another one of them to be broken and sent on his way. A boot kid, badly trained and conceited in the bargain.” But then, thinking again, George wasn’t sure that that was Old Keno’s attitude. The man, he knew suddenly, was going to be very hard to predict.
Old Keno offered his hand and then a chair. “I’m Keno Martin. I’ll have the boy stir up the fire for you if you’re cold. Newcomers find it chilly here in Meteorville.”
Old Keno returned to his reports while George Moffat, seeing no sign of the boy mentioned, glanced yearningly at the dead fireplace. Suddenly George realized what he was doing. The lot of a constable was endurance. If Old Keno, knowing he was coming, had already started the program of hazing, George was ready. Grimly he refused the warmth for himself and concentrated on Old Keno.
“I understand,” said Keno after a while, “that if you measure up I’m to be retired from service.”
“Well—” began George.
“Wouldn’t know what to do with myself,” said Old Keno decidedly. “But that’s no bar to your measuring up. If you can you can and that’s all there is to it. I won’t stand in your way.”
Young George said to himself that he doubted it. The temperature must be twenty below in this room. Inside his gloves his hands felt blue and frostbitten. “I’ll bet you won’t,” George told himself.
“Matter of fact,” said Old Keno, “I’m kind of glad you’re here. The general run of crime is always fairly heavy and this morning it got heavier. It will be good to have help on this job. I’ve been kind of hoping they’d send me an assistant—”
“I’ll bet you have,” said George to himself.
“—that could really take it, of course,” continued Old Keno. “Ooglach is a funny place. Hot as the devil in some places, cold in others. Requires versatility. You know why this place is important?”
“Well, I—”
“This planet is a meteor deposit. About fifteen or twenty million meteors a day fall into its atmosphere, but that isn’t a patch on what it used to get before the atmosphere formed as it is. Its face is studded with the things and there are holes all over the place.
“We ship several hundred billion dollars’ worth of industrial diamonds from here every year. Naturally we have to mine the bulk of them out of old meteors and that keeps a miner population around—which is always a tough one. Some of those stones are gemstones. They’re a United States monopoly and it’s our job to see that they don’t get lifted. We frown on all illegal export—especially when it begins with murder.”
Moffat perked up. He forgot about the cold room. This was what he had been training for. He was very conscious of his superiority in such cases. The latest methods of crime detection had been built into him as second nature. His young body had been trained to accomplish the most strenuous manhunts. Mentally he was well balanced, physically he was at his peak. He knew it and he was anxious to prove it.
“You’ve got some idea of who is doing this?” said Moffat.
“Well, shouldn’t be too hard. Of course, there’s plenty of tough gents on Ooglach who wouldn’t stop at anything—but the point is they’re cowed. My angle is, the people who did this must be new. They murdered a mine guard up at Crater 743 and emptied the safe of a month’s haul. That would be about thirty-five million dollars in gems.
“Any man who had been around here any time would have known better. That means the gents who did it probably came in their own spaceship. It’s probably parked beyond the radar detection sphere—somewhere to the south. No, it wasn’t local talent.”
Moffat almost smiled. Old Keno’s faith in himself seemed monstrous to him. He looked with interest at the old constable and realized with a start that all his own studies in criminology and physiognomy had not fitted him to make an accurate estimate of Keno Martin’s true character. The man was elusive.
He looked with interest at the old constable and realized with a start that all his own studies in criminology and physiognomy had not fitted him to make an accurate estimate of Keno Martin’s true character.
“So, if it’s all the same to you,” said Keno, “we’ll just put together a kit and take out of here for the mine. I just got this report half an hour ago and I stopped here long enough to write this dispatch for my boy to take to that spacecan you came in. I want this data relayed to other planets, though of course we’ll probably get these people a long time before they get away. You all ready to go?”
For a moment Moffat was dismayed. He had considered himself fit and ready and yet he knew that his long trip on the
tramp had wearied him enormously. You don’t sleep and eat well on a tramp and how welcome would be a few hours of rest! But he banished all thought of it. Keno would know he was tired. This was just another way of wearing him down.
“I’m ready,” he said. “Just tell your boy to bring my case from the ship. I feel fine.”
“Good,” said Old Keno. He opened the back door and yelled in some remarkable gibberish at the shed. Then he took down from a shelf several boxes of cartridges, looked to the loads in his guns and handed a rifle to Moffat.
Old Keno waited patiently at the door until a slab-faced native brought a high-speed tractor around front and then, after placing the cartridges in the cab, Old Keno mounted up.
“Wait a minute,” said Moffat. “I don’t see any food. How long are we going to be gone?”
The old constable looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry about that. My mind was just so busy with other things. Bring out a case of rations from the kitchen.”
Moffat smiled to himself. This campaign was so obvious. He brought the rations and threw them into the back of the cab and then, eyes on the old constable, mounted up in his turn.
Suddenly he was assailed with a doubt. Maybe it was just senility that had made Old Keno forget. A man wouldn’t go tearing off into any trackless waste without food just to show up a new recruit. Hmm . . . maybe headquarters had its reasons for wanting to replace this man.
“Where’s your coat?” said Moffat, eyeing the patched sleeves of Old Keno’s uniform shirt.
“That’s so,” said the old constable, looking oddly at Moffat. “I forgot that too, I guess.” He bawled at the boy, who brought up a heavy service mackinaw. But Old Keno did not put it on. He laid it across the back of the seat and addressed himself to the controls.
The revving motor sent great plumes of white snow spiraling upwards. Several curious folks came into the street to look. Moffat glanced at the old constable and felt a genuine wave of pity. “Poor Old Keno,” he thought.
The yellow sky lay hard against the blinding plain. In the far distance a range of hundred-thousand-foot peaks reached forever skyward, white and orange in their perpetual covering of frost. The tractor sped across the wastes at two hundred miles per hour, skimming the hummocks, its hydraulic seats riding easy while the treads bucked, spun and roared. A high fog of snow particles was left behind them and the cold which had been intense at the beginning began to turn Moffat’s blood to ice crystals in his veins.
At last he surrendered. “Isn’t there a heater in this thing?” he said.
CHAPTER TWO
Rugged Going
OLD Keno flushed. “I’m sorry. I’ve got so much on my mind I didn’t even think of it.” And he reached down to throw a button on the panel, which brought an immediate trickle of faintly warm air into the cab, raising the interior temperature from a minus fifty to a mere minus twenty.
Moffat tried not to show how eagerly he received this succor from his distress. He was beginning to feel a little frightened of Old Keno. There he sat in his shirt sleeves, oblivious of weather. Beside him was Moffat, bundled to the eyes in all that the service could offer a man in the way of warmth—all of which was not enough.
By golly, thought Moffat, a man could pretty well perish riding in one of these things if he wasn’t careful. He glanced sideways at Keno. The old constable did not find anything unusual about his uncoated state.
“He’s senile,” Moffat decided. “He’s unable to feel anything.” And then again he thought, “He’s trying to run me out. I’ll stick it if it’s the last thing I ever do on Ooglach.” And he knew with a slight shudder that this very well might be the last thing he did on Ooglach or anywhere else!
Half an hour later they pulled up beside the shaft of Crater 743, where the mine buildings clustered under a ten-foot coating of snow and ice. Their presence had been seen from afar and a small knot of men awaited them. Their greeting was respectful, bordering on awe.
“I’ve been watching for you, Constable,” said the foreman. “I’m very sorry to have to trouble you but—”
“I suppose you trampled up all the clues,” said Keno gruffly.
The crowd parted to let him through. They had known better than to touch the murdered man or the safe or to walk on tracks, and Keno and Moffat were able to inspect the scene as it had been found at dawn by the cook.
Keno looked at the dead man and muttered to himself, “Forty-five Mauser at the range of two feet. Silencer employed. Asleep when he was hit. Alarm signal shorted out by the intruder. Safe opened with an alpha torch.”
He knelt before the broken door and Moffat was amazed to hear him muttering the code of arches and whorls which would identify future fingerprints.
Moffat, puzzled, got down beside the old constable and at length, by catching the light just right, was able to make out the fact that at least there was a fingerprint there. But even with all his training he knew he would need powder and a magnifier to read that mark.
He looked wonderingly at Keno. Either the old constable was pulling his leg or he actually could read that print. It could be a bluff. After all, what did a lone fingerprint matter in this case?
Moffat was additionally puzzled to find that the crew at the mine had been so meticulous as to avoid obliterating the tracks of the retreating felons. He was impressed against his wish by this. It meant these people really walked lightly where Old Keno was concerned. He was wondering if Keno had remembered to bring a plaster cast outfit when he heard Keno grumbling.
“Leader’s about five feet tall, walks with a bad limp, been in the Russian army, very quick, probably shoots left-handed. The other two men are ex-convicts, both with dark hair, heavy features—one about a hundred and ninety-five pounds, the other two hundred and thirty. They rely entirely on the leader for orders. They’ll fight if told. Come along, Constable Moffat. We’ll see what can be done to intercept these people.”
Moffat could have deduced a number of these things, but not all of them. He was bemused by it. This old man was not bluffing! And that fact made Keno loom larger than before. Moffat began to dwindle in his own estimation.
Without a word to the waiting men Old Keno climbed into the cab, slammed the door, waited briefly for Moffat to get settled and went off at full speed along the clear track of a departing skimmer.
Young Constable Moffat was not prepared for the accuracy of this tracking. He was beginning to understand why the other young recruits had quit here and resigned from service. Old Keno was not only good, he was dismaying. A man’s ego wouldn’t long withstand the pummeling of such exhibitions of endurance and manhunter sense that Old Keno had displayed to him today.
Now the old man was following the thin line left by the skimmer—and he was following it at two hundred and fifty miles per hour.
As a skimmer is driven by a tractor propeller and rises on stub wings to travel, it leaves only an occasional scratch in the snow. Yet Keno Martin was following this scratch. He was evidently seeing it some hundreds of yards ahead and turning accurately whenever it turned.
They raced across the trackless expanse, going south. They were silent for the most part. The dumbbell suns gradually sank until the shadows of the ice hummocks were long and blue across the wastes of crystal white.
Moffat was tired. The trip on the space-tramp had been a hard one, and the long hours of traveling over these blinding, glaring ice fields were just too much. It would have been too cold for the human endurance of any man who had not had months of conditioning to these temperatures. Moffat had had that conditioning. But each agonizing breath of frozen air came closer to breaking him.
Then he realized that Old Keno, wrestling the tractor, showed no signs of fatigue. Insensibly, Moffat’s estimation of his own capabilities dropped. He began to regard Keno with a sort of awe.
> “Don’t you want me to take it for a while?” he said at last out of a guilty conscience.
“Sorry, this will get tough as soon as those suns set and we’ll have to rely on our spots. I’ll just hold on if it’s all the same to you.”
After a while young Moffat began to fidget. Then he suddenly realized what was the matter. “Say, aren’t you hungry?” he said.
Old Keno looked at him blankly. Then he said, “Oh yes, yes, of course. Get yourself something to eat.”
Moffat started to turn and in that moment realized all the sensations that a man must feel who is caught in a straitjacket. He could not swivel more than an inch in either direction. His heavy uniform coat was frozen solid upon him.
Impotently he cursed the supply station eighteen light-years away. The trickle of heat had melted a filter of snow from under the windshield. While it was still daylight it had dampened his coat. As the suns set, the temperature had dropped to about fifty below zero.
“Turn up the heat,” he said plaintively. Old Keno blinked at him.
“That’s all the heat there is,” he apologized.
“Well, hit me with your fist or something,” said Moffat. Old Keno blinked again. “It’s my coat,” said Moffat.
Keno grunted and brought a backhand slap against Moffat’s chest which cracked the ice sheathing. With the disintegration begun, the young constable could move about. He procured a can of rations.
These had been packed by some far-off organization which never had expected for a minute that anyone was going to eat any of them. Theoretically, when one took off the lid heat was instantaneously generated through all the food. Moffat broke the cover and for the next ten seconds—but no more—the mass was warm. Before he could get the first mouthful between his teeth the savage cold had frozen it through.