Terror Out of Space - Leigh Brackett [13]
But they kept on trying. Lundy crawled away. After a while some of the weight went off his chest and he could see better.
A shaft of fitful golden light shot in through a crack about ten feet above him. A small crack, not even big enough to let a baby in and out. It was the only opening other than the door.
The room was small, too. The stone walls were dead black, without ornament or carving, except on the rear wall.
There was a square block of jet there, about eight feet long by four wide, hollowed in a peculiar and unpleasantly suggestive fashion. Above it there was a single huge ruby set in the stone, burning red like a foretaste of hell fire.
Lundy had seen similar small chambers in old cities still on dry land. They were where men had gone to die for crimes against society and the gods.
Lundy looked at the hungry monsters pushing at the immovable door and laughed. There was no particular humor in it. He fired his last shot, and sat down.
The brutes might go away sometime, maybe. But unless they went within a very few minutes, it wasn't going to matter. Lundy's oxygen was getting low, and it was still a long way to the coast.
The voice from the net cried out, Let me free!
"The hell with you," said Lundy. He was tired. He was so tired he didn't care much whether he lived or died.
He made sure the net was fast to his belt, and tightly closed.
"If I live, you go back to Vhia with me. If I die—well, you won't be able to hurt anybody again. There'll be one less devil loose on Venus."
Free! Free! Free! I must be free! This heavy weight . . . .
"Sure. Free to lead guys like Farrell into going crazy, and leaving their wives and kids. Free to kill . . . ." He looked with sultry eyes at the net. "Jackie Smith was my pal. You think I'd let you go? You think anything you could do would make me let you go?"
Then he saw her.
Right through the net, as though the metal mesh was cellophane. She crouched there in his lap, a tiny thing less than two feet high, doubled over her knees. The curve of her back was something an angel had carved out of a whisp of warm, pearl-pink cloud.
Chapter V
Lundy broke into a trembling sweat. He shut his eyes. It didn't matter. He saw her. He couldn't help seeing her. He tried to fight his mind, but he was tired . . . .
Her hair hid most of her. It had black night in it, and moonbeams, and glints of fire like a humming-bird's breast. Hair you dream about. Hair you could smother yourself in, and die happy.
She raised her head slowly, letting the veil of warm darkness fall away from her. Her eyes were shadowed, hidden under thick lashes. She raised her hands to Lundy, like a child praying.
But she wasn't a child. She was a woman, naked as a pearl, and so lovely that Lundy sobbed with it, in shivering ecstasy.
"No," he said hoarsely. "No. No!"
She held her arms up to be free, and didn't move.
Lundy tore the net loose from his belt and flung it on the altar block. He got up and went lurching to the door, but the kelp-things were still there, still hungry. He sat down again, in a corner as far away from both places as he could get, and took some Benzedrine.
It was the wrong thing to do. He'd about reached his limit. It made him lightheaded. He couldn't fight her, couldn't shut her out. She knelt on the altar with her hands stretched out to him, and a shaft of golden light falling on her like something in a church.
"Open your eyes!" he said. "Open your eyes and look at me."
Let me free. Let me free!
Freedom Lundy didn't know anything about. The freedom of outer space, with the whole Milky Way to play in and nothing to hold you back. And with the longing, fear. A blind, stricken terror . . . .
"No!" Lundy said.
Things got dark for Lundy. Presently he found himself at the altar block, fumbling at the net.
He wrenched away and went stumbling back to his corner. He was twitching all over like a frightened dog.