Exiles of the Three Red Moons

The flat emergency field was crowded with hulking forms from every planet; talking, gesticulating excitedly, curious vultures awaiting the new broken spirits, black-souled as themselves.

Rusty neared the low target building, saw his dim reflection in a glassy wall; tall and thin despite the cumbersome furs. He had lost weight, he observed. His bronzed seventy-five inches of slender, handsome youth had shed the surplus flesh that he had accumulated in Earthian cities. His body was now trimmed to bare muscle, sinews of steel. One fought to live here. One fought the cold, the Bugs, crazed men--but the hopelessness of the struggle could not be fought, and one died and was glad to die. One of their number in every other respect, Rusty had _hope_--and he had been forced to keep this thought ever before him as the contagion of omnipresent despair clutched at him also.

He ran a long hand through his leonine hair; badly in need of cutting, it swirled, dark sorrel, about his hawk-like features.

The huge Vulcanian, Lothar, approached. Massive head bent, he leaned toward Rusty as he passed.

"We leave at noon," he muttered. "Meet at White Cliff, if you go!"

Familiarity had bred disinterest in the strange forms from other worlds but the nearness of his departure gave new light to the things about him. Lothar, the Vulcanian! Rusty looked at the great creature, and thought of the excitement Vulcan's discovery had occasioned. In the orbit of Mercury, behind the sun, making it ever invisible to Earth, it was the first planet to be found by interstellar exploration. Occurring long before Rusty was born, it was another Stanley-Livingston affair in the annals of feature news. Of course, Vulcan's existence had been calculated by its effect on Mercury's perihelion as early as the nineteenth century by--what was his name?--Leverrier! Who had been disproved by Einstein, twentieth century, who was himself later disproved. Rusty smiled. Get the facts! Soon he would be back at the old job again....

He watched Lothar's monstrous bulk shuffle away into the crowd; suddenly he remembered the secret plan for escape that night. There would be five of them: Lothar, two Martians, a Venusian and Spike. Spike was from his own planet and his only friend here, if he might be called that. The short, chunky Earthian owed his life to Rusty. He had saved him from the Bugs a few days after his arrival, an exploit unheard of here where everyone saw to his own brief existence. But Spike had never forgotten. And when the little boat had been constructed from salvaged drift-tubes, he had inveigled the others into agreeing to take Rusty along.

Rusty Carter felt a twinge of conscience at not confiding his now propinquent departure. He had tactfully avoided a direct refusal, knowing if word of his pardon got around his life would be worthless. A jealous horde would have made short work of him. The others didn't matter; but, whatever heartless creature Spike was, Rusty hoped he got away.

There came a shout from the upturned faces of the grisly crowd and Rusty saw a red dot, high in the dim sky. It was the jet-blast of the coming ship. It was coming for him!

His heart leaped as he watched the crimson point grow, a line of flame, a dazzling comet upon the tinted moon glow. The light lengthened and a dark hulk appeared at its head. Then, with a roar, a burst of sparks, the ship entered the Plutonian atmosphere, floated gently downward on idling jets.

The crowd of wretches clamored, jostled one another. Rusty stood apart, tingling with excitement. He planned his journey, his homecoming, with a child-like joy. First he would radio Skipper. Then he would take a long luxurious bath--he could feel the warm water now--then go to sleep, with no nightmare of yellow insects crawling unseen toward him. Then he would....

The ship lowered, drifted to a stop high above them. The smile slowly left Rusty's face and his eyes widened.

Glistening in the dim light, the ship remained motionless. Three long objects came into view, gliding slowly from its underside--drift-tubes.

Rusty started forward, eyes fixed to the shining hull, panic leaping into his heart.

In a burst of flame, the ship zoomed upward. There was a faint tingle of ozone in the air, as it ascended, grew smaller in the glowing sky.

Rusty wanted to scream at the disappearing light. He leaned weakly against the wall and a sickness within him was cold and numb, a deadening blow. Then he grinned faintly. Of course! They were sending a special plane--maybe Skipper was coming himself. Of course.

The drift-tubes had landed and the crowd was gathered about them, encircling the newcomers, shouting questions about the outside worlds, inspecting the less formidable for chance possessions. Rusty pushed his way through the mass of foul bodies. At the edge of the group was a smaller, unopened tube--the Tele-news can.

Rusty opened the container, pulled out the roll of thin, printed sheets. It was like Skipper to send a special plane. Sure he would--this was a big story.

Idly glancing through the pages, weeks old, he was surprised to catch the familiar name. Then Rusty tensed, color gone from his face, as the full meaning of the headline came to him.

"PROMINENT EDITOR PASSES: S. K. Russell, Editor of the New York Tele-news for over thirty years, died at his home today, the victim of a heart attack. Russell, called 'Skipper' by all that knew him, was stricken--"

Rusty dropped the page from his hand. He stared, unseeing, into the night, his mind following a torturing logic to its inescapable conclusion. Skipper was dead--Skipper was the only one that knew--no one else would know of his innocence....

He snatched up the paper, read the column, his warrant of doom. Skipper had died three weeks ago, suddenly, before he could even make a will. His wife was sole heir to the Tele-news plant.

Rusty sank down to a rock.

A sense of wild terror gripped him as he realized he was trapped here, for the rest of his life--he had been legally convicted of robbery, murder. Skipper was the only person who could save him. But Skipper was dead!

Men howled, laughed as they passed him. And Rusty Carter knew he was now one of them. No more was there the glow of a secret thought, that soon he could leave--he was to stay until he died just as these others died, screaming or with a voiceless stare in the cold glare of Pluto.

Their laughter faded away and he was alone.

Walking aimlessly, Rusty left the deserted clearing, plodded up a sparkling path. He wandered amid the ghastly spangled crags, neither knowing nor caring where he went. It did not matter and nothing mattered, for he was dead inside. The three moons of Pluto hung low in the east and the enormous Great Moon, the nearby satellite of the planet, arose beside their departing light, a darker green.

Soon, another day. The cold wind. The Bugs. Haunted, restless sleep. The scream of a lonely soul in dreaming delirium. But what matter the cold and the Bugs? They could bring death. Was it not better so?

Rusty came to a long declivity, the rocks sloping down to a wide crater. In the center was a pale wall of lichen, smoothly white on the side of a towering peak. It was White Cliff. Largest landmark on the narrow-horizoned planet, it reared for hundreds of feet into the thin air. Upon its vast sides was a thick blanket of the plants, giving the cliff an unbroken, white distinctiveness and its name. Never visited by day because of the Bugs, it was rarely approached even at night. The reflecting vegetation surrounding it in a dim glow, the Bugs lingered even then. Foot-long obscenities of fuzzy yellow, razor-tipped tendrils before formless maws, by day they swarmed from every crevice of the distorted terrain. Subsisting chiefly upon the rabbit-like veedles, they would also eat a man.