Lake of Fire

Steve got up and brushed sand from his knees. He held the mirror up so that the red Martian sunlight caught and aureoled the splendor of a face that offered a man no chance of help if he ever let go.

A pale, beautiful face, the eyes fringed with long, dark lashes, the lips parted in a mocking smile. A living image capable of mercurial changes of mood, unnaturally still one moment, smiling and animated the next.

One thing at a time, I thought. Don't drive him too hard.

"Some men have carried them about for years," I said. "But just remember what falling in love with an image can mean. You'll never hold her in your arms, Steve. And compulsions can kill."

"She's alive as flesh-and-blood is alive," he said, glaring at me.

"Easy, Steve!"

I could see that I was going to have trouble with my stout-hearted buddy, Captain Stephen Claymore.

He could have stared at a mountain of gold unmoved. He could have knelt with a wry chuckle, and let a handful of diamonds trickle through his wiry, bronze-knuckled hands, in utter contempt for what diamonds could buy on Earth.

He could have thrown back his head and laughed, at wealth, at glory, at anything you want to name that men prize highly on Earth. But a beautiful woman was a temptation apart. A beautiful woman--

Steve grabbed my arm. "Look out, Tom!" he cried. "Watch it!"

The bullet whizzed past like a heat-maddened insect. Steve leapt back, and I flattened myself.

The attack was no great surprise. When people take up a new way of life, when they pull up stakes and go striding into the sunrise, strife paces after like a ravenous hound, red tongue lolling. When the first colonists from Earth swarmed into the crumbling Martian cities a good third of them ended up in stony desolation with their hearts drilled through.

They danced to riotous tunes, calling for louder music and stronger wine, and they fought savagely to set up little kingdoms of tyranny eighty feet square.

Everywhere anarchy reigned, and haggard-eyed, desperate men crouched behind smoke-blackened ruins and held off other men as greedy as themselves. They fought and died by dozens, by hundreds, their minds inflamed by the quickly-made discovery that the Martian cities were vast treasure troves.

You had to go prospecting, you had to search, and when you found your own shining treasure you didn't want to share it with any man alive.

Steve had his gun trained on the wall ahead when he ducked down at my side.

"Yes, sir," I whispered, half to myself. "This is going to be rough!"

"They asked for it!" Steve said.

His gun roared twice.

From the wall ahead came a burst of gunfire in reply.

"If they think they're going to get this mirror away from me--"

I looked at his grim, sweat-beaded face. "I'll help you fight for it," I said.

"So nice of you," he grunted.

"Then maybe you'll have sense enough to bury it face down in the sand."

Guns went off thirty feet directly in front of us. Red sand geysered up, granite cracked and splintered. You could feel the awful heat of the blazing exchange of bullets.

I could see faces between the chinks. Malignant faces moving from peep-hole to peep-hole like scavenger birds hopping about in the desert.

I was aiming at one of the peep-holes when Steve groaned and sagged against me. His gun arm sagged, and I could see that a bullet had pierced his shoulder high up.

"I'm sorry, Tom," he whispered, hoarsely. "I was careless, damn it!"