By WILLIAM BRITTAIN

They played a ghastly game on that lonely asteroid. Killer and victim-to-be danced and feinted between space-beacon and ship. Only the stars knew the winner.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

He did not remember exactly when the idea of killing Hervey occurred to him. Probably, though, it had been that day at Hermes Station, when the wrench had slipped from his grasp as he worked on the tower; it had drifted lightly down and struck Hervey a glancing blow on the helmet. They had laughed about it, and Hervey had said, "If we were under grav conditions, Joe, that probably would have conked me."

It had been funny then, but it wasn't funny any more. Joe Berne watched Hervey all of the time now, waiting. There had to be an opportunity, some day, some time. Accidents weren't frequent on the beacon service-run, but they did happen. And it had to look like an accident.

Berne knew that it wasn't going to be easy. Sam Hervey was a careful, cautious man. He was a man who checked his equipment before he went through the air lock, who nursed his jets like they were infants, a man who had every intention of living a long life in a dirty business where the careless died young. Berne had been glad when Space Service had teamed him with Hervey; Personnel had clearly hoped that a tour of duty with the veteran Hervey would supply the balance and judgment that the younger man apparently lacked. It had worked out ... Berne, Hervey and battered old Service Ship 114 had hung up an enviable record of efficiency and safety. And after their leave, Hervey had asked to work with Berne on another tour.

Hervey was good at this damned, dull, hateful task. Not many men were willing to spend nine months out of the year blasting from asteroid to asteroid, checking and servicing and reporting on the great beacons that beamed the dangerous spaceway from Mars to the moons of Jupiter. It was always tedious, often backbreaking and sometimes dangerous, and even Sam Hervey had said that he would be glad to be out of it.

That had been the start of it, three months before. The wheezing old SS-114 had burned out two of her ancient aft tubes on the run to Adonis Station, and Berne had eased her down on a jagged, unnamed chunk of black slag where they could jury-rig new lining. In between spells on the tube, they had looked over the tiny planetoid, and on one of their trips across the space-scarred waste their Cannon counters had begun to tick ominously. They had fled back to the ship; the rapidity of the signals warned them that volume of radioactivity was far greater than even their screened space-garb was designed to withstand.

Berne had rubbed his hands gleefully that day.

"It has to be a damned big deposit to set up radiation like that," he had chortled, and Sam Hervey, after due deliberation, had agreed with him. They had started to make their plans then; they would pool their funds, buy a small ship on Mars, rig it up with equipment, and work the deposit. Even if it weren't as big as they hoped, it would set them up for life.

"It won't be easy, Joe," Hervey had warned. "Even with everything we've got in the bank, plus what we can borrow, we can't swing the deal. If we sign up with the Service for another trip, the six thousand credits we'll bank from that will do it."

Berne had argued with that. He could see no point in another tour, another nine months in the lonely wastes. Maybe they could cut in one of the big mining companies. Hervey had smiled at him commiseratingly.

"Let's look at the long haul, kid," he had said. "We cut in one of the companies, and right away they've got a big slice of the deposit. We could even file for mining rights and then sell out—let someone else do the hard work. But if we do it ourselves we'll really be in the chips, and won't have to split with anyone."

He had looked around the cluttered cabin of the SS-114.

"Lord," he said slowly, "don't you think I'd like to get out of this, too? I've had enough of non-grav conditions, enough of breathing revamped oxygen. I don't like it any better than you do. But it's been a living. Another nine months of it, a couple of trips out to our strike—and then we retire."

Berne had thought about it so much that it was eating a hole in his brain. Hervey was figuring on two, maybe even three years before they were in a position to sell their mining rights to one of the big companies equipped to do a large-scale extraction job. By that time, Hervey had said, bidding for their rights would be so high they could afford to be choosy.

Maybe so, Joe thought, but he couldn't see it that way. He knew they could sell now and make enough to do what they wanted for the rest of their lives. Sure, they wouldn't make as much, but....

"The hell with the long haul," Joe Berne had said to himself. "I'm getting mine while I'm still young enough to enjoy it."

So he decided to kill Sam Hervey. With Hervey out of the way, Joe Berne would own the deposit. There would be no division of the take. The fact that Sam Hervey had been his friend did not even enter Joe Berne's mind.

Murder in space is not easy. The Space Patrol is nosy about those things. Joe Berne knew that Sam Hervey's death had to appear accidental; as soon as Berne filed claim for mining rights, the SP would be extremely interested in the manner of his partner's death.

There was no question of disposing of the body—not in space. In the boiling heat of the Venusian jungles, perhaps, it would have been easy; there the bodies of earthlings rotted and were gone. But out here in the frigid void between Mars and Jupiter, the dead remain unchanged through eternity. Neither could Hervey's body be jettisoned in space; held by the attraction of the ship, it would slowly circle the SS-114 like a horrible toy on a string, a mute accusation against a murderer.... Nor could the body be buried on an asteroid; Space Service demanded that its dead be brought home whenever humanly possible. Berne could not conceive of any circumstances that could arise in the Asteroid Belt that could adequately explain to the Service and the SP why Sam Hervey was not brought home.

SS-114 would have to land at Mars Terminal with her engineer still aboard, frozen solid in the hold, testifying to the accident that killed him....

The great beacon of Astarea Station pulsed steadily into the star-hung void. Sam Hervey finished his service check list and watched Joe Berne scribbling furiously at his desk, his powerful shoulders hunched over the paper. Berne looked up and found his partner's pale blue eyes on him, saw the amusement in the space-burned, homely face.

"Don't you ever get tired of figuring how you're going to spend your money?" Hervey asked. He pushed away the dinner plates and relaxed in his seat. He belched quietly, tamped tobacco in his old pipe, and blew a reflective cloud of blue smoke at Berne. Berne felt a flash of annoyance.

"No," he said, shortly. "I've been poor too long. There are so many things I want, I don't even know where to start."

"A new-model helicopter, most likely," Hervey said easily. "You want a red one or a yellow one? And a permanent membership at one of the sexier pleasure domes at Luna City, complete with blonde, maybe?"

Hervey was making fun of him. Berne felt his fists clench and the muscles bunch in his shoulders. Watch it, he told himself.

"Maybe," he replied. "Why not?"

The old man chuckled, watching Berne's dark, flushed face through the smoke.

"A fool and his money ..." he quoted. "You're no fool, Joe, but you're apt to be careless. Like the other day, when I asked you to check the oxygen supply on the suits."

"I forgot," Berne said sullenly. "Anyone can forget."

"Not out here," Hervey said sharply. "There ain't many second chances in space."

Berne looked at the older man, and wondered if he were getting suspicious. He had not forgotten to check the oxygen supply before they stepped through the air locks at Adonis Station. He had made very certain that Hervey's suit tanks had been almost empty. But just before they left the ship, Sam Hervey had paused, checked all of his equipment, and of course had discovered from the indicator dials on his suit control box that his tanks were low. Hervey had said little—just another lecture on being careful in space—but perhaps he had started to think about it, had remembered that he himself had filled the tanks a few days before....

It was time to play smart.

"I know," the big man apologized humbly. "I'm sorry, Sam. Sometimes I think I'll never learn. If it weren't for you...."

Sam Hervey smiled. "You'll learn," he said. "You're learning all the time. Make a spaceman yet, before I'm through with you. But you sure were a wild one when they teamed you up with me. You just needed a little seasoning."

Who in hell wants to be a spaceman, Berne thought. To hell with that, and with this busybody of an old maid and his superior airs. He yawned.

"I'm going to hit the sack," he announced.

Hervey nodded. "I'm with you," he said. "We finish here tomorrow, soon's we run a check on power output. And then the run to Hermes Station."

He stretched. "Guess I'm getting old, Joe. I need my sleep before I strap down for blast-off. Seems like those G's hit me a lot harder than they used to." He looked admiringly at the bulk and muscles of his younger partner. "Now you're built to take acceleration. Me, I'm not—too skinny and too old."

Hervey unstrapped himself from his chair and drifted toward his bunk, pulling himself along by the handgrips.

"Be nice, someday," he uttered, "to walk to bed and go to sleep without locking myself in. And that reminds me...."

Berne looked up. "Yeah?"

"Joe, make sure you check the acceleration harnesses before we blast off tomorrow. I felt a little give in mine last time. I don't aim to get shoved clear through my own firing chamber bulkhead one of these days."

"Sure, Sam."

Berne had felt the give in his own harness, he remembered. The ship was getting old; she needed to be refitted before her next trip out. Like those harnesses, for instance. The strain against them was terrific.... That is when it burst on him, flooding his mind with its perfection and simplicity. Of course! Why hadn't he thought of it before?

"Going to the john," he told Hervey. He guided himself out of the cabin and into the pressurized tunnel leading aft, closing the door behind him.

It would be so easy. In a little two-man ship like the SS-114, the engineer lay prone in his power control station aft, cushioned in his webbed harness against the awful shattering thrust of acceleration. A weakened harness, or an improperly secured one—and a man would hurtle screaming into the jungle of gears and control levers and junction boxes that studded the bulkhead of the firing chamber. He would smash against that unyielding metal and be broken like a child's toy....

Oh, it was simple, but not quite that simple, not with a man like Sam Hervey. Even if he trusted Joe Berne completely, Sam Hervey would check his own harness, just to make sure; it was the habit of a lifetime in space. And especially after the oxygen-tank incident. But there was another way, a better way. In the dim light of the tunnel, Joe Berne kneeled beside one of the tool lockers. He found what he wanted, and his big hand closed reassuringly around the handle of a heavy wrench. He closed the locker door softly, thrust the wrench into the bellyband of his dungarees, and drifted back to the cabin.

One smashing blow, and it would be over. Then he would work on the harness, weakening it further, and before blast-off he would cradle Sam Hervey's corpse in the webbing. The thrust, the unresisting corpse straining at the harness—then release and the dead thing smashing against the bulkhead.... No wounds, no injuries on the battered thing that could not be explained by the crash into the tangled gears. It had happened in space before; it would happen again.

Sam Hervey was already strapped down when he returned, but he was still awake, watching Berne. Now? Berne decided to wait until Hervey was asleep. He kept his back toward the other bunk as he groped along the handrail toward his own sack; no need of letting Hervey see that bulge in his middle.... Swiftly he thrust it under the blanket, stripped, turned off the light and strapped down. In the darkness he heard Hervey's soft, "'Night, Joe."

"Good night, Sam." He grinned into the darkness, his fingers wrapped around the wrench, waiting.

It was not a long wait. The breathing across the cabin settled down, became deep, regular. The momentary tossing ceased. The cabin was quiet. Slowly, carefully, Joe Berne unsnapped his bunk harness. For once he was thankful for non-grav condition. He did not have to touch the floor until the last moment, when he would need solid footing when he swung the wrench....

Gently he drifted across the cabin, his left hand lightly touching the handrail, pushing along. He held his breath. Another few feet.... He lifted the wrench, straining to see in the darkness.

Sam Hervey moved swiftly. His lean wiry body twisted on the narrow bunk, the harness was thrown off—how had he gotten free so quickly?—and he was away, sobbing through his teeth, clawing at the bigger man. Joe Berne gasped in shock, falling back from the fury of the sudden assault. A hard fist crashed into his belly, and he cursed and swung the wrench. He cut air, and Hervey was scrambling away from him. The cabin door was jerked open, and in the dim tunnel light Berne saw his quarry plunging away, a shocked white face staring back over his shoulder. Cursing, Berne hurled the wrench. It was futile, of course. It drifted slowly away from his hand and crashed against the slammed steel door.

Berne was trembling with rage; waves of sick nausea gripped him. His dismal failure writhed in his stomach, and he cursed again as he groped from the cabin. Hervey had turned off the tunnel light; in the darkness ahead of him, Berne heard Hervey scrambling along the handrails, and then a clatter as something fell.

He plunged toward the sound, taking great leaps, using the power of his legs against the floor to hurl himself forward. He did not see the trap that Hervey had laid, the tangle of armored cable that Hervey had ripped from a locker and hurled into the narrow tunnel behind him. Berne smashed the cable, screaming obscenities at Hervey, and fought to free himself from the twisted mass.

Hervey had bought time with the cabin door slammed in Berne's face, with the cable hurled from the locker into the tunnel. As Berne freed himself and leaped forward again, he heard the woosh of escaping air as the inner air lock door was opened. Then the clang of the lock door echoed through the ship. Hervey was safe, for awhile.

But he couldn't go far. Sobbing, mouthing curses, sick with anger, Berne struggled into space garb and opened the gunrack beside the lock. He saw with satisfaction that the fleeing Hervey had not waited to arm himself. Berne plunged through the lock.

The great banded face of mighty Jupiter seemed to fill the whole sky, lowering down on the jagged black waste of the asteroid. Five hundred yards from the ship the gray metal dome of Astarea Station huddled forlornly at the base of the soaring beacon tower. In the cold half-light, Berne saw the bulky space-suited figure of Sam Hervey running toward the station.

Berne kneeled at the top of the ladder, took careful aim, and squeezed the switch of the heavy rifle. The rocket flame lanced out. Just behind the fleeing figure, and to the side, the rocket mushroomed in a brief blinding flare. Berne could see the glint of the face-plate as Hervey turned his head. He fired again, and cursed the weak light as he overshot. The running figure wavered, looked back, started again toward the safety of the station air lock—toward the radio that could call Mars Base, that could tell the story of murder....

The range was too great. He missed again, but Hervey turned away. Silhouetted against the circle of the station air lock, he made a good target—but running amid the nightmare shapes of the black rocks, Berne could barely see him.

Hervey realized that he would not be able to make it into the safety of the station. He swerved away, leaping high with each huge step, and sped into the wild darkness. Berne leaped down the ladder and ran toward the station, peering into the half-light, finger on the switch. Then he saw him, sitting calmly on an outcropping, watching. Berne switched on his communicator.

"You can't get away, Sam," he said.

The answer came back, thin in the earphones.

"I'm going to try, Joe," Hervey said. "Have you gone out of your mind?"

Berne laughed into the throat mike. "No," he said. "I'm sane, Sam. I just decided that I wasn't going to split the money with you, Sam. Or wait three years to get it, either."

He heard the other's soft, "Oh." Hervey got up and moved away from the outcropping, looking back. Berne took up a position about midway between the ship and the station, watching him. Hervey was finished, he told himself; it was just a matter of time ... Berne could cover both havens.

He was so sure of victory that when he heard Sam Hervey starting to laugh, he was genuinely shocked, and he was a little afraid. What...?

"Joe?" The voice was in his ears.

"Yeah, Sam."

"You wouldn't want to blast an old friend, would you, Joe?"

"It would be a pleasure, Sam."

The laugh sounded again. "Now, Joe, you're not using your head. Always careless, that's you, Joe. What would the Space Patrol say when they find me full of rocket fragments? Might be a little tough on you, Joe."

Joe Berne gasped, and then the truth swept over him. Ye Gods, he thought, what a fool I am! I almost got him, almost brought him down with the projector. The heavy weapon slipped from his nerveless fingers. He sat down heavily on a rock, staring bitterly into the dimness.

"You can't stay out there forever, Sam," Berne said dully. "Maybe I can't kill you with a rocket, but I can kill you with something else."

"I know I can't fight you," Hervey said reasonably. "You're bigger and you're stronger. But you've got to catch me, Joe—and I can run faster than you ever could, you big dumb ox."

Berne shook his head. Everything was wrong. What had happened?

"You can't stay out there forever, Sam," he repeated.

The chuckle came again, thin and ghostly in the earphones. "No," Hervey said. "But Joe—neither can you!"

What did Hervey mean? Berne looked back at the ship, then at the dull metallic dome of Astarea Station.

And then it came to him, what Sam Hervey had tried to say.

He, Joe Berne, did not dare return to the ship so long as Sam Hervey lived, for then Hervey could make a dash for the safety of the station. Nor did Berne dare go to the station, for that would leave the ship unprotected. If Berne went to either place, Hervey could easily reach the air lock of the other refuge, slip through, dog down the doors and sit it out, waiting for the Space Patrol to come.

"Stalemate, Joe," Sam Hervey said softly. "It's your move."

Berne went berserk then. Howling with rage, he picked up a rock and hurled it toward the voice. Cursing, he plunged into the tortured rocks, seeking out his tormentor.

"I'll kill you," he sobbed. "I'll kill you!"

Sam Hervey did not hesitate. Bracing himself, he shot away. For half an hour Berne followed him, panting, raging, almost mad with rage. They leaped and turned and twisted, two crazy little running figures under the cold Jupiter-light, gasping in the thin trickle of air from their suit flasks, blood pounding in their brains. And always Hervey circled away, trying to get between Berne and the ship, between Berne and the station, between Berne and the things that the big man had always wanted, the riches and comfort for which he had been prepared to murder....