Jonner could see him, too. Jonner stopped to hurl a stone. It took a while for the missile to cover the distance. It passed below Kraag's level, some distance away from him.

"Why don't you give it up, Jonner?" asked Kraag. "You can't hurt me with a rock, at this distance."

"Why should I?" retorted Jonner. "All I have to do is wait till night."

"Sure, wait. But I'm not waiting, Jonner. One of us is going to win this thing before night, or I'm going to blast the radio so you can't reach Marsport. If I have to do that, I'll track you down tomorrow—and I think I can stay outside and fight you away from the sphere tonight."

"Getting desperate enough to fight like a man now, aren't you, Kraag? If you want a showdown today, I'm willing."

Kraag's mind was clear now. He had the situation under control. He glanced around the landscape at the scattered portions of the wrecked ship. There was the cargo hull, burst open, where Jonner had gotten his sledge hammer and the pick to bury Stein. Over there was a red sphere, ripped by the jagged gash of the meteor collision—one of the two hydrazine fuel tanks. The yellow sphere 30 degrees away from it was an oxygen fuel tank.

Kraag leveled Jonner's gun and fired at the yellow sphere. The kick knocked him off the sphere, but as he somersaulted backwards he saw the projectile hit the ground. Still low and to one side. But he noticed something on the gun, he hadn't seen before.

There were ridges for sighting along the barrel of Jonner's pistol. Regaining his position atop the sphere, Kraag pressed his back against the observatory dome, to brace himself against the gun's backlash. He aimed carefully at the yellow sphere and fired again.

The yellow tank jumped—not from the impact, but from the spout of freed, expanding oxygen through the hole the bullet made. It moved and wobbled about in the weak gravity, like a dying balloon. When it stopped, Kraag knew he had destroyed half of Jonner's oxygen supply.

"Good shot, Kraag," congratulated Jonner, with fatalistic irony in his tone. "Of course, I'm not as big a target as the tanks."

"Each target in its own time," replied Kraag triumphantly, and looked around for the other yellow sphere.

He had been afraid it might be one of the parts that had fallen over 

 Prev. P 20/23 next