T
heir idyl at the mines lasted exactly twenty-seven hours. Denver showed Darbor around, explained some of the technicalities of moon-mining to her. The girl misused some precious water to try washing the alley-filth from her clothes. Her experiment was not a success and the diaphanous wisps of moonsilver dissolved. She stood in the wrapped blanket and was too tired and depressed even to cry.
"I guess it wasn't practical," she decided ruefully. "It did bunch up in the weirdest places in your spare spacesuit. Have you any old rag I could borrow?"
Denver found cause for unsafe mirth in the spectacle of her blanketed disaster. "I'll see." He rooted about in a locker and found a worn pair of trousers which he threw to the girl. A sweater, too shrunken and misshapen for him to wear again, came next. Dismayed, she inspected the battered loot; then was inspired to quick alterations. Pant-legs cut off well above the baggy knees made passable shorts; the sweater bulged a trifle at the shoulders, it fit adequately elsewhere—and something more than adequately.
Charley fled her vicinity in extremes of voluble embarrassment as she changed and zipped up the substitute garments.
"Nice legs," Denver observed, which was an understatement.
"Watch out you don't skin those precious knees again," she warned darkly.
Time is completely arbitrary on the Moon as far as Earth people are concerned. One gets used to prolonged light and dark periods. Earth poked above the horizon, bathing the heights of the range with intense silver-blue light. But moonshadows lay heavily in the hollows and the deep gorges were still pools of intense gloom. Clocks are set to the meaningless twenty-four hour divisions of day and night on Earth, which have nothing to do with two-week days and nights on Luna. After sunset, with Earthlight still strong and pure and deceptively warm-looking, the landscapes become a barren, haunted wasteland.
Time itself seems unreal.
Time passed swiftly. The idyl was brief. For twenty-seven Earth-hours after their landing at the mines came company...!
An approaching ship painted a quick-dying trail of fire upon the black vault of sky. It swooped suddenly from nowhere, and the trapped fugitives debated flight or useless defense.
Alone, Denver would have stayed and fought, however uneven and hopeless the battle. But he found the girl a mental block to all thoughts of open, pitched battle on the shadowy, moonsilvered slopes. He might surprise the pursuers and flush them by some type of ambush. But they would be too many for him, and his feeble try would end either in death or capture.
Neither alternative appealed to him. With Darbor, he had suddenly found himself possessed of new tenacity toward life, and he had desperate, painful desire to live for her.
He chose flight.
T
he ship dropped short-lived rocket landing flares, circled and came in for a fast landing on the cleared strip of brittle-crusted ash.
Some distance from the hastily-patched and now hastily abandoned mine buildings, Tod Denver and Darbor paused and shot hasty, fearful glances toward the landed ship. By Earthlight, they could distinguish its lines, though not the color. It was a drab shadow now against the vivid grayness of slopes. Figures tiny from distance emerged from it and scattered across the flat and up into the clustered buildings. A few stragglers went over to explore and investigate Denver's space sled in the unlikely possibility that he and the girl had trusted to its meager and dubious protection.
Besides the ship, the hunters would find evidence of recent occupation in the living quarters, from which Denver had removed the frozen corpse before permitting Darbor to assist with the crude remodeling which he had undertaken. Afterward, when the mine buildings and exposed shafts had been turned out on futile quest for the fugitives, the search would spread. Tracks should be simple enough to follow, once located. Denver had anticipated this potential clue to the pursuit, and had kept their walking to the bare, rocky heights of the spur as long as possible.
He hoped to be able to locate the old Martian working, but the chance was slim. Calculating the shadow-apex of Mitre Peak at 2017 ET was complicated by several unknown quantities. Which peak was Mitre Peak? Was that shadow-apex Earth-shadow or Sun-shadow? And had he started out in the correct direction to find the line of deep-cut arrow markings at all?
The first intangible resolved itself. One mitre-shaped peak stood out alone and definite above the sharply defined silhouettes of the mountains. It must be Mitre Peak. It had to be.
The next question was the light source casting the shadow-apex. There were two possible answers. It was possible to estimate the approximate location of either sun or Earth at a given time, but calculations involved in working out too many possibilities on different Earth-days of the Lunar-day made the Earth's shadow-casting the likeliest prospect. Neither location was particularly exact, and probably Laird Martin had expected his directions to be gone into under less harrowing circumstances than those in which Denver now found himself. With time for trial and error one could eventually locate the place.
But Denver was hurried. He trod upon one of the markings while he still sought the elusive shadow apex.
After that, it was a grim race to follow the markings to the old mines, and to get under cover behind defensible barricades in time to repel invasion.
They played a nerve-wracking game of hare and hounds in tricky floods of Earthlight, upon slopes and spills of broken rock, amid a goblin's garden of towering jagged spires. It was tense work over the bad going, and the light was both distorted and insufficient. In shadow, they groped blindly from arrow to arrow. In the patches of Earthglare, they fled at awkward, desperate speed.
Life and death were the stakes. Life, or a fighting chance to defend life, possible wealth from the ancient workings, made a glittering goal ahead. And ever the gray hounds snapped at their heels, with death in some ugly guise the penalty for losing the game.
Charley was ecstatic. He gamboled and capered, he zoomed and zigzagged, he essayed quick, climbing spirals and almost came to grief among the tangled pinnacles on the ridge of the hogback. He swooped downward again in a series of shallow, easy glides and began the performance all over again. It was a game for him, too. But a game in which he tried only to astound himself, with swift, dizzy miracles of magnetic movement.
Charley enjoyed himself hugely. He was with the two people he liked most. He was having a spirited game among interlaced shadows and sudden, substantial obstacles of rock. He nuzzled the fleeing pair playfully, and followed them after his own lazy and intricate and incredibly whimsical fashion. His private mode of locomotion was not bounded by the possibilities involved in feet and tiring legs. He scampered and had fun.
It was not fun for Tod Denver and Darbor. The girl's strength was failing. She lagged, and Denver slowed his pace to support her tottering progress.
Without warning, the mine entrance loomed before them. It was old and crumbly with a thermal erosion resembling decay.
It was high and narrow and forbiddingly dark.
Tod Denver had brought portable radilumes, which were needed at once. Inside the portals was no light at all. Thick, tangible dark blocked the passage. It swallowed light.
Just inside, the mine gallery was too wide for easy defense. Further back, there was a narrowing.
D
enver seized on the possibilities for barricading and set to work, despite numbed and weary muscles. Walking on the Moon is tiring for muscles acquired on worlds of greater gravity. He was near exhaustion, but the stimulus of fear is strong. He worked like a maniac, hauling materials for blockade, carrying the smaller ingredients and rolling or dragging the heavier. A brief interval of rest brought Darbor to his side. She worked with him and helped with the heavier items. Fortunately, the faint gravity eased their task, speeded it.
For pursuit had not lagged. Their trail had been found and followed.
From behind his barricade, Denver picked off the first two hired thugs of the advance guard as they toiled upward, too eagerly impatient for caution. A network of hastily-aimed beams of heat licked up from several angles of the slope, but none touched the barricade. The slope, which flattened just outside the entrance made exact shooting difficult, made a direct hit on the barricade almost impossible, unless one stood practically inside the carved entrance-way. Denver inched to the door and fired.
The battle was tedious, involved, but a stalemate. Lying on his belly, Denver wormed as close as he dared to the break of slope outside the door. There, he fired snap shots at everything that moved on the slopes. Everything that moved on the slopes made a point of returning the gesture. Some shots came from places he had seen no movement.
It went on for a long time. It was pointless, wanton waste of heat-blaster ammunition. But it satisfied some primal urge in the human male without solving anything.
Until Darbor joined him, Denver did not waste thought upon the futilities of the situation. Her presence terrified him, and he urged her back inside. She was stubborn, but complied when he dragged her back with him.
"Now stay inside, you fool," she muttered, her voice barely a whisper in his communication amplifier.
"You stay inside," he commanded with rough tenderness. They both stayed inside, crouched together behind the barricade.
"I think I got three of them," he told her. "There seemed to be eight at first. Some went back to the ship. For more men or supplies, I don't know. I don't like this."
"Relax," she suggested. "You've done all you can."
"I guess it's back to your gilded cage for you, baby," he said. "My money didn't last."
"Sometimes you behave like a mad dog," she observed. "I'm not sure I like you. You enjoyed that butchery out there. You hated to come inside. What did it prove? There are too many of them. They'll kill us, eventually. Or starve us out. Have you any bright ideas?"
Denver was silent. None of his ideas were very bright. He was at the end of his rope. He had tied a knot in it and hung on. But the rope seemed very short and very insecure.
"Hang on, I guess. Just hang on and wait. They may try a rush. If they do I'll bathe the entrance in a full load from my blaster. If they don't rush, we sit it out. Sit and wait for a miracle. It won't happen but we can hope."
Darbor tried to hug the darkness around her. She was a Martian, tough-minded she hoped. It would be nasty, either way. But death was not pleasant. She must try to be strong and face whatever came. She shrugged and resigned herself.
"When the time comes I'll try to think of something touching and significant to say," she promised.
"You hold the fort," Denver told her. "And don't hesitate to shoot if you have to. There's a chance to wipe them out if they try to force in all at once. They won't, but—"
"Where are you going? For a walk?"
"Have to see a man about a dog. There may be a back entrance. I doubt it, since Martian workings on the Moon were never very deep. But I'd like a look at the jackpot. Do you mind?"
Darbor sighed. "Not if you hurry back."
Deep inside the long gallery was a huge, vaulted chamber. Here, Denver found what he sought. There was no back entrance. The mine was a trap that had closed on him and Darbor.
Old Martian workings, yes. But whatever the Martians had sought and delved from the mooncrust was gone. Layered veins had petered out, were exhausted, empty. Some glittering, crystalline smears remained in the crevices but the crystals were dull and life-less. Denver bent close, sensed familiarity. The substance was not unknown. He wetted a finger and probed with it, rubbed again and tested for taste.
The taste was sharp and bitter. As bitter as his disappointment. It was all a grim joke. Valuable enough once to be used as money in the old days on earth. But hardly valuable enough, then, even in real quantity, to be worth the six lives it had cost up to now—counting his and Darbor's as already lost. First, Laird Martin, with his last tragic thoughts of a tiny girl on Earth, now orphaned. Then the three men down the slope, hideous in their bulged and congealing death. Himself and Darbor next on the list, with not much time to go. All for a few crystals of—Salt!
T
he end was as viciously ironic as the means had been brutal, but greed is an ugly force. It takes no heed of men and their brief, futile dreams.
Denver shrugged and rejoined his small garrison. The girl, in spite of the comradeship of shared danger, was as greedy as the others outside. Instinctively, Denver knew that, and he found the understanding in himself to pity her.
"Are they still out there?" he asked needlessly.
Darbor nodded. "What did you find?"
He debated telling her the truth. But why add the bitterness to the little left of her life? Let her dream. She would probably die without ever finding out that she had thrown herself away following a mirage. Let her dream and die happy.
"Enough," he answered roughly. "But does it matter?"
Her eyes rewarded his deceit, but the light was too poor for him to see them. It was easy enough to imagine stars in them, and even a man without illusions can still dream.
"Maybe it will matter," she replied. "We can hope for a miracle. It will make all the difference for us if the miracle happens."
Denver laughed. "Then the money will make a difference if we live through this? You mean you'll stay with me?"
Darbor answered too quickly. "Of course." Then she hesitated, as if something of his distaste echoed within her. She went on, her voice strange. "Sure, I'm mercenary. I've been broke in Venusport, and again here on Luna. It's no fun. Poverty is not all the noble things the copybooks say. It's undignified and degrading. You want to stop washing after a while, because it doesn't seem to matter. Yes, I want money. Am I different from other people?"
Denver laughed harshly. "No. I just thought for a few minutes that you were. I hoped I was at the head of your list. But let's not quarrel. We're friends in a jam together. No miracle is going to happen. It's stupid to fight over a salt mine, empty at that, when we're going to die. I'm like you; I wanted a miracle to happen, but mine didn't concern money. We both got what we asked for, that's all. If you bend over far enough somebody will kick you in the pants. I'm going out, Darbor. Pray for me."
The blankness of her face-plate turned toward him. A glitter, dark and opaque, was all he could make out.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I know it was the wrong answer. But don't be a fool. He'll kill you, and I'm afraid to be in the dark, alone."
"I'll leave Charley with you."
Denver broke the girl's clasp on his arm and edged slow to the doorway. He shouted.
"Hey, Caltis!"
There was stunning silence. Then a far, muted crackle in his earphones.
A voice answered, "Yes? I'm here. What's on your mind, funny boy?"
"A parley."
"Nuts, but come on out. I'll talk."
"You come up," Denver argued. "I don't trust you."
Big Ed Caltis considered the proposition. "How do I know you won't try to nail me for hostage?"
"You don't. But I'm not a fool. What good would it do even if I killed you. Your men are down there. They'd still want the mine. I don't think they care enough about you to deal. They'd kill us anyhow. Bring your gun if it makes you feel more like a man."
After an interval Big Ed Caltis appeared in the doorway. As he entered Denver retreated into the shadow-zone until he stood close beside the rude barricade.
"I'll bargain with you, Caltis. You can have the workings. Let us go free, with an hour's start in my space sled. I'll sign over any share we could claim and agree never to bother you again. It's no use to a corpse. Just let us go."
Caltis gave a short laugh. In the earphones, it sounded nasty.
"No deal, Denver. I hate your guts. And I want Darbor. I've got both of you where I want you, sewed up. We can sit here and wait. We've plenty of air, food and water. You'll run short. I want you to come out, crawling. She can watch you die, slowly, because I'm not giving you any air, water or food. Then I want her to squirm a while before I kick her back into the sewers. You can't bargain. I have her, you, the workings. I've got what I want."
Hate and anger strangled Denver's reply. Caltis skulked back out of sight. Without moving, Denver hailed him again.
"Okay, puttyface!" Denver screamed. "You asked for it. I'm coming out. Stand clear and order off your thugs or I'll squeeze you till your guts squirt out your nose like toothpaste from a tube. I'll see how much man there is left in you. It'll be all over the slope when I'm through."
His taunt drew fire as he had hoped it would. He dodged quickly behind the shelter of the barricade. A beam of dazzling fire penciled the rock wall. It crackled, spread, flaring to incredible heat and light. It exploded, deluging the gallery with glare and spattering rock.
After the glare, darkness seemed thick enough to slice.
In that second of stunned reaction blindness, Denver was leaping the barricade and sprinting toward the entrance. Caltis came to meet him. Both fired at once. Both missed. The random beams flicked at the rough, timbered walls and lashed out with thunderous violence.
Locked together, the men pitched back and forth. They rocked and swayed, muscles straining. It was deadlock again. Denver was youth and fury. Caltis had experience and the training of a fighter. It was savage, lawless, the sculptured stance of embattled champions. Almost motionless, as forces canceled out. The battle was equal.
W
hile they tangled, both blocked, Darbor slipped past them and stood outside the entrance. She was exposed, a clear target. But the men below dared not fire until they knew where Caltis was, what had happened to him. She held the enemy at bay. Gun ready, Darbor faced down the slopes. It was not necessary to pull trigger. Not for the moment. She waited and hoped and dared someone to move.
Neither man gave first. It was the weakened timbering that supported the gallery roof. Loose stones rained down. Dry, cold and brittle wood sagged under strain. Both wild shots had taken shattering effect. Timbers yielded, slowly at first, then faster. Showering of loose stones became a steady stream. A minor avalanche.
Darbor heard the sound or caught some vibration through her helmet microphones. The men were too involved to notice. Caltis heard her. He got a cruel nosehold, twisted Denver's nose like an instrument dial. Denver screamed, released his grip. In the scramble, his foot slipped. Darbor cried out shrill warning.
Breaking free, Caltis bolted in panic toward the entrance.
The fall of rock was soundless. It spilled down in increasing torrents. Larger sections of ceiling were giving away.
Above the prostrate Denver hovered a poised phantom of eerie light. Charley, bored, had gone to sleep. Awakening, he found a game still going on. A fine new game. It was fascinating. He wanted to join the fun. Like an angle of reflected light cast by a turning mirror, he darted.
The running figure aroused his curiosity. Charley streamed through the collapsing gallery. He caught up with Caltis just inside the entrance. With a burble of insane, twittering glee, he went into action. It was all in the spirit of things. Just another delightful game.
Like a thunderbolt he hurtled upon Caltis, tangled with him. It was absurd, insane. Man and moondog went down together in a silly sprawl. Sparks flew, became a confused tesseract of luminous motion. Radiance blazed up and danced and flickered and no exact definition of the intertwined bodies was possible. Glowing lines wove fat webs of living color. It was too swift, too involved for any sane perception.
A wild, sprawling of legs, arms and body encircled and became part of the intricacies of speeding, impossible light.
It was a mess.
Some element or combination of forces in Charley, inspired by excitement and sheer delight, made unfortunate contact with ground currents of vagrant electricity. Electricity ceased to be invisible. It became sizzling, immense flash, in which many complexities made part of a simple whole. It was spectacular but brief. It was a flaming vortex of interlocked spirals of light and color and naked force. It was fireworks.
And it was the end of Big Ed Caltis. He fried, and hot grease spattered about him. He sizzled like a bug on a hot stove.
When Denver reached the entrance, man and moondog lay in a curious huddle of interrupted action. It was over.
Charley was tired, but he still lived and functioned after his curious fashion. For the moment, he had lost interest in further fun and games. He lay quietly in a corner of rough rock and tried to rebuild his scattered and short-circuited energies. He pulsed and crackled and sound poured in floods of muffled static from the earphones in Denver's helmet.
But this was no time for social amenities. Big Ed Caltis was dead, very dead. But the others down the slope were still alive.
Like avenging angels, Denver and Darbor charged together down the slope. Besiegers scattered and fled in panic as twinned beams of dreadful light and heat scourged their hiding places. They fled through the grotesque shadow patterns of Lunar night. They fled back, some of them, to the black ship which had brought them. And there, they ran straight into the waiting arms of a detail from Space Patrol headquarters.
T
od Denver's friend, the watchman, had talked. From spaceport he had called the Space Patrol and talked where it would do some good. A bit late to be of much use, help had arrived. It took the Space Patrol squads a half hour to round up the scattered survivors.
Darbor went back to the mine-buildings with the Space Patrol lieutenant as escort. Denver trudged wearily back up the slope to recover Charley.
The moondog was in a bad way. He bulged badly amidships and seemed greatly disturbed, not to say temperamental. With tenderness and gentle care, Denver cradled the damaged Charley in his arms and made his way back to the living shack at the mine. Space Cops were just hustling in the last of the prisoners and making ready to return to civilization. Denver thanked them, but with brief curtness, for Charley's condition worried him. He went inside and tried to make his pet comfortable, wondering where one would look on the Moon for a veterinary competent to treat a moondog.
Darbor found him crouched over Charley's impoverished couch upon the metal table.
"I want to say goodbye," she told him. "I'm sorry about Charley. The lieutenant says I can go back with them. So it's back to the bright lights for me."
"Good luck," Denver said shortly, tearing his attention from Charley's flickering gyrations. "I hope you find a man with a big fat bankbook."
"So do I," Darbor admitted. "I could use a new wardrobe. I wish it could have been you. If things had worked out—"
"Forget it," Denver snapped. "There'd have been Martin's kid. She'd have got half anyhow. You wouldn't have liked that."
Darbor essayed a grin. "You know, I've been thinking. Maybe the old guy was my father. It could be. I never knew who my old man was, and I did go to school on Earth. Reform school."
Denver regarded her cynically. "Couldn't be. I'm willing to believe you don't know who your father was. Some women should keep books. But that kid's not Martian."
Darbor shrugged. "Doesn't matter. So long, kid. If you make a big strike, look me up."
The Space Patrol lieutenant was waiting for her. She linked arms with him, and vanished toward the ship. Denver went back to Charley. Intently he studied the weird creature, wondering what to do.
A timid knock startled him. For a moment, wild hope dawned. Maybe Darbor—
But it wasn't Darbor. A strange girl stood in the doorway. She pushed open the inner flap of the airlock and stepped from the valve.
"I was looking around," she explained. "I bummed my way out with the Patrol Ship. Do you mind?"
Denver scowled at her. "Should I?"
The girl tried a smile on him but she looked ill-at-ease. "You look like one of the local boy scouts," she said. "How about helping a lady in distress?"
"I make a hobby of it," he snarled. "I don't even care if they're ladies. But I'm fresh out of romance and slightly soured. And I'm worried about the one friend who's dumb enough to stick by me. You picked a bad time to ask. What do you want?"
The girl smiled shyly. "All right, so you don't look like a boy scout. But I'm still a girl in a jam. I'm tired and broke and hungry. All I want is a sandwich, and maybe a lift to the next town. I should have gone back with the Patrol ship but I guess they forgot me. I thought maybe, if you're going somewhere that's civilized, I could bum a lift. What's wrong with your friend?"
Denver indicated Charley. "Frankly, I don't know." He balked at trying to explain again just what a moondog was. "But who are you? What did you want here?"
The girl stared at him. "Didn't you know? I'm Soleil. My father owned this mine. He thought he'd found something, and sent for me to share it. It took the last of our money to get me here, but I wanted to come. We hadn't seen each other for twenty years. Now he's dead, and I'm broke, alone and scared. I need to get to some place where I can dream up an eating job."
"You're Martin's kid?"
Soleil nodded, absently, looking at Charley. The moondog gave a strange, electronic whimper. There was an odd expression on the girl's face. A flash of inspiration seemed to enlighten her.
"I'll take care of this," she said softly. "You wait outside."
Somewhat later, after blinding displays of erratic lightnings had released a splendor of fantastic color through the view-ports to reflect staggeringly from the mountain walls, a tired girl called out to Tod Denver.
She met him inside the airlock. In her arms snuggled a pile of writhing radiance, like glowing worms. Moonpups. A whole litter of moonpups.
"They're cute," Soleil commented, "but I've never seen anything quite like this before."
"It must have been a delayed fuse," said Denver, wilting. "Here we go again."
He fainted....
A
wakening was painful to Denver. He remembered nightmare, and the latter part of his memory dealt with moonpups. Swarms of moonpups. As if Charley hadn't been enough. He was not sure that he wanted to open his eyes.
He thought he heard the outer flap of the airlock open, then someone pounding on the inner door. Habit of curiosity conquered, and his eyelids blinked. He looked up to find a strange man beside his bed. The man was fat, fussy, pompous. But he looked prosperous, and seemed excited.
Denver glanced warily about the room. After all, he had been strained. Perhaps it was all part of delirium. No sign of the girl either. Could he have imagined her, too? He sighed and remembered Darbor.
"Tod Denver?" asked the fat, prosperous man. "I got your name from a Sergeant of Security Police in Crystal City. He says you own a moondog. Is that true?"
Denver nodded painfully. "I'm afraid it is. What's the charge?"
The stranger seemed puzzled, amused. "This may seem odd to you, but I'm in the market for moondogs. Scientific laboratories all over the system want them, and are paying top prices. The most unusual and interesting life form in existence. But moondogs are scarce. Would you consider parting with yours? I can assure you he'll receive kind treatment and good care. They're too valuable for anything else."
Denver almost blanked out again. It was too much like the more harrowing part of his dreams. He blinked his eyes, but the man was still there.
"One of us is crazy," he mused aloud. "Maybe both of us. I can't sell Charley. I'd miss him too much."
Suddenly, as it happens in dreams, Soleil Martin stood beside him. Her arms were empty, but she stood there, smiling.
"You wouldn't have to sell Charley," she said, giving Denver a curious, thrusting glance. "Had you forgotten that you're now a father, or foster-grandfather, or something. You have moonpups, in quantity. I had to let you lie there while I put the little darlings to bed. And it's not Charley any more, please. Charlotte. It has to be Charlotte."
Denver paled and groaned. He turned hopefully to the fat stranger.
"Say, mister, how many moonpups can you use?"
"All of them, if you'll sell." The man whipped out a signed, blank check, and quickly filled in astronomical figures. Denver looked at it, whistled, then doubted first his sanity, then the check.
"Take them," Denver murmured. "Take them, quick, before you change your mind, or all this evaporates in dream."
A moondog has no nerves. Charley—or Charlotte—had none, but the brood of moonpups had already begun to get on whatever passed for nerves in his electronic make-up. He was glad and relieved to be rid of his numerous progeny. He, or she, showed passionate and embarrassing affection for Denver, and even generously included Soleil Martin in the display.
Denver stared at her suddenly while she helped the commission agent round up his radiant loot and make ready for the return to town. It was as if he were seeing her for the first time. She was pretty. Not beautiful, of course. Just pretty. And nice. He remembered that he was carrying her picture in his pocket.
She was even an Earth-girl. They were almost as scarce in the moon colonies as moondogs.
"Look here," he said. "I have money now. I was going out prospecting but it can wait. I kind of inherited you from your father, you know. Do you need dough or something?"
Soleil laughed. "I need everything. But don't bother. I haven't any claim on you. And I can ride back to the city with Mr. Potts. He looks like a better bet. He can write such big checks, too."
Denver made a face of disgust. "All women are alike," he muttered savagely. "Go on, then—"
Soleil frowned. "Don't say it. Don't even think it. I'm not going anywhere. Not till you go. I just wanted you to ask me nice. I'm staying. I'll go prospecting with you. I like that. Dad made me study minerals and mining. I can be a real help. With that big check, we can get a real outfit."
Denver stopped dreaming. "But you don't know what it's like out there. Just empty miles of loneliness and heat and desert and mountains of bare rock. Not even the minimum comforts. Nights last two Earth weeks. There'd just be you and me and Charlotte."
Soleil smiled fondly. "It listens good, and might be fun. I like Charlotte and you. I'm realistic and strong enough to be a genuine partner."
Tod Denver gasped. "You sure know what you want—Partner!" He grinned. "Now we'll have a married woman along. I was worried about wandering around, unprotected, with a female moondog—"
Soleil laughed. "I think Charlotte needs a chaperone."