The Tenth Planet Read Online Free Page B

was no point in completing his sentence. He saw a brilliant flash of light. The titanium cladding of the torus conducted the shock of the explosion to his boots; and the dull crump reverberated in his helmet.
    He saw something grotesque spin out from the dark side of the vessel into sunlight. It was a nightmare. It was the remains of a man in a shattered space-suit.
    Leo Davison had been eviscerated by the explosion. His entrails streamed out from his stomach like bright tattered ribbons, dripping globules of blood and fluid that froze almost instantly, glittering like crystals of red fire in the sunlight.
    Arms akimbo, the body rotated slowly, drifting astern under the force of the blast.
    Idris wanted to vomit; but to be sick in a space-suit was a certain sentence of death. He forced back the nausea, but compelled himself to watch. The rotating figure dwindled rapidly as it was propelled away into the blackness, until it seemed like a bright star, then a faint star, then no more than a pinpoint of light dissolving in a jet infinity.
    Idris became aware that Orlando was calling him frantically.
    “Captain! Captain Hamilton! Please answer! Do you hear me? Urgently request acknowledgement.”
    “Sorry, Orlando. My mind seized up. Leo is dead. He blew himself trying to get the bomb off Three leg.” He peered into the blackness, turning his head lamp to maximum power. “Three leg is deformed and the torus is ruptured. There seems little point in making a complete investigation now. I’m coming inboard. I’ve had enough.”
    There were tears in his eyes; but they wouldn’t roll down his cheeks because of zero gravity. They just filmed over his eyeballs, partially blinding him. That wouldn’t do. He had to see clearly in order to get back into the
Dag
. He shook his head violently in the space suit. Some of the tiny globules splattered on his visor. Some just floated about until he inhaled them, coughing a little. Well, at least it was a new sensation, he told himself grimly—to choke on one’s own tears.

5
    T HE NEWS OF the disaster had been beamed to Mars, the second internal search had been carried out with negative results, and a wake was held for Leo.
    The wake was boozy and light-hearted—or, at least, superficially light-hearted—as Leo would have wanted it to be. They did not mourn his death so much as celebrate his life. Orlando recalled how he and Leo had gone on a splendid drinking jag at the nearest bar to Goddard Field while waiting to see if they would be selected for the shoot to Earth. Almost single-handed Leo had taken on and totally routed four white Martians who had loudly proclaimed that black Martians were inferior. Leo, who was black, had not started the fight. Orlando, being white, had politely asked the offending four to calm down. One of them had thrown beer in his face and another had kicked him in the stomach. At which point Leo went into action—Leo with his Master’s Degree in Nuclear Engineering and his utter hatred of violence.
    The way Orlando told it, Leo, the self-declared pacifist, became transformed instantly into a machine of destruction. He had used his hard negro skull like a hammer of vengeance, butting the face of the man who had kicked Orlando so that he fell back with a broken nose and blood streaming from a smashed mouth. While Orlando was still on the deck, another of the rough-house boys came at Leo with a brokenbottle. He never arrived. A one-foot reverse drop-kick caught him in the throat. He gurgled briefly, then went down like a felled tree. By which time the remaining two were making for the door. By which time also, Orlando had recovered enough to grab one, while Leo locked the other in a terrible bear-hug.
    “This inferior black Martian,” he said softly, “resents the way you spilled beer over my white friend. It was a terrible waste of beer, to say nothing of the mild indignity suffered by my friend. Go to sleep, little man. Go to sleep.” Then Leo’s