DUEL IN BLACK

By JOHN FOSTER WEST

In Luna's shroud-like shadows two men lay waiting
for each other's move, even their guns obscured.
But the dancing space moths weren't fooled.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Young Ron Crag fused the edge of his claim tag to the metal vein inthe quartzite rock with his heat gun, then with heavy-shod fingers hetugged at the small copper disk, but it remained firmly in place.

"That makes you owner according to law, Mr. Crag," he murmured. In thelonely, rugged reaches of Luna's north country a man had to talk tosomeone. "A real lode looks like. Richest uranium lode I've seen inmany a Lunar June. Bring me a nice roll if some of those rotten claimjumpers don't—"

Automatically he grasped the hilt of his gun, loosening it in theholster. He sauntered toward the catatread, parked near the southernrim of the small crater, near the mouth of the gorge.

He could see several purple, nebulous space moths fluttering around theengine of his vehicle. Crag watched them as he approached the machine;they dipped, fluttered and weaved about the catatread, many of themwrapping themselves about the warm metal of the engine and eagerlyabsorbing any heat present. They reminded Ron Crag more of translucentamoeba wreathing through the nothingness of space than moths, but someancient had dubbed them moths and moths they had remained.

They ranged in size from the area of a man's hand to about three squarefeet. He knew two things about them; they could detect the slightestrise in temperature over a distance of fifty yards, and they did notlike the intense, constant heat of the two-weeks lunar days. Theyapparently disappeared into craters and fissures during the hotter partof the day, and came out after the setting of the sun.

"Good thing my suit and thermocubes are completely insulated," hemuttered, "or there'd probably be about ten thousand of them wrappedaround me, drinking up the heat."

He dropped his hands to the two metal blocks built on to the suit highon each hip. Those two mechanisms were almost as important as hisoxygen tank. They generated the heat conducted to the material of thesuit and protected him from the 153° C of the lunar nights. Of course,he could last awhile with only one of the units functioning. A mangot into the habit of checking them during the long nights; his lifedepended on them—them and the oxygen tank, and sometimes the gun.


The pale, turquoise disk of Earth rode low in the heavens above theserrated Alps, towering above him, illuminating the rugged fastnessesin a sort of aqua glow. Earth, now at full, lighted Luna many timesbrighter than a full moon had ever lighted her. But the countlessthousands of shadows cast by lava stalagmites, spires, boulders andmountain peaks were pits of nothingness. Crag walked into the Stygianblackness cast by a stalagmite and disappeared as completely as thoughswallowed up by a dark hole in the moon's surface. He passed on throughthe shadow and reappeared abruptly on the other side. He himself casta long, black shadow, more weird because it appeared to be a black pitsliding over the floor of the crater.

Instinctively Ron Crag crouched as the pencil of flame streaked pasthis head. He could not feel the heat through the insulated suit, but heknew it had missed him by scant inches. He wheeled and darted back intothe shadow he had just quitted, his gun leaping into his hand.

He saw a burly form dart into the shadow of a massive boulder acrossthe basin from him. He started to snap a bea

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