Free Nine Rarities by Ray Bradbury, James Settles Page B

away from the black ship. Skeel exited quickly, snatched out his electro-pistol and took careful aim. He fired.
     
    The distance was a little too great. The beam hacked down, cutting a shallow path in the rock immediately behind the running figure. The figure looked back but didn't stop running. Skeel grunted and went leaping after it in long swinging strides. He was very casual and confident now. This was all so familiar....
     
    Familiar? It was too darned familiar! Skeel stopped and shielded his eyes against the surface glare of sunlight. He stared at the low line of cliffs toward which the figure was running. A strange, insistent hammering seemed to pound away at Skeel's brain. And then, with a little thrill he knew! This was the same asteroid where he had chased his last quarry, in circumstances very similar to this! Those might be the very cliffs where he had killed young—what was his name? Didn't matter now.
     
    Skeel leaped forward again. For a moment he kept the figure In sight, then it seemed to dissolve in the sunlight and disappear. That puzzled him, until he came very close and saw a little cave mouth in the bosom of the cliff. It was there his quarry had fled. Skeel chuckled deep in his throat. He loosened the gun in his belt. Swell! It was as good as over now. Whenever he got this close to the victim he stuck with it to the finish.
     
     
     
    SKEEL stood just within the darkened cave, listening, pistol clutching in his corded hand. A narrow passage seemed to lead slightly downward. Far along it he saw a dim light glow that was not sunlight.
     
    He made his way carefully toward that phenomenon. Soon the sides of the rocky cave were sprinkled with little flat creatures about the size of a silver dollar. They were miniature beacons, exuding light through their tenuous, transparent surfaces! Yet it wasn't phosphorescence Skeel stopped to examine one of them. It was more like actual sunlight, but there was no heat. He touched one of them gingerly, the light immediately went out and it became the same gray color of the stone to which it clung.
     
    Skeel plunged on. Soon the walls became thick with the blazing things. But as he ran by, the vibration of his leaden shoes seemed to frighten them. They blinked off, huge patches of them, remaining gray and quiescent 'til he had passed. Then they came on again. As a result he was running in a constant little patch of darkness, with light ahead and light behind, but always darkness where the reverberation of his pounding feet frightened the button-lichen things.
     
    The tunnel turned and twisted, and several other large ones branched from it. There was no further sight of his quarry. Skeel moved more slowly now. He clicked on his helmet radio but heard no sound of receding feet. Nevertheless he knew his quarry had passed this way not many minutes before, because a few of the light-creatures ahead of him were blinking on again laggardly. Grim-lipped now, a weapon in hand, Skeel pressed on a little more slowly and watched and listened.
     
    He stopped in a dim little grotto where three tunnel mouths gaped. He hesitated, then chose the tunnel to the left and proceeded along it with infinite caution. Still there was no sign his quarry had come this way. Skeel suddenly realized he had acted with foolhardy recklessness. This might be a trap! He started to turn back. "Stand right where you are!"
     
     
     
    THE words rasped through his helmet phones and echoed in his ears. Something jabbed into his ribs with a viciousness that made him grunt.
     
    Skeel slowly raised his arms but the voice rasped again:
     
    "Don't raise your hands! Drop them to your side. Slowly! That's it. Now drop your gun."
     
    Skeel did so. The figure behind him swooped and picked it up.
     
    "Now you can turn around."
     
    Skeel did that too, then expressed himself in three thunderous words. "Blazes! A female!"
     
    "Sure. But don't let it give you ideas." She stepped back a pace keeping the two