Guns of Mars 42
A Martian action-adventure by The Legend Chuck Dixon
CHAPTER 11.3
Kal lay on his back panting from his exertions, the thrill of fear receding only to be renewed by the dire noises below. A rumbling growl echoed up to him along with the crunch of shifting gravel as the huge predator prowled back and forth beneath the outcropping. Kal stood now to walk to the edge of his refuge and, as he raised his eyes, he saw the curious sight of the bounty man ascending the far wall of the canal.
The man did not climb hand over hand up the escarpment as Kal had climbed to this place. Rather he leapt from one ledge to another in great bounds. The thark gauged that the man was jumping many times his height in order to reach the shelves and ledges that ascended the wall to the east. He could scarcely credit what he was seeing. And yet it stirred a memory in him, prodding at a question he had kept cossetted away in his mind over the days since his capture by the bounty man.
“Damned mongrel,” he hissed.
There was no time for Kal to ponder the past. His present was dire and his immediate future bleak. Standing at the edge of the precipice, he looked down to see the orluk moving about below. When it caught sight of his silhouette against the sky it let out a roar that shook the rock under Kal’s sandals. It was exploring the rocky slope of the crater, looking for a way at its prey. The outcropping jutted out over the rubble leaving a sharply receding angle beneath it that was impossible even for this mighty creature to clamber up. But, being a wily hunter, the orluk was not prepared to give up its prize so easily. It sought other ways to get atop the jagged point to where the thark stood so tantalizing.
Kal weighed his options as well, studying the range above him. The outcropping stuck out from a sheer wall of nickel granite laced through with strata of mica and iron. It offered nothing in the way of a path or grips to aid a climb. Still tied to the saddle of his now dead mount, he had a loop of stout rope, braided from strips of thoat leather. It would have served little use even if he had it. The natural edifice rose higher than the length of his line could ever reach.
If he could not go up then he must go down. Impossible as long as the armored fury continued to prowl below. And it showed no signs of departing.
Perhaps if he could kill it and then descend safely. He looked about him, hoping to find a boulder to shove down on its skull. The only loose stones he could find were no bigger than his own head. He had his pistol and few dozen rounds. Its caliber measured one quarter of the size of the rounds his rifle fired. He would need to strike the orluk in a most sensitive place. One of its six eyes. It might not kill but could serve to drive it off. Or, if fortune favored him, an accurate shot through an eye might pierce the creature’s brain pan and bring it down.
He dropped to his belly and braced his pistol in two of his hands, levered down toward the orluk which turned to him again to bellow defiance.
The front tang of the pistol trained on one of the centermost eyes, Kal squeezed the trigger.
The weapon jumped in his hand; his vision obscured by the cloud of white smoke. He looked down and recoiled at the orluk leaping up at him, a red rent in its scalp where his bullet had only creased its skull.
Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.
