Space Prison | Page 9

quite sundown. Prentiss ordered all the guard
fires lighted and all the women and children into the shelters. Fifteen
minutes later the storm finally broke.
It came as a roaring downpour of cold rain. Complete darkness came
with it and the wind rose to a velocity that made the trees lean. An hour
went by and the wind increased, smashing at the shelters with a
violence they had not been built to withstand. The prowler skin
lashings held but the canvas and blankets were ripped into streamers
that cracked like rifle shots in the wind before they were torn
completely loose and flung into the night.
One by one the guard fires went out and the rain continued, growing
colder and driven in almost horizontal sheets by the wind. The women
and children huddled in chilled misery in what meager protection the
torn shelters still gave and there was nothing that could be done to help
them.

The rain turned to snow at midnight, a howling blizzard through which
Prentiss's light could penetrate but a few feet as he made his rounds. He
walked with slogging weariness, forcing himself on. He was no longer
young--he was fifty--and he had had little rest.
He had known, of course, that successful leadership would involve
more sacrifice on his part than on the part of those he led. He could
have shunned responsibility and his personal welfare would have
benefited. He had lived on alien worlds almost half his life; with a rifle
and a knife he could have lived, until Ragnarok finally killed him, with
much less effort than that required of him as leader. But such an action
had been repugnant to him, unthinkable. What he knew of survival on
hostile worlds might help the others to survive.
So he had assumed command, tolerating no objections and disregarding
the fact that he would be shortening his already short time to live on
Ragnarok. It was, he supposed, some old instinct that forbade the
individual to stand aside and let the group die.
The snow stopped an hour later and the wind died to a frigid moaning.
The clouds thinned, broke apart, and the giant star looked down upon
the land with its cold, blue light.
The prowlers came then.
They feinted against the east and west guard lines, then hit the south
line in massed, ferocious attack. Twenty got through, past the
slaughtered south guards, and charged into the interior of the camp. As
they did so the call, prearranged by him in case of such an event, went
up the guard lines:
"Emergency guards, east and west--close in!"
In the camp, above the triumphant, demoniac yammering of the
prowlers, came the screams of women, the thinner cries of children,
and the shouting and cursing of men as they tried to fight the prowlers
with knives and clubs. Then the emergency guards--every third man
from the east and west lines--came plunging through the snow, firing as

they came.
The prowlers launched themselves away from their victims and toward
the guards, leaving a woman to stagger aimlessly with blood spurting
from a severed artery and splashing dark in the starlight on the
blue-white snow. The air was filled with the cracking of gunfire and the
deep, savage snarling of the prowlers. Half of the prowlers broke
through, leaving seven dead guards behind them. The others lay in the
snow where they had fallen and the surviving emergency guards turned
to hurry back to their stations, reloading as they went.
The wounded woman had crumpled down in the snow and a first aid
man knelt over her. He straightened, shaking his head, and joined the
others as they searched for injured among the prowlers' victims.
They found no injured; only the dead. The prowlers killed with grim
efficiency.
* * * * *
"John----"
John Chiara, the young doctor, hurried toward him. His dark eyes were
worried behind his frosted glasses and his eyebrows were coated with
ice.
"The wood is soaked," he said. "It's going to be some time before we
can get fires going. There are babies that will freeze to death before
then."
Prentiss looked at the prowlers lying in the snow and motioned toward
them. "They're warm. Have their guts and lungs taken out."
"What----"
Then Chiara's eyes lighted with comprehension and he hurried away
without further questions.
Prentiss went on, to make the rounds of the guards. When he returned

he saw that his order had been obeyed.
The prowlers lay in the snow as before, their savage faces still twisted
in their dying snarls, but snug and warm inside them babies slept.
* * * * *
The prowlers attacked again and again and when the wan sun lifted to
shine down on the white, frozen land there were five