Смешной враг

Тогда Джо Берн сошел с ума. Он был немного безумен в течение нескольких часов; возможно, он был безумен с той первой сумасшедшей погони по кошмарному ландшафту. Он крутил свой впускной клапан до упора, смеялся, выл и радостно прыгал, когда кислород хлынул в его голодные вздымающиеся легкие. Он прыгнул в звездный полумрак и закричал, глядя на полосатый лик Юпитера в небе. Он что-то пробормотал, поднял тяжелое ружье и швырнул его в Сэма Херви, а потом рассмеялся от удовольствия, когда оно уплыло и легко упало на камни.

Он все еще смеялся, когда впускной клапан забурлил, зашипел и замолчал, и кислорода больше не было. Он медленно повернулся и, тяжело пошатываясь, направился к кораблю.

Joe Berne went mad then. He had been a little mad for hours; perhaps he had been mad since that first crazy chase across the nightmare landscape. He twisted his intake valve all the way and laughed and howled and capered gleefully as the oxygen flooded into his starved heaving lungs. He leaped in the star-hung dimness and shrieked at the banded face of Jupiter in the sky. He gibbered, and he picked up the heavy gun and hurled it at Sam Hervey, and then he laughed with pleasure as it floated away and fell lightly to the rocks.

He was still laughing when the intake valve bubbled and hissed and was silent, and there was no more oxygen. Slowly he turned away, staggering heavily toward the ship, toward the oxygen tanks. The colored lights had been turned on again. A great hammer was crashing against his brain. Someone was pushing his eyeballs out of their sockets; someone had strong fingers locked tight around his throat. He choked and tore at his throat with his own hands. He fell, face downward, and tried to crawl, and in his chest he could hear the sucking and rattling.

Berne was conscious of Sam Hervey standing over him, blotting out the pale cold light of the great planet above. He was conscious of the face peering through the plate into his own darkening features. He tried to reach out, to grasp Hervey, to drag him down into the pain-streaked night with him, but his arms would not move. Through the lightning-shot darkness he heard that soft mocking voice.

"Good night, Joe," Sam Hervey said. "You always were careless."