Governments watched, frightened at the scene and realized what must be waiting out in space. Huge planes that had been winging over arctic wastes and across vast stretches of sea suddenly got crackling messages that forced them to turn abruptly in their courses and head for the nearest air field—whether it was friend or late enemy.
Far out in space, the void was filled with hulled ships and flaring rockets that suddenly mushroomed into gigantic explosions. Down below, Stan drove the Thuscan ship around the world and then towards Europe again.
He finally forced it to crashland in the Tiergarten in evacuated Berlin.
His own ship landed a block away.
The dazed officers in the compartment looked at him for guidance and he realized that he was still the leader, that they still didn't quite know what to do.
"You'll go out that airlock and you'll fight them," he said crisply. "Hand to hand, if you have to. But you'll have to fight them—and to kill them." He strode to the airlock. "Good luck!"
There was no motion about the other rocket and he thought for a frightening moment that everybody on board had been killed. Then he realized that they were waiting for him to make a move, to show himself for an easy target.
He found a hiding place behind a bit of rubble and adjusted the stud on his heat gun.
They weren't going to stay in their ship long, he thought. He wouldmakethem come out.
He turned the stud to high and aimed the gun at a port near the control room. The crystal in the port colored, glowed, and suddenly fused. Stan could dimly make out the control console and flashed his heater at that. The violet beam touched the controls and they turned red and fused. Then the beam caught a thin fuel line in the console and there was a sudden spurt of white heat.
Seconds later, the fuel tanks erupted with a roar that showered bits of red hot metal over the whole area.
A moment more, he thought....
The air about him was suddenly thick with lancing, violet beams and he felt one touch him lightly on the shoulder, crisping the flesh and setting his shirt on fire. He winced and beat out the flames, keeping an eye on the hatch.
Then the hatch flew open and figures boiled out.
The slaughter was brief, and very thorough. But of all the creatures that boiled out of the hatch, Stan didn't see the two he was looking for.
When it was all over, he walked out to the field and glanced at the bodies. There were none that looked like Tanner or—thank God—Avis.
He was touching one body gingerly with his foot when the young pilot ran up to him.
"There was no action on the other side of the ship, was there, sir?"
"No. Why?"
"One of the ports, sir—fused. And there were no flames near it!"
Stan started running for the other side of the ship. There was the blasted port and then footsteps in the carbonized grass that had been flamed when the ship had landed. He ran quickly over the grass, following the footsteps, then glanced ahead into the city.
He caught one brief glimpse of them. Two figures disappearing behind some rubble, running toward one of the side streets....
And the hoop that Stan knew was in an alley behind the Russian owned and operated department store in the Eastern sector.
Stan dashed through the streets. They were two blocks ahead of him—Tanner and a girl, whom he was half pushing, half pulling.
A beam flared above Stan's head and he ducked and zig-zagged from one side of the street to the other.
The figures turned a corner and Stan fired one last, futile shot at them.
When he finally turned into the street, there was nobody in sight—only the whirling black velvet of the hoop.
He hesitated and then dove through it....
... to a street he had seen once before. The Street of Lepers in Casablanca.
The street was deserted—there were no signs of either Tanner or Avis. He walked slowly down the street, and then there was a rustling noise behind them. He whirled, just in time to see Tanner and Avis disappear into the hoop again.
He ran and plunged in after them. It was going to be difficult, he thought. He would have to leave the vicinity of the hoop to look for them. And once his back was turned, they would be going through the hoop once more.
He caught a quick glimpse of Tanner in the deserted streets of Barcelona, Spain. He almost ran into the two in the empty streets of Shanghai. Madrid, Paris, Stuttgart, Leningrad, Los Angeles, Dallas—the cities flashed by like a deck of cards that was flicked past his eyes. The unending succession of black velvet hoops through which he moved like a man traveling through an infinity of dimensions....
And then the apartment in Bristol and Tanner was there, waiting for him. Simply standing against a table, waiting. Avis was in the far corner, her face frightened and drawn.
Stan paused, eyeing the situation.
"It's been quite a chase, hasn't it?" Tanner asked.
Still the urbane Mr. Tanner, Stan thought.
"I caught you, though, didn't I?"
"It all depends on how you look at it. PerhapsI'vecaughtyou."
Tanner held an unfamiliar weapon in his hand. Stan looked at it curiously and then knew exactly what it was. Tanner had gotten hold of Avis' time pistol. He was going to kill him like William Clark had been killed.
Tanner was going to age him a hundred years in a second.
"Think you'll get away with it, Tanner?"
"Why not? There's nobody to stop me!"
How many times had he died in the last eight years? Stan wondered. How many times had his life been hanging by a thread, waiting for somebody to cut it?
"Stan! Duck!"
Tanner had been distracted just long enough by the shout. Stan dropped to the carpet and rolled against Tanner's legs. Then they were both on the floor. Stan grabbed for the arm which still clung to the time pistol. Tanner grunted and twisted and then....
Stan paled and almost gagged.
Tanner was flickering.
In the background, Avis screamed. And then Mr. Ainsworth was looking at him.
"I'm your friend," the creature said weakly.
Stan weakened and almost let go.
"I'm your friend," the creature repeated softly, triumphantly. "I saved your life, didn't I?"
He was lying in the alley again, back in Chicago, lying there hurt and bleeding. And Mr. Ainsworth had come up to help him. Out of all the millions of people in the city, it was only Mr. Ainsworth who had helped.
"I'm your friend," the creature purred again.
That still, quiet morning when the chill air had hung heavy over the city....
And then the conditioning was totally gone and Stan felt exultant. He hadn't realized....
He gripped the arm harder and twisted and the time pistol went skittering across the carpet.
Mr. Ainsworth looked surprised and faded back into Tanner. A powerful, cold-eyed Tanner who suddenly wrenched free and bent Stan under him. He reached for a water carafe from the table to bring it down to smash Stan's skull.
Stan jerked his head to one side and doubled his legs under him and lashed out with them, catching Tanner in the chest. Tanner staggered backwards towards the hoop, his foot unintentionally pressing the on switch. The circle of black started to build up.
The time pistol was only a few feet away. Stan snatched at it and turned it on the still reeling Tanner. It caught the creature flush at the same time as he toppled back through the black velvet circle.
Stan's last glimpse of The Enemy was of a suddenly very old and aging man—hair whitened and thinning, lines etched deeply in the face, clothes sagging limply from a suddenly shriveled frame—toppling backwards into the hoop.
And then the solid circle of black suddenly broke and faded into the frame again.
Stan turned on his side and got sick. The Bristol hoop had been tuned to Chicago. Only there was no more Chicago and no more hoop there. But Tanner had toppled through—to where?
The creature that had been Mr. Ainsworth and Tanner was lost in a space that had no beginning and no end.
And no exit.
CHAPTER XV
They stood on a parapet of the first building to be erected in New Chicago and watched the tiny flares of the workmen who had come from all over the world to rebuild the city. It was night—a cool, almost clear night with only a few faint clouds scudding across the face of the full moon. The stars blazed down, a million tiny candles flickering against a background of black.
Avis moved her head a fraction and said: "Do you love me?"
"What do you think?"
After a moment, she said: "I have to go back tomorrow."
"I know."
"I ... don't want to leave."
"Why not?"
She smiled in the darkness. "You know why not. I don't want to leave you."
He hunkered down on the parapet and she sat down beside him.
"They never told you my last name, did they?" she asked suddenly.
"It's Tanner, isn't it?"
"He was my brother."
He waited a moment, then asked: "What happened to him?"
"He wanted power," she said quietly. "Our society wouldn't give it to him. So he sold out. Of his own free will—he hadn't been conditioned like you were." She paused. "I suppose as long as there's a human race, there will be people who want power and who will be willing to sell their fellow man to get it."
Stan frowned. "That's why they sent you down to try and stop him, wasn't it?"
She nodded. "I was the most qualified." Pause. "A Thuscan eventually took his place, I know. But I wonder how he actually died. Did you ever hear about him on Thusca?"
"He died a hero," Stan lied.
She smiled in the dark. "Thanks anyways. But I knew him, too."
"They used him as a model," Stan said. "Like Mr. Ainsworth and Mr. Malcolm. There actually were human beings like that. Somewhere along the line, the Thuscans captured them and studied them so they could imitate them. Ainsworth and Malcolm and your brother served as models." He shuddered. "Perhaps on some world there's an imitation Stanley Martin walking around."
They watched the stars for a while and then Avis said: "You're a strong man, Stan. How did they ever ... break you?"
"A simple technique—brain-washing you could call it. The Thuscans set up Mr. Malcolm and Mr. Ainsworth and I was the man between. Mr. Malcolm was the enemy, Mr. Ainsworth was the friend. Mr. Ainsworth would 'rescue' me from Mr. Malcolm. There's no quicker way to build up a friendship. I felt obligated, in a sense. And then there was torture ... and machines. When my memory came back, I thought I had it all figured. I only made one mistake. I never thought Tanner was a Thuscan."
"He fooled a lot of people, including myself. You shouldn't feel bad."
"But I do! If Tanner had been a real human being, then they would never have needed me.... Clever psychologists though they were, they had to work through a human agency as a safety factor. If Tanner had been real, they could have done it through him."
"You broke the conditioning," she pointed out. "How?"
He smiled. "That morning when they jumped me. They beat me up for half an hour and nobody came to my rescue. Nobody but Ainsworth. Even in Chicago, people don't stand by and let a 17 year old kid get killed by three men. Tanner had used the time pistol. What had seemed to take a half hour for me actually occurred in seconds. Nobody could have helped me if they had wanted to!"
He stared moodily at the sky. "You know, there isn't much here for me, Avis. I lost my whole family when Chicago was wiped off the map. Larry had died before then, of course." He lowered his voice to a brooding sadness. "And the indoctrination I had, it hasn't entirely worn off. Sometimes I think of people as ... apes again."
"What do you want to do, Stan?" Her voice was cautious.
He stood up and waved at the sky.
"I'm going back with you! There's a thousand worlds up there I've never seen, a thousand adventures I've never had! And there's still Thusca!"
She laughed softly. "Anything else?"
He ran his fingers through her hair and brushed her lips. "You know better than that...."
"We leave tomorrow," she repeated after a moment.
He kissed her softly and then lay back on the parapet and stared at the flickering stars overhead. A breeze came in off the lake and tugged at his hair and he imagined it sweeping on, blowing to a thousand worlds he had never seen.
And a thousand adventures he had never had....