It interlocks, spirals outward in a half dozen directions and circles back upon itself. In a way, it's like the serpent you see in bas-reliefs dating back three thousand years, in Babylonian and Pre-Dynastic Egyptian tombs, for instance, or on totem poles in the Northwest ... a serpent that's continually swallowing its own tail. It's the oldest archeological art-form on Earth and is supposed to symbolize Eternal Life.
But to some people at least the New Chicago Underground symbolizes something far more gloomy. If you're not careful to board just the right train you can get lost in its tomblike, spiraling immensity and feel as helpless as a wandering ghost or an experimental laboratory animal caught up in a blind maze. You can be carried fifty miles in the wrong direction and look out through the windows of a train traveling at half the speed of sound, and see a country landscape or the wide sweep of Lake Michigan five minutes after you've settled down in a comfortable chair and become absorbed in the news of the day on micro-film.
You'll stare out and the section of the city where your home is located just won't be sweeping past. You'll have to get off at the next station, perhaps twenty or thirty miles further on, ride back, and board another train. It's seldom quite as frustrating as that, but only because most of the riders have been conditioned to keep their wits about them through a nightmare kind of trial-and-error apprenticeship.
You've got to stay alert until you've boarded a train with just the right combination of numerals on its destination plate. It isn't hard to do, unless you're carrying a tiny silver hawk in a wafer-thin case, and your destination may be changed without warning and with unbelievable infamy by someone capable of great evil who would much prefer not to have you board a train at all.
I could almost picture him weaving in and out between the platform crowds—faceless so far, but quite possibly glassy-eyed with little waltzing death-heads in the depth of his pupils. An unknown human cipher intent on my destruction, refusing to be discouraged by the failure of a small mechanical killer to do the job for him.
If I'd had a strong reason to believe I actually was being followed, if he'd come right out into the open and I could have caught a glimpse of him, however brief, I'd have felt a subconscious relief that would have kept me on guard and confident. It would have given me an edge that not even the fact that I had no gun could have taken away from me.
It's the unknown and unpredictable that's unnerving, the realization that invisible eyes may be scrutinizing you from a distance and the brain behind them deciding that it would be a great mistake to let a failure of nerve or concern for the consequences interfere with what had to be done.
He wouldn't be wanting me to wear that insignia ever—on Earth or on Mars—and just knowing that made me almost miss my train as it came rushing toward me.
The train was so crowded I had to stand, but I had no complaint on that score. In a seat, with people jamming the aisle in front of me, I'd have been wedged in even more securely. In a standing position I could edge forward and back and keep an eye on the passengers who were holding fast to the horizontal support rail on both sides of me.
There were twenty-five or thirty passengers wedged into the middle section of the train, all standing in slightly cramped postures and most of them unsmiling. I knew exactly how they felt. Not being able to get a seat in an off-hour in the evening can be irritating. But right at the moment there was no room in my mind for annoyance. A slow, hard-to-pin-down uneasiness was creeping over me again, as if a pendulum were swinging back and forth somewhere close to me, ticking out a warning in rhythm—and I couldn't shut out the sound of it.
Just my over-strained nerves, of course. How could it have been anything else? I turned and looked at the man standing next to me. He was middle-aged, conservatively dressed, and had a square-jawed, rather handsome face, with a dusting of gray at his temples.
He was frowning slightly and his expression didn't change when I broke the rule of silence which was customarily observed in the Underground.
"No reason for all the seats to be gone at this hour," I said.
The crazy kind of over-exuberance mixed with peevishness that makes some people say things like that to total strangers a dozen times a day had always seemed inexcusable to me. But when you're under tension you sometimes break all the habits of rational behavior you've imposed on yourself in small matters.
My excuse was that I simply wanted to test the firmness and steadiness of my own voice, to make sure that, deep down, I wasn't nearly as apprehensive as I was beginning to feel.
"Yes, I know," the gray-templed man agreed. "It burns me up a little too. But I guess it just can't be helped at times. Operating an Underground this size must be an awful train-scheduling headache."
"Headache or not," I said. "There's no excuse for it."
He smiled abruptly, exposing large, white teeth and I noticed that there was something almost birdlike in the way his eyes lighted up. Small, black, very bright eyes they were, under short-lashed lids, and quite suddenly he made me think of a magpie alighting on a limb, taking off and alighting again, hardly able to restrain an impulse to chatter.
"What it boils down to," he said, "is the old quarrel between a pedestrian and a man in a car. Neither can understand or sympathize with the other's point of view. Fifteen million people ride this Underground every day and to them it's a poor slob's service at best. That's because they feel themselves to be the victims, at the receiving end. But you've got to remember that safety precautions pose a problem. Avoiding accidents comes first and the New Chicago Transportation System, considering its colossal size, does pretty well in that respect."
"People have been killed," I said, and could have bitten my tongue out. Why let him even suspect that I was thinking about something that wasn't tied in with his argument at all, why give him the slightest hint? The Underground's accident record was good and couldn't have justified such cynicism on my part. And just suppose he wasn't the garrulous, middle-aged business man he appeared to be—
A very sinister game can start in just that way, with everything favoring the alerted party until he lets the other know that he's on his guard and is having uneasy thoughts. That's where the danger lies, in a subconscious betrayal, a slip of the tongue that will precipitate violence faster than it would ordinarily occur.
If a killer feels that he must move swiftly, before suspicion can become a certainty, the odds shift in his favor. He has the advantage of surprise. He becomes alerted too, and necessity acts as a goad—a kind of trigger-mechanism. He'll act more quickly and decisively, without the careful planning that may prompt him to talk too much and give himself away.
He'll take risks that are dangerous and could destroy him, strike with witnesses present and all escape routes blocked. If he has to, he'll strike even in a crowded Underground train with the next station minutes away. And that kind of audacity sometimes pays off.
I told myself that I was imagining things, jumping to a completely unwarranted conclusion. The conversation of the man next to me was exactly what you'd expect from a magpie. He was carefully sidestepping all realistic appraisals of the Underground's shortcomings, trying his best to look at the problem from all sides, even if it meant being shallow and over-optimistic. He was the citizen with a smiling face, the rather likeable guy—why should one hold it against him?—who was trying his best to be fair to everybody, even if he had to burst a blood-vessel doing it.
Realizing all that made me feel less tense and part of the nightmare feeling I'd been experiencing went away. But not quite all of it and when the train passed into an unlighted tunnel and the aisle went dark apprehension began to mount in me again.
What if he was putting on an act, and wasn't the kind of man he appeared to be at all? What does a killer look like? Certainly age had nothing to do with it. He can be young or old—eighteen or seventy-five.
His appearance, his clothes? There were wild-eyed killers with "psycho" stamped all over them, and dignified, soberly-dressed men who looked no different from your next door neighbor and had criminal records a yard long, including, in all likelihood, a murder or two the Law would have a difficult time proving.
I didn't have to speculate about it. Iknew, because I'd done more than my share of social research. There was nothing to prevent a man of distinction from becoming a killer, if he had a secret life that was ugly and devious and a powerful enough motive.
But now he was talking again, despite the darkness, and I was listening with my nerves on edge. I was completely in the dark as to why something about him had set the alarm bells ringing but I was sure I could hear them, very faint and distant this time, but clearly enough. It was funny. Sometimes it meant something and sometimes it didn't. I could feel that danger was hovering right at my elbow and in the end discover I'd been completely mistaken.
I hoped I was mistaken this time, but I knew there was a possibility—remote, perhaps, but dangerous to ignore—that the man who had set the small mechanical killer in motion by the Lakeside had followed me from the Administration Building into the Underground and was standing by my side.
"You take one of the really big power combines," he was saying. "Like, say, Wendel Atomics. It has its defenders and detractors, and I daresay there are quite a few people who would be happy to see its Board of Directors behind bars. I'm not defending the Wendel monopoly, understand. If I was a Martian colonist I might feel quite differently about it. But you've got to remember that when you give the go-ahead signal for a project that big you're asking fifty or a hundred key executives to do the impossible—or pretty close to the impossible."
"The impossible?" I said, trying to sound no more than mildly interested, because I didn't want him to suspect what a jolt his mention of Wendel Atomics had given me.
"Oh, yes," he went on. "That's what it boils down to. Every one of those men will be as human as you or I. They'll react in highly individual ways to every problem that comes up, every frustration, every serious interference with their private lives. You've got to remember that a man's private life is the most important thing in the world—to him personally. Every one of those fifty or a hundred men will have health worries, money worries, love life worries, every kind of worry you can think of. And on Mars worries can pile up."
"So I've heard," I said.
"Well, that's all. That sums it up. I'm simply citing Wendel as an example of what the New Chicago Transportation System is up against. I'd say, in general, that most of the directors are doing their best, when the Old Adam in them isn't in the driver's seat, to keep the trains running on schedule."
He stopped talking abruptly. I didn't think anything of it for a moment, for a loquacious man will often pause in the middle of a conversation to wonder what kind of dent he's been making on the party who's doing most of the listening. But when a full minute passed and the darkness held, and he didn't say a word, when I couldn't even hear him breathing, I began to grow uneasy.
Reach out and touch him? Well, why not? It was the simplest, quickest way of finding out whether he was still at my side and he could hardly be offended if my hand grazed his elbow in a jostling motion that would seem accidental.
It was very strange. I didn't think he was the man I'd feared he might be any longer, because of what he'd said, because he had brought Wendel Atomics into the conversation. If he'dhaddesigns on my life giving his hand away like that would have been the height of folly. It would have been like giving me cards and spades, and a detailed history of his activities for the past five years.
It didn't take any gifted reasoning to figure that out and I didn't pride myself on it. Even a child could have done it. What disturbed me and kept me from feeling relieved was something quite different. The alarm bells were still ringing.They were still ringing.
Louder now and with a dirgelike persistence, as if I was already dead and buried. And neither a child nor a grown man could have figured that one out.
That's why I felt I had to reach out and touch him, had to start him talking again ... had to be sure he was still there at my side.
He was there, all right. He was there in the most alarming possible way, as a dead weight lurching against me, then swaying and screaming as I tried to straighten him up, and stop the terrible downward drag of his sagging body.
He was sinking lower and lower, clutching at my knees now, refusing to take advantage of the support I was offering him. I strained and tugged, but it was no use. He was too heavy to raise and I could hear the breath wheezing out of his throat and there could be no mistaking the weight of horror that was making him twist and writhe as he sagged—the deadliness of whatever it was that had struck at him in the darkness without making a sound.
He screamed again. It was the kind of agonized protest which could only have come from the throat of a man who hardly knew what was happening to him ... a man with his terror heightened and made more acute by the awful, groping-in-the-dark realization that he was experiencing a torment he was powerless to explain.
There had to be an answer but I didn't know what it was, and when the scream died away and the tugging stopped all I could hear for an instant was the steady droning of the train. Then there was another violent movement close to me and a harsh intake of breath.
My hand shot out, grazed something smooth that whipped away from me and caught hold of a wrist that was much thinner than a man's wrist had any right to be.
Much softer too, velvety soft, and it tugged and jerked in a frantic effort to free itself, holding tight to the knife that it would have taken all of a woman's strength to plunge deep into my heart.
But she could have done it, whoever she was, for there was a wiry strength in her—a strength so great that I had to twist her wrist cruelly before her fingers relaxed and the knife dropped to the floor of the train.
She gasped in pain—or was it fury?—and exerted all of her strength again in a desperate effort to break my grip. And this time luck was on her side. No, call it what it was. Luck may have figured, but most of it was plain blundering stupidity on my part. I was pretty sure I knew what her first, misdirected blow with the knife had done to the man I'd been talking to, and the thought so sickened and unnerved me that my fingers relaxed a little when the knife went clattering, and she took advantage of that to break free.
The passengers were crowding me now, pushing, shoving in alarm, and I knew it would be easy enough for her to force her way between them, still exerting all of her strength and get far enough away to be just one of the thirty terrified people when the train roared out into the light again. They'd all look disheveled, on the verge of panic and I wouldn't have a chance of identifying her.
How could I have identified her with any certainty, even if she'd been the only one with a guilty stare? I hadn't the least idea what she looked like. I only knew that she wasn't old, was all woman in her lithe softness, the opposite of an Amazon despite her strength. The femininity which had emanated from her—how instantly it can make itself felt, how instinctively overwhelming it can be!—had made me feel like a brute for an instant, even though I'd known it was her life or mine and I would have been quite mad to spare her.
There were men I could think of, the opposite of brutes, who would have knocked her unconscious with a blow to the head. To spare a determined killer is potentially suicidal, but I doubted if I could have done that.
I was still doubting it an instant later, when the train emerged from the unlighted tunnel and the bright glare of the Underground lamps flooded the aisle, bringing the man she'd stabbed by accident into clear view.
I was sure by now that she'd stabbed him by accident in a try for me, but that wasn't going to help him at all. He had flopped over on his back and was lying sprawled out in the middle of the aisle, and his eyes stared up at me, sightless and glazed.
There was no blood either on or beside him, but that only meant that he'd been stabbed in the back and there hadn't been time for blood from the wound to stain the edge of his clothes and trickle out from beneath him across the aisle.
His face had the pallor of death and his lips were drawn back over the large white teeth I'd noticed when he'd been talking to me. Drawn back in a stiff, unnatural grin and I didn't have to bend down and listen for a heartbeat I knew I wouldn't hear to be completely sure that the words he'd spoken to me would be the last he'd ever speak on Earth.
Just the way his head lolled, back and forth with the rhythmic throbbings of the train, would have clinched it for me. And I couldn't have bent down, because the other passengers were all staring at him too now, and elbowing me away from him to get a closer look, torn between morbid curiosity and stark terror.
I was too shaken, too sick at heart, to resent the elbowing. There was anger in me too, cold, uncompromising and right at that moment I could no longer even think of her as a woman.
It was past midnight when I got home and let myself into the apartment. I was more shaken than I would have cared to admit to anyone who didn't know me as well as Trilling did, because casual acquaintances can do you an injustice and judge the extent of your control by the way you happen to be looking at the moment.
I was quite sure that I was lookingverybad, and however severely I'd been shaken up by what had happened I still had a fair measure of control over my emotions.
I hadn't stayed in the train or on the platform to assist in the investigation, but I didn't feel guilty about it. Trilling could square all that with the authorities easily enough and he wouldn't have wanted me to talk to the police and have to identify myself. I was sure of that. My evidence would be taken down and turned over to the proper authorities in good time. The rule for me—the only rule I had a right to consider—was no entanglements.
I shut and locked the front door and almost called out: "It's me, darling!" as I usually do when I come home late, because when Joan is alone in the apartment and hears a door opening and closing she gets angry when I just walk in unannounced. It's part woman-curiosity, part fear, I guess—the thought that it could be a prowler and why should she be kept in suspense while I'm hanging up my hat and coat?
But this time something prevented me from calling out. Possibly the quarrel we'd had was still rankling a little deep in my mind and I wasn't quite sure how she'd take the "Darling."
My stubborn pride again. Or possibly it was just the feeling I had that the apartment was quieter than usual, that when you're keyed up and alert enough to hear a pin drop and you hear nothing—just a stillness that's a little on the weird side—your anxiety becomes too great to be relieved by calling out a cheery greeting.
I felt somehow that it would be wiser, and set better with the way I felt, if I just hung up my coat and walked into the living room without saying a word.
So I walked into the living room without saying a word and she was sitting right in the middle of it, on a straight-back chair with all of her bags packed and standing on the floor by the window, and with all of my bags packed and standing cheek-by-jowl with hers, and the three trunks that were going with me to Mars all sealed up and double-locked, and she wasn't angry or shaking her head or looking at the luggage with scorn.
There was pride in her lustrous brown eyes and the adorable tilt of her chin, and a warmth and a tenderness, and she was smiling at me and nodding.
"Oh, darling," she said. "Darling ... darling ... come here. Did you think I'd ever let you go to Mars without me? It was just talk—just stubborn, wild, crazy talk and it didn't mean a thing."
If you marry a woman like Joan and ever have a moment of doubt ... well, it means you ought to have your head examined. But you're twice as far removed from sanity if you throw away the check. For you can always be sure it will be redeemed eventually, in full measure and brimming over.
I didn't even have to put on my uniform and attach the small silver hawk to it.
We were not the only passengers in the eight-cabined forward section of the big sky ship which had been assigned to us. But it had taken us almost a week to get acquainted. To get really acquainted, that is, so that we could relax and feel at ease and really enjoy one another's company.
We were sitting in lounge chairs on the long promenade deck that ran parallel with all eight of the cabins, staring out through translucent crystal at a wide waste of stars.
Sitting in the first chair was a tall, sturdily built man of thirty-eight, with keen blue eyes and a dusting of gray at his temples. His name was Clifton Maddox and he was an electronic engineer. He had stories on tap that could turn your hair white, because he had been to Mars and back eight times.
Seated next to him, with her hand resting lightly on his arm, was a woman in her early twenties, with honey-blonde hair and eyes that held unfathomable glints and an enigmatical ingenuousness that could keep a man guessing in an exciting way. Her name was Helen Melton and she had eyes only for the man at her side. She had managed to make of the trip a continuous honeymoon, despite a few lovers' quarrels and the stern exactions which her work as a medical laboratory technician had imposed on her.
I mention these two because they were fairly typical of the group as a whole. They were all unusual individuals, the kind of people you take a liking to straight off, when you meet them casually at a party and exchange a few words with them that you keep remembering for days.
Joan and I sat in the last two chairs on the promenade deck, a little apart from the others. Joan was deep in a book and a little weary of talking and I ... was thinking about the robots.
The robots were a story in themselves—a story that could bear a great deal of re-telling. If right at that moment I'd had a son—a bright and eager lad of six or eight—I'd have set him on my knee and talked about the robots.
The five hundred passengers in the big sky ship were not alone in the long journey through interplanetary space. In the last years of the twentieth century, I'd have taken pains to make very clear to him, and in the early years of the twenty-first, a great new science had grown from an infant into a giant.
The science of cybernetics, of giant computers that could do much of Man's thinking for him on a specialized technological level, had transformed the face of the Earth and was continuing to transform it at a steadily accelerating pace.
The rocket's four giant computers were of the newest and most efficient type—humanoid in aspect, with conical heads, massive metal body-boxes, and three-jointed metal limbs which had all of Man's flexible adaptability in the carrying out of complex and difficult tasks.
Robotlike and immense, they towered in the chart room with their six-digited metal hands on their metal knees, their electronic circuits clicking, their tiers of memory banks in constant motion, but otherwise outwardly indifferent to the human activity that was taking place around them.
Four metal giants in a metal rocket, functioning cooperatively with Man in the gulfs between the planets, might have made an imaginative fiction writer of an earlier age catch his breath and glory in the fulfillment of a prophecy. An H. G. Wells perhaps, or an Olaf Stapledon. But the reality was an even greater tribute to the human mind's inventive brilliance than the Utopian dream had been.
The four giant computers were capable of solving problems too technical for the human mind to master without assistance, usually with astounding swiftness and always with the more-than-human accuracy of thinking machines whose prime function was to correlate without error the data supplied to them on punched metallic tapes, and to perform intricate mechanical tasks based upon that data.
The robots were tremendous, by any yardstick you might care to apply, and if I'd had a son—
I stopped thinking about the robots abruptly and sat very still, listening. A sound I'd heard a moment before had come again, much louder this time—a chill, unearthly screeching.
The chart room was just outside the eight-cabin section and I could hear the sound clearly. My nerves again, my over-stimulated imagination?
In space strange and unusual sounds are as common as pips on a radar screen. It was queer how quickly you got used to them. You had to walk around with your ears plugged up, in a sense, but the plugs didn't have to be inserted. They were just natural growths inside your ears—invisible and without substance, but plugs notwithstanding. They produced a kind of psycho-somatic deafness which didn't otherwise interfere with your hearing.
Just the very unusual sounds, the totally inexplicable raspings, dronings, creakings—usually of short duration—were blotted out.
You didn't hear them unless something deep in your mind whispered: "This one is different. This is an emergency. Take heed!"
The screeching was very different. It was like nothing I'd ever heard before, on Earth or in space.
The others must have heard it too, for it had been too loud, the second time, to be ignored. But apparently that strange acceptance of strange noises in space which goes with the kind of deafness I've mentioned had only been shattered for me. The six men and women in the lounge chairs had looked a little startled for a moment and exchanged puzzled glances. Which meant, of course, that they had heard it despite the mental earplugs in some inner recess of their minds. But that didn't prevent them from shrugging it off and resuming their conversation.
Joan also looked a trifle uneasy. She stopped reading just long enough to raise her eyes and frown, then became absorbed in the book again.
I got up quietly and pressed her wrist. "See you," I said.
She shut the book abruptly and straightened in her chair. "Where are you going, Ralph?"
"Just stay right where you are, kitten," I said. "I'll be back in a moment."
"That screeching noise," she said. "I was wondering about it, Ralph. I guess you'd better see what's causing it."
So she'd been disturbed by it too, and ignoring it had taken a deliberate effort of will which I hadn't realized she was exerting. It made me happy in an odd inner way, because it proved again what I'd always known ... that we were very close and there were currents of understanding which flowed back and forth between us and I had a wife I could be proud of.
"It's probably nothing," I said, not wanting to alarm her. "But I might as well take a look. It seems to be coming from the chart room."
"All right," she said and squeezed my hand.
I had to open and shut two sliding panels and pass along a blank-walled passageway to get to the chart room. To my surprise the door was standing open. It's usually kept locked, because there's no section of the sky ship where a man who didn't want anyone to suspect that he harbored within himself the most dangerous kind of destructive impulses could do more damage.
The shattering of a photo-electric eye or the ripping out of a single live connection in just one of the four cybernetic robots could have wrecked the rocket, and sent it spiraling down through the space gulfs in flaming ruin, depending on just how vital to the robot's functioning the shattered part happened to be.
There was a security alert system which would have to be disconnected first, but anyone resourceful enough to get inside the chart room at all, without identification-disk proof that he had a right to be there, would have known precisely how to take care of the preliminary obstacles.
I didn't waste any time in getting to that wide-open door, for my mind was racing on ahead of me like the most alerted kind of alarm system, its jaggling warning me that every second counted and that what I dreaded most might very well be true.
What I actually saw, when I reached the doorway and stood there looking in, took me completely by surprise. It wasn't the way I'd pictured it at all. But it was just as unnerving, just as much of a threat to the safety of the ship and it startled me so I must have looked almost comic, standing there idiot-still. But there was nothing comic about what I saw.
The woman I'd almost asked to go to Mars with me was staring straight at me, her hair still piled up high, a look of terrified appeal in her eyes. She wasn't alone. She was struggling furiously with a crewman I'd talked to a few times and neither liked nor disliked—a heavyset man with high cheekbones and pale blue eyes. He was gripping her savagely by the wrist and they were both backed up against one of the robot giants.
Suddenly as I stared her head went back and a convulsive trembling seized her. She began to scream.
It was a christ-awful moment—for her and for me. For her because she had no right to be in the Chart Room, or even on the ship, as far as I knew, and there was a look on the crewman's face that chilled me to the core of my being. It went beyond the anger of a duty-obsessed man, outraged by her infringement of the regulations. It was a completely different kind of anger. There was a savage cruelty, a killing rage in his eyes, impossible to misinterpret.
It was just as awful a moment for me, because I wasn't sure I could get to him before he broke her wrist or did something worse to her. I'd seen a woman kneed in the groin once, by just such an enraged human animal, and the memory of it had never left me. A strong man, turned maniacal, could kill with his hands in a matter of seconds. I'd seen that happen too, and the victim hadn't been a woman, but a man as powerful as the killer.
I crossed the Chart Room in a running leap, grabbed him by the shoulders and swung him about, raining blows on him more or less at random. I just tried to hit him as hard as I could without caring much where the blows landed, so long as they resounded with a meaty smack where they would do the most good. My only aim was to stun and, if possible, cripple him in a terrible, punishing way, so that he'd release his grip on the wrist of the woman he'd been trying to hurt before she screamed again and her hand dangled with a sickening limpness, making me want to permanently demolish him in slow and painful stages.
For a moment I was only sure of one thing. My fist had smashed very solidly into his face at least twice and drawn blood. I could see the gleam of blood on his jaw as he reeled back, and I was almost sure I'd heard his nose crack. There was nothing wrong with that, but it didn't satisfy me. I wanted to turn his face into quivering jelly. But most of all I was hoping, praying that she'd break free before I set about doing that, because a voice was screaming deep in my mind that if she couldn't he might still be capable of injuring her cruelly.
She broke free. Just how I don't know, because the punishment I'd dished out hadn't stunned him. He could still have fractured her wrist, judging by the look of blazing fury he trained on me.
His determination to repay me in full probably explained it. He needed both of his hands free for that, because I could see that what he would have liked to do most was get a strangler's grip on my throat.
The human windpipe doesn't fracture easily, as every experienced medical examiner knows. It's elastic and it gives, and post-mortem appearances prove that you can die by strangulation with your windpipe intact. But I have a horror of anything like that, and I didn't intend to let his fingers come anywhere near my throat.
I smashed my fist into his groin twice, putting so much shoulder-to-elbow resilience into the blows that he bent almost double, wrapped his arms about his middle just above his groin and went staggering backwards.
They were below-the-belt beltings, but I didn't give a damn about that. Manhandling a woman just because she hasn't the strength of a male has always seemed to be just about the worst crime on the books. All right ... attacking a child is worse but you certainly forfeit all right to Queensberry Rules consideration when you're called to account for using your strength against anyone weaker than yourself, unless he or she has done something vicious and there's a hell of a good justification for it.
I no longer wanted to permanently demolish him, now that she'd broken free. But I had no control over what happened. The deck of the Chart Room is all smooth metal, and the polishing preparation that's used to keep it bright makes it almost as skid-slippery as a skating rink, if you happen to be thrown a little off-balance.
He was off-balance just enough to change his backward lurch from a stagger to a swaying, spinning glide that sent him crashing against the base of a robot giant.
Up to that instant the four robot giants had looked exactly alike. But a robot in motion looks quite different from a robot at rest, with its massive metal hands on its metal knees, and its gleaming central section in an upright position. The crash was followed by a splintering sound which continued for several seconds without stopping. There was a whirring as well, and a blinding flash of light came from the metal giant's conical head. Almost instantly the robot was in motion, and the way it swayed as it raised its segmented right arm high into the air so alarmed me that I shouted a warning to the man I'd just finished trying to send to the sick bay for a stay of at least two weeks.
The jerky, erratic way the robot giant was swaying could only mean that the crash had damaged its internal gadgetry, and it had gone completely out of control. It was shaking and quivering all over and even its ponderous central section seemed to bulge a little, as if from hunger-bloat.
That, of course, was absurd. But it's natural enough to think of a robot as human and take refuge in absurdity when you know that a cybernetic brain, encased in a functional body, can do just as much damage as a madman running amuck with a deadly weapon. Just as much ... more ... when it's out of control.
You don't want to face up to it squarely, you shrink from it, because some instinct tells you it would be dangerous to let the horror of it come sweeping into your mind too fast. So you take refuge in absurdity, you imagine things that are a little on the ludicrous side. A hunger-bloat, a maniacal glare in photo-electric eyes.
But when you've done that, you have to stand and watch the horror take place before your eyes and in the end you've gained nothing ... because when anything as terrible as what I saw sears its way into your brain the memory of it will remain with you until you die.
The robot giant's massive metal hand swept downward, descending on the head and shoulders of the man who'd crashed into it. It hurled him to the deck, and flattened him out with a hammer blow that crushed his skull, broke his ribs, and tore a deep gash in his back. A red stain spread over his ripped shirt. I shut my eyes, sickened. There was a screaming behind me. I swung dully about and went to her and held her head against my chest, stroking her hair, whispering soothing words into her ear. I could do that without endangering the safety of the sky ship, because the robot giant had ceased to move. With the descent of its hand all of the whirrings had ceased and it remained in a bent-over position, utterly rigid, its mace-like metal palm still resting on the unstirring crewman's back.
I was quite sure that no jury on Earth would have held me criminally responsible for his death. It had been brought about by an accident I couldn't have foreseen. Every man has the right to defend himself when he's under attack, and not just my own life had been in danger. There was no doubt in my mind ... not the slightest.... His rage had been homicidal and he would have killed me if I'd given him the chance.
Justifiable homicide. There could be no other verdict, if the insignia the Board had given me hadn't conferred legal immunity when an accidental death stemmed from my right to stay alive and I had been forced to return to Earth and clear myself in court.
I felt no moral guilt, but still—I was badly shaken. I had been instrumental in causing his death, however unintentionally, and it's always better if a man can live out his life without experiencing the deep sadness that goes with that kind of knowledge.
The only difference is—moral guilt never leaves you and grows worse with the years. But there are so many tragic sadnesses in life that they have a way of merging into one big, onrushing stream and when you measure that stream against a brighter one, the joy-stream, the scales seem to stay just about even, with the balance maybe just a little heavier on the joyful side.
Right at the moment there was another big, onrushing stream running parallel with the sadness. The sober-obligation stream. Or maybe duty-stream would be a better name for it. We spend at least a third of our lives immersed in it up to our necks and swimming against the toughest kind of currents. Sometimes I think we could do without it entirely.
What was it Baudelaire said about boredom? "But well you know that dainty monster, thou, hypocrite reader, fellow man, my brother." You could practically say the same thing about duty.
But the stream is there, and if you just stay on the bank watching the other swimmers you won't really have the right to plunge into the joy-stream with a clear conscience.
The first thing I had to do was get her out of the Chart Room before she collapsed. She was close to hysteria and I didn't even want her to look at the body again. I was careful to stand between her and the robot, and when I guided her gently toward the door I kept my hand on the back of her head and kept her face pressed to my chest.
It was more difficult than it would have looked on a cinema screen—more awkward and less romantic, and that was the way I wanted it to be, because nothing could have been further from my mind at that moment than the romantic glow I'd felt when I had been sitting across a table from her in a lakeside tavern on Earth, and hadn't fully realized that Joan was still the only really important woman in my life.
Oh, all right. You can't have a head that beautiful nestling in the middle of your chest without feeling a certain ... well, a quickening of your pulse, at least. It can happen even in the presence of death, when you've just been shaken to the depths in a ghastly way. Perhaps because of that....
Sex and death. Don't be morbid, Ralphie boy. Don't turn the clock back and let the old Freudian catch-alls of a century ago confuse and mislead you. Half of all that has been made clearer because we know now what Man was like five million years ago when he was a very predatory ape.
Sure, sex and death are closely linked. Dawn man went hunting and slew a cave bear and threw it down before his mate, all bloody, with pride swelling in him and just the excitement of the hunt, the thrill and danger of it, made him want to make love in just as exciting a way.
But sex and life are even more closely linked, and in life there are loyalties to consider and one woman becomes more important to you than all the rest and you don't need that kind of stimulation to enable you to make love to her in the most exciting possible way.
The old stirring is still there, the death-sex linkage, and it can hit you hard at times and you have to keep a tight grip on yourself to keep from succumbing to it. But you can do it if you try.
Of course I was being unfair to her. The sex-death linkage had no more relation to the glow I'd felt back in the lakeside tavern than it did now to her as an individual. I'd have felt the same stirring if I'd been guiding Joan out of the Chart Room with her head on my breast—more of a stirring because Joan was the one woman in the world for me.
What it really meant was that the woman with the hair piled up high on her head filled me with a two-way sense of guilt. The life-sex linkage was better than the death-sex linkage, and the one and only woman feeling better than the promiscuous amorousness which any beautiful woman can arouse in the male. And right at the moment she represented both of the more primitive aspects of sex.
But the dice had just fallen that way. It wasn't her fault and now she was close to hysteria and needed reassurance and all the comfort I could give her.
As soon as we were out in the passageway I asked her to tell me who she was. Her name. So much had happened between us that it seemed unbelievable that I still didn't know that much about her.
"I thought I told you right after we left the spaceport," she said. "I thought you knew. It's Helen ... Helen Barclay."
So ... the old wonder name, the magical name, the Topless Towers of Illium name. How often it seemed to go with her kind of woman. How could she have been Margaret or Janice or Barbara ... attractive as those names were. Lilith perhaps ... yes. Or Eva ... because I've often felt that Eve must have been a woman of glamor, red-headed and with a temper a little on the fiery side, because how else could she have come down to us as Earth's first legendary temptress? But otherwise ... Helen, the glamor name that led the list.
Why was I letting my mind go off at such an absurd tangent, when right ahead of me the stern-obligation stream I've mentioned was widening out, filling with rapids, becoming a river which could have swallowed up the sky ship, or wrecked it ... if I failed to take up a giant's stance right in the middle of it. Wade in and thrust the waters aside, Ralphie boy. It's your duty. Try to think of yourself as a giant.
What made it tough was ... I didn't feel at all like a giant. But what had just happened in the Chart Room couldn't be ignored. A lot of questions would have to be asked fast, and if the explanations sounded like lies, if Helen Barclay refused to cooperate, some very drastic action might have to be taken. I hoped she didn't have anything ugly to conceal. Just the thought was hateful to me, because I believed in her and trusted her. But the way I felt had nothing to do with an obligation I had no right to sidestep for as short a distance as the width of an electron-microscoped virus.
I was glad that I wouldn't have to do the questioning. Not straight off, anyway—not until I knew much more than I did, and all of the big, vital questions had been answered with candor and I could go right on feeling the way I did about her with a clear conscience. I hoped to God it would be with candor. If someone is dying and you can do nothing to save him and what he's done or hasn't done is of no importance to anyone but himself ... you don't ply him with questions. But what she'd done or hadn't done could send the sky ship down into the gulfs in flaming ruin, because all of the passengers are encased in a fragile kind of bubble and the slightest pinprick could puncture it.
The pinprick, for instance, of an Earthside conspirator, traveling along with the bubble out into space and awaiting just the right moment to insert the tiny, darkly gleaming point of the pin under the skin of the bubble.
And she wasn't dying, but alive—and could, if she had nothing to conceal, have no trouble in convincing the commander of the sky ship that any such fear was groundless.
I had to take her straight to the Commander. Otherwise I'd have to take it up with someone of lesser authority and show him the insignia and question her myself in private. I couldn't see any advantage to be gained by that. It would leave the corpse in the Chart Room entirely unexplained and the Commander would not take kindly to having anything as disturbing as that left lying around in a loose-end way for him to worry about.
It would mean, of course, that I would have to show him the insignia. That was the bad part, the one thing I wanted most to avoid. But I could see no effective way of avoiding it now, because he was, after all, in command of the sky ship and directly responsible for its safety. He had every right to be the first to question her, unless I chose to supplant that right with what the insignia represented. To do so would not have been wise for a dozen reasons, the chief one being that when a man is in a firm position to exercise reasonably high authority it's always a mistake to go over his head unless you're sure you can make a better job of it than he could, despite his specialized knowledge. I didn't think for a moment I could come anywhere near equaling Commander Littlefield's competence in guarding the safety of a Mars' rocket ... so to curtail his authority in a high-handed way would have been worse than inexcusable.
But I would still have to show him the insignia ... or I would not be permitted to sit in on the questioning.
We were at the end of the passageway now and just by making a sharp left turn I could have taken her into the cabin section and introduced her to Joan. Perhaps, out of compassion, I should have done that ... let her relax in a lounge chair and look out at the cool, untroubled stars, and regain a little more of her composure. Some of it was coming back, she wasn't trembling quite so violently now, and women seem to know better than men how to ease shock-engendered agitation ... especially when it's another woman they have to soothe and sympathize with. I could trust Joan to handle it like an expert. "Of course, you poor darling. I know just how you feel. Ralph will know what to do. Don't think about it. Just stay right here with us until Ralph comes back."
It would have been the kind thing to do, all right and for an instant I hesitated and almost committed an act of madness.
When you've something to conceal, it's much easier to avoid a thoughtless admission, a damaging slip of the tongue, when you've had time to collect your thoughts and decide in advance exactly how much of the truth it's wise to reveal. She was too agitated now to guard against slips and our chances of getting at the truth would be much better. And like the short-on-brains, over-chivalrous lug I could be on rare occasions—I hoped they were rare—I'd almost torn it.
Unlike Jonathan Trilling, Commander Littlefield was the kind of man who was what he was in an uncomplicated way. You didn't have to try to analyze why he impressed you as he did, because it was all there on display, right out in the open. He was big and robust looking, with a granite-firm jaw and the kind of features that take a long time to develop the lines of character that are etched into them, because a man who has his emotions well under control in his youth will pass into middle-age before you can tell from his expression just how much maturity and strength resides in him.
There are bland-faced lads who seem to have no lines of character at all in their countenances up to about the age of twenty-eight. But when you hear them talk you change your mind very quickly about them, and when they are forty-five the lines are all there, deeply-etched, and the mystery is explained. Commander Littlefield was that kind of man.
We had several very serious things to discuss, because five hours had passed since I'd sat facing him in the same chair and Helen Barclay had sat in another chair at right angles to a third chair, which he had drawn out from his desk and occupied for a full hour without a coffee break, his eyes searching her face as she talked. His stare was a kind of interrogation in itself, and it must have been hard for her to endure. I think it would have angered me a little, if I hadn't suspected what was behind it.
Her story stood up very well and had the ring of truth and her eyes never wavered. But he was hoping they would, then he could detect in her eyes a flicker of hesitation, of evasiveness, which would give her away.
But he hadn't. Her story had stood up almosttoowell ... because the truth always has a few flaws and inconsistencies in it. Memory is never a perfect enough mirror to permit anyone to avoid contradictions when they are doing their best to tell nothing but the truth, even under oath.
But she hadn't seemed to be lying, and in the end I think she convinced him completely, because toward the end he stopped looking at her as if every word she said was impressing him unfavorably.
And now she was in the sick bay, recovering from shock, and I was back again for another talk with the Commander.
He began by saying: "I don't know just how I should address you, Mr. Graham—sir. That silver hawk gives you a Colonization Board clearance that's a little on the special side ... you'll have to admit. The first man who wore it got a little angry when anyone addressed him as 'General' because that's a strictly military title, and military titles haven't been in common use for forty years. There's not supposed to be any army anymore—on Earth or on Mars. But I've always sort of liked 'General' and that insignia is practically the equivalent of five stars."
"I'm afraid I don't like 'General' at all," I said. "The title is ... Ralph."
"Well ... suit yourself.Ralph.I'm a simple soldier at heart, I suppose—always will be, even though I hold the rank of Commander. You're young enough to be my son, so that informal crap doesn't go too much against the grain, if you're that serious about it."
"I'm serious about it," I said. "And you're not old enough to be my father. An older brother, perhaps. You can't stretch it any further than that."
"What do you mean I can't? I'm an old man of forty-eight. Hair thinning, going a little to fat. My God, a Wendel Atomics or Endicott Fuel top executive couldn't look any older, and they've got a head start on the rest of us. They start burning out at thirty-five."
"There's not an ounce of fat on you, as far as I can see," I assured him.
"That's going to handicap you on Mars, Ralph. Eyesight not what it should be in a five-star general. Look again, look closer. I've got a pot belly you'd notice, all right, if I didn't exercise to keep it down."
I'd skipped over his reference to Wendel Atomics and Endicott, maybe subconsciously, but it must have registered belatedly in a very pronounced way, because something in my expression turned him dead serious in an instant. No man ever speaks with complete levity about his age, but what there was of ironic amusement in his gray eyes vanished and his lips tightened.
"Well ... suppose we go over what we've got," he said. "I'll be grateful for any ideas, any suggestions you may care to make. I've found out something that's going to give you a jolt. It may even rock you back on your heels, depending on how easily you can be rocked. But it will keep ... until we've discussed what she told us. What do you think of her story?"
"I believe it," I said. I didn't think it was necessary to elaborate.
"Well ... I'm afraid I do too, more's the pity. If I thought she was lying I'd have more of a lever to pry what we don't know loose."
There was a thin sheet of paper covered with very fine handwriting on his desk. He picked it up and ran his eyes over it.
"I sort of summarized what she told us," he said. "But there's no sense in your reading this. I can summarize it even more briefly by skipping two-thirds of what I have here."
"You might as well," I told him. "She talked and we listened for at least twenty minutes. Then we both questioned her. In a question-and-answer session like that the vital points are apt to get a little blurred."
"Well, we know she did something no one has ever done before—stowed away on a Mars' ship. I'd have said it couldn't be done ... and so would you, I'm sure, because you're as familiar with the inspection routine as I am. You passed through it. No one could possibly get inside a Mars' rocket without a Board clearance and a personal, ten-point identification check every step of the way. In other words, you can't just ascend the launching pad, be whisked up to the passenger section and walk right in. There's only one way you can get inside without passing the four inspection points, with machines X-raying you from head to toe."
"I know," I said. "It was a damn clever stunt."
"It was more than a stunt. It was an achievement on the creative genius level. It took planning and foresight. And ... luck. A great deal of luck. But that doesn't detract from the brilliance of it. She found out that we were installing a new cybernetic robot, to replace one that had developed electronic fatigue and had to be removed for repairs and a long rest. And she knew that we wouldn't X-ray a robot or subject it to any of the usual tests. It would just be wheeled right in."
Littlefield paused an instant, then went on. "She knew there was plenty of room inside a cybernetic robot that large, between the tiers of memory banks and all the other gadgetry, for the carrying out of what she had in mind—a stowaway gamble that was almost sure to succeed. She provided for her comfort during the long trip in half-dozen ingenious ways, as we know, and made sure that the food concentrates she took along were high in essential proteins.
"She knew, of course, that she couldn't stay inside the robot without coming out at all. She'd have to emerge occasionally, if only to ease the psychological strain. But she used good judgment and only emerged when she was absolutely sure that it would be safe."
"But once she didn't," I said.
"Once she didn't. Once she felt she couldn't stand the tensions that were building up in her any longer and she took a chance and came out when she wasn't sure the Chart Room would be deserted. You told me you thought it was never left unguarded. Well ... that isn't strictly true. There's a built-in security alert system in all of the robots and we can risk leaving it unguarded for a few minutes, when every member of the crew is needed elsewhere, to take care of some particularly troublesome space headache. That's what we call the small and seldom very serious emergencies which are always arising in a sky ship this large."
"But if she heard someone moving about ... she must have been crazy to emerge," I said.
"That's just it. She wasn't sure she heard anyone. In fact, she was almost sure it would be safe to emerge. She'd learned to trust her instincts, and the silence was almost unbroken. Just once she thought she heard a slight sound, but she put it down to the tension that was building up in her. She felt shehadto emerge."
"And he caught her," I said, nodding. "And was more enraged than he had any right to be. His fury was maniacal. If you'd seen the look on his face and the way he was twisting her wrist you'd have been sure as I was that he was quite capable of killing her. And that's the most puzzling part of it. We can't explain it—and neither can she. That's the one part of her story I was afraid you wouldn't believe."
"I didn't for a moment," Littlefield said. "I was sure she was lying ... until the look of bewilderment in her eyes convinced me she was telling the truth."
"You didn't want to talk about him until you'd examined the body," I said. "I guess I got a little angry when you were so damned insistent on that point. I was just about to—well, use that silver bird to make you change your mind. That used to be called 'pulling rank' on someone you respect and who has every right to tell you off. Since you like to play soldier—and I mean that in a complimentary way—you're free to go ahead and tell me off now, if you want to."
"Hell no. You had every right to press me. I just felt a little guilty and ashamed, I guess—to think that I'd let a crewman come aboard this sky ship who had managed in some way to deceive the Board. I was pretty sure, even then, that his clearance papers must have been forged, but I wanted a chance to examine the body before I committed myself, one way or the other."
"I guess I'd have done the same," I said
"Yes.... Well, I'd have gone right down to the Chart Room and examined the body before I listened to what she had to say ... if you hadn't given me some very sound advice. If we questioned her while she was in a keyed up state we'd have a better chance of getting at the truth."
I'd almost tripped over that one myself, so I didn't rate the compliment he was paying me. But it was too minor to make me feel conscience-bound to disillusion him.
"You saw me click the officer-section communicator on and talk into it for a minute or two," he went on. "I ordered a double guard posted in the Chart Room, but I told them not to touch the body until I had a chance to get down there myself. It's just as well I did, because something was found on the body I wouldn't have wanted anyone else to see."
He was smiling a little and I wondered why, until he exploded the bombshell—the thing he'd said would rock me back on my heels.
"He'd deceived the Board with a vengeance, apparently. There was a sealed envelope on him and when I tore it open there was a card in it. It wasn't a Board clearance card. It was a Wendel Atomics private police card and it identified him as the kind of secret agent you'd trade in for a snake if youhadto have something poisonous on board and were given a free choice in the matter. The Wendel police are little better than hired killers—although perhaps a few of them are generous-minded enough to feel that when you've beaten a man insensible it's going a little too far to put a bullet in him as well. And the Wendel secret agents are the worst sadists of the lot. They're hand-picked for shrewdness and when you get intelligence along with brutality there's no refinement of cruelty that won't be resorted to when the going gets rough."
"Good God!" I said. "So that's why—No ... no. It doesn't quite explain why just the sight of Helen Barclay emerging from the robot enraged him the way it did. Just the fact that there was a woman stowaway on Board shouldn't have angered him at all. It wasn't his headache, because he was merely masquerading as a crewman. Even a man who felt some responsibility in the matter would have only been a little angered."
Littlefield nodded. "Don't think that hasn't occurred to me. If he'd never set eyes on her before, or had no idea who she was ... it's hard to see why he should have become enraged, as you say. That's why I've gone to such lengths to make sure she was telling us the full truth when she explained why getting to Mars was so important to her."
He didn't have to read from the paper he was still holding to help me recall in detail everything she'd said during that part of the question-and-answer session. It had made too deep an impression on me. It had also struck a vital nerve, because it was tied in with my assignment. Not directly, because I could have completed my big job without so much as talking to her again. But she was going to Mars because of something that Wendel Atomics had done.
Wendel Atomics was the exposed nerve, because anything that had to do with the Martian power combines was of vital interest to me, if only on the general information level.
In her case it was a personal matter, just between Wendel and herself. A very small matter to Wendel but overwhelmingly important to her.
Her brother, an electronic engineer, was dying by inches in a Wendel laboratory. Slow, radio-active poisoning meant very little to Wendel Atomics apparently, when just one small human cog was afflicted with it and they still needed his services.
So she had used her own knowledge of electronics and a very great resourcefulness and a high I.Q. to stow away in a cybernetic robot and was on her way to Mars to see what a woman of courage, entirely alone, could do to save the life of the only brother she had.
She had tried to get a clearance from the Board and failed and that explained how she happened to be in the New Chicago spaceport bar when my own life had been in even more immediate danger ... because slow, radio-active poisoning takes a long time to kill and if you can stop it in time there's always a chance that the victim will recover.
"I've been checking up ever since you left," Littlefield was saying. "I managed to get through to Earth on the needle frequencies and Trilling knows now that you showed me the silver bird. The code I used to tell him that was too complicated to be broken by the big-brained inhabitants of Alpha Centauri's third planet, if—as seems unlikely—such a planet exists."
"And you didn't even tell me," I said. "I suppose I should be burned up about it."
"No, you shouldn't be. I just saved you a lot of unnecessary explaining. You can talk to Trilling all you want to from here on in, but I've cushioned the shock for you, taken a little of the edge off the way he seemed to feel for a minute or two."
"Well ... all right," I said. "Just what did you tell him."
"I asked him to do what he could to confirm her story. So far everything she told us seems to check out. Of course, they haven't been able to turn up too much, and she could still be lying. But we may get more on it later on. Don't count on it, though. I may not even be able to contact Trilling again. The needle frequencies are as unreliable as hell, as you know."
"But you just said I could talk to Trilling myself—"
"If we're lucky. You can't express yourself with precision when you're as troubled as I am right now."
I was troubled too ... perhaps more than he was. But just trying to make that concern dwindle a little by turning all the knobs on and off kept me from thinking about it.
"Well ... he could have recognized her," I said. "There could have been a link there, since he was a Wendel secret agent and her brother works for Wendel. Maybe they sent him her brother's photograph over the needle frequencies and said: 'Look around for a girl who resembles this man and keep an eye on her. She's one little girl we're worried about."
"Oh, sure, that could be it."
"It wouldn't sound quite so ludicrous, Commander, if it was her photograph they managed somehow to send him. Maybe they secured one from her brother without his knowing about it. But still—it wouldn't make much sense. Why should they fear her enough to put a secret agent on her trail? One helpless woman forty million miles from Mars. He couldn't have known she'd smuggle herself on board the rocket in a cybernetic robot ... because his rage when he discovered her precluded that. And why would he make the trip if he was out to get her and, for all he knew to the contrary, she was still somewhere in New Chicago?"
"If he was trailing her he could have suspected she might be on board and may have been searching everywhere for her," Littlefield pointed out. "That would even explain his rage when he finally got his hands on her, if we remember the kind of sadistic human animal he was. Frustration alone could produce a rage as violent as that in a Wendel agent—days and nights of fruitless searching. But ... I agree with you that it doesn't make sense otherwise. The stumbling block, as you say, is the difficulty in imagining how Wendel Atomics could possibly regard her as that serious a menace. Or fear her at all, for that matter."
That was as far as we got. The officer-section communication instrument on Littlefield's desk started buzzing and he swung about to pick it up, with an almost joyful eagerness.
I was sure that at any other time he'd have accepted that call with no visible display of emotion, just as a routine necessity. But when you've reached a stone wall in a discussion of vital importance and the odds against your making any further progress seem insurmountable, for the moment at least, practically any interruption will be as welcome as sunlight after a drenching rain or a peasoup fog. It's certainly better than beating your head against stone.
He listened for perhaps ten seconds with the instrument pressed to his ear, with no pronounced change of expression. Then his face blanched and a look of horror came into his eyes.
He slammed the instrument down and headed for the door on the run, completely unmindful of his dignity. Then he seemed to remember that he owed me an explanation—a man of principle will usually take a second or two out for that even when his home is in flames—and turned a yard from the door to shout at me.
"Someone got the nose-cone panel open, climbed outside and is crawling along the airframe toward the jet section! He's wearing magnetic boots and if I'm not mistaken he's equipped with everything he needs to blow the rocket apart."
When he saw the look on my face he added reassuringly. "We've still got a good chance of stopping him in time, because he just climbed out. But we'll have to bring most of the airframe into sharp focus on the viewplate, and pinpoint his every movement."
It came as such a shock to me that I felt I had a good chance of suffocating, just from the way my throat tightened up and my heart started pumping blood at twice its usual rate.
I'm not quite sure how I managed to follow him at a distance of not more than fifteen feet, down three intership ladders and along four branching passageways, without once stopping to get my breath back. I doubt if I could have done that anyway.
Right foot, then left, right left, right left, Ralphie boy, and don't give up the ship. Never give up the ship when there's a chance to save it. There's nothing painful about being vaporized in space. Remember that, keep it firmly in mind. Nothing painful, nothing sad ... just a quick end to all you've had.
I don't know why I thought the Chart Room looked deserted, like a big, unoccupied mausoleum with tiers for coffins—dozens of coffins—running up both of its sides. No coffins yet, just the empty shelves, for burial time had not yet arrived. But how could the Chart Room have looked deserted, when it wasn't at all?
There were a dozen officers standing in front of the big lighted screen and when we crossed the room to join them without announcing our arrival—well, that made fourteen.
I can't even explain how I got the idea there was a chill in the air that seemed to wrap itself around me in moist, clinging folds, because no section of the sky ship was more comfortably heated.
I didn't spend more than a minute or two trying to puzzle it out, because the "furious sick shapes of nightmare," to quote from a poem I wasn't sure I'd ever read, only disturb you when you give them more encouragement than they're entitled to.
The only really important thing was that we could see him in bent light on the big screen—a tiny, spacesuited figure climbing along the airframe, laden down with something cumbersome that he kept pushing before him in a completely weightless way as he inched further and further toward the rocket's stern.
All at once, I knew what was going to happen to him. I was as sure of it as I am that I have two big toes that point a little inward and that Joan sometimes tenderly jokes about.
Between Earth and Mars space isn't empty. It hasn't been empty for more than half a century, which is a pretty good record on the survival scale for man-made, mechanical implants. The early Sputniks didn't last one-tenth as long.
I knew without waiting for Commander Littlefield to finish what he was saying to one of the officers and issue a command that the needle frequencies scattered throughout the void on all sides of us were the only composite weapon we could count on to save the sky ship and all the people between its decks who didn't want to be vaporized. And that took in practically everyone on board.
Sure, I know. Everyone had thought that the millions of filament-thin wires which had been put into orbit around Earth in the seventh and eighth decades of the twentieth century and later into orbit around Mars and far out into interstellar space would only be used for purposes of communication. Project Needles, or, if you want to be strictly technical, Project West Ford.
God grant that they may some day be used in no other way. But when a man climbs out on the airframe of a sky ship, for the sole purpose of blowing it up——
There is only one way I can do justice to the speed with which it happened and the awful, mind-numbing finality of it. It is not something which should be recorded in a paragraph, a page, but in two sentences at most.
Commander Littlefield issued a command, and a light on the instrument panel blinked, and a million magnetized filaments converged, united and so united, converged again on the airframe of the sky ship. There was a blinding flash of light and the tiny human figure was gone.
The first words Commander Littlefield spoke, after that, were to me.
"Whoever he was, he must have wanted her dead pretty badly ... to have been willing to blow up the sky ship and kill himself in the process."
There was a strange look on his face and his gray eyes met mine with a question in them.
Then he spoke the question aloud. "Or was it you, Ralph, whom he had in mind?"