Instantly, Torry let go his grasp and dropped. He fell and rolled savagely, while the lance of light stabbed overhead, and the explosion started small landslides around him. He screamed in momentary panic. Preventing a helpless plunge into an abyss which opened before him was a chore. And the abyss itself proved only illusion. Solid wall blocked his fall and stunned him for a terrible moment. Miraculously, he retained a grip on his gun.
He lay quietly, while rocks continued to rattle upon his helmet and spacesuit. Someone was descending toward him. It could be only—
Roper.
The visible face behind the plate of transparent plastic could have been poured in the same mold as Torry's. It was younger, finer-featured, but it was shrewd, self-indulgent. Roper had enjoyed his life of crime, and it had agreed with him. He looked healthy, humorously handsome and extremely well-fed.
He stared at Torry, and the expression on his face changed as he saw the blaster. He started a movement toward his own clipped weapon.
"Don't try it, Bart," ordered Torry sharply. "I think I'd enjoy killing you."
Bart Roper sighed deeply. "You took unfair advantage of me," he complained. "I thought you were hurt or killed. I was coming to see—"
"To make sure of me, if you'd missed? Maybe not. Maybe you did have a human impulse for once. I'll try to think so. And you can see how much it hurts when someone takes advantage of any human weakness. It hurts, doesn't it?"
Roper nodded slowly. "It does. So you've got me! Don't be so proud of yourself. It wasn't that hard. I was cooked from the moment your police pals got their hands on the transmitter. It was my only way out. You know that, of course. I just wanted the pleasure of taking some of you with me. I'm not going back to Mars. The disintegrators, or life in the prison mines don't appeal to me. So you'd better kill me now."
"I will if you force me," Torry told him wearily. "But I'm not making it that easy for you. There's a choice, but you won't like it. I've made a deal with Grannar. You can die now, or you can go back to Earth to the clinic."
"The clinic!" shrieked Roper. "You know what that means. I wouldn't be the same person. Maybe not even human."
Torry steadied his eyes on his brother. "I'm not sure you ever were human. But you need treatment. They'll knock out your thymus, drug you and shock you and carve you till you'll never know yourself. You won't be an antisocial monster with the emotional stasis of a child. You won't be anything you've ever been. But you may be a man. And you'll stop hurting people, or they'll stop you for good. The choice is yours—right now. So make up both our minds before I decide to shoot."
Roper yielded with a grimace of distaste. "You win, Torry. You always did, sooner or later. I was quicker, but you were smarter. I guess Rose was the last of your toys I'll ever swipe. And it's back to kindergarten for Bart Roper."
Torry relaxed, though he still did not lower his gun.
"You'll be going back on the survey ship, Bart. That way, you'll have a long voyage in the brig to meditate on your sins. But on Earth, you'll have Rose. You're a married man there, with a wife and child. Rose still loves you, Bart. When you steal something, it stays stolen. I'm not going back, so you'll get Rose after all."
Roper laughed coldly. "That's what I meant about your being smarter than I am. You always come out ahead."
Torry's eyes followed a moving mirage to a notch high on the walls of the gully. The glitter of cold metal was not illusion. Tharol Sen held a gun on him, unwaveringly.
"You can come out now," Torry said to her. "It's all over."
Tharol Sen lowered her gun and walked unsteadily toward them.
"Why didn't you shoot?" Roper stormed at her angrily. "You could have killed him before he pulled the trigger."
Inside her face plate. Torry could see her eyes dim with hot tears.
"Yes, I could have," she said brokenly. "But maybe I've seen enough mirages to recognize one...."
Many Martian hours later, three people watched the survey ship blast off from Triton. Before the ship left, Grannar had been taken aboard and removed from his spacesuit long enough for drugs to be administered and his legs set and splinted. Now, with painkilling narcotics deadening him, the policeman was scarcely aware of the departing ship with his prisoner aboard, consigned bodily to Earth and its clinic for incurable criminals. Grannar had relaxed into a dope-daydream of a comfortable future on Earth as a plankton farmer, with nothing to do but read minifilm detective stories.
Watching the ship vanish beyond a skyful of mirages, Torry tried vainly to conquer a feeling of depression. Loneliness swept over him, as if with the sudden termination of his obsession about Roper, his life had lost most of its meaning. It occurred to him suddenly that Tharol Sen must be feeling infinitely worse. With a quick glance toward Grannar to make sure that the policeman was all right, Torry climbed slowly to the eyrie in the high rocks where the girl had hidden herself. Like a doll in a space suit, Tharol Sen huddled together, staring upward as if toward some vanishing illusion.
Shared loneliness sometimes loses its sting.
But Tharol Sen ignored Torry's presence, and he felt acutely embarrassed.
"You'll be better off without him," Torry said, consoling her. "And life will be much simpler."
"I know that," she replied sharply. "What else did you want?"
Torry laughed.
"Business, I guess. According to Solar Spacelaw, we three are sole owners of Triton and its mineral rights, since we were on the spot and in possession when the survey ship arrived. Your people will have the transuranics they need. But the stuff won't work in the transmitter, so it'll have to go in the hard way. High freight charges will cut down the profits, so I don't think any of us will get rich. I'm sure that Grannar will sell his rights cheap: And as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather your people had the stuff at cost, so I'll sign over my rights to them for the forty-one thousand credits I've invested. Also, you can claim salvage rights on the transmitter of a third of the value, and I'm sure the inventor will be happy to have it back at that. I won't ask any part of the salvage claim. Money just weighs me down anyhow."
"That's very generous of you," murmured Tharol Sen. "My people will be very grateful to you."
"And you," he asked. "Just how grateful will you be?"
Her eyes blinked, then stared soberly through the face plate of her helmet. "Ask that again—"
"It's not part of the deal, of course. But you bragged that you could make Roper forget a girl back on Earth. I need some full time forgetting, and I wondered if you'd like to try the same stunt for me."
Tharol Sen studied him for a long moment before answering.
"When we're out of these helmets," she said softly, "you can kiss me. Just once. For gratitude. Afterward, much later, we can think about the rest, and discuss it with dignity. If you're staying on Mars, why not look me up ... sometime?"
"Why not?" asked Torry, grinning. Then without waiting for the kiss, he made his decision. "And I'm staying on Mars...."