He laughed then, a tall and splendid figure standing strained against the brutal, clawing acceleration. Ellen's brother—aye! And one could see why she wanted him spared. Janazik's lip curled back from his teeth in a snarl of hate.
The rocket must be very near escape velocity now. Presently Ellen would signal for the jets to be turned off and they would rush weightless through space while she took her readings and plotted the orbit that would get them to the Star Ship. And if then Carse emerged with his blaster—
Anse had only a sword.
But—Anse is Anse, thought Janazik.If there is any faintest glimmer of a chance Anse will find it. And if not, we're really no worse off than now. I'll have to warn Anse and leave the rest up to him.
The Khazaki nodded bleakly to himself. It would probably mean his own death before Carse's blaster flame—and damn it, damn it, he liked living. Even if the old Khazak he knew were doomed, there had been many new worlds of the Galactic frontier. He and Anse had often dreamed of roving over them—
However—
A red light blinked on the panel. Ellen's signal to cut the rockets. They were at escape velocity.
Wearily, his hand shaking, Alonzo threw the master switch. The sudden silence was like a thunderclap.
And Janazik screeched the old Krakenaui danger call from his fullest lungs.
Carse turned around with a curse, awkward in the sickening zero-gravity of free fall. "It won't do you any good," he yelled thickly. "I'll kill him too—"
Alonzo threw the master switch up! With a coughing roar, the rockets burst back into life. No longer holding the stanchion, Carse was hurled to the floor.
Janazik clawed at his webbing to get free. Carse leveled his blaster on Alonzo. The engineer threw another switch at random, and the direction of acceleration shifted with sudden violence, slamming Carse against the farther wall.
His blaster raved, and Alonzo had no time to scream before the flame licked about him.
His blaster raved, and Alonzo had no time to scream before the flame licked about him....
His blaster raved, and Alonzo had no time to scream before the flame licked about him....
His blaster raved, and Alonzo had no time to scream before the flame licked about him....
And in the control room, Anse heard Janazik's high ululating yell. The reflexes of the wandering years came back to galvanize him. His sword seemed to leap into his hand, he flung himself out of his chair webbing with a shout....
"Anse!" Ellen's voice came dimly to his ears, hardly noticed. "Anse—what is it—"
He drifted weightless in midair, cursing, trying to swim. And then the rockets woke up again and threw him against the floor. He twisted with Khazaki agility, landed crouched, and bounded for the stern.
Ellen looked after him, gasping, for an instant yet unaware of the catastrophe, thinking how little she knew that yellow-maned savage after all, and how she would like to learn, and—
The rocket veered, crazily. Anse caught himself as he fell, adjusted to the new direction of gravity, and continued his plunging run. The crash of a blaster came from ahead of him.
He burst into the control room and saw it in one blinding instant. Alonzo's charred body sagging in its harness, Janazik half out of his, Carse staggering to his feet—the blaster turned on Janazik, Janazik, the finger tightening—
Tiger-like, Anse sprang. Carse glimpsed him, turned, the blaster half swung about ... and the murderous fighting machine which was Dougald Anson had reached him. Carse saw the sword shrieking against his face; it was the last thing he ever saw....
Anse lurched back against the control panel. "Turn it off!" yelled Janazik. "Throw that big switch there!"
Mechanically, the human obeyed, and there was silence again, a deep ringing silence in which they floated free. It felt like an endless falling.
Falling, falling—Anse looked numbly down at his bloody sword. Falling, falling, falling—but that couldn't be right, he thought dully. He had already fallen. He had killed Ellen's brother.
"And I love her," he whispered.
Janazik drifted over, slowly in the silent room. His eyes were a deep gold, searching now.If Ellen won't have him, he and I will go out together, out to the stars and the great new frontier. But if she will, I'll have to go alone, I'll always be alone—
Unless she would come too. She's a good kid.... I'd like to have her along. Maybe take a mate of my own too.... But that can never be, now. She won't come near her brother's slayer.
"You might not have had to kill him," said Janazik. "Maybe you could have disarmed him."
"Not before he got one of us—probably you," said Anse tonelessly. "Anyway, he needed killing. He shot Alonzo."
He added, after a moment: "A man has to stand by his comrades."
Janazik nodded, very slowly. "Give me your sword," he said.
"Eh?" Anse looked at him. The blue eyes were unseeing, blind with pain, but he handed over the red weapon. Janazik slipped his own glaive into the human's fingers.
Then he laid a hand on Anse's shoulder and smiled at him, and then looked away.
We Khazaki don't know love. There is comradeship, deeper than any Earthling knows. When it happens between male and female, they are mates. When it is between male and male, they are blood-brothers. And a man must stand by his comrades.
Ellen came in, pulling her way along the walls by the handholds, and Anse looked at her without saying a word, just looking.
"What happened?" she said. "What is the—Oh!"
Carse's body floated in midair, turning over and over in air currents like a drowned man in the sea.
"Carse—Carse—"
Ellen pushed from the wall, over to the dead man. She looked at his still face, and stroked his blood-matted hair, and smiled through a mist of tears.
"You were always good to me, Carse," she whispered. "You were ... goodnight, brother. Goodnight."
Then turning to Anse and Janazik, with something cold and terrible in her voice: "Who killed him?"
Anse looked at her, dumbly.
"I did," said Janazik.
He held forth the dripping sword. "He stowed away—was going to take over the ship. Alonzo threw him off balance by turning the rockets back on. He killed Alonzo. Then I killed him. He needed it. He was a traitor and a murderer, Ellen."
"He was my brother," she whispered. And suddenly she was sobbing in Anse's arms, great racking sobs that seemed to tear her slender body apart.
But she'd get over it.
Anse looked at Janazik over her shoulder, and while he ruffled her shining hair his eyes locked with the Khazaki's.This is the end. Once we land, we can never see each other, not ever again. And we were comrades in the old days....
Farewell, my brother.
When the star ship landed outside Krakenau's surrendered citadel, it was still raining a little. Janazik looked out at the wet gray world and shivered. Then, wordlessly, he stepped from the airlock and walked slowly down the hill toward the sea. He did not look back, and Anse did not look after him.