His eyes rolled wildly, trying to glimpse me. He stopped struggling.
Warily, I loosened the noose ... waited while he sucked in air in great, chest-filling gulps.
But not for too long. Before he could stop shaking or have time really to think, I said, "Gaylord, we're going upstairs. If anyone tries to stop us, you're the one who'll get it."
I shoved him forward as I finished, and the inner doors opened. The sash a deadly bond between us, we crossed the lobby.
Into the shaft-lift, then. My prisoner shot me an uncertain glance, half hate and half fear. "I don't see why you had to do it this way. I'd have met you at that thil-shop like you said."
"Maybe." I shrugged. "That's not the question."
"Not the question—?"
"We're getting out on whichever floor Kruze has taken over."
A panicky stiffening. "Oh!"
"Come on, come on! Which floor is it?"
"Seven."
"Good enough." I punched the button and we zoomed upward. "There'll be a guard on duty, of course. You might think about how you're going to get us past him."
Gaylord looked a little green.
The lift slowed. Jerking my sash from Gaylord's throat, I snapped it back in place about my waist and, as we halted, shoved my unwilling accomplice out of the cage ahead of me.
There were two guards in the anteroom instead of one. The first, beetle-browed and heavy-jawed, slumped dozing in a chair. His companion, slimmer and trimmer, sat straighter than was necessary but without a coat, playing a miniature sokkol wheel against himself.
"Visitor for Controller Kruze," Gaylord croaked as the non-sleeping guard looked up. He made as if to stride past the pair to the door beyond.
But as he did so, his head went forward just a fraction, and his left shoulder dropped.
The next item on the agenda would be a simultaneous yell of warning and spin to one side, out of my reach. He might as well have put it on a placard.
I leaped first, by a split second. When the yell came, and the spin, I was already in position to catch Gaylord's arm as he whirled by.
It changed his course a bit. He crashed bodily into the dozing, bull-necked guard, and they went down together.
But the other guard was rising. Ducking, I snatched up his fallen comrade's chair and hurled it at him.
The man threw up his arms to ward it off. Lunging at him full-tilt, head lowered, I butted him in the stomach.
The wind went out of him in a gust. He tottered backward, his mouth opening and closing in agonized, fish-like contortions as he fought to catch his breath.
I stomped on his foot and gave him a violent reverse shove past me. Lurching wildly, he tumbled into the heavy-set guard—now arising—just as had Gaylord. Together, they went down atop the controller in a comic-opera slap-stick tangle.
Then a hand came clear of the threshing clutter of arms and legs. It held a paragun.
I kicked for—connected with—the wrist. The weapon flew wide. I dived after it, arm outstretched.
But before I could claw it up, a voice lashed out, harsh and heavy, from the doorway to Kruze's quarters:
"Don't touch it, Traynor!"
Kruze's voice.
The back of my neck prickled. Carefully, I drew my hand away from the paragun, then turned.
The controller of all FedGov Security's far-flung interplanetary operations stood staring down at me out of heavy-lidded eyes that in this moment sparked cold malice. One slab-like hand gripped a paragun, twin to the one I'd tried to snatch.
"So, Traynor...."
"So?" I flung the word back at him with a belligerence to match his gloating. A sudden, swift recklessness surged through me. "I've got some things to say to you, Controller. That's why I came here."
The heavy-lidded eyes didn't even flicker. The thick body stood granite-like, immobile. "What things?"
"Things about the Kel." I got up from the floor; stepped towards him. Sheer urgency drained the anger from me. "Kruze, they're infiltrating. Tonight—right now, maybe—"
"Shall we shut him up, chief? You want us to stop him?"
It was the heavy-set guard, on his feet again now. Beside him, his thinner companion threw me a look of smoldering hate. A sullen-looking Gaylord was dusting himself off behind them.
I said desperately, "Kruze, you've got to listen! I found that girl—the one who called about the thrill-mills on the voco. She's been a Kel prisoner ever since Bejak II. She knows their plan, the details—"
"And just how does she know it?"
"What—?"
"I said, how does she know it?" Never had the controller's heavy-lidded eyes seemed colder, the bulky body less yielding. And then, as I groped: "To the best of my knowledge, no human has ever communicated with the Kel. We don't even know what they look like. Consequently, I find it difficult to accept the concept of alien infiltration as a practical threat, in the face of our warning net and proved defensive measures."
"But they're shape-changers!" Involuntarily, my hands moved in frantic, pleading gestures. "They can simulate men. It's only the conditioned consistency of human behavior that's baffled them—"
Kruze's great head moved. "Guards, I'm tired of listening to this nonsense."
"Yes, Controller."—This from the thin man. As one, he and his companion closed in.
"Kruze, for the sake of all of us, the whole human race! What does it matter what the Kel look like? We've seen their globeships. We know what happened at Bejak II, at Corrigar, at Astole—"
Hands seized my arms; wrestled me backward.
"Please, Kruze! You've got to listen!"
Nerveless and unrelenting as a granite monolith, Controller Alfred Kruze turned on his heel, stepped back into the room from which he'd come, and closed the door behind him.
The bottom seemed to fall out of my stomach. For an instant I thought I was going to faint.
Gaylord speaking: "Take him down to the detention room. I'll file charges in the morning."
Spasmodically, I twisted towards him. "You, Gaylord! Do you know what it's going to mean if the Kel break through and take Rizal? Lock me up if you want to, yes. Or let these two thugs kick me to death, for that matter. But get to Kruze! Make him listen—"
"I doubt if there's time for him to do much listening." Gaylord glanced at his chrono, spoke with relish. "You see, he's already scheduled to warp back to headquarters in less than an hour. And of course I wouldn't think of disturbing him in the meantime."
For a moment I stared at him in the shock of utter panic. Then—cursing, convulsing—I hurled myself forward.
Just as violently, the guards slammed me back. Ignoring my shouts and struggles, Gaylord pivoted and strode to the shaft-lift, pausing there just long enough to fling me one quick, mocking glance over his shoulder.
The lift's double panels slid aside. Still smirking, Gaylord started to enter.
Only then, inside the cage, movement suddenly flickered.
Gaylord jerked back. His voice rose in a wild, shrill scream of terror. He tried to whirl, to flee.
But a paragun's purple beam flashed like a visual echo to the cry of panic. With an awful, anguished intake of air, Rizal's controller tottered backward ... crumpled to the floor.
Simultaneously, three men leaped from the lift.
They were unique in their way: Each had two heads.
Beside me, the thin guard choked; snatched for the paragun he carried in a hip holster.
He died before he could even get it clear.
The other guard, the heavy-set one, backed up against Controller Kruze's door, hands already raised. His breath rasped in his throat. His face was dough-grey.
For my part, I couldn't even speak.
And now, within the shaft-lift's cage, more movement ... another figure darting forward. A woman's figure.
I choked "Celeste—!"
"Oh, Mark, Mark...." She ran to me; flung her arms about me. "I was so afraid!"
My throat drew tight. I held her close, smoothing the soft golden halo that was her hair.
Only something was wrong. The hair—it didn't feel right....
I straightened, stiffened; stared down at the woman in my arms more intently.
Something was wrong with the eyes, too. They weren't the cool, clear grey that I remembered.
Celeste laughed softly.
But even as she did so, her face began to twist, to change. The features seemed to run together in an incredible distortion.
I tried to thrust her away from me, then.
Like magic, the warm arms twined about my neck reshaped and elongated. Before my eyes, the fleshtones were transformed to grey-green mottling.
Woman into Kel; Kel into woman. The end of an idyll.
I began to laugh ... louder and louder; more and more wildly. When one of the two-headed men tried to shake me, I spat in his face.
Furiously, he lashed out at me with the barrel of his paragun.
I didn't even try to dodge the blow....
This prison room was like the inside of a great, glowing, metal sphere. Light seemed to radiate from its very walls—strange scarlet light that washed over us in pulsing waves.
Yet weird as it was, I hardly gave it a second glance, nor my companions either. Too many other things kept preying on my mind—things like the gnawing guilt that was mine for violating Kruze's orders ... the unanswered question of why I, among all men, should seethe with such headstrong hate against the Kel ... the horror of Rizal's defenses infiltrated, shattered.
Above all, my jumble of mixed feelings as to Celeste.
Only that was a dead end, and I knew it.
Yet still her cool blonde loveliness kept slipping through the shadows of my brain. No sooner did I block the image out on one front than it came cajoling, laughing, mocking on another.
I cursed aloud, and squeezed my eyes tight shut, and gripped my throbbing head between my hands.
But then thick fingers gouged into my shoulder. Their pressure dragged me back from the blackened wastes of my self-recrimination; forced me once again to face the reality of this pulsing scarlet prison sphere.
Wearily, blearily, I opened my eyes and looked up.
Controller Alfred Kruze towered above me, his heavy body grotesque in the crimson radiance.
He said, "Traynor, you know as well as I do that we'll never make it out of here alive. So I want you to know now I'm sorry I wouldn't listen to you. After your insubordination—well, try not to blame me too much; I simply didn't understand."
For a moment I stared at him. My eyes blurred. I choked on my own pent-up emotions. "Controller—if I just hadn't forced Gaylord to put out that action order—"
"I know. But it's not your fault; not really. I shouldn't have let those fools in Psychogen interfere with your conditioning." Kruze's heavy jowls quivered. "Besides, what does it matter now? We're all of us as good as dead."
He turned as he finished; moved off in a restless, plodding circle around our dungeon's canted floor.
A knot drew tight beneath my breastbone. Sick at heart, I looked from one of my companions to another.
Six men; six FedGov Security workers gone astray. From Chief Controller Alfred Kruze straight down to the lowly Sigman Third the Kel had trapped in Communications.
And in between those two extremes, in the middle, stood Special Agent Mark Traynor.
Always, always in the middle. Even here, even now, aboard this Kel globeship.
A sudden clank of metal cut through my introspections. A hatch swung open high overhead.
Taut silence fell over our little group. Fearfully, we stared up at the aperture.
Now a slim rod thrust down through the opening, drill-like. In two seconds it reached and anchored tight against the floor, like an axis for the tiny world that was this room.
Another second, and a bulbous shape slid down the rod. In the radiance, it was as colorless and formless as a red-washed lump of putty. A giant lump, as a hogshead.
Then, as it reached the floor, a change took place. Swiftly, surely, it reshaped itself, drawing taller and thinner and taking on new contours. A man came into being—a tall gawky man, twin of the Sigman Third.
"Here, fellow!" Grinning mirthlessly, he stepped towards the sigman. "Come along, now. Don't be shy!"
Panic flared in the sigman's eyes. Gangling and clumsy, he backed away.
But the quarters here were too cramped for maneuvering. In a rush, the man's Kel duplicate closed in. "Now, wait a minute, fellow—"
The sigman tripped over his own feet and started to fall. Like lightning, the Kel had an arm about him. "Here, now, fellow—"
But in the rush, the arm turned out to be a tentacle instead.
The sigman let out a wild yell. Promptly, hisdoppelganger'shead turned into a tentacle also and, whipping round its victim, pinned arms to sides.
Flailing, screaming, struggling. Inch by inch, foot by foot, the sigman was dragged back to the rod, while we other humans all stood there frozen—paralyzed; unable to speak, unable to move.
Only then, suddenly, I couldn't stand it any more. With a yell of my own, and a curse and a snarl, I lunged into the fray. Tearing, clawing, I fought to free the sigman.
For a moment, it almost seemed I'd turned the tide.
But then, with a sudden shift, the Kel whirled on me. The sigman fell forgotten and it was I, not he, who was beset. Spongy, yielding pseudo-flesh pressed in upon me. Thin tendrils of it touched and clutched me, leech-like. Long tentacles encircled and constricted. I found myself battling for my very breath.
Mercilessly, the creature dragged me to the rod, the axis of the crimson room. Pulpy protrusions wrapped around the metal. I felt the shaft begin to vibrate. With a high, whining sound, it let go of the floor and lifted Kel and me alike into the air. The sphere's dome, the ceiling arc, rushed in upon me. As from afar, I glimpsed the strain-straut, uptilted faces of the other prisoners below.
And now, abruptly, a strange reaction came upon me. It was as if in throwing myself upon the alien foe I'd somehow cast aside my panic. Like the old story of the boy who'd found the nettles didn't prick if only he had the courage to seize them firmly.
We passed through the hatch. A seamless sheen of metal cut off the last sight of my comrades.
Coolly, I gazed about at a room even more weird in conception than the dungeon sphere.
Again, the arc seemed to be the basic motif. But in this place it was a chopped-up, intersected arc, as if function here had held sway over symmetry.
Everywhere, too, there were shifting shapes, strange bodies—bodies long and bodies short, bodies thick and bodies thin. Some resembled life-forms that I knew. Others bore no resemblance to anything I'd ever seen before.
Yet headless or multi-headed, with visible sense organs or without, drab or vivid in coloration, every one of them appeared to have some work to do. Insectile, pulsing, they swarmed over every arc and angle of the room. Here they pulled at mobile strips of metal. There they maneuvered gem-bright crystal buds through maze-like tracks. Cone-things and cube-things, niches, projections—synchronously or erratically, they turned and twitched and throbbed and twisted.
It dawned on me, then: This chamber was the globe's control room. These unfamiliar forms were instruments, equipment.
The kind of equipment, unfortunately, that no human mind, uninstructed could fathom.
Letting go of the rod, my captor carried me across a parabolic wall, then down to a spot where misshapen curves and angles came together in such a pattern as to remind me of the warehouse room with the living statues on Rizal. I was released; allowed to sit.
Minutes dragged by. Then, suddenly, close at hand, another hatch opened. One of the Kel oozed through it, carrying Celeste.
In a flash, all my tensions were back. My palms began to sweat. I had trouble with my breathing.
Gracefully, the girl came close; sat down beside me. "Mark...."
I hesitated, trying not to let the ambivalence I felt show in my eyes. "Yes?"
"Mark, please...." Her hand rested lightly on my arm. "Look at me, Mark."
It was a lovely face. Kel or not, it was lovely.
"My hair, Mark. Look at my hair. Feel of it."
She lifted my hand as she spoke, and brushed it against softly silken strands.
Involuntarily, I stiffened.
"That's right, Mark. It's real. Not even the most sensitive of the Kel can match it."
I looked at her, then. Full at her, straight into her eyes.
Cool, clear, grey eyes.
Her words came in a rush: "Mark I know what you thought. But it wasn't true, not any of it. I didn't have any more idea than you of why the Kel let us go, there in the warehouse. I'm still not sure, unless they wanted to follow you to Kruze.
"As soon as we separated, four of them seized me. One—became like me. And after that...."
I nodded slowly.
"Mark...."
"Don't worry. I'm listening."
"Please, Mark—"
"Let me guess." I laughed abruptly. "They've brought you here to pry some more, get out more information."
A little of the color left Celeste's lovely face. She didn't speak.
"It's true, isn't it?" I jabbed at her. "That's your job here—fronting for the Kel when they have to deal with humans on anything that's more than skin deep."
More of Celeste's color drained. With an unsteady movement, she started to turn away.
I caught her arm and jerked her back so that she faced me. "Answer me, rack you! Isn't it true? Aren't you here to probe me for them?"
"Mark, you're hurting!" A nerve twitched, just below her cheekbone. "It—it isn't anything, Mark. They just—can't understand you. Why you act like you do. Where you find the courage to keep on fighting."
"And you've told them, of course? You've let them know how much I hate them?"
"They—don't understand hate—" She broke off, hesitating; then suddenly swung about to face me. "Besides, it's not true! It's not them you hate! How can you? You don't even know them!"
"Don't say that, rack you!" A red haze swirled across my vision. I let go the girl's arm and struck out at her, slapping.
But she was already twisting, already moving. The slap barely ticked her shoulder. Before I could seize her again, she rolled wide and darted off across the steeply sloping floor-curve.
Surging up, I leaped after her.
But now, off to one side, a Kel swirled swiftly. Like a muddy wave, part of his shapelessness took on form, shoving at a knob-like bulge of metal.
The knob moved. A cone of greenish radiance lanced from an adjoining crystal. Like a searchlight, it swept across the distorted room, pursuing Celeste.
Her eyes came up as, flickering, the beam struck the metal wall beside her. Face stiffening, she cried out in swift panic; flung herself down bodily behind an angling ridge.
The beam whipped back, still reaching for her. Everywhere, the Kel had stopped their shuttling and shifting. I stood alone, apparently forgotten.
And there, not a dozen feet away, was the beam's control-knob.
I made for it in one mad rush, not even stopping to think lest some Kel telepathic sense should doom me.
For a split second, nothing happened.
Then, out of nowhere, a shrill keening sound hammered at my eardrums. The alien directing the cone of radiance changed shape and darkened to a splotchy purple as he came round, trying to meet me.
Feet first, I plowed into him.
Like lightning, tentacles whipped up to ensnare me. Tissue slapped across my face in a smothering plaster.
But this time I too had my strategy. Wasting no time or energy on the monster's embrace, I hurled myself sidewise.
The Kel tore loose from his anchorage on the metal wall. For an instant he swung in mid-air, unsupported save by his contact with my body.
Violently, I flipped him round, whirling so that sheer centrifugal force carried his body closer and closer to the greenish cone of light that still shone from the crystal.
Again, somewhere, the keening sound rose shrilly.
Instantly, the alien clinging to me gave a convulsive shift, so violent it almost turned me over.
But I was whirling too fast to be stopped by anything short of complete upset. Lurching, staggering, I stumbled still closer to the cone of radiance.
One more step, one only—
The beam spilled across the Kel's extended body. Once—twice—three times the alien whirled into the radiance.
And each time, something hissed, like steam escaping. Tentacles jerked at me in a frantic spasm.
Then, of a sudden, the pseudopods released their grip. The viscous body lost all semblance of tone and tension ... flew away from me in a short, sodden arc, to land with a splatting sound against the wall nearby.
How much time had elapsed? One second? Two?
I couldn't tell. I only knew that now, from all sides, Kel were swarming at me in a rush.
I dived for the metal knob that controlled the green beam. With one sweep of my hand, I set it spinning.
The crystal swiveled in swift coordination. The cone of light flashed in a great, swooping arc.
And everywhere its radiance touched the Kel, there was the sound, the sudden hissing. Bulbous bodies went limp. Pseudopodal tissue oozed away like oil on pavement.
Grimly, I spun the knob the other way—hunting down my foes, driving them to cover.
Then—quite suddenly, it seemed—no more Kel were visible. I stood in complete command of the control room of an alien globeship.
I smiled a little at that time, I think—a slow, contemplative smile, with nothing that could be spoken of as humor in it.
After that, tight-lipped, I called, "Celeste! Get up here!"
Hollow-eyed, tousle-headed, she came out from behind the ridge where she'd been hiding.
Not giving her a chance to speak, I said, "These things, the Kel—how do they tell you what they want?"
"How?"—She moved uncertainly "It's—well, one of them—becomes like me. We talk. Then—"
"That's enough," I grunted. "Look around. Start hunting for one who's hiding like you were behind the ridges."
"I—I don't understand...."
"You will." With slow deliberation, I fanned the walls with my cone of greenish light. I had no illusions that my grin was pleasant. "You see, Miss Stelpa, somewhere aboard this ship there's a Kel who doesn't want this beam to burn him. He doesn't want it so bad he'll even betray the rest of his kind in order to prevent it.
"Starting right now, we're going to find that traitor!"
The first three Kel Celeste rooted out were loyal to their species.
Unto death.
The fourth, it seemed, felt differently about it. Even life in the FedGov's interplanetary zoo, apparently, was acceptable, when weighed against no life at all.
Our problems resolved themselves into routine, almost, after that ... a course to set, the ship to steer, messages to send to lure other globes into range of FedGov weapons.
Then, finally, the job was done. The last Kel ship save this one had been swept from space and blasted into atoms.
Now, in a rush, fatigue welled up to claim me. I slumped, half-sick. By the time our craft came to rest on Rizal, I wasn't sure I even had strength left to climb out.
Then, at last, our hatches swung open. Aid parties swarmed aboard.
I moved back out of sight. Somehow, I couldn't face the excited flummery and fawning.
Celeste Stelpa, too, seemed to have vanished. No matter where I looked, I couldn't find her.
The first party into the globeship brought paraguns and proton blasters with them. Relentlessly, they cleared out what was left of the Kel crew, pushing past me almost without notice in the grimness of their work.
Wave Two hoisted Controller Kruze and the other prisoners up from their spherical scarlet dungeon.
It was a moment to remember. For if I couldn't stand the thought of obsequiousness and adulation, Security's chief had no such inhibitions. His heavy body seemed to swell. He beamed and puffed and pranced and strutted.
Conveniently, too, he made no slightest mention of me. Without saying so in so many words, he made it ever so clear that Controller Alfred Kruze himself had saved mankind from the Kel menace.
I smiled a small and twisted smile. That was the way of officialdom, it seemed—in this world or any other.
And what did it really matter?
Only then, without warning, someone said, "—and these people, Controller: the ones who received thrill-mills from the Kel and kept it secret. What do you plan to do about them?"
Kruze's heavy features grew dark. "What would you have me do—to traitors?" He wheeled like an angry mastiff; shook his fist. "They die, of course! All of them! The very fact of past or present possession of a thrill-mill be punished by summary execution, without trial, as collaboration with the Kel!"
I almost cried out, then, by instinct.
Only that could do no good. The thinking part of my brain knew it. So I stood silent, instead; immobile. This quick wave of approval from Kruze's adulators roused only numb shock in me.
Then the controller's aides moved him on out. The rescue parties followed.
I let them go. For my own part, I couldn't leave. Not quite yet.
The last stragglers disappeared. The echoes died. Aching with weariness, I began my own bleakly purposeful tour of inspection.
A dozen times, I lost my way in the maze of rooms and shafts and intersecting passages. A hundred—a thousand—I came upon strange sights, alien things my human mind could never hope to fathom.
Now fatigue bore me down till I had to stop and lean against a wall to rest. I began to wonder if I'd come on a fool's errand.
Then, close to the globeship's exit hatch, I glimpsed a narrow storage niche—a niche stacked high with neat oblong cases.
Fibrox transit boxes.
Involuntarily, my breathing quickened. Dragging down the nearest box, I ripped it open.
A folded paper fell to the floor: a cargo manifest.
I clawed it up ... fumbled it open with fingers numb and stiff as sticks.
And there was the stamp, the familiar scarlet label:
CLASSIFIED FEDGOV SECURITY SUPPLIES!PORT INSPECTION FORBIDDEN
—The label that would permit these boxes to pass customs checks at any port on any planet, throughout FedGov Security's whole far-flung field of operations.
I turned back to the case itself and tugged out one of the smaller boxes within ... tore off its wrapper, read the nameplate: 'Apex Perceptual Intensifier'.
Behind me, Celeste Stelpa asked, "Who is it from, Mark?"
I whirled, already crouching. "What are you doing here?"
Her wan smile didn't change. "Waiting for you, of course." And then: "You see—I knew you wouldn't go till you'd run this down. There's still too much of your hate left in you."
"Oh?"
"Hate's that way, Mark, when you displace it. Even if you win one fight, you've got to turn around and hunt another. Because the thing you fight isn't the thing you're really trying to destroy."
I said harshly, "I don't know what you're trying to say. I don't think you do, either. But whether you do or don't, I don't care. So far as I'm concerned, you're just another traitor to your race. You're like that Kel who helped us kill the rest of them so he could live. You did the same thing when the globes took over Bejak II. You let them bring you here, helped them put out these thrill-mills—"
I broke off as Celeste began to shake. My own hands suddenly weren't steady.
A minute passed, and then another and another.
Slowly, then, Celeste raised her face. "I hope you think it through sometime, Mark Traynor," she whispered in a tear-choked voice. "I hope you ask yourself what's back of all the hate that's in you, and then try to link that up with me, so you can find the reason why I helped the Kel put out their thrill-mills."
I stood very still. "Go on."
"Why should I? You already know the answer. Or if you don't, you haven't the mind ever to understand it."
Her hands drew into fists, then. Her words came in a furious rush: "I hated them, do you understand? I hated them more than you could ever dream of! I was on Bejak II! I saw the things they did—the way the people were slaughtered.
"Only I saw other things too, Mark Traynor! I saw it wasn't the Kel's fault, not all of it. We could have fought them off, if it hadn't been for the FedGov and its racked compulsory conditioning.
"That conditioning—it made us like so many sheep. It robbed us of our imagination, our lust for life, our fighting spirit. And then, later on, when my own patterns broke and I found what our world looked like when inhibition wasn't muting our senses and our feelings—"
Another change of mood, a shift in fervor. Warmth replaced rage. Pleading took the place of anger:
"That's why I did it, Mark. All at once it dawned on me I was hating the wrong thing, the wrong race. I thought that if even a few of our kind could break loose, throw off their patterns, there might be a chance for human freedom. And with freedom, we could beat the Kel.
"You know how I felt, Mark—because you've felt the same way! You hated going back, being reconditioned. Every time, it got harder for you to give up freedom. Only you didn't dare admit it, not even to yourself."
"So I took it out on the Kel, you mean?" It was an effort to keep my own voice steady. "You may be right."
"Then—"
"No. Because this is something else again." I gestured to the boxes that held the thrill-mills. "Do you know where these came from?"
"I can guess."
"Then you know why I've got to follow through on them."
"But—"
"Say that it's for the cause of human freedom. The freedom of all those poor lost souls Kruze has ordered executed. No matter what I have to do, I'm not going to see them die."
Abruptly, I was tired of talking, tired of listening. I turned away.
Celeste said, "But he's gone, Mark. Beyond your reach."
I stopped short. "What—?"
"He warped back as soon as he left the globeship, here. All the way back, clear to the Interplanetary Center."
It rocked me, for an instant. Then I shrugged. "Fair enough."
"You mean—?"
"I warped out to Rizal without a clearance. I can leave the same way."
"No Mark! You mustn't! He could kill you!"
"I'll have a paragun by the time I get there."
"Then I'll go too, Mark! Take me with you!"
"No."
"But why, Mark? Why? Don't you understand how I feel? No matter what happens, I want to be with you."
I said, "You still can't go, Celeste. For two reasons.
"In the first place, I still don't trust you.
"In the second, and no matter what you do or have done, I'm not going to let anything further happen to you. Not if I can help it."
"Mark, I don't care! Even if you try to leave me here, I'll follow!"
"You'll have to, then." Smiling, I pushed past her towards the exit. "Goodbye, Celeste."
"No, Mark! I won't let you go!"
"Goodbye, Celeste," I said again, patting her cheek.
Still smiling, then, I hammered home a knockout blow....
It was still as death inside the space-warp chamber.
But the indicators showed that I'd now reached the Interplanetary Center. Grimly, I shoved shut the switch that released the heavy warp-hatch ... stood motionless while I waited for the mechanism to grind through its inexorable cycle.
A click. A whir.
I drew a swift breath; eased the paragun from my waistband.
Again, a click. The vault-thick cylinder slid smoothly inward on its guides. Air hissed. The world outside the hatch took form, all dim and shadowy.
For a moment I waited, not breathing ... straining my ears for the slightest sound.
None came.
Cat-silent, now I clambered through the exit ... looked down the corridor beyond, with its gleaming ceracoid walls and emblazoned motif of FedGov Security insignia.
Still no one. Moving swiftly down the hall, I sought out the fifth of the row of shaft-lifts.
Soundlessly, it bore me upward. When it halted, I stepped out onto thick, rich veldrence carpeting, crossed to the far side of the alcove, and peered past the draperies into the larger room beyond.
Controller Alfred Kruze sat at his desk, alone, attention focused on a spinning reader-reel.
Shifting, I checked the other door, the one to Kruze's left.
It was closed.
Some of the tightness left my chest. Pulling back the drape, I stepped into the room.
Kruze's head jerked up. The reader-reel clattered to the desk.
I said, "Don't move, Kruze. Don't even breathe. Not if you want to live."
Kruze's eyes distended. His hands stopped in mid-air.
I crossed to him; gestured with the paragun. "Palms flat on the desk, Controller. Thanks to your private warp and lift, no one knows I'm here. Let's keep it that way. No loud noises, no tricks with buzzers, nothing to attract the attention of the guards in the anteroom. They couldn't do you any good. You'd be dead before they got here."
Kruze lowered his hands jerkily. An angry flush was darkening his face. "Just what's the meaning of this, Traynor? Do you want a trip to the blocking rooms, with orders to psych you down to Drudge Third level?"
Instead of answering, I brought up the paragun and leveled it at his head.
The heavy shoulders shifted, just a trifle. A wariness came to the cold, unblinking eyes.
I said, "Kruze, you've got just one order left to give. You're going to stop those executions on Rizal!"
"Executions—? What executions?"
"You know the edict." I held my voice very flat, very factual. "It provided that any person found in possession of a thrill-mill should be shot summarily, without trial."
"And now you want me to countermand it? You'd have me relieve those Kel-lovers of the penalty for their treason?" Angrily, Kruze gave vent to a belligerent snort. "You're even more of a fool than I thought you were, Traynor. What possible reason can you advance why I should let such scoundrels live?"
"The best reason in the world, Controller," I answered, ever so gently. "It's the only way you can even hope to stay alive yourself." And then, after an instant's pause and with a gesture of my paragun: "You see, I agree with your sentiments on treason—and I also happen to know you're the man who gave the Kel those thrill-mill gadgets in the first place!"
For an instant Kruze's knuckles went white against the desk. Then, quite suddenly, he leaned back. His head seemed to sink down between his shoulders. "You've either said too much or not enough, Traynor."
I said, "I should have recognized it from the start, of course: No alien ever could have achieved such insight into the workings of the human mind. That made our villain a man—a man so high in the Federation that he was allowed to operate under minimal conditioning or none at all; a man who had access to whatever he needed in the way of supplies or equipment or personnel, and no questions asked or answers given.
"Give a man like that a lust for power. Then throw in a stalemated war against the Kel—a war that neither side can hope to win.
"As a human among humans, our man's authority is strictly limited. Conditioned or not, our race has had enough of despots.
"But supposing he can help the Kel to victory? Mightn't they be willing to make him absolute and autocratic ruler of his kind?"
Again, I gestured. "There it is, Kruze. That's how you worked it. And that's why you were so bitter when I kept blowing everything apart.
"All along the line, there were pointers to your collaboration. Like the way the Kel turned loose Celeste and me, back at that warehouse on Rizal. That was your work: You didn't want to chance my having too much contact with them. So you ordered them to let me go.
"And don't bother reminding me they took you prisoner, too. Because that was more of your own planning. You didn't intend to take chances of being killed accidentally, once the actual invasion got under way.
"If that's still not enough—if you want court proof—I found cargo manifests aboard that globeship that I captured. They show the thrill-mills went to Rizal as classified Security supplies. With that to go on, it won't be any trick to find the techs who made them. They'll tie you to it tight."
Silence. A long, long moment of silence.
Then, abruptly, Kruze asked, "How many people know about this, Traynor? Just you? Or is the Stelpa girl in on it too?"
I shrugged. "Does it matter? I'm here, now. You're trapped. That's all that counts."
"Perhaps." Heavily, the controller shifted in his chair. "Very honestly, Traynor, your hypotheses are all wrong. But even the unfounded accusations could prove a nuisance, so tell me: What would it take to persuade you to forget all this? Money? A guarantee that you'll stay unconditioned? A planetary controllership?"
I didn't answer.
"I might even go so far as to countermand my execution edict, if that really matters to you." Kruze frowned thoughtfully. "I hate to chance it, though. Those mills shatter conditioning badly. And once that's happened, someone's likely to jump to the wrong conclusions, the way you've done."
Wearily, I shook my head. "Save your breath, Controller. The only deal I'll make is not to kill you, providing you stop those executions. Beyond that, you'll have to take your chances with the courts."
Silence again. And still Kruze sat granite-solid in his chair. Only his eyes showed that he'd heard me—the emotionless, unblinking eyes that never left mine for an instant. Between us, the desk-top gleamed dully, bleak and bare as a sheet of the wind-polished black lake ice you see sometimes in the wintry hinterlands of Bejak II.
I tightened my grip on the paragun's butt. "The order, Kruze. Write it down, ready for plating, or I shoot."
A thick-shouldered shrug. "Very well, Traynor. If that's the way you want it...."
Kruze leaned forward.
The next instant, there was the faintest of humming, whirring sounds, apparently issuing from the desk.
Simultaneously, involuntarily, my right arm jerked forward and down. The gun tore from my fingers and slapped against the desk-top's polished surface with a noisycrack!as if impelled by unseen springs.
For the fraction of a second I lurched off balance—incredulous, gaping.
Before I could recover, Kruze whipped a gun of his own from the desk's sorter-slot. His voice rang with harsh triumph: "As you said earlier, Friend Traynor—don't move, if you want to live!"
The light in his eyes said even more. I stood ever so still.
Heaving up from his chair, he came around the desk, pocketing my own paragun in the process. "You're an ingenious man, Traynor. So I know you'll appreciate ingenuity in another. You see, a buzzer can be under a desk just as well as on top of it. And sometimes, instead of buzzing, it turns on a magnetic field strong enough to jerk an anvil clear across the room. I've found it quite effective in discouraging would-be assassins. It's so unanticipated—like this—"
The controller had come abreast of me as he spoke. Now, without warning, he suddenly hammered a sledge-like fist straight to the pit of my stomach.
Retching, I lurched back; bent double.
Savagely, Kruze brought up a rock-hard knee, square into my face.
Jagged pain-colors exploded in my brain. I crashed to the floor, the room swirling around me.
Kruze again; words coming from afar: "No noise, now, Traynor! As you warned me, we mustn't attract the attention of my guards. We'll just leave the way you came—down the shaft-lift, into the space-warp, and then away on a little trip."
Groggily, prodded on by kicks, I lurched to my feet ... stumbled back to the alcove and the shaft-lift. My nose was bleeding badly. My belly screamed protest at every step.
Down, now; all the way down, with Kruze and his gun crowded close against me. Then a death-march that ran the length of the corridor from the lift to the space-warp chamber.
When I lagged at the entry-hatch, my captor gave me yet another kick, from behind and to the hinge of my left knee, so that I fell through the slot bodily, sprawling on my face on the stone-hard floor inside.
More kicks, as Kruze himself entered. I lurched from his path and, shaking, dragged myself onto the nearest bench. My nails gouged the plasticon in stiff-fingered spasms of pure homicidal fury. But always, always, there was the gun in Kruze's hand—an unwavering gun, centered dead upon me and backed with eyes as bleak and chill as far-off Pluto's ice-mass.
Now Kruze stepped to the warp-board, adjusting controls with swift, sure skill. "This should interest you, Traynor." He talked as he worked, a cool, conversational monolog. "As you know, a space-warp calls for both transmitting and receiving units. For round-trip travel, you have to have both at each terminal point.
"That fact gave me an idea—one designed to take care of crises just such as this one you've precipitated.
"First, I looked for precisely the right planet: one not only uninhabited, but completely devoid of any means of sustaining life.
"I found the ideal spot when an exploration party visited Aldebaran's solar system. It's a world there they named Sheol—a planetary hell, an abode fit only for the dead.
"In accordance with my orders, techs installed a space-warp chamber on it, complete with a receiving unit.
"There's no transmitter, however. So whoever's sent there can plan on permanent residence, alive or dead.
"That's where you come in, Traynor: You'll be the first among those permanent residents...."
Somehow, I didn't even shudder. It was as if I'd been expecting such; as if this only reaffirmed my insight into Kruze and his potentialities for evil.
But the controller was still talking: "... and then, there's the matter of the girl. From your very reticence, I take it for granted you've confided in her. So I'll simply see that she's hunted down, supplied with a thrill-mill, and then executed on the spot for possession of it. I suspect it can all be taken care of before she even realizes that anything out of line has happened to you."
I looked up, then. Slowly. Painfully. Still not quite believing.
"That hit you, did it?" Kruze laughed—a harsh, mirthless sound, deep in his throat. "I thought it would. That's what happens, when a man's emotions run unconditioned, unrestrained."
I gripped the bench. I had a feeling that all my nails were broken, my fingers bleeding. But I didn't look to see.
Kruze said, "I know. You're trying to nerve yourself to rush me. Only believe me, it wouldn't do any good. I can ship you to Sheol dead just as well as living."
He turned from the board as he spoke, so that he faced me squarely. Never had the gun been steadier; never the challenge of the cold eyes more apparent, more relentless.
"Rack you, Kruze!" I choked. I wouldn't keep my voice from shaking.
"Would you like to check my logic, Traynor?" My tormentor was openly taunting now, his whole heavy body aquiver with enjoyment. "As I see it, once you and the girl are dead, I've nothing to fear. If you'd told anyone else about this, any man, he'd have come here with you. Because not even an unconditioned fool like you could have enjoyed playing out a hand like this alone. Right?"
I didn't answer.
"You and the girl, you and the girl.—Traynor, perhaps I can solace your final hours on Sheol. Instead of having the girl summarily executed, it may be I can arrange a less public end for her so that she spends a long time dying. Does that appeal to you?"
I waited for a moment before I spoke. Somehow, for no good reason, it seemed that I had to find precisely the right words, the right pattern.
Then, abruptly, that moment passed, and language no longer mattered.
"Kruze," I said, quite levelly, "count on one thing: I'm going to kill you."
The controller's eyes widened, just a fraction. "Traynor, you fool—!"
I got up, paying him no heed. It was a stolid, unhurried movement, better suited to his temperament and heavy body than to mine.
"Traynor, I'll shoot!"
I laughed aloud.
"Traynor—!"
I said, "Don't worry. You'll kill me. But I'll still get to you, even so. Dead or alive, bare-handed, I'll tear open your throat and bash your brains out!"
"Traynor, listen...."
Flat-footed, unspeaking, I took a slow step towards him.
Kruze's knuckles whitened on the paragun's trigger.
Deliberately, I took another step.
Just as deliberately, Kruze adjusted his aim.
And there it stood: Beyond all doubt, Controller Alfred Kruze would kill me.
What were the odds, then? How much chance did I have, for all my talk, of charging in to strike him down?
Only I didn't have any choice but to try. Not really. Not with Celeste's very life at stake.
Tight-lipped, I drew a long, deep breath.
Only then, incredibly, off beyond Kruze, by the warp-room's entrance, movement flickered.
The breath caught in my throat. I forced myself to hold my eyes full front on Kruze.
Over by the hatchway, the movement resolved itself into a death-pale, shadow-silent figure ... the figure of a woman, creeping out from behind the solid banks of micromesh transistors.
Celeste.
Only that was impossible.
I began to shake.
Kruze laughed. "It's not so easy, is it Traynor? Not when you know the other man will shoot!"
I didn't answer. I couldn't.
And still Celeste moved, like a figure out of nightmare. Step after aching step, closer and closer to the entry.
Kruze again: "All right, Traynor. Make up your mind. Have you got the nerve or not?"
Against the wall, Celeste's sleeve whispered in the stillness. It seemed incredible that Kruze showed no sign that he heard it. Desperately, and in a voice that cracked till it held no faintest resemblance to my own, I said, "Don't worry, Kruze. I'm coming."
I poised, ready to lunge. Over by the hatch, Celeste was reaching out. Stretching, her fingers touched, then grasped, the light-switch.
Her eyes flicked to me in the same instant. Her other hand came up in a swift signal.
Like an echo, the lights blacked out.
I lunged, then. Sidewise and down, hurling myself away from the line of Kruze's aim.
Simultaneously, almost, the paragun's pencil-shaft of purple fire lanced through the black, straight to the spot where I had stood.
I dived in low, striking blindly for Kruze's legs. Pain from the shock of impact splashed through my shoulder. Together, my quarry and I crashed to the floor.
That stone-hard floor.
Writhing, I rolled clear of Kruze, then brought up my legs and smashed my feet into him with all my might.
Breath went out of him in an anguished, incoherent gust. Hands clawed at my ankles in the darkness—jerking me close, wrenching my leg around.
I rolled fast with the twist. Groping, I flailed and pawed at the thick, heavy-muscled body.
An ear came under my fingers. Mouth. Nose. Hair.
Savagely, I jerked the head high, then threw my whole weight forward on it as I smashed it to the floor.
It struck with a pulpy, popping sound. The body twitched convulsively, then went limp.
For an instant I lay there slack-jawed, staring stupidly into the darkness.
But Kruze still didn't move. The hands that but a moment before had sought to break my leg now sagged like sodden sacks of meal.
Panting, half-sobbing, I pulled myself clear. Then, lurching erect, I stumbled to the grey circle that was the entry-hatch and fumbled for a light.
Another hand was already on the switch.
That instant—it lasted through five hundred centuries and more.
Then, raggedly, I whispered, "Celeste—? Celeste?"
The answer, just as ragged: "You didn't really think I'd let you come alone?"
And somehow, after that, there was only the bright future stretching out before us, our future and an unconditioned mankind's, and there wasn't any need for light or words....