Lindsay snapped on the lights. He faced them, his face white.
"That," he said harshly, "was Garrard."
Grant nodded. "It wasn't in his Book," he said.
"Neither," snarled Lindsay, "was it in his Book to keep his action secret."
"Meaning?" asked Grant.
"Who was the bright one that mentioned where he'd gone?"
"That should have been obvious," said Grant.
"Obvious or not—he's gone."
"What you're saying is that he's gone because I opened my big trap?"
Lindsay blinked. "Sorry, Jack. But I'm at wit's ends. I do wish that he had his chance, perfect, though." He stared at Lacy.
Tom, remembering that he had been kissing the man's wife less than five minutes before, flushed slightly and flustered. He hoped it wouldn't show—
"Tom, that's a new brand of lipstick you're wearing, isn't it?" gritted Lindsay.
Tom colored.
Jenna faced her husband. "I kissed him," she said simply. "I did it as any mother would kiss a little boy—because he needed kissing. Not because—"
"Forget it," said Ralph. "Did you know what Garrard was thinking?"
"Tom told me."
"Nice reward," sneered Ralph, facing Lacy.
Lacy dropped his eyes, bitterly.
Jack Grant looked up. "Listen, Lindsay, you're off beam so far—"
"You keep out of this," snarled Lindsay, stepping forward.
"I'm not staying out of it. It happens to be some of my business, too. Lacy, this may hurt, but it needs explaining. Lindsay, I'm not a soft-hearted bird. I'm not even soft-headed. But if any man ever needed the affection of a woman, Tom Lacy does, did, and will. And if I had mother, wife, or sister that refused to try to straighten Lacy out, I'd cut her throat! I've made a lot of crude jokes about the fact that she married you because of your money or friends, but they were just crude jokes that I'd not have made if she hadn't been so completely Mrs. Ralph Lindsay that mere mention of anything else was funny. And you can scream or you can laugh about it, but whatever she did down in the galley, I say, makes a better woman of her!" Then Grant smiled queerly and turned to Lacy. "You lucky dog," he grinned. "She never tried to kiss me!"
Ralph Lindsay sat down wearily. "Was that it, Jenna?"
She nodded; unable to speak.
"I'm sorry," said Lindsay.
"Look, Lindsay—" started Tom Lacy.
Lindsay interrupted. "Lacy, I'm the one to be sorry. I mean it. Pity—is hard to take, even to give honestly. You don't want it, yet it is there. Yes," nodded Lindsay, "if there's anything, ever, that we can do to see you straightened out, we'll do it. Now—"
The phone.
Lindsay picked up the phone and said: "Garrard got it! Where's the next one?"
Haynes said: "Take the one in the Ruhr Industrial District. How'd Garrard get it?"
"We don't know. He went out unplanned, wondering if utter secrecy mightn't be the answer."
"Too bad," said Haynes and hung up quickly. The general didn't like the tone of Lindsay's voice.
Lindsay faced them. "What do we know?" he asked. He felt that he'd been asking that question for year upon year, and that there had been no answer save a mystical, omnipotent rumbling that forboded ill—and that threatened dire consequences if asked to repeat.
"Not a lot," said Grant. "They go off when we get within a hundred feet or so of them. That's all we know."
"Garrard went out without running his intercom radio. He made no reports, thinking that maybe they listened in on our short-range jobs and fired them somehow by remote control when they feared we might succeed in inerting the things!" Lindsay growled in his throat.
"Look," said Grant. "This is urgent. It is also knocking out our nerves. It's not much of a run from here to Ruhr Industrial, but I'm going to suggest that we all forget the problem completely for a few minutes. Me, I'm going in to take a shower."
The value of relaxation did not need pressing. Jenna nodded. "None of us have had much of anything but coffee and toast," she said. "I'm going down and build a real, seven-course breakfast. Any takers?"
They all nodded.
"And Ralph, you come and break eggs for me," she laughed. "So far as I know, I'm the only one that's capable of taking your mind off of your troubles momentarily."
Lindsay laughed and stood up.
Lacy said it was a good idea, and then added: "I'm going to write a letter."
The rest all looked at one another. If Tom Lacy were writing a letter, it meant that he'd taken some new interest in life. Wordless understanding passed between the other three and they all left Lacy sitting at the desk.
The autopilot was bringing the ship down toward the ground out of the stratosphere, slanting toward the Ruhr when Jenna snapped the intercom switch. "Breakfast," she called. Her voice rang out through the ship. Grant came immediately and sat down. Lindsay was already seated. Jenna served up a heaping plate of ham, eggs, fried potatoes, and a small pancake on the side. "This," she smiled, "is too late for a real breakfast, but I demand a breakfast even if it's nine o'clock in the evening when I first eat for the day. There's more if you're still hungry."
"We'll see," said Grant. He picked up his knife and fork but stopped with them poised. "Where's Lacy?"
"I'll give another call," said Jenna, repeating her cry.
They fell to, attacking their plates with vigor. But no Lacy. They finished and still no Lacy. "Come on," said Jenna. "Maybe he's still feeling remorse. We'll find him and then we'll feed him if we have to hold him down and stuff him. O.K.?"
"Yeah," drawled Grant. "Feeding does wonders for my mental attitude. It'll do Tom good, too! Let's find him."
They headed for the scanning room, but it was empty. The desk where they'd left him was as though he had not been there, except—
"Letter?" queried Lindsay, puzzled. "Now, what—" his voice trailed away as he slit the envelope and took out the sheet of paper. He cleared his throat and began:
"Dear Folks:"I put no faith in Garrard's suspicions, but since he was lost without an honest chance to prove them, I am taking this chance."I am taking my skeeter when I finish this and I'm going on ahead, alone. Knowing you as I do, I'll have plenty of time to inspect that robomb before you read this. I'm explaining my actions because I feel that you may need explanation."I think the world and all of both Jenna and Ralph, and feel that I may have caused suspicion and unhappiness there. Since I'll have time to take a good look at this thing and also make some motions toward defusing it long before you arrive, or even find this, let my success be a certain statement of the fact that knowledge of my actions by any of you—or even suspicion cast at the presence of the Decontamination Squadron Ship by the enemy—is not the contributing cause. No one will know until I'm all fin—"
"Dear Folks:
"I put no faith in Garrard's suspicions, but since he was lost without an honest chance to prove them, I am taking this chance.
"I am taking my skeeter when I finish this and I'm going on ahead, alone. Knowing you as I do, I'll have plenty of time to inspect that robomb before you read this. I'm explaining my actions because I feel that you may need explanation.
"I think the world and all of both Jenna and Ralph, and feel that I may have caused suspicion and unhappiness there. Since I'll have time to take a good look at this thing and also make some motions toward defusing it long before you arrive, or even find this, let my success be a certain statement of the fact that knowledge of my actions by any of you—or even suspicion cast at the presence of the Decontamination Squadron Ship by the enemy—is not the contributing cause. No one will know until I'm all fin—"
Light filled the scanning room, and the ship rocked as it was buffeted by the blast. The light and the heat and the sound tore at them, and they clung to the stanchions on the scanning room until the ship stopped rocking and then Grant made a quick dash for the autopilot, which was chattering wildly under the impact of atomic by-products. It stabilized itself, however, and the ship continued on down through the billowing dust to the ground.
"That," growled Lindsay, "loses us Lacy and proves nothing."
"Not entirely," drawled Grant. "It does prove that whatever agency is directing these things does not require the presence of this ship as a tip-off."
"A lot of help that is."
"Well, I'm nominated for the next try. Unanimously. I'm the only one voting any more."
Jenna gasped.
"What's the matter, Jenna?" asked Grant.
"I just realized that you were all that's left. Just like that—and in a few hours. Poor Lacy."
"Lacy?" said Grant. "He—got his release. It's what he's wanted. May we all find what we want as quickly."
"I hate to see any one courting death, though," said Jenna.
"My only regret for Lacy is that we don't know whether he—and Garrard, by the way—went in the same way."
"Meaning?" asked Grant.
"The rest got it as they headed out to defuse the things," said Lindsay. "At about a hundred feet. We can only assume that Garrard and Lacy went in the same way. I'd like better than an assumption."
"Why?"
"A hundred feet is too distant to detect the human body without radiation. It presupposes either a warning of some type or—" Lindsay scowled and stopped. He mumbled something about a conference with General Haynes. He stepped to the autopilot and set it for the next location. Then he left to seek the privacy of his own office from which to call General Haynes. As he left, Jenna lifted a worried face to Jack Grant.
"Jack," Jenna said, "he doesn't trust me any more."
"It does look bad," said Grant. "After all, every one of them came in your presence."
"They came in your presence, and his."
"Admitted. But—"
"I know," she said, with deep feeling. "But I can't help being Martian. My loyalty is with Ralph."
"Jenna," said Grant softly, "we know that. All of us know it. Yet, there's some agency that is tipping them off. There's been robombs at the other sites for hours now, and not one of them has gone off. They're tying up production until we arrive, and they'll continue to tie up the area until we make a false move. Something or someone is giving them the tip-off. I know it isn't me, you know it isn't you, and Ralph knows it isn't him. The areas are completely cleared, but, of course, there may have been watchers. But Garrard would have gone out unlighted, and possibly Lacy would have done the same."
"Jack," she pleaded, "do you suspect me, too?"
"Jenna, you know I do. I rationalize myself, and tell myself that it isn't so. But nevertheless, there is that lingering doubt. Evidence, Jenna. Evidence."
"Jack, a criminal is considered innocent until proven guilty."
"Jenna, that's for the safety of all who may be accused. But considering a man guiltless does not prevent people from making charges. And there have been many occasions where the accused was forced to go through a strenuous period before proving his innocence. What they really mean is that they will not punish a man against whom no true conviction is brought. Until he is convicted, he can not be punished. And it is up to the authorities to prove his guilt. It is also up to him to prove his innocence. But considering him innocent permits his own testimony to be considered as valid as that of any witness instead of marking it off of the books as the word of a guilty man."
"And I?"
"Forgive me, Jenna. I think the world of you, and there is in me a rather violent mental storm. One side—the larger side, insists that you are loyal, and above reproach. The other side, that tells me to beware of the woman in you, that if you were really clever and treacherous, you would hurl these doubts out in the open and cause suspicion to fall upon yourself. And, you are Martian. A sort of racial instinct warns me. It's unfair, and I dislike myself thoroughly for it."
Tears welled in Jenna's deep eyes. "Jack, please. What can I do?"
"I don't know," he told her.
"I ... feel miserable," she sobbed.
"It's a tough load to bear," he said softly, putting a hand on her shoulder.
"It's unfair," she said shakily. "Look, Jack, I know you too well to believe that hard exterior. You put that on because you're excessively soft inside and people can hurt you too easily if you're not careful. I am like that, but I'm not as soft as you are."
Jack laughed a bit. It was a false laugh, designed to lift her out of the doldrums.
It failed.
"For eight long years," she said earnestly, "I've taken from Ralph everything that any woman would find ideal. I've had companionship, tenderness, love and affection. Complete compatibility. He's met my every mood. And not only because it will please me for him to mirror my moods, but because he feels that way too, and his moods change as mine do. He is absolutely happy to follow or lead me into any change of mood and we're never far apart. I've been protected and loved by the man I wanted. That's perfection.
"But for four of those years, I've been unable to reciprocate."
"Now, Jenna, that's not true."
"I love him—even more, now. And I'd do nothing to stand in the way of his happiness. But Jack, remember I'm Martian and he is denied his right to command a battle squadron. Because of me. He's stuck in this noncombat group—because of my heritage. In all that time, he has never shown it, yet he must know. If anything, he has become more tender, more protecting, more affectionate. More tolerant. Yet what can I do to give him release from this? Suicide isn't the proper answer. That would deprive me of what I want, and his desire is not completely to the service. But he cannot have his cake and eat it too."
"That's quite a load, Jenna," said Grant tenderly. "I hadn't realized."
"I ignore it, mostly. But there are times when it creeps up and gets me. I wake at night, thinking deeply. I fret, and go sleepless, wishing there were a way out."
"I think you've well made up for it."
"No," she said with a shake of his head. "He must feel denied of his right to honor by his affiliation—made in the face of public objection to mixed-marriage. I ... am now worse. An enemy alien."
"You are a Terran citizen," stated Grant.
"I have papers to prove it," she said scornfully. "And any doctor that didn't see the papers but examined me perfunctorily would pronounce me Martian. Ours will always be—a sterile marriage. It cannot be otherwise. Yet until this shadow came, we were both happy."
"Poor Jenna," said Grant, putting her head down on his shoulder and patting the back of it. "And now that the first doubt has crept in, the rest of Pandora's Troubles all come roaring in through the initial breach."
"And now this," she sobbed. "Grant, it's worse than torture."
Grant's mind whipped back and forth between several types of torture he'd heard about and wondered what she meant.
"No amount of torture could pry a secret from you, could it?" she asked.
"I like to think I'm that way," he said.
"You think a lot of me," she said. "Would you talk to save me from torture?"
A bead of sweat popped out on Jack's forehead as he thought it over. "That's a double curse," he said grimly. "You'd prefer torture to misloyalty and I'd be torn between the two because it is against all natural instincts for a male to harm a female. That's a forty-thousand-year heritage, Jenna."
"Well," she said, "I'm in that position but I'm without the means to say the word and relieve his torture."
"And he," said Grant, with feeling, "is pretty much in the same boat."
"Before this all happened there was enough to outweigh any doubt. But I'm practically accused of treachery."
Grant smiled tolerantly. "Most of that is in your own mind," he said gently. "You've kept your fears bottled up too long, and they're fermenting into all sorts of questionings and worries."
"Then I'm not really under suspicion?"
Grant laughed. "My dear, if they're reading your mind without your will, that's not treachery. Frankly, I've studied the problem myself, and I know that such is impossible. In no known science has there ever been a situation where a transmitter can be heard without the transmitter aware of its output. By 'transmitter' I mean people talking, men holding radioactives, radio, subradio, light, sound, and fury. Furthermore, since unwitting aid is ruled out, if such aid is given, it is given willingly. And that, Jenna, I refuse to believe."
"Truly?" she pleaded.
"I'll stake my life on it," he said. "All the evidence may be damning but somehow, it's too pat. Coincidence may be a little strained, but far from improbable in any sense. Fact of the matter is, Jenna, there's no sense in going out on the Q-T. I'm going out with all recorders open and working furiously, I'm going to record not only my ideas, but my transient thoughts and my overt acts. I'll show 'em a bold front. And, by showing a bold front, I'll win. And if I do not, you'll all know just what goes on and you'll know how to act on the next one."
Grant laughed and shook the girl gently. He removed a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed her wet eyes with it, and told her to get that elfin chin up again.
"Thanks," she whispered, the tears welling up again. "Thanks, Jack ... for ... faith!"
When the door opened to admit Lindsay, her face was once more composed. She put down her cigarette and said: "Any ideas, Ralph?"
His worried face grew darker. "It seems to get down to the problem of defusing a bomb that explodes when you approach it with that intent."
Grant laughed. "As I said before, we can detonate 'em but it's hard on the personnel."
"Oh, Jack!" cried Jenna.
"Well," he grinned, "it's true. And regardless of whether we lose a few fellows who'd prefer death anyway, we are most definitely keeping the production areas uncontaminated. That's something."
Lindsay scowled. "It's not good enough," he said. "A man's life should be worth more than that."
Grant shook his head. "It's more than mere production, Ralph. Production means many lives. And is one man's life worth more than many men's?"
"To me, my life is."
Grant laughed, taking the sting out of his matter-of-fact statement, "You're selfish."
Lindsay nodded glumly. "I admit it. How're you going to tackle that one out there?"
"Boldly, brashly, and brazenly. Whatever agency is manipulating these things will find me slightly different. I hope I'm confusing enough to make them wonder."
"I wish—" said Lindsay.
"Forget it," said Jack. "I've got to go, and there's little sense in stewing about it. I'll be back, and then we can handle the rest of these things with ease. No chin up, fella. You're in the hot spot of doing a hard job."
"I know," he muttered.
When he looked up, Grant had left.
Lindsay passed his hand over his face with the gesture of a completely baffled and worn-out man. He looked up at his wife. "Jenna," he pleaded, "is there—?"
"Don't you trust me, Ralph?"
"My whole being cries out to trust you, Jenna. But there is still wonder."
"There is nothing I can say that will erase that. Nothing. If I am actress enough to play treachery, I'm also liar enough to swear a false oath."
Lindsay nodded.
"Nothing," she repeated dully.
"You think a lot of Grant," he said flatly.
"I've loved them all," she said.
"Grant more than the rest."
"Jack, despite his hard exterior, is an understanding soul."
"That may save him," muttered Lindsay.
"Ralph!"
The jocular voice of Jack Grant broke in: "I'm taking off in the battle buggy now."
"And then again it may not," said Lindsay harshly.
"I'm not a machine, Ralph. I'm a woman."
"So was Circe!"
"Is that what you think of me?"
The loudspeaker chattered: "This is no road for a human being, folks. They paved it with rubble, I think. My tools are rattling around like mad. If any agency is using anything for detection, they're listening to the rattle of machinery in this battle buggy."
Jenna and Ralph faced the radio panel and both hated it for its flat tones. But they could not turn it off.
"He'll go like Roberts, like Harris," snarled Lindsay. "Like—Lacy."
"No!"
"We'll see," he said tritely.
Silence fell, and then the voice again: "I'm approaching the thing. Y'know, it's fearfully quiet out here with the area evacuated and all machinery stopped. The wall shields make the landscape unreal, like the ghost-sequence in a horror movie. Terra was never intended to be seen under a greenish light. You know how people look under mercury vapor lights? That's how Terra looks, sort of."
"Jenna?"
"Yes Ralph."
"You're not ... you're not—?"
"What can I say?" she pleaded. "I'm only human."
He looked up bitterly. The question was in his eyes. He did not need to voice it. Jenna knew what he was thinking. And he knew that she understood, for the hurt was in her eyes.
"Hey!" came Grant's voice. "I've got us a mascot! C'mere, Ears. Nice fella. 'Tis a woebegone pup, spaniel. Lonely and aching for someone to scratch his tummy. Up, Ears! You're my good luck! The mutt is sitting on the seat like he knew what it was all about. A sharp little rascal. I'll bring him home to you."
Jack drove on, one hand on the wheel and the right hand on the dog's head, stroking gently.Who, he wondered,would leave a pet in a contaminated area? Abandoned to something that no dog could possibly understand.
And he thought, briefly, that he and the dog were in the same boat.
"You can carry my tool bag," he told the pup over the rumble of the battle buggy.
Jenna and Ralph listened to Grant talking to the dog. The man rattled on, speaking lightly, caressingly to the animal, and his words were banal to the tensity in the scanning room.
"I wish I knew," said Lindsay.
"Ralph, stop it!" cried his wife. "Stop playing around the point. If you think I'm guilty, come out and say so!"
"I'm ... not certain."
"Have you no faith in me?"
"Jenna, I—"
"Folks, I'm stopping the buggy, and Ears and I will go over and see that thing right now. So far, there's been no mental disturbances, Jenna. That's the one thing I'm watching for."
Lindsay looked at her.
"I don't feel anything," she said. He wondered, again, and it was in his face.
Her voice went out, and Grant answered. "If either of us feel anything—?"
"I'll let you know," she promised.
"Will you?" muttered her husband.
"I will," she blazed at him.
"Lindsay," snapped Grant, "get off of it! Jenna has no more treachery in her soul than I have, and I know my own heart!"
Ralph Lindsay calmed. Jenna looked at him and knew that the man outside was a sort of safety valve. Her husband was on the verge of breakdown, she guessed, and she was in a nervous state herself. The man out there had been holding the group together for hours, now. What would happen if he went—?
"No!" she pleaded.
But something inside of her knew that he would go, like the rest.
"No!" she said with a half-scream.
"'No' what?" asked Lindsay.
"Grant mustn't!"
Lindsay looked at her. "Isn't that his job?" he said flatly.
"Yes, but—"
"Perhaps you can fix it," said her husband cynically. She looked at him in disbelief. Was this the man she loved?
Then he turned the knife in the wound. "Or," he said vindictively, "is thatyourjob?"
"Lindsay, shut up, you fool!"
Lindsay opened his mouth and then closed it again. "Trouble with you, Lindsay, is that you've a rankle or two in your system which should have been burned out a long time ago. You poor fool, don't you know that every man reaches a crossroad every day? There's not one of us who mustn't give up something to get something else. That's why we have asylums—for people who can't make up their minds, or people who dislike their decisions and try to go back, mentally. The normal man accepts his decision and uses that as experience in making the next one, instead of sitting there, spending his life wondering what if he'd taken the other road. Add up your life, Lindsay, and see whether the credits are better than the debits. You can't have everything!"
Then the tone of his voice changed.
"I'm leaving the battle buggy now, and Ears and I are approaching the thing. I have no fear of it, really. I'm ... curious. What makes these things go off? This, fellers, is a physical phenomenon, developed by human beings—"
"Martians," corrected Lindsay.
"They're classified as human," snapped Grant. "And a lot of them are more human than the pure-white Terran. Spinach, I call it. Anyway, there is a simple explanation for all this and when it is uncovered, all of your rantings and ravings will go to pieces like a bit of charred paper. Call it telepathy if you want—I'm not discounting though I'm skeptical—but I don't feel any warnings yet."
Jenna sat down, closed her eyes, and composed her body into a relaxed pose. She said nothing. Lindsay noted, and said: "Keep it coming, Grant."
"Well," said Grant, "we're at the critical hundred feet, Ears and I. Come here, mutt! That thing is dangerous! Dog doesn't care, folks. Y'know, there's nothing like having a mutt around to teach you faith. Jenna?"
She opened her eyes. "Yes?"
"I'm going in! You're Martian and you're sensitive. Maybe you can catch the backwash if there's any mental shenanigans."
"I'll try."
"Believe it now?" called Lindsay.
"Not entirely. But I'm not missing any bets. Now, I am taking my little hatchet in one hand and I'm going out to ...Jenna! You—!"
The storm burst, the sky flared bright, and the waves of sheer energy beat the ship, stormed in through the windows and the radiation counter shrilled madly. The pillar of fire mounted like a rolling cloud, reaching for the sun.
"Grant," said Lindsay with a dry throat.
Jenna sobbed.
"What did he mean?" demanded Lindsay.
Jenna shook away her tears, swallowed deeply. "I know," she said. "I know."
"You—?"
"I caught it," she said.
"Then it was you," he snapped harshly. "Tell me, Jenna, what kind of enticement did you use to get him going?"
"You fool," she snarled at him. "Blind, stupid fool." She stood up, blazing. "Yes," she said. "I've taken all you gave me, and took it gladly, happily. And I hoped that I could make up to you for ... for ... causing your loss. Yet you've never forgotten that I'm Martian, and that if you'd married a Terran you could have the plaudits and the admiration due any fighting officer. That's rankled in your soul until you hate me!" she screamed. "And what could I do? I'd have made it up to you," she said, her voice quieting, "but I didn't know how. And now you think I'm responsible. Well," she said accusingly, "how do I know but that you are planning revenge on Terra for being blind."
"Jenna, you—"
"Well, I do know. And if you think that I'm—"
"What do you want me to think?" he asked her. "What were Grant's last words?"
"He—"
"Accused you!"
Jenna turned quietly. She stopped at the door. "I solved one fuse because I thought Martian," she said quietly. "I'll solve the next one for you! You've wanted to be free to join the Corps in space. Then follow me close, because when I solve this one there will be no question."
"Jenna—what is it?"
"It is the fuse itself," she said. "A rudimentary brain that reacts upon receiving any thought of removal when that thought originates within a hundred feet or so."
"Utterly fantastic!"
"Is it?" she asked. "Watch!"
Jenna passed through the door and left. Moments later, the whine of a skyplane crescendoed and diminished. Jenna was heading for the next site. Lindsay sat for a long time, his mind whirling.
Jenna was right. He'd been fretting over his denial of the right to command. It hadn't been fair. A group of psychoneurotics—commanded by one. Himself. Not denied the right to command because of his wife, but because of his psychotic nature. For one, any Terran who would enter a mixed-marriage was not possessed of the normal adjustment, and the same true of any Martian. Secondly, were he normal, fighting in combat would produce a psychotic condition since he'd be set against his wife's countrymen.
He leaped up and ran to the driving panel. Harshly he threw the autopilot out of gear and took the controls himself. The ship took off raggedly and hissed through the upper air, racing.
"Jenna!" he called into the radio.
No answer.
"Jenna! Turn on your receiver! Please," he begged.
No answer.
His trembling hands turned up the power and the ship shuddered at the overload drive. The upper air shrilled against rivet head and port sill. The burble point came and the ship shook and rattled terribly. Yet he knew that he had but an even chance. For Jenna was driving a superspeed plane that could race as fast as the big ship—with less danger in atmosphere.
No spacecraft was made to travel horizontally across a planet. But Ralph Lindsay in a frenzy, swore at the sidelong pace, and turned his ship to arrow through the upper air. The burble died, but throughout the ship came the rattle of falling objects, dumped from table and shelf.
He continued to cry into the microphone, and strained his ears for the answer that was not there.
He depressed the nose of the ship and went into a steep, screaming dive.
He—saw her. A minute speck, even through the telescope.
And at the moment he saw her, she stepped from the plane onto the ground, and spoke to him through the radio.
"I've no receiver on, Ralph. But listen—and stay back!"
"Jenna!" he screamed.
"Your duty, remember?" she said quietly. "It is to solve these—things. Your duty, I took away, and now I will return it."
"Jenna!" he pleaded. "I don't want—"
In futility, he gave up. She could not hear. An hypnosis took him, held him in its grip.
"Ralph," she said. "Watch carefully."
He shook himself.
Angrily, he fought the controls. Madly he tried to urge another dyne from the drivers. He would be—too late.
"Jenna! Don't!"
"Ralph, I'm approaching the bomb. I am now seventy feet from it. See?"
Seventy feet?
"I'm seventy feet from it, Ralph, because I've thought only of you. Not once have I thought of defus—"
The blast caught the diving ship and stopped it in its tracks, turned it end for end and sent it rocketing crazily away from the mad scene of turbulence. It arched high into the sky, tumbling. Numb, Lindsay reacted automatically. War, hatred, suspicion. All boiled up in his mind.
The answer? It was clear, finally. The how and the why and the wherefore. His problem—solved.
But the solution was bitter in his mouth.
Instinctively driving the ship toward the next site Lindsay's eyes still saw the pathetic figure silhouetted against that intolerable blast. Solution? She had given him both solutions.
His mind went back through the years. She'd been his, completely. He'd known all the happiness any man needed. Now he was free to take his place—and he didn't want it. What was honor? A mind, clinging to its own ideals. Was there more honor in clinging to his choice or in becoming a public figure, abandoning his choice.
No, Jenna hadn't given it to him. He'd taken it.
More balance, more sensible evaluation of his own set of desires would have kept him from driving her—
He landed his ship flatwise, furrowing the ground. Blindly, he looked across the field toward the—ticking thing.
"Blast!" he snarled at the thing.
He selected tools. Then he faced it again. "Go ahead. Explode." Briefly, he wondered how it would feel—and if any feeling were possible in microseconds.
"I'm coming," he told it.
He hit it a ringing blow with a sledge hammer. "Blast!" he cried angrily.
Down within the robomb, a lacery lacework of silver in a mass of complex hydrocarbon dielectrics sent impulses along flowing filaments of metal to other shapeless tangles of silver globs. Countercurrents flowed back and the filaments of metal became a tangled highway of multi-purposed impulses. Countercurrents canceled and mixed with flowing currents, creating new wave shapes that flowed in both directions from the mixing point, and the silver-shot masses at either end of the multitudinous filamentary transmission lines accepted the false wave shapes, became confused by their unfamiliarity, and sent forth more shapes of meaningless nature.
It was unable to cope with a situation whereby it was commanded to explode. The right act—upon that stimulus—had not been taught—built into—it.
And still the thoughts beat upon the rudimentary brain.
Lindsay climbed atop the thing. "Blast!" he screamed.
The leering face of a Martian looked up at him, and smiled sneeringly. Lindsay snapped his cutting torch and thrust the white-hot flame in the Martian's eye, and the face distorted and became Jenna. She lifted a hand and pushed the flame away. It went, cutting the hard metal around her face. Characters were burned in her forehead, and he read them without understanding. Tiny hands came out through the cut in the metal and wiped Jenna's face from the top of the fuse. They took the white-hot flame in their hands and directed it.
He lifted. He struck at Jack Grant's laughing face with a bar and drove it loose.
"Blast," he told Jack Grant.
Violently, he pried upon the thing. It came up slowly, like Circe, rising out of the sea—or was it Venus—or Jenna. It was exquisitely formed, delicately shaped, but his hands took it and crushed the softly curving figure into a geometrical cylinder, and the softness left it as he lifted it out of the body of the bomb.
From the vacant hole there came a small flow of neutrons and they registered on the counter he wore.
Lindsay jumped down, the mists clearing. He looked at the thing in his hands and laughed. The laugh welled up and broke into a wild sob. Lindsay crumpled to the ground, holding the fuse in his lap and crying over it.
He cried with grief, raved at his own madness. He ignored his own loss, for had he admitted that, he would have gone mad once more.
Paradox, paradox. He—who had tried to force death—was unable to do so. He was alone and a failure. He hurled the fuse at the vast shell of the robomb.
"Stinking failure," he snarled at it. Then came clearness. He picked up the fuse once more and looked at it. Somewhere in his cloud of madness he had succeeded in defus—
The auxiliary detonator went BANG! and startled him from the last hazy mists of madness into cold reality.
Once back in the loneliness of his ship, he called Haynes. He reported all, in a dull voice and asked for help. Later, the help came to find Lindsay working over the two-ended artificial mind, measuring minute electronic impulses and stimulating the nodules of the filamentary connectors to see what happened. From this sample, he knew that the Terran Technical Corps could devise a means of confusing the mental fuses in other robombs.
Ralph Lindsay concluded his lecture to the members of his reconstructed Decontamination Squadron. Then he turned away from them and a bitterness twisted his mouth as he looked up into the sky at the flight squadron that was passing overhead.
It still was not for Lindsay.
He picked up the counter-mentapath and started the battle buggy across the rough field toward the waiting Martian robomb. In the back of his mind was a half-formed prayer that some day he might find one too complicated for him. But until that day he would search for that peace he knew that he would never find.
THE END.