Skagarach said, "Come with us," and he and Bill Cuff strode off. I kept pace with them, hoping the rest of the job would be as easy as this. We passed through two sections of the wheel and entered the viewing room and took seats before the scanners. Bill fiddled with the dials as I cast a look at the next door, some dozen feet from where I sat. Just beyond it was the air blower pump. I checked the time. I had six minutes.
The screens flashed to life. We saw the field around us, and two gigantic rockets, silver with thick blue bands dividing each into three sections, the three-stagers that would shortly hurtle us out beyond the atmosphere. Skagarach began working with the control panel too. At last we had a complete view of all sides of the wheel.
Many Old Companions, from the musters which had captured the rockets and brought them here by VTO tug, were hurrying from wheel-side to rocket, working under the orders of their experts to attach all components together. This was a purely mechanical job, but I doubted that it would be done quite so quickly as my comrades seemed to believe. I saw at least two fumbling attempts to clamp a single connection that failed miserably. Skagarach scowled and Cuff told him to telepath Milo to get down to business. They both breathed heavily through their nostrils.
Then I started to needle them.
It was a hell of a job, doing it without making them enraged withme. First I would ask Skagarach's opinion on something, then Cuff would sneer at it, and I would give Cuff a gentle push toward anger. It was like taking two wildcats, one in each hand, and teasing them so that they'd fly at each other's throats—ignoring the man who was actually baiting them. Sweat sprang out on my face and my hands were moist.
What did it was an inspired reference to telepathy. That was Cuff's sore spot. He turned to Skagarach, eyes narrowed, big hands working malevolently, and I looked at my watch and saw I had six seconds to go; I said, "But isn't telepathy the major need of a first leader?" with innocence dripping from my voice, and Skagarach laughed harshly and said a sane being would presume it was, and then Bill Cuff leaned over and hit him in the mouth.
Skagarach recoiled, spat, and then lashed back with a fist that, if smaller than Cuff's, was still larger than anything you'd care to have sock you in the nose. Then they were growling like dogs and trying to strangle one another.
I didn't count on this for a finish fight; I knew it must have happened often enough before, the meeting of these two brutal creatures; and I thought they were at bottom too dependent on each other, Cuff for Skagarach's telepathic powers and the yellow-hair for my cousin's primordial power, ever to actually fight to the death. But this was all I'd gambled for, this infuriated scuffle.
I leaned across the great board of instruments. The revolver I'd been given was in my hand, reversed. I struck the master switch twice, hard, with the butt of the gun. The second blow knocked it out of alignment and the screens went blank.
At that instant the space station shuddered, like a live thing beginning to arouse from sleep, and the floor vibrated a little beneath my feet. Howard had reached the switch of the solar mirrors, and gradually they were pushing out from the underside, pressing the ground, raising the wheel into the air. I wondered how long it would take them to reach their full extent or to break off. I prayed it would be a few minutes at least....
At the first sensation of movement, the titans had frozen, Skagarach in the act of drawing back a fist, Cuff with his hands twined in the long oily hair of the fox-faced Neanderthal. In a split second they were on their feet and leaning over the control panels.
"The viewers are dark!" yelled Skagarach.
"We've taken off!" I shouted in the same instant.
"They couldn't." That was Bill Cuff, jiggling a useless lever furiously. "Unless you ordered them too, you damn—"
"I did no such thing!" screeched Skagarach. If the viewers had been on, they would have seen that we were still on the ground. If Howard hadn't started the mirrors out, they'd have discovered my sabotage on the screens. The gamble had thus far panned out. Now I had to make the last try. I shoved open the door at my elbow, dashed into the chamber which held the air blower pump. Yelling wildly, "What'll we do now?"Ifollowed Howard's instructions for bringing the blower to full power. Then I leaped into the other room again.
They were so demoralized that I might have shot them both in that moment. Something held me from it. I think it was their inhuman strength, the knowledge that these two were the highest product of a race that was not human. Despite the dark blood I knew ran in my body too, I could not feel that I was Neanderthal; and I could not tackle the two toughest Neanderthals at the outset of the private war I had begun. I was—well, I must face it, I wasscared.
As the blower vents started to pour a hurricane of air into the chambers of the great wheel, I leaped past them, flicked on the intercom switch, and bellowed, "Hit the bunks! Lie down and strap yourselves in!Fast!"
Skagarach had time for one approving look in my direction. "Good Companion!" he said. "You will do!" Then the three of us broke for the next room and the bunks.
CHAPTER XI
I had no intention of flinging myself onto a bunk. I let them do it, ran into the next chamber and hurled the door closed behind me. My order had carried throughout the station. In each of the rooms, otherwise soundproof, my order to lie down had been heard and followed.
I had counted upon the gradual raising of the wheel by the mirrors, and the tremendous pressure of the hundreds of blower vents, to create the illusion of upward motion. I had counted also on the Old Companions having no more idea than the average man in the street of what actually happened when a space ship took off. When the jet of one of those air vents hit a Neanderthal in the face, he naturally believed it to be the pressure on him of an accelerating motion straight up. And he listened to my broadcast advice, and hit for the bunks.
In the first room I found five Neanderthals, all hastily buckling straps across themselves and whining fearfully. I had no more time for mercy, no more inclination for it than had these beasts themselves. Standing in the center of the chamber, I rotated slowly and put a bullet into each ugly face. Then I pounced on the next door.
Here there were four, and I suddenly realized I had no more than one bullet left in the revolver. I saw a tommygun beside a bunk. I went for it, knelt, and as my fingers touched it a hand came down on the back of my neck and clutched ferociously.
"What you doing?" snarled the Old Companion, lifting me and breathing into my face.
Seconds count, seconds.... I knew that after a minute or two of nothing but slow vibration and hurricane breeze, Skagarach or somebody would realize that we were still anchored to Terra. The machine gun was in my hand now. I brought up its muzzle like a lance jerked underhand; the sight tore the beast's chin and lip, turned up his nose and the blood gushed. He recoiled, and I had the weapon in my hands and was stepping back and the chattering began. I made a massacre and went on.
There was a scientist among the Old Companions in the next section of the wheel. My illusion must have beengood—he had strapped himself down too! I sprayed the bunks with leaden death and then roared at him: "Come on! Get a couple of guns and come on! We are taking over this moon!"
There were three small chambers next with perhaps a dozen Old Companions shivering in them, and I left those chambers a gore-spattered, reeking ruin. The trembling of the station had slowed now, but the great wind that swept every corner still held the terrified brutes to their straps and beds. I picked up another of the scientists and was joined by the first one. Three of us marched through gleaming steel and chrome, soft white light and antiseptic cleanliness, marched at triple time and dealt death from heated barrels and rattling magazines.
We met Nessa and Howard. By now my arms were trembling and the sweat of fury and work was half blinding me. I grinned at them and took time to rub a sleeve across my eyes. "We're winning," I said. Nessa saidohhin a tiny sound of heartfelt thanksgiving. Howard said, "I managed to knock out that broad homely chap," which for some reason struck me as funny, and I passed them, laughing aloud. They followed me.
The fake was wearing thin. Now we found Neanderthals on their feet, puzzled and still frightened, but beginning to wonder why they were able to stand at all if we were in flight. Now we found enemies who, if given the chance, shot back. Now it was no pogrom, but a war.
Yet gradually we worked our way through the wheel, and although two of our scientists dropped, we had surprise and luck with us.
I came to a door that I could not open. Tucking the gun under my arm—I had long ago run out of ammo for the first, and found myself another in the grasp of an Old Companion with a scarlet smear for a face—I hurled my shoulder against the thick steel of the panel. It opened grudgingly. What had held it was the corpse of a Neanderthal. I had come full circle, not even noticing that I had passed through the control room and the chamber where Cuff and Skagarach should have been lying. The Old Companions were dead or dying, those of this muster at least, but the two most dangerous had vanished.
I made sure that Howard was armed. The last two scientists had now joined us. I sent the three of them back along our bloody route, and with Nessa held protectively against my side I went forward, scouting cautiously and examining every compartment. I met Howard on the opposite side of the wheel.
We had not found Bill Cuff nor the yellow-haired fox.
CHAPTER XII
"They couldn't have left the station," said Howard again. We were sitting in the red-spangled recreation room, avoiding the sight of the Neanderthal bodies by looking at one another, and drinking whiskey and water that my brother had produced from a wall compartment. "No," he said, as I started to protest, "I tell you I locked the outer door when you all came in, throwing the switch that's camouflaged beside it, and nobody but one of my own men could possibly have discovered it. Besides, if they'd gone out, the door would be open. You can't close it from the outside."
"But I checked every hiding place—"
"Ray," he said gently, "you couldn't check every one in less than an hour. You can't even see most of them."
"Judas priest! Then we're locked in with those two—and outside there are Lord knows how many more, whimpering for our blood!"
"As for those outside," said my brother slowly, "we could blow them up—while nothing short of an atomic explosion could break into the wheel."
"How could we blow them up?"
"I showed you. The atom cannons, the weapons that were meant to repel any hypothetical enemy attack when the station is freewheeling in space. There are gun ports on every curve, Ray." He sighed. "Two hours ago I was a peaceable man, I was here because I loved peace above everything else. Now I want to keep on killing people."
"They aren't people, they're cave beasts. They admit to being non-human."
"Yes. They make a good case for it, too. But it's too much like shooting sitting ducks, or fish in a barrel, for my taste."
"If you'd seen them gunning those poor workers, you wouldn't talk about sitting ducks. They're merciless. And by the way," I said, "why didn't you see that? Why didn't you cut loose with your wonder weapons during the fight?"
"Ray, this wheel is soundproof. It was only by chance that I happened to glance out, by way of a viewer, as you came up the ramp. And of course then I wasn't fully aware of the extent of the killing, or I might have used the guns instead of trying to talk to them." Howard sighed again. "I'm not the violent sort. I guess I wouldn't have thought of the guns anyhow." He looked thoughtfully at me. "I wonder why the Marines didn't radio to us when it began?"
"The Old Companions are hand-jamming the island."
"Oh." He glanced at the corner, where Trutch lay, bound hand and foot and grimacing at us. He was our only prisoner. "It's a fairy tale," he said. "It'sunreal!"
"It won't be so unreal if the other Neanderthal musters succeed in blasting us out into an orbit, Howard."
Nessa began to cry. I wouldn't have known it, she did it so silently, but I happened to see a tear glisten on her cheek. "What is it, honey?" I asked, going to her.
"The baby," she whispered, and then she was choked and couldn't speak. But it hit me at once: acceleration would at the least lose us our child, and probably also kill my wife.
I jumped up. "Come on, all of you," I snapped. "Stick together and follow me quick. We've got to lay that field waste, before we're catapulted into the void. And don't lag, because Cuff could take any one of us between two fingers and snap us in half."
Howard led us to the control room of the armory. Here the viewers hadn't been affected by my sabotage. We saw the field again, and the three-stage rockets—they had all been brought to Odo by this time—in the last moments of their attaching. The solar mirrors had slowly collapsed, letting the great wheel down to earth again. It didn't look as if we had more than a couple of minutes to go. Howard sat down, his movements irritatingly deliberate, and began to point out the trigger assemblies, the sighters, and the ammo reserve levers.
I waited till I got the set-up, then shoved him aside and sat down in his place. "This is my job, son," I said. "Allow me the dirty work. I feel just savage enough to enjoy it."
I sprayed the field with a hail of dumdum slugs from the supermachine guns; then, when I'd picked off everyone in sight, I turned to the atomic heat throwers. I couldn't use the explosive shells and rockets because of what the concussion and fragmentation might do to the space station itself, so I trained the heaters on the top third of each rocket in turn, and simply melted it into thick silvery goo. The lower portions I avoided, for fear of setting off the stored fuel. The three-stage rockets, naturally, carried no weapons. They couldn't fight back. It was wholesale murder, but I kept at it. It was their deaths, or that of mankind.
At last I leaned back. "That's it," I said. "All but for Cuff and Skagarach, that's it."And the thousands of Old Companions hidden all over the world, I thought; but that was a problem for the future, and for better men than I.
Nessa said, "I want to speak to Ray. Alone. Please."
"Be careful," I said to Howard, as he and the three scientists moved out of the armory chamber. Then I was standing to face my wife.
"Ray," she said quietly, "I know why you told them about Odo. I didn't know at the time because I was confused by your wild talk. I just thought you'd become one ofthem. I know now you did it to save me from torture." She put her slim hands on my shoulders. "I don't have to ask this, I don't need reassurance on it—but I want to hear you tell me. It's true, isn't it?"
"Yes, Nessa. I banked on beating them, but I didn't honestly have an idea that I could. Still I knew that I couldn't see them touch you."
"You stacked the human race against me, and picked me. I suppose that's quite terrible," she said, and she was crying and laughing all at once, "but if you think I'll ever reproach you for it, you're insane. I think it must be the finest compliment a girl ever received. If I could love you any more than I did before today, Ray, I would."
Then she was in my arms....
When she had finally freed herself, she said, "Is it true what Cuff said, that you're related to him and to those monstrosities?"
I nodded. I couldn't very well lie to her when the facts were there. "It is true."
"And our baby will be—"
"Yes. But the story of the 'dark blood' has to be proven to us before we start worrying," I lied. That was bravado and she recognized it, but she looked happier. "I don't care if you're half sabretooth tiger, I love you."
I reached for her again. Then I caught a flicker of something in the edge of my eye and whirled.
Bill Cuff was baring his teeth at me not two yards away.
CHAPTER XIII
My right index finger tightened on the trigger of a gun that wasn't in my hand. I'd left it lying beside the controls of the outside armament.
Skagarach's yellow mop showed behind Cuff. Like a tin soldier, mindless but destined to fight with or without weapons, I stepped toward Cuff. I saw that he had no gun either. But Skagarach held a big .45.
Nobody spoke. I knew by instinct that they realized now who their betrayer had been. They wanted to shred me up with their hands; they wouldn't use lead on Ray Rollins. I had taken two steps and was up to Bill Cuff and abruptly a rage overcame me that rivaled their vaunted primal ire. What the hell were they doing here? How dared these two things that ought to have been eons dead and turned to dust come into this room when I was telling my wife that I loved her? I saw my finish in Cuff's gray smoldering eyes and I would not stand for it. With a mad suddenness I hit Bill Cuff in the pit of the stomach while his hands dangled motionless. It should have folded him over like an axed sapling. He coughed once, and then he reached out and took me.
I had seen what he could do with those hands. But even as he lifted me free of the floor, I wrenched up a punch from my waist that caught him smack in the right eye. It was a lucky blow for it hurt him in the only vulnerable spot in all that magnificent frame. He yelled and clenched his grip tighter, but he dropped his head and shook it, squinting the injured eye. I rabbit-punched him at the base of the skull, just behind the ear. It wasn't a good rabbit-punch by any means, for I was in agony with the bite of those fingers of steel in my flesh, but it added to his pain and one of his hands left me for an instant.
I was still dangling in midair. Now I hurled all my weight sideways, and he lost his grip and grabbed for me again. I fell to the floor and twisted between his legs, diving for the control board where my pistol lay.
Something crashed in my ear. I felt that my skull was flying apart, splintering off to the corners of the earth. I rolled like a shot hare and fought to keep my senses. I seemed to go down into red nothingness and struggle back up to the white light of the chamber, and discovered that Cuff was just turning around to me, and I had barely stopped rolling. I was against the curved wall.
Skagarach had shot at me and my head was ringing. I had lost my bearings for no more than a second.
I jumped to my feet and already the noise and pain was fading. My head must have been creased. I saw Nessa step in front of the yellow-haired beast and then almost by reflex I did what I'd have done years before on the football field. I collected my strength and hurled myself at Cuff's shins in a flying tackle.
He was a brawler, a magnificent piece of muscle, but his technique was to pick people up and tear them apart. At fighting this way, falling and being walloped himself, he wasn't so good. What I had to do was avoid being gripped by those bear-traps of his, and whittle him down. Maybe I could do it, if Skagarach would let me.
As I catapulted out of the way of a flailing paw, and gained my feet again, I saw Skagarach fling Nessa to the side, swearing in gutturals. I was standing by the control board and my heavy revolver lay within reach of my hand. I snatched it and the basic infuriated male animal was uppermost in me and I didn't even recognize what I held. It wasn't a gun, it was a heavy projectile. I threw it at Skagarach as he aimed his own weapon at me. My gun crashed into his face. He dropped as if he'd been shot.
Shot! My God! I'd thrown a loaded revolver away!
Bill Cuff was up and the room was too tiny for ducking purposes. I eluded one massive arm but the other enfolded me from behind and the giant hand clasped my shirt front. I aimed a kick for his groin, and saw the fist coming in time to duck and catch the blow slanting on the side of my face. I thought my cheek had been ripped off.
He still had me fast but I jammed down my heels and thrust my whole body backwards. The cloth went to hell, and I was free.
He bore down like a bulldozer. I was in a corner, unable to dive under his hands or between his legs, unable now to avoid those deadly fingers. I backed and there was a stool behind me. My groping hands discovered nothing to snatch and throw. Without reasoning I leaped up and landed on the stool, a short thing about twelve or fourteen inches high. Then the football period came back again, and I could almost see the field before me and the men pushing in to stop me from making that punt....
I swung my right foot back in a short arc and swept it forward and up, old science and old muscles responding to my need, and neatly and viciously I drop-kicked Bill Cuff under the chin.
His head jerked back and there was a report like a .22 rifle going off. He crumpled down into himself like a granite pile collapsing. I knew without looking close that he was good and dead.
I jumped off the stool, over his body. Skagarach had managed to get to his knees, holding his pistol limply and staring at me with blood trickling down his face. I leaped at him and he brought up the gun and shot wildly. Then I was on top of him and there was another shot and his foxlike face smoothed out and became loose, and his gray eyes rolled back till the yellow whites showed. I got slowly to my feet. It was all done.
Taking Nessa and holding her trembling body close to mine, I turned to the door and opened it. The three scientists were sitting in the next room, smoking and waiting for us. The soundproof door had kept our riot secret.
Howard gazed at us and smiled. "The love feast all finished?" he asked.
I nodded.
CHAPTER XIV
After what seemed a long time our radio came on. The Army had landed, the Old Companions in the boats were overwhelmed, and their hand-jammers put out of commission. Thankfully we prepared to leave the bloody metal moon.
As we walked toward the door, Howard snapped his fingers. "Good Lord, I remember what it was!" he said to me. "I know what I had to tell you. You seemed pretty worried about our being related to Bill Cuff."
"Well, aren't you?"
"Hell," he said, "I thought you knew about that business years ago. Everyone else in the family did. Bill's father was supposed to be our mother's brother, right?"
"Sure," I said blankly.
"A lot of nonsense," Howard said irritably. "Uncle John was dead a year before Bill was born. As far as we know, Bill's father was a traveling salesman."
It took ten minutes for it to sink clear in. Then I started to celebrate my release from the horrible mental bondage. I did it in a quiet way. I sat in the plane that was taking us home, and I held Nessa very closely.
I was human. Our child would be human. Nothing else could matter at all.
There was a lot of work to be done even yet, of course. The Old Companions had to be ferreted out, dug from their holes, sought in cities and swamps and villages and caves. In that work we had unexpected help: there are traitors to every cause, good and bad, those who'll turn coat when the going gets rough, and even the boasting Neanderthals were no exception. Our turncoat was the captive Trutch. He had a prodigious memory and he had been high in the councils of the Cuff muster. He named names and located HQs. He was like a cur, savage in a pack but now, standing alone in a cage, fawning and eager to please.
Trutch's reward, when the last of the recrudescent cavemen had been tracked and found and annihilated, was his life. He was sterilized and given a farm all for himself—an extremely well-guarded farm, for even when they were gone the Old Companions left an aura of unease and fear on the land.
It's over now. It can't happen again; we'll be on the watch for the primal rage, the wakening dawn memory in those who may remain as carriers of the dark blood. The man-made moon rides high in space by day and night, watching the world with unfailing vigilance.
My brother Howard is up there as I write.
And Nessa is in the nursery putting our infant son to bed. I hope that one day he'll join many other men in space.
That's the future—ourrealfuture—and heritage....