Chapter VII: Part 7

He looked at me as if he thought I'd gone suddenly quite mad. I finished what I had to say fast, because I knew it would take eight or ten more minutes for him to recover from his first shock, and issue orders, and have the cylinder carried on board his big sky ship--his pride and glory--and for the sky ship to rise from its launching pad and be blown apart in space.

He'd have to get all of the crewmen off as well and set the robot controls and if there were any passengers still on board--I refused to let myself think about that.

"It may be too late," I went on. "We may all be as good as dead right now. But we've got to try. Do you understand? You've got to get that cylinder on the sky ship, set the controls and send it out into space. _It must be done at once. Every second counts._"

He recovered from the shock faster than I'd dared to hope. The grin that hovered for the barest instant on his lips startled me until I realized it was a very special kind of grin--the kind of grin only a man who is about to part with something that means just about as much to him as his own life would be capable of ... if he had a non-eradicable streak of wry humor deep in his nature as well.

"Ralph, I've always looked upon people who put property above human life as just about the lowest worms that crawl. But for a minute--God pity me--I almost felt that way. It's just that--it's fifty billion dollars worth of big, tremendous sky ship and that cylinder is so small--"

"It won't seem small if it blows up and takes the spaceport with it," I said. "It won't seem small at all."

"I know, Ralph. I said once I was old enough to be your father and I still think I am. But if you put me across your knee and gave me the drubbing a dumb six-year old would rate I'd have no right to complain. I should have thought of it myself."

"We don't always think of things that stand out like sore thumbs when we're under tremendous stress," I said. "Don't blame yourself for being human, Commander."

"I hope it won't take me much longer than that to finish the job, Ralph," he said. "I'll do my best. There are only three crewmen on board and all of the passengers have been cleared."

He swung about without another word and went striding out of the enclosure.

I would have followed him if Joan hadn't picked that moment to come back into my arms. It held me up for a minute or two.

* * * * *

The incandescent burst of flame that makes a big sky ship's ascent into space seem for an instant almost cataclysmic, as if the sky itself had been ripped apart in some terrible and incomprehensible way, came exactly eight minutes, thirty-two seconds later.

I timed it myself, not mentally this time but with a watch in my hand. I stood with Joan at my side a hundred feet from the launching pad, watching the cylinder disappear into the sky. It was the cylinder and not the big rocket itself that I seemed to see as I stared upward, as if the sky ship had turned to glass and the deadly thing it was carrying out into space was beginning to stir and vibrate in a quite ghastly way, with its contours enlarged to sky-spanning dimensions under the glass.

To my inward vision it was bigger than the ship itself and it was hard to understand how even a huge sky ship could be carrying anything so enormous and death-freighted when a short while before it had been discharging passengers in the bright Martian sunlight who had given no thought to Death ... only what life had in store for them on a new world.

My fingers were clenched around the watch and I wasn't even aware that Commander Littlefield had joined me until he tapped me on the arm.

"We can see and hear it when it happens--all of it, just as if we were taking it out into space ourselves. Every tele-communicator on the sky ship is turned on and tuned to big screen wave length. If there was a crewman on board he could talk to us and we could talk to him."

"Thank God there isn't a living man on board," I breathed.

"Yes," he said, nodding. "Yes, we can be thankful for that. And for our lives as well. There are four big screens here, but we may as well watch the one in the port clearance building. It's the largest of the four--if size makes any difference when about all we'll see when the cylinder explodes is a blinding flare. We won't see the bulkheads collapsing, or a robot cyb crumbling, that's for sure. It will happen too fast."

"What good will it do us to watch at all?" Joan asked. "I'd rather stay right here. We'll see the flash, won't we?"

"You'll see it, all right," Littlefield said, grimly. "It will look like an exploding star for about ten seconds. My sky ship--an exploding star. I never thought it would ever come to that."

He started to turn away, thinking, no doubt, that I'd fallen in with Joan's idea of passing up a view of it on the screen. But I hadn't at all and when he started walking toward the port clearance building I was right at his side. So was Joan, because she was that kind of a wife. There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask him--questions of the utmost urgency, such as how much progress he'd made in finding out who had shot the dart at me from high up on the spiral and just what news he'd received from the hospital, when Nurse Cherubin had informed him I was trying to get back to the spaceport, that went beyond that bare statement--I was sure she'd briefed him in detail--and ... well, a lot of questions. But this hardly seemed the right time to ask him, because his inner torment was too great.

I could sympathize and understand, because I knew what a hell he was passing through. Nothing could prevent the destruction of his sky ship, but he had to see it with his own eyes, no matter how much agony it caused him.

He didn't have to do any explaining to the Port Clearance men, because they'd either assumed he'd pick out their screen well in advance of our arrival or their own curiosity had proved overmastering.

The screen was lighted and the sound tracks whirring when we walked into the projection room. It was just like walking into the sky ship's chart room and staring across it at the four robot giants who had followed both emergency instructions in space and the routine kind and were doing their best to perform a man's job now. A mechanical best, which meant, of course, that they had no way of knowing how close they were to annihilation. They would be blown apart without pain and had nothing to lose that a man would have valued. But they were not men, and who can be sure that mechanical brains and the thought processes which take place in them are not faintly tinged with emotional coloration?

Probably not ... for it would have been something that laboratory tests have never succeeded in establishing. A cybernetic brain can become fatigued, yes--but it is not really a human fatigue. It is on the metal-fatigue level. But knowing all that, a chill would have gone through me if the robots had been able to talk to us.

The image on the screen was three-dimensional, and in full color and the illusion that we were standing right in the sky ship's chart room was so startling that Joan whispered: "I wish we'd stayed outside. It's terrifying. Almost as if ... we could be blown up ourselves when the blast comes."

"No danger of that," I said, squeezing her hand reassuringly. "You'd better sit down."

There were ten hollow-tubed metal chairs in the room, but all except one were occupied. I reached out and drew it toward her, but she shook her head. "No, I'll stand, Ralph. I may want to leave in a minute."

One of the port clearance lads got up and offered Commander Littlefield his chair, assuming I'd take the one that Joan had refused. But we were both of one mind about standing. Only Littlefield sat down, as if the burden of torment which rested upon him had added ten years to his age.

No sound at all came from the screen for a full minute. Then a scream broke the stillness. It was so totally unexpected, so horrifying, that two of the port clearance men leapt to their feet, sending their chairs spinning backwards. Commander Littlefield was on his feet too, but he hadn't leapt up. He'd arisen jerkily, his hands pressed to his temples, as if to shut out the sound or keep his head from bursting.

We saw her then. She had come into the chart room and was staring directly at us, and just knowing she could see us as clearly as we could see her made her plight seem even more terrible. To me, at least, because it wasn't hard to imagine what was passing through her mind.

_I'm alone on the ship ... just as I feared. They've sent me out alone into space. If Commander Littlefield isn't on board ... if he's in that room watching me with all those other men ... what else can it mean?_

She'd be ten times as sure of it if she'd been inside the port clearance projection room and knew what it looked like, and I was almost certain she had, because there was an unmistakable look of recognition in her eyes, and the Port Clearance building was where they took passengers for questioning.

20

She looked as she always had, with her hair piled up high on her head and the full lips drowsily sensuous, and her breasts thrusting firmly upward against the tight-clinging fabric that ensheathed them just below the curve of her throat, and the soft whiteness of her upper bosom.

Only her eyes had changed. Stark terror looked out of them and suddenly as she stared at us she pressed one hand to her throat and swayed back against the bulkhead on the right side of the doorway. It brought her up short. But I was sure that if it hadn't she'd have gone right on retreating backwards until she either started screaming again or crumpled to the floor in a dead faint.

She neither screamed again nor fainted, for Commander Littlefield gave her no time to succumb to utter panic. But if his voice hadn't rung out as sharply as it did--at the precise moment that it did--the outcome might have been quite different.

"Why did you return to the ship?" he shouted. "Why did you do such a reckless thing? Was it because we suspected you? Was it because you knew we were about to place you under arrest? Answer me! Your life may depend on it."

"Yes ... I went back," she said. "But only to get ... something I didn't want you to find. I was pretty sure I'd hidden it where you'd never think of searching, but when you started suspecting me--"

"I see. A damaging piece of evidence? Something of the sort?"

She nodded. "Yes ... yes ... a paper. It would have proven my guilt."

"You admit your guilt then? We can still save you, but not if you go on lying, clinging to the story you told us. Every part of that is false."

"No, no!" She almost screamed the words. "Most of what I told you was true. My brother did work for Wendel and ... I didn't know that he had died. I just found that out a few hours ago. I came to Mars to help him, to save him if I could. I was a Wendel agent, but only because I had no choice. They threatened to kill my brother ... used that as a weapon to make me spy for them and do--uglier things."

Her voice rose pleadingly. "Bring the ship back. Don't send me out alone into space. You can't be that cruel--"

"We can't bring the ship back. But we can save you. Just tell the truth. Wendel knew that the Board was sending someone to Mars to investigate the combine, a man who couldn't be bribed to shut his eyes to what he was sure to see here. You had instructions to kill that man before he could set foot on Mars. Wendel wanted him killed because they knew the Board was backing him to the hilt and he had been given enough authority to make him the most dangerous kind of adversary. Wendel also knew that you were the most resourceful and intelligent agent in their employ.

"You proved that, to my satisfaction, when you did what no one has ever done before--outwitted a Mars' rocket security alert system by concealing yourself in a cybernetic robot. I'm sure it didn't take Wendel long to discover that you are as intelligent as you are beautiful--both valuable assets in a secret agent. Priceless assets. The time is very short. Am I right so far?"

"Yes ... it's all true. Please ... help me!"

"You tried to kill, without success, the man the Board was sending to Mars to investigate and crack down on both Wendel and Endicott. You tried to kill him three times."

"No, only once. I'm telling you the truth. I didn't fire that dart. There were other Wendel agents on board. One tried to blow up the ship. And there were other Wendel agents in New Chicago, with instructions to assassinate him if they could."

"I see. But you did try to kill him in New Chicago. Why did you come to Mars, if you didn't intend to try again?"

"I told you. I didn't lie when I said I came to save my brother, that I wanted to see Wendel exposed ... forced to face criminal charges. When I tried to stab him in the New Chicago Underground and failed ... I realized what Wendel had done to me, what a vicious person I'd become. I decided I couldn't go on being that kind of person any longer, not even to save my brother. I took the only other way I could think of to keep Wendel from killing my brother. I _am_ a resourceful woman, I _am_ intelligent ... why should I deny it? I might have made the Wendel Combine think twice about killing him. But now my brother's dead and--"

Her shoulders sagged and a look of torment came into her eyes.

"All right. One thing more. When that Wendel agent surprised you in the chart room and the man you'd tried to kill saved you ... why were you so frightened? Why did the agent go into such a rage? You must have thought he intended to kill you. And if you were both Wendel agents--"

"I wasn't supposed to be on the ship. He knew it, and must have been pretty sure I'd turned traitor. He knew all about my brother. There wasn't much he didn't know about me, because he was a very high-placed agent. He knew I had every reason to hate Wendel. And I think he was also the kind of man who turns sadistic when he has a woman completely at his mercy."

She saw me then. I could tell by the way her eyes widened and then fastened on me, staring straight past Littlefield as if he was no longer her only accuser.

But she was mistaken if she thought I had any desire to accuse her. I was furious with Littlefield, sickened by his relentless attack on her and if I hadn't been stunned for a moment, caught up in a kind of hypnotic spell by the suddenness of that attack and the startling candor she'd displayed in replying to it I'd have interfered sooner.

What she'd told him was evidence. It would help me to smash Wendel in a legal way, which is always the best way, when backed up as it would have to be by armed, completely lawful authority. All I'd have to do would be to put what she'd just said into one package and what Wendel agents had done to an Endicott fuel cylinder in a densely populated section of the Colony in another and bring the two packages together and there would take place, on Earth and on Mars, the kind of explosion that would blow the Wendel Combine into the rubbish bin of history. The Wendel-Endicott war would be over, and the Colonists would have a new birth of freedom.

A death-bed confession has the strongest kind of legal validity and when a woman thinks she has been sent out into space on an unmanned rocket perhaps to die ... she is not likely to lie about anything. An unforeseeable accident--a blind fluke of circumstance--had dealt Littlefield a winning hand and he had taken full advantage of it. He had done it to help me, God pity him ... for I hated him for it.

Every question he'd asked her and every reply she'd taken a minute or two to make explicit had cut down her chances of staying on this side of eternity.

She was looking straight at me.

"Ralph!" she said. "I don't want to die alone in space! What are they trying to do to me?"

It was as much as I could take.

I grabbed Littlefield by the shoulders and swung him about and demanded. "You said you could save her. How? Were you lying? If you were ... I'll kill you."

"Let go of me, Ralph," he said. "A chance like that would never come again. I had to risk it."

"All right--you've risked it. Now ... can you save her? That's all I want to know. Nothing else matters."

"Yes ... I think so. If the cylinder doesn't blow up for three or four more minutes. If she puts on a vacuum suit and goes out into space and we're able to pick her up tomorrow or the next day--"

"Then for God's sake tell her. You'll have to tell her about the cylinder, or she won't know how great the danger is. She may take her time about it."

"All right," he said. "I'll take care of it."

He was talking to her in the big screen when Joan and I walked out of the port clearance building.

We walked out because, if the explosion had come while he was talking, just watching it would have killed me. No worse death can come to a man than the one that can take place inwardly, for it can shrivel and blacken his soul and leave him a burnt-out shell of a man until he dies physically. And Joan could sense that, and wanted to get me out of there as quickly as possible.

The explosion came a full ten minutes later, which meant that even Hillard hadn't known how variable the critical mass buildup could be in at least a few of the Endicott cylinders.

We were standing in the open, two hundred feet from the nearest rocket launching pad, when we saw it--Littlefield's exploding star high up in the night sky. The brightness lasted less than ten seconds.

21

You can be holding high cards, practically unbeatable, in the final deal of a poker game and still not be sure of winning. You have to call your opponent's hand before he gets the idea that just by drawing out a gun and shooting you dead he can gather up all the chips, and cash them in by threatening further violence. Assuming, of course, that he's capable of that kind of violence and is in all respects the opposite of an honest gambler.

You can be even less sure of winning when it isn't a game of cards you're on the point of winning, but a duel to the death with a ruthless power combine and time is running out on you.

I had all the evidence I needed now to smash the Wendel Combine. But it had to be built up by legal experts, and stripped down as well, until the documentation had the sinewy, blockbusting persuasiveness of a champion's punch.

It would have to stir popular fury on Earth on a very wide scale, be made so convincing that no one could possibly mistake it for a trumped-up shakedown in another grab for power. And that would take time--two or three weeks, at least.

And right at the moment Wendel was almost certainly out of the hospital and back in the Wendel plant, getting ready to close in on the skyport with his army of goons.

The problem that confronted me can be summarized in just one sentence. I had to get into my uniform, pin the silver bird into place and complete just two visits, or Wendel would dig my grave wide and deep.

Not just my own grave, of course--but when you fight to stay alive you remember all of the things you want to protect and stay alive for. There are men, I suppose, who are chiefly concerned with survival on a more primitive plane, but I think I can honestly say I've never been that kind of man.

My first visit was going to be to one hell of a live man--Joseph Sherwood. Sherwood had undisputed custody, by authority of the Board, of every nuclear weapon in the Colony with enough large-scale destructive potential to make open defiance of that authority an extremely risky undertaking.

I was now his superior in rank, but I had no intention of making changes in his command or questioning the wisdom of the decisions he was more than qualified to make. The measures he had taken to protect the Colony I regarded as absolutely correct and he knew far more about nuclear armaments than I did. There were limits to what those measures could accomplish, because a large-scale thermonuclear weapon can destroy thousands of innocent victims, and the Wendel Combine knew precisely how far it could go without bringing down the thunder.

All I had to do was convince Wendel that it had now gone too far and that the thunder was very close. Basically it would be quite a simple undertaking. I would simply have to walk into the Wendel plant and talk to him in a calm way, at the risk of being blown apart.

I was standing before a full-length mirror in a small, windowless room which the skyport officials had assured me wasn't wired for sound. It sure had privacy. Not that I'd need it while I was putting on my uniform, because I'd be wearing it when I emerged and they would all see the silver bird. And Joan was the only woman in the building ... which made privacy a little absurd on more than one count.

It was just that--well, when you stand before a mirror and pin that kind of insignia on a quite ordinary, regulation-fit uniform it does something to the wearer which changes the way he looks in a quite startling way.

I guess I just didn't want anyone to see me observing the change in a mirror and grin, which would have forced me to do something I just hadn't time for--take a sock at him. I suppose there's a little garden-variety vanity in me--show me a man who claims he hasn't a trace of it in his nature and I'll show you a first-class liar--but right at the moment I wouldn't have been lying if I'd said that nothing could have been further from my mind than preening myself on the way I looked.

But it was just as well I had privacy, because I had to stand before the mirror for three full minutes to get accustomed to the change, and feel relaxed and casual about it.

I'd forgotten to tell Commander Littlefield I'd be needing a tractor, warmed up and ready to roll, and that the place to find it waiting for me would be right outside the gate. The one I'd left there with a dead man sitting in it didn't have quite the trim, speedy look of three or four I'd noticed standing about the skyport and if he could get me a lighter one so much the better.

Joan was taking care of it for me. She came back just as I was turning from the mirror, with the silver bird gleaming on my right shoulder. She'd seen me wearing it before, of course, so she wasn't startled. But the tall, stoop-shouldered man with graying temples who had followed her into the room had enough startlement in his eyes to have made her a present of half of it and still made the grade in that respect.

He kept staring at the silver bird in tight-lipped silence until I darted a questioning glance at Joan and he seemed to realize he was putting a strain on my patience.

"My name's John Lynton," he said, hesitantly. "Commander Littlefield told me you'll be needing a tractor. I have one, and I'll be glad to drive you, sir. I brought the Endicott fuel cylinder to the skyport, so I naturally feel pretty strongly about everything that's happened. There's just one thing I'd like to see happen to Wendel. But I guess I don't have to spell it out for you, sir."

I stared at him in amazement. I'd taken it for granted that the Colonist who had delivered the cylinder was no longer at the skyport, because no one had pointed him out to me, and I'd been under too much of a strain to question Littlefield about it.

"Well ... that takes care of one thing that puzzled me," I said. "I couldn't understand why you'd just deliver the cylinder and clear out. But people here seem to feel they're privileged to do pretty much as they please at times. So it didn't puzzle me too much."

"I was in the Administration Building, talking to a sky ship officer, when you were in the shed, sir," he explained. "But I saw you come into the projection room--"

"All right," I said. "We haven't time to discuss it and it's not important anyway. I know how to drive a tractor, but I'm not an expert at it. If you've got your own tractor you'll know what to do if it breaks down. That's an advantage I'd be a fool to pass up. But if you're going with me, you may as well know we'll be in danger the instant we pass through the gate. The Wendel agents have orders to blast me down on sight."

I shouldn't have said that, for it made Joan bite down hard on her underlip and say in a kind of talking-to-herself whisper, "An armed escort would cut down the danger. Littlefield could--"

I shook my head. "We'd be certain to be stopped then and an open clash with Wendel agents in the streets of the Colony would wrap it up--but good. There's no way of packaging it that would please Wendel more."

The instant Lynton realized, just from the way I was looking at Joan, that I wanted to be alone with her he said: "I'd better check over the tractor once more. I'll drive it through the gate, draw in to the side of the clear-away and keep a sharp eye on the incoming traffic--if any. I'll keep the motor running, sir."

The instant the door closed behind him Joan was in my arms. For the most part all we did was embrace without saying a word, which is one way of saying as much as you possibly can in the space of half a minute.

I was a little afraid that Joan would break down and burst into tears, which would have spoiled everything. I could see the tears trembling on the fringes of her eyelids, and decided right then and there that she was one hell of a precious woman. And when you're parting with something very precious you can break your heart in two if you let yourself do too much thinking.

So I just kissed her very firmly on the mouth for the tenth time, swung about and walked out of that small, windowless room without looking back to see if she was still doing her best to keep the tears from flowing.

In the ambulance on the way to the hospital I'd seen more of the Colony than I could have covered on foot in half a day. Jogging through the streets again with Lynton doing the driving I could have taken in even more of it in a sight-seeing way. I could have--but I didn't.

I saw no reason to make myself conspicuous, and somehow removing the insignia from my shoulder so soon after I'd pinned it on would have gone against the grain. And it wasn't just my uniform or the silver bird which would have made me a sitting duck to a Wendel agent stationed anywhere along the way with my description dear and sharp in his mind. It was a safe bet we'd pass at least a dozen of the Combine's goons, strutting about in their private police uniforms, so I took care to remain in a seated position in the back of the tractor, with my head well below sight-seeing level.

This time I didn't look, wonder or black out at intervals. I kept a tight grip on my nerves and refused to even let myself think what an impasse I'd be facing if my talk with Arms Custodian Sherwood didn't bring the kind of results I was counting on.

It's hard to maintain just one rigid mental stance when you're keeping a great many hard-to-control emotions bottled up in your mind with a clamped-down safety valve. But I didn't have to maintain the stance for long, because twenty minutes after we left the skyport the tractor rumbled to a halt before a massive, fortress-like building which stood a considerable distance from the buildings on both sides of it and was protected in its isolation by steel walls, pacing guards and a well-guarded stockpile of thermonuclear weapons.

No Wendel agent would have risked blasting away at me within three miles of that stronghold--unless he was tired of living and didn't want to see another Martian sunrise. It made me feel secure enough to stand up and descend from the tractor without making a production out of it, as if I was two-thirds convinced I'd be blown apart before I could advance twenty feet.

I neither hurried nor wasted time, just stood calmly by the tractor until I was satisfied no one who had seen us drive up--I was quite sure we were under long-range binocular scrutiny--would come striding out of the forest to question us at gunpoint. Then I nodded to Lynton, and walked straight toward the big gray building. I'd told him not to move from his seat until I came out, so there was no need to caution him further.

I can't remember at exactly what point in my approach to the high-walled gate the silver bird became a thunder-bird, or exactly how each of the three guards looked when they first caught sight of it.

I was too startled just by the way the oldest of the three, who must have been a tow-headed twelve-year-old when the first wearer of the insignia walked the streets of the Colony, stared at me, snapped to attention and grounded the heavy weapon he'd been holding slantwise across his chest with a thud. The other two guards quickly followed suit. Quite possibly they had merely taken their cue from him and didn't want to risk an official reprimand. But they certainly put on a convincing performance, as if what they feared most was a full-dress court martial. If I'd dropped down out of the sky in a golden chariot and was Apollo, maybe, or the Aztec Sun God, I couldn't have been accorded more deference.

A moment later the high steel gate opened and shut with a clang and I was on the inside, with more guards on both sides of me. I'd paused a moment, of course, to explain to the elderly guard who had first saluted me, just why I was there and whom I wanted to see.

I had an escort of six guards as I walked to the end of the first-floor corridor, and ascended a short flight of stairs and they continued to escort all the way to the door of Sherwood's office.

Some men can be jolted almost speechless by an unexpected visit and recover their composure so rapidly they seem to have retained it from the beginning. It was that way with Sherwood. He was a big man in his early forties, with close-cropped reddish hair and handsome features.

He was sparing of words, but everything he told me was in direct answer to my questions and a man who can confine himself to just giving you the information you need without wasting words is likely to be the kind of man you can depend on in an emergency.

His final answer was the clincher. It came at the end of a fifteen-minute conversation.

"We can do it if we've no other choice," he said.

"All right," I said. "I want you to tell Wendel exactly what you've just told me, on a two-way televisual hookup. I'll be at the Wendel plant in fifteen minutes, and I'm sure I can persuade him to talk to you on the screen, right after I've laid it on the line for him.

"If," I added "--and it's a very big _if_--I can get in to see him without ending up dead. His goons have orders to blast me down on sight."

He looked at me steadily for a moment, with a concerned tightening of his lips. Then he leaned back and some of the strain left his face.

"Have any of his goons ever seen you with that insignia on your shoulder?" he asked.

It was a good question and it confirmed the opinion I'd formed of him.

"No, they haven't," I said. "But it doesn't alter the possibility I'll be blasted down before I can get in to see Wendel. Remember--the Wendel Combine has taken the big gamble and is waging an undeclared, but all out war. This insignia makes me Target Number One. If I took it off before entering the plant his goons would probably recognize me anyway--too quickly for me to save myself by shouting at them and trying to make them see that Wendel would want them to withhold their fire. I may not have a chance to do any explaining, because they may recognize me just from the description that's been furnished them."

Sherwood nodded. "Yes ... it would be foolish to deny you won't be exposing yourself to danger. And you'll have to be wearing the insignia when you confront Wendel. But I've a feeling that Wendel's goons will take you straight to him. I could be mistaken, of course. But somehow I can't picture them firing pointblank at Target Number One without prior authorization. They'd be sticking out their necks with a vengeance, because their instructions to blast you on sight were issued before you pinned that bird on your shoulder."

"I hope you're right," I said. "But goons are funny people."

"I'll be right here at my desk when the screen lights up," he said. "Don't worry too much. I'll handle my end of it with very careful timing...."

* * * * *

Fifteen minutes later my tractor rumbled to a halt for the second time, directly in front of the Wendel plant.

Like the Endicott plant, it faced a big square and there were no pedestrians in sight on the side we parked on.

"This time I'm going with you," Lynton said, very firmly.

So he was going with me! All right, it was an obligation I owed him, and I couldn't pull rank on him, because he was a civilian and it wouldn't have done the least bit of good. Moreover, he'd gotten over being dazzled by the silver bird, if it had ever really dazzled him, which I doubted. He was a too tough-fibered, independent, non-authority conscious kind of guy. You find them in every rugged, pioneering society--guys who will stand up in a public meeting and tell a governmental big shot that the speech he's just delivered has a phony ring to it and he'd be well advised to try again.

I descended from the tractor a little more cautiously this time, keeping my eye on the ground-floor windows of the plant and wondering how long it would take me to cross from the car to the building's wide main entrance and if the steel-mesh blinds on the windows might not be a cover-up for nuclear weapons pointed straight in our direction.

But actually, despite the uneasiness which we both felt, we crossed from the tractor to the plant without hurrying and with our shoulders held straight.

There were two guards in Wendel private police uniforms with nuclear hand-guns clamped to their hips standing just inside the entrance and the instant we came into view their hands darted to the holstered weapons and their eyes took on a steely glint.

Then--both guards did a swift double take. They didn't stiffen to attention the way the guards at the gate of the nuclear fortress had done, but something happened to their faces which made them seem to be wearing frozen masks. Only their eyes remained alive, alert, the steely glint replaced by a look of stunned incredulity.

I spoke sharply, without giving them time to reach a decision on their own initiative which might have had tragic consequences, for you can never tell what desperate, completely unjustified measures a badly jolted man will take it into his head to resort to.

"I'm here to see Wendel," I said. "Nobody else will do. I guess I don't have to tell you that this is an order. You'd be very foolish not to unbar that gate, for I have the authority to take you into custody if you prevent me from entering the plant. You may be just guards, but that will not prevent the Colonization Board from imprisoning you on a treason charge."

Their eyes never left the insignia while they were swinging open the big, iron-barred entrance gate for me. It was set well back from the street, with enough walled-in space in front of it to accommodate a dozen bloody corpses. I had an idea they would have tried to make use of it in that way, if I'd attempted to force my way past them with an armed escort and hadn't been wearing the silver bird.

The strain and uncertainty eased a little once we were fairly sure we wouldn't be blasted down without warning. It didn't take long for that near-assurance to harden into a conviction, for what happened after the big gate clanged shut behind us was almost a repeat of what had taken place in the nuclear fortress.

More armed Wendel police guards fell into step on both sides of us, with much the same look on their faces the two at the entrance had worn ten seconds after their eyes had rested on the silver bird.

Just one small incident took place which made it a little unlike the reception which had been accorded me when I'd asked to see Sherwood. We were held up at the end of a branching corridor while one of the guards went into a small, blank-walled room and buzzed Wendel on an interplant communicator, announcing our arrival.

We didn't know that until later, because he was careful to shut the door of the room before he spoke into the communicator. When he came out there was a hardness around his eyes, a look of grim satisfaction that should have warned me that we were in danger. But you don't always attach as much weight as you should to a quick change of expression on the face of a man whose job requires him to resort to brutal violence two or three times a week. The face of such a man can harden just from habit.

Because it was the kind of mistake it was easy to make and the other guards were keeping their hostility under wraps we didn't know or even suspect that we were walking straight into a trap until we were almost at the door of Wendel's office on the second floor of the plant.

If you're the head of a big power combine, and shrewd, as Wendel unquestionably was, and there's a threat to your survival coming straight toward you along an echoing corridor and you want to be sure in advance he'll be a broken man when you talk with him in strict privacy, with the chips scattered widely and the game almost at an end--you'll either take care of it yourself, or assign just one man you can trust to do the job for you.

Not a dozen men--or half a dozen--but just one. It's more efficient that way, more certain, the right way to go about it.

I had no way of knowing that, of course, no way of looking through a wall at Wendel standing motionless or possibly seated in a chair, his eyes gleaming triumphantly, as we approached the door of his office, with just one guard walking a few paces behind us.

Except that--deep in my mind the alarm bells were ringing again. They were ringing, all right, but very, very faintly and I don't know to this day what made me turn my head and look behind me just as he was whipping out the heavy metal thong.

I caught only the barest glimpse of the thong gleaming in the corridor light. But even if he'd kept it concealed for a few seconds longer his face would have given him away. His eyes were blazing with a savage enmity, and he started for me the instant he realized that I had been forewarned.

I gripped Lynton by the arm and fell back against the wall, tugging him around so that he was far enough behind me to give me a chance to grapple with Hard Eyes head-on, with complete freedom of movement.

He made the mistake of coming at me too fast. It might not have been a mistake if he hadn't been so reckless with the thong, trying to lash me across the chest with it before he was sure of his balance. The sheer weight of the weapon carried him forward, straight past me, and it went swishing through the air without hitting anything.

I made a grab for his wrist and before he could recover his balance I was twisting it relentlessly and slamming my fist against the side of his head. He sank to his knees and I kept right on hammering away at him, hitting him first on the right temple and then on the left and not even stopping to take the thong away from him.

There was no need for me to relieve him of the thong, for he flattened out on the floor still holding on to it and passed out cold. It seemed only reasonable and just to let him keep it as a souvenir.

I was out of breath and feeling a little dizzy, because when you hit anyone as hard as I'd hit Hard Eyes, not caring much whether I killed him or not, it takes a minute or two to recover. I still hadn't quite gotten my breath back when the door of Wendel's office slammed open and Wendel himself stood there, staring down at the guard with a look of consternation on his face.

I became a little alarmed when I saw that Lynton had moved out from the wall and was making straight for him with his arm drawn back. Hell--that's an understatement. I became very much alarmed, because the one thing I didn't want was to have Wendel belted unconscious and laid out on the floor at the guard's side before I could have a talk with him.

I got between them just in time, and I grabbed Wendel by the shoulders and hurled him back into his office and when he staggered a little and almost fell I grabbed hold of him for the second time, and slammed him down in the chair in front of his big, metal-topped desk.

He looked up at me for a moment with a killing rage in his eyes, but I didn't give him a chance to get his breath back. For the barest instant, though, if he had been quick enough, he might have succeeded in getting to his feet and lashing out at me, for I saw something on the opposite side of the room that seemed almost too good to be true, and I took three full seconds out to stare at it.

It was a big tele-communicator screen--just the kind of screen I had been sure I'd find somewhere in the plant, but hardly in Wendel's private office. The fact that Sherwood had one in his office was not quite so surprising, for Sherwood's custodianship of thermonuclear weapons had made him more communication-conscious.

I'd counted on being able to persuade Wendel to accompany me to wherever the plant's screen happened to be located, after I'd had a serious talk with him. But since he hadn't wanted me to have a talk with him until he'd done his best to get me killed or crippled for life, and I would now have to keep him boxed up in his office by force while we conducted the talk, having the screen so accessible was one hell of a lucky break.

"Shut the door," I told Lynton. "And lock it."

I waited until Lynton had complied, my hands on Wendel's shoulders with so fierce a clamp-hold that he gave up trying to rise.

"You'll never get out of here alive!" he choked. "If you think--"

"Don't press your luck, Wendel," I said, warningly. "I might be tempted to break your neck."

"That insignia you're wearing doesn't mean a thing now, Graham. Don't you understand? You couldn't command a fly to crawl over a bread crumb. The Wendel Combine is taking over the Colony."

"Not a fly, Wendel," I said. "The Wendel Combine. A big boa constrictor has nothing in common with a fly and I'm not interested in bread crumbs. And this will surprise you. _You're_ going to do the commanding. You're going to command the boa constrictor to start disgorging--every kill it's ever swallowed. It's going to flatten itself out until it's just a mass of cold mottled skin, which the Board will know how to deal with."

"Who's going to make me?"

"I am," I said. "You have just ten minutes to make up your mind. You either turn over all of the Combine's nuclear weapons to the Board, break the back of the Wendel police force by arresting all of its officers and placing yourself under house arrest and order every Wendel employee to cooperate with the Board or--Joseph Sherwood will vaporize the plant with a thermonuclear bomb. The rocket will be guided by remote control and will hover directly above the plant until the bomb has been dropped. Only the plant will be destroyed. There will be no zone of spreading radio-active contamination."

All of the color drained from Wendel's face, leaving it ashen. "You must be mad!" he gasped. "You'd die too."

"I'm aware of that," I said. "We'll all be vaporized together. But it isn't too bad a way to die, Wendel. You feel no pain, never know--"

"Do you expect me to take that threat seriously?" he breathed.

"I'm afraid I do," I said. I gestured toward the tele-communicator. "Sherwood will tell you how serious it is. He's waiting to talk to you. Suppose we turn that screen on and listen to what he has to say. I'm sure you know how to get the right wave-length. The Wendel spy network would hardly fail to keep you informed when Sherwood changes the code frequencies."

"You said ten minutes," Wendel was breathing harshly now and the veins on his forehead were thick blue cords. "You'd have to let Sherwood know when to drop the bomb. You haven't been in communication with him since you arrived here. Suppose I refuse to dial? That's a very intricate, highly specialized communicator. You couldn't operate it."

That made me change my mind about letting him do the dialing. I was pretty sure I'd experience no difficulty in getting in contact with Sherwood and I didn't want to give Wendel a chance to make the communicator even more specialized by ripping put some of the wiring.

I turned to Lynton and indicated by tapping Wendel forcibly on the shoulder that I was about to relinquish my hold on the Combine's difficult president, and would he kindly take my place behind the chair.

"Don't let him move," I cautioned, when we'd changed places. "Keep a tight grip on his shoulders."

"Don't worry," Lynton said. "If he moves an inch I'll do what you said might not be a bad idea--break his neck."

It didn't take me long to discover that Wendel had lied about the communicator, which meant, of course, that he had been hoping I'd give him a chance to do a quick job of sabotage on the wiring.

It was just a run-of-the-mill, two-way televisual communicator, with nothing specialized about it.

There was a humming sound for a few seconds right after I'd finished dialing and it gave me a chance to scrutinize Wendel's face to see how he was taking it.

He was terrified, all right. But his lips were still set in defiant lines and I was sure that if he could have gotten a grip on my throat right at that moment getting his fingers unlocked wouldn't have been easy.

I thought that when Sherwood's image appeared on the screen there would be just one minute of hard-to-live-through uncertainty--that he'd back up what I'd told Wendel with his hand on the rocket release button and look straight at me, as if awaiting a signal I had no intention of giving.

But I suddenly realized I didn't know just how it was going to be. Would Wendel stay defiant right up to the end, would he defeat me through sheer stubbornness, even though he was mortally terrified?

But there was one thing I did know. For the first time, as I waited for Sherwood's image to appear on the screen, I knew with absolute certainty, beyond any possibility of doubt, that I could never go through with it.

The rocket had to be prepared and ready--the nuclear deterrent had to be a reality--or I could never have carried the bluff through with the kind of confidence that just the knowledge that you're holding the highest cards in the deck can give you.

I had to feel that I _just might give the signal_.

But vaporizing the plant would have cost the lives of thirty thousand people and not more than a fourth of them were vicious criminals. I just couldn't see myself ordering a nuclear bomb to be dropped on more than twenty thousand completely innocent Wendel plant engineers and laboratory technicians.

Perhaps I shouldn't have felt that way, because if the Wendel Combine took over the Colony three or four times that number of innocent people would perish, or sink into degradation and become completely enslaved. But I did feel that way and--well, I wouldn't have to live with what I'd done, because I'd be killed by the blast. But I didn't want that on my conscience even as a dead man.

I couldn't go through with it, but had I ever really intended to? It didn't mean I couldn't win, didn't change what I'd come to do. If I could carry my bluff through without flinching, right up to the zero-count instant, there was a very good chance that Wendel would crack. A very good chance still.

I had the highest cards in the deck and was only handicapped in one way. If the zero-count instant came and Wendel didn't crack I couldn't play them.

I've never really believed in miracles. But if you're holding what you think are the highest cards, and something happens to your hand you never dreamed could happen--if you look and see you've got a card that's even higher, just slipped in between the others as a gift ... well, that's pretty close to a miracle, isn't it?

I thought when Sherwood's image appeared on the screen he'd be sitting alone behind his desk, with his thumb on the rocket-release button. But he wasn't alone and when I saw who was with him I almost stopped breathing....

Joan was with him and she was looking straight at me out of the screen.

"Don't do it, Ralph!" she pleaded. "Oh, God, no--"