An officer with two stripes on his shoulder was standing almost at Corriston's elbow. He hadn't turned to depart, and for some reason he seemed reluctant to do so. The space-ship's erratic course seemed to absorb him to the exclusion of all else.
He started swearing under his breath. Then he saw Corriston and a strange look came into his face. He looked at Corriston steadily for a moment, then looked quickly away.
Corriston edged slowly away from him and joined the nearest group of civilians. They were all talking at once and it was hard to understand precisely what they were saying. But after a moment a few enlightening fragments of information greatly lessened his bewilderment.
"That freighter was preparing to land at the Station, but for some reason it couldn't make contact. It never even began to decelerate."
"How do you know?"
"I asked one of the officers—that gray-haired man over there. He was plenty worried. I guess that's why he talked so freely. He'd had some kind of dispute with the captain, apparently. He told me that trouble developed aboard that freighter when it was eight or ten thousand miles away. An emergency message came through, but for some reason the captain kept it pretty much to himself."
Watching the freighter's hull blaze with friction as it went into a narrow orbit about Earth, Corriston tried hard to make himself believe that the particular manner of a spaceman's departure was simply one, tragic aspect of a calculated risk, that men who lived dangerously could hardly expect to die peacefully in their beds. But it was a rationalization without substance. In an immediate and very real sense he was inside the freighter, enduring an eternity of torment, sharing the agonizing fate that was about to overtake the crew.
Nearer and nearer to Earth the freighter swept, completely encircling the planet like a runaway moon with an orbital velocity so great the eye could hardly follow it.
"It will blast out a meteor pit as wide as the Grand Canyon if it explodes on land," someone at Corriston's elbow said. "I wouldn't care to be within a hundred miles of it."
"Neither would I. It could wipe out a city, all right—any city within a radius of thirty miles. This is really something to watch!"
The freighter had encircled Earth twice and was now so close to its blue-green oceans and the dun-colored immensity of its continental land masses that it had almost disappeared from view. It had dwindled to a tiny, glowing pinpoint of radiance crossing the face of the planet, an erratically weaving firefly that had abandoned all hope of guiding itself by a light that was about to flare up with explosive violence and put an end to its life.
The freighter was invisible when the end came. It was invisible when it struck and rebounded and channeled a deep pit in a green valley on Earth. But the explosion which followed was seen by every man and woman on the Station's wide-view promenade.
There were three tremendous flares, each opening and spreading outward like the sides of a funnel, each a livid burst of incandescence spiraling outward into space.
As seen from the Station the flares were not, of course, so tragically spectacular. They resembled more successive flashes of almost instantaneous brightness, flashes such as had many times been produced by the tilting of a heliograph on the rust-red plains of Mars under conditions of maximum visibility.
It takes an experienced eye to interpret such phenomena correctly, and among the spectators on the promenade there were a few, no doubt, who were not even quite sure that the freighter had exploded.
But Corriston had no doubts at all on that score. The full extent of the tragedy would be revealed later by radio communication from Earth.
There was a long silence before anyone spoke. The group around Corriston seemed paralyzed by shock, unable to express in words how blindly hopeful they had dared to be, or how fatalistic from the first. There were a few moist eyes among the women, an awkward, almost reverent shuffling of feet.
Then the young man at Corriston's elbow cleared his throat and said in a barely audible whisper: "It didn't come down in the sea."
"I know," Corriston said. "It came down in North America, close to the Canadian border."
"In the United States?"
"Yes, I think so. We can't be sure. It's too much to hope there was no destruction of human life after an explosion of that magnitude."
Corriston suddenly realized that he was behaving like a man who had taken complete leave of his wits. He was drawing more and more attention to himself when he should have been bending all of his efforts toward making himself as inconspicuous as possible.
Fortunately the agitation of everyone on the promenade was helping to remedy his blunder. His wisest course now was simply to recede as an individual, to move silently to the perimeter of the group and just as silently vanish.
He was confident that he could accomplish it. He began elbowing his way backwards until there were a dozen men and women in front of him. He let himself be observed briefly as a grim-lipped spectator who had taken such an emotional pounding that he could endure no more. Suddenly he saw his chance and took it. There was another small group of civilians close to the group he had joined, and he ducked quickly behind them, using their turned-away backs as a shield. He edged toward a paneled door on his right, his only concern for the moment being a comparatively simple one. He must get away from the crowded promenade as swiftly as possible.
He reached the door, swung the panel wide, and stepped into the long, brightly-lighted compartment beyond without a backward glance. Almost immediately he perceived that he had committed an act of folly. The compartment was a promenade cafeteria and it was crowded with an overflow of agitated men and women discussing the tragedy in heated terms.
Keep cool now. None of these people are interested in you. Keep cool and keep on walking. There's another door and you can be through it in less than a minute, Corriston told himself.
There was a pretty waitress behind the long counter, and as he came abreast of her she smiled at him. For an instant he hesitated, eyed the stool opposite her, and fought off an incongruous but almost irresistible impulse to sit down. Quick warmth and sudden sympathy. Yes, he could do with a bit of both, Corriston thought.
It was sheer insanity, but he did sit down. He eased himself into the stool and ordered a cup of coffee.
"Something with it?" the waitress asked. "A sandwich, or—"
"No, no, I don't think so," Corriston said quickly. "Just the coffee."
The waitress seemed in no hurry to depart. "It was pretty terrible what happened. Wasn't it?"
"Did you see it?" Corriston asked.
"I saw most of it. I saw the ship go past the Station and start to explode. I saw that black wing, or whatever it was, drop off. Then someone started shouting in here and I came back. They say it crashed on Earth."
"That's right," Corriston said, telling himself that he was a damned fool for wanting to look at her hair and hear her friendly woman's voice when every passing second was adding to his danger.
"You saw it crash?"
Corriston nodded. "I just came from the promenade."
"That was a crazy thing to ask you. How excited can you get? I saw you come through that door. You looked kind of pale."
"I still feel that way," Corriston said.
The waitress then said a surprising thing: "I wonder what it is about some men. You just have to look at them once and you know they're the sort you'd like to be with when something terrible happens. You know what I mean?"
"Sure," Corriston said. "Any port in a storm."
The waitress smiled again. "I don't mean that, exactly. Please don't think I'm handing you a line. There's just something ... comfortable about you. You go all pale when something bad happens to other people. That's good; I like that. It means you can feel for other people. You're a gentle sort of guy, but I bet you can take care of yourself and anyone you care about. I just bet you can."
The waitress flushed a little, as if afraid that she had said too much. She turned and walked slowly toward the coffee percolator at the far end of the counter.
He was glad now that he had ordered the coffee. The coffee would help too. He suddenly felt that he was under observation, that hostile eyes were watching him. But it was no more than just a feeling; and coffee and sympathy might drive it away.
How blindly, stupidly foolish could a guy be? Corriston thought. If he had any sense at all he wouldn't wait for the coffee. He'd get up quickly and head for the door at the other end of the cafeteria. He'd either do that, or swing about abruptly and attempt to catch the silent watcher by surprise.
Corriston decided to wait for the coffee.
The waitress looked at him strangely when she returned. She set the coffee down before him and started to turn away, her eyes troubled. Then, suddenly, she seemed to change her mind. She leaned close to him and whispered: "You'd better leave by the promenade door. That man over there has been watching you. I know him very well. He's a Security Guard."
Corriston nodded and stared at her gratefully for a moment. He was more relieved than alarmed. It was far better to have a Security Guard watching him than a killer with a poisoned barb. He wasn't exactly happy about it, but he was confident he could elude the agent.
The waitress' eyes were suddenly warm and friendly again. "Space-shock?" she asked.
"So they claim," Corriston said. "I happen to think they're mistaken."
He started sipping the coffee. It was hot but not steaming hot. He could have tossed it off like a jigger of rye but he had some quick thinking to do.
"Tell me," he said. "Just where is that guard sitting?"
"At the other end of the counter," the waitress replied, the anxiety coming back into her eyes. "He's close to the door. You'd have to go past him. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think you want to get away from him. So you'd better go the way you came—by the promenade door."
"That's not too good an idea, I'm afraid," Corriston said. "He'd follow me and get assistance on the promenade. What's beyond the other door? Where does it lead to?"
"It opens on a corridor," the waitress said quickly. "If you can get past him you might have a better chance that way. There's nothing but a corridor with two side doors. One opens on an emergency stairway that goes down to the Master Sequence Selector compartments."
She seemed to take pride in her knowledge. Due to a space-shocked guy's difficulties, the Master Sequence Selector had become an important secret shared between them. Corriston wondered if she knew that the Selector functioned on thirty-two separate kinds of automatic controls.
If he ever got the chance, he'd come back and tell her exactly how grateful he was. Right at the moment one consideration alone dominated his thinking. If he could get past the guard he could hide out in an intricate maze of machinery. Even if they sent a dozen guards down to look for him it would take them some time to locate him. He could hide-out and gain a breathing spell.
The waitress had a very small hand. Abruptly Corriston clasped it and held it for an instant, his fingers exerting a firm, steady pressure. "Thanks," he said.
Corriston swung about without glancing toward the end of the counter. He'd pass the guard quickly enough; there was no sense in alerting the man in advance. As for recognizing him, that would be no problem at all. You couldn't mistake a Security Guard no matter what kind of clothes he wore.
Corriston took his time. He walked slowly, refusing to hurry. A man under surveillance should never hurry. He should be casual, completely at his ease, for there is no better way of keeping an observer guessing.
He kept parallel with the long counter, his shoulders swaying a little with the assurance of a man who knows exactly where he is going. Presently the entire length of the counter was behind him, and he was less than a yard from the door.
He hadn't glanced once at the counter. He didn't intend to now. One quick leap would carry him through the door and beyond it, and to hell with recognizing the guard. When it was touch and go and odd man out, you altered your plan as you went along.
He'd seen a girl disappear when everyone said it didn't happen. Confined to a psycho-ward, he had simply walked out, eluded a killer, and watched a ship explode on the green hills of Earth. He'd survived all that, so how could one lone Security Guard stop him now?
He was preparing to leap, when something got in his way—a shadow—a shadow for an instant between himself and the door, and then a dark bulk stepping right into the shoes of the shadow and filling it out.
The Security Guard was not at all the kind of person he'd expected him to be. He was not a big ape, not even a muscular-looking man. He had simply seemed big for the instant he took to fill the place of his shadow. He was a man of average height, average build. He blocked the doorway without bluster, looking very calm and relaxed. Only his eyes were cold and accusing and dangerously narrowed as he surveyed Corriston from head to foot.
"I'm afraid you'll have to go back to the ward now," he said. "You picked a bad time to take a turn about the Station. Ordinarily you'd be privileged to do so. That's part of the therapy. But you picked a very bad time."
"I'm beginning to realize that," Corriston said. "I couldn't help it, though. I had no way of knowing that freighter was out of control. I'm afraid you've made a mistake, too, though. I'm not going back to the cell."
Corriston had been watching the man's right arm. Suddenly it went back and his fist started rising, started coming up fast at an angle that could have sent it crashing against Corriston's jaw.
Corriston had no intention of letting that happen. He side-stepped quickly and delivered a smashing blow to the pit of the guard's stomach. The blow was so solid that it doubled the guard up. His knees buckled and he started to fold.
Corriston didn't take the folding for granted. A second blow caught the man squarely on the jaw and a third thudded into his rib section. For an instant he looked so dazed that Corriston felt sorry for him.
He was still half-doubled up when he sank to the floor and straightened out. He straightened out on his side first, and then rolled over on his back and stopped moving. His lips hung slackly, his eyes were wide and staring.
The look on his face gave Corriston a jolt. It was a very strange look. The fact that his features had become slack was not startling in itself, but there was something unnatural, unbelievable, about the way that muscular relaxation had overspread his entire countenance. His features were putty-gray and they seemed to have no clearly defined boundaries.
His nose, eyes, and forehead looked as if the ligaments which held them together had snapped from overstrain or had been severed by a surgeon's scalpel ... severed and allowed to go their separate ways without interference.
In fact, there was no real expression on the man's face at all—no recognizably human expression—not even the stuporous look of a man knocked suddenly unconscious.
There was agitation now in the cafeteria, a hum of angry voices, a rising murmur that was coming dangerously close. Corriston shut his mind to it. He knelt at the guard's side and swiftly unbuttoned the unconscious man's heavy service jacket. He felt around under the jacket until he was satisfied that he could move on through the doorway with a clear conscience. The guard's heart was beating firmly and steadily. There was a reassuring warmth under the jacket as well, a complete absence of clamminess.
Suddenly the guard groaned and started to roll over on his side again. Corriston didn't wait for him to complete the movement. He arose quickly and was through the door in four long strides.
He preferred not to run. He was not so much fleeing as seeking a security he was entitled to, a reasonably safe port in a storm that was threatening to take away his freedom by blanketing him in a dark cloud of unjust suspicion and utter tyranny.
The corridor was as deserted as he'd hoped it would be. With no one to get in his way or sound an alarm, he had no difficulty at all in locating the emergency passageway which descended in a rail-guarded spiral to the Master Sequence Selector. He kept his right hand on the safety rail as he moved downward into the darkness. For the first time he felt extremely tired.
The drone of machinery in a high-vaulted, metal-walled compartment awakened Corriston. It was for the most part a steady, low, continuous sound. But occasionally it ceased to be a drone, in a strict sense, and became high-pitched. It became a shrill, almost intolerable whine, impinging unpleasantly on his eardrums and preventing him from going to sleep again.
For interminable minutes he lay stretched out at full length in the lidded, coffinlike rag bin into which he had crawled, a lethargic weariness enveloping him like a shroud. Above his head steel-blue surfaces crisscrossed, vibrating planes of metal and wire intricately folded back upon themselves.
After a moment, when the steady drone was well in the ascendency again, he sat up and stared about him. He had a throbbing headache and there was a dryness in his throat which made swallowing difficult.
He was certainly not an exceptional man in regard to such matters. During moments of crises he could remain fairly calm and self-possessed but the aftermath could be killing.
He felt now as if all of his nerves had been squeezed together in a vise. He looked at his wrist watch and was amazed to discover that he had slept for eight hours. If a search had been made for him, he had no reason to complain about his luck. He hadn't even closed the lid of the bin. But perhaps the oil-stained waste he had drawn over himself had given them the idea that he was just more waste underneath.
Perhaps the guards didn't give a damn whether they found him or not. It was quite possible. On a low official level a cynical desire for self-comfort could dominate the thinking of a man.
It was quite possible that the guards who had been sent down to search for him—or one of the guards, at least—had been angry at his superiors. Just a quick look and to hell with it—that must have been his attitude.
It made sense in another way. They wouldn't suspect the bin because the bin was so conspicuous and obvious a hiding place. The Purloined Letter sort of thing. Crawl into an empty coffin at a funeral and no one will give you a second glance. All dead men look alike.
The Master Sequence Selector compartment was a coffin, too—a big, all-metal coffin arching above him and hemming him in. If he hoped to get out of it alive, he'd have to do more than just beat on the lid with his fists.
Almost instantly he was ashamed of his thoughts. He had been extremely lucky so far. The funeral was over, the sod firmly in place. They would not be likely to dig him up on suspicion, and he could stay buried until he starved to death.
The worst would be over when they found him. The thirst torment would be the worst, but if it became unbearable he would still have the choice of surrendering himself.
Quite possibly he would die of thirst. Quite possibly he could shout his lungs out and still remain trapped. If a search had been made and they had failed to find him, sullen anger might have tempted them to do an unthinkable thing. They might have locked the door of the compartment so that the corpse would have no opportunity of escaping prematurely and making them look like fools.
Corriston was just starting to climb out of the bin to investigate the truth or falseness of that utterly demoralizing possibility when he heard the sound. It was a very peculiar sound, three or four times repeated, and he heard it clearly above the low drone of the Selector's automatic controls.
He stood up in the bin, straining his ears. It came again, louder this time. It was only a short distance away and it was a voice sound, unmistakably a voice sound.
He climbed out of the bin, grasped a metal rod that projected from one of the cross-beams, and descended cautiously to the base of the Selector. The droning increased for an instant, rising to a whine so high-pitched that he could no longer hear the voice.
He started moving around the edge of the Selector, keeping well within its shadow, watching shafts of dull light move backwards and forwards across the floor. He hardly expected anyone to leap out at him. The voice had not seemed quite that near; in fact, he was by no means sure that it had come from the compartment at all. But if not from the compartment, where?
He found out quickly enough. There was a square, windowlike grate a few feet from the Selector's automatic control panel, set high up on the wall. A faint, steady glow came from it.
Corriston paused for an instant directly below the glow, measuring the distance from the floor to the aperture with his eyes. He strained his ears again, waiting for the whine to subside. It continued shrill, but suddenly he heard the voice again, heard it above the whine.
There was stark terror in the voice. It was despairing and desperate in its pleading, and it seemed to Corriston that he would remember it until he died. He thought he recognized the voice, but he couldn't be sure.
It was perhaps merciful that he couldn't, for the grate was at least ten feet above the floor and had he known beyond the faintest shadow of doubt that it was Helen Ramsey's voice, his inability to reach her would have been fiendish torment.
He hoped only one thing—that he had to reach that voice in time.
First of all he had to stay calm. Even a calm man could not hope to scale a ten-foot wall with his bare hands, but an agitated man would have no chance at all. Something to stand on! A box—anything!
A box would help, a ladder would be better. But what were his chances of finding a ladder in the Selector compartment? Not good at all. Still, he could search for a ladder. Quickly now. No time to waste, but don't lose your head. Take thirty seconds, a good long thirty seconds to look around for a metal ladder. There just might be one standing somewhere against the wall.
There was! Not one ladder, but two, leaning against the wall directly opposite the glimmering front section of the Selector.
It was amazing how desperation could change a man. In the great moments of danger and desperation small, neurotic concerns ceased to matter.
He was sure now. He had recognized the voice beyond any possibility of doubt. The ladder scraped against the wall and swayed a little, and for an instant he feared it might slide out from under him. He paused to make sure, and then went swiftly on up until his head was level with the grate.
He grasped the heavy grillwork with both hands and raised himself higher. He could see clearly through the grill into the compartment beyond now. The entire compartment was visible from where he stood. It was small and square and dimly lighted by an overhead lamp, and there was a paneled door leading into it.
Close to the door a man was standing. Corriston couldn't see his face. He was half-turned away from the wall opposite him, and the girl who was struggling to escape from him was more than two-thirds concealed by his massive shoulders.
He was holding her in a tight, merciless grip. He had locked one hand on her wrist and was preventing her from moving either backwards or forwards. It was costing him no effort. He simply stood very straight and still while she struggled vainly to free herself.
Immense strength seemed to emanate from him, complete assurance and a coldly calculating kind of brutality which appeared to be slowly undermining her will to resist. Her struggles became less frantic second by slow second, and that she was about to stop struggling altogether was evident from the way her right arm had begun to dangle and her body to sag.
The man was holding her by the left wrist in a left-handed grip. He was cruelly twisting her wrist and suddenly she cried out again in pain and despairing helplessness.
The blood started mounting to Corriston's temples. He began tugging at the grate with both hands, exerting all his strength in a desperate effort to dislodge it. It began to move a little, to become less firmly attached to the wall. He could feel it moving under his hands, rasping and creaking as it loosened inch by inch.
He was covered with sweat. Already in his mind he had killed the man, and Helen Ramsey was tight in his arms, happy and alive.
The man did not seem to hear the rasp of the grate coming loose. He neither turned nor raised his head. His free hand had gone out and across the girl's face. But if he had struck her on the face, she gave no sign. She did not recoil as if from a blow and there was something strange about the movement. It was as if the man had reached out to tear something from the girl's face—a veil or a mask.
His hand whipped back empty but his fingers were oddly twisted, as if he had clawed at something that had failed to come free.
Corriston pulled back his shoulders and his posture on the ladder grew more erect. He knew that his exertions might send the ladder toppling but it was a risk he had to take.
The grate was freely movable now. He could move it backwards and forwards, six or eight inches each way; but he still could not rip it completely free.
He kept on tugging, his neck cords bulging, the ladder swaying dangerously. The grate could be moved upward now, just a little. No, it was finally coming completely loose. He could move it in all directions and even push it outward at right angles to its base.
Twice he heard Helen Ramsey cry out again, and her screams became a goad that turned his wrists to steel. With a sudden, convulsive wrench he twisted the grate sideways. It came loose in his hands. It was so surprisingly light that an incongruous rage surged up in him. It was cruelly perverse, intolerable, that he should have been so long delayed by a thin sheet of metal that hardly seemed to have any weight at all.
He swung about on the ladder and let the grate drop. It struck the floor a few feet from the Selector and rebounded with a clang loud enough to wake the dead. The ladder swayed again, and he had to grab the edge of the aperture quickly and with both hands to keep himself from toppling.
He pulled himself forward through the aperture on his stomach, taking care not to dislodge the ladder. His temples were pounding and his palms sticky with sweat. He did not look down until he was completely through, dreading what he might see.
He passed a hand over his eyes. It was unbelievable, but he had to believe it. The man was gone and the girl was now alone in the compartment.
Had the man fled in sudden fear, knowing that Corriston would be consumed with a killing rage that would make him a more than dangerous adversary? Corriston didn't think so. The man had looked quite capable of putting up a furious struggle. More likely he had disappeared to keep himself from being recognized, or because he had accomplished his purpose.
Blind, embittered anger again boiled up in Corriston. Had the man waited, he would have rejoiced and been less angry. He would have taken a calm, deep breath and slowly set about the almost pleasant task of killing him.
He felt cheated, outraged. Then his concern for Helen Ramsey made him forget his rage. Had she been felled with a blow, or had she simply fainted? He started down, then hesitated.
The ladder first. Before he descended it was necessary to make sure that the ladder would be in the same compartment with him, set firmly against the wall, directly under the aperture. If he were prevented from leaving the compartment by the corridor door, he might find himself needing the ladder. Without it he might be descending into a trap that could close with a clang and abruptly imprison him.
Getting down into the compartment was the worst part, just putting the ladder into place and not knowing how badly hurt she was.
What if she's dead? he thought. What if he killed her with a single blow? He looked strong enough. He could have killed her. God, don't let me think of that. I mustn't think it.
His feet touched the floor. He let out his breath slowly, turned and crossed the floor to where she was lying. He went down on his knees and lifted her into his arms. She lay relaxed in his arms, face up, quiet, her lips slightly parted.
He looked down into her face, and for a moment his mind went numb, became still, so that there was no longer a whirling inside his head—only a chilling horror.
She seemed to have two faces. One was shrunken and almost torn away, a shredded fragment of a face. But enough of it remained for him to see the shriveled flesh of the cheeks, the puckered mouth, the white hair clinging to the temples. It was the face of an old woman but so fragmentary that it could not even have been called a half-face. And even though it had been almost ripped away, it seemed still to adhere firmly to the face to which it had been attached, and to blend with it, so that the features of both faces intermingled in a quite unnatural way.
Not quite, though; Helen Ramsey's face was sharper, more distinct—all of the features stood out more clearly. And when Corriston's stunned mind began to function normally again, he realized that the old woman's face was—had to be—a plastic mask.
It took him only an instant to remove the ghastly thing from features which he could not bear to see defaced.
He had to pry it loose, but he did so very gently, exactly as a sculptor might have pried loose a life mask from the face of a recumbent model.
He held it in his hand and looked at it, and a little of the horror crept back into his mind.
It was the merest fragment, as he had thought. Thin, flexible, a tissue-structure of incomplete, aged features, and with an inner surface that was very rough and uneven, as if something had been torn from it.
He could have crumpled it up in his hand, but he did not do so. With a lack of foresight which he was later to regret—a lack which was to prove tragic—he simply flung it from him, as though its ugliness had unnerved him so that he could no longer endure the sight of it.
Helen Ramsey was a dead weight in his arms, and for a moment he feared that she had stopped breathing. So great was his fear, so paralyzing, that his hand on her pulse became rigid, and for a moment he could neither move nor think.
Then he felt the slow beat of her pulse and a great thankfulness came upon him.
He knew then that he must get help as quickly as possible. He eased her gently to the floor, walked to the door and locked it securely. Then he returned to her and took her into his arms again. He spent several minutes trying to revive her. But when she did not open her eyes, did not even stir in his arms, he knew that he could not wait any longer.
An inexorable kind of determination enabled Corriston to get to the Station's central control compartment, and confront the commander, when the latter, absorbed by matters of the utmost urgency, had triple-guarded his privacy by stationing executive officers outside the door.
Commander Clement was a small man physically, with a strangely bland, almost cherubic face. But his face was dark with anger now—or possibly it was shock that he was experiencing—and the heightened color seemed to add to his dignity, making him look not merely forcibly determined, but almost formidable. His white uniform and the seven gold bars on each epaulet helped a good deal too. It was impossible to determine at a glance just how great was his inner strength, but Corriston knew that he could not have gotten where he was had he not possessed unalloyed resoluteness.
He was standing by a visual reference mechanism which looked almost exactly like a black stovepipe spiraling up from the deck. There was a speaking tube in his hand, and he was talking into it. He seemed completely unaware that he was no longer alone.
Had Corriston been less agitated he would have felt a little sorry for the officer who had admitted him. The officer had been so impressed by Corriston's gravity and the earnestness with which he had pleaded his case that he had stepped forward and opened the door without question, assuming, no doubt, that Clement would look up instantly and see Corriston standing just inside the doorway.
Now the door had closed again, Clement hadn't looked up, and the officer was going to be in trouble. But Corriston had no time and very little inclination to worry about that. What Commander Clement was saying into the speaking tube had a far stronger claim on his attention.
"It's the worst thing that could have happened," Clement was saying. "We can't just brazen it out. It's going to mean trouble, serious trouble. What's that? How should I know what happened? When you're carrying a certain kind of cargo a thousand things can go wrong. The ship went out of control, that's all. The first radio message didn't tell me anything. The captain was trying to cover up to save himself. He didn't even want me to know.
"You bet it can happen again. We've got to be prepared for that, too. But right now—"
Commander Clement saw Corriston then. His expression didn't change, but it seemed to Corriston that he paled slightly.
"That's all for now," he said, and returned the speaking tube to its cradle.
He looked steadily at Corriston for a moment. A glint of anger appeared in his eyes, and suddenly they were blazing.
"What do you mean by coming in here unannounced, Lieutenant?" he demanded. "I gave strict orders that no one was to be admitted. If I didn't know you were suffering from severe space-shock...."
"I'm sorry, sir," Corriston said quickly. "It's very urgent. I think I can convince you that I am not suffering from space-shock. I've found Miss Ramsey. She's been badly hurt and needs immediate medical attention."
The Commander looked as if a man he had thought sane was standing before him with a gun in his hand. Not Corriston, but some other, more violent man. For a moment longer he remained rigid and then his hand went out and tightened on Corriston's arm.
"By heaven, if you're lying to me!"
"I would have no reason to lie, sir. It proves I'm not a space-shock case. But that's unimportant now. She's safe for the moment. No one can get to her. I bolted the door on the inside. Unless—"
Corriston went pale. "No, there's no danger. I drew the ladder up and returned it to the Selector compartment. Then I threw the lock on the emergency door."
"Start at the beginning," Clement said. "If she's in danger well get to her. Take it easy now, and tell me exactly what happened."
Corriston went over it fast. He said nothing about the mask. Let Clement find that out for himself.
Commander Clement walked to the door, threw it open and spoke to the executive officer who was stationed outside. The officer came into the control room.
"Stay with Lieutenant Corriston until I get back," Clement said. "He's not to leave. He understands that."
He turned back to Corriston. "I'm afraid you'll have to consider yourself still under guard, Lieutenant. I have only your word that you found Miss Ramsey. I believe you, but there are some regulations even I can't waive."
"It's all right," Corriston said. "I won't attempt to leave. But please hurry, sir."
Commander Clement hesitated, then said with a smile: "I knew about the guard you knocked out, Lieutenant. You're a very hot-headed young man. That's really a court-martial offense, but perhaps we can smooth it over if you're telling the truth now. You were in the position of a man imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. If he can prove his innocence, the law is very lenient. He can escape and still get a full pardon, even a pardon with apologies. It's a different matter, of course if he kills a guard to escape. You didn't."
Corriston was tempted to say, "I think perhaps I tried to, sir," but thought better of it. He'd ask Clement later why the guards who had been sent down into the Selector compartment had failed to find him. It wasn't important enough now to waste a second thought on, but just out of curiosity he would ask.
He didn't have to. After Clement had departed the executive officer told him. "They made a pretty thorough search for you," he said. "Or so they claimed. But they had been drinking heavily—every one of them. Maintaining discipline can be a terrible headache at times. There's a lot of objectivity about the commander and he doesn't try to crack down too hard. He knows what it means to be out here for months with nothing to break the monotony. Hell, if we could send for our wives more often it wouldn't be so bad."
Corriston's palms were cold. He stood very still, wondering how long it would take the commander to return with the news he wanted to hear.
"The question is whether life is really worth living without a woman to talk to," the executive officer went on. "Just to lie relaxed and watch a pretty girl move slowly around a room. It does something for you."
Corriston wished the man would keep quiet. Under ordinary circumstances he could have sympathized heartily. He couldn't now. There was only one girl he wanted to see walk around a room, and she might just as well have been at the opposite end of space.
She wasn't walking around a room now. She was lying helplessly sprawled out, waiting for rescue to come. It had to come soon, it had to. The commander wouldn't just go down alone after her. He'd be accompanied by a half-dozen executive officers who would know exactly how to bundle her into a stretcher and carry her to the sick bay.
But what if a killer just happened to be crouching in one of the corridors, waiting for the stretcher to pass? A killer with a poisoned barb....
Corriston couldn't stand still. He walked back and forth across the control room while the executive officer continued to talk. He paid no heed at all.
Corriston heard a footfall as he paced. He turned and saw that Commander Clement had returned. He was standing in the doorway with a strange look on his face.
Corriston felt bewildered, unable to quite believe that Clement was really back. It was like a dream that had suddenly turned real, a looking glass reversal with a strange quality of distortion about it.
It was real enough. Clement entered and shut the door behind him, very firmly and carefully, as if he wanted to make sure that Corriston would not attempt to escape.
He walked slowly forward, looking at the executive officer as if Corriston had no place at all in his thoughts.
"Everything he told me was a lie," Clement said. "Everything. There was no girl. The compartment was locked; so was the emergency door leading down to the Selector. The ladder was standing against the wall in the Selector compartment. Miss Ramsey could not have been in the compartment—not at any time. There was nothing to indicate it. She just wasn't there."
Corriston moved toward him, his face white. "That's a lie and you know it. What have you done with her? You'd better tell me. You can have me court-martialed, but you can't stop me from talking. I can prove she was there. The grate—"
"The grate? What are you talking about? There was no ripped-out grate. The grate was in place. I feel very sorry for you, Lieutenant. But I can't let sympathy stand in the way of my duty. In some respects you're very rational. You can think logically and clearly ... up to a point. But the shock weakness is there. It's very serious when you start having actual hallucinations."
The executive officer had drawn his gun. He was holding it rather loosely in his hand now, triggered and ready for any dangerous or suspicious move on Corriston's part.
There was nothing in Clement's gaze as he swung about to refute the dark mistrust that had come into the executive officer's eyes. He seemed intent only on bolstering that mistrust by driving even deeper nails into Corriston's coffin.
"I'm afraid we'll have to continue to regard Lieutenant Corriston as dangerously unstable," he said. "Keep your gun on him when you take him back to the Ward. Don't relax your vigilance for an instant."
"I won't," the executive officer promised.
"Good. You're not going to make any further trouble for us, are you, Lieutenant?"
The question seemed to call for no answer and Corriston made none. He turned slowly and walked toward the door, despairingly aware that a man he had rather liked had fallen into step behind him and would shoot him dead if he so much as wavered.
Just as he reached the door Clement spoke again, giving the executive officer final instructions. "He must not be permitted to leave his cell. Make sure of that, Simms. Post a permanent guard at the door. He must be kept under constant surveillance. If he's the self-destructive type, and I'm by no means sure he isn't, he may attempt to kill himself."
May attempt to kill himself. May attempt.... May attempt.... May attempt to kill himself. Corriston sat up on his cot, his mouth dry, his temples pounding.
Had Clement implanted the suggestion in his mind deliberately, with infinite cruelty and cunning? Was Clement really hoping that he would commit suicide? If he took his own life Clement would stand to gain a great deal.
But could Clement be that much of a scoundrel? Was he, in fact, a scoundrel at all?
Corriston knew that he could not afford to succumb to panic. Only by staying calm, by trying to reason it out logically, could he hope to get anywhere. Not at the truth, perhaps, but anywhere at all.
Start off with a supposition: The commander was everything that he pretended to be, an honest man with immense responsibilities which he could not delegate to anyone else. A forthright, hot-tempered, but completely sincere man. A little secretive, yes, but only because he took his responsibilities so seriously.
Start off by assuming that Clement was that kind of a man. What would he stand to gain if Corriston killed himself? The removal of one responsibility, at the very least. It was bad for morale if an officer had hallucinations that vitally concerned the Station itself. But a hallucination about the wealthiest girl on Earth wasn't just run-of-the-mill. It could not only disturb every officer and enlisted man on the Station; it could have political repercussions on Earth.
Clement was already in trouble because of the freighter. The chances were a Congressional Investigating Committee would be coming out. They'd be sure to hear about Corriston. His story would be all over the Station, on everyone's lips.
If Corriston took his own life the commander would be spared all that. He'd have nothing to answer for. The entire affair could be hushed up. Or could it?
Wait a minute, better give the whole problem another twirl. Even if the Commander was a completely honest man, he wouldn't stand to gain too much. He might even find himself in more serious trouble. And look at it in another way: It was hard to believe that a hallucination concerning Helen Ramsey could be much more than a gadfly irritation. If the full truth came out, Clement could clear himself of all blame. Would a man of integrity suggest that a fellow-officer take his own life solely to remove a gadfly irritation? Or any irritation, for that matter?
It was inconceivable on the face of it. The first supposition was a contradiction in terms. It did not remain valid under close scrutiny and therefore it had to be rejected.
Supposition number two: Clement was in all respects the exact opposite of an honest man. Clement had something dark and damaging to conceal, was in more serious trouble than he'd allowed anyone to suspect. Clement had some reason for not wanting the truth about Ramsey's daughter to come out.
What would he stand to gain if Corriston took himself out of the world? Unfortunately there were wide areas where any kind of speculation had to penetrate an almost absolute vacuum to get anywhere at all.
The situation on Mars? Was there some as yet undemonstratable link between Ramsey's uranium holdings and the Station itself? Was Clement involved with Ramsey in some way? And was Ramsey's daughter a vital link in the chain?
Had the accident to the freighter put an additional strain on the chain, a strain so great that Clement had been forced to take immediate, drastic action to protect himself?
Corriston tried to remember exactly what the Commander had said over the speaking tube. He had tried to listen intently, but he had been too agitated to make much sense out of the few brief sentences which he had overheard. Clement had been speaking in anger and not too coherently, and it had been a one-way conversation, with the replying voice completely silent, or, at the very least, inaudible. But one thing about the conversation had made a strong impression on him. Clement had not sounded like an honest man with nothing to conceal. On the contrary, he had sounded like a worried and guilty man.
Corriston shut his eyes and relaxed for a moment on his cot. It was an uneasy, tormenting kind of relaxation, because another thought had occurred to him.
What if Clement had not deliberately tried to plant a suicide suggestion in his mind at all? What if he had simply spoken with the malice of a not too kindly man appalled and enraged by a space-shock victim who had not only lied to him, but had given every evidence of being dangerously difficult to control.
It certainly made sense. There was nothing in the cell which might have enabled Corriston to take his own life, even had he been so inclined. Would not Clement have taken care to introduce into the cell some convenient, readily available weapon—a steel file, perhaps or even a small spool of wire?
A cold dream had begun to take possession of Corriston. Was it true then, could it possibly be true? Was he hallucinating? He had seen Helen Ramsey go into a ladies' lounge and disappear. He had seen her a second time, and she had worn a mask. The mask was so strange that it would have made four men out of five question their own sanity. But he had knelt beside her and lifted her into his arms. He had felt the pulse at her wrist. Well? If after that she had disappeared again, was it not more of a black mark against him than if he had failed to touch her at all?
All hallucinations seem real to the insane. The realer they seem the more likely they are to be inescapably damning.
Could a warped mind hope to escape from such a dilemma? Was there any possible way of making sure? No, not if he had actually cracked up. But supposing he hadn't. Suppose he had just passed for an instant over the borderline, as a result of strain, of abnormal circumstances, and was now completely rational again. In that case, proof would help. Proof could convince him that at least a part of what had happened had been real, that he had not been hallucinating continuously for days.
If he could prove conclusively that he had not been hallucinating when he had climbed through the grate, Helen Ramsey's presence beyond the grate would be pretty well established. Even an insane man does not abandon all logic when he performs a complicated act. He is not likely to ascend a ten foot wall and climb through a grate in pursuit of a complete illusion.
Oh, it could happen.... Possibly it had happened many times in hospitals for the incurably insane. But somehow he could not believe that it had happened in his case. Right at this moment he was certainly not in an abnormal state of mind. How could he be when he was able to think so logically and consistently?
Being sane now, or at least having the firm conviction that he was sane, would enable him to retrace what had happened step by step. What he were to retrace it in reality ... until he came to the grate? If the grate had been ripped out, the torment and uncertainty in his mind would vanish. He would be free then to move against Clement, to unmask and expose him for the scoundrel he was.
Free? The very thought was a mockery. He was free for twenty feet in either direction, free to shout and summon the guard. But beyond that....
Corriston sat up straight. Free to summon the guard. Free to summon a man he had dropped to the floor with two quick, decisive and totally unexpected blows. But if he did summon the guard, what then? Could he be doubled up with cramps—the old prisoners' dodge? "Get me to a doctor. I think I'm dying."
Hell no, not that. It was mildewed even on the face of it. The guard wouldn't be that much of a fool. He'd whip out a gun, and slash downward with it at the first suspicious move on the part of a man he hated.
Was there any other way? Perhaps there was ... a quite simple way. Why couldn't he simply ask the guard to step into the cell and request permission to talk to him? He would plead urgency, but do it very casually, arouse the man's curiosity without antagonizing him too much. No need to be crafty, await some unlikely opportunity, or anything of the sort.
Simply overpower the man—straight off, without any fuss.
It had happened before, but that very fact would make the guard contemptuous, more than ever convinced that the first time he hadn't really been taken by surprise at all. His pride would make him want to believe that. He was the kind of man who could rationalize a humiliating defeat and blot it completely from his memory.
It not only worked, it worked better than he could have dared hope. When he spoke a few words through the door, the guard became instantly curious. He unlocked the cell and came in, his eyes narrowed in anger ... anger, but not suspicion. His gun remained on his hip as he walked up to Corriston and stood directly facing him, well within grappling range.
"Well, what do you want to talk to me about?" he demanded. "Better make it brief. I'm not supposed to talk to you at all."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Corriston said. "You've got no idea how depressing it is to be locked up in a narrow cell with absolutely no one to talk to."
"You don't like it, eh? Well, you brought it on yourself."
Corriston caught the man about the waist and brought his right fist down three times on his curving back. Each blow was a powerful one, slanting downward toward the kidney.
Then Corriston hit the guard directly in the small of the back, with an even more punishing blow. The cumulative effect was instantaneous. The guard collapsed and sank down like a suddenly deflated balloon, the breath whistling from between his teeth.
Corriston watched him sink to the floor and straighten out. Forewarned as he was, he was still appalled by the almost instant, shocking change in the man's expression. For the second time the guard's features began to come apart. The entire upper portion of his face seemed to sink inward and broaden out, and the flowing began, the incredible refusal of his forehead and nose to remain in close proximity to his mouth.
One eye closed completely; the other remained open in a wide and almost pupilless stare. The chin receded and the lips became a puckered gray orifice that looked like some monstrous fungus growth sprouting from the middle of a gargoyle face. The individual features became paler and paler as they spread, and suddenly there seemed to be no color left in the face at all. It had turned completely waxen.
It was a horrifying thing to watch.
Corriston knelt, opened the man's shirt and stared intently at the exposed throat, something he had not done the first time in the cafeteria. The first time he had simply knelt and searched under the shirt with his hand for a heartbeat which had surprised him by its steadiness. He was quite sure now that the heart was beating firmly and steadily.
Even the peculiar appearance of the throat did not alarm him. But it most certainly did interest him. Far down on the Security Guard's throat, just above his breastbone, were a row of small hooks partly embedded in his flesh. The hooks were very tiny indeed, and their brightness was obscured by a thin film of sweat. Corriston removed the moisture with a quick flick of his thumb and continued to stare, as if he could not quite believe his eyes.
Finally he wedged his fingers under the base of the mask, and ripped it from the guard's face.
Under the mask, the face had a perfectly natural look. The features were relaxed and vacuous, but there was no flowing, no unnatural distortion at all. And it was quite a different face—the face of a man who had worn a disguise and was now so completely a stranger to Corriston that he might just as well have been any one of the Station's thirty-seven Security Guards.
Corriston could see where the hook attachments had gone into the flesh in at least thirty places on the man's face: on his brow, his cheekbones, on both sides of his face clear down to the base of his neck. The tiny punctures made by the hooks were faintly rimmed with blood, perhaps because Corriston had torn the mask away too abruptly. Undoubtedly the skin had been anaesthetized, the hooks inserted skillfully by someone familiar with just what should be done to prevent scarring.
He hoped that the guard would not carry tiny scars on his face for the rest of his natural life. He arose and examined the mask. He had a complete false face.
The thing was ingenious beyond belief. It was no mere Halloween assemblage of papier-maché flimflammery, but an elaborate and flexible mask of very thin plastic, or possibly metal. A prosthetic mask—if one could use that term in connection with a mask. It was certainly more complex in structure than any prosthetic leg or arm he had ever seen on a handicapped man, or would ever be likely to see.
He had a pretty good idea as to how it worked. A general idea. Apparently when the hooks were attached to the muscular structure of the human face underneath, every aspect of the wearer's face would be instantly controlled and altered to conform to the configuration of the false face. In that sense the mask could be said to actually mold itself to the wearer's face and transform it into a completely new and different face.
And yet, in some subtle way, the emotions felt by the owner of the real face would be conveyed to the mask, so that it would express with different features very much the same kinds of emotion.
Ingenious was scarcely the word for it. It was a miracle of technological science, almost beyond belief. But he could not doubt the reality of what he saw, for he held the evidence in his hand. No hallucination could possibly be that real.
The way the mask's surface coloration could change when the wearer's emotions changed was perhaps the most amazing miracle of all. He had seen the guard's color come and go, had watched him redden with anger and then grow pale.
It could only mean that there was some mechanically symbiotic, emotion-sensitive electronic coating or skin surface, or series of tubes on the inner surface of the mask, which could simulate actual blood flow much like a network of tiny heat regulators. This network would be so responsive to the slightest change in body temperature that the mask would alter its color the instant the wearer experienced fright or grew uncontrollably angry. What made it seem logical and even likely was the fact that caloric changes do occur in just such a fashion in the human body with every shift from anger to grief or from pain to shock.
There was nothing simple about the inner surface of the mask. It was a maze of complicated gadgetry concentrated in less than eight inches of space, perhaps thirty or forty separate mechanisms in all, some as tiny as the head of a pin, and others about one inch in width.
When the wearer became unconscious, the mask seemingly lost its integrity. The gadgets either stopped functioning or ceased to function properly and the false face became a dissolving, hideous caricature; that bore little or no resemblance to the human countenance in repose, or even to the human countenance convulsed with sudden shock.
How incredibly blind he had been in failing to suspect the existence of a mask when the guard's face had grown unnatural and ghastly in the cafeteria. He had taken it for granted that it was the man himself who had changed.
Fortunately he was spared now from making the same mistake twice, and he took full advantage of the fact. He knelt again and began the by no means easy task of removing the uniform. He had to lift him up and turn him over twice and each time the man groaned and stirred a little. He seemed on the verge of coming to, but Corriston shut his mind to the possibility until the last of the man's garments had been tossed in a pile on the floor.
He quickly took off his own uniform then, and carefully and methodically arrayed himself as a guard, taking care to leave the coat unbuttoned at the throat and even going so far as to draw on the heavy woolen socks and attach to his wrist the guard's metal identification disk.
An audacious thought occurred to him, but he dismissed it at once. He could not attach the mask to his own face. It would have required the administrations of an expert, or, at the very least, someone familiar with the thing who knew exactly how it was supposed to be hooked into place. He had no way of knowing and he recoiled instinctively from the thought of hooks, however tiny, marring the skin on his face.
No, he'd have to get along without the mask. No one on the lower levels knew him by sight, with the one ugly exception of a killer he'd never seen clearly enough to recognize in return. And in the guard's uniform he might even succeed in deceiving the killer if he moved quickly enough to give the man only a brief glimpse of him as he crossed the wide-view promenade.
Corriston stared down at the still unconscious guard, lying stretched out unclothed on the floor of the cell, then he turned, patting the guard's gun which now nestled in its transferred holster on his angular, bony hip.
Well, there were perhaps even worse ways of ending up, and it was certainly a destiny almost universally shared.
He walked out through the open door of the cell without a backward glance.
He had changed his plans completely now. The complicated structure of the mask between his hands had so completely reassured him as to his complete sanity, that he was no longer under a compulsion to return to the Selector Compartment for additional proof.
All of the pieces were coming together and melting into a pattern that remained obscure only because there was still so much about it that he did not understand. He knew there was a killer loose on the Station, the same one who had been loose on the ship that had taken him to the Station. He knew about a poisoned barb that had killed one man and had barely missed killing Corriston himself.
Dismiss the killer for the moment. There was Helen Ramsey, the wealthiest girl on Earth. Think about Ramsey himself and what his wealth had done to Mars. Think about the colonists on Mars, men who had endured unimaginable hardships and privation to stake out uranium claims which Ramsey did not want them to have. Think about the freighter that had gone out of control.
Think about Clement. Think very hard about Clement. The tragedy had shaken him, had given him the look of a very guilty man. He had not wanted it to happen. He had been alarmed, appalled. Yes, think about Clement—that very secretive man.
The killer? You can't get rid of him, can you? He keeps coming back into your mind. The killer had not tried to spare Helen Ramsey. He had killed her bodyguard and ripped a mask from her face. No attempt at protection there. But Clement could not have known about that. He had evidently been searching for Helen Ramsey himself. The news that she had been found had startled him, had given him a visible jolt.
Corriston did not think that the pattern would dissolve. A few of its features were becoming too clear now, the implications too inescapable. There was something going on that was ugly at the core of it, and the coming of the killer had simply brought it out into the open. Not too much into the open as yet perhaps, but the handwriting on the wall had at least become almost readable. Perhaps the accident to the freighter had also helped to bring it into the open. In some obscure way everything seemed to dovetail: Ramsey; the situation on Mars; Clement and the freighter; a twice disappearing Helen Ramsey; and an accusation of space-shock which was completely false and unjustified. Each seemed to hover just above the center of a very definite pattern.
And so did the masks! The masks in particular. Think, think hard about the masks and what the very existence of such masks on the Station implied.
The masks could only have been designed to cover the darkest deceit, to cover the most terrifying treachery.
How many officers and enlisted men on the Station were wearing masks? How many? And why? Was every officer on the Station wearing one? If the masks were thought necessary, if their employment had been made mandatory, there could be only one explanation.
Every officer and every enlisted man was masquerading. The Station was officered and manned by—a word he'd never liked from a dictionary of obsolete American slang came unbidden into his mind—Phonies!
The thought staggered him. For a moment he rejected it as inconceivable, outside the bounds of reason. But it remained on the perimeter of his consciousness and would not be dislodged. It came back and set itself down where its dominance over his mind could not be contested.
What else could it mean? Masks have only one purpose: to enable the wearer to avoid being recognized.
Quite obviously the phony officers could be wearing masks for only one reason: to conceal their real identities while they manned the Stations, carrying on the tasks of the men they had displaced.
Carrying on the tasks of the rightful officers, but with a difference. And that difference would almost certainly be criminal activity on a wide and daring scale.
The only question remaining to be answered was how high did that activity ascend? Did it ascend to the very top, to Commander Clement himself?
Fortunately, the violence of space is a controlled violence, and determined men can slip through it with tools and building materials. They can base themselves on zero-gravity construction rafts and take refuge in pressurized crevices, go floating along steel girders five hundred feet in length until there has been assembled the greatest of all miracles—a manned Space Station a thousand feet in diameter encircling Earth at a distance of fifteen hundred miles.
The Station had not been built in space, it had been built on Earth section by section. However, the final task of putting it together had been left to the floating men in their fishbowl helmets, the suicide brigade with their incredible vacuum equipment and remote control welding arms.
Fifty-seven sections had been built on Earth over a period of five years, thirty-four in the Eastern United States, the rest in scattered localities from Chicago to the Gold Coast. They had all been sent up by step rockets into the same narrow orbit around Earth. They were fifty-seven sections "crash landing" in a total vacuum, weightless and yet with sufficient mass and inertia to keep them in close proximity until the great task could get under way.
The assembled Station was cone-shaped, and it had been a colossal undertaking to keep it from developing stress defects over a third of its bulk during the early constructional stages. Under the guidance of experts, the problem had been solved, but at a tragic price.
Assembling the Station had cost the lives of fifty-three men, for there is no easy way to bring together, join, seal and make safe tons of metal and plastic, intricate machinery and equipment, plus a thousand-and-one small, incidental contrivances fifteen hundred miles above the emergency-alert systems and hospital facilities of Earth.
Some of the men who had lost their lives had been blown out of transport rocket tubes by mistake. Some had missed their footing too close to a welding operation that had been halted too late. Some had floated into capsules full of nitric oxygen gas under high pressure and had failed to veer away in time. Still others had tugged too strenuously at heavy girders and the slow, but crushing inertia of an enormous, backward-swinging beam in free fall had ripped their space suits asunder and fractured their spines.
There were five thousand ways of dying in space. But the sacrifice, the terror, the tragic toll seemed immeasurably remote now, for the roar of the incoming and outgoing ships made the Station a gigantic reality so completely in the present that it seemed to have no past.
Spinning always on its axis, substituting centrifugal force for the gravity tug of Earth, the Station was a complete world, a self-contained macrocosm so immense that the magnetic-shod mechanics who inspected it in relays, the passenger-carrying shuttle rockets from Earth that came and went, and even the thousand-foot ships that berthed for re-fueling and clearance seemed hardly to encroach at all on its vast central bulk.
And yet, it was something quite apart from the Station's bigness which came under worldwide scrutiny when the freighter crashed and was splintered into fragments, channeling a fiery crater in the earth and causing the most disastrous accidental death toll in United States history.
The news was flashed to the four corners of the earth, and almost simultaneously a flight of United States military jets took off from the Lake Superior airport to explore the wreckage.
The first message from the flight commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hackett, came five hours later. It was tense, grim and it minced no words. "Wreckage radioactive. Main cargo uranium in a rough ore state. Explosion and subsequent intense radioactivity apparently caused by an auxiliary cargo of highly unstable uranium isotopes. If the freighter had berthed at the Station the dangerous character of its cargo could not have escaped detection. We have every reason to believe that it intended to berth at the Station. Its signals to the Station, before some undeterminable shipboard accident sent it out of control, confirm this. We must therefore assume complicity of a double nature: by the freighter's commanding officer, Captain James Summerfield, and by someone in a position of high command on the Station."
After that, there was no silencing the slow, relentless events on Earth.
A week after the tragedy, a U. S. Marine corporal stationed at Port Forrestal, Wisconsin, put through a late afternoon phono-view call to his wife. His face on the screen was haggard with strain, and he seemed not to want to meet his wife's gaze.
"We've been ordered out into space," he said.
"You mean they're sending you out to take over the Station?"
"They're sending out five thousand United States Marines," the corporal said. "We all knew it was coming. We expected it when that Governmental Investigating Committee was turned back."
"But it doesn't make sense. I can't understand it. Why should the Commander of the Station refuse to permit a Governmental Investigating Committee to land?"
"We don't know. He must have something to conceal, and you can be pretty sure it's an ugly something. When that freighter disaster got into every daily press conference of the high brass I knew this was coming. I felt it in my bones."
"But what will happen if the Commander refuses to let even the Marines land? What will happen then?"
"We may have to open fire on the Station," the corporal said. "If the Station is in criminal hands we'll have no alternative."
"You talk as if you were in command."