"I guess every soldier talks like that when his life is in jeopardy. But I'm glad I'm not a five-star general. If I had to make a decision like that—"
But it wasn't a general who made the crucial decision. It was Admiral John Hayes, Commander of the Eighth Spatial Naval Division, acting on behalf of fifty-seven nations.
He stood in the bridge room of a United States naval cruiser of massive tonnage, staring out through a wide-view observation port at the Station's glimmering immensity. The cruiser and the Station were moving at almost the same speed, fifteen thousand miles an hour. But now the cruiser was moving just a little faster than the Station, and Admiral Hayes was growing impatient.
Maneuvering into an orbital position almost directly abreast of the Station had been difficult. Commander Hayes' nerves were badly frayed; and he was not a man who could endure too much frustration. He had signaled the Station twice and received no reply. During that time, both the Station and the Cruiser had completely encircled the Earth at an interval of just a little under two hours.
He turned suddenly from the viewport, his lips set in tight lines. He stared for an instant in silence at the young officer at his side, his mind groping for an argument which would completely justify what he had already decided he must do.
But Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Archer spoke first, saying quietly: "You have no choice, sir."
Hayes' features relaxed a little. It was good to know that he had support from a man whose judgment he respected. For an instant the awful aloneness which went with supreme command weighed less heavily upon him.
"It's absolute defiance, open rebellion," Hayes said. "I'm forced to assume that the Station is in criminal hands. We'll never know, probably, just what happened on board that freighter. But we do know that accidents occur. For every thirty ships that berth securely, one meets with some kind of navigational mishap. The damage isn't always irreparable. More often than not, in fact, it's quite minor. Usually it means only a delay in berthing, a navigational shift, a circling back for another try. But apparently that freighter really had it. So it gave the show away. Commander Clement must be in league, hand in glove, with whoever is interested in smuggling unauthorized uranium shipments through to Earth for his own personal profit. And to hasten his immediate profit that someone apparently found it to his advantage to trigger a little of the shipment into highly fissionable material on Mars."
"You know as well as I do who the someone is, sir," Archer said.
"I guess we both know. But right now my only concern is with the Station. If they ignore my third order to stand by for boarding I'll have to open fire. The Station's stolen property just as long as it remains in criminal hands. You can't get a desperate criminal to surrender your property unless you convince him his own life is in danger. I've got to try my best to convince Commander Clement I mean business without destroying the Station."
"You'll damage it to some extent, sir. How bad do you think it will be?"
"I don't know. I don't intend to launch an atomic warhead. But I can't stop short of that if he stays stubborn. I've no way of knowing what his breaking point will be. But I do know that if he keeps control of the Station he'll be in a position to wipe out New York or London."
"But you'll make your intentions unmistakably clear before you open fire, sir?"
"Yes," Hayes said, wearily. "Yes ... of course I will."
Corriston took a deep breath and let it out slowly. So far luck had favored him. Now he felt as though he were walking through a deadly jungle where all the animals had suddenly turned friendly. The teeth they bared at him were smiling. The grins were their masks. But the commander didn't pretend at all ... whoever the commander really was!
And then that single question began to gnaw at Corriston like some rat feeding on his flesh: Where was the real Clement now? Was he alive? Was he accessible? Or was he dead?
Corriston's mental processes were now governed by the most evanescent of impressions: the depth of the shadows on both sides of the corridor; his own shadow lengthening before him; the drone of machinery deep within the Station; the muffled beating of his own heart. Suddenly he was at the end of the corridor and approaching the main control room, his face as grim as death.
Violence he had determined upon, but it would be a very brief, a very effective kind of violence. It takes only a second to rip a mask from a man's face.
Something was happening just outside the main control room door. The three executive officers guarding the door had moved eight or ten paces down the corridor, and the door itself was standing ajar. The executive officers had their backs turned to Corriston and were making no attempt to conceal their agitation. They were very pale, at least, one of them was. Two had their backs completely turned, but Corriston caught a brief glimpse of the third man's profile, and it seemed completely drained of color, as if the mask had stopped mirroring emotion artificially and had allowed the wearer's actual pallor to seep through.
Corriston glided quickly to the door, passed through it and shut it very quietly behind him.
The commander had his back turned too. He was standing before the viewport, staring out into space.
But the commander did seem dazed, did seem stunned. Corriston could tell by his posture, by the way he held his shoulders, by the utter rigidity of his neck.
Then he saw it, the long cylindrical hull touched by a pale glimmer of starlight, the circular, glowing ports, the massive, atomic-projectile launching turrets at its base. He saw it through the viewport, saw it past the commander's stiffening shoulders—an American war cruiser of formidable tonnage and armed with sufficient fire power to shatter a small moon.
All right, let the Big Dark contain it for a moment, poised out there, ready for any contingency. Right at the moment a scoundrel must be unmasked in a very stark way. Whatever trouble he had brought upon himself, he must be made to face it now without the mask.
Corriston unholstered his gun and walked toward the commander across the deck. He came up behind him and thrust the gun into the small of his back.
"Turn around," he ordered. "Don't make any other move. Just turn slowly and face me. I want to take a good look at your face."
If the commander was startled, he didn't show it. Perhaps the war cruiser had dealt him such a crushing blow that he was no longer capable of experiencing shock. Or his control may have been extraordinary. Corriston had no way of knowing and it didn't concern him too much.
He was chiefly interested in the commander's eyes. He had never before seen eyes quite so piercing in their stare or narrowed in quite such an ugly way.
The commander spoke almost instantly and his voice had a steel-cold rasp. "Well?" he said.
Just a few words—just the shortest possible question he could have asked.
Corriston said: "You're wearing a mask, aren't you, commander?"
The impostor's expression did not change, but his hand went instinctively to his throat.
"Remove your tie and unbutton your collar," Corriston said.
The man made another quick gesture with his hand in the direction of his throat. But it seemed involuntary, protective, for he did not touch his collar.
Corriston shifted his weapon a little, moving the barrel upward until it pressed very firmly against the commander's breastbone. He reached out and unbuttoned the commander's collar with his free hand, very quickly and expertly.
He was staring at the tiny hooks at the base of the mask when something happened which made him regret that he had not followed his original intention of instantly ripping the mask from the man's face.
The door opened and the three executive officers came into the control room. For an instant they seemed neither to see nor understand the situation. They must have seen Corriston, but the fact that he was wearing a guard's uniform may have given them the idea that he had every right to be there. The gun was concealed from view and the commander was standing very quietly by the viewport and quite obviously incapable of making any move, simply because the slightest move would have endangered his life.
So the executive officers went right on talking for an instant, half to themselves and half to the commander, just as if Corriston had not been present at all.
"If that cruiser lands, Ramsey's goose is cooked and ours is too," a tall officer said. "The instant that freighter crashed I knew they'd find out quickly enough how the ships had been carrying smuggled uranium. I knew that under pressure, half of our captains would talk ... and the crews, too. All the government would have to do is check and they'd find out that we're Ramsey's men, all of us. They might even now know about the masks."
"Why not about the masks?" another officer joined in. "Ramsey paid for the research that went into them, didn't he? Big tycoon ... fingers in a dozen pies. When the secret's out, and he puts them on the market, he'll make important money out of it. But we'll be in prison with just our own faces staring back at us from a steel wall."
"Don't worry about that. Ramsey won't profit from the manufacture of masks. He won't even profit from the false uranium clearance we gave him. If that cruiser is allowed to land he'll be in prison with us."
"Better think that over, Commander. You refused to let the Governmental Investigating Committee land. If a single soldier sets foot on the Station we're done for. It's not too late to do something about it. That cruiser can only berth by overtaking us. If we change our orbit fast and start blasting at them with our rear adjusting rockets they'll have to keep their distance?"
"Aren't you forgetting something? A single atomic warhead could blow the Station apart."
"We've got to risk that. They'll think a long time before they'll go that far. The Station's not expendible. If we change our orbit we can still make contact with the Mars ship that's due to berth in an hour. We've got to get back to Mars and whatever protection Ramsey can give us. We'll have his daughter with us. He'll be so glad to see her he'll go out on a limb to protect us."
"He'd go out on a limb anyway; He'd have to in order to save himself. But sure, we'll take the girl. No harm in that. He knows she's here and will be expecting her. He'll thank us for taking things so quickly in hand. If that crazy lieutenant had made his story public that cruiser would have been out there anyway—perhaps even sooner. They'd have wanted to know on Earth why anyone would want to harm Ramsey's daughter, something we don't know ourselves."
Corriston decided then that he'd kept silent long enough. He returned his gun to its holster, and walked up to the three executive officers, completely ignoring the commander.
He heard the commander threaten him in a low tone, heard him say words which would have caused some men to pause in fear. But Corriston did not turn.
There was stunned disbelief in the eyes of the three men facing him. He spoke quickly, knowing that he had only a moment before the commander would see that he was seized and restrained. He had to make sure that the three would hear him out, that the commander would not be instantly obeyed. Perhaps he couldn't make sure, but at least he could try.
"I'll make a bargain with you," he said. "I've done reckless things but I'm not a complete fool. You're going to prevent that cruiser from berthing and I won't be able to interfere. I'm just one man against several hundred. All three of you are armed. If I started shooting I'd get perhaps two of you—no more. Then you'd kill me. I haven't even the advantage of surprise. I gave that up because I can't believe you're complete fools either.
"First, I want to see Helen Ramsey. I want you to let me talk to her. And when the Mars' ship berths, I want to go to Mars with her. I've something to offer in return."
One of the officers stared at him, tightened his lips and stared harder. "Good God!" he muttered. "Good God! A bargain. You must be out of your mind. What could you possibly offer? If you had a gun trained on us—"
"A witness in your defense," Corriston said. "A witness who will stand up in court and swear that you did try to protect Helen Ramsey, that you saved her from a very great danger. You may think that you do not need a witness now, but before the year is out Ramsey will be on trial for his life. His wealth won't save him. They know too much about him now. That freighter explosion killed too many people. The public outcry will be too great.
"If you stay on Mars you'll be hunted down like wild animals. They'll get you in the end and you know it. You'll be brought back to Earth; you'll stand trial."
Corriston paused for the barest instant, knowing that the commander too was listening, knowing from the absence of sound and movement behind him that his words were being weighed. "I think you know that I would not break my word. I'll stand up in court and defend you under oath. I'll be speaking the simple truth. You did save Helen Ramsey from a very great danger; you probably saved her life. That is sure to weigh in your favor with any impartial judge and jury. You won't get the death penalty; I can promise you that."
It was the commander who spoke first. He said, very quietly. "He's right, of course. Completely right."
One of the officers nodded. "There's no reason why we shouldn't let him talk to the girl. We can decide later whether we like his offer."
"We're going to like it," the commander said, coming around in front of Corriston. "He has more sense than I would have given him credit for."
"So have you, commander," Corriston said, and meant it.
The commander's eyes were still hostile, unfriendly, but the cold rage had gone out of them.
"All right," he said. "Let him see the girl now. Make sure a guard is stationed at the door. Keeping that cruiser from berthing won't be easy. They'll keep the Station under fire with small projectiles, even if they don't attack us with atomic warheads. They'll risk some damage just to throw a scare into us."
The officer next to Corriston nudged his arm. "All right," he said. "But remember this when you talk to her. She doesn't know the truth about us. She doesn't even know we're wearing masks. We'd like it better if you didn't say anything about it."
"Whether she knows it or not isn't too important," Corriston said. "I suppose you wouldn't care to tell me what you've done with Commander Clement and the other officers."
"No, we wouldn't care to tell you. Anything more?"
"I guess not," Corriston said. "Take me to her."
He was staring at her across a shadowed room, with the pale glimmer of a cabin viewport above her right shoulder, a very small port that looked like a full moon glimmering high in the sky through a sea of mist.
Her face was very white and she was staring back at him as if he had come suddenly out of nowhere.
She hesitated only an instant and then walked straight toward him, walked right up to him and touched him gently on the face.
"I'm so glad," she said.
She drew back then and looked at him and smiled. "I was afraid you were in trouble because of me," she said, "some terrible kind of trouble, and I couldn't help you at all. I kept blaming myself for everything foolish that I had ever done, going way back to the day when I broke my first doll, deliberately and spitefully, because I was a very headstrong little girl."
"I'm afraid I've always been pretty headstrong myself," Corriston said. "But being a boy, I naturally couldn't break dolls. I just wrecked the family's peace of mind."
"We all go through life with a great deal of foolish luggage," she said. "And sometimes you have an impulse to just drop everything—and run away."
"I can understand that," Corriston said. "But did you have to run away quite so fast? It's hard to believe it was for anybody's good, including your own."
"It might have been," she said. "It might have been for my good and then later, partly for your good. Please don't judge me too harshly before I've had a chance to tell you exactly what happened."
He reached out for her and kissed her even as she came into his arms. He had expected her to be angry, to withdraw, but instead she encircled his strong back with a surprising fierceness. When he released her, her eyes were shining.
"I'm glad you did that ... darling! Very glad. But we're still in trouble."
"I know that. But we're in love, too. And you just promised to tell me what happened."
"Well, I guess I just ... just regressed."
"You what?"
"Regressed. You know, like when I was a headstrong little brat of a child. We all do that at times. You'll have to admit there was some excuse for me. You weren't born in a house with a hundred rooms, with servants always coming and going, and outside gardens with big red and yellow flowers where you couldn't even run and hide without being smothered, without being searched for and brought screaming and kicking back inside.
"You don't know what it means to know you haven't a father, only a stern, cold, black-coated man standing away off in the darkness somewhere and watching people bow down before him.
"You don't know what it means to be told: 'You're Stephen Ramsey's daughter. Behave. Behave. Behave!'"
"I scarcely ever saw my father. And when I did see him he was as cold as one of the slabs in the big mausoleum he took so much pride in, the big family mausoleum which only a Ramsey was permitted to visit. And yet I think he loved me in his own cold way. I think he still does."
She fell silent for a moment and then an overpowering need to tell Corriston more seemed to come upon her.
"I was never allowed to see young men, not even to go for a ride in the park. Anyone of them might be a fortune seeker, because no young man, even if he is madly in love with a girl, can quite shut his eyes to wealth as one additional reason for loving her.
"So I never saw any young men. I wasn't permitted to even go to a dance, or walk in the moonlight on a balcony. I wanted to go to dances, wanted at least one young man to kiss me damned hard."
"Sure you did," Corriston said. "I understand."
"I'm going to stop right there, darling. I could tell you what it means to be free to travel, anywhere, anywhere in the world and to see all of the white and shining cities, and to be intoxicated by beauty, and to know at the same time that you are not free, can never hope to be free as other people are free."
"And that's why you ran away."
"Yes, darling, yes, and because that bodyguard was a complete fool. He was just one of thirty bodyguards my father had hired to protect me, year after year. But he was the biggest fool of all. He drank too much and he talked too much. Finally I made up my mind that I would be better off if I went on to Mars alone. My father had told me I could come, the trip had been carefully planned down to the smallest detail. I was to travel incognito. I was to keep to myself until I arrived at the Station and no one was supposed to know I was even on the ship, not even the captain. I'm quite sure he didn't know. I think the invitation to his cabin was a complete fabrication. In fact, I'm sure it was. I think Clakey—his real name was Ewers—was just drunk enough to make up a crazy story like that to get me away from you.
"But I didn't want to get away from you, darling. I wanted to get away from him. I wanted to have a few days of complete freedom before I arrived on Mars, and perhaps after that for a day in the colony before I joined my father. I didn't care how angry he'd be when he saw me without a bodyguard, alone, wonderfully, gloriously alone and free for the first time in my life. I didn't want to be Helen Ramsey at all. I wanted to be somebody else and be completely free.
"So I went into the ladies room, darling, and I put on the strangest kind of mask."
"Yes," Corriston said. "I know."
"You know about the mask?"
"Please go on," Corriston said. "I'd rather you didn't ask me how I know that your father can take pride in at least one constructive achievement. The masks are extraordinary. I've seen one."
"But how? Where? I can't believe it. I—"
"Please," Corriston said. "It isn't too important. I made a necessary promise that I wouldn't tell you, not immediately. I'm asking you to trust me and go on."
"Well, I secured one of those very unusual masks. From the Gresham-Ramsey Laboratories, before we left Earth. I could go there anytime I wanted to. All of the research technicians there are quite old. One of them, Thomas Webb, is really quite handsome. I might have fallen in love with him if he had been forty years younger. He showed me just how to adjust the mask. But when I went into the ladies' lounge I had more than just a mask. I had a complete thin plastic change of clothing concealed under my dress. I didn't remove my dress, only reversed my clothing so that the plastic dress covered the one I'd been wearing."
Corriston said, "It was a very courageous thing for you to do."
"I'm glad you think so, darling. Because when I came out of the lounge and saw Ewers killed, I wasn't courageous at all. I became panic-stricken, terrified, beside myself with fear. I knew that my father had many dangerous enemies. I knew that I was in immediate, deadly danger. I had to go on with the disguise then. I had to go right on being somebody else. I couldn't tell anyone. I couldn't even tell you. I had to let you think that in some strange, bewildering way I had gone into the lounge and disappeared.
"I knew you wouldn't really believe that, not for a moment. But I didn't know what you'd think. I could have told you, I suppose, but I was afraid it would only make the danger greater, might transfer some of the danger to you. And I didn't know you'd go straight to the captain and get yourself into trouble. There were rumors on the Station that you'd been confined, put under guard. But they were only rumors. I felt I had to see you, talk to you. I was half out of my mind with anxiety. I bribed one of the guards to let me out of the quarantine cage and went in search of you.
"I searched everywhere, followed passageways at random, got lost in a maze of machinery."
"And someone followed you," Corriston said. "He followed you and tore the mask from your face."
She looked at him with wide, startled eyes. "How did you know?"
"I was there," Corriston said. "You fainted and I took you into my arms—for the very first time. You didn't know that, did you?"
"How could I have known? If what you say is true, I—"
Helen Ramsey did not complete what she had started to say. Had she done so she might not have been thrown so abruptly off-balance by the suddenly lurching deck; she would have moved closer to Corriston and could have seized hold of his shoulders for support.
She did not fall, but she nearly did, and the lurch sent her tottering all the way to the opposite wall. Corriston saw her collide with the wall and sink to her knees. At the same instant his own knees collapsed.
He was lying sprawled out on the deck, too startled and shaken to go immediately to her aid, when the second lurch came. It spun him about, and then he was sliding. He couldn't seem to stop the sliding. He went all the way to the opposite wall too.
For a brief instant they were together again, locked in a desperate embrace, their legs higher than their heads. Then the deck righted itself and the bombardment began.
It was a terrifying thing to have to listen to, and Corriston preferred to listen to it on his feet. Slowly he arose and helped his companion up, holding her in so tight a grip that it seemed to them that they had been welded together and could never part.
He was glad that he could be completely sure of one thing. It wasn't a nuclear bombardment—not yet. The cruiser was merely shelling the Station. When the cruiser launched an atomic warhead he'd know about it—rather, he wouldn't know. The fact that he was still alive and aware of what was going on told him a great deal about the nature of the bombardment.
"What is it?" Helen Ramsey whispered. "Do you know?"
"We're the catspaw in a naval attack," Corriston said. "The commander took a very great risk."
It was incredible, but right at the moment he felt himself to be in the scoundrel's corner. He didn't want the Station to be blown apart in the great empty spaces between the planets any more than the commander did.
When Corriston reached the viewport and stared out, the cruiser was following the Station far off to the side, in an obvious effort to outmaneuver it by maintaining a parallel rather than a directly pursuing course. But it was not escaping the swiftly turning Station's stern rocket jets. Blinding bursts of incandescence spiraled toward it through the void, and once or twice scored direct hits.
He saw the cruiser shudder throughout its length, and then draw back, almost as if it were endowed with life and had nerves and arteries that could be ripped apart.
There were mechanical arteries that could easily enough be ripped. For an instant Corriston stared with a strange kind of detachment, freed from the terrible tension and uncertainty by his absolute absorption in the battle itself, freed from the almost mind-numbing sense of participating in a struggle that could end in utter disaster for Station and cruiser alike. He knew that if the cruiser maneuvered in too close, the puffs of flame from the Station's jets could turn into superheated gases roaring through space, destroying everything in their path.
The Station, too, was only a pulsebeat from fiery annihilation. And a pulsebeat could be terrifyingly brief. But the decision had been made and there could be no turning back.
Aboard the cruiser the decision had certainly come from very high up. Corriston turned the thought slowly over in his mind, still in the grip of his strange detachment. Just what did "very high up" mean?
It meant—it had to mean—a conflict of personalities, the hot-headedness or stubbornness or glory-seeking that went with every decision made by strong-willed men.
Aboard the cruiser someone had acted. After consultation? On just an impulse? In blind rage because the Station had ignored a warning that had been repeated twice?
There was no way of knowing. But on the cruiser men were dying. That was important too. Just how reckless had the decision been?
In space, military science has never been an exact science. Sonic echoes alone can kill, and in a pressurized compartment blowups happen. Jet-supports can be placed at the best of all possible angles and still fly off into space. Compressed air shot out of pressure vents can turn bone and flesh into soft oozing jelly.
The cruiser was changing its course again. It had failed, in a maneuver, twice repeated, to draw close at almost right angles to the Station, and had taken terrible punishment from below, above and straight ahead.
But the cruiser was still firing. And Corriston not only saw the bursts of flame, he felt the blasts in his eardrums, his brain and the soles of his feet. And suddenly he saw flames darting out directly beneath him, and knew that the Station was on fire.
Corriston knew that at any moment he could be smashed back against a bone-crushing wall of metal; he could be pulverized, asphyxiated, driven mad. And the fear in him—the fear that he wouldn't be able to control—would be a two-edged sword.
There was no pain more ghastly than the final burst of agony that came with a burst open nervous system. It was the most horrible way to die. But even dying that way wouldn't be half as bad as watching the woman he loved die.
Almost as if aware of his thoughts, Helen spoke to him for the first time since he had crossed to the viewport.
"It's very strange, darling. I'm calmer now than I have ever been. I guess it can happen if you love a man so very much that you know your life would have no meaning if anything should happen to him. It's like facing up squarely to the fact that you no longer have any existence apart from him. I've done that, darling, and I'm not afraid."
There was silence in the cabin for an instant. Then another shell exploded, and another, and another. Corriston felt light and dangerously dizzy. It was amazing that he had not been hurled to the floor, still more amazing that he could have remained for so long motionless in just one spot.
Then, abruptly, the bombardment ceased. There was no sound at all in the cabin, just a silence so absolute that the roaring in Corriston's ears was like the sound made by an angry sea beating against vast stone cliffs in a world that had ceased to exist.
There were no longer any exploding white stars coming from the cruiser. It was dwindling into the blackness of space, giving up the battle, conceding defeat. It became thinner and thinner. Suddenly only the reef remained. Where the cruiser had been there stretched only empty space.
Corriston turned from the viewport. He crossed the cabin to the cot, swaying a little, but only from dizziness, and sat down and drew the girl on the cot close to him. He held her tightly, saying nothing.
Corriston was still sitting on the cot when the door opened and the commander and two executive officers came into the cabin.
He was not too surprised, for it had been somehow almost impossible for him to believe that the commander could have been killed. A scoundrel's luck and a drunkard's luck were often very much the same thing.
If the commander had succeeded in quickly putting out the fire he rated a medal, he was a man for all of that.
And apparently the commander had succeeded in putting out the fire, or he would not now be facing Corriston with a grimly urgent look on his mask.
Helen Ramsey was staring at him almost as if she were seeing him as he really was for the first time. Did she know that he was wearing a mask? There was no possible way she could know, he told himself, except by intuition. The masks were good. Having worn one herself she ought to know how good they were. She ought not even to suspect the commander unless—
Corriston had no time to finish the thought.
"Get up, both of you," the commander said, gesturing with his braided right arm. "The Mars ship has just berthed. We've got to go aboard before there's any question as to the obedience of the crew. The captain has been taken off, but we're keeping some of the crew."
"You—you put out the fire, Commander?"
"Naturally. I'm not quite the incompetent you think me, Lieutenant."
"I'm quite sure of that, Commander," Corriston said. "Do we take anything with us?"
"You'll get all the extras you need on Mars," the commander said. "Stephen Ramsey isn't likely to want to see his daughter go about in rags."
Corriston decided that the wisest thing he could do was to take the commander at his word in every important respect; for the moment, at any rate. There was the little matter of a killer still at large somewhere on the Station, and the quicker they were in space the safer Ramsey's daughter would be. Not just in space as the Station was in space, but much further out in the Big Dark.
"All right, Commander," he said. "Let's get started."
Getting started took very little time. A great thankfulness came upon Corriston when he saw the smooth dark hull of the Mars ship looming high above him, a thousand foot long cylinder of inky blackness against a glimmering wilderness of stars.
The ship was berthed securely beneath a towering network of telemetric aerials, on a completely circular launching platform that was like a saucer in reverse, with a contractable metal ramp leading up to the wide-open, brightly lighted boarding port at its base.
There were steps on the ramp, but Corriston knew that when the structure was drawn back into the ship it would collapse like a house of cards, folded back upon itself.
Helen Ramsey ascended first. Corriston made certain that she would by getting in the commander's way with a convincing show of accidental clumsiness. He pretended to stumble as he began the ascent, to be all hands and feet.
The commander swore softly and Corriston was quite sure that he had not been deceived. But there was very little that he could do about it under the circumstances. He had to let Ramsey's daughter climb the ramp first and she was almost at the top before Corriston started up.
Corriston was halfway to the top, and the commander and the impatient, tight-lipped executive officers were just starting up, when three tall figures emerged from the darkness at the base of the ramp.
The attack took place so quickly that it was over almost before it started. The commander and the executive officers didn't have a chance. One of the emerging men had a gun, and he shot the commander in the stomach with it at almost point-blank range.
The commander sank down, clutching at his stomach, bent nearly double. Even from where Corriston was standing, he could see the blood trickling down his right leg. The terrible dark wetness directly over the wound was of course invisible, completely concealed by the commander's tightly laced arms.
The startled, badly frightened officers turned and tried to get away. But they didn't get far. The man who had shot the commander picked them off like clay pigeons, one by one, as they fled.
His two companions did not even seem to be armed. They just stood quietly watching the executive officers die. They died on the launching platform and on the smooth deck beyond, two of them simply dropping in their tracks, a third sprawling grotesquely, and the last staggering on for a few paces. There were four executive officers, and not one escaped. It was butchery, pure and simple, cruel, savage beyond belief.
Helen Ramsey was already on the ship, and there was no possible way for him to get her off.
The thought that he was himself in the deadliest kind of danger never even crossed his mind.
The killer returned his gun to its holster very slowly and deliberately, and then he took it out again. It was a very strange gesture, when every passing second must have been of vital importance to him, but it revealed something very unusual about the man. He evidently liked to feel that he had completed one job and packaged it to his entire satisfaction, before going on to another.
It was that more than anything else which jolted Corriston into complete awareness, and made it impossible for him to doubt the reality, the utter horror, of what had taken place. The killer had gestured to his companions, and he was coming up the ramp.
He came slowly up the ramp, and for the first time Corriston saw his face. It was not a face that he would ever forget or ever want to forget. It was the face of the man he had grappled with in the dark and seen once in the light. But now his features were turned away. It was exactly the kind of face which Corriston had pictured him as having, except that it was just a little uglier looking. The slant of the cheekbones even crueler, harsher, the eyes more venomously narrowed, the mouth an uglier gash.
"All right, Lieutenant," he said, gesturing with the gun. "Go on ahead. Go on board. We're going to need you to help pilot this ship to Mars."
The silence in the chart room was like the hush that comes over a desert when hurricane winds have died down, or like the stillness of a rocky coast when waves have ceased to pound, and dangerous rocks stand out with all of their saw-edged teeth exposed.
It was extraordinary how, at the point of a gun, a man could think and act almost automatically, and postpone making any decision at all. It wasn't cowardice; Corriston was quite sure of that. He felt only anger, deep, relentless, all-consuming. Sweat oozed in droplets from his brow, but it was the heat and the tension which made his skin stream with moisture. There was no immediate fear in him at all.
He'd kept fear at bay by refusing to let his mind leap ahead. Only the gun at his back mattered, and just why it should have mattered so much was the only thing that puzzled him.
It did not occur to him that what some men dread most is the fear of dying too abruptly, without foreknowledge and with just a second's glimpse of something cold and deadly before the final blackout. A gun had that kind of power.
The man with the gun had asked Corriston a great many questions, urgently practical questions that dealt with cold statistics concerning zero-gravity, solar radiation, space drift and the length of time it would take to reach Mars if a single pilot took full advantage of the automatic controls and never allowed himself to become reckless.
Corriston had replied to the best of his ability and knowledge, and the other had accepted his answers with a quiet grunt of satisfaction. It was only after that, when the silence had lengthened almost unendurably between them, that the more personal questions came.
The killer jabbed the gun more firmly against Corriston's spine and asked in a cold, flat voice: "Do you know who I am, Corriston? Have you any idea?"
Corriston stared out the viewport for a moment without replying, his face deathly pale. "I don't know your name," he said. "Probably that's not too important. I do know that you're a cold-blooded murderer, and that killing gives you pleasure. I am very tired. I wish you wouldn't question me any more."
"Do you think you can pilot this ship to Mars, tired as you are?"
Corriston nodded.
The pressure of the gun barrel diminished. "I am very glad—for your sake. I suppose I might as well tell you my name. It's Henley, Richard Henley. We'll be seeing a lot of each other before this trip is ended, but you'll find that I'm not a particularly talkative man. When I have something important to say, though, I won't leave you in any doubt as to what I want done. Right now I must warn you that I would just as soon kill you as not."
"You're lying," Corriston said. "If you killed me now you'd never get to Mars. You need me and you know it."
"Corriston."
"Yes."
"Don't assume too much. There are practical advantages in keeping you alive but a wrong move on your part could outweigh them. I'd have a fair chance of getting to Mars without your help. I know more than you think about spatial navigation. And the automatic controls are far from unreliable. Without them it would take at least five men to pilot a ship this size to Mars. With their aid a single experienced pilot should be able to accomplish it. I'm pretty sure you've had enough officer training school to qualify as a pilot. A ship's inspection officer has to be able to navigate a ship; I've checked on that. But you're certainly no expert, and if you force my hand I'll take my chance with the auto-controls and my own limited knowledge."
"You'll be taking a chance, all right," Corriston said. "What would you do if the observation glass started showing small pits in the hull from a very large shower of micro-meteorites? Can the auto-controls stop those pits from spreading? I've seen a ship stippled all over in less than ten minutes. The meteor guards won't deflect micro-meteorites, and you've got to alter your velocity and angle of drive and a lot of other things fast. And what happens when your instruments start showing light spectra peculiarities that can't be measured in angstroms? Just a little oddity like that can force you to change your course, but the auto-pilot won't know a thing about it.
"And when you hit the Martian atmosphere and start firing against the direction of motion, how much good do you think limited knowledge will do you? Remember, nearly all of the journey will have been made in free fall, and in free fall the auto-controls are fairly efficient. But the instant you hit the atmosphere the slightest miscalculation in the utilization of your fuel reserves can lead to absolute disaster. I don't know what makes you tick, of course. You may get a distorted kind of pleasure from thinking of yourself as a man marked for death, the same kind of pleasure you get from killing people."
There was silence for a moment. Then Henley drew in his breath sharply and said: "Are you threatening me, Corriston?"
"Just warning you," Corriston said.
"I don't take kindly to warnings, Corriston. If you're not careful I'll put a bullet right through you."
"Do the men who hired you know how you operate, Henley?"
It was a stab in the dark, but it brought a quick, enraged reply. "How I operate is my own business. And I don't like the word 'hire.' I'd advise you not to use it again. Ramsey's uranium steal made every miner on Mars decide straight off that I was the right man to lead them. They're all in back of me, but they don't control me. I take orders from no one."
"Maybe they wouldn't be in back of you if they knew what a scoundrel you are," Corriston said.
"You may think whatever you please. I don't mind your calling me a scoundrel if it will ease your mind. Just don't use the word 'hire.'"
"I don't see why you should object to it," Corriston went on recklessly. "It protects you, in a way. It's a good word to hide behind. If the colonists knew the truth about you, I don't think you'd last very long."
"I'll last long enough to help you dig your own grave, Corriston, if you keep on with that line of talk. You're the real lucky one. I missed killing you on the Station because my aim was bad. You were an unexpected complication and you were keeping me upset. I didn't like it at all."
"Go ahead. I knew too much. Was that it?"
"Partly. I didn't know how much you knew or how much you'd guessed. But you were in a position to start a lot of high-powered stuff that could have interfered with my plans in a dozen ways. Now I happen to need you—to a limited extent. But I'm warning you again. Don't trade on your luck. Don't force me to kill you, Corriston."
"Perhaps I won't. Perhaps we can strike a compromise. As I see it, there's no need for immediate violence. Suppose you take me just a little more fully into your confidence. It can do you no harm now; and there are a few things I'm still curious about."
"All right, Corriston. What is it you'd like to know?"
"How did you manage to stay concealed on the Station when Ramsey's officers were in full command? You had considerable freedom of movement, apparently, even if you had to move with caution."
"We had everything planned in advance," Henley said. "We got to one of Ramsey's men with bribe money the miners raised, an executive officer named Stockton. We made it worth his while. We had a carefully worked out plan for smuggling Helen Ramsey off the shuttle ship and keeping her hidden until the Mars ship arrived. Stockton had everything prepared: a concealed compartment, food, made our problem more complicated. Stockton helped us get out of the quarantine cage and kept right on protecting us until we no longer needed him."
"Then you must have known about the masks. You must have known before you arrived that Ramsey's men were in complete control of the Station."
"Sure we knew, long before Earth found out. We know exactly what had taken place. You'd be surprised what a few carefully placed bribes can do. We knew that Ramsey had laid himself wide open by substituting his own men for the Station's commanding officers. We knew exactly how vulnerable he was."
"I see," Corriston said. "Ramsey was so vulnerable that any determined attack made upon him would have had a fair chance of succeeding. But you worked out a plan for striking at him in a wholly criminal way, through his daughter. Did the miners know that, Henley? Or did they just give you their backing in a general way? You probably seemed to them the kind of man who would go after Ramsey hammer and tongs."
"Suppose we just say they knew I'd find a way to make Ramsey meet all of our demands." Henley smiled thinly. "The details they left to me." He paused an instant, then went on: "Right after Helen Ramsey disappeared, I did some hard thinking. It occurred to me that she might be wearing a mask too. So I watched all of the women in the quarantine cage and when one of them slipped out I followed her."
"As simple as that!"
"It wasn't simple. The girl's disappearance on the shuttle ship had me completely baffled at first. It wasn't until we reached the Station that the mask possibility occurred to me."
"We talked about that once before, remember?"
"You were lucky then, Corriston. I tried very hard to kill you, simply because I thought you knew more about Helen Ramsey's disappearance than you actually did. In that dark cargo compartment, with time running out on me, I couldn't think very clearly. Anything more you'd like to know?"
"Yes. How many men did Ramsey succeed in substituting for the rightful officers? How many, beside the commander?"
"Eight, including the commander. His real name was Henry Hervet. Five were executive officers, two were security guards. They're all dead now."
Corriston's mouth went dry. "Including the one who sold out and helped you?"
"Yes, Stockton was the first to die. He was dead before the others tried to board this ship. I made sure of that. He was too greedy for his own good."
"You got back the money you gave him, I suppose."
"Naturally. Money is of very little value to a dead man."
Corriston had gone very pale. There was dread in his eyes when he asked: "And the real Commander Clement? What happened to him? Where is he now?"
"Stockton told me that after a mask was made of his face he was imprisoned somewhere on the Station," Henley said. "Clement and seven others. Ramsey gave Hervet strict orders not to kill them. I don't know where Clement is now, but I can make a pretty good guess. He has probably been released and is in full command of the Station again."
Henley stood very still for a moment, very straight and still, and Corriston could feel the gun nudging the small of his back again.
"I may as well tell you now that I'm going to have to lock you in, Corriston," Henley said. "When I turn the key on this room your sole responsibility will be right here with the controls. You'll have to sleep and eat here, and I don't intend to bring you any fancy meals. You'll hear a knock on the door three times a day. You'll get a tray with some food on it.
"You'll have to decide for yourself how much sleep you can afford to take. And remember this: I'll be keeping a careful check on every navigational move you make. Not a too accurate check, perhaps, but I'll know enough. If you throw the ship off course I'll find out about it, and I'll want to know why. Be ready with your answers and make sure they carry weight. Any more questions, Corriston?"
Corriston shook his head. "No. The quicker you get out of here the better I'll feel."
"All right, I'll leave you now. It's naturally to my benefit to try to see things from your point of view. And just in case you're worrying about Helen Ramsey—don't. Nothing is going to happen to her, provided you stay in line. If you want me don't hesitate to buzz. That's what the intercom is for."
Corriston looked around once when Henley was on his way to the door. The man hadn't turned away from him. He was backing toward the door, his lips tight, his eyes mocking, coldly derisive.
"Did you think I'd give you a chance to catch me with my guard down, Corriston? If you did, you're a bigger fool than I thought you. This gun stays with me, and it's going to be centered on you every time I open this door. Remember that, Lieutenant."
The journey to Mars was a long wait. It was a standing and a waiting, with a hundred corrective power maneuvers to be checked at every hour of the day and night. It was sleep without rest and rest without sleep, and it was a battle against dizziness and the despair which can come to a pilot when a panel starts flickering a red danger signal in the utter loneliness of interplanetary space.
The ship was never too hot, never too cold, for the temperature was kept stable by thermostat-controlled radiation shutters and the air was kept pure with the aid of carbon filters. But to Corriston the air conditioning system with all of its elaborate controls seemed only to point up and emphasize the lack of stability elsewhere, both inside and outside the ship.
There were so many things that could go wrong—tragically, dangerously, fatally wrong. For no reason at all, for instance, a recently inspected filter or gasket could go completely bad, and a "no juice" blow up threaten. Or a magnetic guidance tape could jam and stop recording, and the ship could deviate a hair's breadth from its prescribed path and forget to swing completely back again.
Eventually a correction might be made, but if you failed to correct it in time, that one tiny deviation could spell disaster. With every day out there were more details to check, while obstacles mounted and it was impossible ever to quite catch up with what you had to do, and go on with complete confidence to the next task.
Worst of all, Corriston was denied all opportunity to see or speak to the woman he loved.
The trip to Mars took fourteen days. And in all that time Corriston did not once see Helen Ramsey. He saw only Henley, heard only the deep drone of the engines, and at times, when he was close to despair, the dull, steady beating of his own heart.
The door to his prison would open and a tray of food would be pushed forward into the compartment. Then the door would close quietly again, and he would be alone.
In some respects he was imprisoned in a way that was almost too unbelievable for the human mind to grasp. The walls of his cell were the constellations, the barriers to his freedom space itself.
The chartroom was a cell too, but it had no real confining power over him. He could walk out of the chart room simply by unlocking the viewport and swinging it wide open. He could walk out into the larger prison of space—and die in five seconds with his lungs on fire.
On the thirteenth day Mars loomed out of the inscrutable darkness ahead like some great accusing eye that had fastened itself on the ship with a malignance all its own. It filled one-fifth of the viewport, rust-red over most of its surface, but also pale blue in patches, a blue which shaded off into a kaleidoscope of colors that seemed to hover chiefly like the shifting, almost hueless cloudiness of a hot summer haze.
On the morning of the fifteenth day, the ship, decelerating under sidethrusts from its powerful retardation rockets, cut off its engines and, free-coasting through a landing ellipse of seventy degrees, landed safely on Mars.
It landed in the open desert, twenty miles from Ramsey's citadel, and eighty-seven miles from the first Martian colony. But Corriston received no praise at all for his navigational skill.
Five minutes after the engines ceased to throb a blow on the head felled him, a brutal blow from behind.
"Tie him up," Henley said. "We're not killing him, not just yet."
"But I don't see why—" a cold voice started to protest.
"Damn you, Stone, I know what I'm doing. Keep your thoughts to yourself."
Corriston sat very straight and still in the darkness, his back against cold metal, his eyes on the distant glow of the heating lamp. He could see the lamp through a wide panel opening in the bulkhead directly opposite him. Wherever his eyes fell there was the glimmer of light on metal. But the warmth of the lamp would have left him close to freezing had it not been supplemented by the heating units inside his heavy clothing.
He didn't know how he was going to free himself. His hands were securely handcuffed and the sharp metal was biting into his flesh. Turning and twisting about did him no good at all.
He didn't know how he was going to free himself, but he refused to give up hope. There had to be a way.
You could begin on one of your captors, on a human being with a great deal to lose or gain. You could try to penetrate his armor, sound out his human weaknesses. Or you could set to work on the handcuffs at your wrists, struggling in an almost hopeless attempt to draw your hands through them in some way or get them unlocked without a key.
He decided to try the first way. He raised his voice. "Stone?" he called out. "Can you hear me?"
There ensued a silence. Then Stone's voice came back loud and clear. "Sure, I can hear you. What do you want?"
"I'd like to talk to you," Corriston said.
"About what?"
"About you. What are you getting out of this? You've nothing to lose by being frank with me. Henley would never believe anything I might say."
"You're right about that," Stone said. "But why should I talk to you? I'll tell you something that may surprise you. Keeping you alive was Henley's idea. He figured we might need you. He figured that if Ramsey wouldn't listen to us he might listen to you—a Space Station officer. He figured we might need you to convince Ramsey we're not bluffing. Someone who knows we're not bluffing. Someone who knows we'd kill his daughter before we gave him a third chance to make up his mind and hand over the dough."
"A third chance? I thought—"
"You think too much, Corriston. I'll spell it out for you. Henley is on his way now to give Ramsey his first chance. He may succeed or he may not. If he doesn't succeed he'll come back and take you to the fortress with him. That will be Ramsey's second chance. He won't get a third."
"I see," Corriston said. "But I asked you a question you didn't answer. How much do you stand to get out of this? What is your split, your percentage? Don't tell me; I'll guess. Henley is promising you fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. But how much ransom do you think he'll get from Ramsey? Two million, at least. Possibly twenty million. Does that kind of split satisfy you, Stone? Remember, when that ransom is paid, every law enforcement agency on Earth goes into operation. It starts off in a quiet suite of offices, with just one owl-faced little guy shuffling some papers.
"It starts off that way, but in the space of one hour you're a man marked for destruction. The military goes into action. From Earth to Mars your photograph is televised. Ten thousand trained experts are thrown into the operation. You've suddenly become important, an accessory to the kidnapping of the wealthiest girl on Earth.
"How does that set with you, Stone? They'll get you in the end. No, I'll qualify that. They'll get you unless Ramsey gives you a split of at least a million dollars. With a million dollars you'd have a one in five chance of covering your tracks, of hiding out indefinitely. But Ramsey won't give you anything like that kind of a split. You know that as well as I do. He'll have to cover his own tracks and he'll need all of the two million—or twenty million—for himself. Or most of it.
"I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Your real interest lies in preventing that kidnapping before it's too late. He's getting ready to double-cross you, Stone. It was in the back of his mind all the time. He's looking out only for himself."
"I don't think so," Stone said. "My split, since you brought the matter up, is half a million. He's demanding six million in ransom. That's twelve times what I'm getting and what Jim Saddler is getting. But I've no complaints. He organized and planned everything.
"I'll be honest with you. That doesn't mean a damn thing to me. I'm no good when it comes to taking a risk like that, but does that mean he's better than I am? Do you think I'd string along with him if I believed that for a moment?
"Hell, no. I'm using him, don't you see? I'm letting him take the big gamble, and I stay in the background ... doing practically nothing. So if I clear a half million, what have I to complain about?"
"Nothing, I suppose," Corriston said.
"You're damned right. But I don't think I like the way you said that. There's something in your voice that I don't like."
"That's too bad," Corriston said.
"Maybe you think I don't mean what I said. Is that it?"
Corriston tightened his lips. He could hear Stone's footsteps coming toward him through the darkness. They were heavy steps, advancing slowly, with a slight shuffling sound. They paused twice and then came on again, and the silence between pauses seemed almost crushingly thick.
Corriston suddenly realized that he knew almost nothing about Stone. He had taken the man pretty much for granted, a killer's accomplice without much personality, a sullen-faced scoundrel who was good at obeying orders and standing ready to silence anyone Henley disliked with a well-placed kick in the head.
But what if he did have personality after all? Suppose there were hidden depths in him, a hidden reservoir of malice which he kept concealed until he felt a mad impulse to start laughing or bragging or proving to someone he disliked that he was as potentially dangerous as Henley—perhaps even more dangerous. And suppose he decided to back up his boasting with a quick knife thrust or a gun blast at almost point-blank range?
It wasn't a pleasant thought, and the flicker of a match between Stone's cupped hands did nothing to dispel Corriston's uneasiness. The small, bright flame brought Stone's features into sharp relief for an instant. The lips had an ugly set to them, and the eyes were slitted, gleaming. He was making no effort to keep his hate from showing, and the instant the match went out he lit another.
He seemed to be advancing slowly on purpose, as if aware that his stealth and deliberation had begun to un-nerve Corriston. Corriston felt himself stiffening, moving more closely back against the wall. Breathing quickly, he told himself that he hadn't much time, that he must be careful not to overreach himself.
There was another moment of silence, of stillness, while the shuffling ceased. Then Stone was very close in the darkness, his hands cupped about a third match, a mocking smile on his lips.
It was a blunder on his part. Before he could move again Corriston was upon him.
There are times when a handcuffed man is at a disadvantage in a furiously waged and uncertain struggle, but Corriston suffered no disadvantage. For ten minutes he had been reminding himself that a blow along the side of the neck, just under the jaw, could paralyze and even kill if it were delivered with sufficient force.
A sharp, flat-of-the-hand blow could do it. But handcuffs were better, and Corriston lashed out now with his manacled wrists upraised, so that the handcuffs grazed Stone's neck twice lightly and then almost splintered his jawbone with a rotor-blade violence.
The blow not only stunned Stone, it lifted him clear of the deck. He staggered forward and fell heavily, his breath leaving his lungs in an agonizing sob.
Corriston leaned back against the wall again for an instant, breathing heavily. Then he knelt beside Stone and went through his pockets until he found the handcuff key. It was difficult. He had to do a lot of awkward fumbling with his fingers, and even with the key in his possession, getting the cuffs off was far from easy. But somehow he managed it, perhaps because he had unusually flexible fingers and knew that if he failed, Stone would see to it that he got no second chance this side of eternity.
He stood very straight and still in the darkness, his eyes focused on Stone's white face. There was no need for him to strike a match. He had taken from Stone not only the key, but a small pocket flashlight which Stone had apparently preferred not to use.
There was something else he had taken from Stone—his gun. He held the weapon now, very firmly centered on Stone, while he waited for him to come to.
Ordinarily he wouldn't have cared if Stone had never opened his eyes again; but now he had to wait and see. The ship was so large that to explore it compartment by compartment until he found the one in which Helen Ramsey was being held prisoner would be dangerously time-consuming. So, if Stone recovered consciousness within fifteen or twenty minutes and could tell him, so much the better.
If not, better wait and see. He waited, shifting his gun only a little from weariness as the minutes dragged on, wondering if he had not made a mistake in waiting at all.
Finally Stone stirred and groaned. Corriston bent and shook him by the shoulders. He took firm hold of his shoulders and shook him vigorously, feeling no pity for him at all.
He got the truth out of him by threatening him with violence, by threatening to kill him if he kept anything back. Stone kept nothing back. Just remembering the blow that had felled him, loosened his tongue. But the gun helped too, the gun wedged so closely against his ribs under his heart that he feared that if he breathed too heavily he would breathe his last.
"I won't lie to you," he said desperately, pleadingly. "You haven't a chance. There's a photoelectric alarm system outside the compartment, and Jim Saddler is sitting just inside the door. He has a gun trained on her. His orders are to shoot her dead if anyone so much as attempts to get inside that door."
"Meaning me?"
"It means you, Lieutenant. I'm not lying; I swear it. You won't stand a chance. Henley will be coming back in a few hours now. You'd better get out while you're still in one piece."
Corriston was tempted to hurl Stone back against the wall and shout at him: "It doesn't matter whether I go out of here in one piece or dead on a stretcher. She's the only thing I care about."
But he caught himself just in time. Stone thought in the most primitive imaginable terms. You couldn't go to a Stone Age man and say: "My own skin doesn't mean a goddam thing to me. I'm in love. If she dies I die. Can't you understand that? If she dies, my life will be over."
He said instead: "All right. I guess it means I've got to get help."
"You'll never get help," Stone said, summoning from some defiant depths within himself a little courage. "The colony is eighty-seven miles from here. You couldn't cross the desert on foot. No one could cross it on foot, not when the temperature drops at night to fifty below. But you'd better not stay. He'd better head for Ramsey's citadel. That's your only chance. It's only twenty miles from here."
Let him think that, a voice within Corriston warned. Let him think that I'll head for the citadel. Otherwise he may attempt to get word to Ramsey somehow. I can tie him up and leave him in a state of shock, but if he thinks I'm heading for the colony, even a state of shock may not stop him. Saddler may come down here looking for him. Once he's freed, if he thinks I'm heading for the Colony....
Corriston said: "Damn you, Stone, I ought to kill you. I ought to put a bullet through your heart right now. I don't know why I can't. It's a weakness in me."
"I'd kill you, Corriston, if I had the chance. But I'm glad you have that kind of a weakness."
Corriston stared at him incredulously. "You're certainly outspoken. You were pleading for your life a moment ago—going soft, as you'd put it. Now you're talking realistically, analyzing your own motivations and mine."
"I'm not quite as dumb as you think me, Corriston."
"All right. Let's say you're not dumb. Few people are, when it comes to a matter of life or death. That's beside the point right now. I've got to tie you up. Where can I find some rope?"
"It would be much simpler to lock me in a vacant compartment."
"All right. Then I'll lock you in one of the compartments. You can pick your own compartment. I'd advise you not to waste my time. Pick your own compartment and I'll slide the bolt fast on the outside."
Stone showed no disposition to put up an argument. Corriston kept the gun pressed into the small of his back and he seemed to realize that his life hung by a thread.
They found a compartment that was small and dark, and into it Stone walked at gunpoint, offering no protest, and answering the questions Corriston put to him readily enough.
"You'll find all the equipment you need at the end of this passageway," Stone said. "Activate the third door on your left. Anything else you'd like to know?"
Corriston shook his head. He walked out of the compartment backwards, keeping his gun trained on Stone until he was in the corridor. Then he swung the door shut and shot the bolt home.
He had no trouble at all in finding the equipment he knew he'd need, thanks to Stone's generosity. Stone could afford to be generous, he reflected bitterly. The Henley combine still held all of the trump cards.
He cursed the time it took him to equip himself for a near-suicidal crossing of eighty-seven miles of Martian desert. He would travel on foot, after nightfall, and in freezing cold. The compartment in which he labored was a basal compartment, and set in the massive bulkhead, against which he leaned with his bootstraps still unlaced, was an airlock opening directly on the Martian plain.
He collected the smaller articles first, setting them down in a row on a long metal bench directly opposite the airlock: three compasses, each weighing perhaps twenty ounces; a cathode ray compass; a non-magnetic compass and a sun compass. The sun compass would perhaps prove the most valuable until darkness fell. The sun, shining down with brilliance from the clear Martian sky, could throw a directional kind of shadow, enabling a man on foot to take fairly accurate bearings without the use of sighting and viewing instruments.
To the compasses on the bench he added five map coordinates and a Lambert conformal projection chart.
Food concentrates came next: four shining aluminum cubes, four inches by four inches, which would go into the knapsack on his back. Then a canteen, already filled with sterilized water from the ship's central water supply system.
Next, he took from the locker the right kind of clothing: a tubeflex inner suit with a warm lining and a heavy outer suit equipped with heat lamps.
Oxygen masks next—oxy-respirators, to be exact. One to attach to the face and one to hold in reserve as a spare. They covered only a third of the face, but that third had everything to do with a man's staying alive and vigorous in the thin air of Mars. When night fell, and the cold descended, oxy-respirators were not enough. Then you had to pull down the entire front of your helmet and stagger on with your sight impaired, for in a cold that was almost beyond endurance, helmets had a way of clouding over from time to time.
The clouding over of the vision plate was not too important. It could be constantly wiped clean. But if his brain started "clouding over" too....
He dismissed the possibility from his mind. He was clothed now, fully clothed, and ready to depart.
He started moving toward the airlock, feeling and looking like a giant beetle of the tropics, feeling awkward, cumbersome and insecure. His boots were weighted, and the bulge of the oxygen tank on his shoulder made him look almost hunchbacked in the cold light glimmer that turned the bulkhead into a mirroring surface as he advanced.