“The switches,” said Eve. “When he hit the switches with his fist and the caller cut out. He must have switched it on then.”
“No,” said Ecdyon. “There is no such switch. Not there. All he did was switch off the call circuit. The sphere had nothing to do with that.”
“It must have come on automatically,” I said. “When the second missile hit us. The first teed it up. The second set it off. It’s independently programmed, just like everything else aboard this damned ship.”
Maslax was only just coming around to realizing what had happened.
“The Gray Goose,” he said. “It’s dead?”
“Not an atom left,” I said, feeling quite sick at the thought.
“I did it,” he said. “I did it. I killed them. I showed them what I can do, didn’t I? They’ll be sorry they ever....”
“They’ll be sorry, all right,” I cut him off. “But there’s nothing left of them to show it. You didn’t do it, you stupid little bastard. It was the ship.”
It was risky, I suppose, calling him names like that. But I felt like it.
“I did it,” said Maslax.
“If he wants to think he did it,” Eve said to me, “you’d better let him think he did it. No point in provoking him.”
“He didn’t have anything against them,” I said. “What did they ever do to him?”
“They shot at us,” said. Eve.
“Honi soit qui mal y pense,” I quoted, with savage sarcasm. I still remembered what happened to the last ships that shot at me. Their own missiles had set in process a reaction which destroyed them. I hadn’t been sorry then—not in the least. But this didn’t seem quite the same, somehow. Just an ant stinging a whale.
“I cannot tell,” said Ecdyon, “but I think that there is nothing in our path, and we are traveling quite slowly.”
“We aren’t going to swallow any moons, then?” I asked.
“No moons,” he said. Then: “Wait. The Cicindel—the other ship—it is behind us, coming on—they do not know—they cannot be aware....”
He reached out for the switches that operated the call circuits, but Maslax jumped forward across the room and brought the butt of his gun hard down on the stretching fingers.
Ecdyon yelped, and I sagged under his weight as he swayed and transferred it from the console to my shoulder.
“No!” said Maslax. “Let them come!”
“Those are Gallacellans,” I said. “That’s the Cicindel—the ship which brought the message that sent you off on this crazy stunt. That’s not a ship out of Pallant—the men on board it aren’t even human. They’re Gallacellans, damn it! You can’t possibly have anything against them. They never hated you. They couldn’t hate you. Your crazy ideas have nothing to do with them. You can’t want them to be killed.”
“Leave those switches alone,” said Maslax.
“We have to warn that ship,” I said. “They don’t know what happened. They must think we fired on the Gray Goose. They’re coming to investigate. They must know that this ship isn’t in Gallacellan hands. They didn’t want it brought up from Mormyr in the first place. You must let us tell them not to come any closer.”
“No,” he said. “You wouldn’t blow up the Gray Goose for me. I won’t save the Cicindel for you.”
“I’m going to do it,” I said. “You can shoot me if you like.” I reached for the switches, realizing as I did so that I didn’t know what to do, and turning my head toward Ecdyon, who had swayed back against the wall by now. While my head was turned, Maslax slammed the gun-butt down on my fingers just as he had on Ecdyon’s.
It hurt. Had the console been flat and smooth he might have split the fingers, but as it was the panel sloped considerably and my fingers slipped between the switches. Nothing was broken and the skin was not cut. But I am inordinately sensitive about my fingers. I’m a pilot, and a pilot’s life is in his fingertips. Even a bruise can mean the difference between life and death in a delicate balance in distorted space. I really wanted to clench my fist and knock Maslax across the room. I am not by nature a violent man but at that moment I felt close to murder. Self control intervened, however, and I listened, instead, to what Maslax was saying.
“Touch those switches again,” he threatened, “and I’ll burn your hand off.”
“How long?” Eve asked the Gallacellan.
“If neither ship changes speed,” said Ecdyon, consulting the screens and the dials and calculating in his head, “I think about twenty minutes.”
We had just twenty minutes to take Maslax, by force, by stealth, or by persuasion. Just twenty minutes, because I was determined that the Cicindel shouldn’t follow the police boat to oblivion.
Come on, I said to the wind, think of something, damn you!
You’re bigger, you’re faster, said the wind.
Not that way, I said. Not while he can press that trigger. There has to be another way. An easier way.
There’s only one other way.
Tell me.
He’s got a weak mind. He’s mad. Break him.
I looked hard at the ugly, malevolent face of the little man. He was looking right back at me, and he was waiting—waiting with the gun, because he knew I was going to try something and he wanted to kill me. I could read it in his face—I didn’t need telepathy. He actually wanted to give himself the pleasure of shooting me, and he was just waiting for me to give him the reason.
“What am I thinking, Maslax?” I rapped out. “Come on, tell me. Show me this mind reading talent of yours. Tell me what I’m thinking.”
“Hate and fear,” he said tautly. “Hate and fear.”
I shook my head, and made every effort to sneer at him. “Wrong,” I said. “That’s wrong. I’m not afraid of you. I don’t even hate you. Try again, Maslax. Tell me what I’m thinking. Give me the words. Come on, you read the words, don’t you? There are words, up here, inside my head. Tell me what they are, Maslax. You can’t read minds at all, can you? And you know it. I can take you Maslax, can’t I? I can take you because you can’t read my mind. You don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“I can read your mind,” he said. But there was an edge in his voice. I was beginning to shake him. I’d picked out his weak spot. I was attacking his fantasies.
“Show me,” I invited. “Give me the words. Come on, tell me. What are the words?”
“Cripple!” he said.
“Wrong.”
“Hate—loathing—foul!”
“Wrong.”
“Animal—insect—spider!”
“Wrong.”
He screamed. “You’re lying!”
“I’m not lying,” I told him, keeping my voice level. “I’m not lying. You have the words wrong, Maslax. You can’t read. But I don’t want you to take my word for it. I’m going to prove it to you. I’m going to prove beyond every last vestige of doubt that you’re wrong, and then you’ll have to see it. Do you know how I’m going to do it? You should, if you can read my mind. You should know exactly how I’m going to do it. Come on, Maslax, tell me. How am I going to prove you wrong? What am I going to do?”
I took a step forward, and he took a step back. He was frightened—really saturated with fear. I was astonished. Words, only words, but I had him moving backward. I had him retreating. The gun didn’t matter. I had the weapon that mattered now—the only weapon that mattered. I took one more step forward and the stark terror in his eyes was a joy to behold.
“Come on,” I said, my voice still quiet, but taking on a tone of calculated menace, “tell me. What am I going to do? I’m going to prove you wrong, aren’t I? I’m going to prove to you that you can’t read minds. And you know I’m going to prove it because you don’t know what I’m going to do. Isn’t that right? You know, don’t you? You know I’m going to prove it.”
I knew exactly what he was going to say and I was ready for him.
“You’re not!” he squealed in anguish. “You’re not because you can’t. There’s no way. There’s nothing you can do. Nothing!”
“Nothing?” I said. “Nothing? Is that what I’m going to do? Nothing—because there’s nothing I can do? Well, how about this, Maslax?”
And I took from the pocket of my jacket a pack of playing cards. I don’t have many personal effects—I don’t even wear a watch—but I do like to carry a pack of cards. Sometimes, I just turn them over, playing patience. It calms me after a flight. Sometimes, I seek out a game—a gambling game—because that soothes my nerves as well. Ever since Johnny took up gambling to pass away dead time on New Alexandria I’d been carrying this pack so that I could relieve him of a little of his pay now and again. With owing Charlot so much, I was always a little starved for cash.
Maslax looked at the pack of cards as if it were a rattlesnake about to bite him. He raised his gun and pointed it—not at me, but at the cards in my hand. He was afraid of those cards. He was afraid because he hadn’t known they were there, and he was afraid because he knew what I was going to do with them.
“What’s the matter, Maslax?” I asked him. “You can’t be afraid of a little test of skill, now can you? You can read my mind, remember? There’s nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all. Here, I’ll show you what we’re going to do. I’ll explain this little game we’re going to play. I’m going to hold the pack in my hand, like this, so I can see the bottom card. I’m going to look at it hard, and concentrate on it. And then you’re going to tell me what it is.”
I riffled the cards once, and then held them up so that the card at the bottom was facing me. It was the seven of diamonds. I was just about to start, when it suddenly occurred to me that maybe—just maybe—I was wrong. Or maybe—just maybe—he would accidentally call the right card. It would only take once, just the first time, for the whole campaign to fall down. I riffled again, left fifty-one cards in my left hand, held between two fingers, and palmed one in my right hand. The one I palmed was the seven of diamonds—the facing card in the pack was now the jack of spades. It didn’t matter now what card he called—I had one with which to prove him wrong.
“Call it,” I said, holding the pack up in front of my face. “Call the card.”
His mouth was open; he was staring. He was trying to speak, trying to force words out, but they wouldn’t come. They wouldn’t come because he was afraid.
“Come on, Maslax,” I taunted. “You can do it. You can read my mind. Just tell me what the card is.”
He went back one pace more, and would have gone two, but the wall stopped him; he was backed right up against it. He stammered, and he looked at the pack of cards the way people had been looking at him for years—or so he thought.
He finally got it out. “It’s the jack,” he said. “The jack of spades.”
For a moment, my heart almost stopped beating.
I pretended to pull the card out, and produced the red seven from my right hand. I threw it at him, and he watched it flutter as if he were mesmerized by it. While he was watching it I shuffled the pack again and palmed another card—the three of diamonds—ready for a repeat performance. The seven settled face-up.
“There’s your jack of spades,” I said, loading all the mockery I could muster into my voice. “What’s the next one? Come on, Maslax, really show us what you can do.”
The new card facing me in the pack was the ten of hearts.
Maslax was breaking apart. “The jack,” he said again. “It’s the jack of spades.”
I plucked the ten out of the pack and I let it fall, exposing it as I did.
“The next one, Maslax,” I said. “Call the next one. Read my mind.”
He moaned, and called the jack of spades for the third time. I turned the pack in my hand, still holding them. The bottom card was the six of clubs.
“Well,” I said. “You don’t seem to be able to read my mind after all.”
He howled, and I threw the pack at the ceiling.
He fired, and the cards cascaded into a cloud of fire.
I dived forward, grabbed his left arm, and rammed the elbow back into the wall. I groped for the empty gauntlet, and felt the hard lump of the trigger device free of his nerveless, paralyzed fingers. Ecdyon, who had uncoiled into a long dive the moment I was out of the way, was grappling with the dwarf’s gun hand, but it was no longer necessary. Maslax had crumpled up, and dropped the gun as if his right hand were as deadened as his left.
Eve picked it up.
We let him go, and turned back to the console where the screens still shone and the tape outlets ticked quietly away, dropping slow streamers onto the floor. A couple of smoldering cards clung to the console; the rest had fallen to the floor. I stamped out the remaining flames. There was a long dark scar on the ceiling where the beam had burned the plastic.
I felt weak. It was all I could do to stop my knees shaking. I’d piloted ships through the worst conditions imaginable, and I’d felt afterward as if I were fit to die. But I’d never felt quite like I felt then. It was only then that I realized that Maslax’s naked fear had escalated at the same rate as my own deeply buried panic. When he called that first card correctly I had felt a wash of pure horror, but I had simply not recognized it. It suddenly struck me that I would never know whether Maslax had read my mind or not. I would never know whether I might not have beaten him by simply feeding him my own fear.
I shook my head, trying to clear it. “Call that ship,” I said. “Warn them off.”
I continued absorbing my state of tension, getting my self back into a state of calm, not paying any attention to what was going on around me now that all was well again. It was some moments before I realized that all was not well.
While those moments were wandering by, Eve was staring at me, and her realization that I wasn’t aware was just as slow. Eventually she said, “Grainger,” in a very low voice.
I looked at her, and then I looked where she was pointing.
Ecdyon had no sooner regained his feet after jumping Maslax than he had collapsed again. He was in an untidy sprawl all over the cabin floor. He was unconscious.