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the legion of lazarus by edmond hamilton it isn't the dying itself. it's what comesbefore. the waiting, alone in a room without windows, trying to think. the opening of thedoor, the voices of the men who are going with you but not all the way, the walk downthe corridor to the airlock room, the faces of the men, closed and impersonal. they donot enjoy this. neither do they shrink from it. it's their job. this is the room. it is small and it has awindow. outside there is no friendly sky, no clouds. there is space, and there is thehuge red circle of mars filling the sky, looking down like an enormous eye upon this tiny moon.but you do not look up. you look out.
there are men out there. they are quite naked.they sleep upon the barren plain, drowsing in a timeless ocean. their bodies are whiteas ivory and their hair is loose across their faces. some of them seem to smile. they lie,and sleep, and the great red eye looks at them forever as they are borne around it. "it isn't so bad," says one of the men whoare with you inside this ultimate room. "fifty years from now, the rest of us will all beold, or dead." it is small comfort. the one garment you have worn is taken fromyou and the lock door opens, and the fear that cannot possibly become greater does becomegreater, and then suddenly that terrible crescendo
is past. there is no longer any hope, andyou learn that without hope there is little to be afraid of. you want now only to getit over with. you step forward into the lock. the door behind you shuts. you sense thatthe one before you is opening, but there is not much time. the burst of air carries youforward. perhaps you scream, but you are now beyond sound, beyond sight, beyond everything.you do not even feel that it is cold. chapter i there is a time for sleep, and a time forwaking. but hyrst had slept heavily, and the waking was hard. he had slept long, and thewaking was slow. fifty years, said the dim
voice of remembrance. but another part ofhis mind said, no, it is only tomorrow morning. another part of his mind. that was strange.there seemed to be more parts to his mind than he remembered having had before, butthey were all confused and hidden behind a veil of mist. perhaps they were not reallythere at all. perhaps— fifty years. i have been dead, he thought,and now i live again. half a century. strange. hyrst lay on a narrow bed, in a place of subduedlight and antiseptic-smelling air. there was no one else in the room. there was no sound. fifty years, he thought. what is it like now,the house where i lived once, the country, the planet? where are my children, where aremy friends, my enemies, the people i loved,
the people i hated? where is elena? where is my wife? a whisper out of nowhere, sad, remote. yourwife is dead and your children are old. forget them. forget the friends and the enemies. but i can't forget! cried hyrst silently inthe spaces of his own mind. it was only yesterday— fifty years, said the whisper. and you mustforget. macdonald, said hyrst suddenly. i didn't killhim. i was innocent. i can't forget that. careful, said the whisper. watch out. i didn't kill macdonald. somebody did. somebodylet me pay for it. who? was it landers? was
it saul? we four were together out there ontitan, when he died. careful, hyrst. they're coming. listen tome. you think this is your own mind speaking, question-and-answer. but it isn't. hyrst sprang upright on the narrow bed, hisheart pounding, the sweat running cold on his skin. who are you? where are you? how— they're here, said the whisper calmly. bequiet. two men came into the ward. "i am dr. merridew,"said the one in the white coverall, smiling at hyrst with a brisk professional smile."this is warden meister. we didn't mean to startle you. there are a few questions, beforewe release you—"
merridew, said the whisper in hyrst's mind,is a psychiatrist. let me handle this. hyrst sat still, his hands lax between hisknees, his eyes wide and fixed in astonishment. he heard the psychiatrist's questions, andhe heard the answers he gave to them, but he was merely an instrument, with no consciousvolition, it was the whisperer in his mind who was answering. then the warden shuffledsome papers he held in his hand and asked questions of his own. "you underwent the humane penalty withoutadmitting your guilt. for the record, now that the penalty has been paid, do you wishto change your final statements?" the voice in hyrst's mind, the secret voice,said swiftly to him. don't argue with them,
don't get angry, or they'll keep you on andon here. "but—" thought hyrst. i know you're innocent, but they'll neverbelieve it. they'll keep you on for further psychiatric tests. they might get near thetruth, hyrst—the truth about us. suddenly hyrst began to understand, not alland not clearly, something of what had happened to him. the obscuring mists began to liftfrom the borders of his mind. "what is the truth," he asked in that innerquiet, "about us?" you've spent fifty years in the valley ofthe shadow. you're changed, hyrst. you're not quite human any more. no one is, who goesthrough the freeze. but they don't know that.
"then you too—" yes. and i too changed. and that is why ourminds can speak, even though i am on mars and you are on its moon. but they must notknow that. so don't argue, don't show emotion! the warden was waiting. hyrst said aloud tohim, slowly. "i have no statement to make." the warden did not seem surprised. he wenton, "according to your papers here you also denied knowing the location of the titanitefor which macdonald was presumably murdered. do you still deny that?" hyrst was honestly surprised. "but surely,by now—" the warden shrugged. "according to this data,it never came to light."
"i never knew," said hyrst, "where it was." "well," said the warden, "i've asked the questionand that's as far as my responsibility goes. but there's a visitor who has permission tosee you." he and the doctor went out. hyrst watchedthem go. he thought, so i'm not quite human. not quite human any more. does that make memore, or less, than a man? both, said the secret voice. their minds arestill closed to you. only our minds—we who have changed too—are open. "who are you?" asked hyrst. my name is shearing. now listen. when youare released, they'll bring you down here
to mars. i'll be waiting for you. i'll helpyou. "why? what do you care about me, or a murderfifty years old?" i'll tell you why later, said the whisperof shearing. but you must follow my guidance. there's danger for you, hyrst, from the momentyou're released! there are those who have been waiting for you. "danger? but—" the door opened, and hyrst's visitor camein. he was a man something over sixty but the deep lines in his face made him look older.his face was gray and drawn and twitching, but it became perfectly rigid and white whenhe came to the foot of the bed and looked
at hyrst. there was rage in his eyes, a rageso old and weary that it brought tears to them. "you should have stayed dead," he said tohyrst. "why couldn't they let you stay dead?" hyrst was shocked and startled. "who are you?and why—" the other man was not even listening. hiseyelids had closed, and when they opened again they looked on naked agony. "it isn't right,"he said. "a murderer should die, and stay dead. not come back." "i didn't murder macdonald," hyrst said, withthe beginnings of anger. "and i don't know why you—"
he stopped. the white, aging face, the tear-filled,furious eyes, he did not quite know what there was about them but it was there, like an oldremembered face peeping up through a blur of water for a moment, and then withdrawingagain. after a moment, hyrst said hoarsely, "what'syour name?" "you wouldn't know it," said the other. "ichanged it, long ago." hyrst felt a cold, and it seemed that he couldnot breathe. he said, "but you were only eleven—" he could not go on. there was a terrible silencebetween them. he must break it, he could not let it go on. he must speak. but all he couldsay was to whisper, "i'm not a murderer. you must believe it. i'm going to prove it—"
"you murdered macdonald. and you murderedmy mother. i watched her age and die, spending every penny, spending every drop of her bloodand ours, to get you back again. i pretended for fifty years that i too believed you wereinnocent, when all the time i knew." hyrst said, "i'm innocent." he tried to saya name, too, but he could not speak the word. "no. you're lying, as you lied then. we foundout. mother hired detectives, experts. over and over, for decades—and always they foundthe same thing. landers and saul could not possibly have killed macdonald, and you werethe only other human being there. proof? i can show you barrels of it. and all of itproof that my father was a murderer." he leaned a little toward hyrst, and the tearsran down his lined, careworn face. he said,
"all right, you've come back. alive, stillyoung. but i'm warning you. if you try again to get that titanite, if you shame us allagain after all this time, if you even come near us, i'll kill you." he went out. hyrst sat, looking after him,and he thought that no man before him had ever felt what tore him now. inside his mind came shearing's whisper, witha totally unexpected note of compassion. but some of us have, hyrst. welcome to the brotherhood.welcome to the legion of lazarus. chapter ii mars roared and glittered tonight. and howwas a man to stand the faces and lights and
sounds, when he had come back from the silenceof eternity? hyrst walked through the flaring streets ofsyrtis city with slow and dragging steps. it was like being back on earth. for thiscity was not really part of the old dead planet, of the dark barrens that rolled away beneaththe night. this was the place of the rocket-men, the miners, the schemers, the workers, whohad come from another, younger world. their bars and entertainment houses flung a sun-likebrilliance. their ships, lifting majestically skyward from the distant spaceport, wrotetheir flaming sign on the sky. only here and there moved one of the hooded, robed humanoidswho had once owned this world. the next corner, said the whisper in hyrst'smind. turn there. no, not toward the spaceport.
the other way. hyrst thought suddenly, "shearing." yes? "i am being followed." his physical ears heard nothing but the voicesand music. his physical eyes saw only the street crowd. yet he knew. he knew it by apicture that kept coming into his mind, of a blurred shape moving always behind him. of course you're being followed, came shearing'sthought. i told you they've been waiting for you. this is the corner. turn.
hyrst turned. it was a darker street, runningaway from the lights through black warehouses and on the labyrinthine monolithic housesof the humanoids. now look back, shearing commanded. no, notwith your eyes! with your mind. learn to use your talents. hyrst tried. the blurred image in his mindcame clearer, and clearer still, and it was a young man with a vicious mouth and flatuncaring eyes. hyrst shivered. "who is he?" he works for the men who have been waitingfor you, hyrst. bring him this way. "this—way?" look ahead. with your mind. can't you learn?
stung to sudden anger, hyrst flung out a mentalprobe with a power he hadn't known he possessed. in a place of total darkness between two warehousesahead, he saw a tall man lounging at his ease. shearing laughed. yes, it's me. just walk past me. don't hurry. hyrst glanced backward, mentally at the manfollowing him through the shadows. he was closer now, and quite silent. his face wastight and secret. hyrst thought, how do i know this shearing isn't in it with him, takingme into a place where they can both get at me— he went past the two warehouses and he didnot turn his head but his mind saw shearing
waiting in the darkness. then there was asoft, shapeless sound, and he turned and saw shearing bending over a huddled form. "that was unkind of you," said shearing, speakingaloud but not loudly. hyrst, still shaking, said, "but not exactlystrange. i've never seen you before. and i still don't know what this is all about." shearing smiled, as he knelt beside the prone,unmoving body. even here in the shadows, hyrst could see him with these new eyes of the mind.shearing was a big man. his hair was grizzled along the sides of his head, and his eyeswere dark and very keen. he reached out one hand and turned the head of the prone youngman, and they looked at the lax, loose face.
"he's not dead?" said hyrst. "of course not. but it will be a while beforehe wakes." "but who is he?" shearing stood up. "i never saw him before.but i know who he's working for." hyrst flung a sudden question at shearing,and almost without thinking he followed it to surprise the answer in shearing's mind.the question was, who are you working for? and the answer was a woman, a tall and handsomewoman with angry eyes, standing against a drift of stars. there was a ship, all lonelyon a dark plain, and she was pointing to it, and somehow hyrst knew that it was vitallyimportant to her, and to shearing, and perhaps
even to himself. but before he could do morethan register this fleeting vision on his own consciousness, shearing's mind slammedshut with exactly the same violent effect as a door slammed in his face. he reeled back,throwing up his arms in a futile but instinctive gesture, and shearing said angrily, "you're getting too good. i'll give you asocial hint—it's customary to knock before you enter." hyrst said, still holding the pieces of hishead together, "all right—sorry. so who is she?" "she's one of us. she wants what we want."
"i want only to find out who murdered macdonald!" "you want more than that, hyrst, though youdon't know it yet. but macdonald's murderer is part of what we're after." he took hyrst's arm. "we don't have long.thanks to my guidance, you slipped them all except this one. but they'll be hounding afterour trail very quickly." they went on along the shadowed street. theglare of the lights died back behind them, and they moved in darkness with only the keenstars to watch them, and the cold, gritty wind blowing in from the barrens, and thedark door-ways of the mastaba-like monolithic houses of the humanoids staring at them likesightless eyes. hyrst looked up at the bright,
tiny moon that crept amid the stars, and adeep shaking took him as he thought of men lying up there in the deathly sleep, of himselflying there year after year.... "in here," said shearing. it was one of thefrigid, musty tombs that the humanoids called home. it was dark and there was nothing init at all. "we can't risk a light. we don't need it, anyway." they sat down. hyrst said desperately, "listen,i want to know some things. exactly what are we doing here?" shearing answered deliberately, "we are hidingfrom those who want you, and we are waiting for a chance to go to our friends."
"our friends? your friends, maybe. that woman—idon't know her, and—" "now you listen, hyrst. i'll tell you thismuch about us now. we're lazarites, like you, with the same powers as you. but all lazaritesare not on our side." hyrst thought about that. "then those otherswho are hunting us—" "there are lazarites among them, too. notmany, but a few. you don't know us, you don't know them. do you want to leave me and goback out and let them have you?" hyrst remembered the adder-like face of theyoung man who had come after him through the shadows. after a long moment he said, "well.but what are you after?" "the thing that macdonald was killed for,fifty years ago."
hyrst said, "the titanite? they said it hadn'tever been found. but how it could have remained hidden so long—" "i want you," shearing said, "to tell me allabout how macdonald died. everything you can remember." hyrst asked eagerly, "you think we can findout who killed him? after all this time? god, if we could—my son—" "quiet, hyrst. go ahead and tell me. not inwords. just remember what happened, and i'll get it." yet, by sheer lifetime habit, hyrst couldnot remember without first putting it into
words in his own mind, as they two sat inthe cold, whispering darkness. "there were four of us out there on titan,you must already know that. and only four—" four men. and one was named macdonald, anengineer, a secretive, selfish and enormously greedy man. macdonald was the man who founda fortune, and kept it secret, and died. landers was one. a lean, brown, lively man,an excellent physicist with a friendly manner and no obvious ambitions. saul was one, and he was big and blond andquiet, a good drinking companion, a good geologist, a lover of good music. if he had any darkerpassions, he kept them hidden. hyrst was the fourth man, and the only oneof the four still living....
he remembered now. he saw the black and bittercrags of titan stark against the glory of the rings, and he saw two figures moving acrossa plain of methane snow, their helmets gleaming in the saturn-light. behind them in the plainwere the flat, half-buried concrete structures of the little refinery, and all around themwere the spidery roads where the big half-tracs dragged their loads of uranium ore from theenchaining mountains. the two men were quarrelling. "you're angry," macdonald was saying, "becauseit was i who found it." "listen," hyrst said. "we're sick, all threeof us, of hearing you brag about it." "i'll bet you are," said macdonald smugly."the first find of a titanite pocket for years.
the rarest, costliest stuff in the system.if you know the way they've been bidding to buy it from me—" "i do know," hyrst said. "you've done nothingfor weeks but give forth mysterious hints—" "and you don't like that," macdonald said."of course you don't! it's no part of our refinery deal, it's mine, i've got it andit's hidden where nobody can find it till i sell it. naturally, you don't like that." "all right," said hyrst. "so the titanitefind is all yours. you're still a partner in the refinery, remember. and you've stillgot an obligation to the rest of us, so you can damn well get in and do your job."
"don't worry. i've always done my job." "more or less," said hyrst. "for your information,i've seen better engineers in grade-school. there's number three hoist. it's been bustedfor a week. now let's get in there and fix it." the two figures in hyrst's memory toiled on,out of the area of roads to the edge of the landing field, where the ships come to takeaway the refined uranium. number three hoist rose in a stiff, ugly column from the ground.it was supposed to fetch the uranium up from the underground storage bins and load it intoa specially-built hot-tank ship in position at the dock. but number three had balked andrefused to perform its task. in this completely
automated plant, men were only important whensomething went wrong. now something was wrong, and it was up to macdonald, the mechanicalengineer, and hyrst, the electronics man, to set it right. hyrst opened the hatch, and they climbed themetal stairs to the upper chamber. number three's brain was here, its scanners, itstabulating and recording apparatus, its signal system. a red light pulsated on a panel, alonein a string of white ones. "trouble's in the hoist-mechanism," said hyrst."that's your department." he smiled and sat down on a metal bench in the center of theroom, with his back to the stair. "d level." macdonald grumbled, and went to a skeletalcage built over a round segment of the floor.
various tools were clipped to the ribs ofthe cage. macdonald pulled an extra rayproof protectall over his vac-suit and stepped insidethe cage, pressing a button. the cage dropped, into a circular shaft that paralleled thehoist right down to the feeder mechanism. hyrst waited. inside his helmet he could hearmacdonald breathing and grumbling as he worked away, repairing a break in the belt. he didnot hear anything else. then something happened, so swiftly that he had never had any memoryof it, and some time later he came to and looked for macdonald. the cage was way downat the bottom of the shaft and macdonald was in it, with a very massive pedestal-blockon top of him. the block had been unbolted from the floor and dragged to the edge ofthe shaft, and it could not possibly have
been an accident that it tumbled in, betweenthe wide-apart ribs of the cage. and that's how macdonald died, hyrst thought—andso i died. they said i forced the secret of his titanite find out of him, and then killedhim. shearing asked swiftly, "macdonald never gaveyou any hint of where he'd hidden the titanite?" "no," said hyrst. he paused, and then said,"it's the titanite you're after?" shearing answered carefully. "in a way, yes.but we didn't kill macdonald for it. those who did kill him are the men who are afteryou now. they're afraid you might lead us to the stuff." hyrst swore, shaking with sudden anger. "damnit, i won't be treated like a child. not by
you, by anyone. i want—" "you want the men who killed macdonald," saidshearing. "i know. i remember what was in your mind when you met your son." a weakness took hyrst and he leaned his foreheadagainst the cold stone wall. "i'm sorry," said shearing. "but we want whatyou want—and more. so much more that you can't dream it. you must trust us." "us? that woman?" once again in shearing's mind hyrst saw thewoman with her head against the stars, and the ship looming darkly. he saw the womanmuch more clearly, and she was like a fire,
burning with anger, burning with a single-minded,dedicated purpose. she was beautiful, and frightening. "she, and others," said shearing. "listen.we must go soon. we're to be picked up, secretly. will you trust us—or would you rather trustyourself to those who are hunting you?" hyrst was silent. shearing said, "well?" "i'll go with you," said hyrst. they went out into the cold darkness, andhyrst heard shearing say in his mind, "i wouldn't try to run—" but it wasn't shearing speaking in his mindnow, it was a third man.
"i wouldn't try to run—" frantically startled, hyrst threw out hismental vision and saw the men who stood around them in the darkness, four men, three of themholding the wicked little weapons called bee-guns in their hands. the fourth man came closer,a dark slender man with a face like a fox, high-boned, narrow-eyed, smiling. it cameto hyrst that the three with weapons were only ordinary men, and that it was this fourthman whose mind had spoken. he was speaking aloud now. "i want you alive,believe me—but there are endless gradations between alive and dead. my men are very accurate." shearing's face was suddenly drawn and exhausted."don't try anything," he warned hyrst wearily.
"he means it." the dark man shook his head at shearing. "thiswasn't nice of you. you knew we had a particular interest in mr. hyrst." he turned to hyrstand smiled. his teeth were small and very neat and white. "did you know that shearinghas been keeping a shield over your mind as well as his? a little too large a task forhim. when you jarred his mind open for an instant, it was all we needed to lead us here." he went on. "mr. hyrst, my name is vernon.we'd like you to come with us." vernon nodded to the three accurate men, andthe whole little group began to walk in the direction of the spaceport. shearing seemedalmost asleep on his feet now. it was as though
he had expended all his energy on a task,and failed at it, and was now quiescent, like an empty well waiting to fill again. "where are we going?" hyrst asked, and vernonanswered: "to see a gentleman you've never heard of,in a place you've never been." he added, with easy friendliness, "don't worry, mr. hyrst,we have nothing against you. you're new to this—ah—state of life. you shouldn't beasked to make decisions or agreements until you know both sides of the question. mr. shearingwas taking an unfair advantage." remembering the dark hard purpose shearinghad let him see in his mind, hyrst could not readily dispute that. but he put out an exploringprobe in the direction of vernon's mind.
it was shut tight. they walked on, toward the spaceport gates.chapter iii all space was before him, hung with the many-coloredlights of the stars, intensely brilliant in the black nothing. it was incredibly splendid,but it was too much like what he had looked at with his cold unseeing eyes for fifty years.he looked down—down being relative to where he was standing in the blister-window—andsaw the whole belt swarming by under him like a drift of fireflies. he quivered inwardlywith a chill vertigo, and turned away. vernon was talking aloud. he had been talkingfor some time. he was stretched out on a soft, deep lounge, smoking, pretending to sip froma tall glass.
"so you see, mr. hyrst, we can help you alot. it's not easy for a lazarite—for one of us—to get a job. i know. people havea—well, a feeling. now mr. bellaver—" "where is shearing?" asked hyrst. he cameand stood in the center of the room, with the soft lights in his eyes and the soft carpetsunder his feet. his mind reached out, uneasy and restless, but it seemed to be surroundedby a zone of fog that tangled and confused and deflected it. he could not find shearing. "we've been here for hours," he said. "whereis he?" "probably talking a deal with mr. bellaver.i wouldn't worry. as i was saying, bellaver incorporated is interested in men like you.we're the largest builders of spacecraft in
the system, and we can afford—" "i know all about it," said hyrst impatiently."old quentin bellaver was busy swallowing up his rivals when i went through the door." "then," said vernon imperturbably, "you shouldrealize how much we can do for you. electronics is a vital branch—" hyrst moved erratically around the room, lookingat things and not really seeing them, hearing vernon's voice but not understanding whatit said. he was growing more and more uneasy. it was as though someone was calling to him,urgently, but just out of earshot. he kept straining, with his ears and his mind, andvernon's voice babbled on, and the barrier
was like a wall around his thoughts. they had been aboard this ship for a longtime now, and he had not seen shearing since they came through the hatch. it was not reallya ship, of course. it had no power of its own, depending on powerful tugs to tow it.it was walter bellaver's floating pleasure-palace, and the damnedest thing hyrst had ever seen.vernon said it could and often did accommodate three or four hundred guests in the utmostluxury. there was nobody aboard it now but bellaver, vernon, hyrst and shearing, thethree very accurate men, and perhaps a dozen others including stewards and the crews ofthe tugs and bellaver's yacht. it was named the happy dream, and it was presently driftingin an excessively lonely orbit high above
the ecliptic, between nothing and nowhere. vernon had been with him almost constantly.he was getting tired of vernon. vernon talked too much. "listen," he said. "you can stop selling bellaver.i'm not looking for a job. where's shearing?" "oh, forget shearing," said vernon, impatientin his turn. "you never heard of him until a few days ago." "he helped me." "for reasons of his own." "what's your reason? and bellaver's?"
"mr. bellaver is interested in all socialproblems. and i'm a lazarite myself, so naturally i have a sympathy for others like me." vernonsat up, putting his glass aside on a low table. he had drunk hardly any of the contents. "shearing," he said, "is a member of a gangwho some time ago stole a particular property of bellaver incorporated. you're not involvedin the quarrel, mr. hyrst. i'd advise you, as a friend, to stay not involved." hyrst's mind and his ears were stretched andquivering, straining to hear a cry for help just a little too far away. "what kind of a property?" asked hyrst.
vernon shrugged. "the bellavers have neversaid what kind, for fairly obvious reasons." "something to do with ships?" "i suppose so. it isn't important to me. norto you, mr. hyrst." "will you pour me a drink?" said hyrst, pointingto the cellaret close beside vernon. "yes, that's fine. how long ago?" "what?" asked vernon, measuring whisky intoa glass. "the theft," said hyrst, and threw his mindsuddenly against the barrier. for one fleeting second he forced a crack in it. "somethingover fifty—", said vernon, and let the glass fall. he spun around from the cellaret andwas halfway to his feet when hyrst hit him.
he hit him three or four times before he wouldstay down, and three or four more before he would lie quiet. hyrst straightened up, breathinghard. his lip was bleeding and he wiped it with the back of his hand. "that was a littletoo big a job for you, mr. vernon," he said viciously. "trying to keep my mind blankedand under control for hours." he stuffed a handkerchief into vernon's mouth, and tiedhim up with his own cummerbund, and shoved him out of sight behind an enormous bed. thenhe opened the door carefully, and went out. there was nobody in the corridor. this waswide and ornate, with doors opening off it, and nothing to show what was behind them orwhich way to go. hyrst stood still a minute, getting control of himself. the barrier nolonger obscured his mind. he let it rove,
finding that every time he did that it waseasier, and the images clearer. he heard shearing again, as he had heard him in that one secondwhen vernon's guard had faltered. his face became set and ugly. he began to move towardthe stern of the happy dream. heavy metal-cloth curtains closed this endof the corridor. beyond them was a ballroom in which only one dim light now burned, avastness of black polished floors and crystal windows looking upon space. hyrst's footstepswere hushed and swallowed up in whispering echoes. he made his way across to anotherset of curtains, edged between them with infinite caution, and found himself in the upper aisleof an amphitheater. it was pitch dark where he was, and he stoodperfectly still, exploring with his mind.
he could not see any guards. the rows of emptyseats were arranged in circles around a central pit, large enough for any entertainment mr.bellaver might decide to give. the pit was brilliantly lighted, and from somewhere lowerdown came the intermittent sound of voices. also from the pit came shearing's cries. hyrstbegan to tremble with outrage and anger, and his still-uncertain mental control faltereddangerously. then from out of nowhere, a voice spoke in his mind, and he saw the face ofthe woman he had seen twice before, the woman shearing served. "careful," she said. "there is a lazaritewith bellaver. his attention is all on shearing, but you must keep your mind shielded. i'llhelp you."
hyrst whispered. "thanks." he felt calm now,alert and capable. he crept along the dark aisle, toward the pit. mr. bellaver's theater lacked nothing. thelarge circular stage area was fitted with upper and lower electro-magnets for the useof acrobats and dancers with null-grav specialties. they could perform without disturbing theregular grav-field of the happy dream, thus keeping the guests comfortable, and by skillfulmanipulation of the magnetic fields more spectacular stunts were possible than in ordinary no-gravity. shearing was in the pit, between the upperand lower magnets. he wore an acrobat's metal attraction-harness, strapped on over his clothes.when hyrst looked over the rail he was hanging
at the central point of weightlessness, whereeverything in a man floats free and his senses are lost in a dreadful vertigo unless he hasbeen conditioned over a long period of time to get used to it. shearing had not been conditioned. "careful," said the woman's warning voicein his mind. "his life depends on you. no, don't try to make contact with him! the lazaritewould sense you—" shearing began a slow ascension toward theupper magnet as the current was increased, from some unseen control board. he moved convulsivelyturning horizontally around the axis of his own middle like a toy spun on a string. hisback was uppermost, and hyrst could not see his face.
"bellaver and the lazarite," said the womanquietly, "are trying to learn from shearing where our ship is. he has been able so farto keep his mind shielded. he is—a very brave man. but you'll have to hurry. he'snear the breaking point." shearing was now almost level with hyrst,suspended over that open pit, looking down, a long way. "you'll have to be quick, hyrst. please. pleaseget him out of there before we have to kill him." the current in the magnet was cut and shearingfell, with a long neighing scream. hyrst looked down. the repelling force ofthe lower magnet cushioned the fall, and the
upper magnet took hold, hard. shearing stoppedabout three feet above the stage floor and started slowly to rise again. he seemed tobe crying. hyrst turned and ran back to the top of the aisle. halfway around the circlehe found steps and went tearing down them. on the next level—there were three—hesaw two men leaning over the broad rail, watching shearing. "yes, there they are. you must find a weapon—" hyrst looked around, blinking like a molein the dark. seats, nothing but seats. ornamentation, but all solid. small metal cylinder, set ina wall niche. chemical extinguisher. yes. compact and heavy. he took it.
"hurry. he's almost through—" the two men were tense and hungry, eager aswolves. one was the lazarite, a grey man, old and seamed with living and none of itgood. the other was bellaver, and he was young. he was tall and fresh-faced, impeccably shaven,impeccably dressed, the keen, clean, public-spirited executive. "i can give you more if you want it, shearing,"bellaver said, his fingers ready on a control-plate set into the broad rail. "how about it?" "shut up, bellaver," whispered the lazaritealoud. "i've almost got it. almost—" his face was agonized with concentration.
"now!" the woman's voiceless cry in his mind senthyrst forward. his hand swung up and then down in a crashing arc, elongated by the heavycylinder. the lazarite fell without a sound. he fell across bellaver, pushing him backfrom the control-plate, and lay over his feet, bleeding gently into the thick pile of thecarpet. bellaver's mouth and eyes opened wide. he looked at the lazarite and then at hyrst.he leaped backward, away from the encumbrance at his ankles, making the first hoarse effortat a shout for help. hyrst did not give him time to finish it. the first row of seatscaught bellaver and threw him, and hyrst swung the cylinder again. bellaver collapsed.
"was i in time?" hyrst asked of the woman,in his mind. he thought she was crying when she answered, "yes." he smiled. he steppedover the lazarite and went to the control-plate and began to work with it until he had shearingsafely on the floor of the stage. then he cut the power and ran down another flightof steps to the bottom level. his mind was able to range free now. he could not senseanyone close at hand. bellaver seemed to have sent underlings elsewhere in the happy dreamwhile he worked on shearing. it was nothing for which a man would seek witnesses. hyrstvaulted the rail onto the stage and dragged shearing away from the magnet. he felt uncomfortablein all that glare of light. he hauled and grunted until he got shearing over the railinto the dark. then he wrestled the harness
off him. shearing sobbed feebly, and retched. "can you stand up?" said hyrst. "hey. shearing."he shook him, hard. "stand up." he got shearing up, a one-hundred-and-ninetypound rag doll draped over his shoulders. he began to walk him out of the theater. "areyou still there?" he asked of the woman. the answer came into his mind swiftly. "yes.i'll help you watch. do you see where the skiff is?" it was in a pod under the belly of the happydream. "i see it," said hyrst. "take that. bellaver's yacht is faster, butyou'd need the crew. the skiff you can handle yourself."
he walked shearing into a fore-and-aft corridor.shearing's feet were beginning to move of their own accord, and he had stopped retching.but his eyes were still blank and he staggered aimlessly. hyrst's nerves were prickling witha mixture of fierce satisfaction and fear. far above in the lush suite he felt vernonstir and come to. there were men somewhere closer, quite close. he forced his mind tosee. two of the very accurate men who had been with vernon were playing cards with twoothers who were apparently stewards. the third one lolled in a chair, smoking. all five werein a lounge just around the corner of a transverse corridor. the door was open. without realizing that he had done so, hyrsttook control of shearing's mind. "steady,
now. we're going past that corner withouta sound. you hear me, shearing? not a sound." shearing's eyes flickered vaguely. he frowned,and his step became steadier. the floor of the corridor was covered in a tough resilientplastic that deadened footsteps. they passed the corner. the men continued to play cards.hyrst sent up a derisive insult to vernon and told shearing to hurry a little. the stairleading down into the pod was just ahead, ten yards, five— a man appeared in the corridor ahead, comingfrom some storeroom with a rack of plastic bottles in his hand. "you'll have to run now," came the woman'sthought, coolly. "don't panic. you can still
make it." the man with the bottles yelled. he beganto run toward hyrst and shearing, dropping the rack to leave his hands free. in the loungeroombehind them the card-party broke up. hyrst took shearing by the arm and clamped downeven tighter on his mind, giving him a single command. they ran together, fast. the men from the lounge poured out into themain corridor. their voices were confused and very loud. ahead, the man who had beenbringing the bottles was now between hyrst and the stair. he was a brown, hard man wholooked like a pilot. he said, "you better stop," and then he grappled with hyrst andshearing. the three of them spun around in
a clumsy dance, shearing moving like an automaton.hyrst and the pilot flailing away with their fists, and then the pilot fell back hard onthe seat of his pants, with the blood bursting out of his nose and his eyes glazing. hyrstraced for the stair, propelling shearing. they tumbled down it with a shot from a bee-gunbuzzing over their heads. it was a short stair with a double-hatch door at the bottom. theyfell through it, and hyrst slammed it shut almost on the toes of a man coming down thestair behind them. the automatic lock took hold. hyrst told shearing, "you can stop now." a few minutes later, from the great swag bellyof the happy dream, a small space-skiff shot away and was quickly lost in the star-shotimmensity above the belt.
chapter iv it did not stay lost for long. shearing wasat the controls. the chronometer showed fourteen hours and twenty-seven minutes since theyleft the happy dream. shearing had spent eight of those hours in a species of comatose slumber,from which he had roused out practically normal. now hyrst was heavily asleep in the pneumo-chairbeside him. shearing punched him. "wake up." after several more punches hyrst groaned andopened his eyes. he mumbled a question, and shearing pointed out the wide curved portthat gave full vision forward and on both sides.
"it was a good try," he said, "but i don'tthink we're going to make it. look there. no, farther back. see it? now the other side.and there's one astern." still sleepy, but alarmed, hyrst swung hismental vision around. it was easier than looking. two fast, powerful tugs from the happy dream,and bellaver's yacht. he frowned in heavy concentration. "bellaver's aboard. he's gota mighty goose-egg on his head. vernon too, with his shields up tight. the three accuratemen and the pilot—his nose is a thing of beauty—plus crew. nine in all. two men eachto the tugs. the other lazarite, the one i laid out—he's not along." shearing nodded approvingly. "you're gettinggood. now take a glance at our fuel-tanks
and tell me what you see." hyrst sat up straight, fully awake. "practically,"he said, "nothing." "this skiff was meant for short hops only.we've got enough for perhaps another forty-five minutes, less if we get too involved. they'refaster than we are, so they'll catch up to us—oh, say in about half an hour. we havefriends coming—" "friends?" "certainly. you don't think we let each otherdown, do you? not the brotherhood. but they had to come from a long way off. we can'tpossibly rendezvous under an hour and a half, maybe more if—"
"i know," said hyrst. "if we all get involved."he looked out the port. in the beginning, following directions from the young woman—whosename he had never thought to ask—he had set a course that plunged him deep into oneof the wildest sectors of the belt. he was not a pilot. he could, like most men of histime, handle a simple craft under simple conditions, but these conditions were not simple. theskiff's radar was short-range and it had no automatic deflection reflexes. hyrst had hadto fly on esp, spotting meteor swarms, asteroids, debris of all sorts in this poetically namedhell-hole, the path of minor worlds, and then figuring out how to get by, through, or overthem without a crash. shearing had relieved him just in time.
he glowered at the whirling, glittering messoutside, the dust, the shards and fragments of a shattered world. it merged into mistand his mind was roving again. shearing jockeyed the controls. he was flying esper too. thetugs and bellaver's fast yacht were closing up the gap. the level in the tanks went down,used up not in free fall but in the constant maneuvering. hyrst swung mentally inboard to check vac-suitsand equipment in the locker, and then out again. his vision was strong and free. hecould look at the sun, and see the splendid fires of the corona. he could look at mars,old and cold and dried-up, and at jupiter, massive and sullen and totally useless exceptas an anchor for its family of crazy moons.
he could look farther than that. he couldlook at the stars. in a little while, he thought, he could look at whole galaxies. his heartpounded and the breath came hot and hard into his lungs. it was a good feeling. it madeall that had gone before almost worthwhile. the primal immensities drew him, the blackgulfs lit with gold and crimson and peacock-colored flames. he wanted to go farther and farther,into— "you're learning too fast," said shearingdryly. "stick to something small and close and sordid, namely an asteroid where we canland." "i found one," said hyrst. "there." shearing followed his mental nudge. "hell,"he said, "couldn't you have spotted something
better? these valhallas give me the creeps." "the others within reach are too small, orthere's no cover. we'll have quite a little time to wait. i take it you would like tobe alive when your friends come." vernon's thought broke in on them abruptly."you have just one chance of that, and that's to give yourselves up, right now." "does the socially-conscious mr. bellaverstill want to give me that job?" asked hyrst. "i'm warning you," said vernon. "your mind is full of hate," said hyrst. "cleanseit." he shut vernon out as easily as hanging up a phone. under stress, his new powers weredeveloping rapidly. he felt a little drunk
with them. shearing said, "don't get aboveyourself, boy. you're still a cub, you know." then he grinned briefly and added, "by theway, thanks." hyrst said, "i owed it to you. and you canthank your lady friend, too. she had a big hand in it." "christina," said shearing softly. "yes." he dropped the skiff sharply in a descendingcurve, toward the asteroid. "do you think," said hyrst, "you could nowtell me what the devil this is all about?" shearing said, "we've got a starship." hyrst stared. for a long time he didn't sayanything. then, "you've got a starship? but
nobody has! people talk of someday reachingother stars, but nobody tried yet, nobody could try—" he broke off, suddenly rememberinga dark, lonely ship, and a woman with angry eyes watching it. even in his astonishment,things began to come clearer to him. "so that's it—a starship. and bellaver wants it?" shearing nodded. "well," said hyrst. "go on." "you've already developed some amazing mentalcapabilities since you came back from beyond the door. you'll find that's only the beginning.the radiation, the exposure—something. the simple act of pseudo-death, perhaps. anyway,the brain is altered, stepped up, a great
deal of its normally unused potential released.you've always been a fair-to-middling technician. you'll find your rating boosted, eventually,to the genius level." the skiff veered wildly as shearing dodgeda whizzing chunk of rock the size of a skyscraper. "that's one reason," he said, "why we wantedto get you before bellaver did. the number of technicians undergoing the humane penaltyis quite small. we—the brotherhood—need all of them we can get." "but that wasn't the main reason you wantedme?" pressed hyrst. shearing looked at him. "no. we wanted youmainly because you were present when macdonald died. handled right—"
he paused. the asteroid was rushing at them,and bellaver's ships were close behind. hyrst was already in a vac-suit, all but the helmet. "take the controls," said shearing. "as shegoes. don't worry, i'll make the landing." he pulled the vac-suit on. "handled right,"he said, "you might be the key to that murder, and to the mystery behind it that the brotherhoodmust solve." he took the controls again. they helped eachother on with their helmets. the asteroid filled the port, a wild, weird jumble of vari-coloredrock. "i don't see how," said hyrst, into his helmetmike. "latent impressions," answered shearing briefly,and sent the skiff skittering in between two
great black monoliths, to settle with a jaron a pan of rock as smooth and naked as a ballroom floor. "make it fast," said shearing. "they're righton top of us." the skiff, designed as sheering had said forshort hops, could not accommodate the extra weight and bulk of an airlock. you were supposedto land in atmosphere. if you didn't, you just pushed a release-button and hung on.the air was exhausted in one whistling swoosh that took with it everything loose. the moisturein it crystallized instantly, and before this frozen drift had even begun to settle, hyrstand shearing were on their way. they crossed the rock pan in great swaggeringbounds. the gravity was light, the horizon
only twenty or so miles away. literally inhis mind's eye hyrst could see the three ships arrowing at them. he opened contact with vernon,knowing shearing had done so too. vernon had been looking for them. "mr. bellaver still prefers to have you alive,"he said. "if you'll wait quietly beside the skiff, we'll take you aboard." shearing gave him a hard answer. "very well," said vernon. "mr. bellaver wantsme to make it clear to you that he doesn't intend for you to get away. so you can interpretthat as you please. be seeing you." he broke contact, knowing that hyrst and shearingwould close him out. from now on, hyrst realized,
he would keep track of them the way he andshearing had kept track of obstructions in the path of flight, by mental "sight". theyacht was extremely close. suddenly hyrst had a confused glimpse of a hand on a control-leverover-lapped by a view of the black-mouthed tubes of the yacht's belly-jets. he dived,literally, into a crack between one of the monoliths and a slab that leaned against itsbase, dragging shearing with him. the yacht swept over. nothing happened. itdropped out of sight, braking for a landing. "imagination," said shearing. "you realizea possibility, and you think it's so. tricky. but i don't blame you. the safe side is thebest one." hyrst looked out the crack. one of the tugswas coming in to land beside the skiff, while
the other one circled. "now what?" he said. "i suppose we can dodgethem for a while, but we can't hide from vernon." shearing chuckled. he had got his look oftough competence back. he seemed almost to be enjoying himself. "i told you you wereonly a cub. how do you suppose we've kept the starship hidden all these years? watch." in the flick of a second hyrst went blindand deaf. then he realized that it was only his mental eyes and ears that were blankedout as though a curtain had been drawn across them. his physical eyes were still clear andsharp, and when shearing's voice came over the helmet audio he heard it without trouble.
"this is called the cloak. i suppose you couldcall it an extension of the shield, though it's more like a force field. it's no barto physical vision, and it has the one great disadvantage of being opaque both ways tomental energy. but it does act as a deflector. if vernon follows us now, he'll have to doit the hard way. stick close by me, so i don't have too wide a spread. and it'll be up toyou to lead. i can't do both. let's go." hyrst had, unconsciously, become so used tohis new perceptions that it made him feel dull and helpless to be without them. he ledoff down one of the smooth rock avenues, going away from the skiff and the tug which hadjust landed. on either side of the avenue were monoliths,irregularly spaced and of different sizes
and heights but following an apparently orderlyplan. the light of the distant sun lay raw and blinding on them, casting shadows as blackand sharp-edged as though drawn upon the rock with india ink. you could see faces in the monoliths. youcould see mighty outlines, singly and in groups, of gods and beasts and men, in combat, insuppliance, in death and burial. that was why these asteroids were called valhallas.twenty-six of them had been found so far, and studied, and still no one could say certainlywhether or not the hands of any living beings had fashioned them. they might be actual monuments,defaced by cosmic dust, by collision with the myriad fragments of the belt, by time.they might be one of nature's casual jokes,
created by the same agencies. no actual tombshad been found, nor tools, nor definitely identifiable artifacts. but still the feelingpersisted, in the airless silence of the avenues, that some passing race had paused and wroughtfor itself a memorial more enduring than its fame, and then gone on into the great galacticsea, never to return. hyrst had never been on a valhalla before.he understood why shearing had not wanted to land and he wished now that they hadn't.there was something overwhelmingly sad and awesome about these leaning, towering figuresof stone, moving forever in their lonely orbit, going nowhere, returning to nowhere. then he saw the second tug overhead. he forgothis daydreams. "they're going to act as a
spotter," he said. shearing grunted but didnot speak. his whole mind was concentrated on maintaining the cloak. hyrst stopped himstill in the pitchy shadow under what might have been a kneeling woman sixty feet high.he watched the tug. it lazed away, circling slowly, and he did not think it had seen them.he could not any longer see the place where they had landed, but he assumed that by nowthe yacht had looped back and come in—if not there somewhere close by. they could figureon nine to eleven men hunting them, depending on whether they left the ships guarded ornot. either way, it was too many. "listen," he said aloud to shearing. "listen,i want to ask you. what you said about latent impressions—you think i might have seenand heard the killer even though i was unconscious?"
"especially heard. possible. with your increasedpower, and ours, impressions received through sense-channels but not recognized at the timeor remembered later might be recovered." he shook his head. "don't bother me." "i just wanted to know," said hyrst. he thoughtof his son, and the two daughters he hoped he would never see. he thought of elena. itwas too late to do anything for her, but the others were still living. so was he, and heintended to stay that way, at least until he had done what he set out to do. "old bellaver was behind that killing, wasn'the? old quentin, this one's grandfather." "yes. don't bother me."
"one thing more. do we lazarites live longerthan men?" shearing gave him a curious, brief look. "yes." the tug was out of sight behind a massiverearing shape that seemed to clutch a broken ship between its paws. symbolic, perhaps,of space? who knew? hyrst led shearing in wild impala-like leaps across an open space,and into a narrow way that twisted, filled with darkness, among the bases of a groupthat resembled an outlandish procession following a king. "how much longer?" "humane penalty first came in a hundred andfourteen years ago, right? after seitz' method
was perfected for saving spacemen. i was oneof the first they used it on." "my god," said hyrst. yet, somehow, he wasnot as surprised as he might have been. "i've aged," said shearing apologetically."i was only twenty-seven then." they crouched, beside a humped shape likea gigantic lizard with a long tail. the tug swung overhead and slowly on. hyrst said, "then it's possible the one whokilled macdonald is still alive?" "possible. probable." hyrst bared his teeth, in what was not atall like a smile. "good," he said. "that makes me happy."
they did not do any talking after that. theyhad had their helmet radios operating on practically no power at all, so that they couldn't bepicked up outside a radius of a few yards, but even that might be too close, now thatbellaver's men had had time to get suited and fan out. they shut them off entirely,communicating by yanks and nudges. for what seemed to hyrst like a very longtime, but which was probably less than half an hour in measured minutes, they dodged fromone patch of shadow to another, following an erratic course that hyrst thought wouldlead them away from the ships. once more the tug went over, slow, and then hyrst didn'tsee it again. the idea that they might have given up occurred to him but he dismissedit as absurd. with the helmet mike shut off,
the silence was beginning to get on his nerves.once he looked up and saw a piece of cosmic debris smash into a monolith. dust and splintersflew, and a great fragment broke off and fell slowly downward, bumping and rebounding, andall of it as soundless as a dream. you couldn't hear yourself walk, you couldn't hear anythingbut the roar of your own breathing and the pounding of your own blood. the grotesquerocky avenues could hide an army, stealthy, creeping— there was a hill, or at least a higher eminence,crowned with what might have been the cyclopean image of a man stretched out on a noble catafalque,with hooded giants standing by in attitudes of mourning. it seemed like the best placeto stop that hyrst had seen, with plenty of
cover and a view of the surrounding area.with luck, you might stay hidden there a long time. he jogged shearing's elbow and pointed,and shearing nodded. there was a wide, almost circular sweep of open rock around the baseof the hill. hyrst looked carefully for the tug. there was no sign of it. he tore outacross the open, with shearing at his heels. the tug swooped over, going fast this time.it could not possibly have missed them. shearing dropped the cloak with a grunt. "no use forthat any more," he said. they bounded up the hillside and in among the mourning figures.the tug whipped around in a tight spiral and hung over the hill. hyrst shook the sweatout of his eyes. his mind was clear again. the tug's skipper was babbling into his communicator,and in another place on the asteroid hyrst
could mentally see a thin skirmish line spreadout, and in still another four men in a bunch. they all picked up and began to move, towardthe hill. shearing said, nodding spaceward, "our friendsare on the way. if we can hold out—" "fat chance," said hyrst. "they're armed,and all we've got is flare-pistols." but he looked around. his eyes detected nothing butrock, hard sunlight, and deep shadow, but his mind saw that one of the black blots atthe base of the main block, the catafalque, was more than a shadow. he slid into a crackthat resembled a passage, being rounded rather than ragged. shearing was right behind him."i don't like this," he said, "but i suppose there's no help for it."
the crack led down into a cave, or chamber,too irregularly shaped to be artificial, too smoothly surfaced and floored to be natural.there was nothing in it but a block of stone, nine feet or so long and about four feet wideby five feet high. it seemed to be a natural part of the floor, but hyrst avoided it. onthe opposite, the sunward side, there was a small windowlike aperture that admitteda ray of blinding radiance, sharply defined and doing nothing to illumine the dark oneither side of it. vernon's thought came to them, hard, triumphant,peremptory. "mr. bellaver says you have ten minutes to come out. after that, no mercy."chapter v the minutes slid past, sections of eternityarbitrarily measured by the standards of another
planet and having no relevance at all on thistiny whirling rock. the beam of light from the small aperture moved visibly across theopposite wall. hyrst watched it, blinking. outside, bellaver's men were drawn up in awide crescent across the hill in front of the catafalque. they waited. "no mercy," said hyrst softly. "no mercy,is it?" he bent over and began to loosen the clamps that held the lead weights to the solesof his boots. "it isn't mercy we need," said shearing. "it'stime." "how much?" "look for yourself."
hyrst shifted his attention to space. therewas a ship in it, heading toward the asteroid, and coming fast. hyrst frowned, doing in hishead without thinking about it a calculation that would have required a computer in hisformer life. "twenty-three minutes and seventeen seconds,"he said, "inclusive of the four remaining." he finished getting the weights off his boots.he handed one to shearing. then he half-climbed, half-floated up the wall and settled himselfabove the entrance, where there was a slight concavity in the rock to give him hold. "shearing," he said. "what?" he was settling himself beside themouth of the crack, where a man would have
to come clear inside to get a shot at him. "a starship implies the intention to go tothe stars. why haven't you?" "for the simplest reason in the world," saidshearing bitterly. "the damn thing can't fly." "but—" said hyrst, in astonishment. "it isn't finished. it's been building forover seventy years now, and a long and painful process that's been, too, hyrst—doing itbit by bit in secret, and every bit having to be dreamed up out of whole cloth, and oftendiscarded and dreamed up again, because the principle of a workable star-drive has neverbeen formulated before. and it still isn't finished. it can't be finished, unless—"
he stopped, and both men turned their attentionto the outside. "bellaver's looking at his chrono," said hyrst."go ahead, we've got a minute." shearing continued, "unless we can get holdof enough titanite to build the hyper-shift relays. nothing else has a fast enough reactiontime, and the necessary load-capacity. we must have burned out a thousand differenttest-boards, trying." "can't you buy it?" asked hyrst. the questionsounded reasonable, but he knew as he said it that it was a foolish one. "i mean, i knowthe stuff is scarcer than virtue and worth astronomical sums—that's what macdonaldwas so happy about—but—" "the bellaver corporation had a corner onthe stuff before our ship was even thought
of. that's what brought this whole damnedmess about. some of our people—not saying why they wanted it, of course—tried to buysome from bellaver in the usual way, and one of them must have been incautious about hisshield. because a lazarite working for bellaver caught a mental hint of the starship, andthe reason for the titanite, and that was it. three generations of bellavers have beenafter us for the star-drive, and it's developed into a secret war as bitter as any ever foughton the battlefield. they hold all the titanite, we hold the ship, and perhaps now you're beginningto see why macdonald was killed, and why you're so important to both sides." "beginning to," said hyrst. "but only beginning."
"macdonald found a titanite pocket. and asyou know, a titanite pocket isn't very big. one man can break the crude stuff, fill asack with it, and tote it on his own back if he doesn't have a power-sled." "macdonald had a sled." "and he used it. he cleaned out his pocket,afraid somebody else would track him to it, and he hid the wretched ore somewhere. thenhe began to dicker. he approached the bellaver corporation, and we heard of it and approachedhim. he tried playing us off against bellaver to boost the price, and suddenly he was deadand you were accused of his murder. we thought you really had done it, because no titaniteturned up, and we knew bellaver hadn't gotten
it from him. we'd watched too closely. itwasn't until some years later that one of our people learned that macdonald had threateneda little too loudly to sell to us unless bellaver practically tripled his offer—and of coursebellaver didn't dare do that. a price so much out of line even for titanite would have stirredall the rival shipbuilders to unwelcome curiosity. so, we figured, bellaver had had him killed." "but what happened to the titanite?" "that," said shearing, "is what nobody knows.bellaver must have figured that if his tame lazarites couldn't find where macdonald hadput it, we couldn't either. he was right. with all our combined mental probes and conventionaldetectors we haven't been able to track it
down. and we haven't been able to find anymore pockets, either. bellaver corporation got exclusive mineral rights to the wholedamned moon. they even own the refinery now." hyrst shook his head. "latent impressionsor not, i don't see how i can help on that. if macdonald had given the killer any clue—" a beam of bright blue light no thicker thana pencil struck in through the mouth of the passage. it touched the side of the largestone block. the stone turned molten and ran, and then the beam flicked off, leaving a placethat glowed briefly red. shearing said, "i guess our ten minutes are up." they were. for a second or two nothing morehappened and then hyrst saw something come
sailing in through the crack. his mind toldhim what it was just barely in time to shut his eyes. there was a flash that dazzled himeven through his closed lids, and the flash became a glare that did not lessen. bellaver'smen had tossed in a long-term flare, and almost at once someone followed it, in the hope ofcatching hyrst and shearing blinded and off guard. the eyes of hyrst's mind, unaffectedby light, clearly showed him the suited figure just below him, with its bubble helmet coveredby a glare-shield. they directed him with perfect accuracy in the downward sweep ofthe lead weight he had taken from his boot, and which he still held in his hand. the bubblehelmet was very strong, and the gravity very light, but the concussion was enough to dropthe man unconscious. just about thought hyrst,
what happened to me there in the hoist tower,when macdonald died. shearing, who had by now adjusted his own glare-shield stoopedquickly and took the man's gun. he said aloud, over the helmet communicator,"the next one that steps through here gets it. do you hear that, bellaver?" bellaver's voice answered. "listen, shearing,i was wrong. i admit it. let's calm down and start over again. i—" "ten minutes ago it was no mercy." "it's hard for me to behave reasonably aboutthis business. you know what it means to me, what it meant to my father and his father.but i'm willing to do anything, shearing,
if you'll make a deal." "i'll make a deal. readily. eagerly. giveback what your grandfather stole from us, and we'll call it square." "oh no we won't," said hyrst grimly, breakingin. "not until i find who killed macdonald." "all right," said bellaver. "wilson, breakout the grenades." the entire surface of hyrst's body burst intoa flaring sweat. for one panic-stricken second he wanted to rush out the crack pleading formercy. then he got his feet against the wall and pushed hard, and went plunging acrossthe chamber in a sort of floating dive. shearing got there at the same time and helped to pullhim down. they huddled together on the floor,
with the coffin-shaped block between themand the crack. hyrst sent out a frantic mental call to hurry, directed at the spaceship ofthe brotherhood. "they're all going to hurry," said shearing."vernon has found the ship now. he's telling bellaver. here comes the grenade—" small round glittering thing of death, curvinglight and graceful through the airless gloom. it comes so slowly, and the flesh shrinksquivering upon itself until it is nothing more than a handful of simple fear. outsidethe men are running away, and the one who has thrown the grenade from the cramped, constructingvantage of the crack is running after them, and shearing is crying with his mind willit to fall short, will it to fall sh—
there is a great brilliance, and the rockleaps, but there is not the slightest sound. chapter vi"the ram, the bull, the heavenly twins, and next the crab the lion shine. the virgin andthe scales—" the old zodiacal rhyme was running throughhyrst's mind, and that was the only thing that was in his mind. the virgin and the scales. yes. and she's very beautiful, too, thoughthyrst. but she shouldn't be holding the scales. that's all wrong. the scales come next, andthen the scorpion—scorpio—and the archer—sagittarius— and anyway they aren't scales, they're a pairof big golden stars, and she's putting them
down, and they're melting together. there'sonly one of them, and it's not a star at all, really. it's a polished metal jug, reflectingthe light, and— the virgin smiled. "the doctor said you werecoming around. i brought you something to drink." reality returned to hyrst with a rush. "you'rechristina," he said, and tried to sit up. he was dizzy, and she helped him, and he said,"i guess it did fall short." "what?" "the grenade. the last thing i remember isshearing—wait. where is shearing?" "sitting up in the lounge, nursing his bruises.yes, it fell short, but i don't think telekinetics
had much to do with that. we've never beenable to control matter convincingly. there. all right?" "fine. how did you get us out?" "of course the grenade had made the entranceimpassible—we had to cut our way in through the outer wall. we had a clear field. bellaver'smen had all gone back to their ships. they thought you were dead, and to tell you thetruth we thought you must be, too. but you didn't quite 'feel' dead, so we dug you out." "thanks," said hyrst. "i suppose they knowdifferent now." he was in a ship's sick-bay. from the erraticcrash and shudder of the lateral jets, they
were beating their way through the belt, andat a high rate of speed. hyrst sent a glance back into space. the tugs and bellaver's yachtwere following, but this time only the yacht had a chance. the tugs were dropping hopelesslybehind. "yes, they soon found out once we got youout, but with any luck we'll lose them," said christina. she sat down beside the bunk, whereshe could see his face. "shearing told you about the ship." "the starship. yes." he looked at her. suddenlyhe laughed. "you're not a goddess at all." "who said i was?" "shearing. or anyway, his mind. ten feet tall,and crowned with stars—i was afraid of you."
he leaned closer. "your eyes, though. theyare angry." "so will yours be," she said, "when you'vefought the bellavers as long as we have." "there are still things i don't understand.why you built the ship, why you've kept it secret from everyone, not just bellaver, whatyou plan to do with it—how you came to be one of the brotherhood." she smiled. "the seitz method was originatedto save wreck-victims frozen in deep space. remember? quite a few of us never went throughthe door at all, innocent or guilty. but that makes no difference, once you've come backfrom out there." she put her hand on his. "you've learned fast, but you're only on thethreshold. there's no need for words with
us. open your mind—" he did so. at first it was no different fromthe contact he had had with shearing's mind, or with christina's before on the happy dream.thoughts came to him clearly phrased—you want to know why we built the ship, what weplan to do with it—and it was only after some time that he realized the words had stoppedand he was receiving christina's emotions, her memories and opinions, her disappointmentsand her dreams, as simply and directly as though they were his own. you haven't had time yet, they told him withoutwords, to realize how alone you are. you haven't tried, as most of us do at first, to be humanagain, to fit yourself into life as though
the gap of time was not there, as though nothinghad changed. you haven't watched people getting old around you while you have hardly addeda gray hair. you haven't had to move from one place to another, one job, one group offriends to another, because sooner or later they sense something wrong about you. youhaven't had to hide your new powers as you would hide a disease because people wouldfear and hate you, perhaps even kill you, if they knew. that's why there is a brotherhood.and that's why we built the ship. symbol of flight. symbol of freedom. a universewide beyond imagining, thronging with many colored guns, with new worlds where men ina human society could build a society of their own. no boundaries beyond which the mind cannotdare to go. all space, all time, all knowledge—free!
once more he saw those wide dark seas betweenthe suns. his mind raced with hers through the cold-flaming nebulae, wheeled blindedand stunned past the hiving stars of hercules, looked in eager fascination at the splendidspiral of andromeda—no longer, perhaps, beyond reach, for what are time and spaceto the intangible forces of the mind? then that wild flight ceased, and insteadthere was a smaller vision, misty and only half realized, of houses and streets, a placewhere they could live and be what they were, openly and without fear. can you understand now, she asked him, whatthey would think if they knew about the ship? can you understand that they would be afraidto have us colonizing out there, afraid of
what we might do? he understood. at the very least, if the truthwere known, the lazarites would never be free again. they would be taken and tested andexamined and lectured about, legislated over, restricted, governed, and used. they mightbe fairly paid for their ship and whatever other advancements they might develop, butthey would never be permitted to use them. with sudden savage eagerness hyrst said, "butfirst of all i must know who killed macdonald. shearing explained about the latent impressions.i'm ready." she stood up, regarding him with grave eyes."there's no guarantee it will work. sometimes it does. sometimes not."
hyrst thought about the tired, gray-hairedman who had stood at the foot of his bed. "it'll work. it's got to." he added, "if it doesn't, i'll tear the truthout of bellaver with my hands." "it may come to that," she said grimly. "butwe'll hope. lie quiet. i'll make the arrangements." an hour later hyrst lay on the padded tablein the middle of the sick-bay. the ship spun and whirled and leaped in a sort of insanedance, and hyrst was strapped to the table to prevent his being thrown off. he had knownthat the ship was maneuvering in the thickest swarm area of the belt with four pilots mind-linkedand flying esper, trying to out-dare bellaver. two others were keeping vernon blanked, andthey hoped that either bellaver himself or
his radar-deflector system would give up.hyrst had known this, but now he was no longer interested. he was barely conscious of thelurching of the ship. they had given him some sort of a drug, and he lay relaxed and pliantin a pleasant suspension of all worries, looking vaguely up at the faces that were bent overhim. finally he closed his eyes, and even they were gone. he was crossing the plain of methane snowwith macdonald, under the glowing rings. at first it was all a little blurred, but graduallythe memory cleared until he was aware of each tiny detail far more clearly than he had beenat the time—the texture of the material from which macdonald's suit was made, theinfinitesimal shadow underscoring every roughness
of the snow, the exact sensation of walkingin his leaded boots, the whisper and whistle of his oxygen system. he quarreled again withmacdonald, not missing a word. he climbed with him into the tower of number three hoistand examined the signal lights, and sat down on the bench, smiling, to wait. he sweated inside his suit. he would takea shower when he got back to quarters. he wished for a smoke. macdonald's steady grumblingand cursing filled his helmet. he listened, enjoying it. hope you bang yourself with yourown clumsy hammer. and i wish you joy of your fortune. if you have as many friends richas you had poor you won't have any. there was an itch under his left arm. he pressedthe suit in with his right and wriggled his
body against it. it didn't do any good. damnsuits. damn titan. lucky elena, back on earth with the kids. making good money, though.won't be long before i can go back and live like a human being. now his nose itched, andmacdonald was still grumbling. there was the faintest ghost of a sound and then crack,then nothing, dark, cold, sinking, very weak, gone. nothing, nothing. i come to in the coldsilence and look down the shaft at macdonald and he is dead. go back a bit. slow. that's right. easy. backto elena and the kids. lucky elena, in the sun and the warm sweetair. lucky kids. but i'm lucky too. i can go back to them soon. my nose itches. whydoes your nose always itch when you've got
a helmet on, or your hands all over grease?listen to macdonald, damning the belt, damning the tools, damning everything in sight. isthat a footstep? the air is thin and poisonous, but it carries sound. somebody coming behindme? split second, no time to look or think. crack. cold. dark. nothing. let's go back again. don't hurry. we've allthe time in the world. go back to the footsteps you heard behind you. almost heard. and then i black and cold. heavy.flat. face heavy against helmet, cold. lying down. must get up, must get up, danger. faraway. can't. macdonald is screaming. let the lift alone, what are you doing, hyrst? hyrst!shut up, you greedy little man, and listen.
you're not hyrst—who are you? that doesn'tmatter. i know, you're from bellaver. bellaver sent you to steal the titanite. well, youwon't get it. it's where nobody will ever get it unless i show them how. good. that'sgood, macdonald. that's what i wanted to know. you see, we don't need the titanite. macdonald screams again and the lift goesdown with a roar and a rattle of severed chain. heavy footsteps, shaking the floor by my head.someone turns me over, speaks to me, bending close. light is gray and strange. i try torouse. i can't. the man is satisfied. he drops me and goes away, but i have seen his faceinside his helmet. i hear him working on some metal thing with a tool. he is whistling alittle under his breath. macdonald is not
screaming now. from time to time he whimpers.but i have seen the killer's face. i have seen his face. i have seen— take it easy, hyrst. take your time. elena is dead, and this is christina bendingover me. i have seen the killer's face. it is the face of vernon.chapter vii there was christina, and there was shearing,and there were two more he did not know, leaning over him. the drug was wearing off a little,and hyrst could see them more clearly, see
the bitter disappointment in their eyes. "is that all?" christina said. "are you sure?go back again—" they took him back again, and it was the same. "that's all macdonald said? then we're nocloser to the titanite than we were before." hyrst was not interested in the titanite."vernon," he said. something red and wild rose up in him, and he tried to tear awaythe straps that held him. "vernon. i'll get him—" "later, hyrst," said shearing, and sighed."lie still a bit. he's on bellaver's yacht, remember? quite out of reach. now think. macdonaldsaid, you won't get it, it's where nobody
will ever get it—" "what's the use?" said christina, turningaway. "it was a faint hope anyway. dying men don't draw obliging maps for you." she satdown on the edge of a bunk and put her head in her hands. "we might as well give up. youknow that." one of the two lazarites who had done thelatent probe on hyrst said with hollow hopefulness, "perhaps if we let him rest a while and thengo over it again—" "let me up out of here," said hyrst, stillgroggy with the drug. "i want vernon." "i'll help you get him," said shearing, "ifyou'll tell me what macdonald meant when he said nobody will ever get it unless i showthem how."
"how the devil do i know?" hyrst tugged atthe straps, raging. "let me up." "but you knew macdonald well. you worked withhim and beside him for years." "does that tell me where he hid the titanite?don't be an ass, shearing. let me up." "but," said shearing equably, "he didn't saywhere. he said how." "isn't that the same thing?" "is it? listen. nobody will ever get it unlessi show them where. nobody will ever get it unless i show them how." hyrst stopped fighting the straps. he beganto frown. christina lifted her head again. she did not say anything. the two lazariteswho had done the probe stood still and held
their breath. shearing's mind touched hyrst's stroking itas with soothing fingers. "let's think about that for a minute. let your thoughts movefreely. macdonald was an engineer. the engineer. of the four, he alone knew every inch of thephysical set-up of the refinery. so?" "yes. that's right. but that doesn't say where—waita minute, though. if he'd just shoved it in a crack somewhere in the mountains, he'd knowa detector might find it, more easily than before it was dug. he'd have put it some wheredeep, deeper than he could possibly dig. maybe in an abandoned mine?" "no place," said shearing, "is too deep forus to probe. we've examined every abandoned
mine on that side of titan. and it doesn'tfit, anyway. no. try again." "he wouldn't have brought it back to the refinery.one of us would be sure to find it. unless, of course—" hyrst stopped, and the tension in the sick-baytightened another notch. the ship lurched sharply, swerved, and shot upward with a deafeningthunder of rocket-blasts. hyrst shut his eyes, thinking hard. "unless he put it in some place so dangerousthat nobody ever went there. a place where even he didn't go, but which he would knowabout being the engineer." "can you think of any place that would answerthat description?"
"yes," said hyrst slowly. "the undergroundstorage bins. they're always hot, even when they're empty. anything hidden near them wouldbe blanketed by radiation. no detector would see anything but uranium. probably even youwouldn't." "no," said shearing, looking amazed. "probablywe wouldn't. the radioactive disturbance would be too strong to get through, even if we werelooking for something beyond it, which we weren't." christina had sprung up. now she bent overhyrst and said, "but is there a way it could have been done? obviously, the titanite couldn'thave been put directly into the bin with the uranium—if nothing else, it would have beenshipped out in the next tanker."
"oh, yes," said hyrst. "there would be severalways. i can think of a couple myself, and i've never even see the layout. the repair-liftshaft, i know, goes clear down to the feeder mechanism, and there's some kind of a systemof dispersal tunnels and an emergency gadget that trips automatically to release a liquid-graphitedamping material into them in case the radiation level gets too high. i don't remember thatit ever did, but it's a safeguard. there'd be plenty of places to hide a lead box fullof titanite." "unless i show them how," repeated shearingslowly, and began to undo the straps that held hyrst to the table. "it has an ominoussound. i'll bet you that locating the titanite will be child's play compared to getting itout. well, we'll do what we can."
"the first thing," said christina grimly,"is to get rid of bellaver. if he has the slightest suspicion where we're headed he'llradio ahead and have all titan alerted." hyrst, sitting up now on the edge of the table,hanging on against the lurching of the ship, said, "that's right—he owns the refinerynow, doesn't he? is it still working?" "no. the mines around there played out, oh,ten, fifteen years ago. the activity's shifted to the north and east on the other side ofthe range. that is what may possibly give us a chance." shearing staggered with hyrstacross the bucking deck and sat tailor-fashion in the bunk, his eyes intent. "hyrst, i wantyou to remember everything you can about the refinery. the ground plan, exactly where thebuildings are, the hoists, the landing field.
everything." hyrst said, showing the edges of his teeth,"when do i get vernon?" "you'll get him. i promise you." "what about bellaver? he's still behind us." shearing smiled. "that's christina's job!let her worry." hyrst nodded. he began to remember the refinery.christina and the other two went out. a short while later a number of things happened,violently, and in quick succession. the ship of the lazarites, pursuing its wild and headlongcourse through the swarming debris of the belt, was far ahead of bellaver's yacht butstill within instrument range. apparently
in desperation it plunged suddenly on a tangentialcourse into a cluster of great jagged rocks all travelling together at a furious rateof speed. the cluster was perhaps two hundred miles across. the lazarite ship twisted andturned, and then there was a swift bright flowering of flame, and then nothing. "she's blown her tubes," said bellaver exultantly,on the bridge of his yacht. the instruments had lost contact, chiefly because the clusterwas so thick that it was impossible to separate one body from another. vernon said, "they're not blanking my mindany more. it stopped, like that." but he was still doubtful.
"can you locate the ship?" asked bellaver. "i'm trying." bellaver caught his arm. "look there!" there was a second, larger and more brilliant,flash of flame. "they've hit an asteroid," he said. "they'redone for." "i can't locate them," vernon said. "no ship,no wreckage. it could be a trick. they could be holding a cloak." "a trick?" said bellaver. "i doubt it. anyway,we're running low on fuel, and i'm not going to go into that cluster and risk my own neckto find out. if by any chance they do come
out again later on, we'll deal with them." but they both watched the cluster until ithad whirled on out of sight. and neither eye nor instrument nor vernon's probing mind coulddistinguish any sign of life. chapter viii titan lay below them in the saturn-glow, underthe fantastic glory of the rings. a bitter, repellent world of jagged peaks and glimmeringplains of poison snow. the tiny life-raft dropped toward it, skittering nervously asit hit the thin atmosphere. hyrst clung hard to the handholds, trying not to retch. hewas not habituated to space anyway, and the skiff had been bad enough. now, without anyhull around him and nothing but a curved shield
in front of him, he felt like an ant on aflying leaf. "i don't like it either." shearing said. "butit gives us a fifty-fifty chance of getting through unnoticed. radar usually isn't lookingfor anything so small." "i understand all the reasons," hyrst said."it's my stomach that's obtuse." he could make out the pattern of the refinerynow, a million miles of vertigo below him. the lazarite ship was somewhere up and outbehind them, hiding in the rings. the trick had worked with bellaver out there in thebelt, and they hoped now that it would work with bellaver's observers on titan. therewas no need for any fake explosions this time, to give the impression of destruction. secrecywas the watch-word, all lights out and jet-blasts
muffled to a spark. later, when hyrst andshearing had accomplished their mission, the ship would drop down fast and take them off,with the titanite, before any patrol craft would have time to arrive. they hoped. the buildings of the refinery were dark andcold, drifted out of shape by an accumulation of the thin, evil snow. the spiderweb of roadshad faded from the plain, and the landing field was smooth and unmarked. around itsperimeter the six stiff towers of the hoists stood up like lonely sentinels, hooded andcloaked. hyrst felt a sudden tightening of his throat,and this was a thing he had not expected.
a refinery on titan was hardly a thing tobe sentimental about. but it was bound up so intimately with other things, with hopesfor a future that was now far behind him, with plans for elena and the kids that werenow a cruel mockery, with friendly memories of saul and landers, now long dead, that hecould not look at it unmoved. "let's try again," said shearing quietly."if we could locate the titanite definitely it might make all the difference. we'll hardlyhave time to search all six of the bins." glad of the distraction, hyrst tried. he linkedhis mind to shearing's and they probed with this double probe, one after the other, thesix hoists and the bins beneath them, while the raft fell whistling down the air.
it was the same as all the tries before. thebins had been empty for more than a decade, but the residual radiation was still hot enoughto present a luminous haze to the eyes of the mind, fogging everything around it. "wait a minute," hyrst said. "let's use ourwits. look at the way those hoists are placed, in a wide crescent. now if i was macdonald,coming in from the mountains with a load of titanite, and i wanted not to be seen, whichone would i pick?" "either one or six," said shearing, withouthesitation. "they're the farthest away from the buildings." "but number six is at the west end of thecrescent, and to reach it you would have to
go clear across the landing field." he pointedmentally to number one. "i'll bet on that one. shall we give it another try?" they did. this time, for a fleeting second,hyrst thought he had something. "so did i," said shearing. "sort of down underand behind." "yes," said hyrst. "look out!" his involuntarycry was caused by the sudden collision of the life-raft with a cloud. the vapor wasvery thick, and after the cruel clarity of space it made hyrst feel that he was smothering.shearing jockeyed the raft's meagre controls, and in a minute or two they were below thecloud and spiralling down toward the landing field. it was snowing.
"good," said shearing. "we'll hope it keepsup." they landed close to number one hoist andfloundered rapidly through the shallow drifts, carrying some things. the hatch had been sealedwith a plastic spray to prevent corrosion, and it took them several minutes to get itopen. inside the tower it was pitch black, but they did not need lights. their othersenses showed them the worn metal treads of the steps quite clearly. in the upper chamberthe indicator panels were dark and dead. hyrst shivered inside his suit. he had been hereso many times before, so long ago. "let's get busy," shearing said. they pulled on the rayproofs they had broughtwith them from the raft. without power the
lift was useless, but the skeleton cage, strippedof all its tools, was not too heavy for two strong men to swing clear of the shaft top.they made sure it would stay clear, and then sent down a light collapsible ladder. hyrstslid down first into the smooth, round, totally unlighted hole, that had one segment of itopen paralleling the machinery of the hoist. "take it carefully," shearing said, and slidafter him. clumsy in vac-suit and rayproof, hyrst descendedthe ladder with agonizing slowness. every impulse cried out for haste, but he knew ifhe hurried he would wind up at the bottom of the shaft as dead as macdonald. the bangingand knocking of their passage against the metal wall made a somber, hollow booming inthat enclosed space, and it seemed to hyrst
that the silent belts and cables of the hoisthummed a little in sympathy. it was probably only the blood humming in his own ears. "see anything yet?" "no." the vast strange glowing of the bin grew brighteras they approached it. the hoist was still "hot," and it glowed too, but nothing likethe concentration in the bin. "even with rayproofs, we can't stay closeto that too long." "i don't think we'll have to. macdonald wasonly human, and the bin was full then. he couldn't have stayed long either."
"nothing but fog. when you hit bottom, betteruse your light." at long last hyrst felt the bottom of theshaft under his boots. he stood aside from the ladder and switched on his belt lamp.in this case the physical eyes were better than the mental, being insensitive to radiation.instantly the gears and cams of the feeder assembly sprang into sharp relief on the openside of the shaft. shearing stumbled down off the ladder and switched on his own light. "where was it we thought we saw something?" "down under and behind." hyrst turned slowlyaround, questing. the shaft was unbroken except by the repair opening. he climbed throughit, with some difficulty, because nobody was
supposed to climb through it and the machinerywas placed for easy access with extension tools from the lift. the bin itself was nowdirectly opposite them, a big hopper cut deep in the solid rock and serving the feeder bysimple gravity. the feeder pretty well filled its own rocky chamber. a place might havebeen found beside it for something not too big, but the first man who came down on thelift would have seen it whether he was looking for it or not. shearing pointed. a dark opening pierced therock at one side. hyrst tried to see into it with his mental eyes, but the "fog" wasso dense and bright— he saw it, an unsubstantial ghostly shadow,but there. a square box some twenty feet down
the tunnel. shearing drew a quick sharp breath "let'sgo." they went into the tunnel, crouching, scrapingagainst the narrow sides. "look out for booby traps." "i don't see any—yet." the box sat in the middle of the tunnel. therewas no way to get around it, no way to see over it without lying on its top and wrigglingbetween it and the low roof. hyrst and shearing shut their eyes. "i'm not sure, but i think i see a wire. damnthe fog. can't tell where it goes—"
hyrst took cutters from his belt and slitheredcautiously over the box. his heart was hammering very hard and his hand shook so that he hadgreat difficulty getting the cutters and the wire together. the wire was attached to theback of the box, very crudely and hastily attached with a blob of plastic solder. itwas not until he had pinched the wire with the sharp metal cutter-teeth that he realizedthe plastic was non-metallic and the wire bare. and then, of course, it was too late. there must have been a simple energizer somewhereup ahead, still charging itself from the ample radiation source. the cutters flew out ofhyrst's hand in a shower of sparks, and in the darkness of the tunnel ahead there wasa sudden wild flare of light, and an explosion
of dust. a shock wave, not too great, hammeredpast hyrst's helmet. shearing yelled once, a protest broken short in mid-cry. then theywaited. the dust settled. the brief tremor of therock was stilled. in the roof of the tunnel, where the blasthad been, a broken dump-trap hung open, but nothing poured out of it but a handful ofblack dust. hyrst began to laugh. he lay on his bellyon top of the box of titanite and laughed. the tears ran out of his eyes and down hisnose and dropped onto the inside of his helmet. shearing hit him from behind. he hit him untilhe stopped laughing, and then hyrst shook his head and said.
"poor macdonald." "yeah. go ahead, you can cut the wire now." "such a lovely booby trap. but he wasn't figuringon time. they went away from here, shearing, you see? and when they went they drained offthe liquid graphite and took it with them. so there isn't anything left to flood thetunnel. pathetic, isn't it?" shearing hit him again. "cut the wire." he cut it. they scuffled backward down thetunnel, dragging the box. when they got back into the shaft where there was room to doit they opened up the box. "doesn't look like much, does it, for allthe trouble it's made?"
"no, it doesn't. but then gold doesn't looklike much, or uranium, or a handful of little dry seeds." shearing picked up a chunk ofthe rough, grayish ore. "you know what that is, hyrst? that's the stars." it was hyrst's turn to prod shearing intoquiet. the starship and the dream that went with it were still only an intellectual interestto him. they shared out the titanite into two webbing sacks. it made a light load foreach, hardly noticeable when clipped to a belt-ring at the back. hyrst felt suddenly very nervous. perhapsit was reaction, perhaps it was the memory of having been trapped in a similar hole onthe valhalla asteroid. perhaps it was a mental
premonition, obscured by the radioactive "fog".at any rate, he started to climb the ladder with almost suicidal haste, urging shearingon after him. the shaft seemed to be a mile high. it seemed to lengthen ahead of him ashe climbed, so that he was never any nearer the top. he knew it was only imagination,because he passed the level markers, but it was the closest thing to a nightmare he hadever experienced when he was broad awake. just after they had passed the e level mark,shearing spoke. "a ship has landed." hyrst looked mentally. the fog-effect wasnot so great now, and he could see quite clearly. it was a small ship, and two men were gettingout of it. it had stopped snowing.
"radar must have picked up the raft afterall," said shearing. "or else somebody spotted the jet-flares." he began to climb faster."we better get out of this before they come in." d level. hyrst's hands were cold and stiffinside his gauntlets, clumsy hooks to catch the slender rungs. the two men were standingoutside in the snow, peering around. c level. one of the two men saw the raft parkedby the hoist tower. he pointed, and they moved toward it. b level. hyrst's boots slipped and scrambled,banging the shaft wall. "christ," said shearing. "you sound like a temple gong. what are youtrying to do, alarm the whole moon?"
the men outside bent over the raft. they lookedat it. then they looked at the hoist tower. they left the raft and began to run, pullingguns out of their belts. a level. hyrst's breath roared in his helmetlike a great wind. he thought of the long dark way down that was below them, and howmacdonald had looked at the bottom of the shaft, and how he would take shearing withhim if he fell, and nobody would get to the stars, and vernon would go free. he set histeeth, and sobbed, and climbed. outside, the two men cautiously removed the hatch and steppedinto the tower. end of the ladder. a level floor to sprawlon. hyrst squirmed away from the shaft. he thought for a minute he was going to passout, and he fumbled with the oxygen valve,
making the mixture richer. his head beganto clear. shearing was now beside him. this time they had guns, too. shearing gave hima quick mental caution, not unless you have to. one of the two men was placing a tentativefoot on the stair that led up to where they were. the other man was close behind him.shearing took careful aim and fired, at half power. the harsh blue bolt did not strike eitherman. but they went reeling back in a cloud of burning flakes, and when shearing shoutedto them to drop their weapons and get out they did so, half stunned from the shock.hyrst and shearing leaped down the stairs, stopping only long enough to pick up the guns.then they scrambled outside. the two men were
running as hard as they could for their ship,but they had not gone far and shearing stopped them with another shot that sent a geyserof methane steam puffing up practically under their feet. "not yet," he said. "later." the two men stood, sullenly obedient. theywere both young, and not bad looking. just doing a job, hyrst thought. no real harm inthem, just doing a job, like so many people who never stop to worry about what the jobmeans. they both wore bellaver's insigne on their vac-suits. one of them said, as though he were recitinga lesson in which he had no real personal
interest, "you're trespassing on private property.you'll be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." "sure," said shearing. he motioned to thehoist tower. "back inside." the young men hesitated. "what you going todo?" "nothing fatal. it shouldn't take you morethan half an hour to break out again." he marched them to the hatch and saw theminside it. hyrst was watching the sky, the black star-glittering sky with the gloriousarch of the rings across it and one milky-bright curve of saturn visible and growing abovethe eastern horizon. "they're coming," he said mentally to shearing.
"good." he started to close the hatch, andone of the young men pointed suddenly to the sack clipped to shearing's belt. "you've been stealing something." "tell that to bellaver." "you bet i will. the fullest extent of thelaw, mister! the fullest extent—" the hatch closed. shearing jammed the fasteningmechanism so it could not be turned from the inside. then he went and stood beside hyrstin the glimmering plain, watching the ship drop down out of the rings. hyrst said, "they'll tell bellaver."
"naturally." "what will bellaver do?" "i'm not sure. something drastic. he wantsour starship so hard he'd murder his own children to get it. you can see why. in itself it'spriceless, a hundred years ahead of its time, but that's not all. it's what it stands for.to us it means freedom and safety. to bellaver it means—" he gestured toward the sky, and hyrst nodded,seeing in shearing's mind the image of a gigantic bellaver, ten times bigger than god, gatheringthe whole galaxy into his arms. "i wish you luck," said hyrst. he unhookedthe sack of titanite from his belt and gave
it to shearing. "it'll take a little whileto refine the stuff and build the relays, even so. that may be time enough. come backfor me if you can." "vernon?" "yes." shearing nodded. "i said i'd help you gethim. i will." "no. this is my job. i'll do it alone. youbelong there, with them. with christina." "hyrst. listen—" "don't tell me where the starship is. i mightnot hold out as well as you." "all right, but hyrst—in case we can't getback—look for us away from the sun. not
toward it." "i'll remember." the ship landed. shearing entered it, carryingthe titanite. and hyrst walked away, toward the closed and buried buildings of the refinery. it had begun to snow again.chapter ix it was cold and dark and infinitely sad. hyrstwandered through the rooms, feeling like a ghost, thinking like one. everything had beenremoved from the buildings. the living quarters were now mere cubicular tombs for a lot ofmemories, absolutely bare of any human or familiar touch. it felt very strange to hyrst.he kept telling himself that fifty years had
passed, but he could not believe it. it seemedonly a few months since macdonald's death, months occupied by investigation and trialand the raging, futile anguish of the unjustly accused. the long interval of the pseudo-deathwas no more than a night's sleep, to a mind unconscious of passing time. now it seemedthat saul and landers should still be here, and there should be lights and warmth andmovement. there was nothing. he could not bring himselfto stay in the living quarters. he went into one of the storerooms and sat on a concretebuttress and waited. it was a long and dreadful wait. during it all the emotional storms occasionedby the murder and its aftermath passed through his mind. scenes with saul and landers. sceneswith the investigators, with macdonald's family,
with lawyers and reporters. scenes with elena.the whole terrible nightmare, leading inevitably to that culminating moment when the door ofthe airlock opened and he joined the sleepers on the plain. when it was all over hyrst feltshaken and exhausted, but calm. the face of vernon burned brightly in his mind's eye. without bothering to open the steel-shutteredwindows, he watched the two young men force their way out of the hoist tower. he watchedthem run to their ship and chatter excitedly over their radio. by the time, much later,that bellaver's yacht came screaming down to the landing field on a flaming burst ofjets, he could watch it with almost the cool detachment of a spectator. he was carefulto keep his shields up tight against vernon,
and he did not think the other lazarite wouldbe likely to look for him. vernon seemed to be fully occupied with bellaver. "what else would they be stealing, you fool?you should have, killed hyrst before, when you had the chance." "somebody had to take the blame for macdonald.anyway, you had him aboard the happy dream. why didn't you hang onto him?" "don't get insolent with me, vernon. i canturn you over to the police anytime, for any one of a hundred things." "not without tipping your hand, bellaver."
"it would be worth it." a string of foul names,delivered in a furious scream. "you couldn't locate the titanite, but they did, just assoon as they got hold of hyrst." "all right, mr. god almighty bellaver, turnme in. but if it was the titanite they took, you haven't a chance of finding that starshipwithout me." "you haven't done very well at it so far." "in the excitement, they may get careless.but it's up to you." more foul language, but bellaver did not repeathis threat. he and vernon, with a couple of other men, got into vac-suits and lumberedacross the snow to the hoist tower. from inside the cold dark buried building, hyrst watchedthem, and thought hard and fast, and smiled.
presently he left the building and circledcautiously through the snowy gloom until he was in range of their helmet-communicators.he could hear them aurally now, but he kept watching them, esper-fashion. they inspected the empty lead box, and theyoung men told what had happened, and bellaver turned his raging fury against them. therewas no longer any doubt that the titanite had been found and taken away, and bellaversaw the stars and worlds and moons, the bright glowing plunder of a galaxy, slipping awayfrom him. he threatened the two young men with every punishment he could think of fornot having stopped the thieves, and one of the young men turned white and anxious, andthe other one flushed brick red and shook
his fist close to bellaver's helmet. "you go to hell," he said. "i don't care whoyou are. you go to hell." he walked out of the hoist tower, with hiscompanion stumbling at his heels, and bellaver screamed after them, and behind him the crewmenlooked shocked and contemptuous, and vernon laughed openly, showing the edges of his teeth. the two young men got into their ship andwent away. bellaver turned and stood looking at the empty box. he seemed exhausted now,hopeless, like a child about to break down and cry. vernon went over and kicked the box. "hyrst had the advantage," he said. "he knewmacdonald and he knew the refinery. even so,
it must have been pure guesswork. nobody couldprobe through that fog." "what are we going to do?" asked bellaver."vernon, what are we going to do?" hyrst spoke for the first time, his voiceringing loud and startling in their ears. "don't ask vernon," he said. "ask me." there was a moment of complete silence. hyrstfelt vernon's mind brush his, and he permitted himself one cruel flash of triumph. then everybodyspoke at once, vernon explaining why he hadn't spotted hyrst—who could have figured he'dstay behind at a time like this?—the crew-members nervously fingering their guns, and bellavercrying, "hyrst! is that you, hyrst? where are you?"
"where i can get the first shot at anybodycoming out of the tower, and where nobody from the yacht will ever reach me. tell themall to stay put. go ahead, bellaver, you want to hear me out, don't you?" "what do you want to say?" "i can find you that starship. tell them,bellaver." he told them. and vernon said to bellaver,"if he's willing to betray his friends, why would he get them the titanite?" he laughed."it isn't even a good trick." "oh, yes, it is," said hyrst softly. "it'sa very good one. the best. you see, i don't care about the starship or the titanite. alli care about is the man who killed macdonald.
they were sort of bound up together. everhear of latent impressions, vernon? i was unconscious, but my ears heard and my eyessaw, and my brain remembered, when it was shown how." "that was fifty years ago," said vernon. "peopledon't understand about us. nobody would believe you if you told them." "they would if bellaver told them. they wouldif bellaver explained out loud about the lazarites, about what happens to men when they go throughthe door. they'd listen to him. and there must be others who know, or at least suspect."hyrst paused, long enough to smile. "the beauty of that is, bellaver, that you're in the clear.you're not responsible for a murder your grandfather
had done. you could swear you didn't evenknow about it until now." vernon said to bellaver, "if you do this tome, i'll blast you wide open." "what can he do, bellaver?" hyrst shouted."he can talk, but you have the money, the position, the legal powers. you can talk louder.and when they know the truth, will anybody take the word of a lazarite against a humanman?" his voice rose higher and louder, drowningout vernon's cry. "are you afraid of him, bellaver? are youso afraid of him you'll let the starship go?" "hold him." bellaver said, and the crewmenheld vernon fast. "wait a minute, hyrst," he said. "what's your angle? is it just revenge?are you selling out your friends for something
over and done half a century ago? i don'tbelieve it, hyrst." hyrst said slowly, "i can answer that, soeven you will understand. i have children. they're getting old now. they've lived alltheir lives thinking their father killed a man, not for love or for justice or in self-defense,but for sheer cold-blooded greed. i want them to know it wasn't so." "hold him!" bellaver said. the crewmen struggledwith vernon, and vernon said viciously to bellaver, "he'll never lead you to the starship. i canread his mind. when you've turned me in and blackened your grandfather's name to clearhim, he'll laugh in your face. what are you,
bellaver, a fool?" "am i, hyrst?" "that's for you to find out. i'm offeringyou the starship for vernon, and that's fair enough, because i want him as bad as you wantit. and i can tell you, bellaver, if you decide to play it smart and call in your guards tohunt me down, it will do you no good. i won't be alive when they take me." silence. in his mind's eye hyrst could seethe beads of sweat running down bellaver's face behind his helmet. he could see vernon'sface, too. it gave him pleasure. "it should be an easy decision, bellaver,"he said. "after all, suppose i am lying. what
have you got to lose but vernon? and withhis record, that isn't much." "hold him," said bellaver. "all right, hyrst.i'll do it. but i'll tell you now. if you lie to me, there won't be any re-awakeningin another fifty years. this will be for good." "fair enough," said hyrst. "i'm putting mygun away. i'm coming in." he walked quickly through the snow towardthe tower. chapter x on the bridge of his yacht, bellaver turnedto hyrst and said, "i've done what you wanted. now find me thatstarship." hyrst nodded. "take off."
the rockets roared and thundered, and theswift yacht leaped quivering into the sky. hyrst sat quietly in his recoil chair. hefelt a different man, changed entirely in the last few days. much had happened in thosedays. bellaver had got busy on the radio even beforehis yacht left titan, and the story of the lazarites had burst like a nova upon the solarsystem. already there were instances of suspected lazarites being mobbed by their neighbors,and government was frantically concerning itself with all the new, far-reaching implicationsof the humane penalty. close on the heels of this bomb-shell hadcome vernon's angry accusations against bellaver, delivered as soon as he was given to the authoritieson mars. during the twenty martian hours necessary
for formal charge and the taking of depositions,and while bellaver's yacht was being refueled, vernon's story of the starship went out onall the interworld circuits. and it had been as christina had said. the whole solar systemwas frantic to have the lazarites caught and stopped, and every man in space became a self-appointedsearcher for the hidden starship. bellaver, letting his lawyers worry about vernon's accusations,had already laid formal claim to that ship, based on the value of the stolen titanite. "where?" demanded bellaver now, in a furyof impatience. "where?" "wait," said hyrst. "there are too many watching,ready to follow you. they know what you're after. wait till we're clear of mars."
he sat in his chair, looking into space. hisdrive was all gone, and the anger that had fed it. somewhere his son and his two daughterswere drawing their first free breaths relieved of a burden they should never have had tocarry. they knew now that he was innocent, and they could think of him now without bitterness,speak his name without hate. he had done what he had set out to do, and he was finished.he knew what was ahead of him, but he was too tired to care. the yacht went fast, away from the old redweary planet. hyrst thought of shearing and christina and the others, laboring over theirship on the dark plain. he felt safe in doing this, because vernon was gone and the grayevil man who had helped to torture shearing
aboard the happy dream was still in an earthhospital recovering from the blow hyrst had given him. they were out of reach, and hyrstwas the only lazarite bellaver had. he did not try to get through to shearingbecause he knew that was impossible, and there was no reason for it anyway. he let his mindstretch out and rove through the nighted spaces beyond saturn, beyond uranus and neptune,beyond the black and frigid bulk of pluto. he did not see the ship nor touch a lazaritemind, and so he knew that they were still holding the cloak, still hiding from possiblebetrayal. he withdrew his mind, and wished them luck. "we're clear of mars," said bellaver. "whichway?"
"that way," said hyrst, and pointed. "towardthe sun." the yacht swerved and steadied on a new course,toward the distant glare of sol. and bellaver said, "what's the exact location?" "can you trust every man in this crew?" askedhyrst. "can you be sure not one of them would give it away, when we stop to refuel? you'renot the only one that knows about the starship now, remember." "you could tell me." "you're too impatient, bellaver. you'd wantto head straight there, and it won't be that
easy. they have defenses. we have to be careful,or they'll destroy the ship before we reach "or finish their relays and go." bellavergave hyrst a long look. "i'll trust you because i have to. but i wasn't making an empty threat.and i'll do it so there won't be any thought of murder. you'd better find me that ship,hyrst." from then on, bellaver hardly slept. he pacedthe corridors and haunted the control room and watched hyrst with a gnawing, agonizingdoubt. hyrst began to feel for him a distant sort of pity, as he might have felt for aman afflicted by some disease brought on by his own excesses. the yacht passed the orbit of earth, refueledat an obscure space station, and sped on.
hyrst continued to stall bellaver, orderinga change of course from time to time to keep him happy. at intervals he let his mind rovethrough those dark spaces they were leaving farther behind with every passing second.each time it was a greater effort, but still there was no sign of the starship or its base,and so he knew that the labor still went on. by the time the yacht reached the orbit ofvenus a fan-shaped cordon of other ships had collected around and behind her drawn by theword that bellaver was on his way to find the starship. government patrols were in constanttouch. "they can't interfere," said bellaver. "i'vegot a lien on that ship, a formal claim." "sure," said hyrst. "but you'd better be thefirst to find it. possession, you know. bear
off a bit. mislead them. they're sure nowthey know where you're going." "don't they?" said bellaver, looking aheadat the glittering spark that was mercury. "there isn't anyplace else to go." "isn't there?" bellaver stared at him, narrow-eyed. "thelegend of the vulcan was exploded by the first explorers. there is no intra-mercurial world." hyrst shot a swift stabbing mental glancetoward pluto. still nothing. he sighed and said easily, "there wasn't then. there is now."
he brazened out the look of incredulity onbellaver's face. "these are lazarites, remember, not men. theybuilt a place for themselves where nobody would ever think to look. not a planet, ofcourse, just a floating workshop. a satellite. and now you know. so you can let them beatyou to mercury." "all right," said bellaver softly. "all right." they passed mercury, lost in the blaze ofthe sun, and only a few ships followed them, far behind. the rest stopped to search thecraggy valleys of the twilight belt, and the bleak icefields of the dark side. and now hyrst had run his string out, andhe knew it. when no intra-mercurial satellite
showed up, physically or on detector-screens,there was no further lie to tell. he drove his mind out and away, to the cold planetswheeling on the fringes of sol's light, and he sweated, and prayed, and hoped that nothinghad gone wrong. and suddenly the cloak was dropped, and he saw a lonesome chip of rockbeyond pluto, all hollowed out for shops and living quarters, and the great ship standingin the mile-long plain, with the stars all drifted overhead. and the ship lifted fromthe plain, circled upward, and suddenly was not. hyrst was bitterly sorry that he was not aboard.but he told bellaver, "you can stop looking now. they've got away."
he watched bellaver die, standing erect onhis feet, still breathing, but dying inside with the last outgoing of hope. "i thought you were lying," he said, "butit was the only chance i had." he nodded, looking toward the shuttered port with theinsufferable blaze outside. he said, in a flat, dead voice, "if you were put out here,bound, in a lifeboat, headed toward the sun—yes. i could make up a story to fit that." in the same toneless voice, he called hismen. and suddenly the yacht lurched over shuddering in the backwash of some tremendous energy.hyrst and the others were flung scattering against the bulk-heads, and the lights wentout, and the instruments went dead.
beyond the port, on the unshuttered side awayfrom the sun, a vast dark shape had materialized out of nothing, to hang close in space besidethe yacht. hyrst heard in his mind, strong and clear,the voice of shearing saying, "didn't i tell you the brotherhood stands by its own? besides,we couldn't make a liar out of you, now could we?" hyrst began to laugh, just a little bit hysterically.he told bellaver, "there's your starship. and shearing says if i'm not alive when hecomes aboard to get me, that they won't be as careful about warping space when they goaway as they were when they came." bellaver did not say anything. he sat on thedeck where the shock had thrown him, not speaking.
he was still sitting there when hyrst passedthrough the airlock into the starship's boat, and he did not move even when the great shipvanished silently into whatever mysterious ultra-space the minds of the lazarites hadunlocked, outbound for the limitless freedom of the universe, where the wheeling galaxiesthunder on forever across infinity and the stars burn bright, and there is nothing tostop the march of the legion of lazarus. and who knew, who could tell, where that marchwould end? aboard the starship, already a million milesaway, hyrst said to christina. "when they brought me back from beyond the door, thatwas re-awakening. but this—this is being born again."
she did not answer that. but she took hishand and smiled.
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