The Collection (82 page)

Crag
asked,
^"
How long will it take?"

^"
For something this size? I'd
guess half an hour to an hour. But we won't have to wait till it's completely
collapsed. When it's gone down enough that I'm sure-"

Crag
looked about him, at the spaceship behind them, bumping gently against the
surface of the asteroid, right at the shadow line that divided night and day.
Strange that a world only twenty or thirty yards in diameter should have night
and day-and yet darkness on the night side would be even denser than the
darkness on the night side of Earth.

Time,
Crag thought,
and its relation to distance are
strange on a world like this.
If he walked twenty paces ahead and put
himself right under distant, tiny Sol, it would be high noon. Thirty or forty
more steps-held down to the light asteroid only by the gravplates on the shoes
of the spacesuit-and he'd be in the middle of the night side; it would be
midnight.

He
chuckled at the fancy. "It's a small world," he said, remembering
that Olliver had said that to him in the conversation between judge and
prisoner at the end of the trial, the conversation that had led to all of this.

Olliver
laughed excitedly, almost hysterically.
^"
And it
^'
s getting
smaller already-I think. Don't you, Crag, Evadne?
^"

Crag
looked about him and tried to judge, but if there
^'
d been any
shrinkage as yet, he couldn't tell. He heard Evadne say, "I'm not sure
yet, Jon."

Olliver
said, "We can be sure in a few seconds. I've got a rule.
^"
He took a steel foot rule from one of the pockets of his spacesuit and laid it
down on a flat expanse of rock. He picked up a loose bit of rock and made a
scratch opposite each end of the rule.

Evadne
walked over near Crag. Her eyes, through the plastic of the helmet, looked into
his intensely, searchingly. He got the idea that she wanted to ask him a question
and didn't dare-because Olliver would have heard it too-but was trying to find
the answer by looking at him and reading his face. He met her gaze squarely,
trying to guess what she was thinking or wondering. It hadn't anything to do,
he felt sure just then, with the fact that he was a man and she a woman. It was
something more important than that.

He
heard Olliver
^'
s voice say,
^"
1
think
so. I think it's-Wait, let's be sure."

He
turned away from Evadne and watched Olliver as Olliver watched the rule and the
scratches on the rock. There was tension among them, but no one spoke. A minute
or two went by, and then Olliver stood up and faced them.

His
eyes were shining-almost as though with madness-but his voice was calm now. He
said,
^"
It works." He looked from one to the other of them
and then his eyes stopped on Crag. He said,
^"
Crag, your million
credits is waste paper. How would you like to be second in command of the
Solar System?"

For
the first time, Crag wondered if Olliver were mad.

The
thought must have showed in his face, for Olliver shook his head. "I'm not
crazy, Crag. Nor do I know any commercial use for neutronium. That was
camouflage.

Listen,
Crag-
A few of these little gadgets set up in hidden places on each of the
occupied planets, set up with radio controls so they can be triggered off from
wherever I may be-that
^'
s all it will take.
If this works on an
asteroid-and it has-it
^'
ll work on an object of any size. A chain
reaction doesn't care whether it works in a peanut or a planet."

Crag
said slowly,
^"
You mean-"

^"
You might as well know all of
it, Crag. There isn
^'
t any political party behind this. That was just
talk. The only way peace can be kept in the system is by the rule of
one
man.
But I'll need help, Crag, and you
^'
re the man I'd rather
have, in spite of-" His voice changed. "Evadne, that
^'
s
useless.
^"

Crag
looked quickly toward the woman and saw that she
^'
d pulled a heater
from the pocket of her spacesuit and was aiming it at Olliver. Olliver laughed.
He said, "I thought it was about time for you to show your colors, my
dear. I expected that, really. I took the charge out of that heater.
^"

Evadne
pulled the trigger and nothing happened. Cragsaw her face go pale-but it seemed
anger rather than fear.

She
said, "All right, you beat me on that one, Jon. But someone will stop you,
somehow. Do you realize that you couldn't do what you plan without destroying a
planet or two-billions of lives, Jon-and that Earth itself would have to be one
of the ones you destroyed? Because Earth is the-the fightingest one and
wouldn't knuckle under to you, even on a threat like that? Jon, you'd kill off
more than half of the human race, just to rule the ones who are left!"

She
didn't drop the useless heater, but it hung at her side.

Olliver
had one in his own hand now. He said, "Take it away from her, Crag."

Crag
looked from one of them to the other. And he looked around him. The asteroid
was
shrinking. There was now a definite diminution in diameter, perhaps by a
tenth.

Olliver
spoke again and more sharply. "Take it away from her, Crag."

Olliver's
blaster covered both of them. He could have killed Evadne where she stood; the
command was meaningless, and Crag knew it was a test. Olliver was making him
line up, one way or the other.

Crag
thought of Earth, that he hated. And he thought of it as a dead little ball of
heavy matter-and he didn't hate it that much. But to be second in command-not
of a world, but of
worlds—

Olliver
said,
^"
Your last chance, Crag. And listen-don't think I'm blind
to you and Evadne. But I didn
^'
t care. She
^'
s been spying
on me all along. I know the outfit she belongs to-a quixotic group that's
trying to end system-wide corruption another way, a way that won't work. She's
a spy, Crag, and 1 don
^'
t want her.

"Here
are my final terms and you've got a few seconds to decide. Disarm her now, and
I won't kill her. We'll take her back, and you can have her if you're silly
enough to want her-out of billions of women who'll be yours for the taking.
^"

Maybe
that was all it took. Crag decided.

Be
reached for Evadne with his good hand, seeing the look of cold contempt in her
eyes-and the puzzlement in her eves as he swung her around instead of reaching
for the useless gun she held. He said quickly,
"Night side!"
He
propelled her forward ahead of him and then ran after her. He hoped Olliver's
reflexes would be slow. They
had
to be.

On a
tiny and shrinking asteroid, the horizon isn't far. It was a few steps on this
one, and they were over it in less than a second. He heard Olliver curse and
felt a wave of heat go past him, just too late. And then they were in the
darkness.

He
found Evadne by running into her and grabbed her and held on because there
wasn't going to be much time. In seconds, Olliver would realize that he didn
^'
t
have to come after them, that all he had to do was to get into the ship and
warp off-or even just close the door and sit it out until they were dead. Even
though Olliver wasn't a qualified pilot he could, with the help of the manual
of instructions inside the ship, have a fair chance of getting it back to Earth
or Mars.

So
Crag said quickly,
^"
I can stop him. But it
^'
s
curtains for both of us, too. Shall I?"

She
caught her breath, but there wasn
^'
t any hesitation in her answer.
"Hurry, Crag. Hurry."

He
ran on around the night side-ten steps-to the ship. He braced his feet as he
lifted it and then threw it out into space-the whole pound weight of it. It
seemed to go slowly, but it kept going. It would keep going for a long time,
from that throw. It might come back, eventually, but not for hours-and the air
in spacesuits of this type was good for only half an hour or so without processing
or renewal.

Olliver
would never rule a system now, only the tiniest world.

But
all three of them were dead. He heard Olliver scream madly with rage and saw
him come running over the horizon for a shot at him. Crag laughed and ducked
back into blackness. He ran into Evadne, who had followed him. He caught her
quickly as he crashed into her. He said,
^"
Give me the heater,
quick,
^"
and took it from her hand.

He
could sec Olliver standing there, heater in hand, just where the spaceship had
been, peering into the darkness, trying to see where to shoot them. But he
could sec Olliver and Olliver, on the day side, couldn't see him.

He'd
rather have had his metal hand to throw-he was used to using that and could hit
a man
^'
s head at twenty or thirty feet. But the heater-gun would
serve now; Olliver wasn't even ten feet away and he couldn
^'
t miss.

He
didn
^'
t miss. The missile shattered Olliver's helmet.

Crag
walked forward into the light, keeping between Evadne and Olliver so she
wouldn't have to see. A man whose helmet has been shattered in space isn't a
pleasant sight.

He
reached down and got the disintegrator out of Olliver's pocket. He used it.

Evadne
came up and took his arm as he stood there, looking upward, seeing a distant
gleam of sunlight on an object that was still moving away from them. He wished
now he hadn
^'
t thrown the spaceship so hard; had he tossed it lightly
it might conceivably have returned before the air in his and Evadne's
spacesuits ran out. But he couldn
^'
t have been sure he could get
Olliver before Olliver, who had a loaded heater, could get him. And when the
asteroid got small enough, the night side would no longer have been a
protection. You can hide on the night side of a world-but not when it gets as small
as a basketball.

Evadne
said,
^"
Thanks, Crag. You were-Is
wonderful
too hackneyed
a word?"

Crag
grinned at her. He said, "It's a wonderful word." He put his arms
around her.

And
then laughed. Here he was with two hundred thousand credits-a fortune-in his
pocket and the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. And her arms were around
him too and-you can't even kiss a woman in a spacesuit! Any more than you can
spend a fortune on an asteroid without even a single tavern on it.

An
asteroid that was now less than ten yards in diameter.

Evadne
laughed too, and he was glad, very glad of that.

It
was
funny-if you saw it that way-and it made things easier in this last moment
that she could see it that way too.

He
saw she was breathing with difficulty. She said, "Crag-my dear-this suit
must not have had its tank fully charged with oxygen. I'm afraid I can't-stay
with you much longer."

He
held her tighter. He couldn
^'
t think of anything to say.

She
said, "But we stopped him, Crag. Someday humanity will get itself out of the
mess it's in now. And when it does, there'll still-be an Earth-for it to live
on."

"Was
he right, Evadne? I mean, about your being a member of some secret
organization?
^"

"No.
He either made that up or imagined it. I was just his wife, Crag. But I'd stopped
loving him months ago. I knew, though, he planned to buy or steal that gadget
of Eisen
^'
s-he
^'
d have got it somehow, even if we hadn't
helped him. And I suspected, but didn't know, that he was planning
something-bad. I stayed with him so I'd have a chance to try to stop him if-I
was right.
^"

She
was breathing harder. Her arms tightened around him. She said, "Crag, I
want that gadget. I
^'
ll use it on myself; I won
^'
t ask you
to. But it will be sudden and painless, not like this." She was fighting
for every breath now, but she laughed again. "Guess I'm lying, Crag. I
^'
m
not afraid to die either way. But I've seen people who died this way and they
^'
re-well-I
don
^'
t want you to see me-like that. I'd-rather-
^“

He
pressed it into her hand. He tightened his arms one last time and then stepped
quickly back because he could hear and see how much pain she was in now, how
every breath was becoming agony for her. He looked away, as he knew she wanted
him to.

And
when he looked back, after a little while, there was nothing there to see;
nothing at all.

Except
the disintegrator itself, lying there on a sphere now only six feet across. He
picked it up. There was still one thing to do. Someone, sometime, might find
this collapsed asteroid, attracted to it by the fact that his detector showed
a mass greater than the bulk shown in a visiplate. If he found the gadget
clinging there beside it—