The Edmond Hamilton Megapack: 16 Classic Science Fiction Tales (15 page)

D Level. Hyrst’s hands were cold and stiff inside his gauntlets, clumsy hooks to catch the slender rungs. The two men were standing outside in the snow, peering around.

C Level. One of the two men saw the raft parked by 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 you trying to do, alarm the whole moon?”

The men outside bent over the raft. They looked at it. Then they looked at the hoist tower. They left the raft and began to run, pulling guns out of their belts.

A Level. Hyrst’s breath roared in his helmet like a great wind. He thought of the long dark way down that was below them, and how MacDonald had looked at the bottom of the shaft, and how he would take Shearing with him if he fell, and nobody would get to the stars, and Vernon would go free. He set his teeth, and sobbed, and climbed. Outside, the two men cautiously removed the hatch and stepped into the tower.

End of the ladder. A level floor to sprawl on. Hyrst squirmed away from the shaft. He thought for a minute he was going to pass out, and he fumbled with the oxygen valve, making the mixture richer. His head began to clear. Shearing was now beside him. This time they had guns, too. Shearing gave him a quick mental caution,
Not unless you have to
. One of the two men was placing a tentative foot 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 either man. But they went reeling back in a cloud of burning flakes, and when Shearing shouted to 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 geyser of methane steam puffing up practically under their feet.

“Not yet,” he said. “Later.”

The two men stood, sullenly obedient. They were both young, and not bad looking. Just doing a job, Hyrst thought. No real harm in them, just doing a job, like so many people who never stop to worry about what the job means. They both wore Bellaver’s insigne on their vac-suits.

One of them said, as though he were reciting a 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 the hoist tower. “Back inside.”

The young men hesitated. “What you going to do?”

“Nothing fatal. It shouldn’t take you more than half an hour to break out again.”

He marched them to the hatch and saw them inside it. Hyrst was watching the sky, the black star-glittering sky with the glorious arch of the Rings across it and one milky-bright curve of Saturn visible and growing above the eastern horizon.

“They’re coming,” he said mentally to Shearing.

“Good.” He started to close the hatch, and one 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 the law, mister! The fullest extent—”

The hatch closed. Shearing jammed the fastening mechanism so it could not be turned from the inside. Then he went and stood beside Hyrst in 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 wants our starship so hard he’d murder his own children to get it. You can see why. In itself it’s priceless, 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, gathering the whole galaxy into his arms.

“I wish you luck,” said Hyrst. He unhooked the sack of Titanite from his belt and gave it to Shearing. “It’ll take a little while to refine the stuff and build the relays, even so. That may be time enough. Come back for me if you can.”

“Vernon?”

“Yes.”

Shearing nodded. “I said I’d help you get him. I will.”

“No. This is my job. I’ll do it alone. You belong there, with them. With Christina.”

“Hyrst. Listen—”

“Don’t tell me where the starship is. I might not hold out as well as you.”

“All right, but Hyrst—in case we can’t get back—look for us away from the Sun. Not toward it.”

“I’ll remember.”

The ship landed. Shearing entered it, carrying the 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. Hyrst wandered through the rooms, feeling like a ghost, thinking like one. Everything had been removed from the buildings. The living quarters were now mere cubicular tombs for a lot of memories, 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 seemed only a few months since MacDonald’s death, months occupied by investigation and trial and the raging, futile anguish of the unjustly accused. The long interval of the pseudo-death was no more than a night’s sleep, to a mind unconscious of passing time. Now it seemed that Saul and Landers should still be here, and there should be lights and warmth and movement.

There was nothing. He could not bring himself to stay in the living quarters. He went into one of the storerooms and sat on a concrete buttress and waited. It was a long and dreadful wait. During it all the emotional storms occasioned by the murder and its aftermath passed through his mind. Scenes with Saul and Landers. Scenes with 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 of the airlock opened and he joined the sleepers on the plain. When it was all over Hyrst felt shaken and exhausted, but calm. The face of Vernon burned brightly in his mind’s eye.

Without bothering to open the steel-shuttered windows, he watched the two young men force their way out of the hoist tower. He watched them 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 of jets, he could watch it with almost the cool detachment of a spectator. He was careful to keep his shields up tight against Vernon, and he did not think the other Lazarite would be 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 can turn 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 as soon as they got hold of Hyrst.
”

“
All right, Mr. God Almighty Bellaver, turn me in. But if it was the Titanite they took, you haven’t a chance of finding that starship without 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 repeat his threat. He and Vernon, with a couple of other men, got into vac-suits and lumbered across the snow to the hoist tower. From inside the cold dark buried building, Hyrst watched them, and thought hard and fast, and smiled. Presently he left the building and circled cautiously 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 the young men told what had happened, and Bellaver turned his raging fury against them. There was no longer any doubt that the Titanite had been found and taken away, and Bellaver saw the stars and worlds and moons, the bright glowing plunder of a galaxy, slipping away from him. He threatened the two young men with every punishment he could think of for not having stopped the thieves, and one of the young men turned white and anxious, and the other one flushed brick red and shook his fist close to Bellaver’s helmet.

“You go to hell,” he said. “I don’t care who you are. You go to hell.”

He walked out of the hoist tower, with his companion stumbling at his heels, and Bellaver screamed after them, and behind him the crewmen looked shocked and contemptuous, and Vernon laughed openly, showing the edges of his teeth.

The two young men got into their ship and went 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 knew MacDonald and he knew the refinery. Even so, it must have been pure guesswork. Nobody could probe 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 voice ringing loud and startling in their ears.

“Don’t ask Vernon,” he said. “Ask me.”

There was a moment of complete silence. Hyrst felt Vernon’s mind brush his, and he permitted himself one cruel flash of triumph. Then everybody spoke at once, Vernon explaining why he hadn’t spotted Hyrst—who could have figured he’d stay behind at a time like this?—the crew-members nervously fingering their guns, and Bellaver crying,

“Hyrst! Is that you, Hyrst? Where are you?”

“Where I can get the first shot at anybody coming out of the tower, and where nobody from the yacht will ever reach me. Tell them all 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’s a very good one. The best. You see, I don’t care about the starship or the Titanite. All I care about is the man who killed MacDonald. They were sort of bound up together. Ever hear of latent impressions, Vernon? I was unconscious, but my ears heard and my eyes saw, and my brain remembered, when it was shown how.”

“That was fifty years ago,” said Vernon. “People don’t understand about us. Nobody would believe you if you told them.”

“They would if Bellaver told them. They would if Bellaver explained out loud about the Lazarites, about what happens to men when they go through the 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 even know about it until now.”

Vernon said to Bellaver, “If you do this to me, 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 human man?”

His voice rose higher and louder, drowning out Vernon’s cry.

“Are you afraid of him, Bellaver? Are you so afraid of him you’ll let the starship go?”

“Hold him.” Bellaver said, and the crewmen held 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’t believe it, Hyrst.”

Hyrst said slowly, “I can answer that, so even you will understand. I have children. They’re getting old now. They’ve lived all their 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 struggled with Vernon, and Vernon said viciously to Bellaver,

“He’ll never lead you to the starship. I can read his mind. When you’ve turned me in and blackened your grandfather’s name to clear him, he’ll laugh in your face. What are you, Bellaver, a fool?”