“Oh,” I said pensively, “I’d say...about a year and a half.”
I was hoping that he was going to get hopping mad, and perhaps relax his guard enough for me to grab the gun and stop him getting to the trigger, which was back in his pocket.
But he didn’t get mad. His face just drained of its color, and he looked to be feeling very cold. He took the trigger out of his pocket and he showed it to me.
“I’ve had enough of your sense of humor,” he said. “If we don’t reach Mormyr soon I’m going to blow this ship like I blew the last. I’ll give you exactly half an hour.”
I could have made Mormyr in half that time, but I saw no point in telling him so. I thought it was time to test his reserve a little.
“You weren’t aboard the last ship when it blew,” I said. “You can’t blow the Swan without blowing yourself with it. Now you and I both know full well that you won’t do that.”
He chuckled. It was a horrible sound. I thought he was just trying to scare me.
“You don’t understand, do you?” he said.
“Well,” I said, “I can’t read your mind, but....” Thoughts began to strike me then, and I paused. If this crazy man really could read minds, how was it that he didn’t know that I was heading for Mormyr at a snail’s pace? How come it had taken him so long to figure out which switch turned on his suit caller? He could no more read minds than I.
“You can’t read minds,” I said, half bemused, half accusing.
Unexpectedly, I got the reaction I’d been hoping for before. Hut there was no chance of taking advantage of it. He leaped backward from the cradle as if he’d been stung. I watched his fingers whiten around the barrel of the gun, and for a couple of seconds I almost believed that I was shot. But neither beam nor bullet came out of the gun. He’d moved his finger from the firing stud at the last moment.
“I can read your mind,” he said, his voice thinning out into a hiss. “I know exactly what’s coming out of your mind.”
“Tell me,” I invited.
“Hate,” he said, putting some hate of his own into the way he said it. “Hate and fear.”
“Well,” I said, keeping outwardly calm and as offhand as was possible. “I must admit that you’re not exactly my favorite person at this particular moment in time, and I’m quite willing to concede that the way you’re waving that gun around is a little worrying. I might describe my mental state as apprehensive. But I’m not radiating hate and fear, now am I? Be reasonable.”
“Hate,” he said, and his fingers whitened again as he squeezed the gun barrel, burning me to ash in his imagination—but only in his imagination. “Hate and fear.” He was still hissing slightly. But his voice was trailing off into a whisper.
“You can’t read minds,” I told him flatly. “You can’t read a single thing in my mind.”
Be careful, warned the wind. He’s crazy. He thinks he can!
Maslax looked at me as if I were a poisonous snake. “I need you,” he said. “I need you. To take me to Mormyr. You’re the only man who can. But I don’t need anybody else.”
He stepped back, half turning to where Eve and Ecdyon waited in the corner. Eve was seated now: Ecdyon was still standing, slightly behind her. Maslax grabbed Eve by the wrist, but only with two fingers, because he had the bomb-trigger in the same hand. He yanked at her. She stayed seated, freeing her wrist without difficulty. Maslax spun, and jabbed the gun into her face.
“Get up!” he commanded.
Eve sullenly rose to her feet.
“We’re going to Mormyr,” said Maslax. “Fast. Otherwise I’m going to kill her.”
I didn’t know how far I dared push him. It was Eve’s life at risk, and, if he was as crazy as he seemed he might well kill her.
“You need her too,” I said. “I need her, if I’m going to take this ship down on Mormyr. I can’t do it without shots. She’s the only one who knows which shots to give me when.”
“You can tell the alien,” said Maslax. “I mean what I say. Any more trouble and I’ll burn her before your very eyes.”
I shook my head. “Kill her and we’ll never get down on Mormyr. There’s just not time on a drop like that to give orders and explanations. It has to be done fast and smooth and exactly right. Without Eve, I’d never make it. I wouldn’t stand a cat’s chance. If you can read my mind then you know that’s true.”
That caught him. It was a good line. I could see the doubt in his face, but I knew that he couldn’t admit that doubt in his own mind. He had to make up his mind now. Was Eve expendable or wasn’t she? Either way, I’d know. If he didn’t believe me, he’d keep using her. Either way, she’d stay alive.
He sneered at me, and I knew the news wasn’t good. He threw my gambit back at me. “I can read your mind,” he said. “You can make it without the shots. You know you can make it. You think you’re the best there is. It’ll hurt you, but you can make it. We don’t need the woman. So make up your mind now. Do we go to Mormyr, or do I kill her?”
“We go to Mormyr,” I said.
I turned back to the controls, set the hood back in position, and told Johnny what to do on the way to transfer. Even while we were building up to the transfer I was considering what a hideous mess we were now in. By taking the line of argument I had I had put myself in a difficult position. By claiming that Eve was necessary to the drop, I had tacitly, without thinking, conceded that a drop was an actual possibility. If I’d thought faster, I’d have claimed that the drop was impossible, and invited him to blow the ship, as one way dead was the same as another. But would that have worked? Wouldn’t he have begun to shoot one at a time? Would I rather try the drop than that? I thought fast, but no matter how fast, it looked as if I was going to have to brave the storms of Mormyr for a second time. And for what? For a crazy midget.
Once I’d made transfer, I had a few spare minutes. I thought I’d try to reason with him. I had no great hopes, but I had to try.
“Look,” I said, “it’s just not worth the risk. Even with Eve and all the shots just right, there’s only one chance in ten I can get down to the surface. And if I can’t hold her perfectly steady, she’ll tumble, and we’ll be stuck down there until we die. And that won’t take long, in those conditions. I know that ship might be worth a lot. But can’t you see that no matter how much it’s worth, it can’t be worth the risks we’ll be taking in trying to reach it?”
I heard Maslax laugh, but I didn’t dare leave the hood while we were transcee in order to look at him.
“It doesn’t matter if your ship is down there for all time,” he said. “We can all come back in the Varsovien. I’ll even guarantee to let you go before I take the Varsovien back to Pallant. You’ll live, all of you, if you’ll just do as you’re told.”
“It’s still not worth the risk,” I insisted.
“Oh, it’s worth it,” he said. “It’s worth it. You don’t understand. I keep telling you that you don’t understand but you won’t believe me, just like you won’t believe I can read your mind. They never believed me. Not any of them. They never took any notice. But I knew. I knew, because I could read their minds. They thought they could keep it from me. They thought they could block me out of their minds by just not looking at me, just not seeing me. But they didn’t understand. It’s worth it to me, to get the Fenris device. It’s worth all of life to me. It’s worth more than the world, more than the universe. You don’t understand, do you?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t.”
“I know what you think,” he said. “I can read your mind. You think I want to raise the Varsovien for someone else. You think the Gallacellans are paying me. You think Ferrier’s paying me. Well, Ferrier’s dead, and so is that girl of his. And I never talked to a filthy alien in my life. Nobody’s paying me for the Varsovien. I want it for myself. You think I want it so I can escape, don’t you? You think I want it so I can run away from the police, run away and sell it to some other world. Well, you’re wrong. I don’t want the
Fenris to sell. I don’t want it to escape. I want the Fenris device to use.”
“Use on who?” I asked faintly. I already knew.
“On all of them,” he said. “On all of them. The whole world. Pallant.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Johnny,” I said calmly—I had to be calm, in spite of everything—“we’re going down. I don’t think there’s anything else we can do.”
“Whatever you say,” he said.
“You’ve got to stay steady. Is the captain with you?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell him to get out. Tell him to go lie on his bunk and pray. I don’t want him in a position where he might so much as catch your eye. OK?”
“All right, Grainger.” Nick’s voice floated up from the depths. “I’m on my way.”
“Good. Now, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. Instead of going in on a long arc, like I did before, I’m going to go straight in. A vertical dive at high speed. I’m not going to pull out until I hit the garbage in the last few thousand feet, and then I’m going to pull out so that the storm wind sits on my tail, and I’m going to keep it there. That way I think I can cope with all the dirt and the vapor. If the wind changes while I’m pulling out, we’re dead, but it’ll only be a matter of seconds, and I think that chance might owe us that much. Now you’ll know when I go into the curve because it will hurt me and I’ll probably scream. If and when you hear me, you keep that plasma in the web—because if it bleeds it won’t just leak, it’ll explode, and there’ll be one dead Johnny in the drive-chamber. The rest of us will survive you by about a second and a half. Now, you understand what I’m going to try to do?”
“I get it,” he said.
“Fine. Eve?”
“I know. Just the stun. When you give me the word. It’s going to hurt you, you know—hurt you badly.”
“‘That’s what I’m relying on,” I told her. “Nothing like pain to sharpen up the reflexes.”
“Or paralyze them,” she said.
“That’s another concession that chance owes me,” I said. “I won’t seize up.”
“Get on with it,” said Maslax.
“You’re sure in a hurry to die,” I commented.
“Nobody’s going to die,” he said.
“How many people are there on Pallant? Twenty million? That’s a lot of nobody.”
“It’s all nobody so far as you’re concerned,” he told me. “You’ll live, and so will your friends.”
“Count me down,” I said to Johnny. I had already matched periods with the planet. I was directly above the spot that Stylaster had wanted me to aim for the day before. It was a real hell-hole down there.
Johnny was counting through the fifties.
“And you better all remember one thing more,” I said. “I’m going down fast—I’ll have to keep the shields up. But there’s so much mass in the atmosphere I’m bound to lose one, maybe two, even in a matter of seconds. The rest will be stripped when I pull my daredevil trick at the bottom. Now, when the shields finally go the gravity will go with them for a second or two. There’ll be a down all right, but it won’t be the down you’re used to. Make sure that you’re all absolutely secure. Especially you, Maslax. I don’t want you to hit that trigger by accident.”
“We’re all strapped in like good boys and girls,” the little man assured me.
Johnny reached the twenties.
“We’re on our marks,” I said, and I gritted my teeth to keep from saying anything more.
I powered the cannons, building up thrust and loading the flux, and I flipped the ship. Down we went, plummeting like a stone, faster and faster.
It was only a matter of seconds, but seconds can be terribly long and terribly full. I had the wind to help me and he would do his utmost, but nerves are nerves, and the ship’s nerve-net was designed to be sensitive—sensitive enough to alert me to mass densities many orders of magnitude smaller than those I would be crashing through. It was going to hurt me—and it was going to hurt the ship. Coming up might be a lot easier than going down, but in a crippled ship it could be just as fatal. But I intended to bring back the Swan, no matter what Maslax’s plans might be.
Johnny reached zero and we plunged. The drive screamed, but the flux was in perfect synch. I had the web down low to cover the deration. Our effective mass was tremendous, but that only meant we were falling faster. I didn’t care about mass because I didn’t intend maneuvering except once. I was betting my whole stack on one turn.
It was like diving into an acid bath. An acid bath with an undertow. I began to burn, and without the passage of any subjective time at all I was consumed by flames. At the same time I felt the hands of the atmosphere smash into the shielding, millions of them, chopping it away, shattering the force-lines into Hinders. All of it hit me at once. It was like dying.
There was only one instant in that dive. I don’t know how many times the clock ticked, how many times my heart beat, because from the moment we hit the air I was no longer in the same world as the clock and the heart. I was suspended in eternity, blasted right out of body and mind by the sheer power that poured into the ship and which the reaction poured back into me. I was flying with the Swan’s body, feeling with the Swan’s senses, and I knew that if the Swan had had any mind, any identity except for me she’d have destroyed me for putting her through that dive. But I was she, and she couldn’t destroy me because I wouldn’t let her destroy herself. I held her still, plasma, discharge, and mind, and the wind held the stillness, and down we went, apparently forever.
Something inside me was still tuned to the instruments, but I have no idea what it was or how. Somewhere, there was a trigger to pull me out of the dive, but the trigger had to pull itself because all the “I” that I knew about was totally bound up with that wave of agony and that shearing shield.
We lost one, vanished just like that, gone. There was no bleeding of either power or balance. There was just no time. We were suspended in time and balance. The second shield followed the first and I clamped the deration syndrome and I froze the flux absolutely still, but not jammed, caught still in a stream of motion. There was a fugitive instant, which we almost reached, but couldn’t quite, in which I’d have hit the light barrier without transfer and we’d have blown a hole in Mormyr that would have become one of the seven wonders of the universe, and the atoms that had been me would have been strewn from now until the very beginning of time.
Instead, the needle shot so much life into my arm that for just one tiny fraction of that timeless instant where I was suspended my heart and my brain were able to transcend those fires of hell and I blasted everything out of the cannons and cartwheeled the ship.
The shields just vanished, and they took up and down and all around with them, and for a moment we were all nowhere and nowhen. But I was already feeling for the wings of the storm and matching them to my wings and trying to find some kind of perfect harmony.
That was when chance, and chance alone, held the cards. If there had been no such harmony, if the storm into which I’d plunged had been real, absolute chaos, we’d have become part of the storm. Chaos. But the stormwind was blowing, blowing everything before it, and we joined it, and all of a sudden there we were, deeper than it was possible to be in the atmosphere of Mormyr, making a few lousy hundreds of kph, in one piece, flux balanced, and staying balanced despite the best efforts of the storm, slowing down, safe and well.
I was lost, lost in a maze of color, with all the devils in hell screaming in my ears, with steamhammers crushing me to pulp. But most of all the colors, blinding colors. I thought I was blind, or would be, but I realized what was happening. The overload had scrambled the whole sensory net. The ship and I were suffering extreme synesthesia. So was the wind. But my body was already programmed, and it was doing what was necessary. I was away no more than a few seconds, and when I got back I was still doing what was necessary.
I was feeling no pain. The threshold had been passed. The receptor
s in my brain had just cut out. Perhaps the wind had had to cut them out. For the next few hours, I would feel nothing as my body went through its programmed motions. Nothing at all. The sense of touch was simply gone. It would return, in time, and then I would feel pain—all the pain in the world, for hours. But by then I would be under an anesthetic. Knocked out.
It might take years off my life, but I wouldn’t know very much about it.
Seconds later, we landed the ship.
We were down.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Thirty hours went by before the wind allowed me to come out of the coma. By that time, I was whole again. I felt terrible, but human.
I said it was impossible, I told him.
It always feels worse than it is, he assured me.
It couldn’t have felt worse, I assured him.
Precisely, he said. It could have been a lot worse.
We couldn’t ever do it again, I said. It’d kill me.
We could do it twice weekly and earn a living, he told me. Practice is all. Without me, you’d have found it difficult the first ten or a dozen times, but after that—if you survived—you’d be able to handle it with equanimity.
He was a cheerful little bastard, sometimes. He was right—it does always feel worse than it is. But there are some feelings a man shouldn’t have to undergo.
Never again, I said. Under no circumstances whatsoever.
It’s not over yet, he said ominously. The best is yet to come. Our kindly host is getting more and more impatient while we lie here recovering. Our friends are suffering all kinds of misery. There are agonies you haven’t even contemplated yet.
I don’t want to contemplate them. I just want to lie here and be ill.
You can’t afford the luxury. You need your mind for higher things. We have got ourselves into this mess. We have to think of a way out.
No way, I said. No way. I think I’ll just die. Let Maslax blow the ship. We should have told him to go to hell up on top, and then at least I could have died swiftly and peaceably.
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