LITMIR.BIZ

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“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. They are angry.”

      “So will yours be,” she said, “when you’ve fought 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, what you plan to do with it—how you came to be one of the Brotherhood.”

      She smiled. “The Seitz method was originated to save wreck-victims frozen in deep space. Remember? Quite a few of us never went through the door at all, innocent or guilty. But that makes no difference, once you’ve come back from out there.” She put her hand on his. “You’ve learned fast, but you’re only on the threshold. There’s no need for words with us. Open your mind—”

      * * * *

      He did so. At first it was no different from the 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 we plan to do with it—and it was only after some time that he realized the words had stopped and he was receiving Christina’s emotions, her memories and opinions, her disappointments and her dreams, as simply and directly as though they were his own.

      You haven’t had time yet, they told him without words, to realize how alone you are. You haven’t tried, as most of us do at first, to be human again, to fit yourself into life as though the gap of time was not there, as though nothing had changed. You haven’t watched people getting old around you while you have hardly added a gray hair. You haven’t had to move from one place to another, one job, one group of friends to another, because sooner or later they sense something wrong about you. You haven’t had to hide your new powers as you would hide a disease because people would fear 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 universe wide beyond imagining, thronging with many colored guns, with new worlds where men in a human society could build a society of their own. No boundaries beyond which the mind cannot dare to go. All space, all time, all knowledge—free!

      Once more he saw those wide dark seas between the suns. His mind raced with hers through the cold-flaming nebulae, wheeled blinded and stunned past the hiving stars of Hercules, looked in eager fascination at the splendid spiral of Andromeda—no longer, perhaps, beyond reach, for what are time and space to the intangible forces of the mind?

      Then that wild flight ceased, and instead there was a smaller vision, misty and only half realized, of houses and streets, a place where they could live and be what they were, openly and without fear.

      Can you understand now, she asked him, what they would think if they knew about the ship? Can you understand that they would be afraid to have us colonizing out there, afraid of what we might do?

      He understood. At the very least, if the truth were known, the Lazarites would never be free again. They would be taken and tested and examined and lectured about, legislated over, restricted, governed, and used. They might be fairly paid for their ship and whatever other advancements they might develop, but they would never be permitted to use them.

      With sudden savage eagerness Hyrst said, “But first 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-haired man 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 truth out of Bellaver with my hands.”

      “It may come to that,” she said grimly. “But we’ll hope. Lie quiet. I’ll make the arrangements.”

      An hour later Hyrst lay on the padded table in the middle of the sick-bay. The ship spun and whirled and leaped in a sort of insane dance, and Hyrst was strapped to the table to prevent his being thrown off. He had known that the ship was maneuvering in the thickest swarm area of the Belt with four pilots mind-linked and flying esper, trying to out-dare Bellaver. Two others were keeping Vernon blanked, and they 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 the lurching of the ship. They had given him some sort of a drug, and he lay relaxed and pliant in a pleasant suspension of all worries, looking vaguely up at the faces that were bent over him. Finally he closed his eyes, and even they were gone.

      * * * *

      He was crossing the plain of methane snow with MacDonald, under the glowing Rings. At first it was all a little blurred, but gradually the memory cleared until he was aware of each tiny detail far more clearly than he had been at the time—the texture of the material from which MacDonald’s suit was made, the infinitesimal shadow underscoring every roughness of the snow, the exact sensation of walking in his leaded boots, the whisper and whistle of his oxygen system. He quarreled again with MacDonald, not missing a word. He climbed with him into the tower of Number Three hoist and examined the signal lights, and sat down on the bench, smiling, to wait.

      He sweated inside his suit. He would take a shower when he got back to quarters. He wished for a smoke. MacDonald’s steady grumbling and cursing filled his helmet. He listened, enjoying it. Hope you bang yourself with your own clumsy hammer. And I wish you joy of your fortune. If you have as many friends rich as you had poor you won’t have any. There was an itch under his left arm. He pressed the suit in with his right and wriggled his body against it. It didn’t do any good. Damn suits. 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, and MacDonald 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 cold silence and look down the shaft at MacDonald and he is dead.

      Go back a bit. Slow. That’s right. Easy. Back to Elena and the kids.

      Lucky Elena, in the sun and the warm sweet air. Lucky kids. But I’m lucky too. I can go back to them soon. My nose itches. Why does 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. Is that a footstep? The air is thin and poisonous, but it carries sound. Somebody coming behind me? Split second, no time to look or think. Crack. Cold. Dark. Nothing.

      Let’s go back again. Don’t hurry. We’ve all the 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. Far away. 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’t matter. I know, you’re from Bellaver. Bellaver sent you to steal the Titanite. Well, you won’t get it. It’s where nobody will ever get it unless I show them how. Good. That’s good, MacDonald. That’s what I wanted to know. You see, we don’t need the Titanite.

      MacDonald screams again and the lift goes down 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 to rouse. I can’t. The man is satisfied. He drops me and goes away, but I have seen his face inside his helmet. I hear him working on some metal thing with a tool. He is whistling a little 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.

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