Walt was outside the ship. His feet planted firmly, he waited. The four
advancing mutants were not yet adjusted to the space disorientation.
Behind them, the tip of the Washington Monument loomed starkly white
above the trees.
Walt's anger rose to an even greater fury. He knew how Julia had felt as
a child: the hot, impotent flare of rage; the senseless desire to throw
something; to smash and destroy something; to disprove helplessness by
some savage action.
The mutants were closer; terror was dying out of their eyes. Their lips
were relaxing. Their bodies were loosening to their wills.
_We're going to kill you, Walt: with our hands._
_Lyrian traitor._
Walt was breathing in shallow gasps. They would rush him in a minute.
Willy, out of the saucer ship now, crouched only yards away, ready to
spring. He feinted, and Walt flinched instinctively.
_You can't displace from five of us!_
_Not and hold the shielding, traitor!_
General Tibbets, in the doorway behind Walt, began firing at the mutants
with a pistol.
Bob clutched at his chest and staggered. In an instant, the others were
displaced and invulnerable.
Bob fell.
Reg went to his wounded companion, held him in displacement, healed him
rapidly.
Bob coughed and shook his head and scrambled to his feet. He screamed
his hate at the general.
The pistol clicked on an empty chamber.
Walt retreated several steps.
_... green wartle rivers of Lyria; birdsong, there, in a skybranch,
partly pretty orange and soft like fur pictures...._
He was in Calvin's mind!
Calvin was sitting in the games space, on the floor, rolling the metal
practice ball back and forth before him between his hairy hands.
Forential was speaking. The confining walls of the space station were so
comfortingly solid....
And Walt had a fix on it! Knew its position, its direction, its speed!
He had an anchor!
Where is something? he thought wildly. Quick! A rock! Throw a rock!
Something big: to throw: quick! Huge, heavy--
* * * * *
Forgotten, the advancing mutants. With every unit and sub unit and
compartment and section of his mind, pouring out every available degree
of telepathic power, dropping the shielding, concentrating above
everything else, he seized the Washington Monument. It shook; it wobbled
unsteadily; it wrenched free.
Calvin, delighted, was helping him.
_Walt!_ he cried. _We'll play games! We'll throw it!_
It was off the ground. It poised uncertainly. It moved upward. Slowly at
first, like a rocket: faster and faster, dwindling from Earth, becoming
a vanishing pinpoint like a black, daylight star.
Calvin pulled it in with childish joy. _It's_ big! he cried proudly.
It was aimed on target.
Calvin was no longer in Walt's mind.
With a last, exhausting burst of thought, he increased its already
terrific speed. The laboratory still stood. The mutants had not realized
his shielding was down. He restored it, weakened and quivering.
And they were upon him. He fought them off with his fists and elbows. He
dared not displace, lest the shielding should crumble entirely. A few
minutes more; if I can just gain a few minutes more, he thought.
He was down. He jerked his head out of the way of a foot. He caught a
leg and twisted.
Fingers tore at his throat. He caught someone with a savage and
satisfying kick.
Out in space, beyond the orbit of the moon, Fierut detected the
Washington Monument on his warning device. It was coming too fast to
deflect. He tried.
A heartbeat later, it ripped into the steel of the space station. It
crumbled and shattered and sprayed marble, and huge fragments erupted
from the opposite side. The space station became visible. There was a
great, ragged, tunneling hole from rim to rim. Escaping air spewed
wreckage into space. Parts of demolished machinery whirled away. In a
yet-sealed compartment, a power system exploded with a great, blinding,
soundless flash. Chunks of steel debris, vast shrapnel, blossomed in all
directions.
The space station, its orbit altered, twisted away, a gutted, lifeless
derelict.
Walt's shielding collapsed. His mutant bridge opened; his mutant powers
vanished. He screamed for help.
He saw General Tibbets slam a pistol butt against Willy's suddenly
unprotected skull.
* * * * *
Five minutes later, in the laboratory, amid incredible confusion, Julia
stood over Walt and dabbed antiseptic on his cut, swollen lip.
Throughout the room there were shouts and laughter and cries of victory.
One of the technicians--one who had worked hardest over it--was joyfully
smashing the second signal generator.
In the center of the frenzy, Dr. Norvel sat slumped across the desk. She
was sound asleep.
Weary and proud, Julia straightened up from Walt.
"I've--we've both--got to get some rest," she said. "There'll be the
press, the TV, the radio.... I can't face them. I'm too tired.... I must
look like something the cat dragged in...."
Walt, heavy lidded and exhausted, looked up at her. He smiled leadenly.
"Look fine, Julia." His voice was thick and indistinct because of the
swelling of his tongue.
She sure ran me around, he thought. But she can't now. She's not
superior to me any more. I'll be able to hold my own. She's, she's so
helpless, so pliant. That's the way I like her. Poor tired girl!
We'll travel, he thought. I want to see all of the planet. All the
sights, all the cities. I want to live in the bustle of its life, in the
hurry of its crowds. I want to travel and learn all the different smells
and experience all the different places, and I want to celebrate its
richness and its newness; I want to devour it; I want to--
She'll be there; I want to feel her by my side: sweet Julia, so
compliant, waiting my decisions and anticipating my wishes. I want to
see her laugh. And I want ... I want....
I'll have to ask her about things like that.
... I'm no longer so innocent, but I'm not yet so wise. I have grown
and matured marvelously, and I will further: I know what I want. And
she'll be there to, to help me see and do and....
He felt a great warm glow of bursting and bubbling emotions.
"I'm going to sleep twenty-four hours," Julia said. "Just as soon as I
can get in bed."
"Better leave before the fourth estate gets here," the general said.
"I'll have the staff car drive you back to the hotel."
"Don't tell anybody we're there."
The general nodded. He took Julia's arm. "I'll walk you outside." He
sent an orderly for the car.
"When you're rested--" he let Walt and Julia go through the door in
front of him--"when you're rested, we'll want to see both of you again.
You said something, Julia, about making us all like you were: with all
those unusual abilities?"
"Later. Please, later. I'm just too tired to think." She held onto
Walt's arm possessively.
But do, she wondered, _do_ I remember enough details to enable a surgeon
to install a bridge?
* * * * *
A welter of other thoughts and impressions seethed to the surface of her
leaden brain: The international situation ... if nothing changes ... for
the last few years, there is an equilibrium ... working for genuine
peace.... War is farther off every year.... But to interfere? When
people can still be convinced of so many, so many falsehoods? Patterns
of hatred (like of superstition), are they (aren't they: who can say?
would the bridge not join but divide, upset the equilibrium?) are the
patterns of hatred too deep, and too dangerous, and too entrenched in
our generation?
She was tired; but out of the exhaustion, the weariness, the fatigue,
she suddenly realized with startling clarity, like the chime of a great,
flawless bell, ringing hope and promise: That it will come; the next
development of man will come, lies waiting in the future (near or far)
to be born, to be born: will come. When mankind is ready, it will come:
will come.
A wave of exultation filled her. Oh, be ready soon! she cried. Be ready
soon!
"I, I don't think I can, can be of any help on that, General," she said.
"After you get some rest--"
"No," she said. Did she remember enough to guide a surgeon? "No, I'm
afraid I've forgotten too thoroughly."
The general helped them into the car.
She snuggled over against Walt. She didn't want to think at all. She
dreaded the next few days. She wished they were over.
She pulled Walt's head down and kissed his swollen lips. He tried to
draw back in surprise. She held on. The car began to move. He resisted
and then relaxed and then cooperated. She was deliriously in love with
him.
Drifting to sleep she thought: After next week, we'll be able to get
away and go home. We'll settle down right away. We'll buy the Castle
Place; he can fix it up and work around the yard in the evenings, and
I'll put pink and white curtains in the kitchen. And there's Beck's
Hardware Store. I'll have to see about making the down payment on it the
first day we get back.
There will be Saturday teas. Walt will look stunningly handsome in a
double breasted suit in Church on Sunday....
... movies twice a week ... dancing once a month.... I'll let him go
moose hunting in Canada every single year if he wants to.
She snuggled closer.
He's so innocent, she thought. He'll have to be educated (not so much as
the other mutants, because he's already learned a little): but not more
than it is good a husband should be.
My, she thought, feeling his arms around her. My, he has _strong_
muscles.
But he won't be any trouble. He'll handle like a lamb. I can manage him.
She smiled and was asleep.
THE END