He frowned and raised his hand as though to scratch his head, changed
the motion in mid-air. And with the speed of a hopped-up _narcophene_
smoker, the thin-snouted pyro was in his fist, slowly traversing a
lethal arc that covered both men.
His voice was taut as he spoke. "It's your ship, Woller, but I'm taking
it over. Woller--Alan Woller--look at me. _Do you know who I am?_"
Woller stared deep into the icy eyes confronting him. The doubt flared
again in his own. His jaw dropped slack. His brows lifted and he
whispered, "Nolan!"
Nolan didn't bother to nod. He said grimly, "Your hands--hold them
where they are. You, too, Vincennes. I've come a long way for this
and I don't mind killing. You taught me that, Woller. A man's life is
nothing. Mine was nothing to you, when it endangered the dirty little
treacheries you were working."
The life seemed to have gone out of Woller and left only a hulking,
pallid carcass, propped up by the internal pressure of its own fear.
There was murky horror crawling in his eyes.
* * * * *
Steve Nolan looked at him and his thin lips curled into a snarling
grin. But those were only his lips. Strangely, there was no triumph in
his heart, none of the fierce pleasure he'd dreamed of all those dreary
years. There was only dull disgust, and the hint of a long-dead hope
for rest again. Rest, and the common things of life on the Earth which
was forbidden to him.
Woller could die before him now, and he would be avenged. But Woller
alive could say the words that would wipe out the banishment, would
return him to the green star that was home. Woller could be made to
confess--
"I ought to blast you now," he said in a soft, chill tone that was like
a whip to Woller, jerking him upright. "I ought to, and I will if I
must. But you can live if you want to."
Woller was licking his lips, his face a mask, only his panic-stricken
eyes alive.
"You can live," Nolan repeated. "A full statement about the Junta
frame, in writing. Write it out and thumbprint it, and we'll telestat
it to the nearest TPL station. Then you can have the lifeboat, Woller,
and as much of a start as TPL gives you. Are you willing to pay that
much for your life, Woller?"