Tragor sat facing the Chief Coordinator for the second time in four
days, and if he had been shaken the first time he was infinitely more
alarmed now. His shoulders were trembling so that he was sure the
Coordinator would remark about it, and all of the color had drained
from his face.
"Tragor," Kraii said, his eyes piercingly accusing, "your plan for
Earth conquest has been a disastrous failure from first to last.
Subject a man to struggle and hardship, you said--place his life in
danger, and he will find an android woman impossible to resist! Well,
did that fool of an artist find thirty android women irresistible? Did
he? Answer me, Tragor."
It did not seem as though Tragor's face could have gone any paler. But
suddenly it did. It seemed paler than pale, as if the receding blood
had turned it into a thin tissue so hueless that the term "color" could
not even be applied to it.
"His surrender would have been complete if the Earthwoman had not
screamed," he said. "All of his resistance was gone."
"Tragor, have you lost your mind? Two-thirds of the men in high places
on Earth have women they love just as compulsively. And if we put your
miserable plan into operation a good many women would scream. Just the
sight of us would start them screaming. You have proved conclusively
that the Plan cannot work."
Tragor started to rise, appalled by the sudden fury which blazed in
the Coordinator's eyes. He recoiled backwards and as he did so a
hand-gun clattered on the chart stand before him. Kraii had whipped the
hand-gun from beneath the stand so quickly that it seemed almost like a
conjuring trick. But to deceive the eye of a Martian frozen with terror
was no great feat and Kraii knew it.
He seemed to enjoy the sudden look of stricken disbelief in Tragor's
stare. He seemed actually to relish inflicting such an irrevocable
choice of evils on a Martian completely at his mercy.
"Do it now, Tragor," he said. "If you put it off even for a moment
you'll waver and lack the courage to kill yourself. Then we shall have
to execute you publicly. Think of the shame and disgrace of a public
execution, Tragor. I am offering you the easiest choice first. Do it
immediately. Right here and now. When it is over, I'll aerate the
compartment thoroughly, so you need not worry on that score."
"No, I can't! You're asking too much of me!"
Tragor recoiled another step, looking at the Chief Coordinator with an
almost childlike simplicity of appeal that would have moved a Martian
with a heart of stone. But if Kraii had a heart, it was certainly not
of stone. Stone can be splintered and shattered and even dissolved.
Quite obviously the fierce, dangerous and obdurate metal of the Chief
Coordinator's heart was not in the least like stone.
"Oh, I know, I know," Kraii said. "It's customarily done after a decent
interval, in the privacy of the condemned's own compartment. Watching
you kill yourself will be very painful to me. But I am prepared to
endure it for your sake. It will be easier for you this way.
"Think, Tragor. I'll be right here, close to you, and if you imagine
for a moment that I am not still your friend you do me a grievous
injustice. My nearness right up to the end should be comforting
to you. A fellow Martian, sharing every one of your life drives,
every compulsive emotion you've ever experienced from the cradle to
the grave. I did not blunder as you did, but that is the only real
difference between us. Do you imagine for a moment that I do not
sympathize with you?"
"No, no. Give me a little time. Only a few minutes," Tragor pleaded.
"That's all I ask. Then if you can't--"
Tragor's voice broke on a strangled sob.
"Tragor, listen to me. You have a choice of two alternatives. You can
either kill yourself--and that is the honorable way--or you'll be
shamefully executed. Which will it be?"
Tragor took a slow step forward. It was a short step and it hardly
seemed to bring him much nearer to the hand-gun. But to the Chief
Coordinator it seemed a step in the right direction and his features
relaxed a little.
"I'm glad you've decided on the honorable way, Tragor. It would be
humiliating to be publicly executed in full view of a wretch like
Sull. You are right in distrusting him. He hates you and will try
to step into your shoes. I may even be compelled to permit it as a
necessary expediency."
"No," Tragor said, slowly. "No one is going to step into my shoes--or
over them when I am lying dead. Not even you."
Tragor had the hand-gun before Kraii could grasp the implications of a
statement so unbelievable.
Tragor held the weapon firmly. He drew himself up and just as
resolutely stepped quickly back from the desk again. But he did not
raise the hand-gun to his own brow. Instead he narrowed his eyes and
pointed the weapon directly at Kraii. He fired three times, straight
across the chart table, aiming at the Chief Coordinator's heart.
The bullets struck Kraii just above the heart and went right through
him.
Blood spattered on the chart table. It spattered also on the Chief
Coordinator's resplendent uniform, his outflung arms, his vacantly
staring face. He fell straight forward across the chart table, and as
he collapsed upon it Tragor fired for the fourth and last time.
He stood for a moment with the still smoking weapon in his hand, a
cold, triumphant smirk on his face. The terrible hatred that had been
generated within him by the Chief Coordinator's final taunts had
dispelled every vestige of his fear and he was no longer trembling.
In working off his fury on the lump of cold clay before him he had
forgotten the meaning of fright. It was that way with most Martians.
They could be demoralized by terror until an outlet for vindictiveness
presented itself with overwhelming force. Then they became exacters of
vengeance, cold, deadly, precise.
The fact that the Chief Coordinator had died without speaking marred
just a little the completeness of Tragor's triumph. But not seriously,
and he immediately set about taking the precautions that would turn
that triumph into permanent victory for himself.
He stepped to the chart table, raised the slain Martian's taloned right
hand, and coiled the limp talons firmly around the hand-gun, having
taken care to wipe all talon prints from the weapon first. He left
just a little slack, to make sure that when rigor set in the resulting
contraction would not appear excessive, or cause anyone to question the
naturalness of the "suicide's" grip.
Then he stepped back and surveyed his handiwork. He was well pleased
with himself. By a near miracle psychology had played directly into his
hands, the very psychology Kraii had accused him of neglecting in his
appraisal of Earthmen.
It was taken for granted that no one--_no one_--would dare oppose
the judgment of a Chief Coordinator. It was taken for granted that a
hand-gun sent clattering before a condemned Martian could be used in
only one way. That it should be turned on the Chief Coordinator himself
was against all reason. It went contrary to the most powerful of
ingrained psychological compulsions: a Martian's need to feel himself
completely a Martian until the moment of his death.
But for one incredible moment Tragor had not thought of himself as a
Martian. He had thought of himself as an instrument of destiny, set
apart from all other members of his race by a plan for conquest he had
spent half a lifetime in perfecting. It was intolerable that the Great
Plan should perish with him. It was intolerable that he should die in
any case.
His love of life was greater even than the Martian hunger for
inflicting death. In that respect he was unusual. Among Martians, he
was, perhaps, unique.
Tragor looked briefly and for the last time at the slain Coordinator's
hated features, reflecting with satisfaction that no one--not even a
Chief Coordinator--could maintain his dignity in death.
Then he turned and walked resolutely from the compartment.
He was half way down the passageway outside when he saw the woman he
had taken captive and would have died to possess. She was advancing
slowly to meet him and saw with amazement that she was clasping a
hand-gun similar to the one he had just used with such deadly accuracy
of aim. How, he wondered with a swift intake of his breath, had she
managed to secure it? Had she stolen it from one of the warrior-caste
brutes? There could be no other way of explaining it, but--
He had no time to puzzle it out, because she raised the weapon suddenly
and blew off his head, splintering and shattering the skull and filling
the passageway with a drifting spiral of smoke.
"You beast!" she whispered. "You monstrous beast!"