Doug worked silently. His eyes stung, and he wasted a moment to rub
them again, because he must see, must see so precisely, so exactly. The
work table was almost bare of the equipment he had ordered. The new
Contraption had devoured it into its fantastic vitals as fast as his
taut hands and flagging memory were able to feed. Yet it was useless
work--the gleaming thing he had built would never so much as fry an egg.
Yet he worked as though the power-pack were resting on the table
among the scraps of wire, bits and pieces that were left, as though
somehow it would be there when he needed it, and then they could go,
could escape, and then forget... The two shiny terminals glared at him
dully like two tiny eyes, each telling him that he was such a fool to
hope that they could ever be anything else than bare. They glared at
him, told him that he was finished now, finished, but with the end
impossibly far away.
He let the tools drop amid the bits and pieces The Contraption was a
cold, dead thing, a mockery without its great surging electric heart. A
mockery, a precisely assembled heap of shiny junk.
He was near exhaustion as he looked at the two empty terminals.
The anger in him had burned out and became a cold leaden thing. He
no longer cared about the ridiculous beliefs, the regulations, the
laws that prohibited him from obtaining the thing he needed to free
himself--no longer cursed himself, for it was not he who was to blame.
He went upstairs to where Dot slept, and wondered if this was how it
felt to be a thousand years old. Finally tired, finally fed-up, finally
weary of being a fool.
He watched her as she slept, watched the gentle rise and fall of her
breasts, let his eyes wander over the soft symmetry of her body, and
asked himself why men were so dutiful in creating their clanking
idiocies about life and about death when all that such diligence
accomplished was eternal blasphemy of the pure and simple. The
beautiful they defiled, then disguised the ruin they left with a cloak
labeled Duty, and went forth armed with the rotten wood of what they
called Law to build a dingy world more to their liking than the garden
that had been given them for nothing....
It was not fair, no it was not fair, but he was tired at last. Too
tired to look now for another time-track, to throw the Contraption
wildly out of focus and careen through a thousand tracks, a million,
and look for a place where a man and a woman could be simply that and
nothing either more nor less. For in all infinity there was no such
place, and the running would be worth less than the wasted breath it
took.
With Dot, one last time, then.
She stirred. Her eyes opened, and she smiled.
"Doug? Did you finish it, Doug?"
"Yes. Yes, I finished it, as far as it ever will be finished."
She dropped her eyes. "We can keep trying." They met his. "We will keep
trying, Doug. We've got to--for Terry and Mike...."
He said nothing. He sat heavily on the bed, his features grim.
He took off his shirt and dropped, exhausted, beside her.
* * * * *
He awoke with the idea. "Dot! Dot I think I've found it!" He was
instantly on his feet, trying to jam the sleep back from the center
of his brain, trying to make sure it was no left-over figment from a
nightmare, a wild dream. He heard her foot-steps coming almost at a run.
"What is it? You sound as if you've found a pre-Truman dollar under the
bed--"
"I don't know--it may be as half-baked as the kind that came
later--worth even less, perhaps, but it's worth a try. They say
desperate situations call for desperate action...."
"Take it easy, now. You aren't the blood and thunder type, exactly!"
There was a note of cautious anticipation in her voice, but there was
hope in it, and it was enough.
"Tomorrow--or more exactly, some sixteen hours from now, we are
scheduled to take-off for Venus headquarters to begin the games...."
"Yes, I know," she said quietly.
"Well that's it, don't you see? I'll go of course--I'll go but not all
the way!"
"Doug I won't let you--anymore than you'd let me try to seduce the
Prelate General into giving us the thing!"
"And I'll bet you could, too!" He laughed, and it was a real laugh
for the first time in what seemed all his life. "But I'm afraid the
Prelate General is going to be denied that dainty bit of intrigue, my
darling. Don't you see? Space-ships--they've got to have a method of
communication! High-frequency radio--high-voltage stuff! Ten to one I'd
find a power-pack aboard!"
"No, Doug, no...."
"It's a chance, Dot, and it's a good one. I'll be the ranking officer
aboard of course--I shouldn't have too much trouble in pirating the
thing--I'll make them rip the pack out for me, then I'll order them to
bring me back. Then it'll just be a race against time."
He stood there, staring at the delicate tracery of a lattice-work wall,
not seeing it. But he heard the fear in Dot's voice.
"A space-ship, Doug.... Why you'd--you'd die."
He laughed. "I'm sure the other Quadrates don't plan on dying, not for
awhile yet, anyway. And I know it'll work, if I'm careful. And I've
been careful so far." He looked at her, and the fear had not left her
eyes. "You mustn't be afraid, Dot," he said then. "There's less to fear
this way, because this way there's at least a chance. Don't you see the
beauty of it--right up to the last moment, everything will appear to
be as it should--and then before there's even any suspicion I'll take
over--probably be almost back to Earth before they even know anything's
gone hay-wire."
"Won't they be able to radio back from the other ships, I mean, when
they realize things aren't as they should be--that the ship you are in
isn't tagging along in the formation? They'll just be waiting for you
when you land, Doug."
"They'll want to be waiting, sure--but they won't know where, not until
I'm down, and safely out, headed here."
Dot didn't say anything then. It was such a story-book plan, such a
crazy thing that it would never work; she knew it would never work.
"Doug, Doug...."
He held her close to him.
"Dot," he said, "we have two choices I think. We can be mature, we can
be logical, we can make a tragedy out of a desperate situation and die
martyrs to conservative thinking. Or we can keep grabbing at straws
until we are sunk or end up ingloriously alive. Which way?"
She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. "I guess a knock-down drag-out
thriller, mister.... But Doug--I'm scared."
* * * * *
He stood still, apart from the other three as they talked in low,
casual tones, waiting for the space-tower signal to board their ships.
An early morning breeze tugged gently at his blue cloak, and he had to
shield his eyes with his gauntlets as he looked at the four slender
columns of glittering metal that tapered to needle points high above
him. A quarter their diameter and height they might have been simple
V-2 rockets on some strange desert proving-ground. At the same time
they were the fantastic silver darts that he remembered from the pages
of colored Sunday supplements which had foretold the coming of flight
through Space. Yet the feeling of everyday security that they tore away
was replaced with a vigorous thing inside him that was of firmer stuff
than awe, more challenging than fear, more exciting than adventure.
And suddenly, sailing ships were the toys of children, and oceans were
spilled tea in a saucer.
They were a strange people, Doug thought. A horrible people, perhaps,
a people whom he wanted desperately to escape. Yet a people who had
learned that the sky and the Earth were not enough, nor were ever meant
to be.
A green light flashed. The three Quadrates ended their conversation,
boarded waiting surface-vehicles and started toward their ships.
A car with a pennant bearing the insignia of a Senior Quadrate flying
from atop its sleek passenger enclosure drove up beside Doug.
"Your transportation, sir."
He returned the salute. "Thank you, no. I shall walk," he said.
It was a short walk--less than two hundred yards, but he did not want
it all to happen too quickly.
His steps were measured in slow, deliberate cadence as he crossed
the smooth plaza toward the great craft on which his insignia was
emblazoned.
At length he was swallowed up inside it, and at a flashing blue signal,
the four great ships thundered for the stars, and left Earth a little
thing behind them.