* * * * *
He looked down into her glazed eyes, hoping to see some flicker of
expression that showed some interest in anything. "Norma, you've a good
logical mind--tell me, did you notice anything about Cahill's last cry?"
"No."
"Nothing odd?"
"I've not seen men die very often. What was strange about it?" The eyes
unglazed a bit, but Farradyne could not tell whether this was awakened
interest or merely the recapture of the feeling she had enjoyed before.
"It sounded to me like a discordant moan."
"It was discordant."
"Not the way you mean. It sounded to me like there were three or four
distinct tones all going at once."
"Stop beating that dead horse," she told him flatly. "It's the same
chorus you used to sing about the three people in your control room,
remember?"
"Brenner made a sound like that, too," he said.
"A piglike sound," she said scornfully. "Forget it, Farradyne. Your
evidence consists of one man surprised at the sight of a good-looking
woman and one man whose throat was coming apart in death. Forget it."
She shut the door to her room in his face abruptly.
Farradyne looked down at Cahill's body with regret. A gunman and a
love-lotus operator was not likely to have his absence noticed among
the kind of people who could afford to start asking questions of the
officials, and there might be a chance that Cahill's absence would
cause the same people to ask a question or two of Farradyne.
Farradyne would have liked to keep the body. But hauling a slain
corpse--he did not consider it murder--into a doctor's office and
asking for an autopsy on the throat could not be done. Nor could
Farradyne do it himself. He could perform a fair job of setting a
broken bone and he could treat a burn or a cut, but he would not
recognize a larynx if he saw it.
Grunting distastefully, Farradyne hauled the body to the scuttle port
and consigned it to space with a terse, "See you in Hell, Cahill!"
Sleep did not come to Farradyne for a long time.
X
The Lancaster came down at Denver; before Farradyne had the landing
ramp out, a spaceport buggy came careening across the field to stop
almost at the base of the ship.
"Farradyne?" said the man.
"You're the Bennington man?"
"Sidney Kingman," said the other, showing Farradyne a small case with
an identification card and license. "Where is she?"
"Inside."
Kingman handed Farradyne an envelope. He pocketed it and led Kingman
into the salon. Norma was there, sitting on the divan, smoking.
"Miss Hannon, Mr. Kingman."
"Another one of your friends?" she sneered.
"No. He's one of yours."
"I have no friends."
"Yes, you have, Miss Hannon. And you have parents--"
Norma leaped to her feet angrily. "You good-for-nothing bum!" she
screeched at Farradyne.
"You wouldn't leave me alone, Norma," said Farradyne tiredly. "So I've
brought you home."
"I'll come after you," she snarled.
"Not if I see you first," he told her. "This is it."
"I won't go!"
"You'll go," said Farradyne harshly, "if I have to clip you on the chin
and help Kingman carry you out on a shutter."
For the first time, Farradyne saw tears of genuine sorrow. There was
anger at him, too; but remorse was there a-plenty. "Why hurt them?" she
asked. "Why can't they just call me dead and let it go at that? I'm
worse than dead."
Then her face froze again and she looked at Kingman. "All right,"
she said in a hard voice, "let's go and hurt my folks to death. You
money-grubbing ghouls."
She started towards the spacelock. Kingman followed. Her face wore a
coldly distant expression as she left the Lancaster. Kingman's driver
took them off. She did not turn back to look at Farradyne.
And that was that. Farradyne retracted the landing ramp, closed the
spacelock, and not long afterwards hiked the Lancaster into the sky and
headed for Mercury.