"Very," said Burnett.
He was thinking about three thousand eternal nights of young bodies
being ripped, slaughtered, flung to the vacuum tides. Ten years of
hating a job and hoping that some day there would be a last trip and it
would all be over.
Burnett laughed through his nose. Controls moved under his fingers like
fluid; loved, caressed, tended by his familiar touching. Looking ahead,
he squinted.
"There's your Ruler now, Lethla. Doing somersaults. Looks dead. A good
trick."
"Cut power! We don't want to burn him!"
* * * * *
Burnett cut. Kriere's milky face floated dreamily into a visual-screen,
eyes sealed, lips gaping, hands sagging, clutching emptily at the stars.
"We're about fifty miles from him, catching up." Burnett turned to
Lethla with an intent scowl. Funny. This was the first and the last
time anybody would ever board the _Constellation_ alive. His stomach
went flat, tautened with sudden weakening fear.
If Kriere could be captured, that meant the end of the war, the end
of shelves stacked with sleeping warriors, the end of this blind
searching. Kriere, then, had to be taken aboard. After that--
Kriere, the All-Mighty. At whose behest all space had quivered like
a smitten gong for part of a century. Kriere, revolving in his neat,
water-blue uniform, emblems shining gold, heat-gun tucked in glossy
jet holster. With Kriere aboard, chances of overcoming him would be
eliminated. Now: Rice and Burnett against Lethla. Lethla favored
because of his gun.
Kriere would make odds impossible.
Something had to be done before Kriere came in.
Lethla had to be yanked off guard. Shocked, bewildered,
fooled--somehow. But--how?
Burnett's jaw froze tight. He could feel a spot on his shoulder-blade
where Lethla would send a bullet crashing into rib, sinew,
artery--heart.
There was a way. And there was a weapon. And the war would be over and
this would be the last trip.
Sweat covered his palms in a nervous smear.
"Steady, Rice," he said, matter of factly. With the rockets cut, there
was too much silence, and his voice sounded guilty standing up alone in
the center of that silence. "Take controls, Rice. I'll manipulate the
star-port."
Burnett slipped from the control console. Rice replaced him grimly.
Burnett strode to the next console of levers. That spot on his back
kept aching like it was sear-branded X. For the place where the bullet
sings and rips. And if you turn quick, catching it in the arm first,
why--
Kriere loomed bigger, a white spider delicately dancing on a web of
stars. His eyes flicked open behind the glassite sheath, and saw the
_Constellation_. Kriere smiled. His hands came up. He knew he was about
to be rescued.
Burnett smiled right back at him. What Kriere didn't know was that he
was about to end a ten-years' war.
There was only _one_ way of drawing Lethla off guard, and it had to be
fast.
Burnett jabbed a purple-topped stud. The star-port clashed open as
it had done a thousand times before; but for the first time it was a
good sound. And out of the star-port, at Sam Burnett's easily fingered
directions, slid the long claw-like mechanism that picked up bodies
from space.
Lethla watched, intent and cold and quiet. The gun was cold and quiet,
too.
The claw glided toward Kriere without a sound, now, dream-like in its
slowness.
It reached Kriere.
Burnett inhaled a deep breath.
The metal claw cuddled Kriere in its shiny palm.
Lethla watched.
He watched while Burnett exhaled, touched another lever and said: "You
know, Lethla, there's an old saying that only dead men come aboard the
_Constellation_. I believe it."
* * * * *
And the claw closed as Burnett spoke, closed slowly and certainly, all
around Kriere, crushing him into a ridiculous posture of silence. There
was blood running on the claw, and the only recognizable part was the
head, which was carefully preserved for identification.
That was the only way to draw Lethla off guard.
Burnett spun about and leaped.
The horror on Lethla's face didn't go away as he fired his gun.
Rice came in fighting, too, but not before something like a red-hot
ramrod stabbed Sam Burnett, catching him in the ribs, spinning him back
like a drunken idiot to fall in a corner.
Fists made blunt flesh noises. Lethla went down, weaponless and
screaming. Rice kicked. After awhile Lethla quit screaming, and the
room swam around in Burnett's eyes, and he closed them tight and
started laughing.
He didn't finish laughing for maybe ten minutes. He heard the retriever
claws come inside, and the star-port grind shut.
Out of the red darkness, Rice's voice came and then he could see Rice's
young face over him. Burnett groaned.