"Precaution. Stand where you are."
They stood, and were searched.
"Very well," said the officer's voice. "Come aboard."
"No."
One short word, spoken quietly in a voice that Trehearne knew. A
voice he had not heard for a long, long time, but that he remembered.
Kerrel's voice. Some of the exhaustion in him stirred and drew back,
and anger took his place. The men stood in the beam of light, but with
their backs toward it, facing their prisoners. The undiffused glare
passed around them, leaving their faces in darkness, invisible behind
the helmet plates. Trehearne tried to identify Kerrel, but he could not.
The officer said, rather irritably, "But there's no point in standing
out here any longer." The case had been long and hard for him, too. "We
take off as soon as the search detail comes back."
"Yes," said Kerrel. "But not them. They stay here."
The suited shapes, the faceless and unhuman shapes that had stood
together drew apart a little and turned toward each other, as though
they tried to pierce the darkness with their peering helmet plates.
There was a silence of astonishment, and then Edri said, "That's
murder."
The voice of the officer, rising on a note of anger, demanded, "Kerrel,
what the hell--Have you gone clean crazy?"
"Is justice a crazy thing?" There was something strange about Kerrel's
voice. It was flat and toneless and devoid of passion, the voice
of a man with too much inside himself to bear, too much to find
escape through any normal channels. "They may have succeeded. Do you
understand that? They may, just possibly, have done what they set out
to do. Do you know what that would mean?"
"As well as you do. And don't worry about justice, they'll get it. But
they'll get it from the Council on Llyrdis, according to law."
"Law," said Kerrel softly. "Once Trehearne received the benefit of our
law. I told them then that they were wrong to give it to him. The law
is good, I've served it all my life. But there are times when one has
to go beyond the law if one is to go on serving it. Leave them here."
Trehearne spoke, for the first time. "It wouldn't do for me to go back
to Llyrdis, would it, Kerrel? Not to stand up in open Council and tell
exactly how and why Yann died."
Kerrel's voice answered him, and he could not tell which of the
helmeted shapes was speaking, the shapes with the shadowed faces. It
was maddening not to know.
"And was I wrong, Trehearne? Could you stand up in open Council and say
that I was wrong to try it?"
"Listen," said the officer. "I'm not judge and I'm not jury. I was sent
out by the Council to bring these men in, and I'm going to do it. For
God's sake, Kerrel, stop trying to carry the weight of the universe on
your shoulders. No man is that big. Come on, you three--into the ship."
"No."
One figure detached itself. One figure drew away from the rest of the
group and stood between them and the ship, with a shock-rifle in its
hands.
"You're not thinking far enough ahead. Suppose they've failed. Should
they be put on trial--under a law and a system that they've risked
their lives to tear down--should they be allowed to talk to the whole
Galaxy about what they've done, to become heroes and martyrs, a focal
point of trouble for all time to come?"
"There have been Orthist trials before." The officer was moving toward
Kerrel. "I think you'd better give me that rifle, before you get
carried away."
The muzzle of the shock-gun lifted, and Kerrel said, "Wait, I'm not
finished yet." The officer took another step and then he hesitated, and
an uneasiness seemed to come over him and the rest of the cruiser's
men. Trehearne's belly contracted with a sick impotent fury and his
hands moved forward in a grasping motion, futile, hungry. Quorn was
cursing in a monotone, so low that it only formed a background for the
voices speaking over it.
Kerrel said, "These men are different. They found the ship, the shrine.
They've been inside it, handled the notebooks, for all I know they've
seen the body of Orthis himself. They proved it could be done. Will
that ever be forgotten?"
"I don't give a damn," the officer said. "No one is going to kill
prisoners. Give me the gun."
Kerrel stepped back, just a little, a step or two. The group of men
began to widen out, slowly, leaving one by one the beam of light until
only three were left, a small screen between Kerrel and the prisoners.
Trehearne's legs bent and flexed. He watched the gun.
Kerrel said, "Suppose they didn't fail. Suppose it's all over, the
thousand years of Vardda life. Should they be allowed to enjoy the
thing they've done?"
"Fine talk," Trehearne said. The darkness was deep and close, outside
the beam. "Noble talk. Maybe I even believe it. But you've got another
reason, too."
"I admit it. But in this, it doesn't matter. No woman ever born was
important enough to matter in this." He asked quietly of the officer,
"Will you leave them here?"
"Will you put that gun down!"
Back another step. "You three men there, in front of the prisoners.
Move aside."
"All right," said the officer. "_Jump him!_"
Trehearne sprang for the darkness. He saw the three men in front of him
melt away. The rifle cracked and flared, not aimed at anyone just yet,
a warning. And then the night was full of motion.
Lying on the black rock, on the iron ridges of frozen air that flowed
between, Trehearne watched the clumsy dance of men in shapeless
pressure suits and round blank helmets, in and out of the sharp bright
beam that was empty now except for themselves. They had moved around
Kerrel in the blackness and the silence and come upon him from the
back, but their hands were hampered by the gauntlets and the bulging
fabric of Kerrel's suit was hard to hold. They lost him, and then he
was part of the group again and they did not know which one, and their
voices rose in an angry babble. Only Kerrel did not speak. Trehearne
crept on his belly, farther away from the beam, and the shadows that
were Quorn and Edri followed him. Suddenly Edri tapped his helmet, and
then pointed, and Trehearne saw the solitary figure of a man walking
in the darkness outside the beam, but from this angle showing black
against it, toward the place where the prisoners had been.
Trehearne said aloud, "This is Trehearne speaking. He's coming our way,
to your right and just outside the beam."
The men began to run, spreading out. And then the shock-rifle flared
and flared again, steady, systematic, raking all the ground where the
prisoners should be, the blue bolts cracking in the helmet phones like
heavy static. Trehearne and the others fled farther away, floundering
over the bitter ground, and the blue bolts haunted them, and then two
men flung themselves at Kerrel from behind. He fell, dropping the rifle.
The two men got up after a moment, rather slowly. Someone came with a
belt lamp, and then others, and then all of them, with Trehearne and
Quorn and Edri. They all stood looking down at the figure that still
lay where it had fallen and did not move. There was a ridge of rock
with sharp teeth edging it, sticking up from the frozen air.
"He hit hard," said one of the men, "right on his face-plate, and it
broke."
The officer swore, viciously. "What a stinking mess! Why did he have to
do it? He must have been crazy."
"I don't know," Trehearne said slowly. "Where do you draw the line
between lunacy and belief? If there'd been more like him, we couldn't
have done what we did."
They picked Kerrel up and carried him to the cruiser, and Trehearne
plodded on where he was told. Inside the ship he and the others were
stripped of their pressure suits and searched again for weapons. Then
guards took them down a corridor, tired bitter men who had been too
long on a grinding job. One of them said, "We overhauled the _Mirzim_.
All your friends are here." And then he added, "It's a pity that we
have to save the lives of men like you."
They came to a heavy door and stopped, and Shairn was standing there.
She looked thin, and her eyes were shadowed, and there were lines
around her mouth that had not been there before. She was not the old
Shairn. She was someone new. There was no joy in that meeting. She
looked at Trehearne and said, "Michael, what have you done?"
He shook his head and answered, "That's the hell of it. We may not have
done anything at all."