Mars roared and glittered tonight. And how was a man to stand the faces
and lights and sounds, when he had come back from the silence of
eternity?
Hyrst walked through the flaring streets of Syrtis City with slow and
dragging steps. It was like being back on Earth. For this city was not
really part of the old dead planet, of the dark barrens that rolled away
beneath the night. This was the place of the rocket-men, the miners, the
schemers, the workers, who had come from another, younger world. Their
bars and entertainment houses flung a sun-like brilliance. Their ships,
lifting majestically skyward from the distant spaceport, wrote their
flaming sign on the sky. Only here and there moved one of the hooded,
robed humanoids who had once owned this world.
_The next corner_, said the whisper in Hyrst's mind. _Turn there. No,
not toward the spaceport. The other way._
Hyrst thought suddenly, "Shearing."
_Yes?_
"I am being followed."
His physical ears heard nothing but the voices and music. His physical
eyes saw only the street crowd. Yet he knew. He knew it by a picture
that kept coming into his mind, of a blurred shape moving always behind
him.
_Of course you're being followed_, came Shearing's thought. _I told you
they've been waiting for you. This is the corner. Turn._
Hyrst turned. It was a darker street, running away from the lights
through black warehouses and on the labyrinthine monolithic houses of
the humanoids.
_Now look back_, Shearing commanded. _No, not with your eyes! With your
mind. Learn to use your talents._
Hyrst tried. The blurred image in his mind came clearer, and clearer
still, and it was a young man with a vicious mouth and flat uncaring
eyes. Hyrst shivered. "Who is he?"
_He works for the men who have been waiting for you, Hyrst. Bring him
this way._
"This--way?"
_Look ahead. With your mind. Can't you learn?_
Stung to sudden anger, Hyrst flung out a mental probe with a power he
hadn't known he possessed. In a place of total darkness between two
warehouses ahead, he saw a tall man lounging at his ease. Shearing
laughed.
_Yes, it's me. Just walk past me. Don't hurry._
Hyrst glanced backward, mentally at the man following him through the
shadows. He was closer now, and quite silent. His face was tight and
secret. Hyrst thought, How do I know this Shearing isn't in it with him,
taking me into a place where they can both get at me--
He went past the two warehouses and he did not turn his head but his
mind saw Shearing waiting in the darkness. Then there was a soft,
shapeless sound, and he turned and saw Shearing bending over a huddled
form.
"That was unkind of you," said Shearing, speaking aloud but not loudly.
Hyrst, still shaking, said, "But not exactly strange. I've never seen
you before. And I still don't know what this is all about."
Shearing smiled, as he knelt beside the prone, unmoving body. Even here
in the shadows, Hyrst could see him with these new eyes of the mind.
Shearing was a big man. His hair was grizzled along the sides of his
head, and his eyes were dark and very keen. He reached out one hand and
turned the head of the prone young man, and they looked at the lax,
loose face.
"He's not dead?" said Hyrst.
"Of course not. But it will be a while before he wakes."
"But who is he?"
Shearing stood up. "I never saw him before. But I know who he's working
for."
* * * * *
Hyrst flung a sudden question at Shearing, and almost without thinking
he followed it to surprise the answer in Shearing's mind. The question
was, _Who are you working for_? And the answer was a woman, a tall and
handsome woman with angry eyes, standing against a drift of stars. There
was a ship, all lonely on a dark plain, and she was pointing to it, and
somehow Hyrst knew that it was vitally important to her, and to
Shearing, and perhaps even to himself. But before he could do more than
register this fleeting vision on his own consciousness, Shearing's mind
slammed shut with exactly the same violent effect as a door slammed in
his face. He reeled back, throwing up his arms in a futile but
instinctive gesture, and Shearing said angrily,
"You're getting too good. I'll give you a social hint--it's customary to
knock before you enter."
Hyrst said, still holding the pieces of his head together, "All
right--sorry. So who is she?"
"She's one of us. She wants what we want."
"I want only to find out who murdered MacDonald!"
"You want more than that, Hyrst, though you don't know it yet. But
MacDonald's murderer is part of what we're after."
He took Hyrst's arm. "We don't have long. Thanks to my guidance, you
slipped them all except this one. But they'll be hounding after our
trail very quickly."
They went on along the shadowed street. The glare of the lights died
back behind them, and they moved in darkness with only the keen stars to
watch them, and the cold, gritty wind blowing in from the barrens, and
the dark door-ways of the mastaba-like monolithic houses of the
humanoids staring at them like sightless eyes. Hyrst looked up at the
bright, tiny moon that crept amid the stars, and a deep shaking took him
as he thought of men lying up there in the deathly sleep, of himself
lying there year after year....
"In here," said Shearing. It was one of the frigid, musty tombs that the
humanoids called home. It was dark and there was nothing in it at all.
"We can't risk a light. We don't need it, anyway."
They sat down. Hyrst said desperately, "Listen, I want to know some
things. Exactly what are we doing here?"
Shearing answered deliberately, "We are hiding from those who want you,
and we are waiting for a chance to go to our friends."
"Our friends? Your friends, maybe. That woman--I don't know her, and--"
"Now _you_ listen, Hyrst. I'll tell you this much about us now. We're
Lazarites, like you, with the same powers as you. But all Lazarites are
not on _our_ side."
Hyrst thought about that. "Then those others who are hunting us--"
"There are Lazarites among them, too. Not many, but a few. You don't
know us, you don't know them. Do you want to leave me and go back out
and let them have you?"
Hyrst remembered the adder-like face of the young man who had come after
him through the shadows. After a long moment he said, "Well. But what
are _you_ after?"
"The thing that MacDonald was killed for, fifty years ago."
Hyrst said, "The Titanite? They said it hadn't ever been found. But how
it could have remained hidden so long--"
"I want you," Shearing said, "to tell me all about how MacDonald died.
Everything you can remember."
Hyrst asked eagerly, "You think we can find out who killed him? After
all this time? God, if we could--my son--"
"Quiet, Hyrst. Go ahead and tell me. Not in words. Just remember what
happened, and I'll get it."
Yet, by sheer lifetime habit, Hyrst could not remember without first
putting it into words in his own mind, as they two sat in the cold,
whispering darkness.
"There were four of us out there on Titan, you must already know that.
And only four--"
* * * * *
Four men. And one was named MacDonald, an engineer, a secretive, selfish
and enormously greedy man. MacDonald was the man who found a fortune,
and kept it secret, and died.
Landers was one. A lean, brown, lively man, an excellent physicist with
a friendly manner and no obvious ambitions.
Saul was one, and he was big and blond and quiet, a good drinking
companion, a good geologist, a lover of good music. If he had any darker
passions, he kept them hidden.
Hyrst was the fourth man, and the only one of the four still living....
He remembered now. He saw the black and bitter crags of Titan stark
against the glory of the Rings, and he saw two figures moving across a
plain of methane snow, their helmets gleaming in the Saturn-light.
Behind them in the plain were the flat, half-buried concrete structures
of the little refinery, and all around them were the spidery roads where
the big half-tracs dragged their loads of uranium ore from the
enchaining mountains.
The two men were quarrelling.
"You're angry," MacDonald was saying, "because it was _I_ who found it."
"Listen," Hyrst said. "We're sick, all three of us, of hearing you brag
about it."
"I'll bet you are," said MacDonald smugly. "The first find of a Titanite
pocket for years. The rarest, costliest stuff in the System. If you know
the way they've been bidding to buy it from me--"
"I do know," Hyrst said. "You've done nothing for weeks but give forth
mysterious hints--"
"And you don't like that," MacDonald said. "Of course you don't! It's no
part of our refinery deal, it's mine, I've got it and it's hidden where
nobody can find it till I sell it. Naturally, you don't like that."
"All _right_," said Hyrst. "So the Titanite find is all yours. You're
still a partner in the refinery, remember. And you've still got an
obligation to the rest of us, so you can damn well get in and do your
job."
"Don't worry. I've always done my job."
"More or less," said Hyrst. "For your information, I've seen better
engineers in grade-school. There's Number Three hoist. It's been busted
for a week. Now let's get in there and fix it."
The two figures in Hyrst's memory toiled on, out of the area of roads to
the edge of the landing field, where the ships come to take away the
refined uranium. Number Three hoist rose in a stiff, ugly column from
the ground. It was supposed to fetch the uranium up from the
underground storage bins and load it into a specially-built hot-tank
ship in position at the dock. But Number Three had balked and refused to
perform its task. In this completely automated plant, men were only
important when something went wrong. Now something was wrong, and it was
up to MacDonald, the mechanical engineer, and Hyrst, the electronics
man, to set it right.
Hyrst opened the hatch, and they climbed the metal stairs to the upper
chamber. Number Three's brain was here, its scanners, its tabulating and
recording apparatus, its signal system. A red light pulsated on a panel,
alone in a string of white ones.
"Trouble's in the hoist-mechanism," said Hyrst. "That's your
department." He smiled and sat down on a metal bench in the center of
the room, with his back to the stair. "D Level."
MacDonald grumbled, and went to a skeletal cage built over a round
segment of the floor. Various tools were clipped to the ribs of the
cage. MacDonald pulled an extra rayproof protectall over his vac-suit
and stepped inside the cage, pressing a button. The cage dropped, into a
circular shaft that paralleled the hoist right down to the feeder
mechanism.
Hyrst waited. Inside his helmet he could hear MacDonald breathing and
grumbling as he worked away, repairing a break in the belt. He did not
hear anything else. Then something happened, so swiftly that he had
never had any memory of it, and some time later he came to and looked
for MacDonald. The cage was way down at the bottom of the shaft and
MacDonald was in it, with a very massive pedestal-block on top of him.
The block had been unbolted from the floor and dragged to the edge of
the shaft, and it could not possibly have been an accident that it
tumbled in, between the wide-apart ribs of the cage.
And that's how MacDonald died, Hyrst thought--and so _I_ died. They said
I forced the secret of his Titanite find out of him, and then killed
him.
Shearing asked swiftly, "MacDonald never gave you any hint of where he'd
hidden the Titanite?"
"No," said Hyrst. He paused, and then said, "It's the Titanite you're
after?"
Shearing answered carefully. "In a way, yes. But _we_ didn't kill
MacDonald for it. Those who did kill him are the men who are after you
now. They're afraid you might lead us to the stuff."
Hyrst swore, shaking with sudden anger. "Damn it, I won't be treated
like a child. Not by you, by anyone. I want--"
"You want the men who killed MacDonald," said Shearing. "I know. I
remember what was in your mind when you met your son."
A weakness took Hyrst and he leaned his forehead against the cold stone
wall.
"I'm sorry," said Shearing. "But we want what you want--and more. So
much more that you can't dream it. You must trust us."
"Us? That woman?"
* * * * *
Once again in Shearing's mind Hyrst saw the woman with her head against
the stars, and the ship looming darkly. He saw the woman much more
clearly, and she was like a fire, burning with anger, burning with a
single-minded, dedicated purpose. She was beautiful, and frightening.
"She, and others," said Shearing. "Listen. We must go soon. We're to be
picked up, secretly. Will you trust us--or would you rather trust
yourself to those who are hunting you?"
Hyrst was silent. Shearing said, "Well?"
"I'll go with you," said Hyrst.
They went out into the cold darkness, and Hyrst heard Shearing say in
his mind, "I wouldn't try to run--"
_But it wasn't Shearing speaking in his mind now, it was a third man._
"I wouldn't try to run--"
Frantically startled, Hyrst threw out his mental vision and saw the men
who stood around them in the darkness, four men, three of them
holding the wicked little weapons called bee-guns in their hands. The
fourth man came closer, a dark slender man with a face like a fox,
high-boned, narrow-eyed, smiling. It came to Hyrst that the three with
weapons were only ordinary men, and that it was this fourth man whose
mind had spoken.
He was speaking aloud now. "I want you alive, believe me--but there are
endless gradations between alive and dead. My men are very accurate."
Shearing's face was suddenly drawn and exhausted. "Don't try anything,"
he warned Hyrst wearily. "He means it."
The dark man shook his head at Shearing. "This wasn't nice of you. You
knew we had a particular interest in Mr. Hyrst." He turned to Hyrst and
smiled. His teeth were small and very neat and white. "Did you know that
Shearing has been keeping a shield over your mind as well as his? A
little too large a task for him. When you jarred his mind open for an
instant, it was all we needed to lead us here."
He went on. "Mr. Hyrst, my name is Vernon. We'd like you to come with
us."
Vernon nodded to the three accurate men, and the whole little group
began to walk in the direction of the spaceport. Shearing seemed almost
asleep on his feet now. It was as though he had expended all his energy
on a task, and failed at it, and was now quiescent, like an empty well
waiting to fill again.
"Where are we going?" Hyrst asked, and Vernon answered:
"To see a gentleman you've never heard of, in a place you've never
been." He added, with easy friendliness, "Don't worry, Mr. Hyrst, we
have nothing against _you_. You're new to this--ah--state of life. You
shouldn't be asked to make decisions or agreements until you know both
sides of the question. Mr. Shearing was taking an unfair advantage."
Remembering the dark hard purpose Shearing had let him see in his mind,
Hyrst could not readily dispute that. But he put out an exploring probe
in the direction of Vernon's mind.
It was shut tight.
They walked on, toward the spaceport gates.