It did not stay lost for long. Shearing was at the controls. The
chronometer showed fourteen hours and twenty-seven minutes since they
left the _Happy Dream_. Shearing had spent eight of those hours in a
species of comatose slumber, from which he had roused out practically
normal. Now Hyrst was heavily asleep in the pneumo-chair beside him.
Shearing punched him. "Wake up."
After several more punches Hyrst groaned and opened his eyes. He mumbled
a question, and Shearing pointed out the wide curved port that gave full
vision forward and on both sides.
"It was a good try," he said, "but I don't think we're going to make it.
Look there. No, farther back. See it? Now the other side. And there's
one astern."
Still sleepy, but alarmed, Hyrst swung his mental vision around. It was
easier than looking. Two fast, powerful tugs from the _Happy Dream_, and
Bellaver's yacht. He frowned in heavy concentration. "Bellaver's aboard.
He's got a mighty goose-egg on his head. Vernon too, with his shields up
tight. The three accurate men and the pilot--his nose is a thing of
beauty--plus crew. Nine in all. Two men each to the tugs. The other
Lazarite, the one I laid out--he's not along."
Shearing nodded approvingly. "You're getting good. Now take a glance at
our fuel-tanks and tell me what you see."
Hyrst sat up straight, fully awake. "Practically," he said, "nothing."
"This skiff was meant for short hops only. We've got enough for perhaps
another forty-five minutes, less if we get too involved. They're faster
than we are, so they'll catch up to us--oh, say in about half an hour.
We have friends coming--"
"Friends?"
"Certainly. You don't think we let each other down, do you? Not the
brotherhood. But they had to come from a long way off. We can't possibly
rendezvous under an hour and a half, maybe more if--"
"I know," said Hyrst. "If we all get involved." He looked out the port.
In the beginning, following directions from the young woman--whose name
he had never thought to ask--he had set a course that plunged him deep
into one of the wildest sectors of the Belt. He was not a pilot. He
could, like most men of his time, handle a simple craft under simple
conditions, but these conditions were not simple. The skiff's radar was
short-range and it had no automatic deflection reflexes. Hyrst had had
to fly on ESP, spotting meteor swarms, asteroids, debris of all sorts in
this poetically named hell-hole, the Path of Minor Worlds, and then
figuring out how to get by, through, or over them without a crash.
Shearing had relieved him just in time.
He glowered at the whirling, glittering mess outside, the dust, the
shards and fragments of a shattered world. It merged into mist and his
mind was roving again. Shearing jockeyed the controls. He was flying
esper too. The tugs and Bellaver's fast yacht were closing up the gap.
The level in the tanks went down, used up not in free fall but in the
constant maneuvering.
Hyrst swung mentally inboard to check vac-suits and equipment in the
locker, and then out again. His vision was strong and free. He could
look at the Sun, and see the splendid fires of the corona. He could look
at Mars, old and cold and dried-up, and at Jupiter, massive and sullen
and totally useless except as an anchor for its family of crazy moons.
He could look farther than that. He could look at the stars. In a little
while, he thought, he could look at whole galaxies. His heart pounded
and the breath came hot and hard into his lungs. It was a good feeling.
It made all that had gone before almost worthwhile. The primal
immensities drew him, the black gulfs lit with gold and crimson and
peacock-colored flames. He wanted to go farther and farther, into--
"You're learning too fast," said Shearing dryly. "Stick to something
small and close and sordid, namely an asteroid where we can land."
"I found one," said Hyrst. "There."
* * * * *
Shearing followed his mental nudge. "Hell," he said, "couldn't you have
spotted something better? These Valhallas give me the creeps."
"The others within reach are too small, or there's no cover. We'll have
quite a little time to wait. I take it you would like to be alive when
your friends come."
Vernon's thought broke in on them abruptly. "You have just one chance of
that, and that's to give yourselves up, right now."
"Does the socially-conscious Mr. Bellaver still want to give me that
job?" asked Hyrst.
"I'm warning you," said Vernon.
"Your mind is full of hate," said Hyrst. "Cleanse it." He shut Vernon
out as easily as hanging up a phone. Under stress, his new powers were
developing rapidly. He felt a little drunk with them. Shearing said,
"Don't get above yourself, boy. You're still a cub, you know." Then he
grinned briefly and added, "By the way, thanks."
Hyrst said, "I owed it to you. And you can thank your lady friend, too.
She had a big hand in it."
"Christina," said Shearing softly. "Yes."
He dropped the skiff sharply in a descending curve, toward the asteroid.
"Do you think," said Hyrst, "you could now tell me what the devil this
is all about?"
Shearing said, "We've got a starship."
Hyrst stared. For a long time he didn't say anything. Then, "You've got
a starship? But nobody has! People talk of someday reaching other stars,
but nobody tried yet, nobody _could_ try--" He broke off, suddenly
remembering a dark, lonely ship, and a woman with angry eyes watching
it. Even in his astonishment, things began to come clearer to him. "So
that's it--a starship. And Bellaver wants it?"
Shearing nodded.
"Well," said Hyrst. "Go on."
"You've already developed some amazing mental capabilities since you
came back from beyond the door. You'll find that's only the beginning.
The radiation, the exposure--something. The simple act of pseudo-death,
perhaps. Anyway, the brain is altered, stepped up, a great deal of its
normally unused potential released. You've always been a
fair-to-middling technician. You'll find your rating boosted,
eventually, to the genius level."
The skiff veered wildly as Shearing dodged a whizzing chunk of rock the
size of a skyscraper.
"That's one reason," he said, "why we wanted to get you before Bellaver
did. The number of technicians undergoing the Humane Penalty is quite
small. We--the brotherhood--need all of them we can get."
"But that wasn't the main reason you wanted me?" pressed Hyrst.
Shearing looked at him. "No. We wanted you mainly because you were
present when MacDonald died. Handled right--"
He paused. The asteroid was rushing at them, and Bellaver's ships were
close behind. Hyrst was already in a vac-suit, all but the helmet.
"Take the controls," said Shearing. "As she goes. Don't worry, I'll make
the landing." He pulled the vac-suit on. "Handled right," he said, "you
might be the key to that murder, and to the mystery behind it that the
brotherhood _must_ solve."
He took the controls again. They helped each other on with their
helmets. The asteroid filled the port, a wild, weird jumble of
vari-colored rock.
"I don't see how," said Hyrst, into his helmet mike.
"Latent impressions," answered Shearing briefly, and sent the skiff
skittering in between two great black monoliths, to settle with a jar on
a pan of rock as smooth and naked as a ballroom floor.
"Make it fast," said Shearing. "They're right on top of us."
* * * * *
The skiff, designed as Sheering had said for short hops, could not
accommodate the extra weight and bulk of an airlock. You were supposed
to land in atmosphere. If you didn't, you just pushed a release-button
and hung on. The air was exhausted in one whistling swoosh that took
with it everything loose. The moisture in it crystallized instantly, and
before this frozen drift had even begun to settle, Hyrst and Shearing
were on their way.
They crossed the rock pan in great swaggering bounds. The gravity was
light, the horizon only twenty or so miles away. Literally in his mind's
eye Hyrst could see the three ships arrowing at them. He opened contact
with Vernon, knowing Shearing had done so too. Vernon had been looking
for them.
"Mr. Bellaver still prefers to have you alive," he said. "If you'll wait
quietly beside the skiff, we'll take you aboard."
Shearing gave him a hard answer.
"Very well," said Vernon. "Mr. Bellaver wants me to make it clear to you
that he doesn't intend for you to get away. So you can interpret that as
you please. Be seeing you."
He broke contact, knowing that Hyrst and Shearing would close him out.
From now on, Hyrst realized, he would keep track of them the way he and
Shearing had kept track of obstructions in the path of flight, by mental
"sight". The yacht was extremely close. Suddenly Hyrst had a confused
glimpse of a hand on a control-lever over-lapped by a view of the
black-mouthed tubes of the yacht's belly-jets. He dived, literally, into
a crack between one of the monoliths and a slab that leaned against its
base, dragging Shearing with him.
The yacht swept over. Nothing happened. It dropped out of sight, braking
for a landing.
"Imagination," said Shearing. "You realize a possibility, and you think
it's so. Tricky. But I don't blame you. The safe side is the best one."
Hyrst looked out the crack. One of the tugs was coming in to land beside
the skiff, while the other one circled.
"Now what?" he said. "I suppose we can dodge them for a while, but we
can't hide from Vernon."
Shearing chuckled. He had got his look of tough competence back. He
seemed almost to be enjoying himself. "I told you you were only a cub.
How do you suppose we've kept the starship hidden all these years?
Watch."
In the flick of a second Hyrst went blind and deaf. Then he realized
that it was only his mental eyes and ears that were blanked out as
though a curtain had been drawn across them. His physical eyes were
still clear and sharp, and when Shearing's voice came over the helmet
audio he heard it without trouble.
"This is called the cloak. I suppose you could call it an extension of
the shield, though it's more like a force field. It's no bar to physical
vision, and it has the one great disadvantage of being opaque both ways
to mental energy. But it does act as a deflector. If Vernon follows us
now, he'll have to do it the hard way. Stick close by me, so I don't
have too wide a spread. And it'll be up to you to lead. I can't do both.
Let's go."
Hyrst had, unconsciously, become so used to his new perceptions that it
made him feel dull and helpless to be without them. He led off down one
of the smooth rock avenues, going away from the skiff and the tug which
had just landed.
On either side of the avenue were monoliths, irregularly spaced and of
different sizes and heights but following an apparently orderly plan.
The light of the distant sun lay raw and blinding on them, casting
shadows as black and sharp-edged as though drawn upon the rock with
india ink.
You could see faces in the monoliths. You could see mighty outlines,
singly and in groups, of gods and beasts and men, in combat, in
suppliance, in death and burial. That was why these asteroids were
called Valhallas. Twenty-six of them had been found so far, and studied,
and still no one could say certainly whether or not the hands of any
living beings had fashioned them. They might be actual monuments,
defaced by cosmic dust, by collision with the myriad fragments of the
Belt, by time. They might be one of Nature's casual jokes, created by
the same agencies. No actual tombs had been found, nor tools, nor
definitely identifiable artifacts. But still the feeling persisted, in
the airless silence of the avenues, that some passing race had paused
and wrought for itself a memorial more enduring than its fame, and then
gone on into the great galactic sea, never to return.
* * * * *
Hyrst had never been on a Valhalla before. He understood why Shearing
had not wanted to land and he wished now that they hadn't. There was
something overwhelmingly sad and awesome about these leaning, towering
figures of stone, moving forever in their lonely orbit, going nowhere,
returning to nowhere.
Then he saw the second tug overhead. He forgot his daydreams. "They're
going to act as a spotter," he said. Shearing grunted but did not speak.
His whole mind was concentrated on maintaining the cloak. Hyrst stopped
him still in the pitchy shadow under what might have been a kneeling
woman sixty feet high. He watched the tug. It lazed away, circling
slowly, and he did not think it had seen them. He could not any longer
see the place where they had landed, but he assumed that by now the
yacht had looped back and come in--if not there somewhere close by. They
could figure on nine to eleven men hunting them, depending on whether
they left the ships guarded or not. Either way, it was too many.
"Listen," he said aloud to Shearing. "Listen, I want to ask you. What
you said about latent impressions--you think I might have seen and heard
the killer even though I was unconscious?"
"Especially heard. Possible. With your increased power, and ours,
impressions received through sense-channels but not recognized at the
time or remembered later might be recovered." He shook his head. "Don't
bother me."
"I just wanted to know," said Hyrst. He thought of his son, and the two
daughters he hoped he would never see. He thought of Elena. It was too
late to do anything for her, but the others were still living. So was
he, and he intended to stay that way, at least until he had done what he
set out to do.
"Old Bellaver was behind that killing, wasn't he? Old Quentin, this
one's grandfather."
"Yes. Don't bother me."
"One thing more. Do we Lazarites live longer than men?"
Shearing gave him a curious, brief look. "Yes."
The tug was out of sight behind a massive rearing shape that seemed to
clutch a broken ship between its paws. Symbolic, perhaps, of space? Who
knew? Hyrst led Shearing in wild impala-like leaps across an open space,
and into a narrow way that twisted, filled with darkness, among the
bases of a group that resembled an outlandish procession following a
king.
"How much longer?"
"Humane Penalty first came in a hundred and fourteen years ago, right?
After Seitz' method was perfected for saving spacemen. I was one of the
first they used it on."
"My God," said Hyrst. Yet, somehow, he was not as surprised as he might
have been.
"I've aged," said Shearing apologetically. "I was only twenty-seven
then."
They crouched, beside a humped shape like a gigantic lizard with a long
tail. The tug swung overhead and slowly on.
Hyrst said, "Then it's possible the one who killed MacDonald is still
alive?"
"Possible. Probable."
Hyrst bared his teeth, in what was not at all like a smile. "Good," he
said. "That makes me happy."
They did not do any talking after that. They had had their helmet radios
operating on practically no power at all, so that they couldn't be
picked up outside a radius of a few yards, but even that might be too
close, now that Bellaver's men had had time to get suited and fan out.
They shut them off entirely, communicating by yanks and nudges.
* * * * *
For what seemed to Hyrst like a very long time, but which was probably
less than half an hour in measured minutes, they dodged from one patch
of shadow to another, following an erratic course that Hyrst thought
would lead them away from the ships. Once more the tug went over, slow,
and then Hyrst didn't see it again. The idea that they might have given
up occurred to him but he dismissed it as absurd. With the helmet mike
shut off, the silence was beginning to get on his nerves. Once he looked
up and saw a piece of cosmic debris smash into a monolith. Dust and
splinters flew, and a great fragment broke off and fell slowly downward,
bumping and rebounding, and all of it as soundless as a dream. You
couldn't hear yourself walk, you couldn't hear anything but the roar of
your own breathing and the pounding of your own blood. The grotesque
rocky avenues could hide an army, stealthy, creeping--
There was a hill, or at least a higher eminence, crowned with what might
have been the cyclopean image of a man stretched out on a noble
catafalque, with hooded giants standing by in attitudes of mourning. It
seemed like the best place to stop that Hyrst had seen, with plenty of
cover and a view of the surrounding area. With luck, you might stay
hidden there a long time. He jogged Shearing's elbow and pointed, and
Shearing nodded. There was a wide, almost circular sweep of open rock
around the base of the hill. Hyrst looked carefully for the tug. There
was no sign of it. He tore out across the open, with Shearing at his
heels.
The tug swooped over, going fast this time. It could not possibly have
missed them. Shearing dropped the cloak with a grunt. "No use for that
any more," he said. They bounded up the hillside and in among the
mourning figures. The tug whipped around in a tight spiral and hung over
the hill. Hyrst shook the sweat out of his eyes. His mind was clear
again. The tug's skipper was babbling into his communicator, and in
another place on the asteroid Hyrst could mentally see a thin skirmish
line spread out, and in still another four men in a bunch. They all
picked up and began to move, toward the hill.
Shearing said, nodding spaceward, "Our friends are on the way. If we can
hold out--"
"Fat chance," said Hyrst. "They're armed, and all we've got is
flare-pistols." But he looked around. His eyes detected nothing but
rock, hard sunlight, and deep shadow, but his mind saw that one of the
black blots at the base of the main block, the catafalque, was more than
a shadow. He slid into a crack that resembled a passage, being rounded
rather than ragged. Shearing was right behind him. "I don't like this,"
he said, "but I suppose there's no help for it."
The crack led down into a cave, or chamber, too irregularly shaped to be
artificial, too smoothly surfaced and floored to be natural. There was
nothing in it but a block of stone, nine feet or so long and about four
feet wide by five feet high. It seemed to be a natural part of the
floor, but Hyrst avoided it. On the opposite, the sunward side, there
was a small windowlike aperture that admitted a ray of blinding
radiance, sharply defined and doing nothing to illumine the dark on
either side of it.
Vernon's thought came to them, hard, triumphant, peremptory. "Mr.
Bellaver says you have ten minutes to come out. After that, no mercy."