The minutes slid past, sections of eternity arbitrarily measured by the
standards of another planet and having no relevance at all on this tiny
whirling rock. The beam of light from the small aperture moved visibly
across the opposite wall. Hyrst watched it, blinking. Outside,
Bellaver's men were drawn up in a wide crescent across the hill in front
of the catafalque. They waited.
"No mercy," said Hyrst softly. "No mercy, is it?" He bent over and began
to loosen the clamps that held the lead weights to the soles of his
boots.
"It isn't mercy we need," said Shearing. "It's time."
"How much?"
"Look for yourself."
Hyrst shifted his attention to space. There was a ship in it, heading
toward the asteroid, and coming fast. Hyrst frowned, doing in his head
without thinking about it a calculation that would have required a
computer in his former life.
"Twenty-three minutes and seventeen seconds," he said, "inclusive of the
four remaining."
He finished getting the weights off his boots. He handed one to
Shearing. Then he half-climbed, half-floated up the wall and settled
himself above the entrance, where there was a slight concavity in the
rock to give him hold.
"Shearing," he said.
"What?" He was settling himself beside the mouth of the crack, where a
man would have to come clear inside to get a shot at him.
"A starship implies the intention to go to the stars. Why haven't you?"
"For the simplest reason in the world," said Shearing bitterly. "The
damn thing can't fly."
"But--" said Hyrst, in astonishment.
"It isn't finished. It's been building for over seventy years now, and a
long and painful process that's been, too, Hyrst--doing it bit by bit in
secret, and every bit having to be dreamed up out of whole cloth, and
often discarded and dreamed up again, because the principle of a
workable star-drive has never been formulated before. And it still isn't
finished. It can't be finished, unless--"
He stopped, and both men turned their attention to the outside.
"Bellaver's looking at his chrono," said Hyrst. "Go ahead, we've got a
minute."
Shearing continued, "unless we can get hold of enough Titanite to build
the hyper-shift relays. Nothing else has a fast enough reaction time,
and the necessary load-capacity. We must have burned out a thousand
different test-boards, trying."
"Can't you buy it?" asked Hyrst. The question sounded reasonable, but he
knew as he said it that it was a foolish one. "I mean, I know the stuff
is scarcer than virtue and worth astronomical sums--that's what
MacDonald was so happy about--but--"
"The Bellaver Corporation had a corner on the stuff before our ship was
even thought of. That's what brought this whole damned mess about. Some
of our people--not saying why they wanted it, of course--tried to buy
some from Bellaver in the usual way, and one of them must have been
incautious about his shield. Because a Lazarite working for Bellaver
caught a mental hint of the starship, and the reason for the Titanite,
and that was it. Three generations of Bellavers have been after us for
the star-drive, and it's developed into a secret war as bitter as any
ever fought on the battlefield. They hold all the Titanite, we hold the
ship, and perhaps now you're beginning to see why MacDonald was killed,
and why you're so important to both sides."
"Beginning to," said Hyrst. "But only beginning."
"MacDonald found a Titanite pocket. And as you know, a Titanite pocket
isn't very big. One man can break the crude stuff, fill a sack with it,
and tote it on his own back if he doesn't have a power-sled."
"MacDonald had a sled."
"And he used it. He cleaned out his pocket, afraid somebody else would
track him to it, and he hid the wretched ore somewhere. Then he began to
dicker. He approached the Bellaver Corporation, and we heard of it and
approached _him_. He tried playing us off against Bellaver to boost the
price, and suddenly he was dead and you were accused of his murder. We
thought you really had done it, because no Titanite turned up, and we
knew Bellaver hadn't gotten it from him. We'd watched too closely. It
wasn't until some years later that one of our people learned that
MacDonald had threatened a little too loudly to sell to us unless
Bellaver practically tripled his offer--and of course Bellaver didn't
dare do that. A price so much out of line even for Titanite would have
stirred all the rival shipbuilders to unwelcome curiosity. So, we
figured, Bellaver had had him killed."
"But what happened to the Titanite?"
"That," said Shearing, "is what nobody knows. Bellaver must have figured
that if his tame Lazarites couldn't find where MacDonald had put it, we
couldn't either. He was right. With all our combined mental probes and
conventional detectors we haven't been able to track it down. And we
haven't been able to find any more pockets, either. Bellaver Corporation
got exclusive mineral rights to the whole damned moon. They even own the
refinery now."
Hyrst shook his head. "Latent impressions or not, I don't see how I can
help on that. If MacDonald had given the killer any clue--"
* * * * *
A beam of bright blue light no thicker than a pencil struck in through
the mouth of the passage. It touched the side of the large stone block.
The stone turned molten and ran, and then the beam flicked off, leaving
a place that glowed briefly red. Shearing said, "I guess our ten minutes
are up."
They were. For a second or two nothing more happened and then Hyrst saw
something come sailing in through the crack. His mind told him what it
was just barely in time to shut his eyes. There was a flash that dazzled
him even through his closed lids, and the flash became a glare that did
not lessen. Bellaver's men had tossed in a long-term flare, and almost
at once someone followed it, in the hope of catching Hyrst and Shearing
blinded and off guard. The eyes of Hyrst's mind, unaffected by light,
clearly showed him the suited figure just below him, with its bubble
helmet covered by a glare-shield. They directed him with perfect
accuracy in the downward sweep of the lead weight he had taken from his
boot, and which he still held in his hand. The bubble helmet was very
strong, and the gravity very light, but the concussion was enough to
drop the man unconscious. Just about thought Hyrst, what happened to me
there in the hoist tower, when MacDonald died. Shearing, who had by now
adjusted his own glare-shield stooped quickly and took the man's gun.
He said aloud, over the helmet communicator, "The next one that steps
through here gets it. Do you hear that, Bellaver?"
Bellaver's voice answered. "Listen, Shearing, I was wrong. I admit it.
Let's calm down and start over again. I--"
"Ten minutes ago it was no mercy."
"It's hard for me to behave reasonably about this business. You know
what it means to me, what it meant to my father and _his_ father. But
I'm willing to do anything, Shearing, if you'll make a deal."
"I'll make a deal. Readily. Eagerly. Give back what your grandfather
stole from us, and we'll call it square."
"Oh no we won't," said Hyrst grimly, breaking in. "Not until I find who
killed MacDonald."
"All right," said Bellaver. "Wilson, break out the grenades."
The entire surface of Hyrst's body burst into a flaring sweat. For one
panic-stricken second he wanted to rush out the crack pleading for
mercy. Then he got his feet against the wall and pushed hard, and went
plunging across the chamber in a sort of floating dive. Shearing got
there at the same time and helped to pull him down. They huddled
together on the floor, with the coffin-shaped block between them and the
crack. Hyrst sent out a frantic mental call to hurry, directed at the
spaceship of the brotherhood.
"They're all going to hurry," said Shearing. "Vernon has found the ship
now. He's telling Bellaver. Here comes the grenade--"
Small round glittering thing of death, curving light and graceful
through the airless gloom. It comes so slowly, and the flesh shrinks
quivering upon itself until it is nothing more than a handful of simple
fear. Outside the men are running away, and the one who has thrown the
grenade from the cramped, constructing vantage of the crack is running
after them, and Shearing is crying with his mind Will it to fall short,
_will it to fall sh_--
There is a great brilliance, and the rock leaps, but there is not the
slightest sound.