But there was no time for that now. His fingers spurned the ray button;
found another. A jolt shivered the space-skiff from fore-quartz to
rocket as his tensile beam reached across the closing miles, fastened
its grip on Smith's craft.
Mallory's grin tightened. He cut motors. His tensile beam would
contract like a rubber band, drawing the two ships together. Smith,
feeling that beam upon him, unable to sheer it off, would not be able
to turn a lethal radiation upon him now. For the tensile beam was a
perfect conduction ray. To destroy one ship meant to destroy both.
There was a groan behind him. Shocked, he turned. From the storage bin,
bleeding from nose, ears, mouth, body twisted as though wrung through
some gigantic mangler, crawled the missing jewel thief--Albert Lemming!
* * * * *
Mallory choked, sickened. "Lord, man! How did you get aboard here?
Why--"
Liquid breath gurgled in Lemming's throat. Glaze filmed his eyeballs.
"Tried to--" he panted, "--stow away. Wilmot dead--knew suspect
me--hid--"
His head fell forward to the floor. Dan fingered his pulse, found there
not the feeblest stir of life. Lemming, fleeing the dreaded breath of
suspicion, had lost the more important breath of life. The miracle was
that he had survived, even so long, the tremendous acceleration that
had taxed all Mallory's space-trained, protected faculties.
And the two space-skiffs closed inexorably the gap between them.
Mallory's quick brain leaped to the final problem. But before he could
solve it, the small skiff audio burst into speech.
"Well done, whoever you are!" said the voice from the other skiff. "But
you realize it won't do you any good?"
Mallory rasped, "I'm coming alongside in a minute, Smith. Stand by to
surrender peaceably, or--"
"Or?" mocked the ex-space officer. "So it's you, Lieutenant? I might
have guessed it. Your valor is exceeded only by your lack of foresight.
I repeat, your hectic pursuit has done you no good."
"Never mind the talk. Stand by. This is the end," said Mallory. "This
is checkmate, Smith."
"Not checkmate, my gallant young friend," corrected Smith.
"_Stalemate._ True, you hold me captive in your beam. But to what end?
You can't hope to take me alive. Whenever I choose, I can blast you and
myself into atoms. And with us goes--" he paused significantly--"Lady
Alice! Ah, you are silent, Lieutenant? I thought you would be. Of
course, I'm an old man. These youthful romancings no longer interest
me. But--bless us, she's much too beautiful to die, isn't she,
Lieutenant?"
Lady Alice's voice interrupted.
"Take him, Dan! Don't think about me. I'm not afraid to--"
"You hear, Lieutenant? The girl's gallantry is a fit match for your
own. But by this time, surely, you have realized that if she dies, the
secret of the new ray weapon dies with her. I think my leader's forces
will have taken New Fresno before a second messenger reaches Io."
It was the truth. Knowing that, Dan Mallory groaned. This was a
deadlock; one that neither force could break. He said slowly, "Well,
Captain? What is your price for Lady Alice's safety?"
"My own," replied the renegade spaceman promptly, "and the secret
she bears. I'm not an unreasonable man, Lieutenant. Even though--"
bitterness edged his words--"even though the Solar Space Patrol
did take the best years of my life, squeeze the heart out of me,
throw my aging body into the discard like a dried pulp. No, I'm not
unreasonable--"
So that was it. The self-pity of an aging man, perhaps a man gone off
his gravs from the letdown after active years. That was why Smith
had renounced his SSP pledge, gone over to the other side. Captain
Algase's words rang in Dan's memory. "Where there are new causes, there
are traitors to the old--" Even a spaceman was not exempt from human
weakness.
"If Lady Alice will surrender her secret to me," the renegade captain
was continuing, "with convincing proof that the formula she gives me is
no lie, I will permit you both to live. I will allow you to keep one of
these ships, return to safety--"
Mallory thought feverishly. It was against his every scruple to parley
thus with the other man. But he could gain nothing by destroying
himself and Lady Alice. Alive, there was always a chance they might win
through to the New Fresno fort, carry their message, howsoever belated.
If they died, Kreuther and his hirelings would surely win.