"Yeah. Now keep quiet a minute. I--"
"Turn around, both of you! I want to see your faces just once more!"
Jon whirled. He saw Deanne shriek inside her helmet. At the lip of the
great disc, B-Haaq stood, a hand-weapon in each gauntlet!
"I knew who they'd send, Master Kane! Did you think I would leave this
little project all to you, and give away all the credit to boot? Stand
still!"
"It's Director Gentech Starn who gets the credit for this one, B-Haaq!
And I'm pretty sure, after seeing you in action, that he'll know, this
time how to use it! Because he knows now that you can't do today's
business with yesterday's tools and be in business tomorrow!"
"Damn pretty, lover boy! Is that the way you take other men's women,
too?"
Damn him, Jon thought. Time's running out now. Running out.
"Suit yourself on that! I think I trimmed you good!" And with that
Jon kicked viciously against the ponderous mass of the tool cylinder,
launched himself straight at B-Haaq!
Two guns flared!
The twin beams flashed straight into Jon's flying figure, then bounced
harmlessly into Space!
And then the two of them were drifting in the void, fighting silently
and desperately for a death hold.
The universe wheeled crazily as Jon fended off the other's gauntlets
as they grabbed for his tank hoses, and then he struck with all the
strength he could at the fragile face plate. And was parried.
Then for a moment their helmets touched.
"You're a real jerk, Majtech! Why do you think I didn't take any of
those guns with me from the Flagship's arsenal? Hell, there wasn't one
in there that worked!"
B-Haaq made a desperate grab for the side-dog on Jon's helmet; caught
it, began to twist!
Jon clamped the suited arm, held it ... held it, twisted his body. Then
fingered the suit pack into blazing life, melting a horrible, gaping
hole in the Majtech's suit!
For the merest fraction of a second he saw the terror stricken grimace
of hatred and disbelief on B-Haaq's thin face, and then the interior of
the helmet was a mass of exploding flesh and blood.
He whirled. Blasted recklessly back to the Justifier, almost missed;
back-blasted, slid.
He grabbed Deanne about the waist of her suit, and then flicked on his
space radio.
"This is Kane calling Stine! Kane, calling Stine! Do you hear me,
Stine?"
His earphones crackled. "What the blue Jupiter is going on out there,
Kane? Have you--"
"Stine, you're a real dumbhead! A real Prokyman bat brain! You should
have learned better who to trust by this time! The girl and I have
done a job for you out here. You'll never get it fixed now, not in ten
million years! Sure, a system dies; it gives its life, but so that
people like you can't make other people think you're God and enslave
others like it! You're through, Stine!"
"Kane, you're going to die where you stand!" The earphones almost shook
from their connections.
And Jon pulled at Deanne, pulled her prone beside him on the smooth
metal of the nearly-flat disc!
"Shield your eyes!"
Every gun in Stine's batteries blazed. Blazed, and smashed inward in a
blinding, coruscating sea of blue-white flame that for a moment seemed
to rival Procyon herself! For silent seconds, the great ship seemed to
devour itself in the pent up energies suddenly unleashed in a single
hell-spawned torrent of fire from its erupting bowels, then it was no
longer matter but a great wraith of superhot gasses fast dissipating
into the dark of Infinity.
"Jon! Jon, darling--"
"It's O.K., princess. It's O.K. now."
"But you--"
"I fixed his guns for him. He made me do it, remember? Oh, I fixed 'em
good!"
And then they both laughed. Laughed until the tears came, two pygmies
in Space, two pygmies against a solar system of planets with a whole
universe to hear them.
Then slowly, two fine trails of fire started toward a slender,
streamlined shape that hovered ten thousand miles off.
Somewhere high above them, a Cepheid winked. Knowingly.