"There's only one stipulation I make, Irish. I want a complete picture
of Marnagan capturing Raider's Base. I want a picture of Gunther's face
when you do it. Snap it, now, we've got rush work to do. How good an
actor are you?"
"That's a silly question."
"You only have to do three things. Walk with your gun out in front of
you, firing. That's number one. Number two is to clutch at your heart
and fall down dead. Number three is to clutch at your side, fall down
and twitch on the ground. Is that clear?"
"Clear as the Coal Sack Nebula...."
An hour later Hathaway trudged down a passageway that led out into a
sort of city street inside the asteroid. There were about six streets,
lined with cube houses in yellow metal, ending near Hathaway in a
wide, green-lawned Plaza.
Hathaway, weaponless, idly carrying his camera in one hand, walked
across the Plaza as if he owned it. He was heading for a building that
was pretentious enough to be Gunther's quarters.
He got halfway there when he felt a gun in his back.
He didn't resist. They took him straight ahead to his destination and
pushed him into a room where Gunther sat.
Hathaway looked at him. "So you're Gunther?" he said, calmly. The
pirate was incredibly old, his bulging forehead stood out over sunken,
questioningly dark eyes, and his scrawny body was lost in folds of
metal-link cloth. He glanced up from a paper-file, surprised. Before he
could speak, Hathaway said:
"Everything's over with, Mr. Gunther. The Patrol is in the city now and
we're capturing your Base. Don't try to fight. We've a thousand men
against your eighty-five."
Gunther sat there, blinking at Hathaway, not moving. His thin hands
twitched in his lap. "You are bluffing," he said, finally, with a firm
directness. "A ship hasn't landed here for an hour. Your ship was the
last. Two people were on it. The last I saw of them they were being
pursued to the death by the Beasts. One of you escaped, it seemed."
"Both. The other guy went after the Patrol."
"Impossible!"
"I can't respect your opinion, Mr. Gunther."
A shouting rose from the Plaza. About fifty of Gunther's men, lounging
on carved benches during their time-off, stirred to their feet and
started yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side
of his office. He stared, hard.
The Patrol was coming!
Across the Plaza, marching quietly and decisively, came the Patrol.
Five hundred Patrolmen in one long, incredible line, carrying paralysis
guns with them in their tight hands.
Gunther babbled like a child, his voice a shrill dagger in the air.
"Get out there, you men! Throw them back! We're outnumbered!"
Guns flared. But the Patrol came on. Gunther's men didn't run, Hathaway
had to credit them on that. They took it, standing.
Hathaway chuckled inside, deep. What a sweet, sweet shot this was.
His camera whirred, clicked and whirred again. Nobody stopped him
from filming it. Everything was too wild, hot and angry. Gunther was
throwing a fit, still seated at his desk, unable to move because of his
fragile, bony legs and their atrophied state.
Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three
of the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and
twitch. God, what photography!
Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He
fired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paper-weight.
Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos
taking place immediately outside his window.
The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And
out of the chaos came Marnagan's voice, "Here!"
* * * * *
One of the Patrolmen stopped firing, and ran toward Click and the
Building. He got inside. "Did you see them run, Click boy? What an
idea. How did we do?"
"Fine, Irish. Fine!"
"So here's Gunther, the spalpeen! Gunther, the little dried up pirate,
eh?" Marnagan whacked Hathaway on the back. "I'll have to hand it to
you, this is the best plan o' battle ever laid out. And proud I was to
fight with such splendid men as these--" He gestured toward the Plaza.
Click laughed with him. "You should be proud. Five hundred Patrolmen
with hair like red banners flying, with thick Irish brogues and broad
shoulders and freckles and blue eyes and a body as tall as your
stories!"
Marnagan roared. "I always said, I said--if ever there could be an
army of Marnagans, we could lick the whole damn uneeverse! Did you
photograph it, Click?"
"I did." Hathaway tapped his camera happily.
"Ah, then, won't that be a scoop for you, boy? Money from the Patrol so
they can use the film as instruction in Classes and money from Cosmic
Films for the news-reel headlines! And what a scene, and what acting!
Five hundred duplicates of Steve Marnagan, broadcast telepathically
into the minds of the pirates, walking across a Plaza, capturing the
whole she-bang! How did you like my death-scenes?"
"You're a ham. And anyway--five hundred duplicates, nothing!" said
Click. He ripped the film-spool from the camera, spread it in the air
to develop, inserted it in the micro-viewer. "Have a look--"
Marnagan looked. "Ah, now. Ah, now," he said over and over. "There's
the Plaza, and there's Gunther's men fighting and then they're turning
and running. And what are they running from? One man! Me. Irish
Marnagan! Walking all by myself across the lawn, paralyzing them. One
against a hundred, and the cowards running from me!
"Sure, Click, this is better than I thought. I forgot that the film
wouldn't register telepathic emanations, them other Marnagans. It
makes it look like I'm a mighty brave man, does it not? It does. Ah,
look--look at me, Hathaway, I'm enjoying every minute of it, I am."
* * * * *
Hathaway swatted him on his back-side. "Look here, you egocentric son
of Erin, there's more work to be done. More pirates to be captured. The
Patrol is still marching around and someone might be suspicious if they
looked too close and saw all that red hair."
"All right, Click, we'll clean up the rest of them now. We're a
combination, we two, we are. I take it all back about your pictures,
Click, if you hadn't thought of taking pictures of me and inserting
it into those telepath machines we'd be dead ducks now. Well--here I
go...."