He stared unseeingly past her wet, upturned face. "You know why," he
said bitterly. "Those rays are strong. They don't only work on embryos;
they change adult life forms, too. I have one chance in seven of
staying alive. You'd have one chance in a million of staying beautiful.
I couldn't stand that. I'd kill myself, and then humanity would die,
too. You'd be their murderer."
Her sobs gradually died away. She straightened slowly until he no
longer had to support her, but all the vitality and resilience was gone
out of her body. "All right," she said in a lifeless voice. "You'll
come back, Peter."
He turned away suddenly, not trusting himself to kiss her goodbye. A
line from an old film kept echoing through his head. "_They'll_ come
back--but not as _boys_!"
We'll come back, but not as men.
We'll come back, but not as elephants.
We'll come back, but not as octopi.
* * * * *
He was trembling violently. He ran the last few steps, stumbled into
the airlock, and pressed the stud that would seal the door behind him.
_We'll come back...._ He heard the massive disk sink home, closing him
off. Then he sank down on the floor of the airlock and put his head in
shaking hands.
After a while he roused himself, closed the inner door of the lock
behind him, and walked down the long corridor into the control chamber.
The shining banks of keys were there, waiting for his touch; he slumped
down before them and listlessly closed the contact of the visiplate.
He swung its field slowly, scanning for the last time the bare walls
of the underground chamber, making sure that all the spectators had
retired out of the way of the blast. Then his clawed fingers poised
over the keys, hovered a moment, and thrust down.
Acceleration pressed him deep into his chair. In the visiplate, the
heavy doors that closed the tunnel above him flashed back, one by one.
The energy-charged screen flickered off to let him pass, and closed
smoothly behind him. The last doors, cleverly camouflaged, slipped back
into place and then dwindled in the distance. It was done.
He flashed on out, past the moon, past Mars, over the asteroid belt.
The days merged into weeks, then months, and finally, far out, _The
Avenger_ curved into an orbit and held it. The great motors died, and
the silence pressed in about him.
Already he could feel the invisible rays burning resistlessly through
his flesh as if it were water, shifting the cells of his body, working
its slow, monstrous alchemy upon him. Peter waited until the changes
were unmistakably evident in his skin and hair, and then he smashed all
the mirrors in the ship.
The embryos were pulsing with unnatural life, even in the suspended
animation of their crystal cells. One by one he allowed them to
mature, and after weeks or years destroyed the monstrosities that came
from the incubators. Time went by, meaninglessly. He ate when he was
hungry, slept when his driving purpose let him, and worked unceasingly,
searching for the million-to-one chance.
He stared sometimes through changed eyes at the tiny blue star that was
Earth, wondering if the race he had left behind still burrowed in its
worm-tunnels, digging deeper and deeper away from the sunlight. But
after a time he ceased even to wonder.
And one changeling-child he did not destroy. He fed knowledge to its
eager brain, and watched it through the swift years, with a dawning
hope....
* * * * *
Peter closed the diary. "The rest you know, Robert," he said.
"Yes," I told him. "I was that child. I am the millionth mutation you
were searching for."
His eyes glowed suddenly in their misshapen sockets. "You are. Your
brain is as superior to mine as mine is to an anthropoid's. You solve
instinctively problems that would take our mechanical computers hours
of work. You are a superman."
"I am without your imperfections," I said, flexing my arms.
He rose and strode nervously over to the window. I watched him as he
stood there, outlined against the blazing galaxies. He had changed but
little in the years that I had known him. His lank gray hair straggled
over his sunken eyes; his cheeks were blobbed with excresences of
flesh; one corner of his mouth was drawn up in a perpetual grin. He had
a tiny sixth finger on his left hand.
He turned again, and I saw the old scar on his cheek where I had once
accidentally drawn one of my talons across his face.
"And now," he said softly, "we will go home. I've waited so
long--keeping the control chamber and the engine room locked away from
you, not telling you, even, about Earth until now--because I had to be
sure. But now, the waiting is over.
"They're still there, I'm sure of it--the people, and the Invaders. You
can kill the Invaders, Robert."
He looked at me, a little oddly, almost as if he had some instinctive
knowledge of what was to come. But he went on swiftly, "On Earth we
had a saying: 'Fight fire with fire.' That is the way it will be with
you. You are completely, coldly logical, just as _they_ are. You can
understand them, and so you can conquer them."