"No."
"What did he mean?"
"Just what he said, I'm sure."
Lee smothered his exasperation. "All right--then who _is_ the man with
the golden eyes?"
Daphne regarded Lee with a sort of impersonal fondness. "Someone I'm
sure you will meet very, very soon."
She left before Lee could get in another question. He sat on the edge
of the bed staring moodily at his coffee cup. "She cured my headache,"
he muttered, "but I've got a hunch this guy with the golden eyes is
going to bring it right back again...."
* * * * *
There was a complete new wardrobe on a chair by the bed, but
Lee--loaded down as he was by unanswered questions--refused to wonder
where it had come from. As he showered, towelled and dressed, his
thoughts were centered upon Mr. Clifford to the exclusion of all else.
Mr. Clifford. Who was he? Why had he done all this? A devious plot of
International Electronics to get one Lee Hayden back on his feet and
on the job again? Lee thought not. Two points stood against this idea.
First, International had definitely charged him off. Second, granted
they were having a last try, their procedure would in no way resemble
the mad pattern of Mr. Clifford.
Then what lay behind this? Was it the amused gesture of a dilettante
philanthropist? No. There was something about this Clifford that put
him a cut above that. He was no idle operator. There was purpose
involved. But what purpose? Daphne had told him he would probably never
see Mr. Clifford again. So how could he ever make any sense out of what
had transpired in the last few hours?
As Lee snatched up his key and headed for the lobby, he told himself,
_She put her hands on my forehead and the headache was gone instantly.
Or did I really have a headache?_
The clerk nodded deferentially. Lee faced him behind his old shield of
belligerence. "My name is Lee Hayden."
"I know, sir."
"I was in room 1106."
The clerk nodded.
"Who rented it for me?"
"Why, Mr. Clifford, sir. I thought you knew."
"I just wanted to find out if _you_ knew." Lee tossed down his key.
"I'm going out."
"Certainly, sir."
"Well?"
"Well, what, sir?"
"The bill. Don't people pay to stay here--or is it a charity
institution?"
"Oh, no sir. We are not a charity institution. But your bill was paid
for by--"
"I know--by Mr. Clifford." Lee scowled and strode out into the street.
* * * * *
He walked from the hotel straight to the nearest bar. He knocked off
a double bourbon, neat, and let it warm the lining of his stomach. It
felt good. He set down his glass and gestured to the barkeep. Then he
was looking into the refilled glass and making no move to lift it. A
moment later he was out in the street, realizing this was the first
time in eighteen months that he'd walked away from a drink.
It was no reformation, though; merely a temporary diversion of his mind
from a prime objective; that of drinking himself to death; that of
blotting from his brain the picture of eleven men dying horribly as the
ship he had designed shivered and buckled and collapsed in deep space.
Not even a temporary respite, because the horrible vision of his own
shortcomings--his own failure--was still there. But how could he have
known? Neither he nor anyone else could possibly have been aware of
the true conditions encountered out there. Theories and abstracts were
fine; almost enough to go on. But not quite. The payoff is always in
the doing. Otherwise, test pilots would not command fabulous salaries
to risk their necks on the first try-out. But eleven men! Snuffed out
because Lee Hayden's word had been taken. Eleven young men.
And here he was, many hours later--back in his room with the bottle on
the table ready to blot out the dream--the nightmare of their final
agony--that ripped and tore at him everytime he closed his eyes.
Still half sober, he fell into bed and began living it again, tasting
the horror, feeling his own flesh grind, his own bones break; living
their deaths over just as he had from that first moment when he'd
gotten word of the disaster; the last message they'd sent from space.
He awoke in a pool of sweat and realized where he was. He snatched at
the bottle, hit it, knocked it off the table. He watched the liquor
slop out onto the carpet. He sobbed.
Then, wide-awake--with the stench of fresh whiskey in his nostrils--he
saw the man with the golden eyes.
* * * * *
Or at least he thought he was awake. And even as it happened, there was
a certainty in his mind.
_This is no dream._
He was standing, apparently unobserved, in a huge cave; a strange,
fabulous place and the wonder of it caught at his breath and made his
heart race.
The cave was high in the side of a mountain. It was as though a huge
knife had cut horizontally into solid rock and sliced out a chunk nine
feet thick, fifty feet wide, and one hundred feet deep. The walls and
ceiling of the cave were of burnished black stone, the floor laid with
thick, silken carpet.
Light came soft and shadowless from somewhere, seemingly sourceless,
and from the outer lip of the cave where Lee stood, he could see a
full, yellow moon riding the night-sky.
The scene--above and below--was one of ecstacy; an overwhelming
sensation swept through Lee, something he had never known before.
At his feet was a sheer drop of ten thousand feet straight down the
face of the mountain to a green valley below. A silver river threaded
delicately through a valley hemmed in by towering snow-covered giants.
The air was like sharp wine and something within Lee said, _I am not
dreaming. I know I am here. I can feel the air in my lungs. I can feel
a new life vibrating through my flesh. I am still drunk but now it's
different. Now I'm drunk from a feeling of complete freedom. I know for
the first time that I have never been really alive._
He raised his eyes to the stars above--steel-blue stars in the clear
air. _I know too, that these are the Himalaya mountains--that this is
the roof of the world._
He turned and looked into the cave. A man stood nearby. He wore a
white gown, yet his form was not hidden; a magnificent six-foot body
supported a head of majestic proportions. The man's face was a magnet
and Lee would never know whether or not he was handsome. He would
remember that the mouth was firm, the nose straight, the eyes dark and
arresting. They were not golden, yet the light that came from them,
illuminating the face that would forever leave an impression of shining
gold.
The man with the golden eyes.