The glass was thick, perfectly clear. Only its glimmer in the sun said
they were imprisoned. Beyond the field, the ever dying and growing
jungle undulated like a green sea. Just outside the glass, the ladder
lay on the gravel where the patrolman had dropped it--within arm's
reach and it might as well have been light years away.
"Look!" Dorothy cried. "The scratch on my finger's already healed."
She held up her finger and there was no mark on it. Vulcan's power
was working, building a life then to tear it down. Each soul-wringing
second created beauty, clear blue-eyed, honey-haired beauty--to
transform it as swiftly into ugliness....
It was the first time in Norman's eventful life that he had ever stared
defeat in the face. He had met death before and he had been in some
pretty tight spots but always there had been some way out. Not here.
There was no possible way to climb a twenty-foot wall of perpendicular
oil-slick glass.
"I'm afraid I've failed you, Dorothy," he said. In his mind now was
only the thought of something he must _not_ do. He couldn't allow her
to go through the horror he had seen on Johnny's gray face. After two
hours, when he saw the first gray hair--he looked down at his hands.
They were his only weapons against a longer torture. Could he kill
Dorothy with his own hands...?
"Well," Dorothy broke in on his thoughts. "Sade wins; and when we go,
the whole universe is next." Her voice was a full octave lower than
Norman had first heard it when she appeared at his galley door.
Norman walked over and stood before her. "Whatever happens," he said,
"I want you to know this--that I've fallen in love with you. You're the
bravest woman I've ever known and the most beautiful. That combination
usually doesn't go together."
She looked up at him with very blue and serious eyes. "I've been in
love with you for a long time," she said. "Ever since I first saw your
picture in the paper. That's why I came with you."
Her words were cut off by Norman's lips. Then quickly he left her and
walked back to the glass, staring out at the wind-whipped jungle. Why
wait? Why go through this torture any longer? Get it over with now!
"Gods of the universe, forgive me," he whispered and turned to take her
throat in his hands.
Light flashed across his face. It was Dorothy's mirror. She held
it, smoothing her sun-burnished hair. A thought burst into his
consciousness like a butterfly from a cocoon.
He jumped over and snatched the mirror from her hand, ripped his watch
from his wrist and flipped off the crystal with his thumbnail, letting
the watch drop to the ground.
"What're you doing!"
He didn't bother to answer. His pulse was liquid fire as he held the
watch crystal close to the glass wall with one hand and focused the
rays of the sun into it with the mirror. A thin curl of smoke rose from
the jungle across the field. Then where the smoke had been an orange
flame licked up from the dry grass. He dropped the mirror and the watch
crystal and grabbed Dorothy close to him in the center of their prison,
holding her tightly.
"Why! Why!"
"You'll see!"
* * * * *
Lashed by the wind, the fire spread like a flood. A blast of smoke
engulfed the glass obscuring their view with its swirling whiteness.
Then bits of flaming ashes dotted the smoke as the flames found new
fuel in the rotted trees. Standing there, holding Dorothy in his arms,
Norman saw the glass around them slowly darken. Quickly, as the wind
brought the increasing heat upon them, the glass turned black and all
he could see was the wild smoke rolling across the hole at the top
of their stifling cage. He felt Dorothy coughing. Heat swam in the
blackness about them.
Then almost as suddenly as it had begun, the wind swept the smoke away
and Norman tore himself away from Dorothy and sprang to the glass wall.
Without waiting till the glass lightened, he ran his hand across its
blistering surface. When the thermal quality of the glass permitted
the passage of light and the sight of the smoldering forest across the
field, Norman was half way up the slick side, climbing like a ladder
the bulging ridges that encircled the glass at its invisible seams.
As Dorothy stared at him, unbelieving, he vaulted over the rim and
jolted with stinging feet to the hot gravel outside. The metal ladder
was like a live coal in his hands but he barely felt it as he threw it
against the wall and ran up it like a squirrel. Sitting on the cooling
rim, he drew the ladder up after him and dropped it inside for Dorothy.
Soon they were streaking across the steaming gravel toward the house,
Dorothy's hair streaming in the smoky wind.
Norman burst into the big front room with Dorothy behind him. Their
running feet were loud in the silent house as they sped down the
corridor, Norman dreading what he would find tied to the cylinder where
they had left Keren. "You don't want to see this," he said, halting at
the closed door. "Try these other doors and find a gun. Sade may be
back any moment!"
Dorothy obediently turned away as he went in and the sight that met his
eyes was to figure in many a future nightmare. Half way between the
door and the cylinder, Keren lay on the floor, more like some hideous
reptile than a human being, staring up at him, her eyes two black
holes, hate alive in them, the only life in what was left of her face.
Norman stepped over and picked her up, his fingers recoiling from
the touch of leathern skin and bone. Her luxurious hair had vanished
leaving a skull, cracked skin tight across her cheek bones. The rope
that had held her to the cylinder had slipped from her shrunken wrists
and how she had crawled this far, Norman couldn't tell.
He carried her to the cylinder, opened the heavy cap and drew out
the small hose that Sade had used to restore to youth the white rat.
Quickly, he sprayed the pink liquid upon her face and body--a treatment
that was to rewrite all of medical science. Her cheeks swelled again
to the form of a living face and like a trick of superimposed motion
picture work, before his eyes Keren's skeletal structure became covered
again with firm, rounded flesh, and on her head wispy black threads
appeared and extended again into a silken sable mass.
To save the spark of life that remained with Johnny, Norman knew he had
to get this material back to Earth now; which meant a finish fight for
a space ship. "Are you strong enough now? We've got to ambush Sade."
It was an effort for Keren to reorganize her forgotten coordinations
which enabled her to speak. Her lips moved soundlessly as he carried
her to the door and down the passage. He explained quickly how he and
Dorothy had escaped.
"There are guns in the tower," she managed to whisper as they entered
the front room.
Dorothy stood at the door with two jet rifles, peering out at the still
deserted field. "I found these in their bedroom," she said, handing
Norman one of the guns. "Is she all right? I thought--"
Norman told her what he had done to revive Keren. "But here's what we
do," he said, lowering Keren to a sofa. "Sade will see the empty cage
and know there's something wrong when he comes in to land. He will
probably attack the house. We've got to get back in the cage. Keren can
vaccinate you," he nodded to Dorothy, allaying her hesitation. "When
they land, I'll jump out and take care of as many as I can. Keren can
get the rest from the tower."
"There's a glass cutter in the store room," Keren said, nodding her
approval of the plan. Her cheeks were white as paper but she got up and
walked unsteadily from the room.
"The liquid brought her back from the grave," Norman whispered to
Dorothy, watching Keren walk up the hall.
* * * * *
Keren returned immediately, and gave Norman the glass-cutter, which was
an instrument shaped like a small riveting hammer. "One promise," she
asked. "Sade's mine. I'll be in the tower. You've got to save him for
me."
Keren took her hypodermic from her pocket and, at Norman's smile,
Dorothy permitted the needle to enter her arm. "All right. Let's go."
With the cutter in one hand and the rifle in the other, Norman left the
house again with Dorothy running beside him.
At the glass cage again, it was short work to cut a narrow door at
the base of the smooth wall. With an eye on the horizon, Norman
quickly covered the cutter with gravel, then motioned Dorothy into the
invisible enclosure that had been their prison and so nearly their
mausoleum. "We'll play dead," he explained, stretching out on the
gravel with the two rifles hidden under him. Dorothy lay down beside
him. "When they leave the ship and come over here, I'll jump out. You
stay inside in case they get a chance to shoot back."
Suddenly the air hummed with the flow of rockets. "Here they are!" But
the sound told Norman that his job was doubled in danger. There were
two ships now, the other, his own. They'd repaired it.
Rockets idling, they hovered over the field and slowly settled. Sade's
group was now split in two parties--he couldn't surprise them both....
"Don't move!" Norman whispered, feeling Dorothy's soft hair against his
cheek. His fingers tightened on the guns under his body. His pulse was
loud in his ears. If they suspected something? But it was too late for
worry now. He heard footsteps on the gravel as the sound of the rockets
sputtered and died away.
* * * * *
The next second was a lifetime. Then suddenly he was on his feet. He
whirled, ducked out through the hole in the glass. The guns in his
hands were spitting their red streams, before his eyes found the men
before him, and he played the guns like two garden hoses, spraying
death. The two patrolmen fell, charred and black. But the two groups
had ruined his ambush. Swart sprang aside, behind the glass wall as the
flame streaked past him. Norman saw Sade standing in the door of the
ship, staring at the wild scene. The door was slammed shut as Norman's
guns splattered the hull with fire. Then the fight was between him and
Swart alone.
On the opposite sides of the ring of glass, Dorothy standing there
horrified between them, it was one of the strangest situations in
Norman's experience. The glass was impervious to jet fire. Dorothy was
perfectly safe. But as Norman moved around the wall to get a shot at
Swart, the dark little man also moved, keeping the arc of glass between
them. It couldn't continue. A sudden sheet of flame rushed past one
side of the glass, Sade firing from the ship. Swart was not slow to
take advantage of the opportunity. Quickly he slid around the wall to
corner Norman against Sade's fire.
Norman stood waiting, rifles poised to blast Swart's gun barrel as it
nosed past the curve of glass. But Swart was no fool. He was playing
for time. Norman heard the throbbing as Sade started his rockets. Sade
was moving the ship to trap him between their guns.
Norman started to jump back through the hole in the glass. But that
would be suicide; while Swart guarded the door, Sade could pick them
off from above in the ship. Then an idea whispered in Norman's mind.
If he could lure Swart from the protection of the glass into Keren's
sights in the the tower--if he could trust Keren--but there was nothing
else to do. He ducked into the enclosure beside Dorothy.
Swart laughed. Norman could hear it inside the glass. Quickly, Swart
stepped to the edge of the hole, his pistol covering their exit,
smiling at them through the wall. "You ain't very bright, Norman." It
was the last breath that ever passed his lips, for a long, thin line of
flame suddenly stretched from the tower to the small of his back. Swart
dropped without a sound, surprise on his dead face.
But Sade's ship was already in the air.
"He'll come and strafe us!" Norman shouted to Dorothy above the roar of
the rockets. He took her hand, dragged her out of the cage past Swart's
body. They had to get to the cruiser; their only hope was a fight with
Sade in the air. But the sound of Sade's rockets stopped Norman in his
tracks as he started to dash for the cruiser. Sade's ship was skimming
the field, twenty feet off the ground, his rockets sputtering like a
gasoline engine with a broken piston.
The ship was headed directly toward the house, apparently unable to
rise. Then Norman saw what had happened. Keren's rifle had hit the
rise rocket tube. The heavily repaired solder work had burned through.
Unable to gain altitude, the ship hurtled into the house like a freight
plane gone wild. The plastic walls ripped like tinfoil as the ship's
heavy nose plowed into the building just below the tower.
There was no explosion. The impact killed the rockets. Dust plumed
up like a geyser, disappeared swiftly in the wind, leaving the ship
hanging there tail out, stuck in the building like an arrow.
Norman and Dorothy were at the door before the debris stopped falling.
The front room was choked with dust and bits of torn plastic rained
from the ceiling as they ran down the shadowy corridor. The door
leading to the tower stairs hung on its hinges, admitting a beam of
sunlight from the demolished upper story. They ran up the broken
stairs, swaying precariously. The cracked hull of the ship lay in the
debris of what remained of the tower. The wall had been sheared off
level with the floor on one side and swaying out from the foundation
below a misty rainbow sparkled its colors in the sunlight, hissing
softly as the red fluid escaped from a pipe hidden in the wreckage.
Sade's well around which the house was built had split in the crash.
Leaving Dorothy at the top of the stairs, Norman climbed over
the chunks of plastic into the tower room. Then he realized his
foolhardiness. Too late. A chill tingled the back of his neck as he saw
the ship's port hanging open.
He heard Dorothy's warning cry behind him as he turned around slowly.
Sade's grimy bulk stood beside a chunk of plastic at the edge of the
littered floor. The sunlight glistened on the pistol in his hand, as it
squirted a stream of red flame upon the barrel of Norman's rifle. The
gun dropped from Norman's blistered fingers.
"You thought you could escape what Vulcan and I can do," Sade said.
"None can escape us, for Vulcan and I control the universe from now
on." He pointed his pistol to the floor at Norman's feet and pulled the
trigger. Norman stepped back as the flame licked up around his shoes.
"Keep walking until you fall into that rainbow down there!"
"Wait, Sade!" Norman stepped back again as the line of fire followed
him. "There's no time for this. That pipe's going to burst wide open
any moment!" He shifted from one foot to another, the soles of his
shoes burning.
"Jump," Sade said quietly. He raised the gun higher.
* * * * *
Norman retreated another step. Two feet lay between him and the edge
of the sheared wall, the end of the floor, and then the misty lethal
colors hissing ten feet below.
Dorothy scrambled over the plastic wreckage and threw herself at Sade,
but the flat of his palm met her face and hurled her aside. The line of
fire moved to Norman's toes again, and he stepped back his last step.
Like a cobra wavering before its prey, the flame swept back and forth
across the floor, inches from Norman's toes, scorching the floor under
his feet. He glanced down at the crimson mist, leaping like a fountain
under the splinters of plastic jutting out over it. Then he realized
that fate had given him his chance--for a price.
He had come to Vulcan to find something to save Johnny's life. In
the tank in the cruiser out on the field was the fluid that could do
that. On the broken wall below him, just over the fountain of death, a
piece of the wreckage jutted outward two feet--he could leap to that,
swing clear of the mist and reach the ship and be free. He could save
Johnny--by leaving Dorothy behind.
There could be no compromise. He had no doubt that Sade would kill her
the instant he realized the trick.
Norman glanced back into Sade's triumphant smile. Suddenly he returned
the smile and laughed out loud. "When'd you take your last vaccination,
Sade!" he laughed. "Did you know your hair had turned white?"
Sade held his smile as steady as his gun. "I'm not leaving you and look
for a mirror," he said. "No tricks will save you this time. Those shots
are good for 24 hours."
"Not with all this raw stuff in the air," Norman laughed. "Look how
your hands have withered."
"What matter," Sade said, "my Fountain of Youth can restore me again."
But his smile loosened, and quick as light his glance dropped to his
hands. Norman's knees straightened like steel springs. The length of
flame seared his hip as he sprang. Then his fist piled into Sade's
heavy jaw.
The gun flew out and down into the mist. Sade hit the floor rolling and
struggled to his feet as Norman was on him like a hurricane. He crossed
jabs into his face with both fists then stepped back and swung a long
arc that crushed the big man's nose. Sade stumbled backward, screamed,
arms flailing the air wildly, and fell backward off the edge of the
floor.
Norman stepped over and looked down. Deep in the eery rainbow mist
that swirled around him, Sade scrambled to his feet and looked around
frantically, confused with the colors. His hair turned snow white, his
round cheeks tightened across the bones of his face and his big belly
vanished in his baggy clothes. He held his hands up before his face
and forgot Norman to stare at his skeleton-like fingers. Then, his
hands still raised before his eyes, he sank to the ground as his legs
collapsed. The shoes fell off his bony feet as he lay there writhing.
Norman shook his head, rubbed his eyes. Sade wasn't writhing. It was
the wind rustling his clothes.
Norman found Dorothy's sunlit head pressed against his shoulder as
she cried like a baby. He touched her hair gently, then turned to the
wreckage of the tower.
A moment's search in the debris disclosed Keren's broken form. He
lifted her dead weight in his arms and with Dorothy behind him went
quickly down the stairs. In the front room, he laid Keren on the sofa
and, risking one moment more, jerked a tapestry from the wall and
gently covered her body. Then they ran out of the house and across the
field to the cruiser.
As he helped Dorothy through the port he heard a cyclone roar from the
house. He shoved Dorothy in, jumped in after her and slammed the door.
Through the glass, they watched the house fly to pieces like a bursting
bomb as a giant flower of red spouted high over the field. Then, where
the house had been, stood a wavering red column, feet thick, towering
above the green jungle. It sprayed down upon the cruiser like a scarlet
rain.
They stared at the vivid scene until the red film covered the cabin
windows. Then Norman thumped the tank around the cabin wall, heard
its dull fullness, and walked into the pilot room and sat down at
the controls. "There's plenty in the tank for Johnny," he said, "and
there's plenty on Vulcan for the Universe."
"What shall we name it?" Dorothy said.
As they soared away from the planet and their increasing speed washed
the red film from the glass. Norman looked at the dwindling green
globe that was Vulcan and lived again, swiftly, all that had happened
there. And strangely, now that it was over, one phrase whispered in his
mind. _I'll owe you a thousand kisses_....
"Let's name it 'Kerine,'" he said. "We owe her more than we can ever
repay."
* * * * *
The word "Kerine" was being shouted in every street and across every
backyard fence in the universe two days later and it was a tense moment
outside a closed white door in a hospital in New York City. Although
the surgery was on the fifteenth floor, Norman and Dorothy could
hear the clamor in the street below as thousands halted traffic for
blocks around and the policemen stood by with folded arms, smiling.
Downstairs, the lobby was packed with photographers and reporters,
waiting.
As the white door opened, Norman and Dorothy jumped to their feet.
Norman could hear his heart thumping above the noise from the street as
he looked down at the sheet-covered stretcher the nurses rolled out the
door. As the stretcher rolled into the hall, the face appeared and deep
within his pounding heart, Norman yelled his joy. Johnny's face was
pale and thin, as if recently recovered from a long illness, but it was
Johnny's face, his barber-shy black hair tousled on his forehead.
"Hello, chum," Johnny said. "The doc told me all about it." Then he
glanced at Dorothy. "So that's her."
"She's got exclusive rights to the story," Norman grinned.
"I can't wait to get back in a full dress suit," Johnny said. "For the
wedding."