The answer whispered across the raw red earth.
"Miner Hilton, the son of Gantry."
* * * * *
Falken raised the blaster, forgotten in his hand. Miner Hilton, who had
been Paul Avery, looked at it and then at Falken's face, a shield of
dark iron over cold, terrible flame.
He shivered, but he didn't move, nor speak.
"You know a way to fight that thing," said Falken, very softly, in his
throat. "I want to kill you. But you know a way."
"I--I don't know. I can't...." Golden tortured eyes went to Sheila
Moore and stayed there, with a dreadful lost intensity.
Falken's white teeth showed. "You want to tell, Miner Hilton. You want
to help us, don't you? Because of Sheila!"
Young Hilton's face flamed red, and then went white. Sheila cried
sharply,
"Eric, don't! Can't you see he's suffering?"
But Falken remembered Kitty, and the babies who were born and died on
freezing rock, without sun or shelter. He said,
"She'd never have you, Hilton. And I'll tell you this. Perhaps I can't
force out of you what you know. But if I can't, I swear to God I'll
kill you with my own hands."
He threw back his head and laughed suddenly. "Gantry Hilton's son--in
love with an Unregenerate!"
"Wait, Eric." Sheila Moore put a hand on his arm to stop him, and went
forward. She took Miner Hilton by the shoulders and looked up at him,
and said,
"It isn't so impossible, Miner Hilton. Not if what I think is true."
Falken stared at her in stunned amazement, beyond speech or movement.
Then his heart was torn with sudden pain, and he knew, with the clarity
of utter truth, that he loved Sheila Moore.