Thorsten did have a deal with the Marties. What was more, Pat was in on
it. She had to be.
She looked at my face.
"What's the matter, Lump? Something you ate?"
"Sit down, Pat," I said, pointing to the navigation table. "Go on, sit
down!" I yelled.
She turned white.
"You know what kind of a ship this is, don't you?" I said, feeling like
I was a hundred years old.
"Sure." She nodded. She was beginning to get it. "You weren't supposed
to know about that."
"I didn't. Not until we were spaceborne."
Didn't she realize? Couldn't she see what she was doing to me?
"Pat, do you know what'll happen if the Marties get this drive? They'll
be able to hit Earth and Venus with everything they've got, coming out
of nowhere and going back into hyperspace when they're through. The TSN
won't stand a chance against them."
She shrugged. "They probably would, if they ever got it, but they
won't. Harry's going to assemble the drive, install it in his ships,
and then we'll take off. The Marties'll be stuck."
"Wait a minute--you just mentioned taking off. Where to?"
She looked up at me. "Harry says there's another planet out in
hyperspace, somewhere, circling another star. He says people can live
on it." Her eyes were shining, and I remembered a girl on a terrace,
back at the Academy, with a dream in her voice that I'd been too dumb
to recognize.
"He does, does he? Can he prove it? How do you know what he's really
going to do?"
"Because he's told me!" she flared. "He's going to by-pass the fumbling
bureaucrats who run things on Earth and take mankind out to the
stars--mankind, Ash, the toughest, the strongest men in space, and
their women. Space belongs to us, Ash, not to those Earthbound lilies!"
"And whose speech are you repeating?" I said, getting more and more mad
every minute. "Thorsten's?"
"Yes!"
"All right, if you think so God damned much of him, suppose you tell
me what he is to you now?" I asked.
"He's my husband." She didn't even hesitate.
* * * * *
I started for her, before I could think of words for the
doublecrossing....
She came off the navigation table like a coiled spring. She had a gun
in her hand.
"Ash--get back! I don't want to hurt you. Ash--can't you see why? Do
you think I'm the kind who--?"
I kept coming. "No," I said, "I can't see why. I'm not built so I could
see why. And yes, I do think you're the kind."
"I don't know why I had to pick you!" she screamed then. "Maybe I
remembered something--maybe I found something out, after it was too
late--"
She was crying, but she was bringing the gun up at the same time.