"Yeah, Lou. How's it?"
"No damn good at all, Ash. I've been waiting for you."
"Thorsten?"
"Yeah--our old classmate, Harry the horse. About thirty-forty hours
back."
"You been in that thing all this time!"
"Sure--snap, if you breathe shallow and don't drink anything. Helps to
have a couple of spare tanks." He could still try to chuckle.
"Well, hell, guy, let's get you over to my ship."
"No can do, Ash. No sense to it."
I was straining to hear the words now, even with his set right next to
mine, I knelt down and touched helmets with him.
"Listen, Ash--he's got the stuff. The diagrams, the charts, the
figures--everything. He's even got the tech detail to put it together
for him."
"All right, Lou. It figured. But can the yak. Come on, boy, over my
shoulder you go, and down to the can with you."
"Lemme lay! Goddam it, quit tryin' to move me! I didn't walk over
here--I got flung when the dome let go!" He was screaming.
"Sorry, Lou!"
"S'all right." He bubbled a chuckle. "I see by my infallible little TSN
instruments that I'm gonna run outta breathin' material 'na couple
minutes. 'S'all right by me. Luck to ya, Ash."
"Yeah."
But he didn't strangle. He didn't choke in his helmet; there was still
air in his tanks when he died.
* * * * *
I went back to my ship and sat behind the control board, smoking a
cigarette. I rubbed a hand across my tired eyes, and wondered what I
was going to do next.
Thorsten had thought of everything. He couldn't have found technicians
to assemble the drive anywhere else, so he'd come out here and
kidnapped them. That was an elementary move, obviously planned far in
advance.
I'd been running a useless race. I would have realized it long ago, if
I hadn't been half-crazy about Pat.
She laughed at me when I told her about it, but she laughed in a
peculiar way.
"I could have told you," she said, laughing. "Ash Holcomb, the big
undercover agent, heading like mad for Titan! And what does he find?"
"I found Lou Foster, Pat," I said, feeling the steel in my voice
slicing upward in my throat.
"That wasn't anybody's fault!" she said quickly. "He happened to get
in Harry's way."
"Go tell Andrea Foster," I said.
"Stop it, Ash! You can keep bringing up horrible examples, but it still
doesn't mean anything, compared to travel to the stars."
"What was wrong with the way it was going to be done?" I asked.
But she was pulling her protective shell of mockery around her again.
"Oh, stop it, Ash! You're licked, and now you're trying to justify it
by claiming foul, the way losers always have."
But the last thing she said, as I slammed out of the cabin, was:
"This time, you got the spanking, Ash. Now stop crying about it." But
somehow, she didn't sound as happy as she'd probably expected.
I took the ship back out into space, finally, heading Sunward. All
I could do was hope I'd get within radio range of a TSN ship before
Thorsten found me.
But that didn't happen. I wasn't anywhere near the Belt when I had to
sit and watch Thorsten's fleet come flaming at me out of space and
surround my ship, sliding into tight courses that held me on a deadly
and invisible leash.
And I could feel things crumbling inside me. All the principles
the Academy had built in, and love, and fear--remorse, friendship,
bravery--none of it meant anything. They were things that human hearts
and minds were capable of, but when yesterday's love is today's
revulsion, when friends are deadly enemies, when all the world thinks
of you as just another space bum--what then? I had the destiny of the
System riding in the holds behind me, and nobody really knew or cared
that I'd break my heart to keep it safe.
They were my eyes, but they weren't altogether normal as I stared out
of the control room screens at the waiting fleet.
They kept their distances. They all had their launchers pointed at me,
and on a few of the old T Class rack-mounts I could see the homing
torps lying in wait on the flat upper decks.
I went back to Pat's cabin. She was sitting up on her bunk, staring at
me. Fire lay buried deep in her eyes, but she kept her face smooth.
"Okay, Pat," I said. "Thorsten's got his crew in a globe around me. He
wants this ship. Should I give it to him?"
What I was saying didn't match my voice. I was tired, and mad, and I
couldn't look at her. I could feel my lower teeth sliding back and
forth against my upper ones.
"No--I know you too well, Ash," she said. "Not the way you'd give it
to him." She pushed herself up and stood in front of me. Her eyes kept
getting wider and wider. "Ash! You're crazy. If you think you can fight
your way out of this--" her voice broke. "You know you don't have a
chance. I've seen Harry's fleet in action. This is one ship, Ash--_one
ship!_"
* * * * *
Her entire body was radiating urgency. She was standing stiff-legged,
every muscle quivering, trying to get her words through the desperate
red haze that was building up in front of my eyes. I couldn't see her
very clearly.
But I could see her well enough to laugh at her.
"Fight?" I said. "_Fight?_ I've had fighting--all the fighting I'm ever
going to do. I've been fighting too much, too often. I had a name and a
friend, once--and I had a girl, once, too. Now all I've got is a job,
and some orders, and a conscience, maybe. No--I'm not going to fight."
I threw back my head and laughed again. I reached out and grabbed her
arm. "Come on--you're going to have a grandstand seat."
I pulled her up the companionway and into the control room, and threw
her into the co-pilot's seat. I pulled out my gun.
"Reach for those controls," I said, "and I'll blow your hand off." She
sat in the chair, her face gray, staring out at Thorsten's fleet.