"Uh-uh." Logan pantomimed him into moving the body onto a rollered
table and taking it to the emergency life-craft air-lock. "I'm not that
dumb. I'm having you wire this emergency life-boat with explosive. We
collect the minerals first. We blow up the body if the Martians act
funny. We make them wait until we've collected our half and gotten five
hours' start toward Earth before we allow them to pick up the body.
Nice, huh?"
Brandon swayed over the task of wiring the life-boat with explosive.
"You're cutting your own throat. Handing over a weapon like that to
the Martian enemy."
It was no again from Logan. "After the Martians pick up the body and
we're safely on our way home to Earth, I press a button and the whole
damn thing blows up. They call it double-crossing."
"Destroy the body?"
"Hell, yes. Think I want a weapon like that turned over to the enemy?
Guh!"
"The war'll go on for years."
"So Earth'll wind up winning, anyhow. We're getting along, slow but
sure. And when the war's over, I got a load of radium to set myself up
in business and a big future in front of me."
"So you kill millions of men, for that."
"What'd they do for me? Ruined my guts in the last war!"
There had to be some argument, something to say, quick, something to
do to a man like Logan. Brandon thought, quickly. "Look, Logan, we can
work this, but save the body."
"Don't be funny."
"Put one of the _other_ bodies in the ship we send out. Save Lazarus'
body and run back to Earth with it!" insisted Brandon.
The little assistant shook his head. "The Martians'll have an
intra-material beam focused on the emergency ship when they get within
one hundred thousand miles of her. They'll be able to tell then if the
body's dead or alive. No dice, Brandy."
It was hardly like leaping himself, thought Brandon. It was just
frustration and rage and unthinking action. Brandon jumped. Logan
hardly flicked an eyelid as he pressed the trigger of his paragun. It
paralyzed the legs from under Brandon and he collapsed. The gun sprayed
over his groin and chest and face, too, in a withering shower of
red-hot needles. The lights went out.
* * * * *
There was a loose sensation of empty space, and acceleration minus
power. Pure soundless momentum. Brandon forced his eyes open painfully,
and found himself alone in the preparations' room, lying stretched upon
one of the coroner tables, bound with metal fibre.
"Logan!" he bellowed it up through the ship. He waited. He did it
again. "Logan!"
He fought the metal fibre, knotting his fists, twisting his arms. He
yanked himself back and forth. It pretty well held, except for a
looseness in the right hand binding. He worked on that. Upstairs, a
queer, detached Martian bass voice intoned itself.
"500,000 miles. Prepare your emergency craft with the body of the
Scientist inside of it, Morgue Ship. At 300,000 miles, release the
emergency craft. We'll release _our_ mineral payment ship now, giving
you a half hour leeway to pick it up. It contains the exact amount you
asked for."
Logan's voice next:
"Good. The Scientist is alive, still, and doing well. You're getting a
bargain."
Brandon's face whitened, bringing out all the hard, scared bones of
it, the cheeks and brow and chin bones. He jerked against the binding
and it only jumped the air from his lungs so he sobbed. Breathing
deeply, he lay back. They were taking his child back out into space.
Lazarus, his second son, whom he had birthed out of space with a metal
retriever, they were taking back out and away from him. You can't
have your real son; so you take the second best and you slap him into
breathing life, into breathing consciousness, and before he is a day
old they try to tear him away from you again. Brandon fairly yelled
against his manacles of wire. Sweat came down his face, and the stuff
from his eyes wasn't all sweat.
Logan tiptoed down the hard rungs, grinning.
"Awake, Sleeping Beauty?"
Brandon said nothing. His right hand was loosened. It was wet and
loosened, working like a small white animal at his side, slipping from
its wire trap.
"You can't go ahead with it, Logan."
"Why not?"
"The Earth Tribunal will find out."
"You won't tell them." Logan was doing something across the room.
He was the only moving thing in front of a hundred cold shelves of
sleeping warriors.