Chapter VIII: Part 8

Ping! Abruptly the pinging changed in tone. It became frequency modulated so that it rose in a chirp, and Farradyne knew that the submarine was coming closer.

_Norma! Get through, wherever you are!_

Along the shoreline something blossomed with an orange flash. Seconds later there was an eruption fifty yards from the Lancaster that shook the ship hard enough to make the plates groan. A trickle of lake water oozed through the ceiling of the astrodome.

The pinging came louder.

Underwater bursts ricocheted and flashed and hurled their gusts of force against the spacer, buffeting the Lancaster.

Farradyne's hands hung above his controls. He could escape this holocaust; all he had to do was to blast free from the water, make a brief run for it, and then come down hard on the enemy ultradrive toggle-bar and his Lancaster would virtually disappear right under the guns of the squadrons that sought him. He could hide in space for a day or a week and return after Norma explained.

But this was wrong. To be sure he had the enemy equipment in his hold and enemy agents in his salon who could explain the science behind the device. Eventually it could be reproduced--but only if there were time.

For Farradyne realized that his act had been the first overt move that could start the First Interstellar War--but the enemy would not permit Sol to take the second move. Once their secret was out the starships would hover over Sol's planets with their loads of mercurite and it would be slavery or death. He would land to find a ruined Sol and a few remnants of humankind reduced to savagery. The only result would be the locating of a mercurite stockpile and a blow of retaliation.

And then someday, another sentience would come to visit the stars and find only the smouldering ruins of two systems that could neither live with each other nor permit each other to have supremacy.

Another bouncing crash shook the Lancaster.

The radio was rambling on and on as John Bundy gave the world a blow by blow description of the first action made toward its ultimate death.

"--and to those people who have stood out against the expenditure of monies for arms and training, I say they should witness this attack upon an enemy of society. Yes, warfare is dead, but the conflict goes on against evil and ruthlessness, and only by preparedness of strength and preparedness of mind--to be as ruthless as the fiends that bore from within--can mankind combat his own weaknesses.

"They are evacuating the area now. Farradyne is trapped and unless he surrenders within the next half hour, atomic weapons will be used. We may never learn the thoughts of the mind that has directed the decay of the moral fiber of our people. We may never know why a man, given the opportunities that many finer men have been denied, chose as his life's work--"

Carolyn laughed hysterically and Farradyne went below for a look.

Morgan and Roberts fell upon him and hauled him down the stairs. They pinned him to the deck and held him there. Carolyn stood above him.

"We don't mind dying," she said, "in order to take you with us! You and your money and your paid agents and your bribed officials! Permit you to surrender? To stand mock trial and be acquitted? Never!"

The Lancaster shook with the throb of depth charges.

Farradyne struggled against his captors. He'd been as blind a fool as he had ever been, to let them sit there without taping them separately.

"Let me up!" he stormed. "Let me up so we can escape this bombing--"

"Shut the hell up!"

Farradyne struggled.

There was a blasting roar that stunned them all; it shook the Lancaster viciously. The trickle of water through the astrodome was covered by the ear-splitting thunder, but less shockingly loud as the Lancaster hiked into the open air and braved the fire of the squadrons.

Farradyne fought himself awake. "Let him escape and we--"

Carolyn's shrill laugh drowned out his weak voice.

The radio went on as accursedly unanswerable as always. "Farradyne's spacecraft has been trapped and fired upon and now the pilot himself has been flushed from cover. He is making the criminal's last-stand. The rascal is hoping to flee through the most thorough skycover that has ever been assembled. He cannot hope to win though, ladies and gentlemen. I wish we had video here in the early morning light, so that you could see this vivid spectacle of the eternal battle between the forces of good and evil!

"But we'll all be there when Farradyne goes down to the death of flame he so richly deserves. Above him now are the jet bombers and above them lie the Interplanetary Space Guard to fire the final coup de grace--if Farradyne can run this gauntlet of righteous wrath that far.

"His flare trail is dimmed by the pinpoints of flashing death that seek him out. On every side of me are ships vomiting torpedoes, guided missiles with target-seeking radar in their sleek noses that will end this reign of terror and dissolution once they find their mark."

Farradyne looked up at Carolyn and saw a glow of excitement in her eyes. She looked down at him and said, "Charles, you almost succeeded--"

The radio clicked audibly and a forceful voice came on: "Attention! Attention! All listeners hear this. This is the office of the Secretary of Solar Defense, Under Secretary Marshall White speaking. All persons, whether official or unofficial, whether citizen or military, are hereby charged with the safety of Charles Farradyne and the Lancaster model Eighty-One in his possession. This is a 'Cease Fire' order. All citizens and military personnel, officials and non-officials are hereby ordered to offer Charles Farradyne whatever he may request in the nature of manpower, machinery, supplies, protection, material and safe conduct so that he may deliver his spacecraft to the Terran Arsenal at Terre Haute, Indiana."

Morgan looked at Farradyne with a scowl.

Carolyn cried, "Friends in high places!"

Roberts spat on Farradyne's face.

The Under Secretary's voice went on, "Within the hour, Miss Norma Hannon, one-time associate of Howard Clevis, undercover agent attached to this office on free duty, has presented irrevocable evidence to show that the hellflower operations have been a part and parcel of an unsuspected plot against humanity by denizens of an extra-solar culture. Since Farradyne's spacecraft contains the only known device enabling matter to exceed the velocity of light, its delivery to the Arsenal is deemed top priority. All persons are charged--"

Farradyne shrugged himself out of the grip of the truckmen. "Go the hell aloft and grab that bastard running the ship!" he snarled at them.

The other enemy rushed forward and Roberts caught a hard fist on the jaw and reeled back. Farradyne wheeled with a wide swing and chopped the edge of his hand hard against the side of the alien face. The blow hurled the other back against the little bar, against which he crumpled and slipped to the floor in a flaccid heap.

"Watch her!" Farradyne yelled to Roberts, who was recovering from his blow. Morgan dashed up the stairs and Farradyne was at his heels.

The truckman raced across the control room and caught the enemy pilot by his right wrist, whipped it out, around, down, back and up in a hammerlock. He jerked once and then lifted the screaming pilot out of the chair; hammerlock in one hand, his other arm clenched around the pilot's throat.

Farradyne slipped into the pilot's chair and reversed the controls. He oriented himself, and then boldly turned the Lancaster on its side and sent the ship screaming through the upper air towards Indiana.

In the control room there were some flashes high in the sky. Terran forces had made contact with the enemy.

* * * * *

He turned in his pilot's chair as he heard them struggling up the stairs. Carolyn was fighting her way up with tooth and nail and crying, "I've got to see him!" Roberts was still stunned from the blow, a bit groggy and also a bit reluctant to lash out and crush a few bones.

Farradyne jeered, "So I couldn't get through?"

Carolyn faced him, "You poor simpleton," she said, "you've just sealed your own doom."

Farradyne shrugged. "Sometimes it's better to kill the dog than let the fleas multiply. It saves the rest of the dogs."

"Do you realize what you're doing? You're giving up! You're admitting--"

"Oh, shut up, Carolyn. What's your alternative? To surrender quietly and let your rapacious gang walk in? Of course we can't win. But you can't win either because we're going to deprive you of victory. When the next galactic race comes this way they'll find a couple of glowing monuments to a culture that preferred death to slavery."

"But you couldn't possibly--"

"Oh yes, I can. That's why we're heading for the arsenal now. I'll get my load of mercurite there, and deliver it to your system while you and your gang are ruining ours. I call it retribution."

"You don't offer any alternative, either," she whispered.

"Complete surrender," he suggested.

"And you know what that would mean."

Farradyne looked at her. It was an impasse and he knew it as well as she did. The law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is only good when there is a higher authority to see that it goes no further. When there is no just authority to pass judgment, the loss of an eye is revenged with interest, and the anger and resentment and desire for counter-revenge grow and pyramid until nations and planets and solar systems are involved in punitive wars that leave both sides weak and broken. Primitive and ruinous it was. But then, so was all revenge.

It need not be ruinous. There could be a better way to pride, to personal or national integrity. It had been done before in the middle of the Twentieth Century and it had been the start of a consolidated Terra. For there is personal pride in knowing that you have let your defeated enemy live; in letting your defeated enemy know that you feel strong and secure enough to hold his efforts in contempt.

Farradyne looked at Carolyn. "Surrender," he suggested to her. "Then we'll move in quietly and count off your people. We've lost many of ours, so we'll just tally off so many men to be murdered in cold blood. So many virgins to be ravished. So many wives to be left without husbands and so many husbands left without wives. Children left homeless to such and such a number." His voice rose. "So much hunger; so much pestilence; so much famine; so much death. What in the hell do you think we are, Carolyn, a race of God damned vultures?"

"What do you want me to do?" she whimpered. "You're in the driver's seat."

"No, I'm not!" yelled Farradyne. "And I'm not going to be held responsible for anything that wasn't my idea in the first place. Your outfit started this and now if your outfit does not care for the end-game, it's for you to say. Now--do we drop mercurite?"

She searched his face and saw nothing but hard determination. She shook her arm from Roberts' clutch and walked to the radio. Into the microphone she began to singsong. She went on for some time; staccato, musical now and discordant then, her triple-tongued voice rising and falling as she spoke rapidly.

Then she turned from the radio. "You win," she said. "Somehow you always win. And maybe--maybe I'm glad it's all over!"

Tears welled in her eyes and she turned away from them to stumble down the stairway blindly.

23

Farradyne looked down at the white face, almost as pale as the hospital sheets. Norma looked up at him, her face wan and her smile weak but genuine. He reached down and pressed her hand gently. "Relax, Norma, it's all over and done with."

"You're sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. Dr. Fawcett told me this morning that you were obviously on your way to a cure."

"I'm feeling fine," she said. "I'm weak, but I do feel better. This is just from the strain. I held my nerves together too long and it's left me sort of washed out. But I'll be all right."

"You've got to be," he said seriously. "This is all too good to miss."

"What's happened? Charles, you talk. I'm--"

"Sure. Well, you never saw so much gold-braid and striped-trousers a-space before in your life. After I set the Lancaster down at Terre Haute, they came aboard and sat on two of the guys for hostages against my return, and a bunch of us went to Lyra Three Fifty Seven with Carolyn as interpreter. We made 'em cough up Clevis and about a hundred other bright guys who'd been too smart for 'em. They--the gold-braid and striped-trouser set--moved in and they've been conferring ever since. Seems as how I guessed right; both sides seem to think that there's been enough strife, and that more can be gained by pooling our efforts. Anyway, it's out of my hands now and I'm just a spaceman again."

Farradyne took a deep breath and chuckled. "I've my license back, clear and honest. There's nothing too good for Farradyne, former bona fide louse. I've also got enough interstellar shipping contracts to set me up in rare style. Within a year I'll own a whole fleet and then I can retire and pay someone else to go a-spacing. Does that sound good, honey?"

Norma looked up at him out of soft eyes. "Is this a proposal of marriage?"

"In the first degree," he said.

Norma pulled him down and gave him her lips. They were soft and warm and pleasantly affectionate, as they had been on the road in Wisconsin. Then she let him go and he stood up. He saw her eyes fill with tears.

"Norma?" he said.

"Charles, it wouldn't work."

"But--"

She smiled gently. "It's not that, Charles," she said slowly. "I'm not thinking about Frank and the years of hate. Since then I've come to know you and admire you, but you see, I don't really love you, Charles. I--"

He saw something in her eyes and understood; he hoped she would not get involved in any long discussion and, to forestall it, he asked, "It's Howard?"

She nodded. "I loved him before Frank--" Her eyes glowed a bit and were dry again. "Howard is a strong man, Charles. He used Frank, and then he used me, and then he used you. And the hellflowers took Frank, and then they took me from Howard and finally they took Howard, too. But you've brought them all back but Frank. To me, Charles, and I've got--"

He bent down and stopped the flow of words with his lips. "Be happy, baby," he said against her cheek. "I'll finish it all up in fine style."

Farradyne left the room quickly. In the corridor he paused long enough to shake the growing vacuum away, and then he went down to the waiting room....

"Howard? She's awake and feeling fine, although she's still weak as a kitten. A bit of the sight and touch of you would work wonders, Howard. She wants you."

Clevis got up and gripped Farradyne's hand hard. "You're quite a guy, Charles," he said.

"I want to be second-best man, Howard."

"Any damned day in the week," replied Clevis. He left and Farradyne was alone.

Farradyne sat down and lit a cigarette. He blew smoke at his toes and wondered at himself. He should have been feeling despondent. Instead, he felt a peculiarly satisfying glow of contentment. He couldn't win everything; somehow this single loss was meant to be and it was right that he should not have Norma.

And then the plume of smoke curled around a pair of slender ankles and Farradyne realized that his loss of Norma was not a loss at all; the slight vacuum filled full as Farradyne knew where his last piece of unfinished business was.

The waiting room resounded with a gentle musical chord. It was operatic in quality; angel, hoyden and devil singing bacchanal. He smiled and looked up at her.

"Any damned day in the week," he promised, getting to his feet.

Against his face, Carolyn laughed softly. "But you can't even pronounce my name."

"I'll get along," he said. "We'll figure out something."

Arm in arm they went out into the bright sunshine.

* * * * *

Once He had Been a Star Master--Now He Dealt in Soul-Shattering Ruin....

Farradyne had committed the one unpardonable error a Space Master could make. He didn't die along with the other 32 passengers when his ship smashed into the Bog on Venus.

They broke him--exiled him to the rotting fungus fields of Venus.

Now his only desire in existence was to return to the cool, gleaming sea of deep space.

And there was a way--only one. But he would have to become the vilest parasite in the universe--peddler of a poison that stripped the spirit, before it consumed the body....

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Cover: J. Gaughan
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