Chapter IV

"This is Colonel Keifer calling warp-ship seven. Come in please."

"Warp seven, sir?"

"Captain Haddix?"

"A moment, sir."

Keifer waited impatiently, then saw Haddix's gaunt face on the viewscreen. "Where are you now, Haddix?"

"Starting out along the warp-route, sir. Has there been a change in plans?"

"Yes. I want you to return tonight, Captain Haddix. Without Alan Tremaine."

"But I thought--"

"Don't. We still need Tremaine's name, but the boy is suspicious. No one has to know he has been killed. This is one case where we want the name but _not_ the game. You understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"One more thing, Captain. How would you like to attain your majority?"

"Yes, _sir_!" Haddix beamed.

"Good. Return tonight without Tremaine and you'll be promoted. Good luck, Captain."

* * * * *

Alan felt awkward in the cumbersome spacesuit, clomping along the hull of warp-ship seven with Captain Haddix. Ahead of him, Haddix looked like some grotesque monster in the shapeless, inflated suit. But Haddix had learned to slide his feet along in their magnet-shod boots and could move with comparative ease.

"There's the warp-station," Haddix called over the suit intercom, pointing with one gauntleted hand toward a black globe which obscured the starlight overhead. From the globe, an incredibly straight black line darted out across the gulf of space like a bridge to infinity. From here it seemed only inches thick, but Alan knew it was actually fifty feet across.

"That's the warp," Haddix said. "It bends space as if space were a sheet of paper with Venus at one corner and Mars at another. You fold the sheet of paper across to place Venus and Mars in juxtaposition. In the same way, this warp folds space, aligning Venus and Mars in sub-space."

"Why can't men travel the same way?" Alan asked. "It's almost instantaneous, isn't it? It takes almost a month by spaceship from Mars to Venus."

Haddix's laughter purred over the intercom. "Uh-uh," he said. "The stresses in a space-warp are tremendous. Water has no shape to lose, so it doesn't matter. A man would be mangled. Well, are you ready, Mr. Tremaine?"

"I guess so."

"Fine. Just point yourself in the direction of the warp-station, unmagnetize your boots and switch on your shoulder jets. Once you get the hang of it, it's a cinch. Here we go."

Ahead of him, Alan saw Haddix's form suddenly lift from the hull of the spaceship and rocket up toward the warp-station. Alan followed him, feeling utterly no sensation of movement after the initial acceleration.

* * * * *

A featureless black globe several hundred yards in diameter, the warp station floated toward them. Following Haddix's lead, Alan alighted on his hands, cutting his shoulder jets and cart-wheeling into an upright position. The warp-station, he knew, was merely a terminal point for the space-warp itself. Untended, it housed the tremendous atomic power plant which unfolded the water on the Martian end of the warp from sub-space to normal space.

"As you can see," Haddix said, "the station is working. But there's no water."

Alan could feel the pulsing of great machinery underfoot. But the black tube of sub-space, yawning awesomely half a hundred feet to his left, was empty.

"Want to take a look?" Haddix demanded.

Alan nodded through the glassite helmet of his space suit, then fell into dragging, magnetized step beside Haddix. Soon they approached the lip of the sub-space tube, where sub-space intersected normal space in a fifty foot wide channel.

"It doesn't look dangerous," Alan said.

"For water, it's not. The pressure would crush a man to jelly."

Alan peered over the edge. Below him perhaps a dozen feet, a white line had been painted. Over it in stark white letters was the word CAUTION. Beyond that point, apparently, the actual space-warp began. "Look out!" Alan shouted. "What are you trying to do?"

Haddix was leaning against him, their two bulky suits in sudden, dangerous contact. Alan could feel himself slipping over the edge. Yelling now, his own voice deafening him inside the glassite helmet, Alan groped with clumsy, gauntletted hands for Haddix. He clutched the shoulder of the man's spacesuit, then felt himself tumbling over the edge into the tube.

There was a jolting sensation above him. He was sliding down the inflated body of Haddix's spacesuit, sliding, sliding. He wrapped his arms about the legs of the suit and clung there. Below his dangling feet was the white line and the word CAUTION painted there. Immediately below that, the space-warp itself.

"Let go of me!" Haddix screamed. "You'll kill us both."

Alan looked up. Haddix was clinging to the lip of the tube with both hands. Suddenly, Haddix began rocking back and forth in an attempt to dislodge Alan.

"Don't try it," Alan said. "All I've got to do is yank at your legs a little harder and we'll both fall down there."

"I can't climb up with you hanging on like that. I--I can't hold on much longer. This warp-station's at Earth normal gravity, Tremaine. My hands are slipping!"

"Listen to me," Alan said. "We can still get out of this. I can climb up your back, then pull you up after me."

"How do I know you will?"

"You don't. If we just hang here, we're as good as dead." Alan could feel the strain in his arms as he clung to Haddix's suit. For Haddix, the strain was double. Haddix could not be expected to hang there more than a few moments.

"I'm coming up," Alan said. "Don't try anything foolish."

* * * * *

Hanging by one arm, Alan reached up with his other hand and grasped the belt of Haddix's suit. Suspended there by both arms now, he reached up again for the flange of metal at the neck of Haddix's suit, where the glassite helmet fit. He got the gauntletted fingers of one hand around it, then almost lost his precarious grip. He swung sickeningly over the abyss for one harrowing moment, then held the flange with both hands. Taking a deep breath, he reached for the lip of the tube itself and soon clambered up and over. He lay there briefly, panting. He had never been nearer death in his life.

"Help!" Haddix gasped. "I can't hold on much longer."

Alan crouched there, looked over the edge. Haddix still clung with both hands.

"Why did you try to kill me?" Alan demanded. "Did you kill my father and Eugene Talbrick too?"

"It was Keifer!" Haddix cried. "Keifer thought you were suspicious. He was going to get you out of the way and keep using your name."

"Did he kill my father?"

"I don't know. Honest."

"And Talbrick?"

"One of my men did it. At Keifer's orders. Get me out of here, I'm begging you."

"O.K.," Alan said. He braced himself and hauled Haddix up out of the tube, then turned and jetted back toward the waiting warp-ship. They entered the airlock together, waited for the green safety light which announced the return of normal pressure and air, then stripped off their deflated spacesuits and glassite helmets.

Cat-quick, Haddix yanked an atomic pistol from his belt.

Instinctively, matching reflex for reflex, Alan slapped it from his hand. The weapon roared, blasting the air over Alan's head as he dove for Haddix. They went down together, rolling across the floor. Alan was aware of Haddix shouting for help, of the man's long fingers closing on his throat, of a knee driven painfully into his groin.

The inner lock door swung open. The warp-ship's pilot crashed through and scrambled on the floor after the atomic pistol. "Get out of the way, Captain," he said. "I've got him covered."

But Haddix was a growling, choking, feline animal now, trying to squeeze the life from Alan's throat. Desperately, Alan groped blindly with his fingers. His thumbs found Haddix's eyes, gouging. Haddix screamed and tumbled clear, clawing at his face.

Alan sucked air into his lungs and sprang to his feet as the atomic pistol was discharged. He felt a sudden, burning numbness in his left arm, then was grappling with the pilot chest to chest, the atomic pistol between them. When the weapon went off, Alan was flung across the airlock, slamming against the wall. The pilot went down to his knees slowly, disbelief on his face as he died trying to stuff entrails back into his belly.

Haddix and Alan went for the atomic pistol at the same time. The Security Officer got his fingers around it and turned, snarling, toward Alan.

"All right, you no good son--" he began.

Alan stepped on his wrist, pinning it on the floor with the weapon. He kicked Haddix in the face with his other foot and retrieved the atomic pistol as Haddix slumped forward.

"Now listen," Alan said, breathing in great sobs, "we're going forward. You'll call Keifer and tell him I'm dead. Try anything else and I'll kill you. Understand?"

Haddix understood.

Alan followed him, stuffing his numb left hand into a pocket of his blouse as a temporary sling. By the time they reached the control cabin, the left side of his blouse was soaked with blood.

* * * * *

"Good dinner, wasn't it?" Bennett Keifer asked Laura.

"Yes," she said.

"Did you like the wine?"

"Yes."

"I'm glad you decided to accept my invitation. Are you?"

"Yes."

"Is that all you have to say, 'yes'?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"Come here, Laura."

_Dad_, she thought. _It's for you. Alan, Alan, where are you?_ She walked to where Keifer was sitting.

"Sit down, Laura."

She sat.

"You still don't like me," he said, as if it were both regretted and unexpected. "But you're all alone now. I've given you the opportunity to start a new life here with me. Your father can't help you. And Alan Tremaine--"

"What about Alan?" Laura asked eagerly.

"I want ours to be a frank relationship. No lies. No deceits. Alan Tremaine is dead."

"What--what did you say?" Laura cried.

"Tremaine is dead. I got word this afternoon. An accident at the warp-station."

"It isn't true," Laura whispered. "It cant be true. Please. Please...."

"Listen to me, Laura. I'm going to win. I can't be stopped now. I'm offering you half, a woman's share of empire. Not just the Outworlds. I believe I can force Earth itself to its knees."

_Alan, Alan, forgive me. I said I hated you...._

"It isn't madness, Laura. With Tremaine's name and my plans, the Outworlds will rally behind me. And after they hear how Earth has sundered the space-warp from Venus--"

"Earth wouldn't," Laura said mechanically.

"It's on every Martian's lips," Keifer said.

"Then you did it yourself."

"Laura, Laura. I said a woman's share of empire. Don't worry yourself over the details. Wealth and jewels and importance, that's a woman's share. It's yours if you want it."

"My father--"

"Is a prisoner. Will you come here now?"

Laura looked at him, at this man who would carve a solar empire for himself by twisting the legitimate motives of the Outworld people. _It's for Dad_, she thought. She tried to fill her mind with that and nothing else. For her father. Otherwise, he would be tortured. For her father. For her father....

But when Keifer smiled down on her, calmly sure of himself, she thought of other things, of Earth, which did not yet understand the full extent of Keifer's madness, of Alan, who had been slain treacherously....

"That's for my father!" she cried, and slapped Keifer's face.

He caught her hands, pinning them at her side. "You little vixen," he said. The imprint of her fingers was on his cheek. There was quick hatred in his eyes, but lust as well. "Why don't you cry for help?" he taunted her. "My guards will hear you."

Laura freed one of her hands and slapped him again, then watched as rage swept the lust from his eyes. "I'll break you," he promised, biting off the words one at a time. "You'll come crawling." He forced her down slowly on the couch.

They both looked up as the door to the room slid noisily into the wall.

Alan stood there.