human dangers, Mr. Bergen. You guard against the sea and against mechanical failure and you don’t search your human visitors, do you? I have a weapon, Bergen.”
Now that it was out and he had taken the final step, from which there was no returning, for he was now dead whatever he did, he was quite calm.
Annette said, “Oh, John,” and grasped her husband’s arm. “He’s—”
Bergen stepped in front of her. “A weapon? Is that what that thing is? Now slowly, Demerest, slowly. There’s nothing to get hot over. If you want to talk, we will talk. What is that?”
“Nothing dramatic. A portable laser beam.”
“But what do you want to do with it?”
“Destroy Ocean-Deep.”
“But you can’t, Demerest. You know you can’t. There’s only so much energy you can pack into your fist and any laser you can hold can’t pump enough heat to penetrate the walls.”
“I know that. This packs more energy than you think. It’s Moon-made and there are some advantages to manufacturing the energy unit in a vacuum. But you’re right. Even so, it’s designed only for small jobs and requires frequent recharging. So I don’t intend to try to cut through a foot-plus of alloy steel . . . But it will do the job indirectly. For one thing, it will keep you two quiet. There’s enough energy in my fist to kill two people.”
“You wouldn’t kill us,” said Bergen evenly. “You have no reason.”
“If by that,” said Demerest, “you imply that I am an unreasoning being to be somehow made to understand my madness, forget it. I have every reason to kill you and I will kill you. By laser beam if I have to, though I would rather not.”
“What good will killing us do you? Make me understand. Is it that I have refused to sacrifice Ocean-Deep funds? I couldn’t do anything else. I’m not really the one to make the decision. And if you kill me, that won’t help you force the decision in your direction, will it? In fact, quite the contrary. If a Moon-man is a murderer, how will that reflect on Luna City? Consider human emotions on Earth.”
There was just an edge of shrillness in Annette’s voice as she joined in. “Don’t you see there will be people who will say that Solar radiation on the Moon has dangerous effects? That the genetic engineering which has reorganized your bones and muscles has affected mental stability? Consider the word ‘lunatic,’ Mr. Demerest. Men once believed the Moon brought madness.”
“I am not mad, Mrs. Bergen.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Bergen, following his wife’s lead smoothly. “Men will say that you were; that all Moon-men are; and Luna City will be closed down and the Moon itself closed to all further exploration, perhaps forever. Is that what you want?”
“That might happen if they thought I killed you, but they won’t. It will be an accident.” With his left elbow, Demerest broke the plastic that covered the manual controls.
“I know units of this sort,” he said. “I know exactly how it works. Logically, breaking that plastic should set up a warning flash—after all, it might be broken by accident—and then someone would be here to investigate, or, better yet, the controls should lock until deliberately released to make sure the break was not merely accidental.”
He paused, then said, “But I’m sure no one will come; that no warning has taken place. Your manual system is not failsafe because in your heart you were sure it would never be used.”
“What do you plan to do?” said Bergen.
He was tense and Demerest watched his knees carefully, and said, “If you try to jump toward me, I’ll shoot at once, and then keep right on with what I’m doing.”
“I think maybe you’re giving me nothing to lose.”
“You’ll lose time. Let me go right on without interference and you’ll have some minutes to keep on talking. You may even be able to talk me out of it. There’s my proposal. Don’t interfere with me and I will give you your chance to argue.”
“But what do you plan to do?”
“This,” said Demerest. He did not have to look. His left hand snaked out and closed a contact. “The fusion unit will now pump heat into the air lock and the steam will empty it. It will take a few minutes. When it’s done, I’m sure one of those little red-glass buttons will light.”
“Are you going to—”
Demerest said, “Why do you ask? You know that I must be intending, having gone this far, to Rood Ocean- Deep?”
“But why? Damn it, why?”
“Because it will be marked down as an accident. Because your safety record will be spoiled. Because it will be a complete catastrophe and will wipe you out. And PPC will then turn from you, and the glamor of Ocean-Deep will be gone. We will get the funds; we will continue. If I could bring that to pass in some other way, I would, but the needs of Luna City are the needs of mankind and those are paramount.”
“You will die, too,” Annette managed to say.
“Of course. Once I am forced to do something like this, would I want to live? I’m not a murderer.”
“But you will be. If you flood this unit, you will flood all of Ocean-Deep and kill everyone in it—and doom those who are out in their subs to slower death. Fifty men and women—an unborn child—”
“That is not my fault,” said Demerest, in clear pain. “I did not expect to find a pregnant woman here, but now that I have, I can’t stop because of that.”
“But you must stop,” said Bergen. “Your plan won’t work unless what happens can be shown to be an accident. They’ll find you with a beam emitter in your hand and with the manual controls clearly tampered with. Do you think they won’t deduce the truth from that?”
Demerest was feeling very tired. “Mr. Bergen, you sound desperate. Listen—When the outer door opens, water under a thousand atmospheres of pressure will enter. It will be a massive battering ram that will destroy and mangle everything in its path. The walls of the Ocean-Deep units will remain but everything inside will be twisted beyond recognition. Human beings will be mangled into shredded tissue and splintered bone and death will be instantaneous and unfelt. Even if I were to burn you to death with the laser there would be nothing left to show it had been done, so I won’t hesitate, you see. This manual unit will be smashed anyway; anything I can do will be erased by the water.”
“But the beam emitter, the laser gun. Even damaged, it will be recognizable,” said Annette.
“We use such things on the Moon, Mrs. Bergen. It is a common tool; it is the optical analogue of a jackknife. I could kill you with a jackknife, you know, but one would not deduce that a man carrying a jackknife, or even holding one with the blade open, was necessarily planning murder. He might be whittling. Besides, a Moon-made laser is not a projectile gun. It doesn’t have to withstand.an internal explosion. It is made of thin metal, mechanically weak. After it is smashed by the waterclap I doubt that it will make much sense as an object.”
Demerest did not have to think to make these statements. He had worked them out within himself through months of self-debate back on the Moon.
“In fact,” he went on, “how will the investigators ever know what happened in here? They will send ’scaphes down to inspect what is left of Ocean-Deep, but how can they get inside without first pumping the water out? They will, in effect, have to build a new Ocean-Deep and that would take—how long? Perhaps, given public reluctance to waste money, they might never do it at all and content themselves with dropping a laurel wreath on the dead walls of the dead Ocean-Deep.”
Bergen said, “The men on Luna City will know what you have done. Surely one of them will have a conscience. The truth will be known.”
“One truth,” said Demerest, “is that I am not a fool. No one on Luna City knows what I planned to do or will suspect what I have done. They sent me down here to negotiate cooperation on the matter of financial grants. I was to argue and nothing more. There’s not even a laser-beam emitter missing up there. I put this one together myself out of scrapped parts. . . . And it works. I’ve tested it.”
Annette said slowly, “You haven’t thought it through. Do you know what you’re doing?”
“I’ve thought it through. I know what I’m doing. . . . And I know also that you are both conscious of the lit signal. I’m aware of it. The air lock is empty and time’s up, I’m afraid.”
Rapidly, holding his beam emitter tensely high, he closed another contact. A circular part of the unit wall cracked into a thin crescent and rolled smoothly away.
