could last long enough to see that. But I’m going to walk into that flame pit. Do you want to wish me a good journey? Come close, let me touch your arm. Get a good dose of me first. Your last. I’ll cease to give offense.” Muller was trembling. His face was sweaty. His upper lip quivered.
Boardman said, “At least come out to Zone F with me. Let’s sit down quietly and discuss this over brandy.”
“Side by side?” Muller laughed. “You’d vomit. You couldn’t bear it.”
“I’m willing to talk.”
“I’m not,” Muller said. He took a shaky step toward the northwest. His big powerful body seemed shrunken and withered, nothing but sinews stretching tighter over a yielding armature. He took another step. Boardman watched. Ottavio and Davis stood beside him to the left; Reynolds and Greenfield on the other side, between Muller and the flame pit. Rawlins, like an afterthought, was alone at the far side of the group.
Boardman felt a throbbing in his larynx, a stirring and a tickle of tension in his loins. A great weariness possessed him, and at the same time a fierce soaring excitement of a kind he had not known since he had been a young man. He allowed Muller to take a third step toward self-destruction. Then, casually, Boardman gestured with two flicking fingers.
Greenfield and Reynolds pounced.
Catlike they darted forth, ready for this, and caught Muller by the inner forearms. Boardman saw the grayness sweep over their faces as the impact of Muller’s field got to them. Muller struggled, heaved, tried to break loose. Davis and Ottavio were upon him now too. In the gathering darkness the group formed a surging Laocoon, Muller only half visible as the smaller men coiled and wound about his flexed battling body. A stungun would have been easier, Boardman reflected. But stunguns were risky, sometimes, on humans. They had been known to send hearts into wild runaways. They had no defibrillator here.
A moment more, and Muller was forced to his knees.
“Disarm him,” Boardman said.
Ottavio and Davis held him. Reynolds and Greenfield searched him. From a pocket Greenfield pulled forth the deadly little windowed globe. “That’s all he seems to be carrying,” Greenfield said.
“Check carefully.”
They checked. Meanwhile Muller remained motionless, his face frozen, his eyes stony. It was the posture and the expression of a man at the headsman’s block. At length Greenfield looked up again. “Nothing,” he said.
Muller said, “One of my left upper molars contains a secret compartment full of carniphage. I’ll count to ten and bite hard, and I’ll melt away before your eyes.”
Greenfield swung around and grabbed for Muller’s jaws.
Boardman said, “Leave him alone. He’s joking.”
“But how do we know—” Greenfield began.
“Let him be. Step back.” Boardman gestured. “Stand five meters away from him. Don’t go near him unless he moves.”
They stepped away, obviously grateful to get back from the full thrust of Muller’s field. Boardman, fifteen meters from him, could feel faint strands of pain. He went no closer.
“You can stand up now,” Boardman said. “But please don’t try to move. I regret this, Dick.”
Muller got to his feet. His face was black with hatred. But he said nothing, nor did he move.
“If we have to,” Boardman said, “we’ll tape you in a webfoam cradle and carry you out of the maze to the ship. We’ll keep you in foam from then on. You’ll be in foam when you meet the aliens. You’ll be absolutely helpless. I would hate to do that to you, Dick. The other choice is willing cooperation. Go with us of your own free will to the ship. Do what we ask of you. Help us this last time.”
“May your intestines rust,” said Muller almost casually. “May you live a thousand years with worms eating you. May you choke on your own smugness and never die.”
“Help us. Willingly.”
“Put me in the webfoam, Charles. Otherwise I’ll kill myself the first chance I get.”
“What a villain I must seem, eh?” Boardman said. “But I don’t want to do it this way. Come willingly, Dick.”
Muller’s reply was close to a snarl.
Boardman sighed. This was an embarrassment. He looked toward Ottavio.
“The webfoam,” he said.
Rawlins, who had been standing as though in a trance, burst into sudden activity. He darted forward, seized Reynolds’ gun from its holster, ran toward Muller and pressed the weapon into his hand. “There,” he said thickly. “Now you’re in charge!”
2
Muller studied the gun as though he had never seen one before, but his surprise lasted only a fraction of a second. He slipped his hand around its comfortable butt and fingered the firing stud. It was a familiar model, only slightly changed from those he had known. In a quick flaring burst he could kill them all. Or himself. He stepped back so they could not come upon him from the rear. Probing with his kickstaff, he checked the wall, found it trustworthy, and planted his shoulderblades against it. Then he moved the gun in an arc of some 270°, taking them all in.
“Stand close together,” he said. “The six of you. Stand one meter apart in a straight row, and keep your hands out where I can see them at all times.”
He enjoyed the black, glowering look that Boardman threw at Ned Rawlins. The boy seemed dazed, flushed, confused, a figure in a dream. Muller waited patiently as the six men arranged themselves according to his orders. He was surprised at his own calmness.
“You look unhappy, Charles,” he said. “How old are you now, eighty years? You’d like to live that other seventy, eighty, ninety, I guess. You have your career planned, and the plan doesn’t include dying on Lemnos. Stand still, Charles. And stand straight. You won’t win any pity from me by trying to look old and sagging. I know that dodge. You’re as healthy as I am, beneath the phony flab. Healthier. Straight, Charles!”
Boardman said raggedly, “If it’ll make you feel better, Dick, kill me. And then go aboard the ship and do what we want you to do. I’m expendable.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Yes.”
“I almost think you do,” Muller said wonderingly. “You crafty old bastard, you’re offering a trade! Your life for my cooperation! But where’s the
“The offer stands.”
“Rejected,” Muller said. “If I kill you, it won’t be as part of any deal. But I’m much more likely to kill myself. You know, I’m a decent man at heart. Somewhat unstable, yes, and who’s to blame me for that? But decent. I’d rather use this gun on me than on you. I’m the one who’s suffering. I can end it.”
“You could have ended it at any time in the past nine years,” Boardman pointed out. “But you survived. You devoted all your ingenuity to staying alive in this murderous place.”
“Ah. Yes. But that was different! An abstract challenge, man against the maze. A test of my skills. Ingenuity. But if I kill myself now, I thwart you. I put the thumb to the nose, with all of mankind watching. I’m the indispensable man, you say? What better way then, to pay mankind back for my pain?”
“We regretted your suffering,” said Boardman.
“I’m sure you wept bitterly for me. But that was all you did. You let me go creeping away, diseased, corrupt, unclean. Now comes the release. Not really suicide, but revenge.” Muller smiled. He turned the gun to finest beam and let its muzzle rest against his chest. A touch of the finger, now. His eyes raked their faces. The four soldiers did not seem to care. Rawlins appeared deep in shock. Only Boardman was animated with concern and fright. “I could kill you first, I suppose, Charles. As a lesson to our young friend—the wages of deceit is death.
