and more during their long flight. The farther they penetrated into deep space, the greater the nostalgia of the human mind and its eagerness to transform any man-made objects, such as the spaceships in which they travelled, into their archaic forebears. Judith, for some reason, had been immune, but Glanville had seen a succession of extraordinary visions, fragments of the myths and dreams of the Earth’s past, reborn out of the dead lakes and fossil seas of the alien worlds.
Judith, of course, not only lacked all imagination but felt no sense of guilt — Glanville’s crime, the memory of which he had almost completely repressed, was no responsibility of hers, man and wife though they might be. Besides, the failures of which she silently accused him every day were those of character, more serious in her eyes than embezzlement, grand larceny or even murder. It was precisely this that made possible his plan to deal once and for all with Captain Thornwald.
Three weeks later, when Thornwald arrived, Glanville had recovered completely from the accident. From the top of the sand-reef overhanging the western edge of the lake he watched the police captain’s capsule land two hundred yards from the pavilion. Judith stood under the awning on the veranda, one hand raised to ward off the dust kicked up by the retro-jets. She had never questioned Glanville’s strategy for dealing with Thornwald, but now and then he had noticed her glancing upwards at the beacon of the control ship, as if calculating the number of days it would take Thornwald to catch up with them. Glanville was surprised by her patience. Once, a week before Thornwald arrived, he almost challenged her to say whether she really believed he would be able to outwit the police captain. By a curious irony, he realized that she probably did but if so, why did she still despise him?
As the starboard hatch of the capsule fell back, Glanville stood up on the edge of the reef and began to wave with both arms. He made his way down the side of the reef, then jumped the last five feet to the lake floor and ran across to the capsule. ‘Thornwald! Captain, it’s good to see you!’
Framed within the steel collar of his suit, the policeman’s tired face looked up at Glanville through the open hatch. He stood up with an effort and accepted Glanville’s hand, then climbed down on to the ground. Careful not to turn his back on Glanville, he unzipped his suit and glanced quickly at the pavilion and the wreck of the excursion module.
Glanville strolled to and fro around him. Thornwald’s cautious manner, the hand near the weapon in his holster, for some reason amused him. ‘Captain, you made a superb landing, beautiful marksmanship — getting here at all, for that matter. You saw the beacon, I suppose, but even so…’ When Thornwald was about to speak, Glanville rattled on: ‘No, of course I didn’t leave it on deliberately — damn it, we actually crashed! Can you imagine it, after coming all this way — very nearly broke our necks. Luckily, Judith was all right, not a scratch on her. She’ll be glad to see you, Captain.’
Thornwald nodded slowly, his eyes following Glanville’s pudgy, sweating figure as it roved about the capsule. A tall, stooped man with a tough, pessimistic face and all the wariness of a long-serving policeman, he seemed somehow unsettled by Glanville’s manic gaiety.
Glanville pointed to the pavilion. ‘Come on, we’ll have lunch, you must be tired out.’ He gestured at the sand- lake and the blank sky. ‘Nothing much here, I know, but it’s restful. After a few days—’
‘Glanville!’ Thornwald stopped. Face set, he put a hand out as if to touch Glanville’s shoulder. ‘You realize why I’m here?’
‘Of course, Captain.’ Glanville gave him an easy smile. ‘For heaven’s sake, stop looking so serious. I’m not going to escape. There’s nowhere to go.’
‘As long as you realize that.’ Thornwald plodded forward through the top surface of fine sand, his feet placed carefully as if testing the validity of this planet with its euphoric tenant. ‘You can have something to eat, then we’ll get ready to go back.’
‘If you like, Captain. Still, there’s no desperate hurry. Seven years here and back, what difference will a few hours or even days make? All those whipper-snappers you left behind you in the department will be chief commissioners now; I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry. Besides, the emigration laws may even have been changed..
Thornwald nodded dourly. Glanville was about to introduce him to Judith, standing quietly on the veranda twenty feet from him, but suddenly Thornwald stopped and glanced across the lake, as if searching for an invisible marksman hidden among the reefs.
‘All right?’ Glanville asked. Changing the pitch and tempo of his voice, he remarked quietly: ‘I call it the Sea of Dreams. We’re a long way from home, Captain, remember that. There are strange visions here at sunset. Keep your back turned on them.’ He waved at Judith, who was watching them approach with pursed lips. ‘Captain Thornwald, my dear. Rescue at last.’
‘Of a kind.’ She faced Thornwald who stood beside Glanville, as if hesitating to enter the pavilion. ‘I hope you feel all this is necessary, Captain. Revenge is a poor motive for justice.’
Glanville cleared his throat. ‘Well, yes, my dear, but… Come on, Captain, sit down, we’ll have a drink. Judith, could you…?
After a pause she nodded and went into the pavilion.
Glanville made a temporizing gesture. ‘A difficult moment, Captain. But as you know, Judith was always rather headstrong.’
Thornwald nodded, watching Glanville as the latter drew the chair around the table. He pointed to the wreck of the excursion module. ‘How badly was it damaged? We’ll have a look at it later.’
‘A waste of time, Captain. It’s a complete write-off.’
Thornwald scrutinized the wreck. ‘Even so, I’ll want to decontaminate it before we leave.’
‘Isn’t that pointless? — no one will ever come here. The whole planet is dead. Anyway, there’s a good deal of fuel in the tanks; if you short a circuit with your sprays the whole thing could go up.’ Glanville looked around impatiently. ‘Where are those drinks? Judith is..
He started to stand up, and found Thornwald following him to the door of the pavilion. ‘It’s all right, Captain.’
Thornwald leaned stolidly on the door. He looked down at Glanville’s plump, sweating face. ‘Let me help you.’
Glanville shrugged and beckoned him forward, but then stopped. ‘Captain, for heaven’s sake! If I wanted to escape I wouldn’t have been waiting for you here. Believe me, I haven’t got a gun hidden away in a whisky bottle or something — I just don’t want a scene between you and Judith.’
Thornwald nodded, then waited in the doorway. When Glanville returned with the tray he went back to his seat, eyes searching the pavilion and the surrounding beach as if looking for a missing element in a puzzle. ‘Glanville, I have to prefer charges against you — you’re aware what you face when you get back?’
Glanville shrugged. ‘Of course. But after all, the offence was comparatively trivial, wasn’t it?’ He reached for Thornwald’s bulky flight-suit which was spread across the veranda-rail. ‘Let me move this out of the sun. Where’s Judith gone?’
As Thornwald glanced at the door of the pavilion Glanville reached down to the steel pencil in the right knee of the suit. He withdrew it from the slot, then deliberately dropped it to the metal floor.
‘What’s this?’ he asked. ‘A torch?’ His thumb pushed back the nozzle and then moved quickly to the spring tab.
‘Don’t press that!’ Thornwald was on his feet. ‘It’s a radio reflector, you’ll fill the place with—’ He reached across the table and tried to grasp it from Glanville, then flung up his forearm to protect his face.
A blinding jet of vaporized aluminium suddenly erupted from the nozzle of Glanville’s hand, gushing out like a firework. Within two or three seconds its spangled cloud filled the veranda, painting the walls and ceiling. Thornwald kicked aside the table and buried his face in his hands, his hair and forehead covered with the silver paint.
Glanville backed to the steps, flecks of the paint spattering his arms and chest, hosing the jet directly at the policeman. He tossed the canister on to the floor, where its last spurts gusted out into the sunlight, swept up by the convection currents like a swarm of fireflies. Then, head down, Glanville turned and ran towards the edge of the sandreef fifty yards away.
Two hours later, as he crouched deep in the grottoes of the reef on the west shore of the lake, Glanville watched with amusement as Thornwald’s silver-painted figure stepped out of the pavilion into the sunlight. The cloud of vapour above the pavilion had settled, and the drab grey panels of the roof and sides were now a brilliant
