Last Gasp

been the perfect opportunity for her, had she wished, to pump him for information. Skrote made it even easier by raising the subject himself. Hoping his slurred speech was convincing, he hinted that Zone 4 wasn't all that it pretended to be, that some aspects of the research being carried out there were of a highly classified nature. To his delight, which he disguised by a fit of supposedly drunken giggles, Natassya told him pretty quickly that he was acting like a boring scientist and would he please shut up and make love to her at once? Scientific lectures she could do without; what she really wanted was to feel him hard inside her.

He obliged the lady, ever more deeply, hopelessly, in love. He was as certain as he'd ever been about anything in. his life that her feelings for him were genuine and not part of a devious conspiracy. Natassya Pavlovitch had passed the test with flying colors.

In a curious and perverse way, this made Skrote want to unburden himself to her. Disgust was too feeble a word for what he felt about his work in Zone 4. It made him sick to the stomach. He despised himself for his involvement over the past five years. Five years! How on earth had he stood it? And, more to the point, why? It was a catalog of horror that ranked with the medical experiments in the Nazi concentration camps, and he, God help him, had played a part, been a leading character in this barbarity. He jerked and trembled and felt himself go as Natassya worked him fluidly with her soft mouth, her cool firm hands aiding the spasm of release. He moaned and went slack, his body quivering as the urgent ecstasy died out of it.

She snuggled close, smearing his chest with a burning kiss, her warm breasts and hard dark nipples flattening against his stomach. Her hair clung to her neck like seaweed. 'Was that good, Cy?' Natassya pressed her damp face to him. 'Do you like it in my mouth?'

'It was beautiful, fantastic. God, I can't tell you. I'm not very experienced with women.'

'Now, Cy, you've told me that before and I don't believe it. You know how to give a woman pleasure. You must have pleasured hundreds of women.'

'Hundreds . . .' He laughed weakly. 'If that was true, which it isn't, none of them could have compared with you, Natassya.'

He stroked her hair, feeling relaxed and at peace, yet his mind was singing with exhilaration. He hadn't the words to express his gratitude. To be loved was incredible enough in itself, but that it should be this woman who loved him, the most perfect dream-image he could possibly have imagined! His happiness filled up, overflowing.

As if sharing his thoughts, Natassya said, 'You've made me so very happy, Cy. I want us always to be together. I never want to leave you.'

He thought he detected a strained note of pleading in her voice. There were other emotions buried there, and she was holding on to him fiercely. Skrote felt a convulsive shudder pass through her body.

'You don't have to leave me,' he comforted her. 'There's no reason why--'

But to his alarm and mystification she was sobbing now, dry heartbroken sobs that were muffled against his chest. He tried to lift her head, peering at her in the dim light that filtered in through the slatted blinds; but she resisted, turning her face away from him. 'Please don't, Cy. Don't look at me like this.'

'Darling, what is it? What's upset you?' To Skrote, female psychology was as deep and impenetrable a mystery as the Pyramids. He knew that women cried when they were happy, but these without doubt were tears of sadness, of anguish. 'Come on, honey, tell me!' he pleaded. 'Let me share it, let me help you!'

Natassya raised her head and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand.

'I'm being stupid. It's nothing.' She tried to smile. 'While we are together we'll be happy. If it lasts for only a few weeks . . . well, we have that. It's better than nothing. Let's take our happiness while it

lasts and forget about the future. I'm just being stupid, darling. Forgive

f>

me.

'What are you talking about, Natassya?' Skrote held her shoulders and stared at her, his heart thudding painfully. 'Are they sending you back to Russia? Is that what you're trying to tell me?'

Natassya freed herself and sat up, slender and pale in the darkness, and leaned against her raised knees. 'Cy, dearest, I don't see how it can last much longer. When the work here is finished we'll both be sent home, you to America, me to Russia. There isn't much left to do now that the Primary Plan has been concluded, for either of us. Starbuck will be shut down and that will be the end--for it and for us.'

What she said was true--in a sense. Now that the work in Zone 2 was winding to a close there would be no need of the Russian presence on the island. But in another sense she was quite wrong. The Primary Plan was indeed finished, whereas the Secondary Plan was in its infancy, with decades of research ahead. In ten or twenty years time he would still be here, Skrote realized bleakly, alone, Natassya gone with the rest of the Russian observers. He breathed in and out slowly, his head whirling with ideas, notions, plans, a chain reaction of thought like a lightning bolt through his brain.

'Would you be willing to stay here--with me--if it could be arranged?'

'Yes, of course,' she answered dully. 'But how is that possible when the research will be finished in a few months? We shall have to leave. We will be sent home--'

Skrote smoothed her hair from her forehead and shaped his hands to her face, a pallid oval with rudimentary eyes and lips. 'We're not through here,' he mouthed softly. 'The research goes on--and if you're prepared to defect I can arrange for you to stay here, on Star-buck.'

'Stay here?' Her voice rose in consternation. 'There is more work to be done on the Primary Plan?'

'No, my darling, not the Primary Plan,' Skrote said with infinite tenderness and undying love.

The trip from New York had left its mark in the lines of strain around Ruth's eyes and mouth. Her smile of greeting was perfunctory, her handshake limp. It seemed to Chase as if a vital part of her had been left behind, and this, the dark-haired woman seated across the desk, was a faded facsimile.

Chase had invited them down to his office, which Prothero viewed with a faint air of disgruntlement. It was austere and windowless, corkboard-lined walls pinned with graphs, data sheets and flow charts. Silver-coated pipes were fixed to the ceiling and colored ribbons fluttered from the air-conditioning vent. It reminded him of being in a submarine.

'Okay to smoke down here?' he asked, in the act of lighting a cheroot.

'Go ahead,' Chase said with a smile. 'The Pentagon spent billions of dollars on this place and at least half of it must have gone on air conditioning.'

'Where's the vessel stationed?' Prothero asked.

Chase got up and pointed it out on the large wall map crisscrossed with red, blue and green tape. 'She's called the Nierenberg, one of the Scripps' fleet, at present here, two hundred miles out on latitude thirty-five degrees, roughly midway between San Diego and San Francisco.' He sat down and held up a yellow sheet, a radio message not two hours old. 'First report from Hanamura says they've been operating the pilot plant for forty-eight hours nonstop. So far no hitches.' Chase tapped the plastic woodgrain desktop for luck. 'It's too soon to know for sure, but at least it looks encouraging.'

'Just as well,' Prothero said and didn't trouble to soften the blow. 'Gelstrom's dead. The financial situation is as yet unresolved. I can't get a straight answer from the JEG Corporation, which I presume to mean there's a hassle going on.' He gestured with his cheroot at the map. 'Does he say what tonnage they're producing?'

Chase read from the flimsy. ' 'Throughput of brine ten thousand gallons an hour. Oxygen yield of ninety-two percent purity at fifteen plus tons an hour.' '

'Fifteen tons an hour?' Prothero was aghast. 'Is that all? I understood that the existing industrial plant could produce ten times that amount?'

'That's right, it does,' Chase said. 'The Linde double-fractioning process extracts oxygen from the atmosphere and compresses it to ninety-eight percent purity. But there isn't much point in taking oxygen from the depleted atmosphere only to put it back again. Splitting seawater is a totally different technical proposition. You've got to keep the gases separated so that they don't mingle and form an explosive vapor inside the cell. You've got to watch for corrosion and the buildup of hydrogen film on the anode, which can give off poisonous fumes. Don't forget, Pro, that this is an experimental plant. Output isn't significant. If Hanamura can overcome these problems we can scale up to a hundred times the size with a thousand times the tonnage for every plant we build.'

'How many plants will be needed?' Ruth asked. It was the first time she'd shown any interest.

'We estimate between fifty and sixty thousand spread around the world, but with a greater number in the equatorial regions. Computer studies have shown that the oxygen shortfall in the atmosphere is currently running at