She started slightly. “No. Who told you— Or did I order . . . I don’t remember— But, anyway, I don’t want one now. Go away. No, not that way. That’s—”
Maureen turned back from S.B.’s door—it had been a ridiculously long chance, but worth trying—and left the room. Two of her attendants followed.
Astra Ardless turned back to the dressing table. She picked up a graceful bottle, contemplated it, and set it down again. She looked at her naked face and shrugged. Then in the mirror she saw the remaining attendant, and turned. “I told you to go,” she said imperiously and yet wearily.
“I cannot go until I have talked with you,” said Gan Garrett softly.
Astra Ardless snatched up a robe. “A man! I’ll have you blinded for this—burned to death even. I’ll—” Her tone softened; there was, after all, something not unflattering in the situation. “Who are you?”
He held out his wrist in silence.
“Gan Garrett—” she read on the bracelet. “Garrett— But . . . but you—” She drew back, half trembling.
“Yes,” he said quietly, “I made a one-way trip.”
“But . . . but nobody ever came back alive from a one-way trip.”
“No.”
“Then you’re . . . you’re dead? You’re a— No. No! Oh, I know the research societies say there’s some evidence of— But it couldn’t be. There aren’t ghosts! There aren’t!”
“I am here.”
She held the robe tight about her and sought to control her shuddering body. “Why? What do you want of me?”
“I have a message for you. A message from Emigdio Valentinez.”
“Migdito! No— He’s not— He’s not what you are, is he? Is he?”
The shrill tension of her voice, the hand that reached out to clutch him and yet was afraid to, the quivering of her lips left no doubt that Uranov’s bit of gossip had been right; and on that Garrett had built his whole campaign. Now he said, “Valentinez is dead. Stag Hartle killed him.”
Her lips quivered no longer. They tightened cruelly. “Hartle killed—” Her hands made a little wrenching motion. It seemed to say, “That settles Hartle.”
“Stag Hartle killed him—for Breakstone.”
Her eyes went blank. “Breaksone? You mean Sacha? He had Migdito killed by that jackal?”
“Do the dead come back to tell lies? Valentinez invented the new use of lovestonite. Breakstone and Hartle needed it. Valentinez died. Breakstone has the lovestonite weapons.”
Astra Ardless said nothing. But her face was no longer old and sad. It had a new vigor in it, and the bitterness of the tragedy that is beyond mere sadness. She rose and moved toward the door of the adjoining apartment.
“No,” said Garrett gently. “You can do nothing alone. You need helpers. I have brought them.” He moved to the door of the anteroom and raised his arm in the prearranged gesture. The other three returned.
The face of Astra Ardless was the mask of Electra. Even that of Alecto. “You will help me?” she said simply, almost childishly.
“We will help you.”
Then even as they approached the door, it dilated. Four guards entered, each with a pistol. The first, in a pure spirit of fun, discharged the full force of the weapon into the face of the young man named Loewe, whose shrieks were already dying into permanent silence when Sacheverell Breakstone followed his guards.
“Tut, ” said S.B., looking down at the corpse. “Unnecessary. But harmless. And how nice of you, Astra, to collect this little group of traitors for me. It’s a shame that you’ll have to share their fate, which will probably be long and unpleasantly ingenious. Of course, I’m just groping with words, you understand.”
Gan Garrett’s hand twitched helplessly at the popgun that wasn’t there.
IV.
“You surely didn’t think, did you,” S.B. went on with leisurely calm, “that a man of my creative ability could have been so careless as to leave Astra’s room unwired? In an enterprise so daring and significant as mine, one must take all possible precautions. I have had two operatives on shifts regularly listening to this room—save, of course, when I was in it myself. And you”—he turned to Garrett—“you certainly do not expect me to swallow, like Astra, your folderol about being a ghost? How you escaped from a one-way trip, I have no notion, though I intend to learn such a useful secret before I am through with you; but I have no doubt that you are solid and corporeal and alive—for the time being.”
Garrett answered him with equal calm. “It was a pretty frame, S.B., but the picture stepped out of it. Very pretty, and quite worthy of you. But I didn’t expect to find you at the head of this lovestonite racket.”
S.B. smiled his satisfaction. “So? You find that you had underestimated my abilities?”
“Not under. Over. I thought you were too clever to make such a fool of yourself. It smelled more like, say, Hartle’s work to me.”
“Hartle!” S.B. snorted. “That mercenary! That jackal! A man of action, yes, even of a certain contemptible ingenuity. But what creative power does he have? Do you think for a minute that he could conceive and carry out such a colossal undertaking as this?”
Garrett smiled. “You’re doomed, S.B. You’re damned. What can you accomplish with this devilish violence? Kill off a few hundred people—say even a few thousand. And then the millions of mankind will swallow up your little terrorists as though they had never been.”
A trace of anger contorted S.B.’s face, then faded into a laugh. “Poor idealistic idiot! My dear Astra, before I dispatch you and your fumbling confederates to appropriate destinations, I should like to borrow your boudoir for a lecture hall. Sit down. Sit down, all of you. And you boys, keep your trigger fingers steady. Now Garrett, Uranov, Miss Furness, you are to have the privilege of hearing the functioning of a great creative mind.”
Garrett sat down comfortably enough. He did not need the added illogical reassurance of Maureen’s handclasp. Get S.B. talking, induce him to reveal of his own accord all they needed to know, and
