“No, it belonged to Andrew.” Pavel stared down at the thing, wonderingly. “It must have sunk all sorts of barbs in my subconscious if I clung to it like you say I did! I guess it’s time I got rid of it. Hmm! I’ll give it back to Andrew, let him know it wouldn’t have helped anyway. He was on at me to use it, you know, for days and days after we landed. I mean crashed.”
“I’m not surprised,” the doctor nodded. “Suffering the way he was. . . Still, according to what he’s been saying, you infected him—so to speak—with the will to live. He’s very anxious to see you again too, you know.”
He courteously indicated that Pavel should precede him through the door.
And there he was: almost unrecognizably lean, nearly naked in the bright warm sunlight, with a few traces of scarring around his waist and lower back—but grinning from ear to ear. He had been in the swimming pool and drops of water were still running down his body, but he hurled aside the towel he had been about to use and advanced on Pavel with a shout of joy.
“Pavel! How can I ever thank you for saving my life? You were right, right all along! If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t be here now, back in one piece, able to enjoy life again! Here, let me shake your hand . . .”
And his voice changed, even as he put his own hand out.
“What’s that?” he said faintly, and all the color faded from his cheeks. “It’s . . .! You bastard!”
“What?” Standing uncertainly before him, Pavel held up the EWO. “You mean this? Why, I was just about to tell you. If you’d—”
“You devil!” Andrew snatched it from him and stared at the capped end. It was obvious that it had been pushed home. “You activated it! After all your pious preaching you activated it! And. . . .”
He looked as though he was about to be physically sick.
“And all this must be illusion after all! Which means I’m going to die—just as I’d finally found out how to enjoy being alive! You bastard, you devil!” His face contorted into a mask of fury.
“Now just a moment!” said the doctor at Pavel’s side, stepping forward. Pavel himself was frozen with pure amazement, incapable of speaking, barely able to think.
But the doctor was too late.
Raising the heavy plasteel cylinder of the EWO above his head with all the force his newly-discovered health and vigour afforded, Andrew brought it slamming down and smashed open Pavel’s skull as completely, and as fatally, as the hull of the wrecked ship Pennyroyal.
Out of Mindshot
On an outcropping ledge of rock Braden paused for a moment, narrowing his eyes against the sun. He glanced back down the dusty trail—not that it really deserved that name, since calling it a trail implied the previous passage of someone or something and there were no visible tracks, just a series of negotiable footholds rising stair-fashion on the face of the hill.
From this level he could still see his car, zebra-striped by the shadow of a tall, branching cactus at the point where the ground started to slant too steeply for wheels to find purchase. But only a smudge of smoke marked his last stopping-place, a settlement not so much a town as an accident, a wrinkle in the sandy ribbon of desert time.
Because that, though, was the place where he had realized he had come to the end of his quest, he kept his eyes fixed on the blur of smoke while he sought the cork of his canteen and raised it in a parody of a toast. He sipped the contents economically and stopped before his thirst was satisfied. Water, he reasoned, must be his quarry’s chief problem in this arid valley. Ultimately possession of it might become a weapon.
He replaced the canteen in his pack and turned to study the going ahead of him. By now, he calculated, he must be two-thirds of the way to the top. He had hardly expected to find clues indicating he was on the right track—if his deductions were correct he was dealing with someone desperate enough to take every possible precaution—but he was optimistic. If he did not find what he was looking for on this particular hill, there were others beyond which he could explore tomorrow.
After six years of searching, another few days made little difference.
He shouldered the pack and sought the easiest way to go higher. From this point on the rocks grew craggier and there was no sand, for the cold night wind scoured the hard stone clean. Stolidly he scrambled onward, the sun punishing his back and the sweat vanishing from his skin almost before it oozed out of the pores.
After a while he found himself on the edge of a flat space, a miniature plateau about thirty yards across, flanked by a steep drop into the valley and a nearly vertical cliff forty or more feet high. He removed his pack and tossed it over the lip of the level area, then hauled himself up with much panting and cursing. As he bent to reclaim the pack something caught his attention from the corner of his eye.
A stack of rocks did not quite meet the cliff wall. A shadow beyond them looked like the opening of a cave. He saw a speck of bright, artificial color, a fragment of sun caught on a broken bottle.
While he was still staring a quiet voice from behind him said, “Put up your hands.”
Braden strove mentally to quell the flush of jubilation which spread across his mind with cold contrasting thoughts—ordinary thoughts of
