“Guess when and where else we could send you,” Walter said.
Benson dropped his cigarette and tramped it.
“Exactly the same time and place?” he asked.
“Well, the structure of space-time demands. …” Paula began.
“The spatiotemporal displacement field is capable of identifying that spot—” Gregory pointed to a ten-foot circle in front of a bank of sleek-cabineted, dial-studded machines “—with any set of space-time coordinates in the universe. However, to avoid disruption of the structure of space-time, we must return you to approximately the same point in space-time.”
Benson nodded again, this time at the confirmation of his earlier suspicion. Well, while he was alive, he still had a chance.
“All right; tell me exactly what you want me to do.”
A third outbreak of bedlam, this time of relief and frantic explanation.
“Shut up, all of you!” For so thin a man, Carl had an astonishing voice. “I worked this out, so let me tell it.” He turned to Benson. “Maybe I’m tougher than the rest of them, or maybe I’m not as deeply conditioned. For one thing, I’m tone-deaf. Well, here’s the way it is. Gregory can set the machine to function automatically. You stand where he shows you, press the button he shows you, and fifteen seconds later it’ll take you forward in time five seconds and about a kilometer in space, to The Guide’s office. He’ll be at his desk now. You’ll have forty-five seconds to do the job, from the time the field collapses around you till it rebuilds. Then you’ll be taken back to your own time again. The whole thing’s automatic.”
“Can do,” Benson agreed. “How do I kill him?”
“I’m getting sick!” Paula murmured weakly. Her face was whiter than her gown.
“Take care of her, Samuel. Both of you’d better get out of here,” Gregory said.
“The Lord of Hosts is my strength, He will. … Uggggh!” Samuel gasped.
“Conditioning’s getting him, too; we gotta be quick,” Carl said. “Here. This is what you’ll use.” He handed Benson a two-inch globe of black plastic. “Take the damn thing, quick! Little button on the side; press it, and get it out of your hand fast. …” He retched. “Limited-effect bomb; everything within two-meter circle burned to nothing; outside that, great but not unendurable heat. Shut your eyes when you throw it. Flash almost blinding.” He dropped his cigar and turned almost green in the face. Walter had a drink poured and handed it to him. “Uggh! Thanks, Walter.” He downed it.
“Peculiar sort of thing for a nonviolent people to manufacture,” Benson said, looking at the bomb and then putting it in his jacket pocket.
“It isn’t a weapon. Industrial; we use it in mining. I used plenty of them, in Walter’s iron mines.”
He nodded again. “Where do I stand, now?” he asked.
“Right over here.” Gregory placed him in front of a small panel with three buttons. “Press the middle one, and step back into the small red circle and stand perfectly still while the field builds up and collapses. Face that way.”
Benson drew his pistol and checked it; magazine full, a round in the chamber, safety on.
“Put that horrid thing out of sight!” Anthony gasped. “The … the other thing … is what you want to use.”
“The bomb won’t be any good if some of his guards come in before the field rebuilds,” Benson said.
“He has no guards. He lives absolutely alone. We told you. …”
“I know you did. You probably believed it, too. I don’t. And by the way, you’re sending me forward. What do you do about the fact that a time-jump seems to make me pass out?”
“Here. Before you press the button, swallow it.” Gregory gave him a small blue pill.
“Well, I guess that’s all there is,” Gregory continued. “I hope. …” His face twitched, and he dropped to the floor with a thud. Carl and Walter came forward, dragged him away from the machine.
“Conditioning got him. Getting me, too,” Walter said. “Hurry up, man!”
Benson swallowed the pill, pressed the button and stepped back into the red circle, drawing his pistol and snapping off the safety. The blue mist closed in on him.
This time, however, it did not thicken into blackness. It became luminous, brightening to a dazzle and dimming again to a colored mist, and then it cleared, while Benson stood at raise pistol, as though on a target range. He was facing a big desk at twenty feet, across a thick-piled blue rug. There was a man seated at the desk, a white-haired man with a mustache and a small beard, who wore a loose coat of some glossy plum-brown fabric, and a vividly blue neck-scarf.
The pistol centered on the v-shaped blue under his chin. Deliberately, Benson squeezed, recovered from the recoil, aimed, fired, recovered, aimed, fired. Five seconds gone. The old man slumped across the desk, his arms extended. Better make a good job of it, six, seven, eight seconds; he stepped forward to the edge of the desk, call that fifteen seconds, and put the muzzle to the top of the man’s head, firing again and snapping on the safety. There had been something familiar about The Guide’s face, but it was too late to check on that, now. There wasn’t any face left; not even much head.
A box, on the desk, caught Benson’s eye, a cardboard box with an envelope, stamped Top Secret! For the Guide Only!
taped to it. He holstered his pistol and caught that up, stuffing it into his pocket, in obedience to an instinct to grab anything that looked like intelligence matter while in the enemy’s country. Then he stepped back to the spot where the field had deposited him. He had ten seconds to spare; somebody was banging on a door when the blue mist began to gather around him.
He was crouching, the spherical plastic object in his right hand, his thumb over the button, when the field collapsed. Sure enough, right in front of him, so close that he could smell the very heat of it, was the big tank with the red star on its turret.
