“It might have been”, she said. “It might have been for my good and then later, partly for your good. Please don’t judge me too harshly before I’ve had a chance to tell you exactly what happened”.
He reached out for her and kissed her even as she came into his arms. He had expected her to be angry, to withdraw, but instead she encircled his strong back with a surprising fierceness. When he released her, her eyes were shining.
“I’m glad you did that... darling! Very glad. But we’re still in trouble”.
“I know that. But we’re in love, too. And you just promised to tell me what happened”.
“Well, I guess I just... just regressed”.
“You what?”.
“Regressed. You know, like when I was a headstrong little brat of a child. We all do that at times. You’ll have to admit there was some excuse for me. You weren’t bom in a house with a hundred rooms, with servants always coming and going, and outside gardens with big red and yellow flowers where you couldn’t even run and hide without being smothered, without being searched for and brought screaming and kicking back inside.
“You don’t know what it means to know you haven’t a father, only a stem, cold, black-coated man standing away off in the darkness somewhere and watching people bow down before him”.
“You don’t know what it means to be told: You’re Stephen Ramsey’s daughter.
“I scarcely ever saw my father. And when I did see him he was as cold as one of the slabs in the big mausoleum he took so much pride in, the big family mausoleum which only a Ramsey was permitted to visit. And yet I think he loved me in his own cold way. I think he still does”.
She fell silent for a moment and then an overpowering need to tell Corriston more seemed to come upon her.
“I was never allowed to see young men, not even to go for a ride in the park. Anyone of them might be a fortune seeker, because no young man, even if he is madly in love with a girl, can quite shut his eyes to wealth as one additional reason for loving her”.
“So I never saw any young men. I wasn’t permitted to even go to a dance, or walk in the moonlight on a balcony. I wanted to go to dances, wanted at least one young man to kiss me damned hard”.
“Sure you did”, Corriston said. “I understand”.
“I’m going to stop right there, darling. I could tell you what it means to be free to travel, anywhere, anywhere in the world and to see all of the white and shining cities, and to be intoxicated by beauty, and to know at the same time that you are not free, can never hope to be free as other people are free”.
“And that’s why you ran away”.
“Yes, darling, yes, and because that bodyguard was a complete fool. He was just one of thirty bodyguards my father had hired to protect me, year after year. But he was the biggest fool of all. He drank too much and he talked too much. Finally I made up my mind that I would be better off if I went on to Mars alone. My father had told me I could come, the trip had been carefully planned down to the smallest detail. I was to travel incognito. I was to keep to myself until I arrived at the Station and no one was supposed to know I was even on the ship, not even the captain. I’m quite sure he didn’t know. I think the invitation to his cabin was a complete fabrication. In fact, I’m sure it was. I think Clakey — his real name was Ewers — was just drunk enough to make up a crazy story like that to get me away from you”.
“But I didn’t want to get away from you, darling. I wanted to get away from him. I wanted to have a few days of complete freedom before I arrived on Mars, and perhaps after that for a day in the colony before I joined my father. I didn’t care how angry he’d be when he saw me without a bodyguard, alone, wonderfully, gloriously alone and free for the first time in my life. I didn’t want to be Helen Ramsey at all. I wanted to be somebody else and be completely free”.
“So I went into the ladies room, darling, and I put on the strangest kind of mask”.
“Yes”, Corriston said. “I know”.
“You know about the mask?”.
“Please go on”, Corriston said. “I’d rather you didn’t ask me how I know that your father can take pride in at least constructive achievement. The masks are extraordinary. I’ve seen one”.
“But how? Where? I can’t believe it. I” —
“Please”, Corriston said. “It isn’t too important. I made a necessary promise that I wouldn’t tell you, not immediately. I’m asking you to trust me and go on”.
“Well, I secured one of those very unusual masks. From the Gresham-Ramsey Laboratories, before we left Earth. I could go there anytime I wanted to. All of the research technicians there are quite old. One of them, Thomas Webb, is really quite handsome. I might have fallen in love with him if he had been forty years younger. He showed me just how to adjust the mask. But when I went into the ladies’ lounge I had more than just a mask. I had a complete thin plastic change of clothing concealed under my dress. I didn’t remove my dress, only reversed my clothing so that the plastic dress covered the one I’d been wearing”. Corriston said. “It was a very courageous thing for you to do”.
“I’m glad you think so, darling. Because when I came out of the lounge and saw Ewers killed, I wasn’t courageous at all. I became panic-stricken, terrified, beside myself with fear. I knew that my father had many dangerous enemies. I knew that I was in immediate, deadly danger. I had to go on with the disguise then. I had to go right on being somebody else. I couldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t even tell you. I had to let you think that in some strange, bewildering way I had gone into the lounge and disappeared”.
“I knew you wouldn’t really believe that, not for a moment. But I didn’t know what you’d think. I could have told you, I suppose, but I was afraid it would only make the danger greater, might transfer some of the danger to you. And I didn’t know you’d go straight to the captain and get yourself into trouble. There were rumors on the Station that you’d been confined, put under guard. But they were only rumors. I felt I had to see you, talk to you. I was half out of my mind with anxiety. I bribed one of the guards to let me out of the quarantine cage and went in search of you”.
“I searched everywhere, followed passageways at random, got lost in a maze of machinery”.
“And someone followed you”, Corriston said. “He followed you and tore the mask from your face”.
She looked at him with wide, startled eyes. “How did you know?”.
“I was there”, Corriston said. “You fainted and I took you into my arms — for the very first time. You didn’t know that, did you?”.
“How could I have known? If what you say is true, I” — Helen Ramsey did not complete what she had started to say. Had she done so she might not have been thrown so abruptly off-balance by the suddenly lurching deck; she would have moved closer to Corriston and could have seized hold of his shoulders for support.
She did not fall, but she nearly did, and the lurch sent her tottering all the way to the opposite wall. Corriston saw her collide with the wall and sink to her knees. At the same instant his own knees collapsed.
He was lying sprawled out on the deck, too startled and shaken to go immediately to her aid, when the second lurch came. It spun him about, and then he was sliding.
He couldn’t seem to stop the sliding. He went all the way to the opposite wall too.
For a brief instant they were together again, locked in a desperate embrace, their legs higher than their heads. Then the deck righted itself and the bombardment began.
It was a terrifying thing to have to listen to, and Corriston preferred to listen to it on his feet. Slowly he arose and helped his companion up, holding her in so tight a grip that it seemed to them that they had been welded together and could never part.
He was glad that he could be completely sure of one thing. It wasn’t a nuclear bombardment — not yet. The cruiser was merely shelling the Station. When the cruiser launched an atomic warhead he’d know about it — rather, he wouldn’t know. The fact that he was still alive and aware of what was going on told him a great deal about the nature of the bombardment.
“What is it?” Helen Ramsey whispered. “Do you know?”.
“We’re the catspaw in a naval attack”, Corriston said. The commander took a very great risk”.
It was incredible, but right at the moment he felt himself to be in the scoundrel’s comer. He didn’t want the Station to be blown apart in the great empty spaces between the planets any more than the commander did.
When Corriston reached the viewport and stared out, the cruiser was following the Station far off to the side, in an obvious effort to outmaneuver it by maintaining a parallel rather than a directly pursuing course. But it was
