not escaping the swiftly turning Station’s stem rocket jets. Blinding bursts of incandescence spiraled toward it through the void, and once or twice scored direct hits.
He saw the cruiser shudder throughout its length, and then draw back, almost as if it were endowed with life and had nerves and arteries that could be ripped apart.
There were mechanical arteries that could easily enough be ripped. For an instant Corriston stared with a strange kind of detachment, freed from the terrible tension and certainty by his absolute absorption in the battle itself, freed from the almost mind-numbing sense of participating in a struggle that could end in utter disaster for Station and cruiser alike. He knew that if the cruiser maneuvered in too close, the puffs of flame from the Station’s jets could turn into superheated gases roaring through space, destroying everything in their path.
The Station, too, was only a pulsebeat from fiery annihilation. And a pulsebeat could be terrifyingly brief. But the decision had been made and there could be no turning back.
Aboard the cruiser the decision had certainly come from very high up. Corriston turned the thought slowly over in his mind, still in the grip of his strange detachment. Just what did “very high up” mean?
It meant — it had to mean — a conflict of personalities, the hot-headedness or stubbornness or glory-seeking that went with every decision made by strong-willed men.
Aboard the cruiser someone had acted. After consultation? On just an impulse? In blind rage because the Station had ignored a warning that had been repeated twice?
There was no way of knowing. But on the cruiser men were dying. That was important too. Just how reckless had the decision been?
In space, military science has never been an exact science. Sonic echoes alone can kill, and in a pressurized compartment blowups happen. Jet-supports can be placed at the best of all possible angles and still fly off into space. Compressed air shot out of pressure vents can turn bone and flesh into soft oozing jelly.
The cruiser was changing its course again. It had failed, in a maneuver, twice repeated, to draw close at almost right angles to the Station, and had taken terrible punishment from below, above and straight ahead.
But the cruiser was still firing. And Corriston not only saw the bursts of flame, he felt the blasts in his eardrums, his brain and the soles of his feet. And suddenly he saw flames darting out directly beneath him, and knew that the Station was on fire.
Corriston knew that at any moment he could be smashed back against a bone-crushing wall of metal; he could be pulverized, asphyxiated, driven mad. And the fear in him — the fear that he wouldn’t be able to control — would be a two-edged sword.
There was no pain more ghastly than the final burst of agony that came with a burst open nervous system. It was the most horrible way to die. But even dying that way wouldn’t be half as bad as watching the woman he loved die.
Almost as if aware of his thoughts, Helen spoke to him for the first time since he had crossed to the viewport.
“It’s very strange, darling. I’m calmer now than I have ever been. I guess it can happen if you love a man so very much that you know your life would have no meaning if anything should happen to him. It’s like facing up squarely to the fact that you no longer have any existence apart from him. I’ve done that, darling, and I’m not afraid”.
There was silence in the cabin for an instant. Then another shell exploded, and another, and another. Corriston felt light and dangerously dizzy. It was amazing that he had not been hurled to the floor, still more amazing that he could have remained for so long motionless in just one spot.
Then, abruptly, the bombardment ceased. There was no sound at all in the cabin, just a silence so absolute that the roaring in Corriston’s ears was like the sound made by an angry sea beating against vast stone cliffs in a world that had ceased to exist.
There were no longer any exploding white stars coming from the cruiser. It was dwindling into the blackness of space, giving up the battle, conceding defeat. It became thinner and thinner. Suddenly only the reef remained. Where the cruiser had been there stretched only empty space.
Corriston turned from the viewport. He crossed the cabin to the cot, swaying a little, but only from dizziness, and sat down and drew the girl on the cot close to him. He held her tightly, saying nothing.
13
CORRISTON was still sitting on the cot when the door opened and the commander and two executive officers came into the cabin.
He was not too surprised, for it had been somehow almost impossible for him to believe that the commander could have been killed. A scoundrel’s luck and a drunkard’s luck were often very much the same thing.
If the commander had succeeded in quickly putting out the fire he rated a medal, he was a man for all of that.
And apparently the commander had succeeded in putting out the fire, or he would not now be facing Corriston with a grimly urgent look on his mask.
Helen Ramsey was staring at him almost as if she were seeing him as he really was for the first time. Did she know that he was wearing a mask? There was no possible way she could know, he told himself, except by intuition. The masks were good. Having worn one herself she ought to know how good they were. She ought not even to suspect the commander unless —
Corriston had no time to finish the thought.
“Get up, both of you”, the commander said, gesturing with his braided right arm. “The Mars ship has just berthed. We’ve got to go aboard before there’s any question as to the obedience of the crew. The captain has been taken off, but we’re keeping some of the crew”.
“You — you put out the fire, Commander?”.
“Naturally. I’m not quite the incompetent you think me, Lieutenant”.
“I’m quite sure of that, Commander”, Corriston said. “Do we take anything with us?”.
“You’ll get all the extras you need on Mars”, the commander said. “Stephen Ramsey isn’t likely to want to see his daughter go about in rags”.
Corriston decided that the wisest thing he could do was to take the commander at his word in every important respect; for the moment, at any rate. There was the little matter of a killer still at large somewhere on the Station, and the quicker they were in space the safer Ramsey’s daughter would be. Not just in space as the Station was in space, but much further out in the Big Dark.
“All right, Commander”, he said. “Let’s get started”.
Getting started took very little time. A great thankfulness came upon Corriston when he saw the smooth dark hull of the Mars ship looming high above him, a thousand foot long cylinder of inky blackness against a glimmering wilderness of stars.
The ship was berthed securely beneath a towering network of telemetric aerials, on a completely circular launching platform that was like a saucer in reverse, with a contractable metal ramp leading up to the wide-open, brightly lighted boarding port at its base.
There were steps on the ramp, but Corriston knew that when the structure was drawn back into the ship it would collapse like a house of cards, folded back upon itself.
Helen Ramsey ascended first. Corriston made certain that she would by getting in the commander’s way with a convincing show of accidental clumsiness. He pretended to stumble as he began the ascent, to be all hands and feet.
The commander swore softly and Corriston was quite sure that he had not been deceived. But there was very little that he could do about it under the circumstances. He had to let Ramsey’s daughter climb the ramp first and she was almost at the top before Corriston started up.
Corriston was halfway to the top, and the commander and the impatient, tight-lipped executive officers were just starting up, when three tall figures emerged from the darkness at the base of the ramp.
The attack took place so quickly that it was over almost before it started. The commander and the executive officers didn’t have a chance. One of the emerging men had a gun, and he shot the commander in the stomach
