Alex Humphries seemed keenly eager as they rode the shuttle-craft down to the asteroid’s surface, his cold gray eyes glittering with anticipation.
“This could be the most powerful force the human race has ever encountered,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “I’m going to link to capabilities no one’s ever even dreamed of.”
Sitting beside him in the padded shuttlecraft seat, Tamara suddenly realized that if he was right, if the artifact empowered Humphries they way he anticipated, she would lose him forever. Her safety, her future, would vanish.
“Do you think it’s really a good idea to expose yourself to the artifact?” she asked, in a whisper. “I mean, look what it did to your father.”
Alex Humphries was silent for a moment. Then, “All right. You go look at it first.”
“Not me!” she blurted. “It was too painful the first time.”
“And you’re afraid it will be painful for me?”
“Disabling. It crippled your father, didn’t it?”
“Temporarily.”
“Don’t risk it. Let Yuan go in. He
Humphries fell silent again for several long moments. At last he asked, “That first time you came here: why did you kill Commander Bolestos?”
She blinked with surprise. “He … I didn’t think…”
“He was in your way,” Humphries said softly. “Is that it?”
Scrambling in her mind to find an excuse, she finally admitted, “Yes, that was the reason. I had to get past him to see the artifact.”
“And once you saw it, the experience didn’t change you at all, did it?”
“Not really, but it might hurt you, Alex.”
He smiled at her and patted her knee. “We’ll see. We’ll see.”
A full security team was waiting for them at the glassteel dome that protected the opening of the tunnel that led deep into the asteroid’s interior. Humphries ordered them to stay at the dome.
“Captain Yuan knows the way down,” he told the chief security officer. The man stepped aside as Humphries strode to the tunnel entrance.
Turning, Humphries said to Tamara, “You can stay up here. You don’t want to see the artifact again, do you?”
Looking uncertain, Tamara stammered, “No… I… but, but don’t you want me to go with you?”
“No,” Humphries said, cold as honed steel. “You stay here.” He pointed to the chief of the security detail. “Captain Bolestos will take care of you.”
“Bolestos?”
The young security officer pulled his laser pistol from its holster.
“The son of the former commander here,” Humphries said.
Wide-eyed, Yuan looked from Humphries to Tamara to the grim-faced security captain with his drawn pistol.
“Alex!” Tamara called to Humphries. “Don’t leave me! Please!”
“Come on,” Humphries said to Yuan, turning his back on her. “You come with me.”
Slowly, fearfully, Yuan followed Humphries into the down-sloping tunnel. For several minutes neither man said a word. Then a scream echoed off the tunnel’s rock walls.
“What was that?” Yuan shouted, knowing the answer, dreading it.
Humphries didn’t even turn his head. “Justice,” he said. And he continued down the tunnel.
They ducked their heads where the tunnel was low, then found themselves in the grotto just outside the artifacts chamber. The rocks glowed with cool light. The ceiling vaulted above them. The partition that closed off the artifact’s chamber was wide open.
Humphries licked his lips. “Me first.”
“Fine,” Yuan said.
Humphries looked surprised for an instant, then his eyes went hard. “You’re afraid of it?”
“No. I want to see it again.”
“Then
“I can wait,” Yuan replied.
Humphries nodded. “All right. Wait here.”
He stepped across the faint groove in the dusty floor that marked where the partition rested when it was closed. The walls of the tunnel glowed coolly, bathing him in a golden glow. He felt his pulse thumping in his ears. A whiff of an odd scent tickled his nostrils; something that he vaguely remembered…
Hesitating, Humphries turned and saw Yuan standing back there, watching him. Tamara was afraid of the artifact, he said to himself. What did it do to her to make her so fearful? Could it harm me? The thought sent a shudder of alarm through him. It drove my father insane—temporarily. What will it do to me?
His pulse thundering now, Humphries stepped farther into the chamber. The light was bright but warm, like sunlight on a tropical beach. He did not notice the partition sliding smoothly, silently down the chamber’s entrance, closing him inside.
Turning the corner in the stone tunnel he stood face-to-face with the artifact.
Nothing. The chamber seemed empty. Humphries felt his-brows knit with puzzlement, then anger. To come all this way… Were they lying to me? Is this all some elaborate fraud?
The odor he had noticed seemed slightly stronger here. It brought back a memory from his childhood: Christmas morning with the huge tree and all the decorations and the brightly colored packages beneath it.
Then he noticed a tiny glow on the far wall of the rocky grotto, nothing more than a candle’s flickering. But as he watched the glow brightened, grew until it was like a lamp shining in his eyes, a spotlight, a miniature sun blazing its intensity. Humphries threw an arm over his eyes; the light was painful, searing, yet he could not take his eyes from it.
And within the light, shadows. Something formless shifting, moving, slowly taking shape. It was his father. Three-year-old Alex saw his father looming above him, reaching for him, cradling him in his arms. Young Alex felt the warmth and happiness of his father’s love. For a moment.
Other people crowded around Martin Humphries, separating Alex from his father. Alex was a teenager now and his father was distant, aloof. He watched as his father drifted farther and farther away from him. And changed.
Martin Humphries grew larger. The figures around him shrank until they were dwarves, midgets, vermin scurrying beneath his father’s feet. Martin Humphries pointed at one and the figure exploded in a flash of flame. Alex felt pain, like a red-hot iron pushing through his guts.
His father was becoming grotesque, hideous, larger and larger as he turned into a ravening monster, terrifying everyone his fiendish eyes fell upon. Martin Humphries laughed like Satan enjoying the torment of damned souls, and suddenly Alex realized that this wasn’t his father, it was him, Alex, who had become the monster.
He sank to his knees, unable to tear his eyes away from the vision of torture and pain. Is this what my father saw? he asked himself. Is this what my life will become?
He saw the cyborg, Dorn, and the aged Elverda Apacheta: hostages in his power maneuvers against his father. Marionettes, their strings in his own hands. And he saw Tamara: beautiful, cunning, ruthless Tamara staring at him with the eyes of a needful child. She reached toward him with both hands but Humphries saw her cut down by the hand of death. His own hand. Dripping with her blood.
On his hands and knees, Alex Humphries tried to crawl away from the damning, accusing visions. But he couldn’t move. He could not will his body to obey the commands of his fevered mind. He cried out in anguish, then collapsed onto the stone floor, sobbing.
The vision faded slowly, leaving Alex on the grotto floor, soaked with perspiration, trembling with fear. And understanding.
The artifact didn’t drive my father insane, he realized. Dad
Slowly, painfully, Alex scrabbled to the rock wall and pulled himself to his feet.
