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The Legion Of Lazarus

By Edmond Hamilton

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Imagination April 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
on this publication was renewed.]


[Sidenote: Being expelled from an air lock into deep space was the legal
method of execution. But it was also the only way a man could qualify
for--The Legion Of Lazarus]


_It isn't the dying itself. It's what comes before. The waiting, alone
in a room without windows, trying to think. The opening of the door, the
voices of the men who are going with you but not all the way, the walk
down the corridor to the airlock room, the faces of the men, closed and
impersonal. They do not enjoy this. Neither do they shrink from it. It's
their job._

_This is the room. It is small and it has a window. Outside there is no
friendly sky, no clouds. There is space, and there is the huge red
circle of Mars filling the sky, looking down like an enormous eye upon
this tiny moon. But you do not look up. You look out._

_There are men out there. They are quite naked. They sleep upon the
barren plain, drowsing in a timeless ocean. Their bodies are white as
ivory and their hair is loose across their faces. Some of them seem to
smile. They lie, and sleep, and the great red eye looks at them forever
as they are borne around it._

"_It isn't so bad," says one of the men who are with you inside this
ultimate room. "Fifty years from now, the rest of us will all be old, or
dead._"

_It is small comfort._

_The one garment you have worn is taken from you and the lock door
opens, and the fear that cannot possibly become greater does become
greater, and then suddenly that terrible crescendo is past. There is no
longer any hope, and you learn that without hope there is little to be
afraid of. You want now only to get it over with._

_You step forward into the lock._

_The door behind you shuts. You sense that the one before you is
opening, but there is not much time. The burst of air carries you
forward. Perhaps you scream, but you are now beyond sound, beyond sight,
beyond everything. You do not even feel that it is cold._




CHAPTER I


There is a time for sleep, and a time for waking. But Hyrst had slept
heavily, and the waking was hard. He had slept long, and the waking was
slow. _Fifty years_, said the dim voice of remembrance. But another part
of his mind said, No, it is only tomorrow morning.

Another part of his mind. That was strange. There seemed to be more
parts to his mind than he remembered having had before, but they were
all confused and hidden behind a veil of mist. Perhaps they were not
really there at all. Perhaps--

_Fifty years. I have been dead_, he thought, _and now I live again.
Half a century. Strange._

Hyrst lay on a narrow bed, in a place of subdued light and
antiseptic-smelling air. There was no one else in the room. There was no
sound.

_Fifty years_, he thought. _What is it like now, the house where I lived
once, the country, the planet? Where are my children, where are my
friends, my enemies, the people I loved, the people I hated?_

_Where is Elena? Where is my wife?_

A whisper out of nowhere, sad, remote. _Your wife is dead and your
children are old. Forget them. Forget the friends and the enemies._

_But I can't forget!_ cried Hyrst silently in the spaces of his own
mind. It was only yesterday--

_Fifty years_, said the whisper. _And you must forget._

_MacDonald_, said Hyrst suddenly. _I didn't kill him. I was innocent. I
can't forget that._

_Careful_, said the whisper. _Watch out._

_I didn't kill MacDonald. Somebody did. Somebody let me pay for it. Who?
Was it Landers? Was it Saul? We four were together out there on Titan,
when he died._

_Careful_, Hyrst. _They're coming. Listen to me. You think this is your
own mind speaking, question-and-answer. But it isn't._

Hyrst sprang upright on the narrow bed, his heart pounding, the sweat
running cold on his skin. _Who are you? Where are you? How--_

_They're here_, said the whisper calmly. _Be quiet._

Two men came into the ward. "I am Dr. Merridew," said the one in the
white coverall, smiling at Hyrst with a brisk professional smile. "This
is Warden Meister. We didn't mean to startle you. There are a few
questions, before we release you--"

_Merridew_, said the whisper in Hyrst's mind, _is a psychiatrist. Let
me handle this._

Hyrst sat still, his hands lax between his knees, his eyes wide and
fixed in astonishment. He heard the psychiatrist's questions, and he
heard the answers he gave to them, but he was merely an instrument, with
no conscious volition, it was the whisperer in his mind who was
answering. Then the warden shuffled some papers he held in his hand and
asked questions of his own.

"You underwent the Humane Penalty without admitting your guilt. For the
record, now that the penalty has been paid, do you wish to change your
final statements?"

The voice in Hyrst's mind, the secret voice, said swiftly to him. _Don't
argue with them, don't get angry, or they'll keep you on and on here._

"But--" thought Hyrst.

_I know you're innocent, but they'll never believe it. They'll keep you
on for further psychiatric tests. They might get near the truth,
Hyrst--the truth about us._

Suddenly Hyrst began to understand, not all and not clearly, something
of what had happened to him. The obscuring mists began to lift from the
borders of his mind.

"What is the truth," he asked in that inner quiet, "about us?"

_You've spent fifty years in the Valley of the Shadow. You're changed,
Hyrst. You're not quite human any more. No one is, who goes through the
freeze. But they don't know that._

"Then you too--"

_Yes. And I too changed. And that is why our minds can speak, even
though I am on Mars and you are on its moon. But they must not know
that. So don't argue, don't show emotion!_

The warden was waiting. Hyrst said aloud to him, slowly. "I have no
statement to make."

The warden did not seem surprised. He went on, "According to your papers
here you also denied knowing the location of the Titanite for which
MacDonald was presumably murdered. Do you still deny that?"

Hyrst was honestly surprised. "But surely, by now--"

The warden shrugged. "According to this data, it never came to light."

"I never knew," said Hyrst, "where it was."

"Well," said the warden, "I've asked the question and that's as far as
my responsibility goes. But there's a visitor who has permission to see
you."

       *       *       *       *       *

He and the doctor went out. Hyrst watched them go. He thought, So I'm
not quite human. Not quite human any more. Does that make me more, or
less, than a man?

_Both_, said the secret voice. _Their minds are still closed to you.
Only our minds--we who have changed too--are open._

"Who are you?" asked Hyrst.

_My name is Shearing. Now listen. When you are released, they'll bring
you down here to Mars. I'll be waiting for you. I'll help you._

"Why? What do you care about me, or a murder fifty years old?"

_I'll tell you why later_, said the whisper of Shearing. _But you must
follow my guidance. There's danger for you, Hyrst, from the moment
you're released! There are those who have been waiting for you._

"Danger? But--"

The door opened, and Hyrst's visitor came in. He was a man something
over sixty but the deep lines in his face made him look older. His face
was gray and drawn and twitching, but it became perfectly rigid and
white when he came to the foot of the bed and looked at Hyrst. There was
rage in his eyes, a rage so old and weary that it brought tears to them.

"You should have stayed dead," he said to Hyrst. "Why couldn't they let
you stay dead?"

Hyrst was shocked and startled. "Who are you? And why--"

The other man was not even listening. His eyelids had closed, and when
they opened again they looked on naked agony. "It isn't right," he said.
"A murderer should die, and stay dead. Not come back."

"I didn't murder MacDonald," Hyrst said, with the beginnings of anger.
"And I don't know why you--"

He stopped. The white, aging face, the tear-filled, furious eyes, he did
not quite know what there was about them but it was there, like an old
remembered face peeping up through a blur of water for a moment, and
then withdrawing again.

After a moment, Hyrst said hoarsely, "What's your name?"

"You wouldn't know it," said the other. "I changed it, long ago."

Hyrst felt a cold, and it seemed that he could not breathe. He said,
"But you were only eleven--"

He could not go on. There was a terrible silence between them. He must
break it, he could not let it go on. He must speak. But all he could say
was to whisper, "I'm not a murderer. You must believe it. I'm going to
prove it--"

"You murdered MacDonald. And you murdered my mother. I watched her age
and die, spending every penny, spending every drop of her blood and
ours, to get you back again. I pretended for fifty years that I too
believed you were innocent, when all the time I knew."

Hyrst said, "I'm innocent." He tried to say a name, too, but he could
not speak the word.

"No. You're lying, as you lied then. We found out. Mother hired
detectives, experts. Over and over, for decades--and always they found
the same thing. Landers and Saul could not possibly have killed
MacDonald, and you were the only other human being there. Proof? I can
show you barrels of it. And all of it proof that my father was a
murderer."

He leaned a little toward Hyrst, and the tears ran down his lined,
careworn face. He said, "All right, you've come back. Alive, still
young. But I'm warning you. If you try again to get that Titanite, if
you shame us all again after all this time, if you even come near us,
I'll kill you."

He went out. Hyrst sat, looking after him, and he thought that no man
before him had ever felt what tore him now.

Inside his mind came Shearing's whisper, with a totally unexpected note
of compassion. _But some of us have, Hyrst. Welcome to the brotherhood.
Welcome to the Legion of Lazarus._




CHAPTER II


Mars roared and glittered tonight. And how was a man to stand the faces
and lights and sounds, when he had come back from the silence of
eternity?

Hyrst walked through the flaring streets of Syrtis City with slow and
dragging steps. It was like being back on Earth. For this city was not
really part of the old dead planet, of the dark barrens that rolled away
beneath the night. This was the place of the rocket-men, the miners, the
schemers, the workers, who had come from another, younger world. Their
bars and entertainment houses flung a sun-like brilliance. Their ships,
lifting majestically skyward from the distant spaceport, wrote their
flaming sign on the sky. Only here and there moved one of the hooded,
robed humanoids who had once owned this world.

_The next corner_, said the whisper in Hyrst's mind. _Turn there. No,
not toward the spaceport. The other way._

Hyrst thought suddenly, "Shearing."

_Yes?_

"I am being followed."

His physical ears heard nothing but the voices and music. His physical
eyes saw only the street crowd. Yet he knew. He knew it by a picture
that kept coming into his mind, of a blurred shape moving always behind
him.

_Of course you're being followed_, came Shearing's thought. _I told you
they've been waiting for you. This is the corner. Turn._

Hyrst turned. It was a darker street, running away from the lights
through black warehouses and on the labyrinthine monolithic houses of
the humanoids.

_Now look back_, Shearing commanded. _No, not with your eyes! With your
mind. Learn to use your talents._

Hyrst tried. The blurred image in his mind came clearer, and clearer
still, and it was a young man with a vicious mouth and flat uncaring
eyes. Hyrst shivered. "Who is he?"

_He works for the men who have been waiting for you, Hyrst. Bring him
this way._

"This--way?"

_Look ahead. With your mind. Can't you learn?_

Stung to sudden anger, Hyrst flung out a mental probe with a power he
hadn't known he possessed. In a place of total darkness between two
warehouses ahead, he saw a tall man lounging at his ease. Shearing
laughed.

_Yes, it's me. Just walk past me. Don't hurry._

Hyrst glanced backward, mentally at the man following him through the
shadows. He was closer now, and quite silent. His face was tight and
secret. Hyrst thought, How do I know this Shearing isn't in it with him,
taking me into a place where they can both get at me--

He went past the two warehouses and he did not turn his head but his
mind saw Shearing waiting in the darkness. Then there was a soft,
shapeless sound, and he turned and saw Shearing bending over a huddled
form.

"That was unkind of you," said Shearing, speaking aloud but not loudly.

Hyrst, still shaking, said, "But not exactly strange. I've never seen
you before. And I still don't know what this is all about."

Shearing smiled, as he knelt beside the prone, unmoving body. Even here
in the shadows, Hyrst could see him with these new eyes of the mind.
Shearing was a big man. His hair was grizzled along the sides of his
head, and his eyes were dark and very keen. He reached out one hand and
turned the head of the prone young man, and they looked at the lax,
loose face.

"He's not dead?" said Hyrst.

"Of course not. But it will be a while before he wakes."

"But who is he?"

Shearing stood up. "I never saw him before. But I know who he's working
for."

       *       *       *       *       *

Hyrst flung a sudden question at Shearing, and almost without thinking
he followed it to surprise the answer in Shearing's mind. The question
was, _Who are you working for_? And the answer was a woman, a tall and
handsome woman with angry eyes, standing against a drift of stars. There
was a ship, all lonely on a dark plain, and she was pointing to it, and
somehow Hyrst knew that it was vitally important to her, and to
Shearing, and perhaps even to himself. But before he could do more than
register this fleeting vision on his own consciousness, Shearing's mind
slammed shut with exactly the same violent effect as a door slammed in
his face. He reeled back, throwing up his arms in a futile but
instinctive gesture, and Shearing said angrily,

"You're getting too good. I'll give you a social hint--it's customary to
knock before you enter."

Hyrst said, still holding the pieces of his head together, "All
right--sorry. So who is she?"

"She's one of us. She wants what we want."

"I want only to find out who murdered MacDonald!"

"You want more than that, Hyrst, though you don't know it yet. But
MacDonald's murderer is part of what we're after."

He took Hyrst's arm. "We don't have long. Thanks to my guidance, you
slipped them all except this one. But they'll be hounding after our
trail very quickly."

They went on along the shadowed street. The glare of the lights died
back behind them, and they moved in darkness with only the keen stars to
watch them, and the cold, gritty wind blowing in from the barrens, and
the dark door-ways of the mastaba-like monolithic houses of the
humanoids staring at them like sightless eyes. Hyrst looked up at the
bright, tiny moon that crept amid the stars, and a deep shaking took him
as he thought of men lying up there in the deathly sleep, of himself
lying there year after year....

"In here," said Shearing. It was one of the frigid, musty tombs that the
humanoids called home. It was dark and there was nothing in it at all.
"We can't risk a light. We don't need it, anyway."

They sat down. Hyrst said desperately, "Listen, I want to know some
things. Exactly what are we doing here?"

Shearing answered deliberately, "We are hiding from those who want you,
and we are waiting for a chance to go to our friends."

"Our friends? Your friends, maybe. That woman--I don't know her, and--"

"Now _you_ listen, Hyrst. I'll tell you this much about us now. We're
Lazarites, like you, with the same powers as you. But all Lazarites are
not on _our_ side."

Hyrst thought about that. "Then those others who are hunting us--"

"There are Lazarites among them, too. Not many, but a few. You don't
know us, you don't know them. Do you want to leave me and go back out
and let them have you?"

Hyrst remembered the adder-like face of the young man who had come after
him through the shadows. After a long moment he said, "Well. But what
are _you_ after?"

"The thing that MacDonald was killed for, fifty years ago."

Hyrst said, "The Titanite? They said it hadn't ever been found. But how
it could have remained hidden so long--"

"I want you," Shearing said, "to tell me all about how MacDonald died.
Everything you can remember."

Hyrst asked eagerly, "You think we can find out who killed him? After
all this time? God, if we could--my son--"

"Quiet, Hyrst. Go ahead and tell me. Not in words. Just remember what
happened, and I'll get it."

Yet, by sheer lifetime habit, Hyrst could not remember without first
putting it into words in his own mind, as they two sat in the cold,
whispering darkness.

"There were four of us out there on Titan, you must already know that.
And only four--"

       *       *       *       *       *

Four men. And one was named MacDonald, an engineer, a secretive, selfish
and enormously greedy man. MacDonald was the man who found a fortune,
and kept it secret, and died.

Landers was one. A lean, brown, lively man, an excellent physicist with
a friendly manner and no obvious ambitions.

Saul was one, and he was big and blond and quiet, a good drinking
companion, a good geologist, a lover of good music. If he had any darker
passions, he kept them hidden.

Hyrst was the fourth man, and the only one of the four still living....

He remembered now. He saw the black and bitter crags of Titan stark
against the glory of the Rings, and he saw two figures moving across a
plain of methane snow, their helmets gleaming in the Saturn-light.
Behind them in the plain were the flat, half-buried concrete structures
of the little refinery, and all around them were the spidery roads where
the big half-tracs dragged their loads of uranium ore from the
enchaining mountains.

The two men were quarrelling.

"You're angry," MacDonald was saying, "because it was _I_ who found it."

"Listen," Hyrst said. "We're sick, all three of us, of hearing you brag
about it."

"I'll bet you are," said MacDonald smugly. "The first find of a Titanite
pocket for years. The rarest, costliest stuff in the System. If you know
the way they've been bidding to buy it from me--"

"I do know," Hyrst said. "You've done nothing for weeks but give forth
mysterious hints--"

"And you don't like that," MacDonald said. "Of course you don't! It's no
part of our refinery deal, it's mine, I've got it and it's hidden where
nobody can find it till I sell it. Naturally, you don't like that."

"All _right_," said Hyrst. "So the Titanite find is all yours. You're
still a partner in the refinery, remember. And you've still got an
obligation to the rest of us, so you can damn well get in and do your
job."

"Don't worry. I've always done my job."

"More or less," said Hyrst. "For your information, I've seen better
engineers in grade-school. There's Number Three hoist. It's been busted
for a week. Now let's get in there and fix it."

The two figures in Hyrst's memory toiled on, out of the area of roads to
the edge of the landing field, where the ships come to take away the
refined uranium. Number Three hoist rose in a stiff, ugly column from
the ground. It was supposed to fetch the uranium up from the
underground storage bins and load it into a specially-built hot-tank
ship in position at the dock. But Number Three had balked and refused to
perform its task. In this completely automated plant, men were only
important when something went wrong. Now something was wrong, and it was
up to MacDonald, the mechanical engineer, and Hyrst, the electronics
man, to set it right.

Hyrst opened the hatch, and they climbed the metal stairs to the upper
chamber. Number Three's brain was here, its scanners, its tabulating and
recording apparatus, its signal system. A red light pulsated on a panel,
alone in a string of white ones.

"Trouble's in the hoist-mechanism," said Hyrst. "That's your
department." He smiled and sat down on a metal bench in the center of
the room, with his back to the stair. "D Level."

MacDonald grumbled, and went to a skeletal cage built over a round
segment of the floor. Various tools were clipped to the ribs of the
cage. MacDonald pulled an extra rayproof protectall over his vac-suit
and stepped inside the cage, pressing a button. The cage dropped, into a
circular shaft that paralleled the hoist right down to the feeder
mechanism.

Hyrst waited. Inside his helmet he could hear MacDonald breathing and
grumbling as he worked away, repairing a break in the belt. He did not
hear anything else. Then something happened, so swiftly that he had
never had any memory of it, and some time later he came to and looked
for MacDonald. The cage was way down at the bottom of the shaft and
MacDonald was in it, with a very massive pedestal-block on top of him.
The block had been unbolted from the floor and dragged to the edge of
the shaft, and it could not possibly have been an accident that it
tumbled in, between the wide-apart ribs of the cage.

And that's how MacDonald died, Hyrst thought--and so _I_ died. They said
I forced the secret of his Titanite find out of him, and then killed
him.

Shearing asked swiftly, "MacDonald never gave you any hint of where he'd
hidden the Titanite?"

"No," said Hyrst. He paused, and then said, "It's the Titanite you're
after?"

Shearing answered carefully. "In a way, yes. But _we_ didn't kill
MacDonald for it. Those who did kill him are the men who are after you
now. They're afraid you might lead us to the stuff."

Hyrst swore, shaking with sudden anger. "Damn it, I won't be treated
like a child. Not by you, by anyone. I want--"

"You want the men who killed MacDonald," said Shearing. "I know. I
remember what was in your mind when you met your son."

A weakness took Hyrst and he leaned his forehead against the cold stone
wall.

"I'm sorry," said Shearing. "But we want what you want--and more. So
much more that you can't dream it. You must trust us."

"Us? That woman?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Once again in Shearing's mind Hyrst saw the woman with her head against
the stars, and the ship looming darkly. He saw the woman much more
clearly, and she was like a fire, burning with anger, burning with a
single-minded, dedicated purpose. She was beautiful, and frightening.

"She, and others," said Shearing. "Listen. We must go soon. We're to be
picked up, secretly. Will you trust us--or would you rather trust
yourself to those who are hunting you?"

Hyrst was silent. Shearing said, "Well?"

"I'll go with you," said Hyrst.

They went out into the cold darkness, and Hyrst heard Shearing say in
his mind, "I wouldn't try to run--"

_But it wasn't Shearing speaking in his mind now, it was a third man._

"I wouldn't try to run--"

Frantically startled, Hyrst threw out his mental vision and saw the men
who stood around them in the darkness, four men, three of them
holding the wicked little weapons called bee-guns in their hands. The
fourth man came closer, a dark slender man with a face like a fox,
high-boned, narrow-eyed, smiling. It came to Hyrst that the three with
weapons were only ordinary men, and that it was this fourth man whose
mind had spoken.

He was speaking aloud now. "I want you alive, believe me--but there are
endless gradations between alive and dead. My men are very accurate."

Shearing's face was suddenly drawn and exhausted. "Don't try anything,"
he warned Hyrst wearily. "He means it."

The dark man shook his head at Shearing. "This wasn't nice of you. You
knew we had a particular interest in Mr. Hyrst." He turned to Hyrst and
smiled. His teeth were small and very neat and white. "Did you know that
Shearing has been keeping a shield over your mind as well as his? A
little too large a task for him. When you jarred his mind open for an
instant, it was all we needed to lead us here."

He went on. "Mr. Hyrst, my name is Vernon. We'd like you to come with
us."

Vernon nodded to the three accurate men, and the whole little group
began to walk in the direction of the spaceport. Shearing seemed almost
asleep on his feet now. It was as though he had expended all his energy
on a task, and failed at it, and was now quiescent, like an empty well
waiting to fill again.

"Where are we going?" Hyrst asked, and Vernon answered:

"To see a gentleman you've never heard of, in a place you've never
been." He added, with easy friendliness, "Don't worry, Mr. Hyrst, we
have nothing against _you_. You're new to this--ah--state of life. You
shouldn't be asked to make decisions or agreements until you know both
sides of the question. Mr. Shearing was taking an unfair advantage."

Remembering the dark hard purpose Shearing had let him see in his mind,
Hyrst could not readily dispute that. But he put out an exploring probe
in the direction of Vernon's mind.

It was shut tight.

They walked on, toward the spaceport gates.




CHAPTER III


All space was before him, hung with the many-colored lights of the
stars, intensely brilliant in the black nothing. It was incredibly
splendid, but it was too much like what he had looked at with his cold
unseeing eyes for fifty years. He looked down--down being relative to
where he was standing in the blister-window--and saw the whole Belt
swarming by under him like a drift of fireflies. He quivered inwardly
with a chill vertigo, and turned away.

Vernon was talking aloud. He had been talking for some time. He was
stretched out on a soft, deep lounge, smoking, pretending to sip from a
tall glass.

"So you see, Mr. Hyrst, we can help you a lot. It's not easy for a
Lazarite--for one of us--to get a job. I know. People have a--well, a
_feeling_. Now Mr. Bellaver--"

"Where is Shearing?" asked Hyrst. He came and stood in the center of the
room, with the soft lights in his eyes and the soft carpets under his
feet. His mind reached out, uneasy and restless, but it seemed to be
surrounded by a zone of fog that tangled and confused and deflected it.
He could not find Shearing.

"We've been here for hours," he said. "Where is he?"

"Probably talking a deal with Mr. Bellaver. I wouldn't worry. As I was
saying, Bellaver Incorporated is interested in men like you. We're the
largest builders of spacecraft in the System, and we can afford--"

"I know all about it," said Hyrst impatiently. "Old Quentin Bellaver
was busy swallowing up his rivals when I went through the door."

"Then," said Vernon imperturbably, "you should realize how much we can
do for you. Electronics is a vital branch--"

Hyrst moved erratically around the room, looking at things and not
really seeing them, hearing Vernon's voice but not understanding what it
said. He was growing more and more uneasy. It was as though someone was
calling to him, urgently, but just out of earshot. He kept straining,
with his ears and his mind, and Vernon's voice babbled on, and the
barrier was like a wall around his thoughts.

They had been aboard this ship for a long time now, and he had not seen
Shearing since they came through the hatch. It was not really a ship, of
course. It had no power of its own, depending on powerful tugs to tow
it. It was Walter Bellaver's floating pleasure-palace, and the damnedest
thing Hyrst had ever seen. Vernon said it could and often did accommodate
three or four hundred guests in the utmost luxury. There was nobody
aboard it now but Bellaver, Vernon, Hyrst and Shearing, the three very
accurate men, and perhaps a dozen others including stewards and the
crews of the tugs and Bellaver's yacht. It was named the _Happy Dream_,
and it was presently drifting in an excessively lonely orbit high above
the ecliptic, between nothing and nowhere.

Vernon had been with him almost constantly. He was getting tired of
Vernon. Vernon talked too much.

"Listen," he said. "You can stop selling Bellaver. I'm not looking for a
job. Where's Shearing?"

"Oh, forget Shearing," said Vernon, impatient in his turn. "You never
heard of him until a few days ago."

"He helped me."

"For reasons of his own."

"What's _your_ reason? And Bellaver's?"

"Mr. Bellaver is interested in all social problems. And I'm a Lazarite
myself, so naturally I have a sympathy for others like me." Vernon sat
up, putting his glass aside on a low table. He had drunk hardly any of
the contents.

"Shearing," he said, "is a member of a gang who some time ago stole a
particular property of Bellaver Incorporated. You're not involved in the
quarrel, Mr. Hyrst. I'd advise you, as a friend, to stay not involved."

Hyrst's mind and his ears were stretched and quivering, straining to
hear a cry for help just a little too far away.

"What kind of a property?" asked Hyrst.

Vernon shrugged. "The Bellavers have never said what kind, for fairly
obvious reasons."

"Something to do with ships?"

"I suppose so. It isn't important to me. Nor to you, Mr. Hyrst."

"Will you pour me a drink?" said Hyrst, pointing to the cellaret close
beside Vernon. "Yes, that's fine. How long ago?"

"What?" asked Vernon, measuring whisky into a glass.

"The theft," said Hyrst, and threw his mind suddenly against the
barrier. For one fleeting second he forced a crack in it. "Something
over fifty--", said Vernon, and let the glass fall. He spun around from
the cellaret and was halfway to his feet when Hyrst hit him. He hit him
three or four times before he would stay down, and three or four more
before he would lie quiet. Hyrst straightened up, breathing hard. His
lip was bleeding and he wiped it with the back of his hand. "That was a
little too big a job for _you_, Mr. Vernon," he said viciously. "Trying
to keep my mind blanked and under control for hours." He stuffed a
handkerchief into Vernon's mouth, and tied him up with his own
cummerbund, and shoved him out of sight behind an enormous bed. Then he
opened the door carefully, and went out.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was nobody in the corridor. This was wide and ornate, with doors
opening off it, and nothing to show what was behind them or which way to
go. Hyrst stood still a minute, getting control of himself. The barrier
no longer obscured his mind. He let it rove, finding that every time he
did that it was easier, and the images clearer. He heard Shearing again,
as he had heard him in that one second when Vernon's guard had faltered.
His face became set and ugly. He began to move toward the stern of the
_Happy Dream_.

Heavy metal-cloth curtains closed this end of the corridor. Beyond them
was a ballroom in which only one dim light now burned, a vastness of
black polished floors and crystal windows looking upon space. Hyrst's
footsteps were hushed and swallowed up in whispering echoes. He made his
way across to another set of curtains, edged between them with infinite
caution, and found himself in the upper aisle of an amphitheater.

It was pitch dark where he was, and he stood perfectly still, exploring
with his mind. He could not see any guards. The rows of empty seats were
arranged in circles around a central pit, large enough for any
entertainment Mr. Bellaver might decide to give. The pit was brilliantly
lighted, and from somewhere lower down came the intermittent sound of
voices.

Also from the pit came Shearing's cries. Hyrst began to tremble with
outrage and anger, and his still-uncertain mental control faltered
dangerously. Then from out of nowhere, a voice spoke in his mind, and he
saw the face of the woman he had seen twice before, the woman Shearing
served.

"Careful," she said. "There is a Lazarite with Bellaver. His attention
is all on Shearing, but you must keep your mind shielded. I'll help
you."

Hyrst whispered. "Thanks." He felt calm now, alert and capable. He crept
along the dark aisle, toward the pit.

Mr. Bellaver's theater lacked nothing. The large circular stage area was
fitted with upper and lower electro-magnets for the use of acrobats and
dancers with null-grav specialties. They could perform without
disturbing the regular grav-field of the _Happy Dream_, thus keeping the
guests comfortable, and by skillful manipulation of the magnetic fields
more spectacular stunts were possible than in ordinary no-gravity.

Shearing was in the pit, between the upper and lower magnets. He wore an
acrobat's metal attraction-harness, strapped on over his clothes. When
Hyrst looked over the rail he was hanging at the central point of
weightlessness, where everything in a man floats free and his senses are
lost in a dreadful vertigo unless he has been conditioned over a long
period of time to get used to it. Shearing had not been conditioned.

"Careful," said the woman's warning voice in his mind. "His life depends
on you. No, don't try to make contact with him! The Lazarite would sense
you--"

Shearing began a slow ascension toward the upper magnet as the current
was increased, from some unseen control board. He moved convulsively
turning horizontally around the axis of his own middle like a toy spun
on a string. His back was uppermost, and Hyrst could not see his face.

"Bellaver and the Lazarite," said the woman quietly, "are trying to
learn from Shearing where our ship is. He has been able so far to keep
his mind shielded. He is--a very brave man. But you'll have to hurry.
He's near the breaking point."

Shearing was now almost level with Hyrst, suspended over that open pit,
looking down, a long way.

"You'll have to be quick, Hyrst. Please. Please get him out of there
before we have to kill him."

The current in the magnet was cut and Shearing fell, with a long
neighing scream.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hyrst looked down. The repelling force of the lower magnet cushioned the
fall, and the upper magnet took hold, hard. Shearing stopped about three
feet above the stage floor and started slowly to rise again. He seemed
to be crying. Hyrst turned and ran back to the top of the aisle. Halfway
around the circle he found steps and went tearing down them. On the next
level--there were three--he saw two men leaning over the broad rail,
watching Shearing.

"Yes, there they are. You must find a weapon--"

Hyrst looked around, blinking like a mole in the dark. Seats, nothing
but seats. Ornamentation, but all solid. Small metal cylinder, set in a
wall niche. Chemical extinguisher. Yes. Compact and heavy. He took it.

"Hurry. He's almost through--"

The two men were tense and hungry, eager as wolves. One was the
Lazarite, a grey man, old and seamed with living and none of it good.
The other was Bellaver, and he was young. He was tall and fresh-faced,
impeccably shaven, impeccably dressed, the keen, clean, public-spirited
executive.

"I can give you more if you want it, Shearing," Bellaver said, his
fingers ready on a control-plate set into the broad rail. "How about
it?"

"Shut up, Bellaver," whispered the Lazarite aloud. "I've almost got it.
Almost--" His face was agonized with concentration.

"_Now!_"

The woman's voiceless cry in his mind sent Hyrst forward. His hand swung
up and then down in a crashing arc, elongated by the heavy cylinder. The
Lazarite fell without a sound. He fell across Bellaver, pushing him back
from the control-plate, and lay over his feet, bleeding gently into the
thick pile of the carpet. Bellaver's mouth and eyes opened wide. He
looked at the Lazarite and then at Hyrst. He leaped backward, away from
the encumbrance at his ankles, making the first hoarse effort at a shout
for help. Hyrst did not give him time to finish it. The first row of
seats caught Bellaver and threw him, and Hyrst swung the cylinder again.
Bellaver collapsed.

"Was I in time?" Hyrst asked of the woman, in his mind. He thought she
was crying when she answered, "Yes." He smiled. He stepped over the
Lazarite and went to the control-plate and began to work with it until
he had Shearing safely on the floor of the stage. Then he cut the power
and ran down another flight of steps to the bottom level. His mind was
able to range free now. He could not sense anyone close at hand.
Bellaver seemed to have sent underlings elsewhere in the _Happy Dream_
while he worked on Shearing. It was nothing for which a man would seek
witnesses. Hyrst vaulted the rail onto the stage and dragged Shearing
away from the magnet. He felt uncomfortable in all that glare of light.
He hauled and grunted until he got Shearing over the rail into the dark.
Then he wrestled the harness off him. Shearing sobbed feebly, and
retched.

"Can you stand up?" said Hyrst. "Hey. Shearing." He shook him, hard.
"Stand up."

He got Shearing up, a one-hundred-and-ninety pound rag doll draped over
his shoulders. He began to walk him out of the theater. "Are you still
there?" he asked of the woman.

The answer came into his mind swiftly. "Yes. I'll help you watch. Do you
see where the skiff is?"

It was in a pod under the belly of the _Happy Dream_. "I see it," said
Hyrst.

"Take that. Bellaver's yacht is faster, but you'd need the crew. The
skiff you can handle yourself."

       *       *       *       *       *

He walked Shearing into a fore-and-aft corridor. Shearing's feet were
beginning to move of their own accord, and he had stopped retching. But
his eyes were still blank and he staggered aimlessly. Hyrst's nerves
were prickling with a mixture of fierce satisfaction and fear. Far above
in the lush suite he felt Vernon stir and come to. There were men
somewhere closer, quite close. He forced his mind to see. Two of the
very accurate men who had been with Vernon were playing cards with two
others who were apparently stewards. The third one lolled in a chair,
smoking. All five were in a lounge just around the corner of a
transverse corridor. The door was open.

Without realizing that he had done so, Hyrst took control of Shearing's
mind. "Steady, now. We're going past that corner without a sound. You
hear me, Shearing? Not a sound."

Shearing's eyes flickered vaguely. He frowned, and his step became
steadier. The floor of the corridor was covered in a tough resilient
plastic that deadened footsteps. They passed the corner. The men
continued to play cards. Hyrst sent up a derisive insult to Vernon and
told Shearing to hurry a little. The stair leading down into the pod was
just ahead, ten yards, five--

A man appeared in the corridor ahead, coming from some storeroom with a
rack of plastic bottles in his hand.

"You'll have to run now," came the woman's thought, coolly. "Don't
panic. You can still make it."

The man with the bottles yelled. He began to run toward Hyrst and
Shearing, dropping the rack to leave his hands free. In the loungeroom
behind them the card-party broke up. Hyrst took Shearing by the arm and
clamped down even tighter on his mind, giving him a single command. They
ran together, fast.

The men from the lounge poured out into the main corridor. Their voices
were confused and very loud. Ahead, the man who had been bringing the
bottles was now between Hyrst and the stair. He was a brown, hard man
who looked like a pilot. He said, "You better stop," and then he
grappled with Hyrst and Shearing. The three of them spun around in a
clumsy dance, Shearing moving like an automaton. Hyrst and the pilot
flailing away with their fists, and then the pilot fell back hard on the
seat of his pants, with the blood bursting out of his nose and his eyes
glazing. Hyrst raced for the stair, propelling Shearing. They tumbled
down it with a shot from a bee-gun buzzing over their heads. It was a
short stair with a double-hatch door at the bottom. They fell through
it, and Hyrst slammed it shut almost on the toes of a man coming down
the stair behind them. The automatic lock took hold. Hyrst told
Shearing, "You can stop now."

A few minutes later, from the great swag belly of the _Happy Dream_, a
small space-skiff shot away and was quickly lost in the star-shot
immensity above the Belt.




CHAPTER IV


It did not stay lost for long. Shearing was at the controls. The
chronometer showed fourteen hours and twenty-seven minutes since they
left the _Happy Dream_. Shearing had spent eight of those hours in a
species of comatose slumber, from which he had roused out practically
normal. Now Hyrst was heavily asleep in the pneumo-chair beside him.

Shearing punched him. "Wake up."

After several more punches Hyrst groaned and opened his eyes. He mumbled
a question, and Shearing pointed out the wide curved port that gave full
vision forward and on both sides.

"It was a good try," he said, "but I don't think we're going to make it.
Look there. No, farther back. See it? Now the other side. And there's
one astern."

Still sleepy, but alarmed, Hyrst swung his mental vision around. It was
easier than looking. Two fast, powerful tugs from the _Happy Dream_, and
Bellaver's yacht. He frowned in heavy concentration. "Bellaver's aboard.
He's got a mighty goose-egg on his head. Vernon too, with his shields up
tight. The three accurate men and the pilot--his nose is a thing of
beauty--plus crew. Nine in all. Two men each to the tugs. The other
Lazarite, the one I laid out--he's not along."

Shearing nodded approvingly. "You're getting good. Now take a glance at
our fuel-tanks and tell me what you see."

Hyrst sat up straight, fully awake. "Practically," he said, "nothing."

"This skiff was meant for short hops only. We've got enough for perhaps
another forty-five minutes, less if we get too involved. They're faster
than we are, so they'll catch up to us--oh, say in about half an hour.
We have friends coming--"

"Friends?"

"Certainly. You don't think we let each other down, do you? Not the
brotherhood. But they had to come from a long way off. We can't possibly
rendezvous under an hour and a half, maybe more if--"

"I know," said Hyrst. "If we all get involved." He looked out the port.
In the beginning, following directions from the young woman--whose name
he had never thought to ask--he had set a course that plunged him deep
into one of the wildest sectors of the Belt. He was not a pilot. He
could, like most men of his time, handle a simple craft under simple
conditions, but these conditions were not simple. The skiff's radar was
short-range and it had no automatic deflection reflexes. Hyrst had had
to fly on ESP, spotting meteor swarms, asteroids, debris of all sorts in
this poetically named hell-hole, the Path of Minor Worlds, and then
figuring out how to get by, through, or over them without a crash.
Shearing had relieved him just in time.

He glowered at the whirling, glittering mess outside, the dust, the
shards and fragments of a shattered world. It merged into mist and his
mind was roving again. Shearing jockeyed the controls. He was flying
esper too. The tugs and Bellaver's fast yacht were closing up the gap.
The level in the tanks went down, used up not in free fall but in the
constant maneuvering.

Hyrst swung mentally inboard to check vac-suits and equipment in the
locker, and then out again. His vision was strong and free. He could
look at the Sun, and see the splendid fires of the corona. He could look
at Mars, old and cold and dried-up, and at Jupiter, massive and sullen
and totally useless except as an anchor for its family of crazy moons.
He could look farther than that. He could look at the stars. In a little
while, he thought, he could look at whole galaxies. His heart pounded
and the breath came hot and hard into his lungs. It was a good feeling.
It made all that had gone before almost worthwhile. The primal
immensities drew him, the black gulfs lit with gold and crimson and
peacock-colored flames. He wanted to go farther and farther, into--

"You're learning too fast," said Shearing dryly. "Stick to something
small and close and sordid, namely an asteroid where we can land."

"I found one," said Hyrst. "There."

       *       *       *       *       *

Shearing followed his mental nudge. "Hell," he said, "couldn't you have
spotted something better? These Valhallas give me the creeps."

"The others within reach are too small, or there's no cover. We'll have
quite a little time to wait. I take it you would like to be alive when
your friends come."

Vernon's thought broke in on them abruptly. "You have just one chance of
that, and that's to give yourselves up, right now."

"Does the socially-conscious Mr. Bellaver still want to give me that
job?" asked Hyrst.

"I'm warning you," said Vernon.

"Your mind is full of hate," said Hyrst. "Cleanse it." He shut Vernon
out as easily as hanging up a phone. Under stress, his new powers were
developing rapidly. He felt a little drunk with them. Shearing said,
"Don't get above yourself, boy. You're still a cub, you know." Then he
grinned briefly and added, "By the way, thanks."

Hyrst said, "I owed it to you. And you can thank your lady friend, too.
She had a big hand in it."

"Christina," said Shearing softly. "Yes."

He dropped the skiff sharply in a descending curve, toward the asteroid.

"Do you think," said Hyrst, "you could now tell me what the devil this
is all about?"

Shearing said, "We've got a starship."

Hyrst stared. For a long time he didn't say anything. Then, "You've got
a starship? But nobody has! People talk of someday reaching other stars,
but nobody tried yet, nobody _could_ try--" He broke off, suddenly
remembering a dark, lonely ship, and a woman with angry eyes watching
it. Even in his astonishment, things began to come clearer to him. "So
that's it--a starship. And Bellaver wants it?"

Shearing nodded.

"Well," said Hyrst. "Go on."

"You've already developed some amazing mental capabilities since you
came back from beyond the door. You'll find that's only the beginning.
The radiation, the exposure--something. The simple act of pseudo-death,
perhaps. Anyway, the brain is altered, stepped up, a great deal of its
normally unused potential released. You've always been a
fair-to-middling technician. You'll find your rating boosted,
eventually, to the genius level."

The skiff veered wildly as Shearing dodged a whizzing chunk of rock the
size of a skyscraper.

"That's one reason," he said, "why we wanted to get you before Bellaver
did. The number of technicians undergoing the Humane Penalty is quite
small. We--the brotherhood--need all of them we can get."

"But that wasn't the main reason you wanted me?" pressed Hyrst.

Shearing looked at him. "No. We wanted you mainly because you were
present when MacDonald died. Handled right--"

He paused. The asteroid was rushing at them, and Bellaver's ships were
close behind. Hyrst was already in a vac-suit, all but the helmet.

"Take the controls," said Shearing. "As she goes. Don't worry, I'll make
the landing." He pulled the vac-suit on. "Handled right," he said, "you
might be the key to that murder, and to the mystery behind it that the
brotherhood _must_ solve."

He took the controls again. They helped each other on with their
helmets. The asteroid filled the port, a wild, weird jumble of
vari-colored rock.

"I don't see how," said Hyrst, into his helmet mike.

"Latent impressions," answered Shearing briefly, and sent the skiff
skittering in between two great black monoliths, to settle with a jar on
a pan of rock as smooth and naked as a ballroom floor.

"Make it fast," said Shearing. "They're right on top of us."

       *       *       *       *       *

The skiff, designed as Sheering had said for short hops, could not
accommodate the extra weight and bulk of an airlock. You were supposed
to land in atmosphere. If you didn't, you just pushed a release-button
and hung on. The air was exhausted in one whistling swoosh that took
with it everything loose. The moisture in it crystallized instantly, and
before this frozen drift had even begun to settle, Hyrst and Shearing
were on their way.

They crossed the rock pan in great swaggering bounds. The gravity was
light, the horizon only twenty or so miles away. Literally in his mind's
eye Hyrst could see the three ships arrowing at them. He opened contact
with Vernon, knowing Shearing had done so too. Vernon had been looking
for them.

"Mr. Bellaver still prefers to have you alive," he said. "If you'll wait
quietly beside the skiff, we'll take you aboard."

Shearing gave him a hard answer.

"Very well," said Vernon. "Mr. Bellaver wants me to make it clear to you
that he doesn't intend for you to get away. So you can interpret that as
you please. Be seeing you."

He broke contact, knowing that Hyrst and Shearing would close him out.
From now on, Hyrst realized, he would keep track of them the way he and
Shearing had kept track of obstructions in the path of flight, by mental
"sight". The yacht was extremely close. Suddenly Hyrst had a confused
glimpse of a hand on a control-lever over-lapped by a view of the
black-mouthed tubes of the yacht's belly-jets. He dived, literally, into
a crack between one of the monoliths and a slab that leaned against its
base, dragging Shearing with him.

The yacht swept over. Nothing happened. It dropped out of sight, braking
for a landing.

"Imagination," said Shearing. "You realize a possibility, and you think
it's so. Tricky. But I don't blame you. The safe side is the best one."

Hyrst looked out the crack. One of the tugs was coming in to land beside
the skiff, while the other one circled.

"Now what?" he said. "I suppose we can dodge them for a while, but we
can't hide from Vernon."

Shearing chuckled. He had got his look of tough competence back. He
seemed almost to be enjoying himself. "I told you you were only a cub.
How do you suppose we've kept the starship hidden all these years?
Watch."

In the flick of a second Hyrst went blind and deaf. Then he realized
that it was only his mental eyes and ears that were blanked out as
though a curtain had been drawn across them. His physical eyes were
still clear and sharp, and when Shearing's voice came over the helmet
audio he heard it without trouble.

"This is called the cloak. I suppose you could call it an extension of
the shield, though it's more like a force field. It's no bar to physical
vision, and it has the one great disadvantage of being opaque both ways
to mental energy. But it does act as a deflector. If Vernon follows us
now, he'll have to do it the hard way. Stick close by me, so I don't
have too wide a spread. And it'll be up to you to lead. I can't do both.
Let's go."

Hyrst had, unconsciously, become so used to his new perceptions that it
made him feel dull and helpless to be without them. He led off down one
of the smooth rock avenues, going away from the skiff and the tug which
had just landed.

On either side of the avenue were monoliths, irregularly spaced and of
different sizes and heights but following an apparently orderly plan.
The light of the distant sun lay raw and blinding on them, casting
shadows as black and sharp-edged as though drawn upon the rock with
india ink.

You could see faces in the monoliths. You could see mighty outlines,
singly and in groups, of gods and beasts and men, in combat, in
suppliance, in death and burial. That was why these asteroids were
called Valhallas. Twenty-six of them had been found so far, and studied,
and still no one could say certainly whether or not the hands of any
living beings had fashioned them. They might be actual monuments,
defaced by cosmic dust, by collision with the myriad fragments of the
Belt, by time. They might be one of Nature's casual jokes, created by
the same agencies. No actual tombs had been found, nor tools, nor
definitely identifiable artifacts. But still the feeling persisted, in
the airless silence of the avenues, that some passing race had paused
and wrought for itself a memorial more enduring than its fame, and then
gone on into the great galactic sea, never to return.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hyrst had never been on a Valhalla before. He understood why Shearing
had not wanted to land and he wished now that they hadn't. There was
something overwhelmingly sad and awesome about these leaning, towering
figures of stone, moving forever in their lonely orbit, going nowhere,
returning to nowhere.

Then he saw the second tug overhead. He forgot his daydreams. "They're
going to act as a spotter," he said. Shearing grunted but did not speak.
His whole mind was concentrated on maintaining the cloak. Hyrst stopped
him still in the pitchy shadow under what might have been a kneeling
woman sixty feet high. He watched the tug. It lazed away, circling
slowly, and he did not think it had seen them. He could not any longer
see the place where they had landed, but he assumed that by now the
yacht had looped back and come in--if not there somewhere close by. They
could figure on nine to eleven men hunting them, depending on whether
they left the ships guarded or not. Either way, it was too many.

"Listen," he said aloud to Shearing. "Listen, I want to ask you. What
you said about latent impressions--you think I might have seen and heard
the killer even though I was unconscious?"

"Especially heard. Possible. With your increased power, and ours,
impressions received through sense-channels but not recognized at the
time or remembered later might be recovered." He shook his head. "Don't
bother me."

"I just wanted to know," said Hyrst. He thought of his son, and the two
daughters he hoped he would never see. He thought of Elena. It was too
late to do anything for her, but the others were still living. So was
he, and he intended to stay that way, at least until he had done what he
set out to do.

"Old Bellaver was behind that killing, wasn't he? Old Quentin, this
one's grandfather."

"Yes. Don't bother me."

"One thing more. Do we Lazarites live longer than men?"

Shearing gave him a curious, brief look. "Yes."

The tug was out of sight behind a massive rearing shape that seemed to
clutch a broken ship between its paws. Symbolic, perhaps, of space? Who
knew? Hyrst led Shearing in wild impala-like leaps across an open space,
and into a narrow way that twisted, filled with darkness, among the
bases of a group that resembled an outlandish procession following a
king.

"How much longer?"

"Humane Penalty first came in a hundred and fourteen years ago, right?
After Seitz' method was perfected for saving spacemen. I was one of the
first they used it on."

"My God," said Hyrst. Yet, somehow, he was not as surprised as he might
have been.

"I've aged," said Shearing apologetically. "I was only twenty-seven
then."

They crouched, beside a humped shape like a gigantic lizard with a long
tail. The tug swung overhead and slowly on.

Hyrst said, "Then it's possible the one who killed MacDonald is still
alive?"

"Possible. Probable."

Hyrst bared his teeth, in what was not at all like a smile. "Good," he
said. "That makes me happy."

They did not do any talking after that. They had had their helmet radios
operating on practically no power at all, so that they couldn't be
picked up outside a radius of a few yards, but even that might be too
close, now that Bellaver's men had had time to get suited and fan out.
They shut them off entirely, communicating by yanks and nudges.

       *       *       *       *       *

For what seemed to Hyrst like a very long time, but which was probably
less than half an hour in measured minutes, they dodged from one patch
of shadow to another, following an erratic course that Hyrst thought
would lead them away from the ships. Once more the tug went over, slow,
and then Hyrst didn't see it again. The idea that they might have given
up occurred to him but he dismissed it as absurd. With the helmet mike
shut off, the silence was beginning to get on his nerves. Once he looked
up and saw a piece of cosmic debris smash into a monolith. Dust and
splinters flew, and a great fragment broke off and fell slowly downward,
bumping and rebounding, and all of it as soundless as a dream. You
couldn't hear yourself walk, you couldn't hear anything but the roar of
your own breathing and the pounding of your own blood. The grotesque
rocky avenues could hide an army, stealthy, creeping--

There was a hill, or at least a higher eminence, crowned with what might
have been the cyclopean image of a man stretched out on a noble
catafalque, with hooded giants standing by in attitudes of mourning. It
seemed like the best place to stop that Hyrst had seen, with plenty of
cover and a view of the surrounding area. With luck, you might stay
hidden there a long time. He jogged Shearing's elbow and pointed, and
Shearing nodded. There was a wide, almost circular sweep of open rock
around the base of the hill. Hyrst looked carefully for the tug. There
was no sign of it. He tore out across the open, with Shearing at his
heels.

The tug swooped over, going fast this time. It could not possibly have
missed them. Shearing dropped the cloak with a grunt. "No use for that
any more," he said. They bounded up the hillside and in among the
mourning figures. The tug whipped around in a tight spiral and hung over
the hill. Hyrst shook the sweat out of his eyes. His mind was clear
again. The tug's skipper was babbling into his communicator, and in
another place on the asteroid Hyrst could mentally see a thin skirmish
line spread out, and in still another four men in a bunch. They all
picked up and began to move, toward the hill.

Shearing said, nodding spaceward, "Our friends are on the way. If we can
hold out--"

"Fat chance," said Hyrst. "They're armed, and all we've got is
flare-pistols." But he looked around. His eyes detected nothing but
rock, hard sunlight, and deep shadow, but his mind saw that one of the
black blots at the base of the main block, the catafalque, was more than
a shadow. He slid into a crack that resembled a passage, being rounded
rather than ragged. Shearing was right behind him. "I don't like this,"
he said, "but I suppose there's no help for it."

The crack led down into a cave, or chamber, too irregularly shaped to be
artificial, too smoothly surfaced and floored to be natural. There was
nothing in it but a block of stone, nine feet or so long and about four
feet wide by five feet high. It seemed to be a natural part of the
floor, but Hyrst avoided it. On the opposite, the sunward side, there
was a small windowlike aperture that admitted a ray of blinding
radiance, sharply defined and doing nothing to illumine the dark on
either side of it.

Vernon's thought came to them, hard, triumphant, peremptory. "Mr.
Bellaver says you have ten minutes to come out. After that, no mercy."




CHAPTER V


The minutes slid past, sections of eternity arbitrarily measured by the
standards of another planet and having no relevance at all on this tiny
whirling rock. The beam of light from the small aperture moved visibly
across the opposite wall. Hyrst watched it, blinking. Outside,
Bellaver's men were drawn up in a wide crescent across the hill in front
of the catafalque. They waited.

"No mercy," said Hyrst softly. "No mercy, is it?" He bent over and began
to loosen the clamps that held the lead weights to the soles of his
boots.

"It isn't mercy we need," said Shearing. "It's time."

"How much?"

"Look for yourself."

Hyrst shifted his attention to space. There was a ship in it, heading
toward the asteroid, and coming fast. Hyrst frowned, doing in his head
without thinking about it a calculation that would have required a
computer in his former life.

"Twenty-three minutes and seventeen seconds," he said, "inclusive of the
four remaining."

He finished getting the weights off his boots. He handed one to
Shearing. Then he half-climbed, half-floated up the wall and settled
himself above the entrance, where there was a slight concavity in the
rock to give him hold.

"Shearing," he said.

"What?" He was settling himself beside the mouth of the crack, where a
man would have to come clear inside to get a shot at him.

"A starship implies the intention to go to the stars. Why haven't you?"

"For the simplest reason in the world," said Shearing bitterly. "The
damn thing can't fly."

"But--" said Hyrst, in astonishment.

"It isn't finished. It's been building for over seventy years now, and a
long and painful process that's been, too, Hyrst--doing it bit by bit in
secret, and every bit having to be dreamed up out of whole cloth, and
often discarded and dreamed up again, because the principle of a
workable star-drive has never been formulated before. And it still isn't
finished. It can't be finished, unless--"

He stopped, and both men turned their attention to the outside.

"Bellaver's looking at his chrono," said Hyrst. "Go ahead, we've got a
minute."

Shearing continued, "unless we can get hold of enough Titanite to build
the hyper-shift relays. Nothing else has a fast enough reaction time,
and the necessary load-capacity. We must have burned out a thousand
different test-boards, trying."

"Can't you buy it?" asked Hyrst. The question sounded reasonable, but he
knew as he said it that it was a foolish one. "I mean, I know the stuff
is scarcer than virtue and worth astronomical sums--that's what
MacDonald was so happy about--but--"

"The Bellaver Corporation had a corner on the stuff before our ship was
even thought of. That's what brought this whole damned mess about. Some
of our people--not saying why they wanted it, of course--tried to buy
some from Bellaver in the usual way, and one of them must have been
incautious about his shield. Because a Lazarite working for Bellaver
caught a mental hint of the starship, and the reason for the Titanite,
and that was it. Three generations of Bellavers have been after us for
the star-drive, and it's developed into a secret war as bitter as any
ever fought on the battlefield. They hold all the Titanite, we hold the
ship, and perhaps now you're beginning to see why MacDonald was killed,
and why you're so important to both sides."

"Beginning to," said Hyrst. "But only beginning."

"MacDonald found a Titanite pocket. And as you know, a Titanite pocket
isn't very big. One man can break the crude stuff, fill a sack with it,
and tote it on his own back if he doesn't have a power-sled."

"MacDonald had a sled."

"And he used it. He cleaned out his pocket, afraid somebody else would
track him to it, and he hid the wretched ore somewhere. Then he began to
dicker. He approached the Bellaver Corporation, and we heard of it and
approached _him_. He tried playing us off against Bellaver to boost the
price, and suddenly he was dead and you were accused of his murder. We
thought you really had done it, because no Titanite turned up, and we
knew Bellaver hadn't gotten it from him. We'd watched too closely. It
wasn't until some years later that one of our people learned that
MacDonald had threatened a little too loudly to sell to us unless
Bellaver practically tripled his offer--and of course Bellaver didn't
dare do that. A price so much out of line even for Titanite would have
stirred all the rival shipbuilders to unwelcome curiosity. So, we
figured, Bellaver had had him killed."

"But what happened to the Titanite?"

"That," said Shearing, "is what nobody knows. Bellaver must have figured
that if his tame Lazarites couldn't find where MacDonald had put it, we
couldn't either. He was right. With all our combined mental probes and
conventional detectors we haven't been able to track it down. And we
haven't been able to find any more pockets, either. Bellaver Corporation
got exclusive mineral rights to the whole damned moon. They even own the
refinery now."

Hyrst shook his head. "Latent impressions or not, I don't see how I can
help on that. If MacDonald had given the killer any clue--"

       *       *       *       *       *

A beam of bright blue light no thicker than a pencil struck in through
the mouth of the passage. It touched the side of the large stone block.
The stone turned molten and ran, and then the beam flicked off, leaving
a place that glowed briefly red. Shearing said, "I guess our ten minutes
are up."

They were. For a second or two nothing more happened and then Hyrst saw
something come sailing in through the crack. His mind told him what it
was just barely in time to shut his eyes. There was a flash that dazzled
him even through his closed lids, and the flash became a glare that did
not lessen. Bellaver's men had tossed in a long-term flare, and almost
at once someone followed it, in the hope of catching Hyrst and Shearing
blinded and off guard. The eyes of Hyrst's mind, unaffected by light,
clearly showed him the suited figure just below him, with its bubble
helmet covered by a glare-shield. They directed him with perfect
accuracy in the downward sweep of the lead weight he had taken from his
boot, and which he still held in his hand. The bubble helmet was very
strong, and the gravity very light, but the concussion was enough to
drop the man unconscious. Just about thought Hyrst, what happened to me
there in the hoist tower, when MacDonald died. Shearing, who had by now
adjusted his own glare-shield stooped quickly and took the man's gun.

He said aloud, over the helmet communicator, "The next one that steps
through here gets it. Do you hear that, Bellaver?"

Bellaver's voice answered. "Listen, Shearing, I was wrong. I admit it.
Let's calm down and start over again. I--"

"Ten minutes ago it was no mercy."

"It's hard for me to behave reasonably about this business. You know
what it means to me, what it meant to my father and _his_ father. But
I'm willing to do anything, Shearing, if you'll make a deal."

"I'll make a deal. Readily. Eagerly. Give back what your grandfather
stole from us, and we'll call it square."

"Oh no we won't," said Hyrst grimly, breaking in. "Not until I find who
killed MacDonald."

"All right," said Bellaver. "Wilson, break out the grenades."

The entire surface of Hyrst's body burst into a flaring sweat. For one
panic-stricken second he wanted to rush out the crack pleading for
mercy. Then he got his feet against the wall and pushed hard, and went
plunging across the chamber in a sort of floating dive. Shearing got
there at the same time and helped to pull him down. They huddled
together on the floor, with the coffin-shaped block between them and the
crack. Hyrst sent out a frantic mental call to hurry, directed at the
spaceship of the brotherhood.

"They're all going to hurry," said Shearing. "Vernon has found the ship
now. He's telling Bellaver. Here comes the grenade--"

Small round glittering thing of death, curving light and graceful
through the airless gloom. It comes so slowly, and the flesh shrinks
quivering upon itself until it is nothing more than a handful of simple
fear. Outside the men are running away, and the one who has thrown the
grenade from the cramped, constructing vantage of the crack is running
after them, and Shearing is crying with his mind Will it to fall short,
_will it to fall sh_--

There is a great brilliance, and the rock leaps, but there is not the
slightest sound.




CHAPTER VI


    "_The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins,
    And next the Crab the Lion Shine.
    The Virgin and the Scales--_"

The old zodiacal rhyme was running through Hyrst's mind, and that was
the only thing that was in his mind.

The Virgin and the Scales.

Yes. And she's very beautiful, too, thought Hyrst. But she shouldn't be
_holding_ the Scales. That's all wrong. The Scales come next, and then
the Scorpion--Scorpio--and the Archer--Sagittarius--

And anyway they aren't scales, they're a pair of big golden stars, and
she's putting them down, and they're melting together. There's only one
of them, and it's not a star at all, really. It's a polished metal jug,
reflecting the light, and--

The Virgin smiled. "The doctor said you were coming around. I brought
you something to drink."

Reality returned to Hyrst with a rush. "You're Christina," he said, and
tried to sit up. He was dizzy, and she helped him, and he said, "I guess
it did fall short."

"What?"

"The grenade. The last thing I remember is Shearing--Wait. Where is
Shearing?"

"Sitting up in the lounge, nursing his bruises. Yes, it fell short, but
I don't think telekinetics had much to do with that. We've never been
able to control matter convincingly. There. All right?"

"Fine. How did you get us out?"

"Of course the grenade had made the entrance impassible--we had to cut
our way in through the outer wall. We had a clear field. Bellaver's men
had all gone back to their ships. They thought you were dead, and to
tell you the truth we thought you must be, too. But you didn't quite
'feel' dead, so we dug you out."

"Thanks," said Hyrst. "I suppose they know different now."

He was in a ship's sick-bay. From the erratic crash and shudder of the
lateral jets, they were beating their way through the Belt, and at a
high rate of speed. Hyrst sent a glance back into space. The tugs and
Bellaver's yacht were following, but this time only the yacht had a
chance. The tugs were dropping hopelessly behind.

"Yes, they soon found out once we got you out, but with any luck we'll
lose them," said Christina. She sat down beside the bunk, where she
could see his face. "Shearing told you about the ship."

"The starship. Yes." He looked at her. Suddenly he laughed. "You're not
a goddess at all."

"Who said I was?"

"Shearing. Or anyway, his mind. Ten feet tall, and crowned with stars--I
was afraid of you." He leaned closer. "Your eyes, though. They are
angry."

"So will yours be," she said, "when you've fought the Bellavers as long
as we have."

"There are still things I don't understand. Why you built the ship, why
you've kept it secret from everyone, not just Bellaver, what you plan to
do with it--how _you_ came to be one of the Brotherhood."

She smiled. "The Seitz method was originated to save wreck-victims
frozen in deep space. Remember? Quite a few of us never went through the
door at all, innocent or guilty. But that makes no difference, once
you've come back from out there." She put her hand on his. "You've
learned fast, but you're only on the threshold. There's no need for
words with us. Open your mind--"

       *       *       *       *       *

He did so. At first it was no different from the contact he had had with
Shearing's mind, or with Christina's before on the _Happy Dream_.
Thoughts came to him clearly phrased--_You want to know why we built the
ship, what we plan to do with it_--and it was only after some time that
he realized the words had stopped and he was receiving Christina's
emotions, her memories and opinions, her disappointments and her dreams,
as simply and directly as though they were his own.

You haven't had time yet, they told him without words, to realize how
alone you are. You haven't tried, as most of us do at first, to be human
again, to fit yourself into life as though the gap of time was not
there, as though nothing had changed. You haven't watched people getting
old around you while you have hardly added a gray hair. You haven't had
to move from one place to another, one job, one group of friends to
another, because sooner or later they sense something wrong about you.
You haven't had to hide your new powers as you would hide a disease
because people would fear and hate you, perhaps even kill you, if they
knew. That's why there is a brotherhood. And that's why we built the
ship.

Symbol of flight. Symbol of freedom. A universe wide beyond imagining,
thronging with many colored guns, with new worlds where men in a human
society could build a society of their own. _No boundaries beyond which
the mind cannot dare to go. All space, all time, all knowledge--free!_

Once more he saw those wide dark seas between the suns. His mind raced
with hers through the cold-flaming nebulae, wheeled blinded and stunned
past the hiving stars of Hercules, looked in eager fascination at the
splendid spiral of Andromeda--no longer, perhaps, beyond reach, for what
are time and space to the intangible forces of the mind?

Then that wild flight ceased, and instead there was a smaller vision,
misty and only half realized, of houses and streets, a place where they
could live and be what they were, openly and without fear.

_Can you understand now_, she asked him, _what they would think if they
knew about the ship? Can you understand that they would be afraid to
have us colonizing out there, afraid of what we might do?_

He understood. At the very least, if the truth were known, the Lazarites
would never be free again. They would be taken and tested and examined
and lectured about, legislated over, restricted, governed, and used.
They might be fairly paid for their ship and whatever other advancements
they might develop, but they would never be permitted to use them.

With sudden savage eagerness Hyrst said, "But first of all I must know
who killed MacDonald. Shearing explained about the latent impressions.
I'm ready."

She stood up, regarding him with grave eyes. "There's no guarantee it
will work. Sometimes it does. Sometimes not."

Hyrst thought about the tired, gray-haired man who had stood at the foot
of his bed. "It'll work. It's got to."

He added, "If it doesn't, I'll tear the truth out of Bellaver with my
hands."

"It may come to that," she said grimly. "But we'll hope. Lie quiet. I'll
make the arrangements."

An hour later Hyrst lay on the padded table in the middle of the
sick-bay. The ship spun and whirled and leaped in a sort of insane
dance, and Hyrst was strapped to the table to prevent his being thrown
off. He had known that the ship was maneuvering in the thickest swarm
area of the Belt with four pilots mind-linked and flying esper, trying
to out-dare Bellaver. Two others were keeping Vernon blanked, and they
hoped that either Bellaver himself or his radar-deflector system would
give up. Hyrst had known this, but now he was no longer interested. He
was barely conscious of the lurching of the ship. They had given him
some sort of a drug, and he lay relaxed and pliant in a pleasant
suspension of all worries, looking vaguely up at the faces that were
bent over him. Finally he closed his eyes, and even they were gone.

       *       *       *       *       *

He was crossing the plain of methane snow with MacDonald, under the
glowing Rings. At first it was all a little blurred, but gradually the
memory cleared until he was aware of each tiny detail far more clearly
than he had been at the time--the texture of the material from which
MacDonald's suit was made, the infinitesimal shadow underscoring every
roughness of the snow, the exact sensation of walking in his leaded
boots, the whisper and whistle of his oxygen system. He quarreled again
with MacDonald, not missing a word. He climbed with him into the tower
of Number Three hoist and examined the signal lights, and sat down on
the bench, smiling, to wait.

He sweated inside his suit. He would take a shower when he got back to
quarters. He wished for a smoke. MacDonald's steady grumbling and
cursing filled his helmet. He listened, enjoying it. Hope you bang
yourself with your own clumsy hammer. And I wish you joy of your
fortune. If you have as many friends rich as you had poor you won't have
any. There was an itch under his left arm. He pressed the suit in with
his right and wriggled his body against it. It didn't do any good. Damn
suits. Damn Titan. Lucky Elena, back on Earth with the kids. Making good
money, though. Won't be long before I can go back and live like a human
being. Now his nose itched, and MacDonald was still grumbling. There was
the faintest ghost of a sound and then _crack_, then nothing, dark,
cold, sinking, very weak, gone. Nothing, nothing. I come to in the cold
silence and look down the shaft at MacDonald and he is dead.

_Go back a bit. Slow. That's right. Easy. Back to Elena and the kids._

Lucky Elena, in the sun and the warm sweet air. Lucky kids. But I'm
lucky too. I can go back to them soon. My nose itches. Why does your
nose always itch when you've got a helmet on, or your hands all over
grease? Listen to MacDonald, damning the belt, damning the tools,
damning everything in sight. Is that a footstep? The air is thin and
poisonous, but it carries sound. Somebody coming behind me? Split
second, no time to look or think. _Crack._ Cold. Dark. Nothing.

_Let's go back again. Don't hurry. We've all the time in the world. Go
back to the footsteps you heard behind you._

Almost heard. And then I black and cold. Heavy. Flat. Face heavy against
helmet, cold. Lying down. Must get up, must get up, danger. Far away.
Can't. MacDonald is screaming. Let the lift alone, what are you doing,
Hyrst? Hyrst! Shut up, you greedy little man, and listen. You're not
Hyrst--who are you? That doesn't matter. I know, you're from Bellaver.
Bellaver sent you to steal the Titanite. Well, you won't get it. It's
where nobody will ever get it unless I show them how. Good. That's good,
MacDonald. That's what I wanted to know. You see, _we_ don't need the
Titanite.

MacDonald screams again and the lift goes down with a roar and a rattle
of severed chain.

Heavy footsteps, shaking the floor by my head. Someone turns me over,
speaks to me, bending close. Light is gray and strange. I try to rouse.
I can't. The man is satisfied. He drops me and goes away, but I have
seen his face inside his helmet. I hear him working on some metal thing
with a tool. He is whistling a little under his breath. MacDonald is not
screaming now. From time to time he whimpers. But I have seen the
killer's face.

I have seen his face.

I have seen--

_Take it easy, Hyrst. Take your time._

Elena is dead, and this is Christina bending over me.

I have seen the killer's face.

It is the face of Vernon.




CHAPTER VII


There was Christina, and there was Shearing, and there were two more he
did not know, leaning over him. The drug was wearing off a little, and
Hyrst could see them more clearly, see the bitter disappointment in
their eyes.

"Is that all?" Christina said. "Are you sure? Go back again--"

They took him back again, and it was the same.

"That's all MacDonald said? Then we're no closer to the Titanite than we
were before."

Hyrst was not interested in the Titanite. "Vernon," he said. Something
red and wild rose up in him, and he tried to tear away the straps that
held him. "Vernon. I'll get him--"

"Later, Hyrst," said Shearing, and sighed. "Lie still a bit. He's on
Bellaver's yacht, remember? Quite out of reach. Now think. MacDonald
said, You won't get it, it's where nobody will ever get it--"

"What's the use?" said Christina, turning away. "It was a faint hope
anyway. Dying men don't draw obliging maps for you." She sat down on the
edge of a bunk and put her head in her hands. "We might as well give up.
You know that."

One of the two Lazarites who had done the latent probe on Hyrst said
with hollow hopefulness, "Perhaps if we let him rest a while and then go
over it again--"

"Let me up out of here," said Hyrst, still groggy with the drug. "I want
Vernon."

"I'll help you get him," said Shearing, "if you'll tell me what
MacDonald meant when he said _nobody will ever get it unless I show them
how_."

"How the devil do I know?" Hyrst tugged at the straps, raging. "Let me
up."

"But you knew MacDonald well. You worked with him and beside him for
years."

"Does that tell me where he hid the Titanite? Don't be an ass, Shearing.
Let me up."

"But," said Shearing equably, "he didn't say _where_. He said _how_."

"Isn't that the same thing?"

"Is it? Listen. Nobody will ever get it unless I show them where. Nobody
will ever get it unless I show them how."

Hyrst stopped fighting the straps. He began to frown. Christina lifted
her head again. She did not say anything. The two Lazarites who had done
the probe stood still and held their breath.

Shearing's mind touched Hyrst's stroking it as with soothing fingers.
"Let's think about that for a minute. Let your thoughts move freely.
MacDonald was an engineer. The engineer. Of the four, he alone knew
every inch of the physical set-up of the refinery. So?"

"Yes. That's right. But that doesn't say where--Wait a minute, though.
If he'd just shoved it in a crack somewhere in the mountains, he'd know
a detector might find it, more easily than before it was dug. He'd have
put it some where deep, deeper than he could possibly dig. Maybe in an
abandoned mine?"

"No place," said Shearing, "is too deep for us to probe. We've examined
every abandoned mine on that side of Titan. And it doesn't fit, anyway.
No. Try again."

"He wouldn't have brought it back to the refinery. One of us would be
sure to find it. Unless, of course--"

Hyrst stopped, and the tension in the sick-bay tightened another notch.
The ship lurched sharply, swerved, and shot upward with a deafening
thunder of rocket-blasts. Hyrst shut his eyes, thinking hard.

"Unless he put it in some place so dangerous that nobody ever went
there. A place where even he didn't go, but which he would know about
being the engineer."

"Can you think of any place that would answer that description?"

"Yes," said Hyrst slowly. "The underground storage bins. They're always
hot, even when they're empty. Anything hidden near them would be
blanketed by radiation. No detector would see anything but uranium.
Probably even you wouldn't."

"No," said Shearing, looking amazed. "Probably we wouldn't. The
radioactive disturbance would be too strong to get through, even if we
were looking for something beyond it, which we weren't."

       *       *       *       *       *

Christina had sprung up. Now she bent over Hyrst and said, "But is there
a way it could have been done? Obviously, the Titanite couldn't have
been put directly into the bin with the uranium--if nothing else, it
would have been shipped out in the next tanker."

"Oh, yes," said Hyrst. "There would be several ways. I can think of a
couple myself, and I've never even see the layout. The repair-lift
shaft, I know, goes clear down to the feeder mechanism, and there's some
kind of a system of dispersal tunnels and an emergency gadget that trips
automatically to release a liquid-graphite damping material into them in
case the radiation level gets too high. I don't remember that it ever
did, but it's a safeguard. There'd be plenty of places to hide a lead
box full of Titanite."

"_Unless I show them how_," repeated Shearing slowly, and began to undo
the straps that held Hyrst to the table. "It has an ominous sound. I'll
bet you that locating the Titanite will be child's play compared to
getting it out. Well, we'll do what we can."

"The first thing," said Christina grimly, "is to get rid of Bellaver. If
he has the slightest suspicion where we're headed he'll radio ahead and
have all Titan alerted."

Hyrst, sitting up now on the edge of the table, hanging on against the
lurching of the ship, said, "That's right--he owns the refinery now,
doesn't he? Is it still working?"

"No. The mines around there played out, oh, ten, fifteen years ago. The
activity's shifted to the north and east on the other side of the range.
That is what may possibly give us a chance." Shearing staggered with
Hyrst across the bucking deck and sat tailor-fashion in the bunk, his
eyes intent. "Hyrst, I want you to remember everything you can about the
refinery. The ground plan, exactly where the buildings are, the hoists,
the landing field. Everything."

Hyrst said, showing the edges of his teeth, "When do I get Vernon?"

"You'll get him. I promise you."

"What about Bellaver? He's still behind us."

Shearing smiled. "That's Christina's job! Let her worry."

Hyrst nodded. He began to remember the refinery. Christina and the other
two went out.

A short while later a number of things happened, violently, and in quick
succession. The ship of the Lazarites, pursuing its wild and headlong
course through the swarming debris of the Belt, was far ahead of
Bellaver's yacht but still within instrument range. Apparently in
desperation it plunged suddenly on a tangential course into a cluster of
great jagged rocks all travelling together at a furious rate of speed.
The cluster was perhaps two hundred miles across. The Lazarite ship
twisted and turned, and then there was a swift bright flowering of
flame, and then nothing.

"She's blown her tubes," said Bellaver exultantly, on the bridge of his
yacht. The instruments had lost contact, chiefly because the cluster was
so thick that it was impossible to separate one body from another.

Vernon said, "They're not blanking my mind any more. It stopped, like
that."

But he was still doubtful.

"Can you locate the ship?" asked Bellaver.

"I'm trying."

Bellaver caught his arm. "Look there!"

There was a second, larger and more brilliant, flash of flame.

"They've hit an asteroid," he said. "They're done for."

"I can't locate them," Vernon said. "No ship, no wreckage. It could be a
trick. They could be holding a cloak."

"A trick?" said Bellaver. "I doubt it. Anyway, we're running low on
fuel, and I'm not going to go into that cluster and risk my own neck to
find out. If by any chance they do come out again later on, we'll deal
with them."

But they both watched the cluster until it had whirled on out of sight.
And neither eye nor instrument nor Vernon's probing mind could
distinguish any sign of life.




CHAPTER VIII


Titan lay below them in the Saturn-glow, under the fantastic glory of
the Rings. A bitter, repellent world of jagged peaks and glimmering
plains of poison snow. The tiny life-raft dropped toward it, skittering
nervously as it hit the thin atmosphere. Hyrst clung hard to the
handholds, trying not to retch. He was not habituated to space anyway,
and the skiff had been bad enough. Now, without any hull around him and
nothing but a curved shield in front of him, he felt like an ant on a
flying leaf.

"I don't like it either." Shearing said. "But it gives us a fifty-fifty
chance of getting through unnoticed. Radar usually isn't looking for
anything so small."

"_I_ understand all the reasons," Hyrst said. "It's my stomach that's
obtuse."

He could make out the pattern of the refinery now, a million miles of
vertigo below him. The Lazarite ship was somewhere up and out behind
them, hiding in the Rings. The trick had worked with Bellaver out there
in the Belt, and they hoped now that it would work with Bellaver's
observers on Titan. There was no need for any fake explosions this time,
to give the impression of destruction. Secrecy was the watch-word, all
lights out and jet-blasts muffled to a spark. Later, when Hyrst and
Shearing had accomplished their mission, the ship would drop down fast
and take them off, with the Titanite, before any patrol craft would have
time to arrive.

They hoped.

The buildings of the refinery were dark and cold, drifted out of shape
by an accumulation of the thin, evil snow. The spiderweb of roads had
faded from the plain, and the landing field was smooth and unmarked.
Around its perimeter the six stiff towers of the hoists stood up like
lonely sentinels, hooded and cloaked.

Hyrst felt a sudden tightening of his throat, and this was a thing he
had not expected. A refinery on Titan was hardly a thing to be
sentimental about. But it was bound up so intimately with other things,
with hopes for a future that was now far behind him, with plans for
Elena and the kids that were now a cruel mockery, with friendly memories
of Saul and Landers, now long dead, that he could not look at it
unmoved.

"Let's try again," said Shearing quietly. "If we could locate the
Titanite definitely it might make all the difference. We'll hardly have
time to search all six of the bins."

Glad of the distraction, Hyrst tried. He linked his mind to Shearing's
and they probed with this double probe, one after the other, the six
hoists and the bins beneath them, while the raft fell whistling down the
air.

It was the same as all the tries before. The bins had been empty for
more than a decade, but the residual radiation was still hot enough to
present a luminous haze to the eyes of the mind, fogging everything
around it.

"Wait a minute," Hyrst said. "Let's use our wits. Look at the way those
hoists are placed, in a wide crescent. Now if I was MacDonald, coming in
from the mountains with a load of Titanite, and I wanted not to be seen,
which one would I pick?"

"Either One or Six," said Shearing, without hesitation. "They're the
farthest away from the buildings."

"But Number Six is at the west end of the crescent, and to reach it you
would have to go clear across the landing field." He pointed mentally to
Number One. "I'll bet on that one. Shall we give it another try?"

They did. This time, for a fleeting second, Hyrst thought he had
something.

"So did I," said Shearing. "Sort of down under and _behind_."

"Yes," said Hyrst. "_Look_ out!" His involuntary cry was caused by the
sudden collision of the life-raft with a cloud. The vapor was very
thick, and after the cruel clarity of space it made Hyrst feel that he
was smothering. Shearing jockeyed the raft's meagre controls, and in a
minute or two they were below the cloud and spiralling down toward the
landing field. It was snowing.

"Good," said Shearing. "We'll hope it keeps up."

       *       *       *       *       *

They landed close to Number One Hoist and floundered rapidly through the
shallow drifts, carrying some things. The hatch had been sealed with a
plastic spray to prevent corrosion, and it took them several minutes to
get it open. Inside the tower it was pitch black, but they did not need
lights. Their other senses showed them the worn metal treads of the
steps quite clearly. In the upper chamber the indicator panels were dark
and dead. Hyrst shivered inside his suit. He had been here so many times
before, so long ago.

"Let's get busy," Shearing said.

They pulled on the rayproofs they had brought with them from the raft.
Without power the lift was useless, but the skeleton cage, stripped of
all its tools, was not too heavy for two strong men to swing clear of
the shaft top. They made sure it would stay clear, and then sent down a
light collapsible ladder. Hyrst slid down first into the smooth, round,
totally unlighted hole, that had one segment of it open paralleling the
machinery of the hoist.

"Take it carefully," Shearing said, and slid after him.

Clumsy in vac-suit and rayproof, Hyrst descended the ladder with
agonizing slowness. Every impulse cried out for haste, but he knew if he
hurried he would wind up at the bottom of the shaft as dead as
MacDonald. The banging and knocking of their passage against the metal
wall made a somber, hollow booming in that enclosed space, and it seemed
to Hyrst that the silent belts and cables of the hoist hummed a little
in sympathy. It was probably only the blood humming in his own ears.

"See anything yet?"

"No."

The vast strange glowing of the bin grew brighter as they approached it.
The hoist was still "hot," and it glowed too, but nothing like the
concentration in the bin.

"Even with rayproofs, we can't stay close to that too long."

"I don't think we'll have to. MacDonald was only human, and the bin was
full then. He couldn't have stayed long either."

"See anything yet?"

"Nothing but fog. When you hit bottom, better use your light."

At long last Hyrst felt the bottom of the shaft under his boots. He
stood aside from the ladder and switched on his belt lamp. In this case
the physical eyes were better than the mental, being insensitive to
radiation. Instantly the gears and cams of the feeder assembly sprang
into sharp relief on the open side of the shaft. Shearing stumbled down
off the ladder and switched on his own light.

"Where was it we thought we saw something?"

"Down under and behind." Hyrst turned slowly around, questing. The shaft
was unbroken except by the repair opening. He climbed through it, with
some difficulty, because nobody was supposed to climb through it and the
machinery was placed for easy access with extension tools from the lift.
The bin itself was now directly opposite them, a big hopper cut deep in
the solid rock and serving the feeder by simple gravity. The feeder
pretty well filled its own rocky chamber. A place might have been found
beside it for something not too big, but the first man who came down on
the lift would have seen it whether he was looking for it or not.

Shearing pointed. A dark opening pierced the rock at one side. Hyrst
tried to see into it with his mental eyes, but the "fog" was so dense
and bright--

He saw it, an unsubstantial ghostly shadow, but there. A square box some
twenty feet down the tunnel.

Shearing drew a quick sharp breath "Let's go."

They went into the tunnel, crouching, scraping against the narrow sides.

"Look out for booby traps."

"I don't see any--yet."

The box sat in the middle of the tunnel. There was no way to get around
it, no way to see over it without lying on its top and wriggling between
it and the low roof. Hyrst and Shearing shut their eyes.

"I'm not sure, but I think I see a wire. Damn the fog. Can't tell where
it goes--"

       *       *       *       *       *

Hyrst took cutters from his belt and slithered cautiously over the box.
His heart was hammering very hard and his hand shook so that he had
great difficulty getting the cutters and the wire together. The wire was
attached to the back of the box, very crudely and hastily attached with
a blob of plastic solder. It was not until he had pinched the wire with
the sharp metal cutter-teeth that he realized the plastic was
non-metallic and the wire bare. And then, of course, it was too late.

There must have been a simple energizer somewhere up ahead, still
charging itself from the ample radiation source. The cutters flew out of
Hyrst's hand in a shower of sparks, and in the darkness of the tunnel
ahead there was a sudden wild flare of light, and an explosion of dust.
A shock wave, not too great, hammered past Hyrst's helmet. Shearing
yelled once, a protest broken short in mid-cry. Then they waited.

The dust settled. The brief tremor of the rock was stilled.

In the roof of the tunnel, where the blast had been, a broken dump-trap
hung open, but nothing poured out of it but a handful of black dust.

Hyrst began to laugh. He lay on his belly on top of the box of Titanite
and laughed. The tears ran out of his eyes and down his nose and dropped
onto the inside of his helmet. Shearing hit him from behind. He hit him
until he stopped laughing, and then Hyrst shook his head and said.

"Poor MacDonald."

"Yeah. Go ahead, you can cut the wire now."

"Such a lovely booby trap. But he wasn't figuring on time. They went
away from here, Shearing, you see? And when they went they drained off
the liquid graphite and took it with them. So there isn't anything left
to flood the tunnel. Pathetic, isn't it?"

Shearing hit him again. "Cut the wire."

He cut it. They scuffled backward down the tunnel, dragging the box.
When they got back into the shaft where there was room to do it they
opened up the box.

"Doesn't look like much, does it, for all the trouble it's made?"

"No, it doesn't. But then gold doesn't look like much, or uranium, or a
handful of little dry seeds." Shearing picked up a chunk of the rough,
grayish ore. "You know what that is, Hyrst? That's the stars."

It was Hyrst's turn to prod Shearing into quiet. The starship and the
dream that went with it were still only an intellectual interest to him.
They shared out the Titanite into two webbing sacks. It made a light
load for each, hardly noticeable when clipped to a belt-ring at the
back.

Hyrst felt suddenly very nervous. Perhaps it was reaction, perhaps it
was the memory of having been trapped in a similar hole on the Valhalla
asteroid. Perhaps it was a mental premonition, obscured by the
radioactive "fog". At any rate, he started to climb the ladder with
almost suicidal haste, urging Shearing on after him. The shaft seemed to
be a mile high. It seemed to lengthen ahead of him as he climbed, so
that he was never any nearer the top. He knew it was only imagination,
because he passed the level markers, but it was the closest thing to a
nightmare he had ever experienced when he was broad awake. Just after
they had passed the E Level mark, Shearing spoke.

"A ship has landed."

Hyrst looked mentally. The fog-effect was not so great now, and he could
see quite clearly. It was a small ship, and two men were getting out of
it. It had stopped snowing.

"Radar must have picked up the raft after all," said Shearing. "Or else
somebody spotted the jet-flares." He began to climb faster. "We better
get out of this before they come in."

D Level. Hyrst's hands were cold and stiff inside his gauntlets, clumsy
hooks to catch the slender rungs. The two men were standing outside in
the snow, peering around.

C Level. One of the two men saw the raft parked by the hoist tower. He
pointed, and they moved toward it.

B Level. Hyrst's boots slipped and scrambled, banging the shaft wall.
"Christ," said Shearing. "You sound like a temple gong. What are you
trying to do, alarm the whole moon?"

       *       *       *       *       *

The men outside bent over the raft. They looked at it. Then they looked
at the hoist tower. They left the raft and began to run, pulling guns
out of their belts.

A Level. Hyrst's breath roared in his helmet like a great wind. He
thought of the long dark way down that was below them, and how MacDonald
had looked at the bottom of the shaft, and how he would take Shearing
with him if he fell, and nobody would get to the stars, and Vernon would
go free. He set his teeth, and sobbed, and climbed. Outside, the two men
cautiously removed the hatch and stepped into the tower.

End of the ladder. A level floor to sprawl on. Hyrst squirmed away from
the shaft. He thought for a minute he was going to pass out, and he
fumbled with the oxygen valve, making the mixture richer. His head began
to clear. Shearing was now beside him. This time they had guns, too.
Shearing gave him a quick mental caution, _Not unless you have to_. One
of the two men was placing a tentative foot on the stair that led up to
where they were. The other man was close behind him. Shearing took
careful aim and fired, at half power.

The harsh blue bolt did not strike either man. But they went reeling
back in a cloud of burning flakes, and when Shearing shouted to them to
drop their weapons and get out they did so, half stunned from the shock.
Hyrst and Shearing leaped down the stairs, stopping only long enough to
pick up the guns. Then they scrambled outside. The two men were running
as hard as they could for their ship, but they had not gone far and
Shearing stopped them with another shot that sent a geyser of methane
steam puffing up practically under their feet.

"Not yet," he said. "Later."

The two men stood, sullenly obedient. They were both young, and not bad
looking. Just doing a job, Hyrst thought. No real harm in them, just
doing a job, like so many people who never stop to worry about what the
job means. They both wore Bellaver's insigne on their vac-suits.

One of them said, as though he were reciting a lesson in which he had no
real personal interest, "You're trespassing on private property. You'll
be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

"Sure," said Shearing. He motioned to the hoist tower. "Back inside."

The young men hesitated. "What you going to do?"

"Nothing fatal. It shouldn't take you more than half an hour to break
out again."

He marched them to the hatch and saw them inside it. Hyrst was watching
the sky, the black star-glittering sky with the glorious arch of the
Rings across it and one milky-bright curve of Saturn visible and growing
above the eastern horizon.

"They're coming," he said mentally to Shearing.

"Good." He started to close the hatch, and one of the young men pointed
suddenly to the sack clipped to Shearing's belt.

"You've been stealing something."

"Tell that to Bellaver."

"You bet I will. The fullest extent of the law, mister! The fullest
extent--"

The hatch closed. Shearing jammed the fastening mechanism so it could
not be turned from the inside. Then he went and stood beside Hyrst in
the glimmering plain, watching the ship drop down out of the Rings.

Hyrst said, "They'll tell Bellaver."

"Naturally."

"What will Bellaver do?"

"I'm not sure. Something drastic. He wants our starship so hard he'd
murder his own children to get it. You can see why. In itself it's
priceless, a hundred years ahead of its time, but that's not all. It's
what it stands for. To us it means freedom and safety. To Bellaver it
means--"

He gestured toward the sky, and Hyrst nodded, seeing in Shearing's mind
the image of a gigantic Bellaver, ten times bigger than God, gathering
the whole galaxy into his arms.

"I wish you luck," said Hyrst. He unhooked the sack of Titanite from his
belt and gave it to Shearing. "It'll take a little while to refine the
stuff and build the relays, even so. That may be time enough. Come back
for me if you can."

"Vernon?"


"Yes."

Shearing nodded. "I said I'd help you get him. I will."

"No. This is my job. I'll do it alone. You belong there, with them. With
Christina."

"Hyrst. Listen--"

"Don't tell me where the starship is. I might not hold out as well as
you."

"All right, but Hyrst--in case we can't get back--look for us away from
the Sun. Not toward it."

"I'll remember."

The ship landed. Shearing entered it, carrying the Titanite. And Hyrst
walked away, toward the closed and buried buildings of the refinery.

It had begun to snow again.




CHAPTER IX


It was cold and dark and infinitely sad. Hyrst wandered through the
rooms, feeling like a ghost, thinking like one. Everything had been
removed from the buildings. The living quarters were now mere cubicular
tombs for a lot of memories, absolutely bare of any human or familiar
touch. It felt very strange to Hyrst. He kept telling himself that fifty
years had passed, but he could not believe it. It seemed only a few
months since MacDonald's death, months occupied by investigation and
trial and the raging, futile anguish of the unjustly accused. The long
interval of the pseudo-death was no more than a night's sleep, to a mind
unconscious of passing time. Now it seemed that Saul and Landers should
still be here, and there should be lights and warmth and movement.

There was nothing. He could not bring himself to stay in the living
quarters. He went into one of the storerooms and sat on a concrete
buttress and waited. It was a long and dreadful wait. During it all the
emotional storms occasioned by the murder and its aftermath passed
through his mind. Scenes with Saul and Landers. Scenes with the
investigators, with MacDonald's family, with lawyers and reporters.
Scenes with Elena. The whole terrible nightmare, leading inevitably to
that culminating moment when the door of the airlock opened and he
joined the sleepers on the plain. When it was all over Hyrst felt shaken
and exhausted, but calm. The face of Vernon burned brightly in his
mind's eye.

Without bothering to open the steel-shuttered windows, he watched the
two young men force their way out of the hoist tower. He watched them
run to their ship and chatter excitedly over their radio. By the time,
much later, that Bellaver's yacht came screaming down to the landing
field on a flaming burst of jets, he could watch it with almost the cool
detachment of a spectator. He was careful to keep his shields up tight
against Vernon, and he did not think the other Lazarite would be likely
to look for him. Vernon seemed to be fully occupied with Bellaver.

"_What else would they be stealing, you fool? You should have, killed
Hyrst before, when you had the chance._"

"_Somebody had to take the blame for MacDonald. Anyway, you had him
aboard the_ Happy Dream. _Why didn't you hang onto him?_"

"_Don't get insolent with me, Vernon. I can turn you over to the police
anytime, for any one of a hundred things._"

"_Not without tipping your hand, Bellaver._"

"_It would be worth it._" A string of foul names, delivered in a furious
scream. "_You couldn't locate the Titanite, but they did, just as soon
as they got hold of Hyrst._"

"_All right, Mr. God Almighty Bellaver, turn me in. But if it was the
Titanite they took, you haven't a chance of finding that starship
without me._"

"_You haven't done very well at it so far._"

"_In the excitement, they may get careless. But it's up to you._"

More foul language, but Bellaver did not repeat his threat. He and
Vernon, with a couple of other men, got into vac-suits and lumbered
across the snow to the hoist tower. From inside the cold dark buried
building, Hyrst watched them, and thought hard and fast, and smiled.
Presently he left the building and circled cautiously through the snowy
gloom until he was in range of their helmet-communicators. He could hear
them aurally now, but he kept watching them, esper-fashion.

       *       *       *       *       *

They inspected the empty lead box, and the young men told what had
happened, and Bellaver turned his raging fury against them. There was no
longer any doubt that the Titanite had been found and taken away, and
Bellaver saw the stars and worlds and moons, the bright glowing plunder
of a galaxy, slipping away from him. He threatened the two young men
with every punishment he could think of for not having stopped the
thieves, and one of the young men turned white and anxious, and the
other one flushed brick red and shook his fist close to Bellaver's
helmet.

"You go to hell," he said. "I don't care who you are. You go to hell."

He walked out of the hoist tower, with his companion stumbling at his
heels, and Bellaver screamed after them, and behind him the crewmen
looked shocked and contemptuous, and Vernon laughed openly, showing the
edges of his teeth.

The two young men got into their ship and went away. Bellaver turned and
stood looking at the empty box. He seemed exhausted now, hopeless, like
a child about to break down and cry. Vernon went over and kicked the
box.

"Hyrst had the advantage," he said. "He knew MacDonald and he knew the
refinery. Even so, it must have been pure guesswork. Nobody could probe
through that fog."

"What are we going to do?" asked Bellaver. "Vernon, what are we going to
do?"

Hyrst spoke for the first time, his voice ringing loud and startling in
their ears.

"Don't ask Vernon," he said. "Ask me."

There was a moment of complete silence. Hyrst felt Vernon's mind brush
his, and he permitted himself one cruel flash of triumph. Then everybody
spoke at once, Vernon explaining why he hadn't spotted Hyrst--who could
have figured he'd stay behind at a time like this?--the crew-members
nervously fingering their guns, and Bellaver crying,

"Hyrst! Is that you, Hyrst? Where are you?"

"Where I can get the first shot at anybody coming out of the tower, and
where nobody from the yacht will ever reach me. Tell them all to stay
put. Go ahead, Bellaver, you want to hear me out, don't you?"

"What do you want to say?"

"I can find you that starship. Tell them, Bellaver."

He told them. And Vernon said to Bellaver, "If he's willing to betray
his friends, why would he get them the Titanite?" He laughed. "It isn't
even a good trick."

"Oh, yes, it is," said Hyrst softly. "It's a very good one. The best.
You see, I don't care about the starship or the Titanite. All I care
about is the man who killed MacDonald. They were sort of bound up
together. Ever hear of latent impressions, Vernon? I was unconscious,
but my ears heard and my eyes saw, and my brain remembered, when it was
shown how."

"That was fifty years ago," said Vernon. "People don't understand about
us. Nobody would believe you if you told them."

"They would if Bellaver told them. They would if Bellaver explained out
loud about the Lazarites, about what happens to men when they go through
the door. They'd listen to him. And there must be others who know, or at
least suspect." Hyrst paused, long enough to smile. "The beauty of that
is, Bellaver, that you're in the clear. You're not responsible for a
murder your grandfather had done. You could swear you didn't even know
about it until now."

Vernon said to Bellaver, "If you do this to me, I'll blast you wide
open."

"What can he do, Bellaver?" Hyrst shouted. "He can talk, but you have
the money, the position, the legal powers. You can talk louder. And when
they know the truth, will anybody take the word of a Lazarite against a
human man?"

His voice rose higher and louder, drowning out Vernon's cry.

"Are you afraid of him, Bellaver? Are you so afraid of him you'll let
the starship go?"

"Hold him." Bellaver said, and the crewmen held Vernon fast. "Wait a
minute, Hyrst," he said. "What's your angle? Is it just revenge? Are you
selling out your friends for something over and done half a century ago?
I don't believe it, Hyrst."

Hyrst said slowly, "I can answer that, so even you will understand. I
have children. They're getting old now. They've lived all their lives
thinking their father killed a man, not for love or for justice or in
self-defense, but for sheer cold-blooded greed. I want them to know it
wasn't so."

"Hold him!" Bellaver said. The crewmen struggled with Vernon, and Vernon
said viciously to Bellaver,

"He'll never lead you to the starship. I can read his mind. When you've
turned me in and blackened your grandfather's name to clear him, he'll
laugh in your face. What are you, Bellaver, a fool?"

"Am I, Hyrst?"

"That's for you to find out. I'm offering you the starship for Vernon,
and that's fair enough, because I want him as bad as you want it. And I
can tell you, Bellaver, if you decide to play it smart and call in your
guards to hunt me down, it will do you no good. I won't be alive when
they take me."

Silence. In his mind's eye Hyrst could see the beads of sweat running
down Bellaver's face behind his helmet. He could see Vernon's face, too.
It gave him pleasure.

"It should be an easy decision, Bellaver," he said. "After all, suppose
I am lying. What have you got to lose but Vernon? And with his record,
that isn't much."

"Hold him," said Bellaver. "All right, Hyrst. I'll do it. But I'll tell
you now. If you lie to me, there won't be any re-awakening in another
fifty years. This will be for good."

"Fair enough," said Hyrst. "I'm putting my gun away. I'm coming in."

He walked quickly through the snow toward the tower.




CHAPTER X


On the bridge of his yacht, Bellaver turned to Hyrst and said,

"I've done what you wanted. Now find me that starship."

Hyrst nodded. "Take off."

The rockets roared and thundered, and the swift yacht leaped quivering
into the sky.

Hyrst sat quietly in his recoil chair. He felt a different man, changed
entirely in the last few days. Much had happened in those days.

Bellaver had got busy on the radio even before his yacht left Titan, and
the story of the Lazarites had burst like a nova upon the Solar System.
Already there were instances of suspected Lazarites being mobbed by
their neighbors, and Government was frantically concerning itself with
all the new, far-reaching implications of the Humane Penalty.

Close on the heels of this bomb-shell had come Vernon's angry
accusations against Bellaver, delivered as soon as he was given to the
authorities on Mars. During the twenty Martian hours necessary for
formal charge and the taking of depositions, and while Bellaver's yacht
was being refueled, Vernon's story of the starship went out on all the
interworld circuits. And it had been as Christina had said. The whole
Solar System was frantic to have the Lazarites caught and stopped, and
every man in space became a self-appointed searcher for the hidden
starship. Bellaver, letting his lawyers worry about Vernon's
accusations, had already laid formal claim to that ship, based on the
value of the stolen Titanite.

"Where?" demanded Bellaver now, in a fury of impatience. "Where?"

"Wait," said Hyrst. "There are too many watching, ready to follow you.
They know what you're after. Wait till we're clear of Mars."

He sat in his chair, looking into space. His drive was all gone, and the
anger that had fed it. Somewhere his son and his two daughters were
drawing their first free breaths relieved of a burden they should never
have had to carry. They knew now that he was innocent, and they could
think of him now without bitterness, speak his name without hate. He had
done what he had set out to do, and he was finished. He knew what was
ahead of him, but he was too tired to care.

The yacht went fast, away from the old red weary planet. Hyrst thought
of Shearing and Christina and the others, laboring over their ship on
the dark plain. He felt safe in doing this, because Vernon was gone and
the gray evil man who had helped to torture Shearing aboard the _Happy
Dream_ was still in an Earth hospital recovering from the blow Hyrst had
given him. They were out of reach, and Hyrst was the only Lazarite
Bellaver had.

He did not try to get through to Shearing because he knew that was
impossible, and there was no reason for it anyway. He let his mind
stretch out and rove through the nighted spaces beyond Saturn, beyond
Uranus and Neptune, beyond the black and frigid bulk of Pluto. He did
not see the ship nor touch a Lazarite mind, and so he knew that they
were still holding the cloak, still hiding from possible betrayal. He
withdrew his mind, and wished them luck.

"We're clear of Mars," said Bellaver. "Which way?"

"That way," said Hyrst, and pointed. "Toward the Sun."

The yacht swerved and steadied on a new course, toward the distant glare
of Sol. And Bellaver said,

"What's the exact location?"

"Can you trust every man in this crew?" asked Hyrst. "Can you be sure
not one of them would give it away, when we stop to refuel? You're not
the only one that knows about the starship now, remember."

"You could tell _me_."

"You're too impatient, Bellaver. You'd want to head straight there, and
it won't be that easy. They have defenses. We have to be careful, or
they'll destroy the ship before we reach it."

"Or finish their relays and go." Bellaver gave Hyrst a long look. "I'll
trust you because I have to. But I wasn't making an empty threat. And
I'll do it so there won't be any thought of murder. You'd better find me
that ship, Hyrst."

From then on, Bellaver hardly slept. He paced the corridors and haunted
the control room and watched Hyrst with a gnawing, agonizing doubt.
Hyrst began to feel for him a distant sort of pity, as he might have
felt for a man afflicted by some disease brought on by his own excesses.

       *       *       *       *       *

The yacht passed the orbit of Earth, refueled at an obscure space
station, and sped on. Hyrst continued to stall Bellaver, ordering a
change of course from time to time to keep him happy. At intervals he
let his mind rove through those dark spaces they were leaving farther
behind with every passing second. Each time it was a greater effort, but
still there was no sign of the starship or its base, and so he knew that
the labor still went on.

By the time the yacht reached the orbit of Venus a fan-shaped cordon of
other ships had collected around and behind her drawn by the word that
Bellaver was on his way to find the starship. Government patrols were in
constant touch.

"They can't interfere," said Bellaver. "I've got a lien on that ship, a
formal claim."

"Sure," said Hyrst. "But you'd better be the first to find it.
Possession, you know. Bear off a bit. Mislead them. They're sure now
they know where you're going."

"Don't they?" said Bellaver, looking ahead at the glittering spark that
was Mercury. "There isn't anyplace else to go."

"Isn't there?"

Bellaver stared at him, narrow-eyed. "The legend of the Vulcan was
exploded by the first explorers. There is no intra-Mercurial world."

Hyrst shot a swift stabbing mental glance toward Pluto. Still nothing.
He sighed and said easily,

"There wasn't then. There is now."

He brazened out the look of incredulity on Bellaver's face.

"These are Lazarites, remember, not men. They built a place for
themselves where nobody would ever think to look. Not a planet, of
course, just a floating workshop. A satellite. And now you know. So you
can let them beat you to Mercury."

"All right," said Bellaver softly. "All right."

They passed Mercury, lost in the blaze of the Sun, and only a few ships
followed them, far behind. The rest stopped to search the craggy valleys
of the Twilight Belt, and the bleak icefields of the Dark Side.

And now Hyrst had run his string out, and he knew it. When no
intra-Mercurial satellite showed up, physically or on detector-screens,
there was no further lie to tell. He drove his mind out and away, to the
cold planets wheeling on the fringes of Sol's light, and he sweated, and
prayed, and hoped that nothing had gone wrong. And suddenly the cloak
was dropped, and he saw a lonesome chip of rock beyond Pluto, all
hollowed out for shops and living quarters, and the great ship standing
in the mile-long plain, with the stars all drifted overhead. And the
ship lifted from the plain, circled upward, and suddenly was not.

Hyrst was bitterly sorry that he was not aboard. But he told Bellaver,
"You can stop looking now. They've got away."

He watched Bellaver die, standing erect on his feet, still breathing,
but dying inside with the last outgoing of hope.

"I thought you were lying," he said, "but it was the only chance I had."
He nodded, looking toward the shuttered port with the insufferable blaze
outside. He said, in a flat, dead voice, "If you were put out here,
bound, in a lifeboat, headed toward the Sun--Yes. I could make up a
story to fit that."

In the same toneless voice, he called his men. And suddenly the yacht
lurched over shuddering in the backwash of some tremendous energy. Hyrst
and the others were flung scattering against the bulk-heads, and the
lights went out, and the instruments went dead.

Beyond the port, on the unshuttered side away from the Sun, a vast dark
shape had materialized out of nothing, to hang close in space beside the
yacht.

Hyrst heard in his mind, strong and clear, the voice of Shearing saying,
"Didn't I tell you the brotherhood stands by its own? Besides, we
couldn't make a liar out of you, now could we?"

Hyrst began to laugh, just a little bit hysterically. He told Bellaver,
"There's your starship. And Shearing says if I'm not alive when he comes
aboard to get me, that they won't be as careful about warping space when
they go away as they were when they came."

Bellaver did not say anything. He sat on the deck where the shock had
thrown him, not speaking. He was still sitting there when Hyrst passed
through the airlock into the starship's boat, and he did not move even
when the great ship vanished silently into whatever mysterious
ultra-space the minds of the Lazarites had unlocked, outbound for the
limitless freedom of the universe, where the wheeling galaxies thunder
on forever across infinity and the stars burn bright, and there is
nothing to stop the march of the Legion of Lazarus. And who knew, who
could tell, where that march would end?

Aboard the starship, already a million miles away, Hyrst said to
Christina. "When they brought me back from beyond the door, that was
re-awakening. But this--this is being born again."

She did not answer that. But she took his hand and smiled.





End of Project Gutenberg's The Legion of Lazarus, by Edmond Hamilton