Part 11

Freddy looked up at him, troubled, uncertain. "I think she is. She's lying down near the bottom of the dune, right where it slopes up again toward another dune. It's like one, big, hollow dune. I didn't see her move. I guess she must have fainted. He's there, too, lying face down in the sand halfway up the dune, like he was hurt...."

"All right," Corriston said. "Now you'd better stay here with your father."

"Can't I go back with you? I was afraid to climb down to her alone. I was afraid he'd catch me and kill me, and then no one would ever know I'd found her. He'd be warned and try to get away--"

"It was the right thing to do, the level-headed thing," Corriston said. "You couldn't have used better judgment."

"Then it's all right if I go back with you?"

Corriston shook his head. "No, Freddy. I'd rather you didn't. Don't you understand? You've done _more_ than your share. Now it's my turn."

Freddy tightened his lips and stared for a moment at the glitter of sunlight on the caterpillar tread of the nearest tractor. Finally he said, "All right, Lieutenant Corriston. If it's an order."

"It's an order, Freddy."

Corriston gave Freddy's shoulder a pat. Then, after the briefest pause, he said: "There's no substitute for the kind of fast-thinking resourcefulness you've just displayed, Freddy. In a dozen years you'll be heading an expedition and it won't be the kind that gets bogged down after the first thousand miles. You can take my word for that."

He turned then and walked toward the ship. In a moment he had passed the ship and was moving out into the desert beyond, and Freddy wondered how a man could remain so calm in an affair of life and death such as this. It was just as well, perhaps, that he could not see Corriston's face as he moved still further away from the ship into a loneliness of desert and sky.

* * * * *

She was lying in a wind-scoured hollow beneath a seventy-foot dune, her head resting on one sharply-bent elbow, a look of utter exhaustion on her face. Her eyes were closed, and even from where he stood Corriston could see that she was breathing heavily. He could see the slight rise and fall of her bosom, the trembling vibration of her oxygen mask. She was completely alone.

He stood for an instant absolutely motionless on the summit of the dune, staring down at her, noticing in alarm the hollow contour of her cheeks on both sides of the oxygen mask, and the slight tinge of gray that had crept into her countenance. Then he started downward. Almost instantly the sand rose like an unsteady sea on all sides of him, and a warning signal sounded in his brain.

He could connect it with no cause. Beneath him stretched only the wind-scoured inner surface of the dune, dazzling his eyes with its brightness, mirroring the sunlight like a burning glass. For a moment the brightness deceived him, and he did not realize that there were shadowed hollows directly beneath him, dark fissures in the tumbled sand wide enough to conceal a crouching man. He did not even see the shadow creeping toward him over the sand. Only the dazzle for an instant and the gleam of sunlight on Helen Ramsey's tousled hair.

Then, suddenly, he was aware of the danger, fully awake and aware. But realization came too late. Abruptly, without warning, a knife blade flashed in the sunlight and he felt an agonizing stab of pain just below his left kneecap.

A dark shape rose before him, and then dissolved into the shadows again, darting downward and sideways as it disappeared. Corriston threw himself backwards and froze into immobility, thrusting his elbows deep into the sand behind him, using that moment of surprise forced upon him by his assailant to lower his eyes and seek him out.

He saw Saddler's face clearly for an instant, saw the gleaming knife and the hand holding it, and the wavering outline of the man's crouching body three-fourths in shadow. He heard Saddler mutter: "I'm done for, Corriston. But I'll get you first."

It all seemed to happen in slow motion. Corriston's hand went to his hip, but with a nightmare feeling of retardation and his fingers seemed to move without any assistance from the motor centers of his brain. Then even more slowly he was facing the hollow with the gun in his clasp, and the weapon was exploding into the shadows, filling the hollows and windy places with reverberating echoes of sound.

There was complete silence after that. No groans, no outcry--nothing but silence. It went on for so long that Corriston could not shake off a numbing sense of unreality. Surely only a dream could have had so violently unreal a beginning, so terrible an outcome. Then he looked down, and saw the blood on his leg where the knife had grazed it, and knew that it could not have been a dream.

He was still facing the hollow, with two bullets left in his gun. But he knew that he would not have to fire again. Saddler was lying on his back on the sand, his eyes wide open, his jaw hanging slack. There was a spreading red stain on his chest and a rim of blood around his lips. The wind which was blowing across the crest of the dune seemed suddenly to turn malevolent, striking out at the dead man with a sudden, downsweeping gust, ruffling his hair and making him seem to be still enveloped in violence.

Corriston felt his throat muscles contract. He forced himself to bend over and search for a heart beat he knew he wouldn't find, remembering the other times when the outcome had been less fatal, when only a man's face had changed.

As his palm rested for an instant above the dead man's heart, the stirring of the sand immediately beneath him seemed to increase, to become a loud and continuous rustling sound that filled him with a vague sense of disquiet. He could not quite dismiss from his mind a feeling that he was still in danger, that in some strange, almost terrifying way Saddler was still a menace, and that the terrible reality of his death had not destroyed all of the hatred and savage violence which had forced Corriston to kill him in self-defense.

Suddenly Corriston realized that what he heard was not the wind stirring the sand at all, but something quite different. It was closer to him than the sloping rim of the dunes, and it was accompanied by movements directly under his hand, a sudden tightening of the dead man's skin, a contraction more pronounced than could have been produced by the abrupt onset of rigor mortis, however freakishly violent or premature.

The rustling continued for perhaps ten more seconds. Then, abruptly, it stopped and the heads of two lamprenes came into view, moving slowly across Saddler's unstirring flesh until their writhing mouth parts were less than two inches from Corriston's outspread hand.

The sight of them brought an instant of terror, an awareness of peril so acute that Corriston's breath caught in his throat. His hand whipped back and he leapt to his feet with a convulsive shudder.

It was suddenly very still on the dune again. Corriston stood for a moment with his body rigid, fearing to look downward, his mind filled with a growing sense of panic.

Had Helen Ramsey been attacked by lamprenes too? No, no, she was all right; she had to be. Everything confirmed it, her quietness, her steady breathing, the simple fact that her eyes had been closed and not opened wide in torment.

He descended the dune like a man ploughing in frantic haste through a snowdrift, sinking to his knees and floundering free again, lurching backward and sideways, sliding a third of the way.

She was all right when he got to her. He dropped down beside her and lifted her into his arms, and for an instant there was complete silence between them. She just looked at him, looked up into his face steadily and calmly, as if she could read his mind and had the good sense to realize there could be no more certain way of reassuring him. Then her arms tightened about him. "Darling," she whispered. "Darling, darling...."

Corriston started fumbling with his oxygen mask and suddenly he had it off. He held his breath and more slowly helped her free her lips so that he could kiss her. Their lips met and the kiss was longer and more intense than any they had ever before shared.

* * * * *

A half hour later the tractors were in rumbling motion again, their destination Ramsey's Citadel. And Corriston had a plan. He knew that it was riddled with risks and that he was perhaps quite mad to think that it might succeed. But the fact that Helen Ramsey was now completely safe and had dropped off into a brief, outwardly untroubled sleep at his side made him feel reckless to the point where a cautious, level-headed man like Drever could only stare at him and shake his head.

There was a swaying and a creaking all about them, the slow, steady rumble of caterpillar treads, and Drever had almost to shout to make himself heard. He stood directly opposite Corriston, supporting himself by a guard rail, and watching the desert through the weather-shield change color in the wake of the heavy vehicle's heaving, churning, torpedo-shaped rear-end.

"Stone's been unconscious now for an hour," Drever said, dividing his gaze between Corriston, and the loosely strapped-in, sleeping girl at his side, both swaying with the swaying tractor. "We can't count on getting any more information out of him. I can't wake him up. Drugs would be dangerous. I don't think he'll live, but we can't deliberately kill him to get him to talk."

"I know that," Corriston said.

"But he's the only one who knows why Henley is staying so long at the Citadel. He should have been back hours ago. He left before you escaped from the ship. For all we know, he may be dead. Ramsey may have lost his head and had him shot, although that seems unlikely. Ramsey would go to any length to save his daughter. But we've no way of knowing whether he believed Henley's story or not. Anything could have happened. Henley may have attacked Ramsey."

"I've a feeling that he's still at the Citadel," Corriston said. "I'll have to gamble on that--the one-in-five chance that for some reason the negotiations have been prolonged. He may be lying dead in the desert somewhere. He may have been attacked by lamprenes. As you say, anything could have happened. But when I make up my mind to do something I usually go through with it. It's just a matter of plain common sense. You don't toss aside a decision you've given a great deal of thought to just because the arguments against it are weighty, too."

"I see. So you're still determined to walk right up to the gate and tell them you're Stone."

"Why not? They've never laid eyes on Stone and they don't know me from Adam. I won't be wearing this uniform. I'll tell them that Henley's expecting me, that he left orders for me to join him if he failed to come back at a specified time. I'll watch the guard's face and change my story a little--if I have to--as I go along."

"It's a _very_ long gamble. I hope you realize that."

"It's either that or no gamble at all. And we've _got_ to gamble. We're holding at least two high cards and a joker. Henley has had the ground shot right out from under him. He's completely alone, and the only thing he has left to gamble with is his nearness to Ramsey, his ability to terrify Ramsey by making him believe that his daughter's life is still in danger. Ramsey has to be told that Helen has been freed, has to be warned in time, before he does anything foolish.

"Don't you see? With that threat hanging over him, Ramsey would never let us get within fifty yards of the Citadel, let alone walk through the gates. And if Henley finds out that we've got Helen, he'll know that he has nothing left to gamble with except that desperate bluff. And he may doubt his ability to win with a bluff. That would be the worst tragedy of all. He may turn on Ramsey in blind rage, and kill him. He gets a horrible, pathological pleasure out of killing. I've told you how he went berserk on the Station."

Drever nodded, and, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, the look of stubborn opposition was gone from his eyes.

"I guess you're right, Lieutenant. You can't always tell how the cards will fall."

"You can never tell," Corriston said. "And there are some games where the important moves can only be made by just one player, and he usually has to be something of a reckless fool."

22

Corriston left the tractor a hundred and seventy yards from the gate, well hidden behind a hundred foot dune. The other tractors had come to a halt a much greater distance from the Citadel, and were spread out across the desert in a slightly uneven, double line.

He walked slowly forward across the rust-red sand, with a feeling in his bones that he was going to be lucky. Yet he knew that he'd have to be convincing, or he wouldn't stand a chance. If there was more than one guard at the gate he might never get inside. With luck he might be able to convince two guards--even three--but never four or five, for you couldn't forge words into persuasive enough weapons to disarm the suspicion of that many observant men. Not the kind of men who would be guarding Ramsey, at any rate.

The massiveness of the fortified gate shook his confidence a little as he drew near to it. It was at least fifty feet in height, a solid oblong of inches-thick steel with a desert-mirroring surface. He could see his own reflection as he advanced, but it did nothing to reassure him.

He knew what he'd have to do, of course. Walk right up to the gate and trust to luck that he could find some way of announcing his presence without getting himself killed. How _did_ you gain entrance to an impregnable fortress? Surely there had to be some way by which a man could gain admittance without being instantly shot down as a hostile intruder.

He was surprised by the simplicity of the answer. There was no need for him to press a bell or a buzzer, to manipulate a mechanism of any sort. There was not even any need for him to proclaim his arrival by shouting.

The gate swung inward without a sound, and in the shadows cast by its moving bulk two figures silently materialized. They were guards, heavily armed, one tall with shaggy brows and piercing dark eyes, the other a wiry little man with reddish hair, his expression peculiarly bland and non-committal.

It was the little man who said: "All right, come inside. We've been expecting you."

It was impossible, but true. There was nothing threatening in the way the words were uttered, just calm acceptance, just the matter-of-fact indifference of a man who has a duty to perform and doesn't care what happens afterwards.

But it would have perhaps been better if Corriston had not moved so quickly forward, for almost instantly the second guard barred his passage and laid a firm hand on his arm.

"Hold on. Just a minute," the tall guard said. "You're Peter Stone, aren't you?"

With a quick pretense of anger Corriston jerked his arm free and looked the guard up and down. "Naturally I'm Stone. Who in hell did you think I was."

"Sorry," the guard said, shrugging. "Don't take it out on me. I just had to be sure."

"Well, you're sure now. I guess you know why I'm here."

The guard nodded. "Ramsey just phoned down about you. Your friend is with him now. See that big gray building, the one on the left with the shuttered windows? There's a guard stationed at the door, but he won't stop you. He has his orders. Climb two flights of stairs and go down the long corridor on the third floor. Ramsey and your friend are in the last room on the left."

Corriston drew a deep breath, wondering if the guard had noticed the tightening of his facial muscles. He turned away from the gate slowly, staring out over the interior of the fortress, letting his emotions of the moment take complete possession of him.

He had entered as if by magic a world apart, a small, shutin world of massive magnificence, of undreamed of material power and wealth. There were five buildings within the encircling wall of the fortress, each monumental in architectural sweep. Each was a citadel alone and apart, monuments to man's creative genius erected by one man with a determination to make himself unique.

It was a folly almost beyond belief, a terrifying distortion of human creativeness that could lead only to ultimate disaster and defeat.

But greedy and cruel and ruthless as Ramsey undoubtedly was, there still burned in him a little of the spark that had created Athens in white marble. Had it not been so, he could not have even commissioned men of creative genius to transport to Mars the materials for such a project and have taken pleasure in its completion.

"Your friend got here two hours ago," the tall guard said. "They've been talking ever since. He came down to the gate once and said we should let you in, you and another man. Saddler, I think his name was. I see he's not with you."

"No, Saddler is not with me," Corriston said.

"What happened to him?"

"The big gray building with the shuttered windows, you said. If the guard tries to stop me, what do I say."

"I told you he had his orders."

Corriston looked up at the massive gate swinging shut behind him. For good or ill, he was completely trapped, completely at the mercy of the armed guards inside the citadel.

They hadn't taken his gun away from him, but, nevertheless, he was trapped. What chance would one armed man have against seventy-five or a hundred guards? They were keeping out of sight, all but the two at the gate. But at any moment they could converge upon him and shoot him down. They could choose their own moment, precisely as a research medical man could choose his own moment to experiment upon a laboratory animal, knowing that the creature was safe in its cage and couldn't possibly get away.

Corriston's lips tightened and from a shadowed corner of his mind came a determination to brush all that aside, to ignore it completely. The guards at the gate might very well be telling the truth. It stood to reason that Ramsey would have remained secretive about his daughter. Kidnappers do not like to have their ransom demands discussed too openly. If Ramsey had been a complete fool he would have gone down to the gate and taken the guards completely into his confidence, but Corriston could not believe that Ramsey was that much of a fool.

In all probability Henley had threatened Ramsey and provoked him almost beyond endurance. There had arisen the questions of how the ransom was to be paid, the girl set free.

Damn it, Corriston thought, the thing for me to do now is to go straight toward that building and straight up the stairs to the third floor and straight down the corridor until I'm confronting Ramsey face to face. I'm Peter Stone. I'm one of the two men who helped Henley kidnap the girl and I've come to help Henley convince Ramsey. I've come to help him really put the screws on Ramsey. I can improvise from that point on.

He moved away from the guards without looking back. Within the citadel there was silence, stillness, the five massive buildings cutting a rampart of pure, fragile design across the sky. There was a strange kind of perfection about the interior of the citadel. It was akin, somehow, to the perfection of solitude and even the sky seemed hushed, expectant, remote from reality, as if awaiting the unfolding of some impossible event, some terrifying drama of violence and retribution that could take place nowhere else.

But Corriston's reason told him that to believe any such thing would have been the height of folly. The sky inside the citadel was just as real, just as cloud-flecked and palely blue as the sky outside, and the notion that architecture or scenery of any kind could influence events was absolute nonsense. Things would happen exactly as he willed them to happen, provided nothing stood in the way of immediate drastic action and the kind of luck which had saved him at the gate continued to smile upon him.

The big gray building with the shuttered windows continued to occupy most of his attention, and he walked very resolutely toward it, his eyes on the glimmer of pale light which marked its wide doorway. He was still fifty feet away when he saw the guard, standing very quietly just inside the door with his hand on his gun holster.

Corriston's lips tightened, but he did not moderate his stride. He had a reply ready if the guard challenged him. He preferred to believe that he would not be challenged, but he had no intention of taking anything for granted.

He continued on until he reached the doorway and then he stopped abruptly. He waited for the guard to say something, but the man did not speak at all. He simply stared quietly at Corriston for an instant, and then stepped quickly back into the shadows. Corriston went on past him, and advanced along the wide corridor that stretched before him.

The wide central staircase that circled up did not seem appropriate to a building that was not a residence and Corriston found himself wondering if Ramsey had turned the other four buildings into similarly unusual expressions of his own strong-willed orientation to reality.

The buildings had undoubtedly been designed as administrative units of an industrial empire--a beginning empire in a new world. An empire predatory, avaricious, merciless. Yet Ramsey had seemingly allowed his desire for a home to gain dominance here, had allowed the emotions common to all men to influence his taste in interior architecture in at least one of the buildings.

Chalk up that much to Ramsey's credit. In that respect at least, he was superior to Henley. In that respect at least a man of good will could take sides, all apart from the personal issues involved. Henley was a predatory vulture on all counts, his talons constantly spread, constantly crimson-tipped. Ramsey was a vulture too, but in the depths of his mind he knew it. Part of the agony was shared by him, and in one desperate, despairing part of his personality he had tried to be creative.

Corriston ascended the staircase swiftly, casting one brief glance at some murals and then ignoring them. The second floor landing stretched away into shadows, bisected by a wide corridor dimly lighted by overhead lamps. The second floor had an administrative building aspect and so did the third floor, which seemed in all respects its exact duplicate.

Corriston's excitement grew as he mounted the stairway. He felt like a man poised on the brink of a precipice with no assurance that he would not be hurled to his death; a man aware that tragedy would not strike him like a thunderbolt at any moment; and yet also like a man who thought and felt differently from the trapped and the desperately despairing.

He felt very confident, very sure of himself, and it seemed to him that there was no danger that he could not surmount, and deep within him there was something that exulted in the thought and kept him moving steadily upward.

The third floor was like the second, its long central corridor dwindling away into shadows. Down it he moved cautiously, remembering what the guard at the gate had said. The third floor, the last door on your left.

Ramsey was in conference. But it wasn't a conference of industrial associates planning a division of spoils. Ramsey was talking to a killer under duress.

Corriston was half way down the corridor when he heard the shot. It rang out in the stillness with a terrible clarity, sending echoes reverberating throughout the building, stopping Corriston in his tracks.

For an instant the silence remained absolute, as if the shot had somehow silenced all life within the building. Even Corriston's breathing was affected by it, so that for an instant he remained like a man horror-blasted into immobility, frozen, a statue with waxen features and widely dilated eyes.

Then, abruptly, he ceased to be a statue. He broke into a run, heading for the door from which the shot had come.