Part 3

"Look here," snapped Wrightwood, sitting forward abruptly. "You raised hell with me because you thought I was meddling in your life. I wasn't; the only reason they got you entered at Base One is because you're too bright to drop without an explanation, and the Guardians were afraid to let Steve Hagen go to some remote base because Hagen is none other than William Wrightwood, Junior! They want to keep a sharp, official eye on you, and hand you stale jobs until you get tired and quit. Because they haven't got a plausible excuse for tossing you out. So I--"

"That's a lie!" roared Steve.

"Okay," chuckled Wrightwood. "Just watch what happens when you make a fumble. Or," he said slowly after a pause, "do you know that already? Is that why you're leaning so damned far backwards?"

"Is that all you've got to say?"

"Isn't it sufficient?"

"It's too much."

"Call it that, then," grunted Wrightwood. "I'll wait, Steve."

"I'll see you when hell freezes over--"

"Or when it blows up in your face," warned Wrightwood. He said it to Hagen's retreating back. Steve had had enough and he was leaving as quickly as he could.

* * * * *

Steve fumed inwardly. It was sheer frustration; nothing would have satisfied Steve so much as to step forward and send a hard fist into Wrightwood's face just to feel the skin crush and the bone beneath it grate against his knuckle. But against that desire was too many years of viewing William Wrightwood with the awe and fear that a youth holds for an adult who has authority and power over him. As a youth, Steve had neither the physical ability nor the mental agility to cope with his foster father. Now that the tables had been turned by the years and Steve could handle William Wrightwood physically, Hagen understood that physical supremacy would hurt Wrightwood, but would bring only contempt from the man instead of surrender. And the years had given Wrightwood their wealth of experience and mental advance as the years had also aided Steve. Hagen was mentally on the same par with Wrightwood, while the physical parity had reversed but become banal. So it was frustration to Steve knowing that he could smash Wrightwood's face but to no end effect upon the older man.

Somewhere, somehow, to bring Wrightwood to his knees, Hagen had to do something on his own, of his own, for his own, that would command the respect and envy of his foster father; preferably something that would advance Steve while clipping Wrightwood where it hurt the most: his business and his empire.

* * * * *

Steve was still fuming about his foster father's suggestion when he returned to Base One. He sat over his desk, writing the reports of his inspections, and constantly repeated the original question: _Was he being overly hard on Wrightwood because he disliked him?_

Once or twice the urge to lighten a report came, then once or twice the desire to make one more damning came; and the result of this was to leave Steve in a quandary.

He wanted to be fair.

But no man can be honestly fair when his emotions are involved; he gave up, filled in the report statements in a mechanical manner, transcribing them from his notes as though he had no opinion other than the notes, and when he finished that, he felt at least that he had not been inclined to color the data.

Finishing the paper work, Steve headed for the mess hall and met Lois on the way. "Coffee?" he asked.

She nodded, looking at him carefully. "What's wrong, Steve?"

"Inspection is not a pleasant job."

"What happened?"

Steve stopped short and looked at her. Lois stopped too, to face him seriously. "Bribery?" she asked.

Steve said nothing.

Lois stamped her foot. "What kind of man is Wrightwood?" she stormed. "You'd think we were doing this for spite instead of for his own protection."

* * * * *

Steve nodded. "William Wrightwood is a power-hungry man," he said. "Nothing but being an absolute dictator of the universe would satisfy him, and that would only partially sate him because it is not so much the wielding of power that pleases Wrightwood. It is the gaining of more and more power."

"I hadn't considered that."

Steve nodded and turned; they started towards the mess again. "What makes a man that way?" she asked idly.

"Frustration of one sort or another," he said.

"And what is Wrightwood's particular frustration?"

Steve snorted angrily. "Something in his psyche insists that the inability to father a son means that the man is less than a man."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Sure it's ridiculous. But it is that sort of ridiculous thing that has caused more war and suffering than perhaps any other single thing. William Wrightwood lacks a son. He has--like Napoleon--married and divorced three women because they could not give him a son. He married the fourth because she already had a son. Then he killed her because she could not produce a duplicate for him."

"Oh Steve--that's hard to believe!"

Steve grunted. "It was not murder--legally," he said bitterly. "But bitterness and recrimination are just as deadly as the knife or the bullet."

"But how about his foster son?"

"Wrightwood tried everything he could to make a real son of him."

"Well, that's an admirable trait."

"Like hell," gritted Steve. "It is all right to accept a fatherless child and bring it up as your own. But no man should try to do the impossible. Wrightwood tried to make a natural son out of an adopted son. It could not work; he cramped the natural personality of the son, forced the child to follow the footsteps of what Wrightwood thought a son of his would follow. So instead of following, the son revolted as soon as he could and went his own way in direct opposition. Two lives crudded up by the overwhelming drive of one man."

"You know a lot of him."

"I should," he said simply. "I'm the son."

Lois stopped short again. "You're--William Wrightwood, Junior?"

"I'm Steve Hagen," he snapped.

"But you're his son?"

"I am."

"But you've never said so."

"No one has ever asked me; and I'm not proud of the fact."

Lois was silent.

"And I'm not running undercover," said Steve; "I'd prefer to forget the whole thing."

"Then why tell me about it?"

"Because I don't want to operate under a false banner; especially with you. I've said nothing about it because of the natural objection too many people might have if it became known that William Wrightwood's foster son was working among the Guardians. The outfit that has bucked every attempt of his to be gathered into his own little empire."

Lois looked at Steve with a quizzical glance. "But are you here because you want to work as a Guardian, or because you want to strike back at Wrightwood?"

"That's a question that I have asked myself and cannot answer honestly," he said.

Lois nodded quietly, thinking for a moment. "For too many years people have been denying the right of a son to cash in on his father's position," she said. "I see no reason why the reverse should not be true; we should not castigate a son who wants to do the opposite, insisting that he follow his father's position."

"Let's forget it," said Steve. "Life is too short to be filled with bitterness. I'm here and here I shall stay regardless of the inner motive I--"

The outside alarm blared forth in a series of short and long blasts. Both of them stopped to catch the code, which called for an alert at Base One while Base Seven handled an alarm. Seven might need help; so the personnel of One came tumbling out of their relaxation and made ready, just in case.

"That's not you, Steve," said Lois. "But it's me. Be seein' you."

"No," he admitted, "but there's nothing that says I can't go along and help if I want to. I'm unattached when I'm off of my inspection job. A little action will make me feel useful; I'm tired of arguing with techs about crystallized joints, frayed insulation, and unstandardized measuring equipment."

Lois nodded cheerfully and headed for Morehouse's office; Steve headed for his quarters to prepare for the possible recall alarm.

5

It came, that recall alarm, a half hour after the first. The men at Base One tumbled into the ships and ripped into the sky, Steve following the flight closely in his inspection ship. The whole crew went anxiously, cheerfully, for the recall alarm meant that the threatened ship might possibly be saved.

The flight from Base One arrived on the scene forty minutes after taking off. The ship was in subspace, ripping along without drive at three or four hundred times the speed of light, still encased in the warp.

But it was spacewarp held up and maintained by the conjunction of warp-planes forced edge to edge by surrounding Guardian ships. The rescue crew had gone to pick up the people who had flown the ship in life-craft; the swampers and barriers were sticking close to go to work if the hard-held warp failed. A mishap on the part of one pilot holding the warp would fracture the englobement; this was as fatal to the life of the spacewarp as puncture is in the flank of a toy balloon.

Base One's flight came swirling in and caught the orders from the Guardian director in charge. Base Seven was used up; every available ship for the job was holding the warp, it was Base One's job to enter the warp and close down on the generator room, to fasten tractors to the free-running ship and slow it down below the speed of light before the warp broke.

As many as could latched onto the ship and applied their drives. The ship slowed and the warp-holding ships slowed with it, keeping their distance.

It was tricky business, for there was just enough lack of spacial homogeneity to make the course a bit rough; it was somewhat like the job of running a fleet of vessels close together in a heavy sea.

Then the rest of Base One's power ships came in to stand between Seven's warp-holding craft, and Base One's warp-planes went forth, entered the hull of the ship, and established a second englobed warp around the ruined generator. A third warp was thrown about the ship just outside of the second, and the whole crew took a deep breath.

Now if one broke, the other would be there.

They were safe; the ship was saved, could be repaired and put in service again.

The tractors slowed the ship and eventually the whole fleet dropped below the velocity of light and their spacewarp generators thrummed down to a growling halt. The galaxy changed in color as the ships entered prime space and the light of the stars was the real light that mankind had always seen instead of the unreal glow caused by the central energies of the suns of the universe. For space itself is warped naturally in the core of a sun, and the energy glows through a subspace populated only by the phantom cores of prime space stars--and the few puny bits of sentient brain that warped space artificially.

Technicians breached the ship with their kits of tools to make repair as the Guardians broke up their pattern and began the trip back to their bases.

Steve felt gratified; it was the first generator saved by the Guardian tactics. And it was worth anything, any cost, any sacrifice to realize that mankind had some control even over mankind's failures.

He followed the flight back to Base, found a magazine, and relaxed.

* * * * *

Steve was awakened from a light sleep by the ringing of the telephone. Blinking and wondering, he answered it; Lois Morehouse said: "Steve, you're wanted here."

"Okay, what's up?"

"The usual."

Steve hung up and pulled himself together. Why they'd want his opinion again he could not understand. It was obvious this time that the Guardians had done a fine job; nothing was lost. All he could think of was the fact that he had gone as an observer and had seen the incident without taking active part in it. That might possibly give the committee a less distorted picture than the recount of a man whose attention was filled with the mechanics of operating against the possible eruption.

He was preparing his account as he entered Morehouse's office, but once inside, he saw instantly that there was no committee investigation.

Morehouse and Charlemagne were there. Lois was there. And an air of trouble was there also.

Morehouse held up a hand. "Hagen, look at that."

Steve turned and looked. In the corner, near the galactic model, stood a rack and panel, obviously disconnected from the generator room of a spacecraft.

"Go take a good look at it."

Steve went. He looked.

"Test it!"

Steve turned. "I'll have to get my equip--"

Morehouse snorted. "Just turn it on and check it!"

Steve shrugged. He snapped the master switch and turned the function switch to _test_. He checked the meters, wondering whether they were standardized and reading correctly. But he had no need to concern himself about such a refinement; the servo bridge that balanced the stress of warp against the pressure of normal space and integrated it so that the total volume of warped space remained essentially constant was obviously haywire. Instead of operating with a steady thrust of power--operating on test by balancing the power from a standard electric cell against a standard resistance load--the servo bridge was oscillating.

On, off, on, off, on, off, on--

Rapidly like the swinging of the pendulum of a very tiny wall clock, on, off, on, off, on, off, on--

No meters were necessary to check this failure; it was as obviously bad as a flat tire.

Steve turned the gear off and faced Morehouse. He waited, for it was so obvious that he needed to make no explanation. Morehouse wanted something--

"Hagen, that was in the ship we just saved."

"That way?" asked Steve incredulously.

"That way."

"That should have been planeted."

"We agree."

"It's criminal."

"We also agree. So," said Morehouse pointedly, "why didn't you clap a restraint on 'em?"

"Why didn't I what--?"

"You inspected that ship about three hours before it took off."

Steve shook his head. "I'd never have passed it."

"You did. Here's your seal."

Morehouse showed Steve the sheet of paper giving the _Astarte_ a clean bill of health from the Guardian Patrol.

"Hagen, what kind of a game are you playing?"

"Game?"

"Hagen--or Wrightwood?"

Steve looked at Lois. Morehouse said: "She hasn't told us anything that we did not know, Wrightwood."

"Look," said Steve angrily, "my name's Hagen."

"How long have you had it?" asked Morehouse.

"All my life. I answer to it."

"We know that. Lois called at you half way across the campus and you turned; a man taking an assumed name doesn't always react to an unexpected use of it."

"Look," said Steve, as angrily as before, "I've never tried to conceal the fact; all I've tried to do is ignore it. So I'm William Wrightwood Junior, according to a few dozen people who do not believe their eyes or cannot read. To my friends and to the rest of the world, I am Steve Hagen, which is the name my father and mother gave me long before I was born." Steve's eyes grew soft for a moment and he smiled in a reminiscent fashion. "I've been told that my name would have been Catherine if I'd been constructed differently."

"All right, what's your game?"

"Game--schmame. What do you mean?"

"Hagen, why are you here and what do you hope to accomplish?"

"I'm here because I want to be a Guardian."

"And how is William Wrightwood fitted into this picture?"

* * * * *

Steve sat down suddenly. "Look, Commissioner Morehouse, if you think for one moment that I am among the Guardians so that I can cast some discredit upon them so that William Wrightwood can take over, you're much mistaken. Wrightwood can roast in hell for all of me."

Steve turned and looked at Lois. "Do you believe me? Are you on my side--or have you been playing Mata Hari with my feelings?"

Lois flushed. "I believe him, dad."

"Thanks," said Steve drily. "Now about the Mata Hari side of it?"

"Steve, forgive me; I had to know."

"So now you know," he said bitterly. "And so do I."

Charlemagne shrugged. "Steve does a fine enough job," he said. It came ungrudgingly.

"No doubt," said Morehouse. "And somehow I doubt that Wrightwood could plan all these years to plant his son in such a manner. To make--"

"Wrightwood has made pawns of everybody he could control," snapped Steve, "but I'll run my own life."

"We're not running the Guardians as a method of personal revenge, either," Morehouse said.

"What do you mean?"

"None of us can quite justify the idea that you are planted here for sabotage. We did bring you to Base One so that we could keep an eye on you, Hagen."

"Then what--?"

"But granting there is no intention of sabotaging the Guardians, there is still a fine opportunity of seeing to it that William Wrightwood gets clipped."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning the possible overlooking of a generator so bad that the ship would explode, losing for Wrightwood a good bit. Kill off a ship a month by not working too hard, by looking the other way when the generator is about to cave in, by slowing down operations--"

"Look, I--"

Morehouse stood up. "Maybe it isn't even conscious," he said slowly. "Just a subconscious act, blinding the eyes so that a ship is sent forth to explode."

"What am I? An accident prone?"

"Maybe where Wrightwood is concerned," suggested Morehouse.

"Lord knows I have no love for William Wrightwood," said Steve soberly, "and I want to strike back at him. But no man knows better than I do that the way to clip Wrightwood is to wrest some of his power from him or to go ahead and do that which he deemed impossible."

"He is right," said Lois.

Morehouse swivelled around and looked at her. "Lois, are you in love with him?"

"I might be. Eventually I may be. Now, I don't know him well enough. But--"

"You're talking in a circle."

"--but I will say this: I will be a very happy woman if Steve Hagen turns out to be a right guy."

Morehouse looked at her silently; Steve took a deep breath; Charlemagne stared at the ceiling. In the silence the computer behind the alarm screen clicked code; none of them had to turn to look at the galactic sector. They knew it was a distant base responding to a distant alarm, two or three hundred light years across the galaxy.

* * * * *

Morehouse eyed Steve, then. "Hagen, we can't take chances on you."

"I'm being tossed out on a premise?"

"Why don't you resign?"

"Why split hairs?" asked Steve.

"A matter of prestige. You have always had an excellent record. Had you shown any blots, you'd have been cashiered during training school. You graduated high in the class and therefore--according to the laws--we had to accept you. Mostly," said Morehouse sharply and hitting his fist in the palm of his other hand, "because we knew that any reason we give for releasing you must be air tight. Wrightwood owns too many news agencies, congressmen, and top-drawer statesmen. He'll eye anything we do and if he can, he'll yell favoritism, revenge, or rank incompetence."

"And if I resign?"

"That will be your prerogative."

"Also an admission to Wrightwood that he was right?"

"That's your problem."

"I decline."

"We can force your hand, Hagen."

"How?"

"You forget that," said Morehouse, turning and pointing at the faulty warp generator.

"But--"

"It is hard to believe that a Guardian, even a raw recruit, could miss such an obvious fault; it is even more difficult to think that such an oversight was made in malice and revenge."

"I--"

"Then how did it happen?" demanded Morehouse.

"I don't know."

"And you won't resign?"

"No."

"Then until you find out how this warp generator got past your inspection, you'll be released from duty," said Morehouse. "You have no status, Hagen. You will wear the uniform in courtesy only, since you are a member of the organization, and you are subject to our rules. Your pay will continue, since we have no recourse, and your stated duty will be one of investigation on one subject only: Ascertaining the base for this near-explosion!"

"But--"

"That's the edict," said Morehouse.

"Lois--?"

"What can I say?"

"You--?"

"Steve, I think a lot of you. More than I have thought of or considered any other man. And until hatred came out, you were it. Hatred is a nasty thing, Steve; it is not a good thing to found a love or a life upon. So until you rise above your hatred, it's no go. Lose it or burn it or beat it--and then come back."

Hagen turned and left the office. He felt beaten. Where was he to start?

6

Hours later in his quarters, Steve was still pondering the same question. There were so many angles to follow. Steve did not like to think that maybe Morehouse was right, that, subconsciously, he had overlooked the faulty generator hoping that Wrightwood would lose by the accident. He certainly had not overlooked the generator with malice. On the other hand there were other factors that could be plausible. Wrightwood wanted to control Steve; might not Wrightwood's own men have fouled the generator, knowing that Steve had checked it only hours before? The fact that the Guardians got there in time to save the whole ship indicated that someone was on his toes. Any shadow of suspicion cast upon Steve would work toward Wrightwood's ends.

Nor were the Guardians beyond suspicion. Wanting to bring this thing into the open, what better way than to louse the generator themselves and let the natural course of events take care of Hagen.

It was not a pretty tangle. Every angle remained closed to him; Steve could not open the first door, for he had not the authority to question anybody.

But until he got the answer, Steve was not going to do what he wanted to do.

The days wore on into a week, and then the week grew into a month. Steve, unattached, roved the galactic sector, nosing in generator rooms of spacecraft hoping to pick up some clue.

He had to give up the idea of substitution. The generator delivered to Morehouse's office was the generator that had been taken from the threatened ship; it was the same generator he had checked a few hours before the ship took off.

* * * * *

After two months Steve was ready to admit defeat. Only determination remained, and that was wearing very thin. No longer did he have the regard of his fellows; his unattached state was practically a condition of disgrace and everybody knew it. He saw little of Lois; alone he saw her not at all.

But as the months passed, the trail became colder and colder, and the incident dropped into the files--was covered up by the regular list of calls that sent the Guardians out from time to time to take care of trouble, occasionally to fight a blowup, often to go out and calm down some stormy condition that possibly would not have blown anyway. The muttering of the alarm came constantly from one or the other sector of the galaxy and the Guardians would be out, from one base or another.

But not for Steve; he was licked.

He sat in his quarters quietly unhappy for hours before he pulled the typewriter from its case and placed it deliberately on the top of his desk. With a shake of his head, Steve put a sheet of paper in the typewriter and began to tap out his resignation.

He was licked. Morehouse had given orders that he intended to keep. Hagen was to locate the reason why the _Astarte_ had a faulty generator. Period. Or else.

This was time for the "or else" part of it. The thought passed Hagen's mind that not even an official investigation could uncover the truth at this late date. He had no chance where every man's hand was against him. And so--

* * * * *

The telephone interrupted his train of thought, and he got up to answer it. "Hagen?"

Steve said it was and then tried to identify the voice. It was a hoarse voice, half a coarse whisper and half an undertone which sounded like someone trying to disguise his voice--successfully.

"Hagen, d'ye want some dope on the _Astarte_?"

"Who are you?"