CHAPTER XII

"They couldn't have left the station," said Howard again. We were sitting in the red-spangled recreation room, avoiding the sight of the Neanderthal bodies by looking at one another, and drinking whiskey and water that my brother had produced from a wall compartment. "No," he said, as I started to protest, "I tell you I locked the outer door when you all came in, throwing the switch that's camouflaged beside it, and nobody but one of my own men could possibly have discovered it. Besides, if they'd gone out, the door would be open. You can't close it from the outside."

"But I checked every hiding place--"

"Ray," he said gently, "you couldn't check every one in less than an hour. You can't even see most of them."

"Judas priest! Then we're locked in with those two--and outside there are Lord knows how many more, whimpering for our blood!"

"As for those outside," said my brother slowly, "we could blow them up--while nothing short of an atomic explosion could break into the wheel."

"How could we blow them up?"

"I showed you. The atom cannons, the weapons that were meant to repel any hypothetical enemy attack when the station is freewheeling in space. There are gun ports on every curve, Ray." He sighed. "Two hours ago I was a peaceable man, I was here because I loved peace above everything else. Now I want to keep on killing people."

"They aren't people, they're cave beasts. They admit to being non-human."

"Yes. They make a good case for it, too. But it's too much like shooting sitting ducks, or fish in a barrel, for my taste."

"If you'd seen them gunning those poor workers, you wouldn't talk about sitting ducks. They're merciless. And by the way," I said, "why didn't you see that? Why didn't you cut loose with your wonder weapons during the fight?"

"Ray, this wheel is soundproof. It was only by chance that I happened to glance out, by way of a viewer, as you came up the ramp. And of course then I wasn't fully aware of the extent of the killing, or I might have used the guns instead of trying to talk to them." Howard sighed again. "I'm not the violent sort. I guess I wouldn't have thought of the guns anyhow." He looked thoughtfully at me. "I wonder why the Marines didn't radio to us when it began?"

"The Old Companions are hand-jamming the island."

"Oh." He glanced at the corner, where Trutch lay, bound hand and foot and grimacing at us. He was our only prisoner. "It's a fairy tale," he said. "It's _unreal_!"

"It won't be so unreal if the other Neanderthal musters succeed in blasting us out into an orbit, Howard."

Nessa began to cry. I wouldn't have known it, she did it so silently, but I happened to see a tear glisten on her cheek. "What is it, honey?" I asked, going to her.

"The baby," she whispered, and then she was choked and couldn't speak. But it hit me at once: acceleration would at the least lose us our child, and probably also kill my wife.

I jumped up. "Come on, all of you," I snapped. "Stick together and follow me quick. We've got to lay that field waste, before we're catapulted into the void. And don't lag, because Cuff could take any one of us between two fingers and snap us in half."

Howard led us to the control room of the armory. Here the viewers hadn't been affected by my sabotage. We saw the field again, and the three-stage rockets--they had all been brought to Odo by this time--in the last moments of their attaching. The solar mirrors had slowly collapsed, letting the great wheel down to earth again. It didn't look as if we had more than a couple of minutes to go. Howard sat down, his movements irritatingly deliberate, and began to point out the trigger assemblies, the sighters, and the ammo reserve levers.

I waited till I got the set-up, then shoved him aside and sat down in his place. "This is my job, son," I said. "Allow me the dirty work. I feel just savage enough to enjoy it."

* * * * *

I sprayed the field with a hail of dumdum slugs from the supermachine guns; then, when I'd picked off everyone in sight, I turned to the atomic heat throwers. I couldn't use the explosive shells and rockets because of what the concussion and fragmentation might do to the space station itself, so I trained the heaters on the top third of each rocket in turn, and simply melted it into thick silvery goo. The lower portions I avoided, for fear of setting off the stored fuel. The three-stage rockets, naturally, carried no weapons. They couldn't fight back. It was wholesale murder, but I kept at it. It was their deaths, or that of mankind.

At last I leaned back. "That's it," I said. "All but for Cuff and Skagarach, that's it." _And the thousands of Old Companions hidden all over the world_, I thought; but that was a problem for the future, and for better men than I.

Nessa said, "I want to speak to Ray. Alone. Please."

"Be careful," I said to Howard, as he and the three scientists moved out of the armory chamber. Then I was standing to face my wife.

"Ray," she said quietly, "I know why you told them about Odo. I didn't know at the time because I was confused by your wild talk. I just thought you'd become one of _them_. I know now you did it to save me from torture." She put her slim hands on my shoulders. "I don't have to ask this, I don't need reassurance on it--but I want to hear you tell me. It's true, isn't it?"

"Yes, Nessa. I banked on beating them, but I didn't honestly have an idea that I could. Still I knew that I couldn't see them touch you."

"You stacked the human race against me, and picked me. I suppose that's quite terrible," she said, and she was crying and laughing all at once, "but if you think I'll ever reproach you for it, you're insane. I think it must be the finest compliment a girl ever received. If I could love you any more than I did before today, Ray, I would."

Then she was in my arms....

When she had finally freed herself, she said, "Is it true what Cuff said, that you're related to him and to those monstrosities?"

I nodded. I couldn't very well lie to her when the facts were there. "It is true."

"And our baby will be--"

"Yes. But the story of the 'dark blood' has to be proven to us before we start worrying," I lied. That was bravado and she recognized it, but she looked happier. "I don't care if you're half sabretooth tiger, I love you."

I reached for her again. Then I caught a flicker of something in the edge of my eye and whirled.

Bill Cuff was baring his teeth at me not two yards away.