FIFTEEN

'I'm sorry i was hysterical.'

'I'm sorrier I ignored you, Let's forget it. We were both zonked out of our skulls.'

Their bodies said the rest. Afterward they sought the food device. 'Programme for steak and French fries,' Skip demanded. 'If you want something exotic in addition, okay, but I need nourishment!'

Yvonne's laugh was tender. She made the appropriate passes, watching the resultant diagrams and refining her orders accordingly until they should have converged on the precise menu and production could commence. (Mammalian flesh, type bovine, 1.5 kilogram, dimensions… texture… degree of heat denaturing… temperature… flavour overtones…) By now expert, she did the task quickly while letting her mind wander.

'A few short days,' she said, 'and we're home."

'Uh-huh.. We better get in a lot of preliminary relaxation. Things'll be hectic for a while, groundside.

'Course, I suppose if we're rude we can protect ourselves somewhat, but— Oh, hi, Prof.'

Yvonne's hair rippled as she turned to look. 'Good evening,' she said. 'Would you like to join us for dinner?'

Wang stood straight. His lips barely moved, nothing else did in his face except a tic at the right corner of the mouth: 'Are you feeling better?'

'Fine, thank you,' she told him. 'I only needed two or three hours of rest and—and recreation, and I bounced right back.' She smiled with real warmth. 'I might not have done this well except for you.'

'Where is the Sigman?' Wang's tone was hoarse and strained.

'I dunno,' Skip said. 'Prob'Iy catching its equivalent of a nap. Anything urgent?'

'Yes.' Wang made as if to scratch beneath his tunic. The uncharacteristic gesture brought both their gazes astonished upon him. Then the gun was out and he said: 'Raise your hands. Do not move.'

"What the devil—?' Skip grabbed towards the waistband of his shorts. Yvonne uttered a shriek.

'No!' Wang shouted. 'Stand fast or I kill her 1'

Skip lifted his arms. He had seen that kind of determination before. His heart thuttered, sweat broke forth, its acridity pierced the soft wet odours in the Sigman air. On his right he heard the breath move raggedly in and out of Yvonne.

'Good,' Wang said. 'Now listen. I am an expert marksman, and this pistol has no kick. There are eight bullets in the magazine and one in the chamber; I assume you know the type. Seven of those cartridges are magnum loaded. Hydrostatic shock alone would kill you instantly on impact. The first two are minim.

They would disable you, Mr Wayburh, for example by shattering a kneecap, but leave you fit to execute my orders. Dr Canter is my hostage for your obedience.'

Skip thought, Stay calm, stay loose. Watch your chance,_, hut for everything's sake don't try any heroics. Behind that iron mask, he's on the point of amok. See how the4 sweat is running out of him too! He willed his lungs to stop gasping, his muscles to stop quivering and start easing. He did not quite have.command of his voice: 'What do you want?'

'To control this ship,' Wang said. 'You were shown how, and did not tell me.' 'Huh? I—I never—'

'Be still. In her frantic condition, Dr Canter blurted the truth to me.'

' No!' Yvonne's scream came as if she were being flayed. She sank to her knees and brought hands up to cover her wild weeping.

'Do not blame yourself much.' Wang's speech continued flat. 'Blame me for taking advantage. Blame the Sigman for recklessly exposing creatures with whose psychology it was unfamiliar to extraordinary stress.

Blame your lover for deserting you when you most needed him. First, last, and always, blame the fascists who did not keep faith. Because of them, I may no longer trust you. The issue is so great that trust in anyone except my country's leaders becomes treason to humanity.' 'You fool,' Skip said. He was faintly surprised at the composure his words now had. The coolness of crisis was rising fast in him. 'You're supposed to be a semanticist. How can you think a swear word like "fascist" means anything, or using it solves anything? Did Vonny tell you I wasn't going to let on?' Or did she say what's true, that I still haven't decided?

Wang's monotone was dreadful to hear: 'No, she merely let slip that you have the knowledge. The fact that you kept silence before me speaks for itself. You may be a man of essential good will. I rather believe you are. But I must not make the assumption. The only mind I can read is my own. Furthermore, if you were taught, others will be, shortly after we reach Earth. Who is the first of them and what does he do? I do not propose to gamble with the future of several billion living human beings. They outweigh you two, Ahasuerus, and me by just that amount.

'We shall waste no more time. Conduct me to the control room.'

'We'd better obey, sweetheart,' Skip said to the crouched and crying woman. She didn't seem to hear.

'Assist her to her feet,' Wang droned. 'Keep your hands in sight of me. I have watched you exercising and know your capabilities.'

Skip raised Yvonne. 'Come along, robin.' She hung on him and keened. He bit his lip and slapped the bare back, stingingly. She choked, then disengaged herself and shuffled beside him, in advance of the gaping pistol mouth.

'You will not be harmed needlessly,' Wang said. 'I will have her bind you, secure her myself, and check your bonds. I will care for you en route. On arrival, I will inform the world that we are well but should be left undisturbed for some hours until various preparations are completed. Not that any terrestrial spacecraft can likely lift off and make rendezvous sooner. They will have detected us coming, but I will throw us into an unexpected polar orbit. We will ride a tender to Peking. I will bring back men and show them how to establish the invulnerable forcefield and pilot the ship. Then all will be well, and you can probably be repatriated. If not, rny influence will assure you favourable treatment.'

The corridors wound and intertwined, vivid with strange murals. Leaves and flowers brushed skin and offered greetings of bright perfume. The deck was springy under bare feet. A sound like a gong beat through the moist warm air.

'What's the Sigman doing meanwhile?' Skip asked.

'That must depend' upon circumstances,' Wang said. Earnestness tinged the machine voice: 'Whatever is done is for his race too. When man and Sigman next meet, man must be peaceful. For that, we must first liberate him from his demons.'

'Skip,' Yvonne whispered, 'oh, Skip, what can I say? What can I do?'

'Nothing,' he responded. 'You truly are not to blame. I love you.'

They reached the command room. He had considered leading Wang on a snipe hunt, but the general location had always been fairly obvious. The bulkhead rose sheer and plain, except for some inset lenses and jutting force-projector snouts. 'Give me a clear view of your procedure,' Wang ordered. And the trouble was, the motions weren't delicate like the fingering out of a dinner. For a human— Ahasuerus had doubtless made adjustments—they were half a dozen simple wigwags.

The entrance dilated. Blackness lay beyond. 'Dr Canter goes through first,' Wang said. When she entered, her body shone with a white light. It revealed the layout: a spherical chamber about five metres across, bisected by a transparent deck from which rose a number of stanchion rods. At the far end was a bank of the deceptively featureless boxes which housed the controls. 'Next you, Mr Wayburn,' Wang said. 'Go past Dr Canter, to those instruments. She will stay near me.'

The bulkhead closed behind them, and they stood surrounded by a sky image. This was a utilitarian place, and no attempt was made at perfect fidelity. The induced illumination from flesh and garments would have interfered anyhow. They saw the brightest and the nearest stars, though most of the latter are invisible to the naked eye. They saw the sun disc, and the lovely blue and gold companions which were Earth and Luna, and the trailing drive module. The sounds that elsewhere pervaded did not come here.

Wang posted himself beside the entrance. 'Stand in front of me, Dr Canter,' he said. 'Two metres or so off—do not obstruct my view—there. Mr Wayburn, I was told that operation is similar to the boats', but I want a demonstration, plus a running description of what you do.'

'That'll alert Ahasuerus,' Skip said.

Wang nodded. 'I know. Do not think to throw me down with an unheralded burst of high acceleration. I have had Ch'an training; furthermore, I am used to travel under the awkward and varying conditions of terrestrial cosmonautics; and never forget that Dr Canter's life depends on you.'

Skip grimaced. I can't get out of unlocking the controls; and once he's seen how to do that, he could figure the rest out for himself. Maybe the future does lie with the People's Republic. He gesticulated. 'This takes it off automatic. A repeat puts it back on.'

'I see. Good. Let me think___Yes.' Wang's left hand closed on a stanchion in expectation of free fall.

'Set us on course for Mars. That should illustrate the principles.'

Skip hooked a leg around a horizontal bar in front of him and signed for a display. The airborne symbols were easy to read. He directed the ship as he had been told, explaining each step while he did. No heroics. Nothing that'll annoy him and kill her. Kill me, for that matter ___

I imagine the People's Republic will let us live, under a kind of perpetual house arrest. Why not?

But beloved friends in the Byworld, what will become of you? Urania; her boys; Rog Neal; Dan Keough; the Vikings who had Earth's broad seas to roam in; Clarice— And more and more, hundreds he had met, thousands he had not, in whom lay the hope of something new, not that return of the almighty God-King which Wang Li thought was a forward step—yes, and his parents, brothers, sisters. Von-ny's kinfolk, the Almeidas, Thewlis, Kurland, more and more of their kind too, what would become of them?

Meanwhile he brought the ship about. The change was smooth. A period of weightlessness save for slight centrifugal force, while the dual modules rotated, was followed by a resumption of linear acceleration, a vector combining with present velocity to bring them to that planet named for the lord of war.

Nevertheless the Sigman would notice and come aft.

'How do I explain to Ahasuerus?' Skip asked.

It made his spine crawl that the sweat beading Wang's face and drenching his tunic should also shine white. 'Maybe Dr Canter can help,' the Chinese said.

'I don't know,' she replied, scarcely to be heard. 'If we go forward to the synthesizer, maybe—'

'Let me doodle out that that's what we should do,' Skip proposed.

'No!' Wang yelled. 'How can I know what you are telling?' He swallowed. Monotone: We must develop a scheme which guarantees me against losing the upper hand.' The mask split in a wolf grin. 'Not unlike the deterrence concept of the missile era—'

The bulkhead opened. Ahasuerus came in. All four eyes were out. Claws clacked. The scales glowed among the stars from which it had come.

Wang opened fire.

The reports smashed at eardrums. Two low-mass low-speed slugs rocked the Sigman. Wang backed towards the bulkhead, where he hid the image of Virgo, and fired the first of the magnums.

It crashed splintering through the armour, in among the naked cells. Juices spurted. Ahasuerus was flung off in a heap. It wailed, gathered itself and crept forward. Wang fired and fired. Each slug blasted more from the maker of beautiful things. Between shots, he waved the muzzle warningly across his prisoners.

Yvonne clung to a stanchion and screamed as if she would never stop screaming. Skip turned his back.

After the fourth heavy blow, the Sigman could go no farther. Its deep-seated life was almost drained, in phosphorescent wetness that spread across the deck. It lifted a claw and chopped the arm through an arc. A gob of thick digestive fluid sailed past the Milky Way. It struck Wang on the breast and ate through cloth and inward. Ahasuerus collapsed in a rattle and sigh and was quiet.

Wang whimpered for pain. But his gun, however wobbling, remained in his grip. 'I have… three bullets left,' he said through clamped jaws. He pulled the tunic open, though the acids peeled flesh from the fingers of his left hand, and shrugged it off that arm. With the wadded sleeve he wiped the ulcer that gaped on his chest.

'I will live,' he said shakenly. 'The… wound is not mortal. The solvent seems to be… used up.'

Skip approached, step by cautious step. 'I'd better take a look,' he said. Yvonne stumbled to him. He embraced her and whispered in her ear. She shuddered towards self-mastery.

'No,' Wang said. 'You will not… come any nearer.'

'M-me, then,' Yvonne stammered. 'Let me help you.' She clenched her fists, caught a breath, and went on: 'If you feel you're about to faint—you'll kill us, won't you? Let me see what I can do to help you stay c-c-conscious. I'm a woman, no combat training, I couldn't hold you, you'd fling me aside and—'

'—and be prepared to shoot.' Wang wheezed with the flame that was in him. 'I am… not weakened, Wayburn, not slowed… not so much. You might reach me. You could not get my weapon away in time to… save yourself.'

'Agreed,' Skip said.

Yvonne walked towards the pistol. She took Wang's tunic gingerly by the collar. He pointed the muzzle around her. 'I must transfer this,' he said. 'To my left hand. Before you can take my right sleeve off.'

'Yes,' she said.

She flung both arms about his wrist in the same motion that threw her deckward. The pistol roared; a slug whanged off the deck and the starry bulkhead. He tossed her aside. Skip had bounded to him. He brought his gun upward. If Skip seized him, Skip would take a bullet in the back of the head.

The fang had been unleashed while the sigaroon did not watch the murder of the Sigman. As he sprang, he drew it from the rear of his waistband where he had stuck it. The point went into Wang's throat, the edge slashed across.

Blood fountained over both men and Yvonne. Wang fell. They thought they heard a noise from him like

'Yao—' Afterward was only a brief horrible bubbling; and silence; and the blood of man and Sigman flowing together on the deck and blotting out view of the Southern Cross.