The Edmond Hamilton MEGAPACK ®. Edmond HamiltonЧитать онлайн книгу.
“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