Space Station 1
If Corriston took his own life the commander would be spared all that.
He'd have nothing to answer for. The entire affair could be hushed up.
Or could it?
Wait a minute, better give the whole problem another twirl. Even if
the Commander was a completely honest man, he wouldn't stand to gain
too much. He might even find himself in more serious trouble. And look
at it in another way: It was hard to believe that a hallucination
concerning Helen Ramsey could be much more than a gadfly irritation.
If the full truth came out, Clement could clear himself of all blame.
Would a man of integrity suggest that a fellow-officer take his own
life solely to remove a gadfly irritation? Or _any_ irritation, for
that matter?
It was inconceivable on the face of it. The first supposition was a
contradiction in terms. It did not remain valid under close scrutiny
and therefore it had to be rejected.
Supposition number two: Clement was in all respects the exact opposite
of an honest man. Clement had something dark and damaging to conceal,
was in more serious trouble than he'd allowed anyone to suspect.
Clement had some reason for not wanting the truth about Ramsey's
daughter to come out.
What would he stand to gain if Corriston took himself out of the world?
Unfortunately there were wide areas where any kind of speculation had
to penetrate an almost absolute vacuum to get anywhere at all.
The situation on Mars? Was there some as yet undemonstratable link
between Ramsey's uranium holdings and the Station itself? Was Clement
involved with Ramsey in some way? And was Ramsey's daughter a vital
link in the chain?
Had the accident to the freighter put an additional strain on the
chain, a strain so great that Clement had been forced to take
immediate, drastic action to protect himself?
Corriston tried to remember exactly what the Commander had said over
the speaking tube. He had tried to listen intently, but he had been
too agitated to make much sense out of the few brief sentences which
he had overheard. Clement had been speaking in anger and not too
coherently, and it had been a one-way conversation, with the replying
voice completely silent, or, at the very least, inaudible. But one
thing about the conversation _had_ made a strong impression on him.
Clement had not sounded like an honest man with nothing to conceal. On
the contrary, he had sounded like a worried and guilty man.
Corriston shut his eyes and relaxed for a moment on his cot. It was
an uneasy, tormenting kind of relaxation, because another thought had
occurred to him.
What if Clement had not deliberately tried to plant a suicide
suggestion in his mind at all? What if he had simply spoken with the
malice of a not too kindly man appalled and enraged by a space-shock
victim who had not only lied to him, but had given every evidence of
being dangerously difficult to control.
It certainly made sense. There was nothing in the cell which might have
enabled Corriston to take his own life, even had he been so inclined.
Would not Clement have taken care to introduce into the cell some
convenient, readily available weapon--a steel file, perhaps or even a
small spool of wire?
A cold dream had begun to take possession of Corriston. Was it true
then, could it possibly be true? Was he hallucinating? He had seen
Helen Ramsey go into a ladies' lounge and disappear. He had seen her
a second time, and she had worn a mask. The mask was so strange that
it would have made four men out of five question their own sanity. But
he had knelt beside her and lifted her into his arms. He had felt the
pulse at her wrist. Well? If after that she had disappeared again, was
it not more of a black mark against him than if he had failed to touch
her at all?
All hallucinations seem real to the insane. The realer they seem the
more likely they are to be inescapably damning.
Could a warped mind hope to escape from such a dilemma? Was there any
possible way of making sure? No, not if he had actually cracked up. But
supposing he hadn't. Suppose he had just passed for an instant over the
borderline, as a result of strain, of abnormal circumstances, and was
now completely rational again. In that case, proof would help. Proof
could convince him that at least a part of what had happened had been
real, that he had not been hallucinating continuously for days.
If he could prove conclusively that he had not been hallucinating when
he had climbed through the grate, Helen Ramsey's presence beyond the
grate would be pretty well established. Even an insane man does not
abandon all logic when he performs a complicated act. He is not likely
to ascend a ten foot wall and climb through a grate in pursuit of a
complete illusion.
Oh, it _could_ happen.... Possibly it had happened many times in
hospitals for the incurably insane. But somehow he could not believe
that it had happened in his case. Right at this moment he was certainly
not in an abnormal state of mind. How could he be when he was able to
think so logically and consistently?
Being sane now, or at least having the firm conviction that he was
sane, would enable him to retrace what had happened step by step. What
he were to retrace it in reality ... until he came to the grate? If
the grate had been ripped out, the torment and uncertainty in his mind
would vanish. He would be free then to move against Clement, to unmask
and expose him for the scoundrel he was.
Free? The very thought was a mockery. He was free for twenty feet in
either direction, free to shout and summon the guard. But beyond
that....
Corriston sat up straight. Free to summon the guard. Free to summon a
man he had dropped to the floor with two quick, decisive and totally
unexpected blows. But if he did summon the guard, what then? Could
he be doubled up with cramps--the old prisoners' dodge? "Get me to a
doctor. I think I'm dying."
Hell no, not that. It was mildewed even on the face of it. The guard
wouldn't be that much of a fool. He'd whip out a gun, and slash
downward with it at the first suspicious move on the part of a man he
hated.
Was there any other way? Perhaps there was ... a quite simple way. Why
couldn't he simply ask the guard to step into the cell and request
permission to talk to him? He would plead urgency, but do it very
casually, arouse the man's curiosity without antagonizing him too
much. No need to be crafty, await some unlikely opportunity, or
anything of the sort.
Simply overpower the man--straight off, without any fuss.
It had happened before, but that very fact would make the guard
contemptuous, more than ever convinced that the first time he hadn't
really been taken by surprise at all. His pride would make him want
to believe that. He was the kind of man who could rationalize a
humiliating defeat and blot it completely from his memory.
It not only worked, it worked better than he could have dared hope.
When he spoke a few words through the door, the guard became instantly
curious. He unlocked the cell and came in, his eyes narrowed in
anger ... anger, but not suspicion. His gun remained on his hip as he
walked up to Corriston and stood directly facing him, well within
grappling range.
"Well, what do you want to talk to me about?" he demanded. "Better make
it brief. I'm not supposed to talk to you at all."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Corriston said. "You've got no idea how
depressing it is to be locked up in a narrow cell with absolutely no
one to talk to."
"You don't like it, eh? Well, you brought it on yourself."
Corriston caught the man about the waist and brought his right fist
down three times on his curving back. Each blow was a powerful one,
slanting downward toward the kidney.
Then Corriston hit the guard directly in the small of the back, with
an even more punishing blow. The cumulative effect was instantaneous.
The guard collapsed and sank down like a suddenly deflated balloon, the
breath whistling from between his teeth.
Corriston watched him sink to the floor and straighten out. Forewarned
as he was, he was still appalled by the almost instant, shocking change
in the man's expression. For the second time the guard's features began
to come apart. The entire upper portion of his face seemed to sink
inward and broaden out, and the flowing began, the incredible refusal
of his forehead and nose to remain in close proximity to his mouth.
One eye closed completely; the other remained open in a wide and almost
pupilless stare. The chin receded and the lips became a puckered gray
orifice that looked like some monstrous fungus growth sprouting from
the middle of a gargoyle face. The individual features became paler and
paler as they spread, and suddenly there seemed to be no color left in
the face at all. It had turned completely waxen.
It was a horrifying thing to watch.
Corriston knelt, opened the man's shirt and stared intently at the
exposed throat, something he had not done the first time in the
cafeteria. The first time he had simply knelt and searched under the
shirt with his hand for a heartbeat which had surprised him by its
steadiness. He was quite sure now that the heart was beating firmly and
steadily.
Even the peculiar appearance of the throat did not alarm him. But it
most certainly did interest him. Far down on the Security Guard's
throat, just above his breastbone, were a row of small hooks partly
embedded in his flesh. The hooks were very tiny indeed, and their
brightness was obscured by a thin film of sweat. Corriston removed the
moisture with a quick flick of his thumb and continued to stare, as if
he could not quite believe his eyes.
Finally he wedged his fingers under the base of the mask, and ripped it
from the guard's face.
Under the mask, the face had a perfectly natural look. The features
were relaxed and vacuous, but there was no flowing, no unnatural
distortion at all. And it was quite a different face--the face of a
man who had worn a disguise and was now so completely a stranger to
Corriston that he might just as well have been any one of the Station's
thirty-seven Security Guards.
Corriston could see where the hook attachments had gone into the
flesh in at least thirty places on the man's face: on his brow, his
cheekbones, on both sides of his face clear down to the base of his
neck. The tiny punctures made by the hooks were faintly rimmed with
blood, perhaps because Corriston had torn the mask away too abruptly.
Undoubtedly the skin had been anaesthetized, the hooks inserted
skillfully by someone familiar with just what should be done to prevent
scarring.
He hoped that the guard would not carry tiny scars on his face for the
rest of his natural life. He arose and examined the mask. He had a
complete false face.
The thing was ingenious beyond belief. It was no mere Halloween
assemblage of papier-maché flimflammery, but an elaborate and flexible
mask of very thin plastic, or possibly metal. A prosthetic mask--if one
could use that term in connection with a mask. It was certainly more
complex in structure than any prosthetic leg or arm he had ever seen on
a handicapped man, or would ever be likely to see.
He had a pretty good idea as to how it worked. A general idea.
Apparently when the hooks were attached to the muscular structure of
the human face underneath, every aspect of the wearer's face would be
instantly controlled and altered to conform to the configuration of
the false face. In that sense the mask could be said to actually mold
itself to the wearer's face and transform it into a completely new and
different face.
And yet, in some subtle way, the emotions felt by the owner of the
real face would be conveyed to the mask, so that it would express with
different features very much the same kinds of emotion.