Space Station 1
so acute that Corriston's breath caught in his throat. His hand whipped
back and he leapt to his feet with a convulsive shudder.
It was suddenly very still on the dune again. Corriston stood for a
moment with his body rigid, fearing to look downward, his mind filled
with a growing sense of panic.
Had Helen Ramsey been attacked by lamprenes too? No, no, she was all
right; she had to be. Everything confirmed it, her quietness, her
steady breathing, the simple fact that her eyes had been closed and not
opened wide in torment.
He descended the dune like a man ploughing in frantic haste through a
snowdrift, sinking to his knees and floundering free again, lurching
backward and sideways, sliding a third of the way.
She was all right when he got to her. He dropped down beside her and
lifted her into his arms, and for an instant there was complete silence
between them. She just looked at him, looked up into his face steadily
and calmly, as if she could read his mind and had the good sense to
realize there could be no more certain way of reassuring him. Then
her arms tightened about him. "Darling," she whispered. "Darling,
darling...."
Corriston started fumbling with his oxygen mask and suddenly he had it
off. He held his breath and more slowly helped her free her lips so
that he could kiss her. Their lips met and the kiss was longer and more
intense than any they had ever before shared.
* * * * *
A half hour later the tractors were in rumbling motion again, their
destination Ramsey's Citadel. And Corriston had a plan. He knew that it
was riddled with risks and that he was perhaps quite mad to think that
it might succeed. But the fact that Helen Ramsey was now completely
safe and had dropped off into a brief, outwardly untroubled sleep
at his side made him feel reckless to the point where a cautious,
level-headed man like Drever could only stare at him and shake his head.
There was a swaying and a creaking all about them, the slow, steady
rumble of caterpillar treads, and Drever had almost to shout to make
himself heard. He stood directly opposite Corriston, supporting himself
by a guard rail, and watching the desert through the weather-shield
change color in the wake of the heavy vehicle's heaving, churning,
torpedo-shaped rear-end.
"Stone's been unconscious now for an hour," Drever said, dividing his
gaze between Corriston, and the loosely strapped-in, sleeping girl at
his side, both swaying with the swaying tractor. "We can't count on
getting any more information out of him. I can't wake him up. Drugs
would be dangerous. I don't think he'll live, but we can't deliberately
kill him to get him to talk."
"I know that," Corriston said.
"But he's the only one who knows why Henley is staying so long at
the Citadel. He should have been back hours ago. He left before you
escaped from the ship. For all we know, he may be dead. Ramsey may have
lost his head and had him shot, although that seems unlikely. Ramsey
would go to any length to save his daughter. But we've no way of
knowing whether he believed Henley's story or not. Anything could have
happened. Henley may have attacked Ramsey."
"I've a feeling that he's still at the Citadel," Corriston said. "I'll
have to gamble on that--the one-in-five chance that for some reason the
negotiations have been prolonged. He may be lying dead in the desert
somewhere. He may have been attacked by lamprenes. As you say, anything
could have happened. But when I make up my mind to do something I
usually go through with it. It's just a matter of plain common sense.
You don't toss aside a decision you've given a great deal of thought to
just because the arguments against it are weighty, too."
"I see. So you're still determined to walk right up to the gate and
tell them you're Stone."
"Why not? They've never laid eyes on Stone and they don't know me from
Adam. I won't be wearing this uniform. I'll tell them that Henley's
expecting me, that he left orders for me to join him if he failed to
come back at a specified time. I'll watch the guard's face and change
my story a little--if I have to--as I go along."
"It's a _very_ long gamble. I hope you realize that."
"It's either that or no gamble at all. And we've _got_ to gamble. We're
holding at least two high cards and a joker. Henley has had the ground
shot right out from under him. He's completely alone, and the only
thing he has left to gamble with is his nearness to Ramsey, his ability
to terrify Ramsey by making him believe that his daughter's life is
still in danger. Ramsey has to be told that Helen has been freed, has
to be warned in time, before he does anything foolish.
"Don't you see? With that threat hanging over him, Ramsey would never
let us get within fifty yards of the Citadel, let alone walk through
the gates. And if Henley finds out that we've got Helen, he'll know
that he has nothing left to gamble with except that desperate bluff.
And he may doubt his ability to win with a bluff. That would be the
worst tragedy of all. He may turn on Ramsey in blind rage, and kill
him. He gets a horrible, pathological pleasure out of killing. I've
told you how he went berserk on the Station."
Drever nodded, and, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, the look of
stubborn opposition was gone from his eyes.
"I guess you're right, Lieutenant. You can't always tell how the cards
will fall."
"You can never tell," Corriston said. "And there are some games where
the important moves can only be made by just one player, and he usually
has to be something of a reckless fool."
22
Corriston left the tractor a hundred and seventy yards from the gate,
well hidden behind a hundred foot dune. The other tractors had come to
a halt a much greater distance from the Citadel, and were spread out
across the desert in a slightly uneven, double line.
He walked slowly forward across the rust-red sand, with a feeling in
his bones that he was going to be lucky. Yet he knew that he'd have to
be convincing, or he wouldn't stand a chance. If there was more than
one guard at the gate he might never get inside. With luck he might be
able to convince two guards--even three--but never four or five, for
you couldn't forge words into persuasive enough weapons to disarm the
suspicion of that many observant men. Not the kind of men who would be
guarding Ramsey, at any rate.
The massiveness of the fortified gate shook his confidence a little
as he drew near to it. It was at least fifty feet in height, a solid
oblong of inches-thick steel with a desert-mirroring surface. He could
see his own reflection as he advanced, but it did nothing to reassure
him.
He knew what he'd have to do, of course. Walk right up to the gate and
trust to luck that he could find some way of announcing his presence
without getting himself killed. How _did_ you gain entrance to an
impregnable fortress? Surely there had to be some way by which a man
could gain admittance without being instantly shot down as a hostile
intruder.
He was surprised by the simplicity of the answer. There was no need for
him to press a bell or a buzzer, to manipulate a mechanism of any sort.
There was not even any need for him to proclaim his arrival by shouting.
The gate swung inward without a sound, and in the shadows cast by
its moving bulk two figures silently materialized. They were guards,
heavily armed, one tall with shaggy brows and piercing dark eyes, the
other a wiry little man with reddish hair, his expression peculiarly
bland and non-committal.
It was the little man who said: "All right, come inside. We've been
expecting you."
It was impossible, but true. There was nothing threatening in the way
the words were uttered, just calm acceptance, just the matter-of-fact
indifference of a man who has a duty to perform and doesn't care what
happens afterwards.
But it would have perhaps been better if Corriston had not moved so
quickly forward, for almost instantly the second guard barred his
passage and laid a firm hand on his arm.
"Hold on. Just a minute," the tall guard said. "You're Peter Stone,
aren't you?"
With a quick pretense of anger Corriston jerked his arm free and looked
the guard up and down. "Naturally I'm Stone. Who in hell did you think
I was."
"Sorry," the guard said, shrugging. "Don't take it out on me. I just
had to be sure."
"Well, you're sure now. I guess you know why I'm here."
The guard nodded. "Ramsey just phoned down about you. Your friend is
with him now. See that big gray building, the one on the left with the
shuttered windows? There's a guard stationed at the door, but he won't
stop you. He has his orders. Climb two flights of stairs and go down
the long corridor on the third floor. Ramsey and your friend are in the
last room on the left."
Corriston drew a deep breath, wondering if the guard had noticed the
tightening of his facial muscles. He turned away from the gate slowly,
staring out over the interior of the fortress, letting his emotions of
the moment take complete possession of him.
He had entered as if by magic a world apart, a small, shutin world
of massive magnificence, of undreamed of material power and wealth.
There were five buildings within the encircling wall of the fortress,
each monumental in architectural sweep. Each was a citadel alone and
apart, monuments to man's creative genius erected by one man with a
determination to make himself unique.
It was a folly almost beyond belief, a terrifying distortion of human
creativeness that could lead only to ultimate disaster and defeat.
But greedy and cruel and ruthless as Ramsey undoubtedly was, there
still burned in him a little of the spark that had created Athens in
white marble. Had it not been so, he could not have even commissioned
men of creative genius to transport to Mars the materials for such a
project and have taken pleasure in its completion.
"Your friend got here two hours ago," the tall guard said. "They've
been talking ever since. He came down to the gate once and said we
should let you in, you and another man. Saddler, I think his name was.
I see he's not with you."
"No, Saddler is not with me," Corriston said.
"What happened to him?"
"The big gray building with the shuttered windows, you said. If the
guard tries to stop me, what do I say."
"I told you he had his orders."
Corriston looked up at the massive gate swinging shut behind him. For
good or ill, he was completely trapped, completely at the mercy of the
armed guards inside the citadel.
They hadn't taken his gun away from him, but, nevertheless, he was
trapped. What chance would one armed man have against seventy-five or
a hundred guards? They were keeping out of sight, all but the two at
the gate. But at any moment they could converge upon him and shoot
him down. They could choose their own moment, precisely as a research
medical man could choose his own moment to experiment upon a laboratory
animal, knowing that the creature was safe in its cage and couldn't
possibly get away.
Corriston's lips tightened and from a shadowed corner of his mind came
a determination to brush all that aside, to ignore it completely. The
guards at the gate might very well be telling the truth. It stood to
reason that Ramsey would have remained secretive about his daughter.
Kidnappers do not like to have their ransom demands discussed too
openly. If Ramsey had been a complete fool he would have gone down
to the gate and taken the guards completely into his confidence, but
Corriston could not believe that Ramsey was that much of a fool.
In all probability Henley had threatened Ramsey and provoked him almost
beyond endurance. There had arisen the questions of how the ransom was
to be paid, the girl set free.