Space Station 1
Damn it, Corriston thought, the thing for me to do now is to go
straight toward that building and straight up the stairs to the third
floor and straight down the corridor until I'm confronting Ramsey face
to face. I'm Peter Stone. I'm one of the two men who helped Henley
kidnap the girl and I've come to help Henley convince Ramsey. I've
come to help him really put the screws on Ramsey. I can improvise from
that point on.
He moved away from the guards without looking back. Within the citadel
there was silence, stillness, the five massive buildings cutting a
rampart of pure, fragile design across the sky. There was a strange
kind of perfection about the interior of the citadel. It was akin,
somehow, to the perfection of solitude and even the sky seemed hushed,
expectant, remote from reality, as if awaiting the unfolding of some
impossible event, some terrifying drama of violence and retribution
that could take place nowhere else.
But Corriston's reason told him that to believe any such thing would
have been the height of folly. The sky inside the citadel was just as
real, just as cloud-flecked and palely blue as the sky outside, and the
notion that architecture or scenery of any kind could influence events
was absolute nonsense. Things would happen exactly as he willed them to
happen, provided nothing stood in the way of immediate drastic action
and the kind of luck which had saved him at the gate continued to smile
upon him.
The big gray building with the shuttered windows continued to occupy
most of his attention, and he walked very resolutely toward it, his
eyes on the glimmer of pale light which marked its wide doorway. He was
still fifty feet away when he saw the guard, standing very quietly just
inside the door with his hand on his gun holster.
Corriston's lips tightened, but he did not moderate his stride. He had
a reply ready if the guard challenged him. He preferred to believe that
he would not be challenged, but he had no intention of taking anything
for granted.
He continued on until he reached the doorway and then he stopped
abruptly. He waited for the guard to say something, but the man did not
speak at all. He simply stared quietly at Corriston for an instant, and
then stepped quickly back into the shadows. Corriston went on past him,
and advanced along the wide corridor that stretched before him.
The wide central staircase that circled up did not seem appropriate
to a building that was not a residence and Corriston found himself
wondering if Ramsey had turned the other four buildings into similarly
unusual expressions of his own strong-willed orientation to reality.
The buildings had undoubtedly been designed as administrative units
of an industrial empire--a beginning empire in a new world. An empire
predatory, avaricious, merciless. Yet Ramsey had seemingly allowed his
desire for a home to gain dominance here, had allowed the emotions
common to all men to influence his taste in interior architecture in at
least one of the buildings.
Chalk up that much to Ramsey's credit. In that respect at least, he
was superior to Henley. In that respect at least a man of good will
could take sides, all apart from the personal issues involved. Henley
was a predatory vulture on all counts, his talons constantly spread,
constantly crimson-tipped. Ramsey was a vulture too, but in the depths
of his mind he knew it. Part of the agony was shared by him, and in
one desperate, despairing part of his personality he had tried to be
creative.
Corriston ascended the staircase swiftly, casting one brief glance at
some murals and then ignoring them. The second floor landing stretched
away into shadows, bisected by a wide corridor dimly lighted by
overhead lamps. The second floor had an administrative building aspect
and so did the third floor, which seemed in all respects its exact
duplicate.
Corriston's excitement grew as he mounted the stairway. He felt like
a man poised on the brink of a precipice with no assurance that he
would not be hurled to his death; a man aware that tragedy would not
strike him like a thunderbolt at any moment; and yet also like a man
who thought and felt differently from the trapped and the desperately
despairing.
He felt very confident, very sure of himself, and it seemed to him that
there was no danger that he could not surmount, and deep within him
there was something that exulted in the thought and kept him moving
steadily upward.
The third floor was like the second, its long central corridor
dwindling away into shadows. Down it he moved cautiously, remembering
what the guard at the gate had said. The third floor, the last door on
your left.
Ramsey was in conference. But it wasn't a conference of industrial
associates planning a division of spoils. Ramsey was talking to a
killer under duress.
Corriston was half way down the corridor when he heard the shot. It
rang out in the stillness with a terrible clarity, sending echoes
reverberating throughout the building, stopping Corriston in his tracks.
For an instant the silence remained absolute, as if the shot had
somehow silenced all life within the building. Even Corriston's
breathing was affected by it, so that for an instant he remained like
a man horror-blasted into immobility, frozen, a statue with waxen
features and widely dilated eyes.
Then, abruptly, he ceased to be a statue. He broke into a run, heading
for the door from which the shot had come.
He came to the door and saw that it did not slide open on a panel. It
was massive, with a knob jutting out from it, and when he grasped the
knob it swung inward instantly and soundlessly and he found himself in
a large, blank-walled room brightly illumed by three circular overhead
lamps.
Ramsey was sitting stiff and straight before a desk that was cluttered
with reference files, manuscripts in folders, pens, pencils and other
writing materials. His face was drained of all color, and his eyes were
wide and staring. He was looking directly at Corriston, and yet he did
not seem to see Corriston.
He did not appear to be staring at anything in particular, that small,
shrunken, unimpressive-looking little man with graying temples and a
look of blank incomprehension in his eyes that chilled Corriston to the
core of his being.
Shaking, wishing that the eyes would close or brighten with relief, or
do anything but remain so stonily indifferent, Corriston moved closer
to the desk.
He saw at once that Ramsey was close to death. He had been shot in the
chest. There was a dull red stain on his chest, and even as Corriston
stared it widened, a butterfly pattern of red, like a Rorschach seen
through the eyes of a homicidally inclined psychotic.
Suddenly Ramsey moved. He caught hold of the desk edge, and swayed a
little, but his eyes remained filmed, blankly staring.
Corriston was bending above him when a familiar voice said: "He's done
for. Nothing you can do for him. We had an argument and he lost his
head. He just couldn't see it my way. So I made a mistake and shot him.
It was a mistake, all right. I lost _my_ head. Now I've got nothing to
lose by killing you."
Corriston raised his eyes slowly. He had one chance in a hundred
perhaps. He knew it; he sensed it. Henley had somehow managed to stay
out of sight for an instant. The room was very large. There were
shadows in it, and Henley had apparently flattened himself against the
wall behind the desk, in deep shadow.
But now he was standing very straight and still behind the desk,
ignoring the shuddering form of the man he had shot, little dark
deathheads dancing in his eyes.
Henley's nearness did not bother Corriston. Death at ten feet could be
no more final than death at a hundred yards.
Only one thing bothered him. Events could move fast when you were close
to a killer.
He didn't intend to let them move fast. Not for him, at any rate. He
let his eyes rest for an instant on the gun in Henley's hand, his
thoughts racing. He knew that he'd be as good as dead if he made a
single concession.
Don't let him know that the gun worries you. Pretend that the odds are
even, even though he's got the drop on you.
Corriston said: "How do you know he's fatally wounded? The wound's
three inches below his heart. You're taking a hell of a lot for
granted. You just said you made a mistake in shooting him. If he's
rushed to a hospital that mistake may not be your last. You'll have a
chance to go to work on him again."
Henley shook his head, his lips tightening. "Don't be a fool. He'll be
dead in five minutes."
"I'm not being a fool," Corriston said. "What will you stand to gain by
shooting me and letting him die? You've got his daughter, but a dead
man won't be able to ransom her."
For a moment, nothing happened. Henley had made no attempt to draw
his gun, and he did not draw it now. He stood very quietly staring at
Corriston, breathing heavily, a strange, withdrawn look in his eyes.
Perhaps he was thinking over what Corriston had said. Corriston
wondered about that for an instant, and then dismissed it from his
mind. You did not take anything for granted when you were standing that
close to a killer.
It was probably too late to save Ramsey. But for the first time he was
standing very near to Henley with a weapon beneath his hand. If he drew
his gun instantly and shot Henley through the heart Ramsey might have a
chance. Otherwise....
Somehow he couldn't do it; not without giving the other some slight
warning, not without whipping his hand to his gun with a vigor that
was clear and unmistakable. In matters of crime a fair man is at a
disadvantage. He can only deal with a murderer in one way.
He drew a split second ahead of Henley. He shot Henley three times, the
gun blazing in his hands, and it did not seem important to him that
Henley had also drawn his gun. A tight knot reached into his stomach as
Henley's gun blazed, but he kept right on firing.
Henley died missing him, not scoring at all. That was the incredible
thing. Henley, an expert shot, a genius at massacre, had missed him
clearly with five shots and now he was down on the floor, clutching at
his stomach, dragging himself along, while beneath his fingers a dull
red stain grew.
His eyes turned glassy suddenly. He tried twice to raise himself but he
fell back each time. He did not speak at all. Blood from his punctured
lungs flooded up into his mouth, and with a terrible, convulsive
trembling of his entire body he rolled over on his side and lay still.
Corriston's hands began to sweat beneath the hard, cold gun. He wanted
to drop the weapon, to hurl it from him, but he couldn't somehow. He
had killed Saddler in immediate self-defense. This had been a little
different--a new experience, a frightening experience and he had been
forced to grit his teeth even in firing, and now that it was all over
he was tormented inwardly in a way that left him badly shaken.
Henley was gone now. Dead and still and forever removed from a world
he had contaminated. Henley had been warped and twisted largely by
circumstances outside himself; nevertheless a deadly reptile has to be
crushed when it is about to strike.
Corriston looked up from the limp form sprawled out on the floor, and
for a moment the tight lines of his face relaxed a little. Henley was
no longer a menace; the breath of life that had sustained him had
expired so completely that he had become now a kind of hollow mockery
of something monstrous and distorted that could never harm anyone again.
It was Ramsey who had to be considered now, Ramsey who was in peril.
The light in the room seemed somehow a little dimmer than it had been.
He turned slowly back to Ramsey, and for a moment could not quite
believe what he saw.