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was happening now. There was no real peace for him.
I don t smoke, he said, which was not true. But this was brother kin to the uncountable police line-ups
he had gone through, all the way across the American Continent, across Earth, and from A Centauri IX
back here. It annoyed him, and it terrified him, for he knew he was trapped.
Except this time, there were no tough, rock-faced cops out there in the darkness beyond his sight. This
time there were tough, rock-faced Bureau men, and SpaceCom officials.
Even Terrence, head of SpaceCom, was sitting in one of those pneumoseats, watching him steadily.
Daring him to be what he was!
He lifted the cylinder hesitantly, almost put it back.
Smoke it, Alf! snapped a different voice, deeper in tone, from the ebony before him.
He put the cigarette between his lips. They waited.
He seemed to want to say something, perhaps to object. Alf Gunnderson s heavy brows drew down. His
blank eyes became if it were possible even blanker. A sharp, denting V appeared between the
brows.
The cigarette flamed into life.
A tongue of fire leaped up from the tip. In an instant it had consumed tobacco, paper, filter and
de-nicotizer in one roar. The fire slammed against Gunnderson s lips, searing them, lapping at his nose,
his face.
He screamed, fell on his face and beat at the flames with his hands.
Suddenly the stage was clogged with running men in the blue and charcoal suits of the SpaceCom.
Gunnderson lay writhing on the floor, a wisp of charry smoke rising from his face. One of the SpaceCom
officials broke the cap on an extinguisher vial and the spray washed over the body of the fallen man.
Get the Mallaport! Get the goddammed Mallaport, willya! A young Ensign with brush-cut blond hair,
first to reach the stage as though he had been waiting crouched below cradled Gunnderson s head
in his muscular arms, brushing with horror at the flakes of charred skin. He had the watery blue eyes of
the spacemen, those who had seen terrible things; yet his eyes were more frightened now than any man s
eyes were meant to be.
In a few minutes the angular, spade-pawed Malleable-Transporter was smoothing the skin on
Gunnderson s face, realigning the atoms shearing away the burned flesh, coating it with vibrant,
healthy pink skin.
Another few moments and the psioid was finished; the burns had been erased; Gunnderson was new and
whole, save for the patches of healthier-seeming skin that dotted his face.
All through it he had been murmuring. As the Mallaport finished his mental work, stood up with a sigh,
the words filtered through to the young SpaceCom Ensign. He stared at Gunnderson a moment, then
raised his watery blue eyes to the other officials standing about.
He stared at them with a mixture of fear and bewilderment.
Gunnderson had been saying: Let me die, please let me die, I want to die, won t you let me die, please!
The ship was heading toward Omalo, sun of the Delgart system. It had been translated into inverspace by
a Driver named Carina Correia. She had warped the ship through, and gone back to her deep-sleep, till
she was needed at Omalo snap-out.
Now the ship whirled through the crazy quilt of inverspace, cutting through to the star-system of Earth s
adversary.
Gunnderson sat in the cabin with the brush-cut blond Ensign. All through the trip, since blast-off and
snap-out, the pyrotic had been kept in his stateroom. This was the newest of the Earth SpaceCom ships,
yet he had seen none of it. Just this tiny stateroom, in the constant company of the usually stoical Ensign.
The SpaceCom man s watery blue eyes swept between the pallid man and the teleport-proof safe set in
the cabin s bulkhead.
Any idea why they re sending us so deep into Delgart territory? the Ensign fished. It s pretty tight lines
up this far. Must be something big. Any idea?
Gunnderson s eyes came up from their focus on his boot-tops, and stared at the spaceman. He idly
flipped the harmonica he had requested before blast-off, which he had used to pass away the long hours [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]