“Oh, Leep, you couldn’t be so cruel!”
Mara was aghast at the vision of Senilde, unable to die, imprisoned in that small room until his wits left him.
“Have you forgotten he intended to starve and torture me to death?”
“No, but you must make allowances for his age and mental disintegration. You said yourself he was never more than a child. Promise to set him free after George and I have gone to Earth in the space-ship.”
Leep hesitated, then shrugged. “I promise.”
“You made me another promise, too.”
“You mean the numbers? Oh, yes. They are five-three-eight-two and nine-nine-four-five.”
Mara memorized them. Then she hurried down to the lounge. The gas, of which there was now no trace, must have spread itself too thinly to affect George, who was still fast asleep, his head pillowed uncomfortably on the food box.
Mara shook him awake. She outlined the situation, though George’s sleep-dulled brain was slow to get it into focus.
Then he said: “We’d better clear off now. Waiting for daylight could be risky. Senilde has a way of keeping tricks up his sleeve. He might pull another rabbit out of the hat yet.”
“You’re sure you can drive the chariot?” Leep asked, just arriving.
“I know how to start and stop it. It drives itself once the map references are set on the navigating control, and we know those now,” said George. “Come on, Mara.”
He picked up the box, then frowned. It was lighter than it had been. He opened it and stared at the few remaining bars.
“Mara!” he said, sternly.
She said quickly: “There’s enough for us till we reach the ship. You have plenty more in the ship. And Leep won’t need any more.”
Leep held up his flask, and smiled. “This is all the food I shall ever need now.”
The war chariot plowed on through the night, its searchlights stabbing ahead of it. Although it was cold, George stayed up on the platform. He knew there was a long way yet to go, and the chariot was slow. He couldn’t expect to sight the ship until the next day, at least. But he was restless and uneasy. Mara slept tranquilly in the cabin below.
Captain J. Freiburg rose at dawn and took a look around. Nothing had changed. There lay the ship, its fins straightened, everything repaired except the radio. All completed well ahead of his pessimistic schedule. There were the joined lengths of cable spraying from the ship’s waist to an arc of white circle tanks. All was set to begin the slow hauling of the ship back onto its tail.
There was just one hitch. Around a week ago, they’d discovered that none of the tanks was receiving any power. Since then, too, no plane had crossed the sky, no moving vehicles had been seen, no gunfire had been heard. Every day, every hour on the hour, they’d tested the tanks. Still no power. This morning Freiburg climbed into a tank and turned the engine switch. Then jiggled other switches. No sign of response. He was losing hope. He had really lost hope of George Starkey’s return. He was sure the explorer had crashed and was dead. Nevertheless, from force of habit he scanned the dull sky. No distant spot which might be a helicopter was visible. The mate came up, yawning. “Nothing doing, sir?”
“No. The armistice continues. Or else the war has ended for good and all. In which case, it’s ended us, too, I’m afraid. That’s unless we can trace the white circle G.H.Q. I’ll give them a couple more days to start up again. If they don’t, then you’ll have to take Sparks and go out looking for ’em, mister.”
“Right, sir,” said the mate, joylessly.
In the strong light of the artificial sun, Leep’s skeletal body, motionless on a divan, looked like a corpse on a bier. In fact, it was burning with inextinguishable life and his mind was ranging far into the universe. He was aware of the dark abyss which began where the stars of the galaxy thinned away to nothing. Of molten metal moving sluggishly through channels in Venus’s crust. Of the circulating cells of his own flesh. Of electrons and protons, electro-magnetic waves, and all the vibrations of the spectrum. And of Senilde’s wild and sudden irruption.
Senilde seemed the least important of these visions, and soon vanished. But presently he returned, this time making greater impact than all the wonders of infinite space.
For he jumped on the divan and kicked Leep off onto the floor. Then kept kicking him.
Leep found meditation difficult. He sat up, protesting.
“You dirty little schemer, you helped them escape!” roared Senilde.
“They’ve taken my chariot, and my telescope was in it!”
He raged aloud about the spilt and lost (as he thought) elixir, about his imprisonment, and about the loss of Mara—it appeared he’d planned to have her for himself. But the thing which made him see the deepest red, the thing he harped on continually, was the loss of his new toy—the telescope.
“George broke the bargain!” he shouted. “ ‘Switch off the war and you can have the telescope,’ he said. You heard him, Leep. And now he’s taken the telescope back. Very well, then—he can have the war back. And what a war it’ll be this time! I’ll blow the whole planet apart!”
He stamped his way to the stairs.
Leep was disturbed. He, too, had made a bargain of a kind—offered escape to Earth for Mara and George. If the war was unleashed again, the spaceship would be destroyed before they could reach it.
He scrambled up and pursued Senilde, calling, vainly: “Wait!”
He overtook the fat man laboring up the stairs and grabbed his shoulders. And made a discovery, which he reflected upon as he went hurtling backwards down the stairs. Immortality was not protection against the force of Senilde’s electric repellant.
Senilde turned, glaring down at him, and aimed his pistol.
“Meddler! Conniver! Interfering fool!”
Zip! A radio-active needle darted into Leep’s chest as he lay at the foot of the stairs. This time he felt nothing. He got to his feet. Senilde’s eyes became large with surprise.
Zip! Zip! Two more needles ineffectually found their target. Leep said, with controlled urgency: “You can’t kill me, Senilde. We’re on equal footing now, so let us discuss the matter rationally. Don’t start the war again. I promise I’ll get your telescope back for you somehow.”
Senilde frothed at the mouth. “You stole my elixir! You stole it! Don’t talk to me of promises. I want to hear no more promises. Oh, how I’ve been deceived!”
He continued up the stairs, groaning with self-pity.
“An old man like me—lied to, robbed, knocked down, imprisoned, betrayed on every side…”
Leep started after him again, but Senilde reached the top of the stairs and flicked a wall switch, still moaning with anguish. The stairs snapped together into one steep, smooth incline. Leep slipped back to the bottom. By the time he’d found another route to the upper floor, Senilde was secure within the Chinese puzzle box of the control room.
And already the sounds of war were beginning to thunder from the distances. Leep squatted in the passage and tried to peer with his mind into the secrets of the hidden panels and false walls. Perversely, his ungovernable faculty showed him instead the camouflaged exit door in one wall to the steel room, where the elixir had been preserved. It even revealed to him the combination of the lock, which had eluded Senilde’s failing memory for many hours before at last he remembered it, and released himself.
But, obstinately, it refused to give him even a hint of the way into the control room. For it was subject to the basic psychological Law of Reversed Effort. Leep realized that he was trying too hard and defeating his own wish. He must relax and let the faculty take its own wayward course…
Yes, instead, he kept wondering: supposing I do find the way in. I still can’t restrain Senilde. I can’t even touch him. I can’t end what he’s begun. I can’t end what I’ve begun.