Brecht spoke up. “Cap’n, how do we know that this ‘commander’ that has been arranged for isn’t Harry Voight or Hoch McCoy?”
“We don’t know,” said Parks gravely. “But we will. We will.”
Twenty-three minutes after Xantippe showed up on the plates, we engaged her field.
All hands were still in the control room when we plunged in. I remember the sudden weakness of my limbs, and the way all five of the others slipped and slid down to the deck. I remember the Biscuit’s quaver, “I tell you it’s all a dirty Insurrectionist plot.” And then I was down on the deck, too.
Something was hurting me, but I knew exactly where I was. I was under Dr. Grenfell’s torture machine; it was tearing into my mind, chilling my brain. I could feel my brains, every last convolution of them. They were getting colder and colder, and bigger and bigger, and pretty soon now they would burst my skull and the laboratory and the building and chill the Earth. Inside my chest I was hot, and of course I knew why. I was Betelgeuse, mightiest of suns, and with my own warmth. I warmed half a galaxy. Soon I would destroy it, too, and that would be nice.
All the darkness in Great Space came to me.
Leave me alone. I don’t care what you want done. I just want to lie here and— But nobody wanted me to do anything. What’s all the hollering about, then? Oh. I wanted something done. There’s something that has to be done, so get up, get up, get—
“He is dead. Death is but a sleep and a forgetting, and he’s asleep, and he’s forgotten everything, so he must be dead!” It was Phil Hartley. He was down on his hunkers beside me, shrieking at the top of his voice, mouthing and pointing like an ape completely caught up in the violence of his argument. Which was odd, because he wasn’t arguing with anybody. The skipper was sitting silently in the pilot’s chair, tears streaming down his cheeks. Jo Hartley was dead or passed out on the deck. The Biscuit and Bort Brecht were sitting on the deck holding hands like children, starring entranced into the viewplate. It showed a quadrant of Xantippe, filing the screen. The planet’s surface did indeed pulsate, and it was a beautiful sight. I wanted to watch it drawing closer and closer, but there was something that had to be done first.
I sat up achingly. “Get me some water,” I muttered to Phil Hartley. He looked at me, shrieked, and went and hid under the chart table.
The vision of Xantippe caught and held me again, but I shook it off. It was the most desirable thing I’d ever seen and it promised me all I could ever want, but there was something I had to do first. Maybe someone could tell me. I shook the skipper’s shoulder.
“Go away,” he said. I shook him again. He made no response. Fury snapped into my brain. I cuffed him with my open hand, front and back, front and back. He leaped to his feet, screamed, “Leave me alone!” and slumped back into the chair. At the sound Bort Brecht lurched to his feet and came over to us. When he let go Seabiscuit’s hand, the Biscuit began to cry quietly.
“I’m giving the orders around here,” Bort said.
I was delighted. There had been something, a long time ago, about somebody giving orders. “I have to do something,” I said. “Do you know what it is?”
“Come with me.” He led the way, swaggering, to the screen. “Look,” he commanded, and then sat down beside Seabiscuit and lost himself in contemplation. Seabiscuit kept on crying.
“That’s not it,” I said doubtfully. “I think you gave me the wrong orders.”
“Wrong?” he bellowed. “Wrong? I am never wrong!” He got up, and before I knew what was coming, he hauled off and cracked three knuckles with my jawbone. I hit the deck with a crash and slid up against Jo Hartley. Jo didn’t move. He was alive, but he just didn’t seem to give a damn. I lay there for a long time before I could get up again. I wanted to kill Bort Brecht, but there was something I had to do first.
I went back to the captain and butted him out of the chair. He snarled at me and went and crouched by the bulkhead, tears still streaming down his cheeks. I slumped into the seat, my fingers wandering idly about the controls without touching them, my eyes desperately trying to avoid the glory of Xantippe.
It seemed to me that I was very near to the thing I was to do. My right hand touched the infragun activator switch, came away, went back to it, came away. I boldly threw the other switch; a network of crosshairs and a bright central circle appeared on the screen. This was it, I thought. Bort Brecht yelped like a kicked dog when the crosshairs appeared, but did not move. I activated the gun, and grasped the range lever in one hand and the elevation control in the other. A black-centered ball of flame hovered near the surface of the planet.
This was it! I laughed exultantly and pushed the range lever forward. The ball plunged into the dull-silver mystery, leaving a great blank crater. I pulled and pushed at the elevation control, knowing that my lovely little ball was burning and tearing its inexorable way about in the planet’s vitals. I drew it out to the surface, lashed it up and down and right and left, cut and slashed and tore.
Bort Brecht was crouched like an anthropoid, knees bent, knuckles on the deck, fury knotting his features, eyes fixed on the scene of destruction. Behind me, Phil Hartley was teetering on tiptoe, little cries of pain struggling out of his lips every time the fireball appeared. Bort spun and was beside me in one great leap. “What’s happening? Who’s doing that?”
“He is,” I said immediately, pointing at Jo Hartley. I knew that this was going to be tough on Jo, but I was doing the thing I had to do, and I knew Bort would try to stop me. Bort leaped on the prone figure, using teeth and nails and fists and feet; and Phil Hartley hesitated only a minute, torn between the vision of Xantippe and something that called to him from what seemed a long, long while ago. Then Jo cried out in agony, and Phil, a human prototype of my fireball, struck Bort amidships. Back and forth, fore and aft, the bloody battle raged, while Seabiscuit whimpered and the skipper, still sunk in his introspective trance, wept silent. And I cut and stabbed and ripped at Xantippe.
I took care now, and cut a long slash almost from pole to pole; and the edges opened away from the wound as if the planet had been wrapped in a paper sheath. Underneath it was an olive-drab color, shot with scarlet. I cut at this incision again and again, sinking my fireball in deeper at each slash. The weakened ovoid tended to press the edges together, but the irresistible ball sheared them away as it passed; and when it had cut nearly all the through, the whole structure fell in on itself horribly. I had a sudden feeling of lightness, and then unbearable agony. I remember stretching back and back over the chair in the throes of some tremendous attack from inside my body, and then I struck the deck with my head and shoulders, and I was all by myself again in the beautiful black.
There was a succession of lights that hurt, and soothing smells, and the sound of arcs and the sound of falling water. Some of them were weeks apart, some seconds. Sometimes I was conscious and could see people tiptoeing about. Once I thought I heard music.
But at last I awoke quietly, very weak to a hand on my shoulder. I looked up. It was Dr. Renn. He looked older.
“How do you feel, Rip?”
“Hungry.”
He laughed. “That’s splendid. Know where you are?”
I shook my head, marveling that it didn’t hurt me.
“Earth,” he said. “Psy hospital. You’ve been through the mill, son.”