Dumarest heard a shout, the crash of something shatter shy;ing, the fall of something heavy. Claude glared from behind his console as he and the navigator burst into the room.
"Get out!" he said. "The pair of you. I don't want anyone in my engine room."
Quietly Nimino said, "Earl, he's drunk. Look at his eyes."
Claude was more than drunk. The devil inside had broken loose in a gust of savage violence. Dumarest looked at the limp body lying on the floor. Lin lay in a puddle of liquid, the smashed remnants of a bottle lying beside his head. A trickle of blood ran from beneath his hair. It ceased as he watched. The steward would never now realize his ambition. He would never join the big ships and see the worlds out shy;side the Web. His friend, his father-surrogate, had seen to that.
Dumarest took three steps towards where the engineer stood by his console.
"You killed him," he said coldly. "You killed the boy."
"Stay away from me!" Metal shone as Claude lifted his hand. A wrench was gripped in the big fingers. "Come any closer and I'll crack your skull."
"Like you did to Lin?" Dumarest stooped, anger a cold fire in his brain, his fingers reaching for the knife in his boot.
Nimino caught his arm. "No, Earl. He's our engineer. We need him."
"We don't need him," said Dumarest. "He's a drunken, useless fool. He must have seen that the generators were getting out of phase but couldn't do anything about it. So he started to drink in order to forget. He kept on drinking. Now he's crazy."
"You-"
The wrench swept up and forward, light glinting on the spinning metal as it left the big hand, the heavy thing aimed directly at Dumarest's head. He ducked, straightening as the engineer sprang towards him, tasting blood as a big fist slammed into his mouth. The blow rocked him backwards and, before he could recover, Claude had gripped him by the throat.
"Crazy, am I? A drunken, stupid fool. Well, handler, this is where it ends. I'm going to kill you."
His hands tightened, constricting clamps of flesh and bone. Above the twin ridges of his arms Dumarest could see his face, the broad, mottled surface contorted with insane rage. That rage gave the engineer immense strength. He picked up Dumarest and slammed him back against the edge of the console, the metal rim digging cruelly into his spine, sending waves of agony from the barely healed wounds.
"Claude!" Nimino sprang forward, tugging at the engi shy;neer's arms. "Don't! Let him go, he-"
A vicious jerk of an elbow sent the navigator staggering to one side. Dumarest lifted both his hands and thrust them between the rigid forearms. He pressed, forcing his own arms between those of the engineer, thumbs reaching for the eyes. Claude snarled and jerked back his head.
Dumarest snatched back his hands and lifted them to the fingers clamped around his throat. He couldn't breathe and lacked strength, but his brain worked with icy calm. Trapped as he was against the edge of the console he could neither reach his knife or use his feet or knees. Maniacal rage had turned the engineer's arms into rods of steel and it was impossible to reach his eyes. But he could reach the fingers.
He gripped each of the smallest and pulled. It was like pulling at a steel restraint. Darkness began to edge his vision and a raw agony grew within his lungs. He pulled again, ignoring the pain of his back and sides as the new scar tissue yielded beneath the strain. The little fingers lifted and he wrapped his hands around them jerking with the last of his strength.
Bone snapped. Claude cried out, an animal sound of hurt and pain, snatching free his hands and stepping backwards. Nimino rose like a shadow behind him, the wrench a flashing arc in his hand. The sound of its impact was that of a squash shy;ing melon.
"Earl, are you all right?"
Dumarest nodded, massaging his throat. Another ten sec shy;onds and he would have used feet and hands to smash down the engineer but Nimino hadn't given him the time. Now he stood, looking at the wrench, the slumped figure lying in a pool of blood.
"He's dead," he said dully. "I killed him. Earl, I killed him!"
"He was insane. You had no choice."
"There is always a choice." The wrench fell from the navigator's hand. "I have taken a life," he said. "That means I have to return to the beginning and commence again the long and painful climb towards the Ultimate. It would have been better for me had I allowed you to use your knife."
"He would still have been dead," said Dumarest. He was impatient with the navigator's brooding introspection, his concern with a problematical afterlife. "The only difference is that I would have intended to kill him. You did not. He must have had a thin skull."
"Fate," said Nimino thoughtfully. "Who can fight against it? It was my destiny to kill a man." He looked at the console, at the mass of signal lights brightly red. "As it is our destiny to die. Claude has, perhaps, cheated us. He had an easy ending."
Dumarest was curt. "Explain."
"The generators are out of phase, my friend. The error is increasing. When it reaches a certain point the forces we have utilized to move us at supralight speeds will tear us apart."
"Couldn't we land before that happens?" asked Dumarest. "Turn off the generators to conserve their effective life?"
"Can we fight against our destiny?"
"We can fight." Dumarest looked down at his hands, they were clenched, the knuckles showing white. "We have to fight. The alternative is to die." He looked at the navigator. "It's up to you," he said. "You and the captain. There's nothing I can do."
"You can pray," said Nimino softly. "You can always do that."
Lallia stirred as Dumarest entered the cabin, lifting her arms as he turned on the light. "Earl, my darling. How did you know I wanted you?"
He made no comment, standing watching her, cups of basic in his hands. Sleep had washed the lines of fatigue from her face, lessened the heavy pallor, so that lying in the aureole of her hair she looked very young and very helpless. He stooped and set down the cups, feeling her arms close around him, the warm scent of her breath against his cheek.
"Come to me, lover. Come to me now."
"You'd better drink this," he said. "I want you to swallow as much basic as you can hold."
"Aren't I fat enough for you, lover?" She lost her smile as she saw his face. "Earl! Something's wrong! What is it?"
"We're going to crash," he said flatly. "And I think it will be soon."
"Crash?"
"The generators are failing. Sheyan did all he could but it wasn't enough. Now he's trying to get us down all in one piece."
He looked at the woman and thought of the captain, of Sheyan's innate fear as he had been woken from the com shy;fort of his symbiote, his steely acceptance of what had to be done. The generators had defeated him, now he was in the control room, slumped in his big chair, doing what the mechanisms around him could no longer do.
For they worked by rigid patterns governed by the steady progress of the ship. That progress was no longer steady, random forces increasing the velocity by multiplying factors, the gravity fields of close-set suns affecting the vessel in un shy;expected ways. Like a blind man threading a needle through a mass of electrified wire Sheyan was guiding the Moray through destructive energies. Their lives depended on his skill.
"I've spoken to Yalung," said Dumarest. "He knows what to do. Now I want you to do it. Eat as much as you can- food may be hard to find after we land. Wear as much as you can; the landing may be rough and we may have to leave the ship fast. Stay in this cabin and fasten the re shy;straints. And pray," he added, remembering Nimino's advice. "For all we know it could help."