The voice was close now and coming closer. Nick could see his feet sinking into the swamp only ten feet away. The flashlight beam swept the ground and Nick pulled his limp arm away just in time.
“Show yourself, you fucking coward" he screamed, and that scream did it.
The Nick who held the nerve gun whispered, “Holy shit . . as the tyrannosaurus rex reared over him. It seized him around the waist with a three-fingered claw and lifted him like a rag doll, twenty feet to its mouth. The scream was hideous; it ceased suddenly with a snap of teeth and a grinding of bone. Blood sprinkled Nick like an afternoon shower. He rolled onto his back and looked up, and against the sky he could see a pair of legs dangling from the enormous mouth.
He lay very still for the next two hours. Then, moving softly so as not to reawaken the monster, he started for the ravine. The life had come back to his arm and his leg was prickling with sensation.
II
“You changed,” Senator Harmon said as Nick entered the study.
“It was a little messy. I got his blood on my clothes so I went back to his apartment and took a clean pair of tights.” He smiled. “We’re the same size, you know.”
“Did anybody see you kill him?”
Nick shook his head. “He was riding in a cab. I pulled up alongside and shot him through the window.”
“And you're positive you hit him?”
“Right between the eyes.”
The senator seemed satisfied. "You are my real son, Nicholas. You will be a credit to me in the Peace Party. If you carry out your denunciation of the alien as well as you have my son’s murder. I will see to it that Johnny Quog appoints you to an important post.”
“I’m afraid not,” Nick said, coming closer.
“Of course, if you would prefer to stay at Mutagen I can arrange for you to be promoted to section director, or transferred to—”
“No, what I mean is, Johnny Quog won’t be appointing anyone to important positions. Johnny Quog's going to withdraw from the election.”
“I see no chance of that.”
“Oh, I do. Very definitely. And you won’t be arranging any promotions either.”
“And why not?”
“Because of your death.”
Nick pulled at one of the servicing tubes. It gave way easily and the milky fluorocarbons began spilling onto the floor.
“What are you doing?” Replace that tube immediately. . . .”
Of course it was a projection on his part—the dull eyes bulging from their parchment sockets could not show terror, yet Nick imagined they did.
He pulled loose a second tube, and a third. One poured a brackish bile, the other a clear fluid, and all three ran together on the marble floor, swirling prettily, like the patterns on Indian endpapers.
“You fool!” the speaker crackled. “Put them back! Put them back!”
From the corner of his eye Nick saw a flash of light, like the glint of an emerald. The light defined a disembodied hand, a ghostly green hand which began lifting the tubes from the floor and fitting them back on the metal nipples. Only a psych field amp could produce such a limb, but where could the machine be? Built into the desk? No—it must have been built right into the senator’s jar, interfaced directly with his brain.
He pulled at the green hand, and the solidity of it was startling, the cold lifeless surface smooth as plastic, composed of pure thought electronically amplified. He pulled harder, again disconnecting the tube, and suddenly the hand turned and leaped at him like some savage animal. The fingers closed around his neck and he felt the walls of his trachea collapsing, the blood welling in his head, the dizziness, the red behind his eyes. TVo, his thoughts screamed, it cannot end like this, not when I have come so close. . . .
A white-hot point of concentration formed within his throbbing brow. Moved by some force finer than consciousness, it passed outside his head and drifted to the floor directly beneath the life-preserver jar. Then it swelled into a transdimensional window. Nick retained awareness just long enough to see the huge jar containing the senator plummet down the hole, down into the chill grayness, the endless grayness; then he blacked out.
PART VIII
Epilogue
Nick and Hali sat on the lawn outside Post 51 while small clouds raced overhead, casting fleeting shadows across the warm, bright sun. She watched, amused, as he pulled a blade of grass and, stretching it between the thumbs of his cupped hands, blew a honking sound from it like the cry of a goose.
“You are a man of many talents,” she said. “Rocket polo expert, lover, savior of the Federation—and now I see you are also a musician.”
Nick bowed modestly.
“Again yesterday,” she continued, “Morgan Grim visited me to apologize. He told me how proud the company was of you, and that they had arranged a special training program so that you could become a genetic engineer.”
“Not really an engineer,” Nick explained, “just a glorified lab technician. But it’s a lot more interesting than public relations, and I get to work with Doc Scolpes.”
“I am so happy for you.”
They smiled politely at each other, each striving to avoid the potential misery the day held in store; after all, what had to be had to be, and why suffer it unduly?
A few minutes later Scolpes emerged from the post and waddled across the lawn in their direction. He still wore his sterile suit, having only had time to remove the cumbersome helmet. Cradled in his arms was the cryogenic briefcase Hali had brought to the planet long weeks ago.
They rose to greet him. He held the briefcase while Hali snapped the handcuff, chaining it to her wrist.
“I believe these corrected polynucleotides will ensure many generations of happy, healthy Alta-Tyberian infants.”
For a minute Nick could almost see Scolpes as the grandfather, bouncing thousands of almond-eyed, blue-beaked cherubs on his knee.
“We cannot thank you enough,” Hali said. “May there always be an exchange of love and knowledge between our people.”
Scolpes bowed as well as he could with his belly in the 151 way, and kissed her long, delicate hand. Then, warning Nick to be back at the lab in an hour to assist with an experiment, he left them.
“Your luggage is waiting in the cab,’’ Nick said.
“Well then, let us be going.’’
They rode in silence, Nick staring out the window. He saw her sitting on board a great silver ship, crossing the oceans of galaxy at near-relativistic speeds. Time would pass more slowly for her; when she arrived on Alta-Tyberia she would be only months older, while Nick would be an old man. To all the other barriers separating them would be added the distance of age.
As they were nearing the spaceport, the newsman on the radio announced that by order of a special emergency act of congress, presidential elections were being postponed for six months while the Peace Party convened to choose a new candidate. The right wing of the Peace Party, from whose ranks Johnny Quog had been drawn, had been completely discredited by the damning accusations of the Lifestylers, the suspicious disappearance of Senator Harry Harmon, and Johnny Quog’s nervous breakdown during the inquiries that followed. Presumably the new candidate would be offered by the left wing of the Peace Party, an independent group with strongly populist leanings.
They arrived at the terminal twenty minutes early. Nick bought her an armful of magasettes and microfiches.
“I see,’’ she said, “that I will not be at a loss for reading matter.”
“Hali. . .” he said.
“Don’t.”
“Hali, please, stay here with me.”
Suddenly she was angry. “Why must we go through this again? Haven’t we made ourselves miserable enough? It cannot be, Nick Harmon, it simply cannot be! I was sent to your planet with these samples”—she patted the briefcase—“and I must return with the antidote.”