Not even sure he could do it, he considered the possibility, and it terrified him, making his legs turn to ice water, his blood to steam. He was suddenly quite lost, and immersed into a deeper darkness than he had ever known. With no way out.
He spoke to himself, letting his words sound foolish to himself, but sounding them just the same, knowing he had avoided sounding them for much too long:
“Can I do it?”
“Should I? I’ve waited so long, so long, to find a place, and now they tell me I’ve found a place. Is this my final place? Is this what I’ve lived and searched for? I can be a valuable war weapon. I can be the man the men turn to when they want a job done. But what sort of job?”
“Can I do it? Is it more important to me to find peace — even a peace such as this — and to destroy, than to go on with the unrest?”
Alf Gunnderson stared at the night, at the faint tinges of color beginning to form at the edges of his vision, and his mind washed itself in the water of thought. He had discovered much about himself in the past few days. He had discovered many talents, many ideals he had never suspected in himself.
He had discovered he had character, and that he was not a hopeless, oddie hulk, doomed to die wasted. He found he had a future.
If he could make the proper decision.
But what was the proper decision?
“Omalo! Omalo snapout!”
The cry roared through the companionways, bounced down the halls and against the metal hull of the invership, sprayed from the speakers, and deafened the men asleep beside their squawk-boxes.
The ship ploughed through a maze of colors whose hues were unknown, skiiiiittered scud-wise, and popped out, shuddering. There it was. The sun of Delgart. Omalo. Big. And golden. With planets set about like boulders on the edge of the sea. The sea that was space, and from which this ship had come. With death in its hold, and death in its tubes, and death, nothing but death.
The blaster and the mindee escorted Alf Gunnderson to the bridge. They stood back and let him walk to the huge quartz portal. The portal before which the pyrotic had stood so long, so many hours, gazing so deep into inverspace. They left him there, and stood back, because they knew he was safe from them. No matter how hard they held his arms, no matter how fiercely they shouted at him, he was safe. He was something new. Not just a pyrotic, not just a mind-blocked, not just a blaster-safe, he was something totally new.
Not a composite, for there had been many of those, with imperfect powers of several psi types. But something new, and something incomprehensible. Psioid + with a + that might mean anything.
Gunnderson moved forward slowly, his deep shadow squirming out before him, sliding up the console, across the portal shelf, and across the quartz itself. Himself superimposed across the immensity of space.
The man who was Gunnderson stared into the night that lay without, and at the sun that burned steadily and high in that night. A greater fire raged within him than on that molten surface.
His was a power he could not even begin to estimate, and if he let it be used in this way, this once, it could be turned to this purpose over and over and over again.
Was there any salvation for him?
“You’re supposed to flame that sun, Gunnderson,” the slick-haired mindee said, trying to assume an authoritative tone, a tone of command, but failing miserably. He knew he was powerless before this man. They could shoot him, of course, but what would that accomplish?
“What are you going to do, Gunnderson? What do you have in mind?” the blaster chimed in. “SpaceCom wants Omalo fired … are you going to do it, or do we have to report you as a traitor?”
“You know what they’ll do to you back on Earth, Gunnderson. You know, don’t you?”
Alf Gunnderson let the light of Omalo wash his sunken face with red haze. His eyes seemed to deepen in intensity. His hands on the console ledge stiffened and the knuckles turned white. He had seen the possibilities, and he had decided. They would never understand that he had chosen the harder. He turned slowly.
“Where is the lifescoot located?”
They stared at him, and he repeated his question. They refused to answer, and he shouldered past them, stepped into the droptube to take him below decks. The mindee spun on him, his face raging.
“You’re a coward and a traitor, fireboy! You’re a lousy no-psi freak and we’ll get you! You can take the lifeboat, but someday we’ll find you! No matter where you go out there, we’re going to find you!”
He spat then, and the blaster strained and strained and strained, but the power of his mind had no effect on Gunnderson.
The pyrotic let the dropshaft lower him, and he found the lifescoot some time later. He took nothing with him but the battered harmonica, and the red flush of Omalo on his face.
When they felt the pop! of the lifescoot being snapped into space, and they saw the dark grey dot of it moving rapidly away, flicking quickly off into inverspace, the blaster and the mindee slumped into relaxers, stared at each other.
“We’ll have to finish the war without him.”
The blaster nodded. “He could have won it for us in one minute. He’s gone.”
“Do you think he could have done it?”
The blaster shrugged his heavy shoulders. “I just don’t know. Perhaps.”
“He’s gone,” the mindee repeated bitterly. “ He’s gone? Coward! Traitor! Some day … some day …”
“Where can he go?”
“He’s a wanderer at heart. Space is deep, he can go anywhere.”
“Did you mean that, about finding him some day?”
The mindee nodded rapidly. “When they find out, back on Earth, what he did today, they’ll start hunting him through all of space. He’ll never have another moment’s peace. They have to find him … he’s the perfect weapon. But he can’t run forever. They’ll find him.”
“A strange man.”
“A man with a power he can’t hide, John. A man who will sooner or later give himself away. He can’t hide himself cleverly enough to stay hidden forever.”
“Odd that he would turn himself into a fugitive. He could have had peace of mind for the rest of his life. Instead, he’s got this …”
The mindee stared at the closed portal shields. His tones were bitter and frustrated. “We’ll find him some day.”
The ship shuddered, reversed drives, and slipped back into inverspace.
Much sky winked back at him.
He sat on the bluff, wind tousling his grey hair, flapping softly at the dirty shirttail hanging from his pants top.
The Minstrel sat on the bluff watching the land fall slopingly away under him, down to the shining hide of the sprawling dragon, lying in the cup of the hills. The dragon slept — awake — across once lush grass and productive ground.
City.
On this far world, far from a red sun that shone high and steady, the Minstrel sat and pondered the many kinds of peace. And the kind that is not peace, can never be peace.
His eyes turned once more to the sage and eternal advice of the blackness above. No one saw him wink back at the silent stars. Deeper than the darkness.
With a sigh he slung the battered theremin over his frayed shoulders. It was a portable machine, with both rods bent, and its power pack patched and soldered. His body almost at once assumed the half-slouch, round-shouldered walk of the wanderer. He ambled down the hill toward the rocket field.
They called it the rocket field, out here on the Edge, but they didn’t use rockets any longer. Now they rode to space on a whistling tube that glimmered and sparkled behind itself like a small animal chuckling over a private joke. The joke was that the little animal knew the riders were never coming back.