It was inconceivable on the face of it. The first supposition was a contradiction in terms. It did not remain valid under close scrutiny and therefore it had to be rejected.
Supposition number two: Clement was in all respects the exact opposite of an honest man. Clement had something dark and damaging to conceal, was in more serious trouble than he’d allowed anyone to suspect. Clement had some reason for not wanting the truth about Ramsey’s daughter to come out.
What would he stand to gain if Corriston took himself out of the world? Unfortunately there were wide areas where any kind of speculation had to penetrate an almost absolute vacuum to get anywhere at all.
The situation on Mars? Was there some as yet undemonstratable link between Ramsey’s uranium holdings and the Station itself? Was Clement involved with Ramsey in some way? And was Ramsey’s daughter a vital link in the chain?
Had the accident to the freighter put an additional strain on the chain, a strain so great that Clement had been forced to take immediate, drastic action to protect himself?
Corriston tried to remember exactly what the Commander had said over the speaking tube. He had tried to listen intently, but he had been too agitated to make much sense out of the few brief sentences which he had overheard. Clement had been speaking in anger and not too coherently, and it had been a one-way conversation, with the replying voice completely silent, or, at the very least, inaudible. But one thing about the conversation had made a strong impression on him. Clement had not sounded like an honest man with nothing to conceal. On the contrary, he had sounded like a worried and guilty man.
Corriston shut his eyes and relaxed for a moment on his cot. It was an uneasy, tormenting kind of relaxation, because another thought had occurred to him.
What if Clement had not deliberately tried to plant a suicide suggestion in his mind at all? What if he had simply spoken with the malice of a not too kindly man appalled and enraged by a space-shock victim who had not only lied to him, but had given every evidence of being dangerously difficult to control.
It certainly made sense. There was nothing in the cell which might have enabled Corriston to take his own life, even had he been so inclined. Would not Clement have taken care to introduce into the cell some convenient, readily available weapon — a steel file, perhaps or even a small spool of wire?
A cold dream had begun to take possession of Corriston. Was it true then, could it possibly be true? Was he hallucinating? He had seen Helen Ramsey go into a ladies’ lounge and disappear. He had seen her a second time, and she had worn a mask. The mask was so strange that it would have made four men out of five question their own sanity. But he had knelt beside her and lifted her into his arms. He had felt the pulse at her wrist. Well? If after that she had disappeared again, was it not more of a black mark against him than if he had failed to touch her at all?
All hallucinations seem real to the insane. The realer they seem the more likely they are to be inescapably damning.
Could a warped mind hope to escape from such a dilemma? Was there any possible way of making sure? No, not if he had actually cracked up. But supposing he hadn’t. Suppose he had just passed for an instant over the borderline, as a result of strain, of abnormal circumstances, and was now completely rational again. In that case, proof would help. Proof could convince him that at least a part of what had happened had been real, that he had not been hallucinating continuously for days.
If he could prove conclusively that he had not been hallucinating when he had climbed through the grate, Helen Ramsey’s presence beyond the grate would be pretty well established. Even an insane man does not abandon all logic when he performs a complicated act. He is not likely to ascend a ten foot wall and climb through a grate in pursuit of a complete illusion.
Oh, it could happen... Possibly it had happened many times in hospitals for the incurably insane. But somehow he could not believe that it had happened in his case. Right at this moment he was certainly not in an abnormal state of mind. How could he be when he was able to think so logically and consistently?
Being sane now, or at least having the firm conviction that he was sane, would enable him to retrace what had happened step by step. What he were to retrace it in reality... until he came to the grate? If the grate had been ripped out, the torment and uncertainty in his mind would vanish. He would be free then to move against Clement, to unmask and expose him for the scoundrel he was.
Free? The very thought was a mockery. He was free for twenty feet in either direction, free to shout and summon the guard. But beyond that...
Corriston sat up straight. Free to summon the guard. Free to summon a man he had dropped to the floor with two quick, decisive and totally unexpected blows. But if he did summon the guard, what then? Could he be doubled up with cramps — the old prisoners dodge? “Get me to a doctor. I think I’m dying”.
Hell no, not that. It was mildewed even on the face of it. The guard wouldn’t be that much of a fool. He’d whip out a gun, and slash downward with it at the first suspicious move on the part of a man he hated.
Was there any other way? Perhaps there was... a quite simple way. Why couldn’t he simply ask the guard to step into the cell and request permission to talk to him? He would plead urgency, but do it very casually, arouse the man’s curiosity without antagonizing him too much.
No need to be crafty, await some unlikely opportunity, or anything of the sort.
Simply overpower the man — straight off, without any fuss. It had happened before, but that very fact would make the guard contemptuous, more than ever convinced that the first time he hadn’t really been taken by surprise at all. His pride would make him want to believe that. He was the kind of man who could rationalize a humiliating defeat and blot it completely from his memory.
It not only worked, it worked better than he could have dared hope. When he spoke a few words through the door, the guard became instantly curious. He unlocked the cell and came in, his eyes narrowed in anger... anger, but not suspicion. His gun remained on his hip as he walked up to Corriston and stood directly facing him, well within grappling range.
“Well, what do you want to talk to me about?” he demanded. “Better make it brief. I’m not supposed to talk to you at all”.
“I’m sorry to hear that”, Corriston said. “You’ve got no idea how depressing it is to be locked up in a narrow cell with absolutely no one to talk to”.
“You don’t like it, eh? Well, you brought it on yourself”. Corriston caught the man about the waist and brought his right fist down three times on his curving back. Each blow was a powerful one, slanting downward toward the kidney.
Then Corriston hit the guard directly in the small of the back, with an even more punishing blow. The cumulative effect was instantaneous. The guard collapsed and sank down like a suddenly deflated balloon, the breath whistling from between his teeth.
Corriston watched him sink to the floor and straighten out. Forewarned as he was, he was still appalled by the almost instant, shocking change in the man’s expression. For the second time the guard’s features began to come apart. The entire upper portion of his face seemed to sink inward and broaden out, and the flowing began, the incredible refusal of his forehead and nose to remain in close proximity to his mouth.
One eye closed completely; the other remained open in a wide and almost pupilless stare. The chin receded and the lips became a puckered gray orifice that looked like some monstrous fungus growth sprouting from the middle of a gargoyle face. The individual features became paler and paler as they spread, and suddenly there seemed to be no color left in the face at all. It had turned completely waxen.