A jagged red line ran some six inches across the front of his shirt at the chest, beginning below the left clavicle and ending just above his left breast. Mantell saw it was only a flesh wound.
He understood what had happened. Somehow Myra had failed in her attempt, scratching Thurdan where she should have torn.
“Are you in this thing too, Mantell?” Thurdan bellowed in monumental rage. Even coatless, and in his ripped shirt, he was a figure of terrifying authority. Sweat poured down his hairless scalp. “You’re all against me, then? Harmon and Polderson and Ledru and McDermott and Myra—and even you, Mantell. Even you.”
He advanced slowly toward Mantell. They were both unarmed. Myra’s knife, that was to have finished Thurdan, was nowhere in sight, and the blaster Mantell had carried now lay out of reach. Mantell knew that Thurdan needed no weapon. He could tear him to pieces barehanded.
He backed up, moving warily to keep from stumbling. As he stared at Thurdan’s grim face he was astonished to see tears starting to form in the fierce eyes—tears of rage, probably. Learning that your closest associates had banded together to betray you is something that even the strongest of men cannot take without a sharp emotional pang.
“All of you wanted to kill me, didn’t you?” Thurdan said slowly. “I didn’t do enough for you. I didn’t build Starhaven practically with my own two hands, and take you all in when you came running. That wasn’t enough, so you decided to try to kill me. But you won’t kill Ben Thurdan! You won’t!”
Mantell tried desperately to signal to Myra to scramble across the room and seize the blaster where it lay. But she was too dumb and dazed with shock to understand the meaning of his gestures. She lay on a sofa, aims wrapped over her eyes, shaking violently, a pale huddled figure.
Thurdan reached out for him. He ducked, swept in under his mighty fumbling paws, and landed a solid punch on the jutting jaw. It was like hitting a boulder. Thurdan didn’t seem to feel the blow, though Mantell’s arm rippled with pain at the contact.
Thurdan’s hands clutched at his shoulder; he twisted and slipped away.
“The blaster, Myra—get the blaster!” he called harshly. “Pick it up!”
That was a mistake.
Thurdan nicked a hasty glance over his shoulder, saw the blaster where it lay not more than three feet behind him, and scooped it up in one huge paw. In the same motion he hurled it through the open window, far out into the night.
Now it was bare hands against bare hands, and that sort of conflict could have only one conceivable finish.
Mantell edged back as far from Thurdan’s reach as he possibly could. His breath was coming hard and thick.
“Kill me, will you?” he demanded. “I’ll show you! I’ll show all of you!”
Thurdan charged forward, caught Mantell around the middle with one great hand, and hurled him like a toy across the room. He crashed numbingly into a table laden with fine pottery. Mantell rolled over, trying to get up and failing, and waited for Thurdan to pounce and finish him off.
But he didn’t pounce. He stood over him, rocking unsteadily, face contorted by some deep inner stress. He made no attempt to touch the fallen Mantell, who lay looking up.
Finally Thurdan said, “I built Starhaven—and I can destroy it too!”
Wildly he laughed and swung away, ranning down the hall and out into the darkness.
Chapter XVII
Mantell slowly pulled himself to his feet and stood frozen a moment, shaking away the pain. His back felt numb. Thurdan’s sudden flight left him utterly bewildered. He turned to Myra.
“Did you see that? He just ran out!”
She nodded faintly. Her left eye was nearly puffed closed, he saw. She drew a tattered robe around herself. She was making a visible effort to regain control over her nerves.
“Come on,” she said. “There’s a private landing port out on the balcony. That’s probably where he went.”
“What—?”
She didn’t wait to explain. She headed off in the direction Thurdan had gone, and Mantell had no choice but to follow.
They passed through a darkened hallway into a large sitting room whose balcony doors hung open, swaying back and forth in the night breeze. Myra pointed to something just beyond the balcony.
“There he goes!”
An aircar had just taken off, using the balcony as a landing stage; a fiery streak against the blackness indicated its direction. Two more cars were parked on the balcony landing strip. Evidently Thurdan kept them there for emergency use.
“He’s heading for the control tower,” Mantell said. “Like Samson bringing down the temple—he’s going to lift the screens and bring all Starhaven down to ruin around him!”
Hastily they leaped into one of the waiting aircars and Mantell flipped on the engine. The car sprang away from the balcony. He managed to prod the engine into highest gear within moments after take-off, and they soared out over Starhaven.
The city, far below them, looked tiny and almost insignificant.
Myra huddled against him for warmth. She was still quivering, and not entirely from the cold of the night.
Mantell kept his eyes on the course. “What happened before I got there?” he asked.
She said, “Everything went as scheduled . . . until I drew the knife. I . . . hesitated. Just a fraction of a second too long. Ben saw what I was doing. I managed to strike anyway, but he dodged just in time and I only scratched his skin. And then—then he knocked the knife out of my hand and hit me. I thought he was going to kill me. Then you came.”
“And what about Harmon and all the others? Are they still waiting?”
“I guess so. We allowed for something like this to happen. They were waiting to hear from me. I was supposed to give the signal before we made the announcement of Ben’s death. And now—”
“Now everything’s changed,” Mantell said.
The dark windowless bulk of the control tower loomed up in the blackness ahead; he saw the smoking exhaust of Thurdan’s aircar, and brought the vessel down on the landing stage nearby.
They sprang from the car and plunged through the entrance into the control tower itself, Mantell half-dragging Myra behind him. His hand encircled her wrist tightly; there was no time to waste now.
“He must be in his little control center room,” Mantell guessed. “Lord knows what he’s doing in there!”
“How do we get there? I don’t know my way around this building.”
“Come this way,” he snapped. “The lift tubes are over here.”
But the first lift tube they tried did not respond; it had been shut down for the night. So had the second, and so had the third.
“I don’t have any idea how to get them started again,” he told her.
They raced around the level, circling it completely in search of a functioning lift. The thought of running wildly upstairs through the darkened tower was hardly appeahng. At last they found a single lift tube that was in operation.
They took it.
They emerged in the corridor, just outside Mantell’s defense-screen laboratory; not far down the hall was Ben Thurdan’s private control room, the nerve center of Star-haven.
And the light was on in there.
Mantell released his grip on Myra’s wrist and dashed down the hall, leaving her behind. Thurdan was in there, and he had the door locked and the small roomscreen barrier turned on, so it was impossible to enter. He had barricaded himself.
But it was possible to hear what he was saying. The visiscreen was on, and through the plexilite door-window Mantell could see that Thurdan was talking to a gray-faced man in the uniform of the Space Patrol.
“I’m Ben Thurdan, Commander. You heard me, Thurdan. You know who I am. I’m calling direct from Star-haven.” Thurdan looked wild, half-mad almost. The iron reserve of poise had crumbled away completely.