The SP man looked skeptical. “Is this some kind of joke, Thurdan? Your foolishness doesn’t interest me. One of the days you’ll find we’ve broken through your defenses, and—”
“Shut up and let me talk!” Thurdan roared like some wounded animal in anguish. “I’m offering you Starhaven on a plutonium platter, Commander Whitestone! You say you have a fleet? All right, send your damned fleet— I’m dropping the screens! I’m surrendering. Can you understand that, Whitestone?”
The figure in the screen raised eyebrows curiously and peered out at the wild-looking, sweating, half-naked Thurdan. “Surrendering, Thurdan? I find it hard to believe that—”
“Damn you, I mean it! Send a fleet!” As he stood with his face pressed against the panel, listening and watching, Mantell heard Myra approaching behind him.
“What’s going on in there?” she asked. “Thurdan has cracked up completely. Right now he’s busy surrendering Starhaven to Commander Whitestone of the Space Patrol. He’s inviting them to send out a fleet, and he’s promising to drop the screens when the fleet gets here.”
“No! He can’t be serious!”
“I think he is,” Mantell said. “He would never be able to understand the reasons why you tried to kill him tonight. He thinks the conspiracy was the ultimate betrayal of everything he’s worked for in Starhaven—and it threw him off his trolley!”
“We have to stop him!” Myra said determinedly. “If the Patrol ever gets in here they’ll carry everyone in Starhaven off to the prison keeps for brainwashing. People who have been law-abiding citizens for twenty years are going to suffer. The place will be destroyed—”
“If we could only get in there and stop him—but he’s got a barrier-screen around the room.”
“Screens can be turned off. You’re supposed to be a barrier-screen expert, Johnny. Can’t you think of something?”
“No,” he said. “Yes. Yes. I can. Wait here, will you? And scream good and loud if Thurdan comes out of that room before I get back.”
“What are you—”
“Never mind. Just wait here. And sing out if he opens that door!”
Mantell raced hurriedly down the hall to his laboratory, punched his thumb savagely into the doorplate, and kicked the door open when his print released the lock. The light switched on automatically.
He began to rummage through his cluttered workbench for that unfinished pilot model, for which he had once had such high hopes, and which he had never dreamed would be put to a use such as this…
Ah! There it was.
He snatched it up, out of the tangle of punch-coils and transistors in which it lay. Glancing around the room, he found a pocket welding torch, the only instrument within sight that could serve as an effective weapon. He gathered these things up, turned, ran out and back up the corridor to the place where Myra stood waiting for him.
“Did anything happen while I was gone?”
“He’s still talking to that SP man,” she told him. “I’ve been trying to listen. I think Whitestone finally believes Ben’s serious.”
“Okay. Watch out.”
Mantell hammered loudly on the plexiplate door with his fists, while the conversation within came to an end and the screen went dead.
“Ben!” he yelled. “Ben Thurdan!”
Thurdan turned and blinked through the panel at him. Mantell called his name again, and yet again.
“What do you want?” Thurdan growled. “Liarl Betrayer! You’ll die with all the rest of them!”
“You don’t understand, Ben! I’m with you! I’m on your side! It’s all a big mistake. You have to trust me. Look! I’ve brought you the personal defense screen, Ben.”
He held up the model—the useless, unfinished, unworkable model. “I finished it tonight,” he said desperately. “I was working on it ah evening. Then I ran the final tests. It’s a success! You can strap it around your waist and no weapon can touch you.”
“Eh?” Thurdan grunted suspiciously. “I thought you said it would take a week to finish it.”
“I thought so, too. But I worked at nights. It’s finished now.”
Thurdan was staring intently through the thick plastic of the door, shielded both by that and by the bubble of force that cloaked his entire room. There was no way Mantell could possibly get inside. But if be could induce Thurdan to come out. . . .
He seized Myra roughly and thrust her forward. She stood there, arms outstretched to Thurdan.
“I brought her, too,” Mantell said. “She’s yours. She wants to explain. There never was anything serious between her and me, Ben. Come on out of there. Don’t give up Starhaven now. Don’t give up everything you’ve built, all you’ve planned, just for this!”
Mantell saw he was getting through to him now, communicating. Thurdan’s lips were fumbling for words; his deep hard eyes flicked back and forth, bewildered, confused.
Poor Ben! Mantell thought with real compassion. It was a saddening thing to watch a man like that crack open like a moldy melon.
Thurdan’s hand wavered on the switch, and he grimaced to show his inner conflict. Then in a quick convulsive gesture he yanked downward sharply, cutting off the screen-field that was a barrier around the room. A long moment passed. Mantell heard him jiggling with the lock; then the door swung slowly open.
Thurdan came out.
He was walking unsteadily, swaying and faltering like a mighty oak about to fall. In a surprisingly quiet voice, in a voice that was being held in tight rein to keep it from turning into a hysterical babble, he said, “All right, Johnny. Give me the screen.”
Mantell tossed the worthless model to him. Thurdan caught it with one great hand.
“There,” Mantell said. “Go ahead. Strap it to your waist.”
Myra was sobbing gently behind him, a low steady sound. For once Mantell felt no sensation of fear, only a cold, icy calmness inside him that seemed to fill his entire body. He watched as Thurdan carefully strapped the rig around himself.
Then Thurdan said crooningly, “Come here, Myra. Here to me.”
“Just a second, Ben.” Mantell interposed himself between Thurdan and the girl. “We have to test the thing first. Don’t you want to test it?”
Thurdan’s eyes flashed. “What the hell is this?”
Mantell pulled out the pocket welding torch. “You can trust me, Ben. Can’t you?”
“Sure, Johnny. I trust you. About as far as I can throw youl”
Suddenly sane, realizing he had been tricked into coming out of the impregnable safety of his room, Thurdan came lumbering toward the two of them, murder blazing in his eyes.
Mantell waited just a moment and then turned on the welding torch.
There was a momentary sputtering hiss as the arc formed; then the globe of light spurted out and cascaded down over him. Thurdan howled and flailed out with his arms, hitting nothing. He took one difficult last step, like a man slogging grimly forward through a sea of molasses. He was dead then, but he didn’t know it.
Mantell heard a whimper. Then Thurdan fell.
He clicked off the torch. Ben Thurdan was dead at last, dead by a trick, lured and baited to his death like a great mountain bear.
Mantell looked away from the charred thing on the floor. It wasn’t pretty.
“Sorry, Ben,” he said softly. “And you’ll never understand why we had to do it. You never would have understood.”
Inside the room, a quick glance at the meters told Mantell that the defense screens were down all over Starhaven. Thurdan had lowered them before he finished talking to the SP Commander. For the first time in decades, the sanctuary planet lay utterly open to Space Patrol attack.