“Sure,” said Hill, sardonically. He paid. “O.K. now? Whadda I do now?”
“Go in the door here,” said Crowder. “The cargo’s grub. Get comfortable and lay flat on your back when you feel the carrier coming up to be hitched on for towing After the acceleration’s over and you’re in the Pipeline, do as you please”
“Yeah!” said Moore, giggling nervously “Do just as you please”
Hill said tonelessly
“Right. I’ll start now.”
He moved with a savage, infuriated swiftness. There was a queer, muffled cracking sound. Then a startled gasp from Moore, a moment’s struggle, and another sharp crack.
Hill went into the nose of the carrier. He dragged them in. He stayed inside for minutes. He came out and listened, swinging a leather blackjack meditatively. Then he went over to the gate.
He called cautiously to the guard: “You! Slim! Crowder says come quick—an’ quiet! Somethin’s happened and him and Moore got their hands full.”
The guard blinked, and then came quickly. Hill hurried behind him to the loading pit. As the guard called tensely:
“Hey, Crowder, what’s the matter—”
Hill swung the blackjack again, with a certain deft precision. The guard collapsed.
A little later Hill had finished his work. The three men were bound with infinite science. They not only could not escape, they could not even kick. That’s quite a trick—but it can be done if you study the art. And they were not only gagged, but there was tape over their mouths beyond the gag, so that they could not even make a respectable groaning noise. And Hill surveyed the three of them by the light of a candle he had taken from his pocket—as he had taken the rope from about his waist—and said in husky satisfaction:
“O.K. O.K.! I’m givin’ you fellas some bad news. You’re headin’ out to Pluto.”
Terror close to madness shone in the three pairs of eyes which fixed frantically upon him. The eyes seemed to threaten to start from their sockets.
“It ain’t so bad,” said Hill grimly. “Not like you think it is. You’ll get there before you know it. No kidding! You’ll go snakin’up at four gravities, and the air’ll go out. But you won’t die of that. Before you strangle, you’ll freeze—and fast! You’ll freeze so fast y’won’t have time to die, fellas. That’s the funny part. You freeze so quick you ain’t got time to die! The Space Patrol found out a year or so back that that can happen, when things are just right—and they will be, for you. So the Space Patrol will be all set to bring you back, when y’get to Pluto. But it does hurt, fellas. It hurts like’ hell! I oughta know!”
He grinned at them, his mouth twisted and his eyes grim.
“I paid you fellas to send me out to Pluto last year. But it happened I didn’t get to Pluto. The Patrol dragged my carrier out o’ the Pipeline and over to Callisto because they hadda shortage o’ rocket fuel there. So I’ been through it, an’ it hurts! I wouldn’t tell on you fellas, because I wanted you to have it, so I took my bawlin’ out for stowin’ away and come back to send you along. So you’ goin’, fellas! And you’ goin’ all the way to Pluto! And remember this, fellas! It’s gonna be good! After they bring you back, Out there on Pluto, every fella and every soul you sent off as stowaways, they’ll be there on Pluto waitin’ for you. It’s gonna be good, guys! It’s gonna be good!”
He looked at them in the candlelight, and seemed to take a vast satisfaction in their expressions. Then he blew out the candle, and closed the nose door of the carrier, and went away.
And half an hour before sunrise next morning the hydraulic platform pushed the carrier up, and a space tug hung expertly overhead and its grapnel came down and hooked in the tow ring, and then the carrier jerked skyward at four gravities acceleration.
Far out from Earth, the carrier went on, the latest of a long line of specks in infinity which constituted the Pipeline to Pluto. Many of those specks contained things which had been human and would be human again. But now each one drifted sedately away from the sun, and in the later carriers the stowaways still looked completely human and utterly tranquil. What had happened to them had come so quickly that they did not realize what it was. But in the last carrier of all, with three bound, gagged figures in its nose, the expressions were not tranquil at all. Because those men did know what had happened to them. More they knew what was yet to come.
The Power
(Memorandum from Professor Charles, Latin Department, Haverford University, to Professor McFarland, the same faculty:
Dear Professor McFarland:
In a recent batch of fifteenth-century Latin documents from abroad, we found three which seem to fit together. Our interest is in the Latin of the period, but their contents seems to bear upon your line. I send them to you with a free translation. Would you let me know your reaction?
Charles.)
To Johannus Hartmannus, Licentiate in Philosophy, Living at the house of the Goldsmith Grote, Lane of the Dyed Fleece, Leyden, the Low Countries.
Friend Johannus:
I write this from the Goth’s Head Inn, in Padua, the second day after Michaelmas, Anno Domini 1482. I write in haste because a worthy Hollander here journeys homeward and has promised to carry mails for me. He is an amiable lout, but ignorant. Do not speak to him of mysteries. He knows nothing. Less than nothing. Thank him, give him to drink, and speak of me as a pious and worthy student. Then forget him.
I leave Padua tomorrow for the realization of all my hopes and yours. This time I am sure. I came here to purchase perfumes and mandragora and the other necessities for an Operation of the utmost imaginable importance, which I will conduct five nights hence upon a certain hilltop near the village of Montevecchio. I have found a Word and a Name of incalculable power, which in the place that I know of must open to me knowledge of my mysteries. When you read this, I shall possess powers of which Hermes Trismegestus only guessed, and which Albertus Magnus could speak of only by hearsay. I have been deceived before, but this time I am sure. I have seen proofs!
I tremble with agitation as I write to you. I will be brief. I came upon these proofs and the Word and the Name in the village of Montevecchio. I rode into the village at nightfall, disconsolate because I had wasted a month searching for a learned man of whom I had heard great things. Then I found him and he was but a silly antiquary with no knowledge of mysteries! So, riding upon my way I came to Montevecchio, and there they told me of a man dying even then because he had worked wonders. He had entered the village on foot only the day before. He was clad in rich garments, yet he spoke like a peasant. At first he was mild and humble, but he paid for food and wine with a gold piece, and villagers fawned upon him and asked for alms. He flung them a handful of gold pieces and when the news spread the whole village went mad with greed. They clustered about him, shrieking pleas, and thronging ever the more urgently as he strove to satisfy them. It is said that he grew frightened and would have fled because of their thrusting against him. But they plucked at his garments, screaming of their poverty, until suddenly his rich clothing vanished in the twinkling of an eye and he was but another ragged peasant like themselves and the purse from which he had scattered gold became a mere coarse bag filled with ashes.
This had happened but the day before my arrival, and the man was yet alive, though barely so because the villagers had cried witchcraft and beset him with flails and stones and then dragged him to the village priest to be exorcised.
I saw the man and spoke to him, Johannus, by representing myself to the priest as a pious student of the snares Satan has set in the form of witchcraft. He barely breathed, what with broken bones and pitchfork wounds. He was a native of the district, who until now had seemed a simple ordinary soul. To secure my intercession with the priest to shrive him where he died, the man told me all. And it was much!