It was Lorrest who tired first and asked Hargate if he wanted to break off.
“Not yet, but I think I’ve done enough on these fake addresses,” Hargate replied. “Suppose I was at home, at the Cotter’s Edge node, and I wanted to skord up to your node on the Moon. Exactly where is it?”
“I don’t think I should .
“What difference does it make? Who could I tell?”
Lorrest stared at him closely for a moment, then shrugged. “Do you know the geography of the Moon all that well?”
“Like the back of my hand.”
“All right. Try to visualise a spot about one-fifty kilometres north-east—inverted compass, by the way—of the Mayer crater.” Lorrest went on to specify a precise set of grid coordinates, and waited with a look of humorous scepticism while Hargate struggled, using his newly ingested Mollanian maths, to throw a conceptual bridge between Earth and Moon. Scowling ferociously, Hargate picked up the travel trainer and slowly—with some help from the computer in his watch—shaped its working surface into a complex curve. He was gratified to see Lorrest’s expression change.
“You did it!” the Mollanian exclaimed. “You actually got it right!”
“Do you have to sound so surprised?” Concealing his pleasure, Hargate collapsed the trainer and started the same calculation afresh, determined to improve his speed. He worked on it single-mindedly for more than thirty minutes, oblivious to his surroundings, and was taken by surprise when Lorrest suddenly gave a theatrical groan of misery.
“Denny, how long are you going to keep it up?” Lorrest said, gently pounding his own forehead. “Give me a break, will you?”
“What’s the matter? I’m being quiet.”
“You’re being quiet, but you’re creating a kind of third-order whirlpool all round yourself, and it’s driving me crazy. If you ever manage to direct that energy properly you may actually be able to skord by yourself some day.”
The words came as a revelation to Hargate. “You mean you can feel what I’m doing?”
“Feel it! This is one of the reasons we encourage Mollanian children to discard trainers as soon as they can. Anybody who’s using one tends to act like a giant radio station that’s drowning out its neighbours. Kids sometimes use the effect to play tricks on adults—shunting them off to places they didn’t want to visit.”
“This is great,” Hargate said. “I really feel as if I’m getting somewhere.” Ignoring Lorrest’s complaints, he returned to his mental exercises with the trainer and continued until when, near the end of the flight, Lorrest raised the question of his immediate future.
“In one hour and three minutes,” Lorrest said, looking at his watch, “your Moon’s going to get zapped into smithers, and I’d like to be on Earth to see it happen. The view will be just as good from Carsewell or from Valparaiso—which would you prefer? Valparaiso should be warmer, but you’ll have the problem of being an illegal immigrant.”
“Won’t you be there to get me out?”
“Hardly! The Bureau keeps a continuous watch on the few nodes discovered by 2H. I’ll be arrested as soon as I arrive.”
Hargate frowned. “In that case it isn’t worth going.”
“At that stage I’ll want to be taken back to Mollan.” Lorrest’s eyes became unfocused as he was drawn into his inner world. “With the Moon destroyed, I’ll be too famous—notorious, I should say—for Vekrynn to have me quietly put away somewhere. And people will listen to what I have to say about him. I’m looking forward to that part.”
“I see.” The realisation that his association with the tall Mollanian was soon to end, that he had to return to the circumscribed realities of life on Earth, caused Hargate an unexpectedly fierce pang of regret. “I was kind of hoping I wouldn’t have to go back to Earth—this star-hopping game suits me fine.”
“I know it does, Denny. You’ve got the imagination and the spirit for it, and if there was any kind of justice in this universe you’d be…you’d be…” Lorrest turned away and stared out through the window, blinking rapidly.
“Christ, he’s off again,” Hargate said disgustedly, horrified to find that his own vision was dissolving in a painful blur. “How old are you supposed to be, anyway?”
“Old enough to vote.”
“Then stop acting like a big nancy—it’s bloody embarrassing.”
“I’ll do my best, sire.” Lorrest looked owlishly at Hargate for a moment, then his shoulders came up, his face darkened and he had embarked on one of his excruciating whole-body laughs. Hargate felt his own chest give a sympathetic squeeze and within a few seconds he had lost control and was honking and snorting through his nose as an ungovernable tide of laughter went through him, relieving the stresses that had been building since the previous evening. The sight of Lorrest’s contorted, plum-coloured features defeated his every attempt to calm down, and he knew that his own nasal bleatings were having a similar effect on the Mollanian. On the verge of panic over the idea that his lung function might cease altogether, Hargate wheeled himself to another part of the long cabin, shaking his head and cackling, and waited for the return of sanity. It was the first time in his adult life that he had experienced that kind of laughter—nobody on Earth had ever created the necessary climate of camaraderie—and the incident, trivial though it was, magnified his regret at losing Lorrest. He tried to locate a source of hope.
“If things are going to be different on Earth when you have forced Mollan into open contact,” he said, “maybe you’ll go back there.”
“I’d like to—I intend to—but there’ll be a lot of court procedure on Mollan.” Lorrest looked uncomfortable. “It could be quite a few years.”
“Enough said.” Refusing to yield to self-pity, Hargate went to the front of the cabin with the intention of sating his hunger for strange horizons while he still had the opportunity. Almost as if his movement had affected the aircraft’s balance, the nose of the machine dipped under automatic control and it began boring down into lower layers of the atmosphere. Within five minutes they were on the ground at the point from which they had departed on the previous day and Lorrest, who was rapidly regaining the use of his left arm, had unloaded Hargate and his chair. They left the wooded area, crossed the stream and proceeded up the gentle rise in the direction of the invisible node.
“Have you made up your mind?” Lorrest said, effortlessly propelling the chair on the incline.
“It had better be Cotter’s Edge—that’s where it all started.” Hargate suddenly realised he felt something akin to claustrophobia at the prospect of returning to his former existence. “Besides, from Valparaiso the Moon would be upside down. It wouldn’t look right.”
Lorrest halted the chair a few paces from the node, came round to the front and extended his hand. “We’d better take the chance to say goodbye. There’ll be Bureau men waiting for me at the other end, and things may be a little difficult.”
“Sure.” Hargate was in the act of reaching for the offered hand when—with a silent, mind-numbing shock—his reality changed.
Standing behind Lorrest, where a second earlier there had been emptiness, was a towering figure in a gold-belted tunic of silver brocade. His head was leonine and massive, with the unmodified Mollanian cranium, and in one hand he held what appeared to be a radiation weapon. Hargate recognised Warden Vekrynn on the instant and his mind was invaded by darkness.
Lorrest spun on his heel and froze as Vekrynn made a stabbing gesture with the pistol.
“That’s the way—both of you stay perfectly still,” Vekrynn ordered, using English for Hargate’s benefit. “These paralysis weapons are basically harmless, but I’m told it’s quite painful when the effects begin to wear off.”