Burton walked slowly through the door and toward the man. The others were fanning out, their guns ready.
When they were within sixty feet of him, the man saw them. He reared up out of the chair, grimaced, and sat back down. His hand shot out, dived into a recess under the panel, and came out holding a strange-looking device. It had a pistollike butt for gripping, a barrel about a foot long and three inches in diameter, and a sphere at its end the size of a large apple.
Burton cried out, "Loga!"
He ran forward.
49
THE ETHICAL ROSE AGAIN AND SHOUTED, "STOP! OR I'LL FIRE!"
They kept on running. He sighted along the barrel through the transparent sphere, and a thin scarlet line shot soundlessly from the sphere. Smoke curled up from the shallow arc drawn on the metal before the group.
They halted. Anything that could melt that metal was very impressive.
"I can cut you all into two with a single sweep of this," Loga said. "I don't want to. There's been far too much violence, and I'm sick of it. But I will kill you if I must. Now... all of you turn around in unison and throw your weapons as far as you can toward the door."
Burton said, "There are nine guns trained on you. You might get one or two of us, but you'll be blown to bits."
The Ethical smiled grimly.
"It looks like a Mexican standoff, doesn't it?"
He paused. "But it isn't, believe me!"
Croomes shouted, "No, it isn't! You Satan, you fiend from Hell!"
Her pistol boomed. The scarlet beam flashed out from Loga's weapon at the same time that eight other guns exploded.
Loga fell backwards. Burton ran, leaped upon the revolving disc, darted over it to the fixed platform, and pointed his revolver at the prostrate Ethical. The others crowded around him.
While Turpin and Tai-Peng picked up the bleeding and ashen-skinned man from the floor, Burton seized the sphere-ended weapon. Loga was seated roughly in his chair. He held his hand over a gushing wound on the biceps of his right arm. "He got Croomes!" Alice said, pointing. Burton looked once at the severed body and turned away.
Loga looked around as if he couldn't believe what had happened, then said, "There are three boxes in the upper-right-hand drawer in the console. Bring them to me, and I'll be all right in a few minutes."
"This isn't a trick?" Burton said.
"No! I swear! I've had enough of tricks and murder! I meant you no harm! I just wanted you to be disarmed so that I could explain without worrying about you. You're such a violent breed!"
"Look who's talking," Burton said.
"I didn't do it because I loved it!"
"Neither did we," Burton said, but he wasn't so sure that he was wholly truthful.
They brought out three silver boxes set with green emeralds. Burton opened each one slowly and inspected the contents. As the Ethical had said, each contained a bottle. Two held liquid; one, some pink stuff.
"How do I know they won't release some sort of gas?" Burton said. "Or that they aren't poison?"
"They won't be," Nur said. "He does not want to die now."
"That's right," Loga said. "Something terrible may happen soon, and only I know how to stop it. I may need your help."
"You could have had it all along," Burton said, "if only you'd told us the truth in the beginning."
"I had my reasons for not doing so," Loga said. "Very good reasons. And then things got out of hand."
He squeezed one of the bottles, and a clear liquid spurted out onto his hand. After rubbing it over the wound on his shoulder, wincing at the pain, he drank from the second bottle. From the third he poured out a pink gooey substance into his left hand and then pressed it over the wound.
"The first was to sterilize the wound," he said. "The second was to cancel the shock and give me strength. The third will heal the wound in a very short time. Three days."
Burton said, "Where did we wound you the first time?"
"The only bad wound was in my left thigh."
His grayness of skin had been replaced by a normal color within a minute. He asked for some water, which Frigate brought to him. Burton lit a cigarette. His questions were a logjam in his throat. Which one should be spit out first?
Before the inquisition, though, certain things had to be done. Burton held his revolver on Loga while the others brought their chairs in and Frigate made an extra trip to get Burton's. These were placed on the floor on the side of the disc where they'd be out of sight of Croomes' body. While this was being done, Loga was allowed to lift his bloodstained chair to a designated spot. The other chairs were then arranged closely in a semicircle facing the Ethical.
"I think we could all stand a little drink," Burton said. Loga told them how to set the controls of a grail box to get their orders filled. His own was a yellow wine which the others had never found in their grails. Burton duplicated Loga's request and tasted the wine. It was comparable to nothing he'd ever had before, delicate yet pungent. For some reason it evoked a slowly receding tide of dark green waters above which flew giant white birds with crimson beaks.
Burton sat with Loga's weapon across his lap. His first question was how it was operated. Loga indicated the safety lock and the trigger, the use of which Burton had figured out for himself.
"Now," he said, "I think it best that we start out at the beginning. But wtiat is the beginning?"
"Pardon me for interrupting," the Moor said. "We should establish one thing right now. Ah Qaaq... Loga... you must have a private resurrection chamber in the tower?"
"Yes."
The Ethical hesitated. "It wasn't just for me. Tringu also used it. He was my best friend; we were raised together on the Gardenworld. He was the only one I could trust."
"Was he the man called Stern who tried to kill Firebrass before the Parseval took off the tower?"
"Yes. He failed, as you know. So, when I saw that Firebrass was going to get into the tower ahead of me... and Siggen was too, I had to kill them both. Siggen had not told Firebrass who I was. She believed me when I told her that I'd abandon my plans and throw myself on the mercy of the Council. But only after we'd gotten to the tower and the Council was resurrected. She never would have agreed if I'd not lied, not told her that I'd put an inhibit on communication with the computer and that only I could break it. She said she wouldn't tell Firebrass about me until we were in the tower. But she then made arrangements to be in the tower ahead of me with Firebrass. She meant to check up~«n the truth of what I'd told her. Also, I was afraid that while she and Firebrass were in the helicopter on the way to the top of the tower, she'd change her mind and tell Firebrass. So... I set off the bomb I'd planted in the copter just in case..."
"Who's Siggen?" Alice said.
"My wife. The woman posing as Any a Obrenova, the Russian airship officer."
"Oh, yes," Alice said as tears ran down Loga's cheeks.
"It's obvious that your people found your private resurrector and deactivated it. Otherwise, you'd have killed yourself and been translated to the tower. Have you reactivated your resurrector?"
"Yes. Actually, I have two. But both were located and deactivated."
Burton said, "Then if we'd killed you just now, you'd have escaped us. Why didn't you let us do it? Or kill yourself?"
"Because, as I said, I may need you. Because I'm sick of this violence. Because I owe you something."
He paused. "I'd set up an inhibition in the general lazarus machinery long ago. It'd be activated at my signal, the same signal which would kill all within the tower, the underground chambers, and in the area of the sea. But Tringu and I had our private lines. One of them was in the room at the base of the tower. Sharmun, the woman in charge in Monat's and Thanabur's absence, told me that the two rooms had been found. She said that it would do no good to commit suicide in the hope that I could rise in the tower and continue my evil deeds. Me! Evil!"