We might have seen more. But we had seen enough; and we were interrupted.
There was an alien roaring, and I felt someone clutch at me. The helmet was jerked from my head, and the distant visions went out like a turned-off lamp.
The apelike butler was grinning at me, Hallam Sperry standing just behind.
“Busybodies you are, gentlemen,” rumbled Hallam Sperry with sinister good humor. “Poking and prying. Well, we left you here and I don’t suppose I have a right to complain.”
I tried to get at him, but the giant strength of the squat “butler’s” arms held me easily. “Sperry,” I yelled, “you hired that gangster to kill my uncle!”
Sperry shrugged. “Why, perhaps I did,” he agreed. “We play for high stakes here, young man. One uses whatever methods are necessary. The means don’t matter—as long as you win!”
I felt Gideon, behind him, tensing to make a jump at Sperry; but the butler saw it too. He dropped me and jumped back, pulling a gun from his pocket. “Hold it,” he warned thickly.
Hallam Sperry chuckled. “Sit down, gentlemen,” he ordered. “Brooks here will be more comfortable, and so will you.”
Brooks. I looked at the squat man again, a name ringing in my mind. “Oh,” I saw slowly. “Stupid of me. I remember you now. You were one of the men who jumped me and threw me in the drainage tube.”
Sperry nodded enthusiastically. “You are very perceptive,” he said. “Very correct; he was. But that’s over and done with, so let’s forget it. Question is, what do we do with you now?”
“The same as you did with my uncle, I suppose,” I said bitterly. “You’d kill me without a qualm.”
“Oh, certainly. Perhaps I’ll have to. But I wish—” Sperry looked at me speculatively—“I wish I had a little more information. That fool Catroni, as you perhaps saw for yourself, was a little hasty. His orders were to wait until Stewart Eden logged the results of his expedition before scuttling them. He was worried, perhaps, that the surface vessel wouldn’t wait for him; at any rate he left a little prematurely. As a result, I don’t know the one thing that I want to know most of alclass="underline" Is there or is there not uranium at the bottom of the Deep?”
The butler, Brooks, said eagerly, “Want to brainpump them, Mr. Sperry?”
Sperry shook his head. “Patience, Brooks,” he rumbled. “Young man, you know what the brainpump can do. I had to use it on Catroni because I couldn’t believe he was as stupid as it seemed; I thought, unjustly as it turned out, that he was holding out on me. He died as a result of my suspicion. Not comfortably; the brainpump is not comfortable for its subjects.” He looked at me narrowly, then went on in a meditative tone. “I don’t really suppose,” he continued, “that you know any more about your uncle’s affairs than I do. But I need not chance being wrong. I could quite easily put you under the brainpump and find out. once and for all. Of course, after I do that, you know, you will be dead.”
I said tightly. “You can’t bluff me, Sperry!”
“Oh, I never bluff. T am just considering the possibilities. And I won’t try to hide from you the fact that T don’t want you dead just now. You still do own that stock. I want it. With you dead, the stock would go to your heirs, whoever they might be. If they turned up, I’d have them to reckon with; if they couldn’t be found, the surrogate’s court would step in to protect their interests for some future date. You understand that I have a great deal of influence here in Marinia; such an event would not be a catastrophe. But it would be—inconvenient.”
I said, “What do you want?”
He said sharply. “The stock. Sign it over to me.”
“And then what?” I demanded. “Then you kill us?”
Sperry spread his hands. He said gently, “What can I say?” He stepped closer, his eyes burning into mine. He said, in a tone that was still mild and gentle: “I can tell you this much: There are worse things than merely being killed, young man.” We locked gazes for a long moment. Then he blinked, and was a gentle old man again. He said:
“I tell you everything in my mind, you see. Open and above-board; it always pays. I want you to understand my position very clearly, Mr. Eden. I have some of the stock in Marine Mines; I want it all. I have your uncle’s first experimental seacar, with the same sort of armor on it as the one that Catroni—ah—neutralized for me. I imagine it will work just as well. If there is uranium there, I mean to have it. The world will pay through the nose for it, Mr. Eden. Perhaps they will pay in money; perhaps in other things. For the world is short of uranium; and the man who owns enough of it can own the world.”
There was a sudden animal flare in his eyes; for a moment I caught a glimpse of the real Hallam Sperry, the wolfman who would destroy anything for ultimate power; then it died away.
Hallam Sperry sighed heavily and turned away. ‘Take care of these two, Brooks,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll want to talk to them again in a little while.”
He was gone, the door closing behind him.
It was a bad spot. Trouble had piled on trouble; it seemed we had reached the bottom. But the worst was yet to come.
The worst was—Gideon.
When Hallam Sperry walked out, leaving us under the watchful eyes of the squat toad named Brooks, Gideon was sitting motionless against the wall. He sat, still and rigid, for long moments, until I began to worry and said tentatively, “Gideon?”
He didn’t answer. He sat staring, his face lined and fearful. I could almost see him shaking.
It was the worst shock of all to me: Gideon seemed to have lost his nerve entirely. I began to realize just how much I had depended on his strength and wisdom and patience—just then, when he was trembling on the point of collapse.
Things began to look very dark.
The “butler” noticed it and grinned. “They’re all alike,” he said contemptuously. “There won’t be any trouble out of him. Or you either,” he added, looking at me coolly.
I said, “The only trouble is what you make for yourself. You can’t get away with this.”
He said, “We can’t?” He shook his head in mock worry. “Now you tell me,” he said. “If you’d only mentioned it before ” I didn’t laugh. I suppose I should have; because his imitation good humor vanished and, before I could dodge, I caught his clublike hand across the side of my head. I went reeling.
I barely heard him say, “That’s for nothing. Now don’t do anything!”
I shook my head and got up on hands and knees. At the Academy we had had, of course, plenty of training in hand-to-hand combat; if I could only have counted on Gideon to distract the man for a moment, I would have jumped him and taken my chances—even though he outweighed me two to one, and the weight was all animal muscle. But Gideon was still sitting frozen behind me, not even noticing what was going on. I said thickly:
“Brooks, you’ll pay. You’ve got us, but sooner or later somebody’s going to catch up with you, and you won’t be carrying a gun.’”
“Gun?” he demanded contemptuously. “Who needs a gun?” He patted his pocket. “There it is and there it stays; if I can’t take care of two miserable specimens like you with my bare hands. I’ll go back to Alcatraz and pound rocks to toughen up.” He came closer and stood over me menacingly. “On your feet, little man,” he ordered. “I haven’t had my workout this morning, and I’ll be glad to accommodate you if you want exercise. Sperry won’t mind—it’ll just soften you up for the brainpump later on.”
The brainpump! So that was what was in store for us…
“Come on,” he said thickly, his eyes glowing. He was an animal from skull to thick-booted feet, a creature of violence who loved his way of life. It looked like hard times for me; my only hope was to get up and take it, and pray for a quick knockout—