Mantell nodded tensely, too absorbed to speak. He heard the other technicians murmur behind him.
“Here we go, then,” Thurdan said grimly.
His right index finger jabbed sharply down on a projecting green stud of the control panel. The building shook. A violet flare of energy leaped into sight on the vision screen.
And where, a second ago, eleven Space Patrol ships had been arrayed in fighting formation, now there were none.
Thurdan chuckled. “They didn’t expect that, I’d bet! They thought it was impossible to take this heavy an attack and still return fire! But I’m giving them their own juice back twice as hard!”
His finger came down again.
A flank of the Patrol attackers melted into nothingness.
Mantell saw what the strategy was: Thurdan was firing in the millionth-of-a-second pauses between each phase of the synchronized screens, squirting out a burst of energy in the micromoment when Starhaven was left unguarded. But the force of the beam coming up from the planet served as a screen itself, keeping the metal-shielded world from harm.
Again and again Thurdan’s finger came down heavily on the firing stud, until the sky was cleared of ships. The angry cloud of buzzing, energy-spitting gnats that had been plaguing Starhaven was wiped out.
All except one, Mantell saw. One Space Patrol ship remained. He waited for Thurdan to spear it with a burst.
Instead he spoke into a microphone: “Get our ships up there, and grapple that one on. I want that ship. I want to study those guns.”
He flicked away a stream of sweat from his forehead, rose, yawned and stretched. Again Starhaven had triumphed.
An hour later, Mantell was in Thurdan’s office in central Starhaven when four of his private corpsmen brought in the crew of the captured SP ship. At the moment Thurdan was expounding to him the virtues of his screen setup, with what Mantell considered was excusable pride. The big man had just given an awesome demonstration of skill, and Mantell had told him so. He felt sincerely impressed; and there was no reason why Thurdan shouldn’t know it.
“A hundred and eighty-one ships they lost,” Thurdan said. “Over five hundred Patrolmen dead, and at a cost of billions of credits to the Galactic Federation.”
“And without a single Starhaven casualty,” Mantell pointed out.
“That’s only part of it!” Thurdan exclaimed. “We soaked up enough power in that raid to run Starhaven for a year. I’ve ordered the three auxiliary generators shut down indefinitely, until we’re able to use up the trapped power surplus. We—”
The door chimed.
Myra appeared from the inner office and crossed to the door smoothly, saying, “I’ll see who it is, Mr. Thurdan.”
A moment later she reappeared.
“Well?” Thurdan growled.
“The captive SP men are here, under guard.”
A scowl of surprise and annoyance darkened Thurdan’s face. “Captive SP men?” he repeated. “Captives? Who said anything about prisoners? Myra, tell me—who brought in the SP ship?”
“Bentley and his crew.”
“Get Bentley on the phone, fast.”
Myra nodded and punched out the number. Mantell, at one side of Thurdan’s desk, was trying to stare away from her, trying not to admire her liquid grace of movement. He knew Thurdan was still keeping close check on him.
The screen swirled colorfully and a face that Mantell recognized appeared. It belonged to the man who had brought him to Starhaven long ago.
Thurdan said, “Who issued orders authorizing you to take prisoners, Bentley?”
“Why, nobody, sir. I thought—”
“You thought! In the future, just don’t attempt to think, Bentley. Leave that to me. It doesn’t look good on you. Starhaven isn’t a jail. We don’t want prisoners here. You understand that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Next time you happen to capture a ship, jettison any SP man you find aboard.”
“Yes, sir.”
Thurdan broke contact, whirled, and stared at Mantell. “Johnny, there’s a bunch of SP men outside the office. Have them killed. Then report back to me.”
He said it in a cool, even tone of voice. There was none of the anger in it that he had displayed when talking to the unfortunate Bentley.
“Have them killed.” Just like that.
“What are you waiting for, Mantell?”
The room was very silent. “Killing’s a little out of my line, Ben. I’m a research man. I can’t murder a group of innocent SP men, just because you don’t—”
Thurdan’s fist came up faster than Mantell’s eyes could flicker. Fireworks exploded in his head, then he crashed hard into the wall. He heard Myra gasp. He realized Thurdan had opened the fist at the last second and had merely slapped him. But even so, he felt as if he had been poleaxed.
His head rocked. He wobbled unsteadily away from the wall, making sure he was keeping well out of firing range of those fists.
Thurdan said, “I thought you were loyal, Johnny. I gave you an order. You stopped to argue. That doesn’t go on Starhaven. I told you about that. See that you remember it from now on.”
Mantell nodded. His jaw throbbed fiercely where Thurdan had slapped him.
“Yes, Ben.”
“Make sure you mean it! Now get out of here and dispose of those SP men. Come back here when you’ve done the job. That’s an order!”
His voice had regained the cool, level quality of his normal conversation by the time he finished speaking. There was nothing insane or paranoiac about Ben Thurdan, Mantell saw. Thurdan was simply the boss, and aimed to keep things that way.
Behind him, Myra was looking expressionlessly out the window.
“Okay, Ben,” Mantell said hoarsely. “I’ll take care of it right away.”
Chapter Thirteen
Mantell stepped out into the anteroom where four pale SP men waited, standing stiffly at attention, guarded by Thurdan’s private corps-men. The corpsmen recognized him and nodded curtly.
“Thurdan wants these men put out of the way,” Mantell said, in a dry, harsh voice.
The head corpsman said, “Locked up, you mean?”
“No. Killed. Destroyed.”
“But Bentley said—”
“Those are orders!” Mantell scowled. “Thurdan just gave Bentley the devil because he brought in these prisoners,” he said. He glanced at the SP men, who were registering as little emotion as possible. “Come on. Take them down the hall. We can shove them down the disposal unit there.”
Mantell shuddered inwardly at his own calmness. But this was Ben Thurdan’s way. This was Starhaven.
The corpsmen pushed the four SP captives roughly along, down the brightly lighted hall toward the empty room at the end of the corridor. They were herded inside.
“Okay, Mantell,” the corpsman said. “You’re in charge. Which one goes first?”
As Mantell hesitated, a tall SP man stared at him strangely and said to the corpsman, “Just a second. Did you say Mantell?”
“Yeah.”
Mantell moistened his lips. Perhaps the fellow was from Mulciber, and knew about him.
“Johnny Mantell?” he went on.
“That’s me,” Mantell snapped. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I thought I recognized you,” said the SP man casually. “I’m Carter, Fourteenth Earth Platoon. What the hell are you doing in this outfit? And on Thurdan’s side? When I knew you you were a lot different.”
“I—” He stopped. “What do you mean, you knew me? Where?”
“In the Patrol, of course!”
“You’re crazy!”
“It was five years ago, when we were serving in the Syrtis Insurrection.” The way he said it, it sounded like self-evident truth. “You couldn’t have forgotten that so soon, Johnny!”
“What are you trying to get away with?” Mantell asked roughly. “Five years ago I was a stumblebum on Mulciber. Seven years ago I was doing the same thing. A
lso one year ago. I don’t know who you are or what you’re trying to pull, but I never was in the Patrol. For the last seven years I’ve been running away from the SP—until I wound up on Starhaven.”
The SP man was shaking his head incredulously. “They must have done something to you. Same name, same face—it has to be you!”
Mantell realized he was shaking with uneasiness. “You’re just stalling for time,” he said. He glanced at the corpsman leader. “Ledru, get going with this job.”
“Sure, Mantell.”
The Patrolman who had given his name as Carter was staring at him aghast, then looked at the disposal unit. “You’re just going to shove us down that thing? Alive? But we’re Patrolmen, Johnny! Just like you!”
Those last three words rocked Mantell. He knew the reputation of the Patrol well enough, knew they would pull any kind of trick at all to achieve their ends. That was why Thurdan didn’t want them kept prisoners; SP men on Starhaven would be potentially dangerous, behind bars or not.
But there was something in the Patrolman’s tone that rang of sincerity.
Impossible! Those seven stark years on Mulciber burned vividly in Mantell’s memory—too vividly for them to have been only dreams.
“Is the disposal ready?” he asked in a stony voice.
Ledru nodded. He signaled to his men and they grabbed one of the SP boys.
The one named Carter said, “You must be out of your head, Mantell, to do this. They did something to you.”
“Shut up,” Mantell said. He looked at the cold-faced corpsman chief. He thought: They say I committed murder on Mulciber. I say I didn’t, but they found it on my psychprobe charts. Even if I did, it was in a fight—it was manslaughter, nothing worse. This is cold-blooded murder!
But Thurdan must be watching, he thought.
“Ledru,” he said, pointing at Carter, “put this one down the hole first.”
“Sure.”
At Ledru’s gesture the corpsmen released the man they held and moved toward Carter.
Suddenly the strange thing that had happened to Mantell three times already on Starhaven happened again. He experienced that feeling of unreality, the conviction that all his past life was a mere hallucination. It came bursting up within him. He swayed.
Sweat poured down his body. The floor seemed to melt.
The corpsmen were dragging the struggling Carter toward the open disposal hatch, and Mantell knew he couldn’t watch, that he had to get out of the room and get away from this thing that was happening.
He turned and ran to the door. He threw it open and lunged blindly out into the hall.
From behind him he heard a prolonged cry of sheer terror, as the last SP man hurtled through the disposal trap, out into endless space.
Then there was only silence that seemed deafeningly loud.…
Unreasoningly, Mantell started to run up the corridor, the hollow sounds of his own footsteps seeming to pursue him. At last out of breath, lungs gasping, he leaned against the cool, yielding wall to rest. Ahead of him, the bright, straight corridor stretched endlessly until walls, floor and ceiling seemed to meet together in the far distance.
The words of the SP man, Carter, kept drumming mechanically in his brain. “Five years ago when we were serving together in the Syrtis Insurrection.… Five years ago when we.…” He pressed his palms over his ears, trying to shut out their persistent echo.
“Lies! All lies!” Mantell heard himself shout. It had been only an SP trick, a last-minute attempt to escape the doom that Thurdan had decreed for the Earth prisoners.
Leaning there, still sucking air into his burning lungs, a strange hallucination came over him. For an instant he seemed transported, as in a dream, to another world, another time. He was crawling through the blood-red yambo forest floor on his stomach and elbows, the long nozzle of the blaster held before him, attached by a flexible tube to the magna-energy tank strapped to his back. Somewhere ahead, hidden by the twisted scarlet trunks, lay the secret spacefield they had to capture. Suddenly the entire forest came alive with scarlet-skinned Syrtians, their fanglike tusks glittering. He pressed the activator button of his blaster. Then abruptly the entire forest and himself along with it seemed to dissolve into nothingness. With recurrent flashes of consciousness, he remembered being dragged by his legs, and much later, a tall man grinning down at him, saying they’d secured the spacefield.…
He shook his head, shutting his eyes; his respiration steadying down.… And another vision rose before him, clearer and more real than the first one.
He was on the warm golden sands of Mulciber. On the broad raised walk before him, he looked up at the patronizing smug faces of the tourists. A fat man dressed in a loose chiton-like garment of red and yellow checks, laughed, pointed, and threw out some coins. Mantell knew what they were waiting to see; knew the show he was expected to put on.
So he raced, sand flying, on his hands and knees, scrabbling hungrily into the sand for the coins, while his ears burned with the laughter of the Earth tourists.…
“Five years ago when we were serving in the Syrtis Insurrection …”
A hallucination! A lie! Mulciber was true; that was a direct recall. But that fight for the spacefield in the blood-red yambo forest? Only a dream, a fantasy that had no relation to actuality.
“Five years ago when we …”
The recurrent words and the deep voice kept up its measured, mechanical beat, like a pounding drum inside his head, interminably, torturingly.
And at last, as Mantell still stood there, doubt, like a hungry rodent, started gnawing at his mind. A hallucination? Yes. But whose? Carter’s—or his own?
He shook uncontrollably and sobbed. Once again, compulsively, he started to run, hearing only the pound of his feet against the floor, seeing nothing, not knowing where he was heading.
He ran into something hard and rebounded, half stunned. He looked up, thinking he had collided with the wall or with a door.
He hadn’t.
He stared up into the sculptured face of Ben Thurdan. It looked as bleak and as baleful as it had at the moment of the SP attack. He reached out and grasped Mantell’s shoulder with an iron grip.
“Come on in my office a second, Mantell. I want to talk to you.”
Numb inside, and chilled, Mantell faced Thurdan across the width of his office. The door was locked and sealed. Myra stood far off near the window, staring palely at him, then at the glowering Thurdan.
Thurdan said, “I didn’t like the way you were talking when you went out of here, Mantell. I couldn’t trust you. It was the first time I felt that way about you.”
“Ben, I—”
“Keep quiet. I didn’t trust you and I couldn’t allow four SP men to run around Starhaven unchecked. So I used this”—he indicated a switch-studded control panel behind his desk—“and monitored your conversation all the way down into the room at the end of the hall.”
Mantell tried to look cool. “What are you trying to say, Ben? The Space Patrol men are dead, aren’t they?”
“They are. No thanks to you. Ledru and his men finished the job while you were dashing away at top speed up the hall. But listen to this.”
Thurdan flipped a switch and a recorder unit came to life on playback. Mantell heard Carter’s voice say, “In the Patrol, of course! Five years ago, when we were serving in the Syrtis Insurrection! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that so soon, Johnny!”
Thurdan clicked the playback off and said, “What was that all about?”
“It’s a trick,” Mantell said calmly, blotting out his inner panic and confusion. “The Patrol is good at that, as you ought to know. He was trying to confuse us all and perhaps escape. And you—”
“I don’t necessarily believe what an SP man says,” Thurdan broke in. “You were psychprobed when you got here, and the probe said you had lived on Mulciber. It didn’t say anything about your being in the Space Patrol.” Thurdan’s dark eyes narrowed and bored high-intensity holes throug
h Mantell. “But just suppose maybe the psychprobe was wrong, though.”
“How could that be?”
Thurdan shrugged. “Maybe the SP has discovered ways of planting fake memories good enough to fool a psychprobe. Or maybe my operator deliberately altered the readings for some reason of his own. Or he just bungled it out of sheer old age.” Thurdan turned to Myra and said, “Send in Dr. Harmon.”
A few moments passed, and then the spare figure of Harmon appeared at the door, withered-looking, mumbling to himself. He looked ancient.
He was ancient, Mantell thought—well over a hundred, certainly. Even modern techniques of gerontology weren’t able to keep a man young and hale past eighty-five or so, and Harmon looked his age.
He said, “Something the matter, Ben?”
Thurdan glared at him. “Maybe or maybe not. I’m not sure. It seems one of the SP men Bentley captured today recognized Mantell here; claimed to have served with him five years ago!”
“Served with … but that’s impossible, Ben. I probed Mantell myself. He hadn’t been off Mulciber in seven years. That’s what his chart says. And surely if I had seen anything about the Space Patrol there, don’t you think I would have told you?”
“You’re an old man, Erik. You were old when you ran into that vivisection scandal and had to come here, and you haven’t been getting any younger since. Maybe you didn’t do a very good job of probing Mantell. Maybe you overlooked some facts here and there.”
Harmon went chalk-white and began to sputter incoherent angry phrases.
Annoyed, Mantell said, “Look here, Ben. Just because an SP man pulls a crazy desperate stunt to keep himself alive a few minutes more, that’s no—”
“Shut up, Johnny. That SP man sounded convincing to me. I want to clear this business up to my own satisfaction right here and now.”
Harmon said, “But how can you—?”
Thurdan snapped, “Harmon, set up your equipment. We’re going to probe Mantell again.”
There was an instant of dead silence in the room. Myra and Mantell reached the same conclusion at the same split second, and looked at each other in that identical second, eyes wide with horror.