"She wanted you to do this?" Chuck said thickly, blinking through his pain.
"You both want me dead," she screamed, then tore at the heavy computer on Chuck's belt. He groped for it as she pulled it loose, and was only half turned towards her when heavy pain and blackness crushed against his skull.
"About time you came around," Damian said. "Drink this." Chuck felt the bandage on his neck when he bent to put the spout to his lips. He looked around the room while he sucked in the water. "How long have I been out?" he asked.
"About nine hours. You lost some blood and you have a hole in your head."
"There are just two of us here?"
"That's right," Damian said, and the smile was gone now. "Maybe I figured this wrong, but it's over and done now. I tried to kill you. I didn't succeed and — fairly enough — you tried to kill me right back. But neither of us managed to finish the job. Maybe I'm thinking wrong, but I feel the score is even now and no recriminations."
"You don't hear me complaining. And Helena?"
Damian looked uncomfortable. "Well. . the six hours were almost up. And she did agree on the drawing. And she did lose. She attacked me with the scalpel. I'm afraid your computer was completely smashed. I had to dispose of it."
"The insurance will replace it," Chuck said hoarsely. "God, my neck hurts. Head, too."
"Do you think we'll make it?" Damian asked.
"The odds are a hell of a lot better now than they were nine hours ago."
"Yes, one could say that. Perhaps the powers that be have been propitiated by Miss Tyblewski's noble gesture. Upon such sacrifices. . the gods themselves throw incense." He looked out, unseeing, at the blackness beyond the port. "Do you think that should we get out of this, we should, well, mention Helena. .?"
"Helena who?" Chuck said. "Seventy-four people died when the Yuri Gagarin blew. We're the sole survivors."
You Men of Violence
"I hate you, Raver.” the captain shouted, his strained face just inches away, "and I know you must hate me too."
" 'Hate' is too strong a word.” the big man said quietly. "I think 'despise' is much better."
There was no advance warning of the blow — the captain was too good a fighter for that — just the sudden jab that drove his fist into the other's stomach. Raver's only reaction was a slight and condescending grin. This infuriated the captain, who, though a head shorter than Raver, was still over six feet tall, and he expected some reaction other than scorn from the people he hit. In a blind rage he pummeled the other's unresisting form until Raver, leaking blood from nose and mouth, fell across the captain's desk, then slid limply to the floor.
"Get this carrion out," the captain ordered, rubbing at his bruised knuckles. "And clean up this filth." There were smears of blood across the surface of the desk, and everything on it had been swept to the floor when Raver fell. The captain realized then that the blood was on him too and he dabbed at it distastefully with the kerchief from his sleeve. Still, there was some satisfaction in seeing the half-conscious bulk being carried from the room. "Now who is smiling," he shouted after them, then went out himself to wash and change.
Though the captain did not know it yet, he was the loser. From the moment he had boarded the prison ship two weeks earlier, Raver had been planning this encounter. All of his actions, his earlier confrontations with the captain, the hunger strike when the Phreban had been tortured — every bit of it had been planned with this final scene in mind. Raver had pushed the buttons, the captain had reacted as planned, and Raver had won. He leaned against the metal wall of his cell, clutching tightly the pencil-sized communicator that was concealed by his giant fist. When he had fallen across the desk he had palmed it. This was the reason for everything he had done.
Sighing heavily, Raver slumped to the floor and rolled over on his side. It was no accident that his back was to the glass eye of the monitor pickup, or that the barred door of his cell was in sight. Unobserved — and safe from surprise visitors — he allowed himself to smile as he set to work.
He had only a single tool, a nail which he had hidden in his boot sole and filed flat against the metal side of his bunk during the night. The squared tip now made a tiny screwdriver. His hand was a vise and his fingernails pliers and wrench. It was enough. There was no one still alive who knew Raver's real name, or anything about his earlier life before he went into crime and politics, and he certainly did not look like a typical microtechnician. Yet that was what he was, and a highly skilled one as well. The case of the communicator sprang open under his touch and the delicate leaves of the circuits fanned out. He went to work. There were only a few hours left to setdown and he needed all of them.
With infinite patience he disassembled the components, then rejoined them in new circuitry of his own design. He struck an arc from the tiny battery to solder the connections, and could only hope that enough power remained to operate his device. It took a fraction over three hours to construct and for all of that time he lay still, with just his hands moving, an apparently unconscious bulk to the watchers in the prisoner control center. Only when the work was done did he permit himself to groan and stretch and to climb shakily to his feet. As he went to the barred door he stumbled, then held to the bars with one hand and pressed his forehead against the cool metal. In the preceding weeks he had stood this way for a good part of the waking day, so it was not considered unusual.
His right hand, shielded by his body, slid the wire probe into the opening of the lock while he slowly turned the knob on the variable capacitor.
An RF lock is theoretically pickproof, but that is just theory. In practice a trained technician can cause the circuit to resonate at the keying frequency, which is what Raver did. A needle flickered briefly, and he made careful adjustments until it jumped across the dial and up against its stop. This was the operating frequency. Then he went to the sink and cleaned some of the blood from his face and at the same time reversed connections so that the probe became a transmitter. He was ready.
When the hooters sounded the two-minute warning for strapping down he paused for a moment at the door before going to his cot, which served double duty as an acceleration couch. The device had worked: he had felt the click as the electronic actuator had opened the lock. The door was open. Just before the landing rockets flared he pulled up his blanket and rolled over on his side to face the wall.
The rear jets kicked hard with three G's and the webbing of the bed stretched and creaked while Raver pulled himself slowly to his feet. This was the only time he could be sure that the guards in the prison control center would not be watching him. While they were fighting the deceleration he had to do what must be done. One shuffling step at a time he lurched his way across the cell, the muscles in his legs knotted and rock hard. The stool's three metal legs were welded to the floor and he had examined them and felt their thickness days "earlier. Dropping heavily to his knees he seized the nearest leg in both hands, tensed his body — then pulled. The leg broke free with a sharp crack, and the other two were detached the same way. Then a slow shuffle back to the bed, onto which he put the stool and pulled the blanket over it. The ruse would not bear close examining, but it had to fool the watching guard on the screens for only a brief time. Back across the cell to the door, through it, close it, lock it, and down the passageway. His knees crumpled as more jets cut in for landing, five G's or more, but Raver continued on his hands and knees. He could move about safely only as long as the rockets were firing. When they cut out the crewmen and guards would unstrap and come out and he would be caught. Painfully and slowly he dragged himself across the passageway to the connecting ladder and began to work his way down.