“Normal bitterness,” remarked one of Katsulos’ men, appearing in the doorway behind him.
“Yes, this one always snaps right back,” Katsulos said. “But a good subject. See the brain rhythms?” He showed the other a torn-off piece of chart from some recording device.
They stood there discussing Jor like a specimen, while he waited and listened. They had taught Jor to behave. They thought they had taught him permanently—but one of these days he was going to show them. Before it was too late. He shivered in his mail coat.
“Take him back to his cell,” Katsulos ordered at last. “I’ll be along in a moment.”
Jor looked about him confusedly as he was led out of the temple and down some stairs. His recollection of the treatment he had just undergone was already becoming uncertain; and what he did remember was so unpleasant that he made no effort to recall more. But his sullen determination to strike back stayed with him, stronger than ever. He had to strike back, somehow, and soon.
Left alone in the temple, Katsulos kicked the pieces of the plastic dummy into a pile, to be ready for careful salvage. He trod heavily on the malleable face, making it unrecognizable, just in case someone beside his own men should happen to see it.
Then he stood for a moment looking up into the maniacal bronze face of Mars. And Katsulos’ eyes, that were cold weapons when he turned them on other men, were now alive.
A communicator sounded, in what was to be the High Lord Nogara’s cabin when he took delivery of Nirvana II. Admiral Hemphill, alone in the cabin, needed a moment to find the proper switch on the huge, unfamiliar desk. “What is it?”
“Sir, our rendezvous with the Solarian courier is completed; we’re ready to drive again, unless you have any last-minute messages to transmit?”
“Negative. Our new passenger came aboard?”
“Yes, sir. A Solarian, named Mitchell Spain, as we were advised.”
“I know the man, Captain. Will you ask him to come to this cabin as soon as possible? I’d like to talk to him at once.”
“Yes sir.”
“Are those police still snooping around the bridge?”
“Not at the moment, Admiral.”
Hemphill shut off the communicator and leaned back in the thronelike chair from which Felipe Nogara would soon survey his Esteeler empire; but soon the habitually severe expression of Hemphill’s lean face deepened and he stood up. The luxury of this cabin did not please him.
On the blouse of Hemphill’s neat, plain uniform were seven ribbons of scarlet and black, each representing a battle in which one or more berserker machines had been destroyed. He wore no other decorations except his insignia of rank, granted him by the United Planets, the anti-berserker league, of which all worlds were at least nominal members.
Within a minute the cabin door opened. The man who entered, dressed in civilian clothes, was short and muscular and rather ugly. He smiled at once, and came toward Hemphill, saying: “So it’s High Admiral Hemphill now. Congratulations. It’s a long time since we’ve met.”
“Thank you. Yes, not since the Stone Place.” Hemphill’s mouth bent upward slightly at the corners, and he moved around the desk to shake hands. “You were a captain of marines, then, as I recall.”
As they gripped hands, both men thought back to that day of victory. Neither of them could smile at it now, for the war was going badly again.
“Yes, that’s nine years ago,” said Mitchell Spain. “Now—I’m a foreign correspondent for Solar News Service. They’re sending me out to interview Nogara.”
“I’ve heard that you’ve made a reputation as a writer.” Hemphill motioned Mitch to a chair. “I’m afraid I have no time myself for literature or other nonessentials.”
Mitch sat down, and dug out his pipe. He knew Hemphill well enough to be sure that no slur was intended by the reference to literature. To Hemphill, everything was nonessential except the destruction of berserker machines; and today such a viewpoint was doubtless a good one for a High Admiral.
Mitch got the impression that Hemphill had serious business to talk about, but was uncertain of how to broach the subject. To fill the hesitant silence, Mitch remarked: “I wonder if the High Lord Nogara will be pleased with his new ship.” He gestured around the cabin with the stem of his pipe.
Everything was as quiet and steady as if rooted on the surface of a planet. There was nothing to suggest that even now the most powerful engines ever built by Earth-descended man were hurling this ship out toward the rim of the galaxy at many times the speed of light.
Hemphill took the remark as a cue. Leaning slightly forward in his uncomfortable-looking seat, he said: “I’m not concerned about his liking it. What concerns me is how it’s going to be used.”
Since the Stone Place, Mitch’s left hand was mostly scar tissue and prosthetics. He used one plastic finger now to tamp down the glowing coal of his pipe. “You mean Nogara’s idea of shipboard fun? I caught a glimpse just now of the gladiatorial arena. I’ve never met him, but they say he’s gone bad, really bad, since Karlsen’s death.”
“I wasn’t talking about Nogara’s so-called amusements. What I’m really getting at is this: Johann Karlsen may be still alive.”
Hemphill’s calm, fantastic statement hung in the quiet cabin air. For a moment Mitch thought that he could sense the motion of the C-plus ship as it traversed spaces no man understood, spaces where it seemed time could mean nothing and the dead of all the ages might still be walking.
Mitch shook his head. “Are we talking about the same Johann Karlsen?”
“Of course.”
“Two years ago he went down into a hypermassive sun, with a berserker-controlled ship on his tail. Unless that story is not true?”
“It’s perfectly true, except we think now that his launch went into orbit around the hypermass instead of falling into it. Have you seen the girl who’s aboard?”
“I passed a girl, outside your cabin here. I thought . . . ”
“No, I have no time for that. Her name is Lucinda, single names are the custom on her planet. She’s an eyewitness of Karlsen’s vanishing.”
“Oh. Yes, I remember the story. But what’s this about his being in orbit?”
Hemphill stood up and seemed to become more comfortable, as another man would be sitting down. “Ordinarily, the hypermass and everything near it is invisible, due to the extreme red shift caused by its gravity. But during the last year some scientists have done their best to study it. Their ship didn’t compare to this one”—Hemphill turned his head for a moment, as if he could hear the mighty engines—“but they went as close as they dared, carrying some new instruments, long-wave telescopes. The star itself was still invisible, but they brought back these.”
Hemphill stood behind him. “That’s what space looks like near the hypermass. Remember, it has about a billion times the mass of Sol, packed into roughly the same volume. Gravity like that does things we don’t yet understand.”
“Interesting. What forms these dark lines?”
“Falling dust that’s become trapped in lines of gravitic force, like the lines round a magnet. Or so I’m told.”
“And where’s Karlsen supposed to be?”
Hemphill’s finger descended on a photo, pointing out a spot of crystalline roundness, tiny as a raindrop within a magnified line of dust. “We think this is his launch. Its orbiting about a hundred million miles from the center of the hypermass. And the berserker-controlled ship that was chasing him is here, following him in the same dust-line. Now they’re both stuck. No ordinary engines can drive a ship down there.”
Mitch stared at the photos, looking past them into old memories that came flooding back. “And you think he’s alive.”