He moved to the edge of the cot. Kea could see roped muscles play through the sagging flesh of his neck. He scratched his bound arm. Slipped the knots free.
" ‘Course I woulda thought of lyin'," Murph said. "I'm clever enough for that. Don't make captain in this man's company if you ain't quick on your feet."
"I guess you don't," Kea said. He scratched again. The spoon slipped upward.
"Naw. You don't," Murph repeated. Kea saw Murph make the decision. Saw the click in those cunning eyes.
Kea came off the cot, right hand striking up to the chin, left hand—the bound arm—free, the spoon thrusting. It took Murph in the windpipe. Kea saw the eyes widen. Felt the flesh give. The sharp rush of air. He collapsed back as Murph flopped to the floor. A hand beat against his leg. He heard the whistling horror of Murph expelling his life.
Stillness.
Kea moved his foot. It thumped against Murph's body. There was no reaction. Kea let the weakness take him. All tension drained away. He would rest now. Later, he could get up and re-check the course. Let his eyes run over the readings of happy machinery at work.
Then he would make some soup.
There was plenty to eat and drink, now. Plenty of air to breathe. It would have been a lot closer, though, if Murph hadn't figured out that he had lied.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
MANKIND WAS A little low on heroes when Kea Richards, sole survivor of the Destiny I, returned from Base Ten to Earth. Kea was not sure how the hero card would help him with this ultimate edge he had happened on, but he was canny enough to not let it go unplayed. He had worked out the tale he would spin on the long journey home. He told the truth about the cause of the disaster. A collision with a meteroite. He merely left out it had occurred in another universe. And he certainly didn't tell them about the AM2.
Richards came on humble. He played up the image of an ordinary, hardworking space engineer who had been able to snatch victory from the jaws. He also made much of the "fact" that when those fearless scientists and self-sacrificing space crew members around him died, generally with Expressed Noble Sentiments As Their Last, it was his great good fortune that his formal education at Cal Tech, even though it had been interrupted by financial problems, was remembered and applied directly to the various emergencies.
He took an enormous advance and cooperated cheerfully with the ghost preparing his autobiographical fiche. He went to the banquets and lectures, charging whatever his newly hired agent could cozen. And he was delighted to attend the parties and presentations afterward. He smiled, listened intently to the men and women he met, the ones with power, who glorified in their ability to attract the latest hero. He lied, and lied again.
Sometimes he wondered what the old Kea Richards would have thought, the Richards of Kahanamoku and the first two years in California. The Richards before the Bargetas or long hard years in space, on the far side of Barrier Thirty-three. Shaft him, he decided. A man had to grow up sometime and get over the idea that life was a pretty pink wonderland full of bunnies and lambiekins.
Besides, now there was Anti-Matter Two. The key to personal power, he was honest enough to admit to himself. But it was also the ultimate gift for man, and any other species he would encounter in his explosion out into the universe. Richards could not afford the luxury of an Ethics 101 debate, even within himself.
He was undecided as to what to do next. Anti-Matter Two. Whole galaxies of cheap, raw energy. As Fazlur had said, it would change everything, creating a civilization—or barbarism—unlike whatever had gone before. Richards was determined the vast changes would be for the better. He would make damned sure it was properly directed to the benefit of all. Neither fuhrers nor premiers, doges nor rockefellers, would batten from what he already thought of as his discovery. Nor the Bargetas. And this energy wouldn't be diverted to evil, as most everything from gunpowder to petroleum to the atom had been.
Consider the immediate problems you have. The first and most important, he thought, is to stay alive, and always guard your back. This secret has already cost lives—and is worth the death of entire worlds. Richards knew any hint of the secret of Anti-Matter Two and the Alva Sector would also be enough to put kidnappers with mind-draining tools and assassins on his trail, hired by those who stood to gain/lose the most from AM2. At the very least, charges might be trumped up against him by planetary governments.
Very well, then. So he would need to treat the Alva Sector as if it were some kind of hidden mine, deep in a jungle, that only he knew the directions to. He must not return to the Alva Sector, and that discontinuity in N-space, unless he knew he was not being tracked. Nor was it worthwhile returning to in the immediate future, his mind ran on. Before Anti-Matter Two could be developed, someone must create a handle. A shield. Some substance, synthetic or natural, that was a solid, that was malleable, and that was absolutely neutral to both matter and anti-matter.
Richards gnawed his lip. That was a real problem. He grinned—as if the thought of assassins and brainburners was gathering nuts in May. He continued analyzing and thinking, and came to the wonderful catch-22—except this was a triple whammy: To utilize Power (AM2), he would have to achieve Power (wealth/clout). Which could most easily and safely be accomplished by cultivating Power. Catch-222.
That third Power was the men and women whose egos he was stroking as he toured his saga. And they were the beings he was determined to transform or destroy as he helped the human race achieve its destiny. He remembered the ancient saying, If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. But this suggested his next move.
A job. He had no intention of renewing his contract with SpaceWays/Galiot. Not with all these other offers that were coming in. Corporations wanted him solely for the Hero Factor, just as they hired gravball stars for the same reasons. Richards would be expected to continue pressing the flesh, except this time for the benefit of whoever was paying him. That would give him a chance to travel the halls of power. He carefully examined the various letters, verbals, and messages he'd gotten— glork that he'd more or less ignored.
One was from Austin Bargeta. Call him, anytime, day or night, on a private line. The message slip was balled up and hurled into the trash can in a reflex. Kea caught himself. Bargeta? A known entity. Someone he'd had unlikely dreams of encountering—on Richards's terms and turf—someyear. This could be someyear. He'd heard, in spite of his mind's promise to never concern himself with the Bargetas unless he found them in some sort of gunsights, Austin had fulfilled his early promise and become The Man—replacing his father at the head of the Bargeta octopus.
Bargeta senior had suicided three years after Kea's life had been shattered—or at least changed inalterably—on Mars. Suicided under conditions the tabs could only hint at being unthink-ably disgusting.
He smoothed the slip out and stared at it, thinking. Possibly. He made his way to a library and did some research. Very possibly.
Bargeta Ltd. still was one of the colossi of the twenty-second century. But it was tottering. Bad investments had been made. Bargeta Transport, the tree all the lovely money-bearing branches grew from, was blighted. The old man had ordered new plants built, plants that never came up to full production. He'd commissioned new-model spacecraft, models that were of-fered on an already-saturated market, and craft that seemed to offer no more than a new crew/compartment/drive configuration rather than any real engineering improvements. And then he'd "passed on," and Austin had been given the scepter.