The battle-station was impregnable to anything Gaddy had, but he knew how to get it. The station was about to launch its last carrier; Gaddy must get the carrier before it cleared the launch-tubes and threw up its screens. Twisting and writhing like light-speed snakes of green fire, the Takka-beams leaped the light-seconds to their target. Programmed to follow the beams, the Warp-torp zigzagged around and through everything the frantic Khuum tossed at it. The Takkas found the carrier, and a micro-second later so did the torp. The carrier, still sliding out of the battle-station’s belly, warped out of existence like a small sun gone nova. And the battle-station had no option but to go nova with it!
“Got you, you bastard!” Gaddy tried to scream, nothing coming out but a choking cough, his throat was that dry. But strange, because he did hear screams. Except…they weren’t his.
“No—no—no!” Pavanaz danced beside the ’Vader like some demented puppet-master’s doll, clawed at the jiving bucket-seat and leaped up alongside, to wrench Gaddy’s hands—no Gaddy’s gloves—from the controls.
Gaddy was about to trip into hyperspace; with no one at the controls his ship tore into the battle-station’s planet-wide fireball. Khuum disruptors followed it; stripped down its armor to an eggshell that withered in the nuclear furnace….
“No!” Pavanaz sobbed again, trying to drag Gaddy out of the bucket. “You’ve killed it! Jesus, you’ve killed it!” He didn’t mean the battle-station.
“Killed it?” Gaddy got his straps loose, fell out of the seat, somehow managed to land on his feet. And again: “Killed it?” he said. He was still reeling a little, not yet back on solid ground. Snarling, Pavanaz grabbed his throat. And Aces hit him from the side, a blow that crushed his ear and deafened him on that side for two hours. But it also knocked him loose from Gunner Gaddy.
“His machine!” Aces said then, gasping, pointing at the ’Vader. While on the floor Pavanaz rocked and cried.
His ’Vader, yes, which he’d programmed to cave in if anyone took it over twenty million—because he’d known that no one could ever take it over twenty million. No one human, anyway. Unless it was him. But Gaddy had, and in so doing he’d killed it.
Twenty mill? The score, while it lasted, stood at twenty-five million and odds! The battle-station alone had been worth half of that! But who was counting? Pavanaz knew it would have been more if he hadn’t interrupted the game. Not much more, because once past the Big Twenty and the self-destructs had started to cut in, systematically junking the whole machine. And right now the ’Vader’s complex guts were going up in gray, stinking smoke and blue electrical fire, and the machine sputtered and sparked where she sat atop her own internal funeral pyre.
“Gaddy,” said Aces, awed. “You…you’ve bust it!”
And because Pavanaz couldn’t hear what Aces said, he couldn’t contradict him—couldn’t tell him that this had been his target, his impossible dream. Because he had known that if there ever came a time when he could clock twenty million, by then he’d be worth that much and it just wouldn’t matter. But right now it mattered a lot. The ’Vader dying there was taking his whole world, his universe with it.
Pavanaz watched it go, then crawled into a corner and did a Kem job all over Fat Bill’s not-so-immaculately-clean floor….
IV
When fat Bill sloshed back to the arcade after lunch he found his private door open and Grint Pavanaz sitting (or slumped) behind his desk, head thrown back and feet propped up on the imitation mahogany. He saw Pavanaz, then the door of the wall safe where it, too, stood open. For a fat man, Bill could move fast when he had to; his tiny electric stunner was dwarfed by his pudgy fist in less time than it takes to tell. “What…?” he wheezed then, his piggy gaze transferring from Pavanaz to the safe and back again. “What…?”
Finally Pavanaz looked at him. “Yes,” he said listlessly. “What, what.” And: “Don’t panic, Bilbo, I didn’t take anything. I was going to, but…it was depression, that’s all. By the time I had the safe open, I could see how stupid it would be.”
Fat Bill gawped, closed his mouth and snapped the fingers of his free hand. Being fat and wet, the sound was more a plop than a snap. “Aces and Gaddy!” he said. “I saw them down the street. When the rain started up, they took a cab. They were here. They took…you?”
Pavanaz’s face was all twisted. “Gaddy did,” he said, hurting to admit it. “That stinking rocket-jockey! But…I don’t know how, I really don’t know how! There is no one who can take me on—so how come I’m not nearly as good as him? It’s driving me nuts!” Then he scowled. “More to the point, how come you didn’t warn me about him—‘partner’?” He looked accusingly at Bill.
“Tell you about him? Warn you? I ain’t even seen the guy in years!” Fat Bill jutted his wobbly jaw. “He was dead for all I knew! And don’t change the subject. What, you accusing me of stuff, and guilty as all get out? And my safe open?”
“It’s safe,” said Pavanaz humorlessly. And: “You’d better tell me about Gaddy. He has a secret, and I want it. Because if he has it, others might have it too. And I’m not going back to Earth to discover I’m last in line! I was the best, and with whatever it is he’s got I’ll be the best again.”
Fat Bill crossed to his safe. “How much?” he said.
“I told you I didn’t take anything!” Pav snapped. “What, and have you waiting for me at the embarkation with the local cops and a warrant? That’s no way to get to Earth, and it’s sure no way to win a million!”
“How much did they take off you, dummy!” Fat Bill snorted. And Pav didn’t much like being talked to like that, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Fat Bill had just locked he safe and changed the combination when Pavanaz answered: “He took three thousand off me.”
“What!?” The fat man’s jaw fell open. “Three th—”
“Three grand—three biggies,” Pavanaz cut him off. “And I fell for it like it was all new to me. And now I’m mad.”
“But he beat you fair,” said Fat Bill. “Fair’s fair—and our partnership is dissolved. Out,” he jerked his thumb. “And take your debris with you!”
Pavanaz didn’t move. “How’d you like to make two hundred thou?” he said, slowly. “Two hundred grand, all for your fat little self??
“I’m listening,” Fat Bill answered, after a long moment. “But my attention span is shortening by the second.”
“A million’s what I’m set to win on Earth,” said Pavanaz, “and twenty percent of that can be yours—partner?”
“A new partnership?” Fat Bill grimaced. “So soon? And I’m to get two hundred grand out of it? Who do you want killed, Pav?”
“Information,” said Pavanaz, “that’s all I want. And maybe—just maybe—a grubstake to Earth. Hell, you could squeeze it out of what I’ve already earned you!”