And knowing that, Chesley knew one more thing: He knew at last that he was afraid.
He said: "You yourself created an illogical situation."
The Viceroy stopped in mid-breath. Death was very near for Chesley, but at least the Viceroy was listening. Was it his imagination, or did the Viceroy seem to be swelling slightly—as though the strain of carrying a planet on his inhuman shoulders was beginning to tell? Chesley said, "You hoped to rule us by fear—but fear destroys you. When we are afraid, we act irrationally; and we are too many for you."
"I shall destroy your filthy race!"
"Oh," said Chesley, calm now, nodding, "yes, you will. You will destroy us, Viceroy. In fact, you are destroying us now. And what then? If you destroy us all, there will be no servants for your people—and then you will be punished."
The giant figure wavered like smoke. It cried wordlessly—or in words that were not human; and then it said: "Stop!"
"Why?" asked Chesley. "You will blast me anyhow—you can only do it once, you know. That's your basic error, Viceroy, you have only one punishment for any crime, so why should a man be content with a small crime? Might as well commit a large one. No, if you had been logical, you might have—"
"Stop!" bawled the vast, inhuman voice, and the purple-lined room shook. "Stop, man!"
He was swelling with anger, Chesley noted with a surgeon's detachment. Ah, what was the difference? He went on, finishing out his thought, confident that it would be the last thought he would have in this life: "And so, by failing to be logical, you have failed in your mission. It is you who are disloyal, Viceroy. You have betrayed your people. You can never prepare the Earth for their coming."
"Disloyal?" boomed the enormous voice.
Chesley nodded and closed his eyes.
There was a pause
And, even through his closed eyes, a violet flare—
And a crash louder than anything Chesley had ever heard. This is dying, he thought; but then he opened his eyes and it was not.
It was the Viceroy who had blasted himself; disloyalty had to be punished; there was only one punishment; logic required that it be administered. The Viceroy's broken body lay sprawled across the floor, shattered from within under the pressure of a storm of uncontrollable energy. It was not destroyed completely, as any human body would have been; and in death it was no longer human at all.
There was plenty of money in the vaults of the Viceregal Guard, and plenty of time to take it and get away, before any other human dared approach the Viceroy's inner headquarters. Quickly home, quickly with his wife to the airport, quickly in a V.G. plane, with a pilot he could trust, flying south high and fast. And his wife was saying:
"But Arthur, if the Viceroy's dead and the V.G. is going to be out of existence as soon as the people find out about it, then what will we do? You'll be out of a job, and— And if the rest of the race will be trying to lynch the V.G., like you say, then how will we be safe? Don't you ever think of me, Arthur? You can grow a mustache and change your name—but what about Mother? How will I ever dare— And why must we take that filthy trunk? I don't know what you've got in it, but I simply cannot abide the smell of it, and— Arthur! You're not paying attention!"
Chesley said wearily, "Don't worry about it, dear. Look."
He opened the briefcase and showed her the stacks of bills it contained. "But—but that's stealing!" she cried.
He said, "It's my own money, honestly grafted. Besides, it won't be good for anything once the governments take over again. But meanwhile it will buy us a place to live, and a stock of food to see us through, and a laboratory."
"A laboratory?" His wife looked as though she had at last realized her husband had gone utterly mad. "You mean—research? That stuff in the trunk?"
He nodded. "Those are the fragments of the Viceroy's body. If I can find out what he was made of, I think I can find out how he was able to blast people—and then we'll be ready for the next Viceroy his race sends down. If they ever send another. We know that the blast works on them as well as on us—he proved that." He smiled, and pointed down to the palm-fringed airfield which they were circling for a landing. "Our new home," he said.
There was much more that he could have said—for example, that when he had learned the secret of the Viceroy's blast he could, if he wished, rule the world as the Viceroy had; or that with a few other little items he had looted from the Viceroy's quarters they could be fabulously wealthy all the years of their lives. But it was not Chesley's way to be communicative, particularly with his wife; and all that he did say was:
"So you see?
That job was a stepping stone, after all."