And before leaving, they’d done certain things he hadn’t understood then. He understood now that they were the result of post-hypnotic suggestion. They’d removed all evidence that they’d ever actually lived in the shelter, had rigged things so that subsequent investigation would never disprove any point of the story each was to remember falsely and tell after returning to Earth.
He remembered now being bewildered as to why they made those arrangements, even while they had been making them.
But mostly he remembered Anna and the dizzy happiness of those thirteen days together.
“Thanks, Junior,” he said hurriedly.
He grabbed for the phone and talked Chief Operative Reeber into connecting him with the White House, with President Saunderson. After a delay of minutes that didn’t seem like minutes, he heard the President’s voice.
“Carmody, Mr. President,” he said. “I’m going to call you on that reward you offered me. I’d like to get off work right now, for a long vacation. And I’d like a fast plane to Moscow. I want to see Anna.”
President Saunderson chuckled. “Thought you’d change your mind about sticking at work, Captain. Consider yourself on vacation as of now, and for as long as you like. But I’m not sure you’ll want that plane. There’s word from Russia that-uh-Mrs. Carmody has just taken off to fly here, in a straw-rocket. If you hurry, you can get to the landing field in time to meet her.
Carmody hurried and did.
Gateway to Darkness
CHAPTER ONE
Crag
THERE WAS this Crag, and he was a thief and a smuggler and a murderer. He’d been a spaceman once and he had a metal hand and a permanent squint to show for it. Those, and a taste for exotic liquors and a strong disinclination for work. Especially as he would have had to work a week to buy one small jigger of even the cheapest of the fluids that were the only things that made life worthwhile to him. At anything he was qualified to do, that is, except stealing, smuggling and murder. These paid well.
He had no business in Albuquerque, but he got around. And that time they caught him. It was for something he hadn’t done, but they had proof that he did it. Proof enough to send him to the penal colony of Callisto, which he wouldn’t have minded too much, or to send him to the psycher, which he would have minded very much indeed.
He sat on the bed in his cell and worried about it, and about the fact that he needed a drink. The two worries went together, in a way. If they sent him to the psycher, he’d never want a drink again, and he wanted to want a drink.
The psycher was pretty bad. They used it only in extreme cases, partly because they hadn’t perfected it yet. Sometimes—statistically about one time out of nine—it drove its subject crazy, stark raving crazy. The eight times out of nine that it worked, it was worse. It adjusted you; it made you normal. And in the process it killed your memories, the good ones as well as the bad ones, and you started from scratch.
You remembered how to talk and feed yourself and how to use a slipstick or play a flute—if, that is, you knew how to use a slipstick or play a flute before you went to the psycher. But you didn’t remember your name unless they told you. And you didn’t remember the time you were tortured for three days and two nights on Venus before the rest of the crew found you and took you away from the animated vegetables who didn’t like meat in any form and especially in human form. You didn’t remember the time you were spacemad, the time you went nine days without water, the time—well, you didn’t remember anything that had ever happened to you.
Not even the good things.
You started from scratch, a different person. And Crag thought he wouldn’t mind dying, particularly, but he didn’t want his body to keep on walking around afterwards, animated by a well-adjusted stranger, who just wouldn’t be he.
So he paced up and down his cell and made up his mind that he’d at least try to kill himself before he’d let them strap him into the psycher chair, if it came to that.
He hoped that he could do it. He had a lethal weapon with him, the only one he ever carried, but it would be difficult to use on himself. Oh, it could be done if he had the guts; but it takes plenty of guts to kill yourself with a bludgeon, even so efficient a one as his metal hand. Looking at that hand, though it was obviously of metal, no one ever guessed that it weighed twelve pounds instead of a few ounces. The outside layer was Alloy G, a fraction of the weight of magnesium, not much heavier, in fact, than balsa wood. And since you couldn’t mistake the appearance of Alloy G, nobody ever suspected that under it was steel for strength and under the steel lead for weight. It wasn’t a hand you’d want to be slapped in the face with. But long practice and the development of strength in his left arm enabled him to carry it as casually as though it weighed the three or four ounces you’d expect it to weigh.
He quit pacing and went to the window and stood looking down at the huge sprawling city of Albuquerque, capital of SW Sector of North America, third largest city in the world since it had become the number one spaceport of the Western Hemisphere.
The window wasn’t barred but the transparent plastic of the pane was tough stuff. Still, he thought he could hatter through it with one hand, if that hand were his left one. But he could only commit suicide that way. There was a sheer drop of thirty stories from this, the top floor of the SW Sector Capitol Building.
For a moment he considered it and then he remembered that it was only probable, not certain, that they’d send him to the psycher. The Callisto penal colony-well, that wasn’t so good, either, but there was always at least a remote chance of escape from Callisto. Enough of a chance that he wouldn’t jump out of any thirtieth-story windows to avoid going there. Maybe not even to avoid staying there.
But if he had a chance, after being ordered to the psycher, it would be an easier way of killing himself than the one he’d thought of first.
A voice behind him said, “Your trial has been called for fourteen-ten. That is ten minutes from now. Be ready.”
He turned around and looked at the grille in the wall from which the mechanical voice had come. He made a raspberry sound at the grille-not that it did any good, for it was strictly a one-way communicator-and turned back to the window.
He hated it, that sprawling corrupt city out there, scene of intrigue-as were all other cities-between the Guilds and the Gilded. Politics rampant upon a field of muck, and everybody, except the leaders, caught in the middle. He hated Earth; he wondered why he’d come back to it this time.
After a while the voice behind him said, “Your door is now unlocked. You will proceed to the end of the corridor outside it, where you will meet the guards who will escort you to the proper room.”
He caught the distant silver flash of a spaceship coming in; he waited a few seconds until it was out of sight behind the buildings. He didn’t wait any longer than that because he knew this was a test. He’d heard of it from others who’d been here. You could sit and wait for the guards to come and get you, or you could obey the command of the speaker and go to meet them. If you ignored the order and made them come to you, it showed you were not adjusted; it was a point against you when the time came for your sentence.