Crag looked about him, at the spaceship behind them, bumping gently against the surface of the asteroid, right at the shadow line that divided night and day. Strange that a world only twenty or thirty yards in diameter should have night and day-and yet darkness on the night side would be even denser than the darkness on the night side of Earth.
Time, Crag thought, and its relation to distance are strange on a world like this. If he walked twenty paces ahead and put himself right under distant, tiny Sol, it would be high noon. Thirty or forty more steps-held down to the light asteroid only by the gravplates on the shoes of the spacesuit-and he’d be in the middle of the night side; it would be midnight.
He chuckled at the fancy. “It’s a small world,” he said, remembering that Olliver had said that to him in the conversation between judge and prisoner at the end of the trial, the conversation that had led to all of this.
Olliver laughed excitedly, almost hysterically. “And it’s getting smaller already-I think. Don’t you, Crag, Evadne?”
Crag looked about him and tried to judge, but if there’d been any shrinkage as yet, he couldn’t tell. He heard Evadne say, “I’m not sure yet, Jon.”
Olliver said, “We can be sure in a few seconds. I’ve got a rule.” He took a steel foot rule from one of the pockets of his spacesuit and laid it down on a flat expanse of rock. He picked up a loose bit of rock and made a scratch opposite each end of the rule.
Evadne walked over near Crag. Her eyes, through the plastic of the helmet, looked into his intensely, searchingly. He got the idea that she wanted to ask him a question and didn’t dare-because Olliver would have heard it too-but was trying to find the answer by looking at him and reading his face. He met her gaze squarely, trying to guess what she was thinking or wondering. It hadn’t anything to do, he felt sure just then, with the fact that he was a man and she a woman. It was something more important than that.
He heard Olliver’s voice say, “I think so. I think it’s-Wait, let’s be sure.”
He turned away from Evadne and watched Olliver as Olliver watched the rule and the scratches on the rock. There was tension among them, but no one spoke. A minute or two went by, and then Olliver stood up and faced them.
His eyes were shining-almost as though with madness-but his voice was calm now. He said, “It works.” He looked from one to the other of them and then his eyes stopped on Crag. He said, “Crag, your million credits is waste paper. How would you like to be second in command of the Solar System?”
For the first time, Crag wondered if Olliver were mad.
The thought must have showed in his face, for Olliver shook his head. “I’m not crazy, Crag. Nor do I know any commercial use for neutronium. That was camouflage.
Listen, Crag-A few of these little gadgets set up in hidden places on each of the occupied planets, set up with radio controls so they can be triggered off from wherever I may be-that’s all it will take. If this works on an asteroid-and it has-it’ll work on an object of any size. A chain reaction doesn’t care whether it works in a peanut or a planet.”
Crag said slowly, “You mean-“
“You might as well know all of it, Crag. There isn’t any political party behind this. That was just talk. The only way peace can be kept in the system is by the rule of one man. But I’ll need help, Crag, and you’re the man I’d rather have, in spite of-” His voice changed. “Evadne, that’s useless.”
Crag looked quickly toward the woman and saw that she’d pulled a heater from the pocket of her spacesuit and was aiming it at Olliver. Olliver laughed. He said, “I thought it was about time for you to show your colors, my dear. I expected that, really. I took the charge out of that heater.”
Evadne pulled the trigger and nothing happened. Cragsaw her face go pale-but it seemed anger rather than fear.
She said, “All right, you beat me on that one, Jon. But someone will stop you, somehow. Do you realize that you couldn’t do what you plan without destroying a planet or two-billions of lives, Jon-and that Earth itself would have to be one of the ones you destroyed? Because Earth is the-the fightingest one and wouldn’t knuckle under to you, even on a threat like that? Jon, you’d kill off more than half of the human race, just to rule the ones who are left!”
She didn’t drop the useless heater, but it hung at her side.
Olliver had one in his own hand now. He said, “Take it away from her, Crag.”
Crag looked from one of them to the other. And he looked around him. The asteroid was shrinking. There was now a definite diminution in diameter, perhaps by a tenth.
Olliver spoke again and more sharply. “Take it away from her, Crag.”
Olliver’s blaster covered both of them. He could have killed Evadne where she stood; the command was meaningless, and Crag knew it was a test. Olliver was making him line up, one way or the other.
Crag thought of Earth, that he hated. And he thought of it as a dead little ball of heavy matter-and he didn’t hate it that much. But to be second in command-not of a world, but of worlds—
Olliver said, “Your last chance, Crag. And listen-don’t think I’m blind to you and Evadne. But I didn’t care. She’s been spying on me all along. I know the outfit she belongs to-a quixotic group that’s trying to end system-wide corruption another way, a way that won’t work. She’s a spy, Crag, and I don’t want her.
“Here are my final terms and you’ve got a few seconds to decide. Disarm her now, and I won’t kill her. We’ll take her back, and you can have her if you’re silly enough to want her-out of billions of women who’ll be yours for the taking.”
Maybe that was all it took. Crag decided.
Be reached for Evadne with his good hand, seeing the look of cold contempt in her eyes-and the puzzlement in her eves as he swung her around instead of reaching for the useless gun she held. He said quickly, “Night side!” He propelled her forward ahead of him and then ran after her. He hoped Olliver’s reflexes would be slow. They had to be.
On a tiny and shrinking asteroid, the horizon isn’t far. It was a few steps on this one, and they were over it in less than a second. He heard Olliver curse and felt a wave of heat go past him, just too late. And then they were in the darkness.
He found Evadne by running into her and grabbed her and held on because there wasn’t going to be much time. In seconds, Olliver would realize that he didn’t have to come after them, that all he had to do was to get into the ship and warp off-or even just close the door and sit it out until they were dead. Even though Olliver wasn’t a qualified pilot he could, with the help of the manual of instructions inside the ship, have a fair chance of getting it back to Earth or Mars.
So Crag said quickly, “I can stop him. But it’s curtains for both of us, too. Shall I?”
She caught her breath, but there wasn’t any hesitation in her answer. “Hurry, Crag. Hurry.”
He ran on around the night side-ten steps-to the ship. He braced his feet as he lifted it and then threw it out into space-the whole pound weight of it. It seemed to go slowly, but it kept going. It would keep going for a long time, from that throw. It might come back, eventually, but not for hours-and the air in spacesuits of this type was good for only half an hour or so without processing or renewal.
Olliver would never rule a system now, only the tiniest world.
But all three of them were dead. He heard Olliver scream madly with rage and saw him come running over the horizon for a shot at him. Crag laughed and ducked back into blackness. He ran into Evadne, who had followed him. He caught her quickly as he crashed into her. He said, “Give me the heater, quick,” and took it from her hand.