C-the-Third did not come any closer. He simply said:
“You deprived me of my reason to exist. You destroyed a peaceful and prospering tourist agency. You reversed the very process of all races coming closer together. You shall die.”
Puck Generalov was the last to approach the agent. His features were now obscured by a thick layer of cosmetics—red and black hues of mourning. His braid was loosened and a small black bow was woven into it.
“You’re possessed by the idea of intellectual, physiological, and racial superiority,” he pronounced quietly. “You’ve mocked the purest and the most sacred human emotions. You embody all the vices of the human race. You shall die.”
The Zzygou stirred feebly in her capsule. A screen unfolded in the air, and across it ran the letters to form the merciless words:
You destroyed the genetic line of Zey-So, thus murdering numberless multitudes of females, drones, and working individuals. You shall die.
The detective walked up to the capsule and, lowering his hands through the reanimation fluid, carefully handed the control device to Sey-Zo.
“Do you remember how to operate this?”
The Zzygou nodded. Mental destructors had been created based on Zzygou technologies. Turning back towards the criminal, the detective said in a loud, solemn voice:
“Your evil deeds have overfilled the cup of patience of the people in the galaxy and the Emperor on Earth. If you know any prayers, pray, for your consciousness will now be reversed and reduced to zero. You will die as an individual, and your body will be handed over to the Zzygou for collective desecration.”
The agent twitched as the Zzygou, lying in her capsule, pushed the three buttons one after the other.
A horrible scream was torn from his throat as the emitter of the mental destructor began working in the head ring, erasing his memory. Hour after hour, day after day, month after month… Every minute, two years of his life were destroyed… but the most terrible thing was that short-term memory was the last to be erased, and the criminal remained conscious till the very end.
Everyone spontaneously stepped back from the operating table. Dr. Watson covered her face with her hands, and even Kim O’Hara turned her head away.
“The first and the last time I conducted a mental destruction was six years ago,” said Sherlock Holmes in a low voice. “The Case of the Dispersing Cloud… eight human casualties in less than a month. But we had determined the cause of the perpetrator’s emotional dislocation, hidden among childhood complexes. We retained the maniac’s consciousness at the level of a nine-year-old child. He went through a good psychotherapy course… and now he’s a college graduate, atoning for his wrongdoing by honest work.”
Nobody replied to Holmes’s words—and the detective fell silent. All stood under the agent’s hateful gaze, listening to his half-demented curses. Ten minutes later, he fell silent. Mental destructors had been invented only twenty years before, so by now the criminal didn’t even understand what was happening to him.
When twenty minutes passed, the agent started weeping. Sobbing, like a child, looking around helplessly and trying to break free. Janet heaved a deep sigh—her maternal instincts were strong. And now a child was dying under the destructor ray… even if that child had long since grown up to become a ruthless killer.
She glanced at the Zzygou.
Sey-Zo was implacable.
She conducted the process for exactly twenty-five minutes, wiping the agent’s mind clean, even his unconscious memories as an embryo. And only after that did she switch off the control device.
The person who had murdered her companion was now drooling on the operating table. His eyeballs were rolling aimlessly. His arms and legs twitched without any coordination. And it seemed as though his sphincter had loosened.
“Lady Sey-Zo, are you satisfied by the punishment of the criminal?” Holmes asked in an official tone of voice.
The screen lit up the word YES.
“What would you like to do with the body?”
Use it for something socially beneficial. Let it be known—I am carrying out Justice, not revenge.
“Do you agree to contact your race and inform them that justice has prevailed?”
Bring the transceiver.
C-the-Third went off to get the device.
It wasn’t all that wise to be near the portable, poorly screened gluon transmitter, but they remained in the medical block till the end. They all watched the lines of the alien language flash on and disappear on the holographic screen—Sey-Zo couldn’t use the neuro-terminal now. They watched some Zzygou faces flash by—of those who hadn’t undergone anthropomorphosis and only partially resembled humans.
And only when the call was over and Sey-Zo’s speech-screen showed the words The fleets have been recalled. Stop your warships did they all leave the medical module. C-the-Third and Janet stayed with Sey-Zo—the alien’s condition was still very serious.
The recreation lounge had been straightened up. Only the broken table stood as a reminder of the recent fight.
First of all, Alex poured himself a glass full of ninety-proof bourbon and drained it in one gulp. Morrison, who entered the lounge right behind him, nodded in agreement and also applied himself to the fiery beverage. They refilled their glasses and silently sat down next to each other.
Even the modified metabolism of speshes had its limits. Now they had a chance to experience, for a while, a very real intoxication, the way their ancestors and the naturals felt it.
“He looked just like a regular guy… a youngster, fresh out of the academy.” Xang shrugged. “I would never have thought he was more than twenty years old….”
“Me neither. At first.”
“What put you on guard, Alex?” Morrison looked at him demandingly.
“Does it make any difference?”
“It does. You’re… you’re a strange man, Captain Alex Romanov. I’d like to know how you found him out.”
“I’m not a captain anymore, Xang. And I doubt that what has happened will look very good on my service record. I probably won’t ever rise above a Hamster pilot, I’m afraid.”
“Come on, Alex, stop it. For me… for all of us, you’ll always be the captain. Tell me, how did you unmask the killer?”
Alex hesitated, but not for long. It didn’t make any difference now.
“A few strange things in his behavior. On New Ukraine, for instance, Paul stayed at the bar, instead of going on a planetary tour. That’s strange for a greenhorn who hasn’t seen much of the galaxy, right? Of course, I’ve met youngsters who just loved being around astronauts and would sit in a bar day and night, sipping beer. But Paul Lourier was obviously not one of those. For instance, after getting hired onto the ship, he left the restaurant right away.”
Morrison nodded uncertainly. Alex continued:
“And then there was the strange behavior of Generalov, who plotted the trek Quicksilver Pit-New Ukraine-Heraldica-Zodiac-Edem, even before we knew our route. The agent probably knew the route in advance. It would be logical to suppose that Puck was the actual killer. But… Generalov is a natural. Even becoming a navigator was already a leap above his head. To be an agent on top of that, and a professional assassin? Unthinkable. So there must have been some other reasons. Something had prompted him to think of that route. Remember, with whom did Generalov communicate most actively?”
“With Paul, of course.”
“And during that conversation, Generalov, without realizing it himself, had received directions for that trek from Paul.”