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«What's a matter, him?» Foyle inquired of the hairless man in the gutter patois.
The hairless man was now a respectful neutral if not a friend. «Guesses for grabs,» he answered. «Always like that, him. Show old clothes and he twitch. Man!»
«For why, already?»
«For why? Crazy, is all.»
At the main-office airlock, Foyle got Kempsey and himself corked in suits and then led him out to the rocket field where a score of anti-gray beams pointed their pale fingers upward from pits to the gibbous earth hanging in the night sky. They entered a pit, entered Foyle's yawl and uncorked. Foyle took a bottle and a sting ampule from a cabinet. He poured a drink and handed it to Kempsey. He hefted the ampule in his palm, smiling.
Kempsey drank the whiskey, still dazed, still exulting. «Free,» he muttered. «God bless him! Free. You don't know what I've been through.» He drank again. «I still can't believe it. It's like a dream. Why don't you take off, man? I…” Kempsey choked and dropped the glass, staring at Foyle in horror. «Your face!» he exclaimed. «My God, your face! What happened to it?»
«You happened to it, you son of a bitch!» Foyle cried. He leaped up, his tiger face burning, and flung the ampule like a knife. It pierced Kempsey's neck and hung quivering. Kempsey toppled.
Foyle accelerated, blurred to the body, picked it up in mid-fall and carried it aft to the starboard stateroom. There were two main staterooms in the yawl, and Foyle had prepared both of them in advance. The starboard room had been stripped and turned into a surgery. Foyle strapped the body on the operating table, opened a case of surgical instruments, and began the delicate operation he had learned by hypno-training that morning . . . an operation made possible only by his five-to-one acceleration.
He cut through skin and fascia, sawed through the rib cage, exposed the heart, dissected it out and co
Foyle decelerated, checked Kempsey's temperature, shot an anti-shock series into his veins and waited. Blood gurgled through the pump and Kempsey's body. After five minutes, Foyle removed the oxygen mask. The respiration reflex continued. Kempsey was without a heart, yet alive. Foyle sat down alongside the operating table and waited. The stigmata still showed on his face.
Kempsey remained unconscious. Foyle waited.
Kempsey awoke, screaming.
Foyle leaped up, tightened the straps and leaned over the heartless man.
«Hallo, Kempsey,» he said. Kempsey screamed.
«Look at yourself, Kempsey. You're dead.»
Kempsey fainted. Foyle brought him to with the oxygen mask. «Let me die, for God's sake!»
«What's the matter? Does it hurt? I died for six months, and I didn't whine.»
«Let me die.»
«In time, Kempsey. Your sympathetic block's been bypassed, but I'll let you die in time, if you behave. You were aboard 'Vorga' on September 16, 2436?»
«For Christ's sake, let me die.»
«You were aboard 'Vorga'?»
«Yes.»
«You passed a wreck out in space. Wreck of the 'Nomad.' She signaled for help and you passed her by. Yes?»
«Yes.»
«Why?»
«Christ! Oh Christ help me!»
«Why?»
«Oh Jesus!»
«I was aboard 'Nomad,' Kempsey. Why did you leave me to rot?»
«Sweet Jesus help me! Christ, deliver me!»
«I'll deliver you, Kempsey, if you answer questions. Why did you leave me to rot?»
«Couldn't pick you up.»
«Why not?»
«Reffs aboard.»
«Oh? I guessed right, then. You were ru
«Yes.»
«How many?»
«Six hundred.»
«That's a lot, but you could have made room for one more. Why didn't you pick me up?»
«We were scuttling the reffs.»
«What!» Foyle cried.
«Overboard. . . all of them. . . six hundred. . . Stripped 'em. . . took their clothes, money, jewels, baggage . . . Put 'em through the airlock in batches. Christ! The clothes all over the ship . . . The shrieking and the…Jesus! If I could only forget! The naked women . . . blue. . . busting wide open . . spi
«You son of a bitch! It was a racket? You took their money and never intended bringing them to earth?»
«It was a racket.»
«And that's why you didn't pick me up?»
«Would have had to scuttle you anyway.»
«Who gave the order?»
«Captain.»
«Name?»
«Joyce. Lindsey Joyce.»
«Address?»
«Skoptsy Colony, Mars.»
«What!» Foyle was thunderstruck. «He's a Skoptsy? You mean after hunting him for a year, I can't touch him. . . hurt him. . . make him feel what I felt?» He turned away from the tortured man on the table, equally tortured himself by frustration. «A Skoptsy! The one thing I never figured on after preparing that port stateroom for him . . . What am I going to do? What, in God's name am I going to do?» he roared in fury, the stigmata showing livid on his face.
He was recalled by a desperate moan from Kempsey. He returned to the table and bent over the dissected body. «Let's get it straight for the last time. This Skoptsy, Lindsey Joyce, gave the order to scuttle the reffs?»
«Yes.»
«And to let me rot?»
«Yes. Yes. Yes. That's enough. Let me die.»
«Live, you pig-man . . filthy heartless bastard! Live without a heart. Live and suffer. I'll keep you alive forever, you…”
A lurid flash of light caught Foyle's eye. He looked up. His burning image was peering through the large square porthole of the stateroom. As he leaped to the porthole, the burning man disappeared.
Foyle left the stateroom and darted forward to main controls where the observation bubble gave him two hundred and seventy degrees of vision. The Burning Man was nowhere in sight.
«It's not real,» he muttered. «It couldn't be real. It's a sign, a good luck sign. . . a Guardian Angel. It saved me on the Spanish Stairs. It's telling me, to go ahead and find Lindsey Joyce.»
He strapped himself into the pilot chair, ignited the yawl's jets, and, slammed into full acceleration.
«Lindsey Joyce, Skoptsy Colony, Mars,» he thought as he was thrust back deep into the pneumatic chair. «A Skoptsy . . . Without senses, without, pleasure, without pain. The ultimate in Stoic escape. How am I going to punish him? Torture him? Put him in the port stateroom and make him feel what I felt aboard 'Nomad'? Damnation! It's as though he's dead. He is dead. And I've got to figure how to beat a dead body and make it feel pain To come so close to the end and have the door slammed in your face. . The damnable frustration of revenge. Revenge is for dreams . . . never for reality.»
An hour later he released himself from the acceleration and his fury, unbuckled himself from the chair, and remembered Kempsey. He went aft to the surgery. The extreme acceleration of the take-off had choked the blood pump enough to kill Kempsey. Suddenly Foyle was overcome with a novel passionate revulsion for himself. He fought it helplessly.
«What's a matter, you?» he whispered. «Think of the six hundred, scuttled Think of yourself . . . Are you turning into a white-livered Cellar Christian turning the other cheek and whining forgiveness? Olivia, what are you doing to me? Give me strength, not cowardice . . .»
Nevertheless he averted his eyes as he scuttled the body.