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A fifth of a second after Foyle arrived at the field, the pursuers from the monastery jaunted in. He looked around desperately. He was surrounded by half a regiment of Commandos, all under acceleration, all geared for lethal-action, all his equal or better. The odds were impossible.
And then the Outer Satellites altered the odds. Exactly one week after the saturation raid on Terra, they struck at Mars.
Again the missiles came down on the midnight to dawn quadrant. Again the heavens twinkled with interceptions and detonations, and the horizon exploded great puffs of light while the ground shook. But this time there was a ghastly variation, for a brilliant nova burst overhead, flooding the nightside of the planet with garish light. A swarm of fission heads had struck Mars's tiny satellite, Phobos, instantly vaporizing it into a sunlet.
The recognition lag of the Commandos to this appalling attack gave Foyle his opportunity. He accelerated again and burst through them to his yawl. He stopped before the main hatch and saw the stu
Still under acceleration, never pausing to see if anyone was inside the yawl, he shot forward to controls, tripped the release lever, and as the yawl started to float up the anti-gray beam, threw on full jo-C propulsion. He was not strapped into the pilot chair. The effect of the 10-G drive on his accelerated and unprotected body was monstrous.
A creeping force took hold of him and spilled him out of the chair. He inched back toward the rear wall of the control chamber like a sleepwalker. The wall appeared, to his accelerated senses, to approach him. He thrust out both arms, palms flat against the wall to brace himself. The sluggish power thrusting him back split his arms apart and forced him against the wall, gently at first, then harder and harder until face, jaw, chest, and body were crushed against the metal.
The mounting pressure became agonizing. He tried to trip the switchboard in his mouth with his tongue, but the propulsion crushing him against the wall made it impossible for him to move his distorted mouth. A burst of explosions, so far down the sound spectrum that they sounded like sodden rock slides, told him that the Commando Brigade was bombarding him with shots from below. As the yawl tore up into the blue-black of outer space, he began to scream in a bat screech before he mercifully lost consciousness.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
FOYLE AWOKE IN DARKNESS. He was decelerated, but the exhaustion of his body told him he had been under acceleration while he had been unconscious. Either his power pack had run out or. . . He inched a hand to the small of his back. The pack was gone. It had been removed.
He explored with trembling fingers. He was in a bed. He listened to the murmur of ventilators and air-conditioners and the click and buzz of servomechanisms. He was aboard a ship. He was strapped to the bed. The ship was in free fall.
Foyle unfastened himself, pressed his elbows against the mattress and floated up. He drifted through the darkness searching for a light switch or a call button. His hands brushed against a water carafe with raised letteres on the glass. He read them with his fingertips. SS, he felt. V, 0, R, G, A. VORGA. He cried out.
The door of the stateroom opened. A figure drifted through the door, silhouetted against the light of a luxurious private lounge behind it.
«This time we picked you up,» a voice said.
«Olivia?»
«Yes.»
«Then it's true?»
«Yes, Gully.»
Foyle began to cry.
«You're still weak,» Olivia Presteign said gently. «Come and lie down.»
She urged him into the lounge and strapped him into a chaise longue. It was still warm from her body. «You've been like this for six days. We never thought you'd live. Everything was drained out of you before the surgeon found that battery on your back.»
«Where is it?» he croaked.
«You can have it whenever you want it. Don't fret, my dear.»
He looked at her for a long moment, his Snow Maiden, his beloved Ice Princess . . . the white satin skin, the blind coral eyes and exquisite coral mouth. She touched his moist eyelids with a scented handkerchief.
«I love you,» he said.
«Shhh. I know, Gully.»
«You've known all about me. For how long?»
«I knew Gully Foyle the spaceman off the 'Nomad,' was my enemy from the begi
«You knew and you've been laughing at me.»
«Standing by and shaking with laughter.»
«Standing by and loving you. No, don't interrupt. I'm trying to be rational and it's not easy.» A flush cascaded across the marble face. «I'm not playing with you now. I . . . I betrayed you to my father. I did. Self-defense, I thought. Now that I've met him at last I can see he's too dangerous. An hour later I knew it was a mistake because I realized I was in love with you. I'm paying for it now. You need never have known.»
«You expect me to believe that?»
«Then why am I here?» She trembled slightly. «Why did I follow you? That bombing was ghastly. You'd have been dead in another minute when we picked you up. Your yawl was a wreck. . .
«Where are we now?»
«What difference does it make?»
«I'm stalling for time.»
«Time for what?»
«Not for time . . . I'm stalling for courage.»
«We're orbiting earth.»
«How did you follow me?»
«I knew you'd be after Lindsey Joyce. I took over one of my father's ships. It happened to be 'Vorga' again.»
«Does he know?»
«He never knows. I live my own private life.»
He could not take his eyes off her, and yet it hurt him to look at her. He was yearning and hating. . . yearning for the reality to be undone, hating the truth for what it was. He discovered that he was stroking her handkerchief with tremulous fingers.
«I love you, Olivia.»
«I love you, Gully, my enemy.»
«For God's sake!» he burst out. «Why did you do it? You were aboard 'Vorga' ru
«What?» she lashed back. «Are you demanding apologies?»
«I'm demanding an explanation.»
«You'll get none from me!»
«Blood and money, your father said. He was right. Oh . . . Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!»
«Blood and money, yes; and unashamed.»
«I'm drowning, Olivia. Throw me a lifeline.»
«Then drown. Nobody ever saved me. No…No. . . This is wrong, all wrong. Wait, my dear. Wait.» She composed herself and began speaking very tenderly. «I could lie, Gully dear, and make you believe it, but I'm going to be honest. There's a simple explanation. I live my own private life. We all do. You do.»
«What's yours?»
«No different from yours . . . from the rest of the world. I cheat, I lie, I destroy . . . like all of us. I'm criminal . . . like all of us.»
«Why? For money? You don't need money.»
«For control . . . power?»
«Not for power.»
«Then why?»
She took a deep breath, as though this truth was the first truth and was crucifying her. «For hatred. . . To pay you back, all of you.»
«For what?»
«For being blind,» she said in a smoldering voice. «For being cheated. For being helpless. . . They should have killed me when I was born. Do you know what it's like to be blind . . . to receive life secondhand? To be dependent, begging, crippled? 'Bring them down to your level,' I told my secret life. 'If you're blind make them blinder. If you're helpless, cripple them. Pay them back. . . all of them.»