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the boarders reached the enemy hull. And here and there, in a capsule-cocoon
that had been penetrated by no apparent physical force, a Space Force man or
woman burned silently and perhaps painlessly to death.
To Boris, the battle was experienced largely as electronic signals inside his
capsule, and the movements he made with the capsule's inhuman limbs; the
gabble of question and answer and noise inside his helmet, and heat and shock
and pain. And the gradual conviction that his left foot and ankle were
completely gone.
In his helmet a voice said, at intervals: "We're holding, we're holding." The
Colonel understood what the voice meant: the engines of the Space Force ships,
acting as generators now, were standing the overload of combat, resisting the
enemy, and striking at him with weapons of heat and force and disruption,
powers like something out of the heart of a sun.
And the enemy was still resisting too, and still hitting back hard, but it
seemed that he could spare none of his incredible strength to pick the metal
gnats of the boarding party from his armored surface.
Each metal gnat was protected from Space Force weapons by its own
friend-or-foe radar beacon; the racing combat computers on the big ships
picked the tiny voices of friendship out of the inferno of battle noise, and
channeled their violence elsewhere at least, so matters went in hopeful
theory. Practice, to Boris, was being bounced off the hull time and again,
when something heavy hit nearby, then getting back to the hull again with his
capsule's jets, and scrambling again for a hold.
He was bounced off again, more violently than before, and coming back saw on
his capsule's viewscreen a red-rimmed dark hole, a couple of meters in
diameter, piercing the smooth bright
Jovian hull just ahead of him.
"Breach! Breach!" someone else was shouting, having spotted the hole at the
same time.
"Thor, this is Bee, we are entering a breach," Boris called back to the
flagship, giving the machine called Fire Control the information that fragile
friendly human flesh was about to do just that.
"We're gaining!" shouted the voice that usually said
We're holding
the voice of someone who watched an indication of the total force being
exerted by the Jovian. The enemy had been hurt now either that or he was
faking, pretending weakness, gathering his strength for an even greater effort
to come.
Brazil led his boarding party into the torn-open hull, hoping to stay alive,
trying to take the enemy alive. Weapons ready, he scrambled his capsule
forward through a slick patch of still semi-molten metal, into the breach.
"You killed Alice. You were behind everything they did to her."
Adam spoke as he stood facing Ray on the flat rock, with the wide river
roaring below them and the Ringwall looking down.
Ray looked at him calmly, and made a slight dismissive gesture. "Oh yes. Your
wife. But never mind that now. We knew best. You have to admit that we always
know best." The answer was delivered almost absently, as if Ray were
overwhelmingly distracted. Even before he finished speaking he had turned his
face partly away from Adam, and was looking up at the Ringwall again.
Ray said: "The Field-builders are in there, with their victims and they're
aware of us out here. Aware at this moment of me here, looking in at them& but
our ship is overhead did I
tell you that?" He looked back at Adam, calmly and inquiringly.
Adam stared back. Even rage had to pause. "You've forgotten
telling me that, two minutes ago?"
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Ray blinked at him, as if Adam's question had no possible relevance. Then Ray,
as if continuing with some subject already under discussion, said: "It was
years ago when we first began to weed the human garden. For a time, a long
time, we were too conservative. We removed only certain very objectionable
people the power-mad, the organizers of hate groups and of crime
syndicates obscene little creatures, unworthy even of our true human
ancestors. Then gradually we began to feel more confident, and to do more.
"From now on, we will do more still. You of course were wrong to mate with a
human female. But you didn't know then that you were Jovian. We can forgive
you."
"You can forgive me Alice."
Ray ignored the answer. "We were right, of course, to dispose of her. But I
see now that we were in can I call it error?" He shook his head, muttering for
a moment to himself. "Of course I
can call it error, I can say whatever I like& "
He looked closely again at Adam, and for a moment Ray's old infectious grin
was visible. Then the grin as gone, replaced by something else. A look that
would have gone better with a long, scaly neck. "& in error, in our choice of
methods. Hired physical violence." Ray's voice expressed contempt, and he
shook his head. "You foiled the attempt on Ling in Stem City, and I'm glad now
that you did. The use of such means is really beneath us.
Now
, after we have killed with our minds alone, I understand that& I think my
intellect is growing tremendously now, hour by hour, even minute by minute&
now I understand that, and now I
see the true glory of& of& what was I saying?"
A pebble fell, from out of the clear blue sky. Adam saw it clearly as it fell,
as it struck Ray on the shoulder and bounced off to come to rest with minor
clatter on the huge flat rock where they were standing.
Ray looked up, puzzling at the sky with slow, vague eyes.
The mighty intelligence was crumbling, the godlike powers falling in upon
their center. Adam watched the collapse with cold rejoicing, violent hatred.
Adam said: "Damn you to hell, you deserve what you're getting!"
"Ohhh?" Ray again tore his gaze down from the Ringwall. And now, for the first
time since Adam had climbed up on the rock with him, he gave Adam his full
attention. Ray's body came jerkily back to normal shape, the elongated leg
restoring itself as in some dream, or some conjuror's trick.
Ray said: "One thing you must remember, one thing about being a Jovian. It is
that I am your leader, and I am always right.
If you dispute that, you must and will be disciplined. We have begun with
Merit. I think that it will be preferable to destroy her personality entirely,
and then rebuild "
A trigger pulled in Adam's brain, sending him two steps forward, left, right,
and then the front snap kick with the left foot, snapped faster than the eye
could follow.
Ray moved almost as fast, and very lightly for all his bulk, sidestepping
perfectly. He smiled pityingly, and shook his head.
"Adam, Adam, will I have to rebuild you too? How can you hope to fight a
telepath physically? One who is bigger and stronger than you are?
"I think I will remove both you and Merit to the ship, and begin the process
there, as soon as the difficulty with the human ships is over." Ray squinted
up into the misty sky. "That should be soon now." He turned his back on Adam
again to gaze up at the Ringwall. "Later I can return to deal with
the creatures who live there." Without looking Ray dodged
Adam's chop at the back of his neck. Then the huge man spun around, avoiding a
driving knee, and swung.
Adam saw the enormous fist coming at him, and thought he had it ducked, but it
seemed to swing lower, following the movement of his head. There was a flash
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