[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
he had avoided sounding them for much too long:
Can I do it?
Should I? I ve waited so long, so long, to find a place, and now they tell me I ve found a place. Is this
my final place? Is this what I ve lived and searched for? I can be a valuable war weapon. I can be the
man the men turn to when they want a job done. But what sort of job?
Can I do it? Is it more important to me to find peace even a peace such as this and to destroy,
than to go on with the unrest?
Alf Gunnderson stared at the night, at the faint tinges of color beginning to form at the edges of his vision,
and his mind washed itself in the water of thought. He had discovered much about himself in the past few
days. He had discovered many talents, many ideals he had never suspected in himself.
He had discovered he had character, and that he was not a hopeless, oddie hulk, doomed to die wasted.
He found he had a future.
If he could make the proper decision.
But whatwas the proper decision?
Omalo! Omalo snap-out!
The cry roared through the companionways, bounced down the halls and against the metal hull of the
invership, sprayed from the speakers, and deafened the men asleep beside their squawk-boxes.
The ship ploughed through a maze of colors whose hues were unknown, skiiiiittered scud-wise, and
popped out, shuddering. There it was. The sun of Delgart. Omalo. Big. And golden. With planets set
about like boulders on the edge of the sea. The sea that was space, and from which this ship had come.
With death in its hold, and death in its tubes, and death, nothing but death.
The Blaster and the Mindee escorted Alf Gunnderson to the bridge. They stood back and let him walk to
the huge quartz portal. The portal before which the pyrotic had stood so long, so many hours, gazing so
deep into inverspace. They left him there, and stood back, because they knew he was safe from them.
No matter how hard they held his arms, no matter how fiercely they shouted at him, he was safe. He was
something new. Not just a pyrotic, not just a mind-blocked, not just a Blaster-safe, he was something
totally new.
Not a composite, for there had been many of those, with imperfect powers of several psi types. But
something new, and something incomprehensible. Psioid+ with a + that might mean anything.
Gunnderson moved forward slowly, his deep shadow squirming out before him, sliding up the console,
across the portal shelf, and across the quartz itself. Himself superimposed across the immensity of space.
The man who was Gunnderson stared into the night that lay without, and at the sun that burned steadily
and high in that night. A greater fire raged within him than on that molten surface.
His was a power he could not even begin to estimate, and if he let it be used in this way, this once, it
could be turned to this purpose over and over and over again.
Was there any salvation for him?
You re supposed to flame that sun, Gunnderson, the slick-haired Mindee said, trying to assume an
authoritative tone, a tone of command, but failing miserably. He knew he was powerless before this man.
They could shoot him, of course, but what would that accomplish?
What are you going to do, Gunnderson? What do you have in mind? the Blaster chimed in.
SpaceCom wants Omalo fired . . . are you going to do it, or do we have to report you as a traitor?
You know what they ll do to you back on Earth, Gunnderson. You know, don t you?
Alf Gunnderson let the light of Omalo wash his sunken face with red haze. His eyes seemed to deepen in
intensity. His hands on the console ledge stiffened and the knuckles turned white. He had seen the
possibilities, and he had decided. They would never understand that he had chosen the harder way. He
turned slowly.
Where is the lifescoot located?
They stared at him, and he repeated his question. They refused to answer, and he shouldered past them,
stepped into the droptube to take him below decks. The Mindee spun on him, his face raging.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]