by Gardner Fox
“You’re mad,” the pirate rasped.
“No. Sane for the first time, able to understand what I should have understood long ago.” Carrick put his eyes on Alton Raymond. “You were Than Lear’s partner. You secured flight orders for the star-ships that traveled through hyperspace for the commercial planets. The richest of them, Than Lear raided. You shared his loot with him.”
The fat man sucked air through trembling lips. He stared at Carrick out of eyes that were mirrors of despair. He tried to shake his head but only his heavy jowls moved.
“You two have been partners for a long time,” Carrick went on. “What more natural—when Hannes Stryker came to you—that you should call in Than Lear and let him know what Stryker had discovered. A whole new universe!
“Beside this, your robbings of space cargo ships was a paltry matter. The vision of what might be yours must have dazzled you both, given you a kind of madness. Kill Hannes Stryker. Adopt for your own his discovery, his invention of the subsidiundum gateway.
“Alton Raymond could not do it. He’s no killer. Ah, but Than Lear could. He has killed many times on his raids. The trouble was, Than Lear was officially dead, having been put on Dakkan planet a year or two ago. But he could leave the planet any time he wanted with the help of the smugglers’ ships. Oh, yes. He could travel to Skytowers and see Alton Raymond and be briefed by him as to what must be done to steal the Slarrn planets from Hannes Stryker.”
As he spoke, Kael Carrick wondered why this had been hidden from his understanding for so long, and why now of a sudden it should be so plain. Perhaps his experiences in Slarrn had added to his psi factors, to those supernormal abilities which Hannes Stryker had built into his body.
Or perhaps, now that Ylth’yl had been destroyed, his mind had time to take thought of his own personal troubles. No need to worry any more about Ylth’yl the eternal. Time now to worry about Kael Carrick and his guilt or innocence.
He said slowly, “So Than Lear went to Uthoric and hired Felton Pratt to come with him as lookout so as to be in a position to testify against me at the trial. I don’t know how long you waited—maybe you even got to the housekeeper, Mrs. Tellonin, and used her as a spy, wittingly or unwittingly—but you learned when I would be away overnight, fishing.
“You and Felton Pratt drove out to the laboratory. You went in, leaving Pratt outside. You blipped Stryker. You came out and walked off, leaving Pratt to do the rest, summon the patsies and so on.
“Then later, after the trial and when I had been put away on Dakkan, you sent Mai Valoris to find me. You wanted to test me, though—to see if Stryker had made me different from other men as he had hinted in his diary and his notes—so you altered the skimmer compass so she’d be a long time finding me. I was alive, and your suspicions were confirmed.
“Before that, or perhaps even about the same time, Felton Pratt began blackmailing you. If he talked, your goose was cooked. He wanted in on Slarrn, along with you and Alton Raymond. You had to leave Dakkan and put him out of the way, which you did.”
Alton Raymond was sobbing. “Kill him, somebody kill him. He knows too much.” Than Lear swung about, laying the back of his hand across the fat man’s mouth.
“Shut up! He’s just guessing.”
“He knows, he knows,” Raymond blubbered through split lips. “It’s more than a guess. That damned Stryker must have given him a brain to read minds. How else could he know?”
Than Lear opened and closed his hands as he looked at Carrick. “If you were human, I’d kill you, Carrick.”
Carrick laughed harshly. “I’m not human, though. Hannes Stryker made me not-human because he knew there were killers like you alive in the world, killers who would hit him first and then me.”
Than Lear shouted and leaped forward. In mid-stride he paused and a terrified look touched his features, made them seem to crumple as he rose slowly into the air and was turned upside down. Like that, he hurtled at furious speed into the far wall. There was a sickening crunch, a hoarse scream.
Carrick smiled gently at the others. “Telekinetic energy, channeled through my mind against his body. Mind over matter, so to speak.”
One of the hardnoses cursed softly, staring down at the crumpled body of the pirate chieftain. Alton Raymond goggled just beyond him, shaking as might a man with spacebends. Fear was a cold char on his tongue and his middle held nausea as his hand fumbled a path into the pocket of his expensive cling-pants. His fingers tightened on the handle of a small protonigun.
One shot at Kael Carrick is all it needs. A stream of deadly protons hitting him, when he does not expect it and will not have that forcefield raised, will splash him across half the room! Then I won’t have him to fear any longer. He has killed Ylth’yl. He has given me the universe!
Raymond whirled. The gun came up. From its muzzle an invisible flow of high frequency protons leaped at Carrick—
Leaped and—
Halted in mid-air to spread a misty pattern in front of him.
Alton Raymond screamed. The gun was white-hot, melting in his hand. It fell with a plop to the floor, spreading like a pool of black ink. Alton Raymond was weeping, huddled over and clinging to his blistered hand, falling to his knees.
The flow of protons was gone. Carrick walked through where they had been and towered over the kneeling fat man. He said, “You and Than Lear were partners, Raymond. You okayed his plan to murder Stryker. I want the whole thing put down on trutape.”
“What about Than Lear?” one of the men asked.
Than Lear had a broken neck from his impact against the wall. He lay limp, lifeless.
Far from Skytowers, from the walls he had built with credicoins against the world about him, Alton Raymond was a broken man. He stood with glazed eyes and lowered head as Carrick went for a trutape. He sat frozen while Carrick fastened clamps to his wrists, placed electrodes to his temples, held a microphone before his lips.
As the men watched, Alton Raymond talked.
He talked for half an hour, saying what Kael Carrick wanted him to say. He was weeping softly, collapsed in a chair, when he was done. Carrick had to lift his flabby hands and hold them to the electronic seals that stamped the tape with his fingerprints, like a signature.
Carrick looked at the hardcases. He said, “I’m alerting the patsies in about a minute to come get their man. You want them to find you here?”
The smallest of the Border thieves grinned. “You ever need us, Carrick—you know where we are. We were Than Lear’s men—not his. Your fight with him was a private thing. We understood that.”
Another hardcase glanced at the weeping fat man. “He gives you any trouble, we’ll know. And we’ll come to Dyarnal or Leonidar—wherever his trial is held—to testify against him.”
“He won’t be any trouble,” Carrick assured them. “Once a man like him breaks he’s done for.”
He waited until he heard the rumble of the spaceship motors before beaming Space Patrol divisional headquarters. A few moments later the whoosh of displaced air told him the hardcases were on their way back to the Border planets.
It was then that Mai Valoris spoke to him. He wheeled to see her half in, half out of the subsidiundum gateway. There were tears in her eyes as she stumbled from it and ran to him.
“I couldn’t leave you. I couldn’t,” she cried, slamming against him, wrapping her arms about his middle. “I had to know what happened. I waited just beyond the gateway. When I saw—”
He kissed her, stilling her lips.
After a while she stirred and put her head on his chest, “What do we do now?”
“See Alton Raymond condemned for a crime I didn’t commit. Then in exchange for my cleared name, my official innocence—and yours—we’ll go back to Slarrn and form a welcoming committee when Empire sends its people.”
A universe for his freedom. And a woman like Mai Valoris to call his own. It was a good exchange, Kael Carrick thought.
ox, Escape Across the Cosmos