Bob Shaw - The Ceres Solution

He gazed up at the two Mollanians, seeing them with preternatural clarity, while the fear that his life had ended pulsed behind his eyes. Lorrest, in spite of the terrible setback in his schemes, was playing his part with great skill. He looked sullen, disconsolate and beaten—perfectly concealing his knowledge that in a short time the machine his organisation had planted in the Ocean of Storms would activate itself, and that Ceres would be drawn back on to its collision course. Hargate suddenly became aware that something in Lorrest’s physical appearance had changed. He had not seen the Mollanian make any kind of movement with his hands, but now a rectangle of white card was projecting from his breast pocket.

Wondering if Vekrynn might sense any significance in the card, Hargate examined the Warden’s resplendent figure and saw with some surprise that he was perspiring and that the close-waved blond hair was slightly in disarray.

Why, he’s just a man, after all , he thought. A man who invented a new kind of crime . Abnormally keyed-up though he was, Hargate was unprepared for the firestorm of sheer hatred that blazed through his mind, robbing him of both his humanity and the power of sequential thought. A dozen voices seemed to yammer inside him at once, shrieking, advising, threatening, cajoling… Enemy of my people, I need you to die…and all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty nine years…Lorrest is too much the idealist to do what should be done…and Lantech lived after he begat Noah five hundred and ninety-five years…not only do I need you to die, enemy of my people, I personally need to smear your brain into the shit of your gut…

“I don’t think there is any point in prolonging this,” Vekrynn announced, a new note of finality entering his voice. He raised his pistol with obvious intent.

Hargate, all his attention concentrated on Vekrynn, received only a blurred impression of Lorrest diving towards the Warden, hands outstretched. Vekrynn fired the pistol in the same instant and the card projecting from Lorrest’s pocket pulsed once with a fierce blue aura. An intangible something hit Hargate, like the beating of rubber hammers over his entire body, stopping his breath. He heard Vekrynn give a startled grunt. Lorrest snatched the pistol from his hand and with a powerful twist of his wrists snapped it into two pieces. Vekrynn swayed like a teetering statue, but otherwise appeared unable to move.

Lorrest stared at him, his eyes baleful as he flung the ruined weapon to the ground. “What’s the classic line at this point, Vekrynn? It looks like the tables are turned?”

Hargate scarcely heard the words over the tumultuous pounding of his heart. The reflected backlash from Vekrynn’s paralysis gun had been devastating in its effect. He was breathing rapidly, yet was in real danger of asphyxiating due to the fact that his lungs were unable to expand. His attempt to attract Lorrest’s attention produced only harsh clicking sounds as the air he so desperately craved refused to penetrate any further than his throat.

“I’m warning you,” Vekrynn whispered, his voice hoarse and distorted with the strain of speaking. “What you have done to me is…”

“What I’ve done to you is nothing to what I ought to do,” Lorrest interrupted savagely, advancing on the immobile figure of the Warden. “I should kill you, Vekrynn. The only thing stopping me is that I don’t want to be like you.”

“An animal can never be like a man.” Vekrynn, his face pale with strain, took a halting step towards Lorrest.

“Lie down before you fall.” As he spoke Lorrest put out his right hand, seemingly with the intention of pushing Vekrynn off his feet, but the thrust was never completed. As his fingers touched the material of Vekrynn’s tunic there was a splat of unleashed energy and Lorrest dropped exactly where he had been standing, like a puppet whose strings had been released. Vekrynn reeled grotesquely in a circle while he fought to remain upright.

Hargate, still waging his own inner battle, saw that Lorrest was fully conscious, but apparently unable to move. He was emitting regular groaning sounds with each breath.

“Another fool,” Vekrynn commented, beginning a slow flexing of his fingers. “What do they think I am?”

I know what you are, enemy of my people , Hargate thought, his brain stirring into action as air finally began to make its way into his lungs, removing the immediate threat of death. It occurred to him that he had been lucky to receive only a fraction of the reflected discharge—anything like the amount stopped by Vekrynn would have shut down his nervous system for ever. He moved his arms, satisfying himself that they were sufficiently functional for what he had to do, and—scarcely able to believe what was happening to him—came to a terrible decision.

Grasping the wheels of his chair, he rolled himself closer to Vekrynn. Smiling his lop-sided smile, deliberately relaxing his eyes into a squint, he looked up at the Mollanian and extended one hand.

“Please listen to me, sir,” he said. “This isn’t my fight. None of this has anything to do with me. Please take me back to Earth and I’ll make it worth your while.”

Vekrynn managed a small step back, his mouth working with revulsion. “What do you think you’re talking about?”

“I’m talking about the Moon.” Hargate glanced at the crumpled figure of Lorrest and gave a nasal snigger. “There’s a machine there, in the Oceanus Procellarum. I believe Lorrest called it a cone field generator. It will activate itself a few minutes before Ceres is due to go by—and you know what that means, don’t you?”

“Don’t believe him,” Lorrest ground out, his neck corded with the effort of speaking. “It’s a trick.”

“Trick? Trick?” The Warden shuffled slightly, almost losing his balance, and looked down at Hargate. “If what you are saying is true, there isn’t any time for me to…”

“It is true and there is time,” Hargate cut in. “They located a node there—that’s why the spot was chosen—and I can tell you exactly where it is. You’ve got time to go there and…”

“Denny!” Lorrest twitched convulsively. “You can’t do this!”

“Keep it shut,” Hargate said with a contemptuous wave. “Why should I get done in over you? I want to go home.”

“That can easily be arranged,” Vekrynn said urgently. “You claim you know the position of the machine and the node?”

“You bet! I can give you its lunar coordinates, or I can even work out the Mollanian equation for you.”

“I doubt very much that you could—it will be enough if you simply tell me its position.”

“Not so fast, man.” Hargate renewed his grin. “Do we have a deal?”

“Most certainly—as soon as you demonstrate that you can fulfil your side of the bargain.”

“Okay.” Ignoring Lorrest’s desperate efforts to shout him down, Hargate summoned from his memory the precise coordinates given to him earlier and slowly called out the figures. Vekrynn nodded repeatedly as he absorbed the information.

“I’m grateful to you,” he said, gazing intently at Hargate as though seeing him for the first time. “Now we must hurry. Can you reach the top of this hummock unaided?”

“I believe so.” With Hargate struggling to overcome some loss of strength and feeling in his arms, and the Mollanian progressing by ludicrously small steps, they reached the crest at approximately the same time. The Warden’s broad face was drawn and liberally streaked with perspiration, evidence of the tremendous physical effort he was making in order to move at all. Bending his arms with agonised slowness, he fumbled with one of the square links of his golden belt, causing it to spring open like a locket. Inside was a small piece of what looked like dark red glass which Vekrynn touched briefly before closing the link again.