The Chalice of Death (32 page)

The robot steamed on past Mantell without seeing him. He emerged from the alcove and fired once, blasting through its spinal column, paralyzing it and blocking its motor responses. Then, ducking in front of it, he shorted out its brain and put a stop to its impotent whirrings.

The time was twelve-oh-five. Mantell sprinted down the corridor toward Thurdan's suite.

And stopped outside. And listened.

And heard the sound of sobbing. It was Myra. In an agony of remorse, he wondered?

Twelve-oh-six.

Thurdan lay six minutes dead now. Mantell knew what his job was now: to go inside, to snap Myra out of the state of shock she probably had gone into after the killing. He pushed against the door, and to his surprise it gave readily. She had left it open for him.

He flung the door open and burst into Thurdan's apartment. The suite seemed to stretch in every direction. Rare and costly draperies cloaked the oval windows; rich thick rugs brocaded the floor. This was the suite of a czar, of a possession-hungry potentate. Paintings filled the wall space.

The sound of sobbing grew louder. Mantell ran toward it.

He heard Myra shouting to him—“Johnny! Johnny!
No
!”

But by then it was too late.

He blundered into the room and in virtually the same instant two hundred forty pounds of irresistible force crashed into him. The drawn blaster he had been clutching went clattering across the room; he reeled back, struggling for balance.

Ben Thurdan was still alive.

The living room was brightly lighted. With terrible clarity Mantell saw the huge disordered desk, the crumpled papers on its top stained with blood. Myra entered.

Her face was tear-streaked and blotchy; her upper lip was split, and a dab of blood oozed from it. One whole side of her face was livid and swollen where she had received a ferocious blow. She was sobbing hysterically, her whole body quaking with each outcry.

A jagged red line ran some six inches across the front of his shirt at the chest, beginning below the left clavicle and ending just above his left breast. Mantell saw it was only a flesh wound.

He understood what had happened. Somehow Myra had failed in her attempt, scratching Thurdan where she should have torn.

“Are you in this thing too, Mantell?” Thurdan bellowed in monumental rage. Even coatless, and in his ripped shirt, he was a figure of terrifying authority. Sweat poured down his hairless scalp. “You're all against me, then? Harmon and Polderson and Ledru and McDermott and Myra—and even you, Mantell. Even you.”

He advanced slowly toward Mantell. They were both unarmed. Myra's knife, that was to have finished Thurdan, was nowhere in sight, and the blaster Mantell had carried now lay out of reach. Mantell knew that Thurdan needed no weapon. He could tear him to pieces barehanded.

He backed up, moving warily to keep from stumbling. As he stared at Thurdan's grim face he was astonished to see tears starting to form in the fierce eyes—tears of rage, probably. Learning that your closest associates had banded together to betray you is something that even the strongest of men cannot take without a sharp emotional pang.

“All of you wanted to kill me, didn't you?” Thurdan said slowly. “I didn't do enough for you. I didn't build Starhaven practically with my own two hands, and take you all in when you came running. That wasn't enough, so you decided to try to kill me. But you won't kill Ben Thurdan!
You won't
!”

Mantell tried desperately to signal to Myra to scramble across the room and seize the blaster where it lay. But she was too dumb and dazed with shock to understand the meaning of his gestures. She lay on a sofa, arms wrapped over her eyes, shaking violently, a pale huddled figure.

Thurdan reached out for him. He ducked, swept it under his mighty fumbling paws, and landed a solid punch on the jutting jaw. It was like hitting a boulder. Thurdan didn't seem to feel the blow, though Mantell's arm rippled with pain at the contact.

Thurdan's hands clutched at his shoulder; he twisted and slipped away.

“The blaster, Myra—
get the blaster
!” he called harshly. “Pick it up!”

That was a mistake.

Thurdan flicked a hasty glance over his shoulder, saw the blaster where it lay not more than three feet behind him, and scooped it up in one huge paw. In the same motion he hurled it through the open window, far out into the night.

Now it was bare hands against bare hands, and that sort of conflict could have only one conceivable finish.

Mantell edged back as far from Thurdan's reach as he possibly could. His breath was coming hard and thick.

“Kill me, will you?” he demanded. “I'll show you! I'll show all of you!”

Thurdan charged forward, caught Mantell around the middle with one great hand, and hurled him like a toy across the room. He crashed numbingly into a table laden with fine pottery. Mantell rolled over, trying to get up and failing, and waited for Thurdan to pounce and finish him off.

But he didn't pounce. He stood over him, rocking unsteadily, face contorted by some deep inner stress. He made no attempt to touch the fallen Mantell, who lay looking up.

Finally Thurdan said, “I built Starhaven and I can destroy it too!”

Wildly he laughed and swung away, running down the hall and out into the darkness.

Chapter Seventeen

Mantell slowly pulled himself to his feet and stood frozen a moment, shaking away the pain. His back felt numb. Thurdan's sudden flight left him utterly bewildered. He turned to Myra.

“Did you see that? He just ran out!”

She nodded faintly. Her left eye was nearly puffed closed, he saw. She drew a tattered robe around herself. She was making a visible effort to regain control over her nerves.

“Come on,” she said. “There's a private landing port out on the balcony. That's probably where he went.”

“What—?”

She didn't wait to explain. She headed off in the direction Thurdan had gone, and Mantell had no choice but to follow.

They passed through a darkened hallway into a large sitting room whose balcony doors hung open, swaying back and forth in the night breeze. Myra pointed to something just beyond the balcony.

“There he goes!”

An aircar had just taken off, using the balcony as a landing stage; a fiery streak against the blackness indicated its direction. Two more cars were parked on the balcony landing strip. Evidently Thurdan kept them there for emergency use.

“He's heading for the control tower,” Mantell said. “Like Samson bringing down the temple—he's going to lift the screens and bring all Starhaven down to ruin around him!”

Hastily they leaped into one of the waiting aircars and Mantell flipped on the engine. The car sprang away from the balcony. He managed to prod the engine into highest gear within moments after take-off, and they soared out over Starhaven.

The city, far below them, looked tiny and almost insignificant.

Myra huddled against him for warmth. She was still quivering, and not entirely from the cold of the night.

Mantell kept his eyes on the course. “What happened before I got there?” he asked.

She said, “Everything went as scheduled … until I drew the knife. I … hesitated. Just a fraction of a second too long. Ben saw what I was doing. I managed to strike anyway, but he dodged just in time and I only scratched his skin. And then—then he knocked the knife out of my hand and hit me. I thought he was going to kill me. Then you came.”

“And what about Harmon and all the others? Are they still waiting?”

“I guess so. We allowed for something like this to happen. They were waiting to hear from me. I was supposed to give the signal before we made the announcement of Ben's death. And now—”

“Now everything's changed,” Mantell said.

The dark windowless bulk of the control tower loomed up in the blackness ahead; he saw the smoking exhaust of Thurdan's aircar, and brought the vessel down on the landing stage nearby.

They sprang from the car and plunged through the entrance into the control tower itself, Mantell half-dragging Myra behind him. His hand encircled her wrist tightly; there was no time to waste now.

“He must be in his little control center room,” Mantell guessed. “Lord knows what he's doing in there!”

“How do we get there? I don't know my way around this building.”

“Come this way,” he snapped. “The lift tubes are over here.”

But the first lift tube they tried did not respond; it had been shut down for the night. So had the second, and so had the third.

“I don't have any idea how to get them started again,” he told her.

They raced around the level, circling it completely in search of a functioning lift. The thought of running wildly upstairs through the darkened tower was hardly appealing. At last they found a single lift tube that was in operation.

They took it.

They emerged in the corridor, just outside Mantell's defense-screen laboratory; not far down the hall was Ben Thurdan's private control room, the nerve center of Starhaven.

And the light was on in there.

Mantell released his grip on Myra's wrist and dashed down the hall, leaving her behind. Thurdan was in there, and he had the door locked and the small room screen barrier turned on, so it was impossible to enter. He had barricaded himself.

But it was possible to hear what he was saying. The visiscreen was on, and through the plexilite door-window Mantell could see that Thurdan was talking to a gray-faced man in the uniform of the Space Patrol.

“I'm Ben Thurdan, Commander. You heard me,
Thurdan
. You know who I am. I'm calling direct from Starhaven.” Thurdan looked wild, half-mad almost. The iron reserve of poise had crumbled away completely.

The SP man looked skeptical. “Is this some kind of joke, Thurdan? Your foolishness doesn't interest me. One of the days you'll find we've broken through your defenses, and—”

“
Shut up and let me talk
!” Thurdan roared like some wounded animal in anguish. “I'm offering you Starhaven on a plutonium platter, Commander Whitestone! You say you have a fleet? All right,
send
your damned fleet—
I'm dropping the screens
! I'm surrendering. Can you understand that, Whitestone?”

The figure in the screen raised eyebrows curiously and peered out at the wild-looking, sweating, half-naked Thurdan. “Surrendering, Thurdan? I find it hard to believe that—”

“Damn you, I mean it! Send a fleet!”

As he stood with his face pressed against the panel, listening and watching, Mantell heard Myra approaching behind him.

“What's going on in there?” she asked.

“Thurdan has cracked up completely. Right now he's busy surrendering Starhaven to Commander Whitestone of the Space Patrol. He's inviting them to send out a fleet, and he's promising to drop the screens when the fleet gets here.”

“No! He can't be serious!”

“I think he is,” Mantell said. “He would never be able to understand the reasons why you tried to kill him tonight. He thinks the conspiracy was the ultimate betrayal of everything he's worked for in Starhaven—and it threw him off his trolley!”

“We have to stop him!” Myra said determinedly. “If the Patrol ever gets in here they'll carry everyone in Starhaven off to the prison keeps for brainwashing. People who have been law-abiding citizens for twenty years are going to suffer. The place will be destroyed—”

“If we could only get in there and stop him—but he's got a barrier-screen around the room.”

“Screens can be turned off. You're supposed to be barrier-screen expert, Johnny. Can't you think of something?”

“No,” he said. “Yes. Yes. I can. Wait here, will you! And scream good and loud if Thurdan comes out of that room before I get back.”

“What are you—”

“Never mind. Just wait here. And sing out if he opens that door!”

Mantell raced hurriedly down the hall to his laboratory, punched his thumb savagely into the doorplate, and kicked the door open when his print released the lock. The light switched on automatically. He began to rummage through his cluttered workbench for that unfinished pilot model, for which he had once had such high hopes, and which he had never dreamed would be put to a use such as this.…

Ah! There it was.

He snatched it up, out of the tangle of punch-coils and transistors in which it lay. Glancing around the room he found a pocket welding torch, the only instrument within sight that could serve as an effective weapon. He gathered these things up, turned, ran out and back up the corridor to the place where Myra stood waiting for him.

“Did anything happen while I was gone?”

“He's still talking to that SP man,” she told him. “I've been trying to listen. I think Whitestone finally believes Ben's serious.”

“Okay. Watch out.”

Mantell hammered loudly on the plexiplate door with his fists, while the conversation within came to an end and the screen went dead.

“Ben!” he yelled. “Ben Thurdan!”

Thurdan turned and blinked through the panel at him. Mantell called his name again, and yet again.

“What do you want?” Thurdan growled. “Liar! Betrayer! You'll die with all the rest of them!”

“You don't understand, Ben! I'm with you! I'm on your side! It's all a big mistake. You have to trust me. Look! I've brought you the personal defense screen, Ben.”

He held up the model—the useless, unfinished, unworkable model. “I finished it tonight,” he said desperately. “I was working on it all evening. Then I ran the final tests. It's a success! You can strap it around your waist and no weapon can touch you.”

“Eh?” Thurdan grunted suspiciously. “I thought you said it would take a week to finish it.”

“I thought so, too. But I worked at nights. It's finished now.”