“You! You did it! I should have killed you the first time I saw you. I wanted to, now I know I was right. You’ve been like a plague since you came here, sowing death in every direction. I knew you were wrong, yet I let your twisted words convince me. And look what has
happened. First you killed Welf. Then you murdered those men in the cave. Now this attack on the perimeter-all who die there, you will have killed!”
Kerk advanced on Jason, step by slow step, hatred twisting his features. Jason backed away until he could retreat no further, his shoulders against the chart case. Kerk’s hand lashed out, not a fighting blow, but an open slap. Though Jason rolled with it, it still battered him and stretched him full length on the floor. His arm was against the chart case, his fingers near the sealed tubes that held the jump matrices.
Jason seized one of the heavy tubes with both hands and pulled it out. He swung it with all his strength into Kerk’s face. It broke the skin on his cheekbone and forehead and blood ran from the cuts. But it didn’t slow or stop the big man in the slightest. His smile held no mercy as he reached down and dragged Jason to his feet.
“Fight back,” he said, “I will have that much more pleasure as I kill you.” He drew back the granite fist that would tear Jason’s head from his shoulders.
“Go ahead,” Jason said and stopped struggling. “Kill me. You can do it easily. Only don’t call it justice. Weif died to save me. But the men on the island died because of your stupidity. I wanted peace and you wanted war. Now you have it. Kill me to soothe your conscience, because the truth is something you can’t face up to.”
With a bellow of rage, Kerk drove the piledriver fist down.
Mets grabbed the arm in both her hands and hung on, pulling it aside before the blow could land. The three of them fell together, half crushing Jason.
“Don’t do it,”~he screamed. “Jason didn’t want those men to go down there. That was your idea. You can’t kill him for that!”
Kerk, exploding with rage, was past hearing. He turned his attention to Meta, tearing her from him. She was a woman and her supple strength was meager compared to his great muscles. But she was a Pyrran woman and she did what no off-wonder could. She slowed him for a moment, stopped the fury of his attack until he could rip her hands loose and throw her aside. It didn’t take him long to do this, but it was just time enough for Jason to get to the door.
Jason stumbled through and jammed shut the lock behind him. A split second after he had driven the bolt home, Kerk’s weight plunged into the door. The metal screamed and bent, giving way. One hinge was torn loose and the other held only by a shred of metal. It would go down on the next blow.
Jason wasn’t waiting for that. He hadn’t stayed to see if the door would stop the raging Pyrran. No door on the ship could stop him.
Fast as possible, Jason went down the gangway. There was no safety on the ship, which meant he had to get off it. The lifeboat deck was just ahead.
Ever since first seeing them, he had given a lot of thought to the lifeboats. Though he hadn’t looked ahead to this situation, he knew a time might come when he would need transportation of his own. The lifeboats had seemed to be the best bet, except that Meta had told him they had no fuel. She had been right in one thing: the boat he had been in had empty tanks, he had checked. There were five other boats, though, that he hadn’t examined. He had wondered about the idea of useless lifeboats and come to what he hoped ~as a correct conclusion.
This spaceship was the only one the Pyrrans had. Meta had told him once that they always had planned to buy another ship, but never did. Some other necessary war expense managed to come up first. One ship was really enough for their uses. The only difficulty lay in the fact they had to keep that ship in operation or the Pyrran city was dead. Without supplies they would be wiped out in a few months. Therefore the ship’s crew couldn’t conceive of abandoning their ship. No matter what kind of trouble she got into, they couldn’t leave her. When the ship died, so did their world.