Ginny said out of her Medusa mask: “Whatever the rest of you decide, Steve and I won’t sit waiting.”
“Blazes, no!” exploded from me. Svartalf laid back his ears, fangs gleamed amidst his whiskers and the fur stood up on him. z
“You see?” Barney said to the group. “I know these people. You can’t stop them short of throwing them in jail for life; and I’m not convinced any jail would hold them. They might have to be killed. Do we let that happen, or do we help them while we still can?”
Voices rumbled around the table, hands went aloft, Janice Wenzel cried loudest: “I’ve got kids of my own Virginia!” Eyes turned from us to Ashman. He flushed and said:
“I’m not going henhouse on you. Remember, all this has just been sprung on me without warning. I’m bound to raise the arguments that occur to me. I don’t believe that encouraging Valeria’s parents to commit suicide will do her any good.”
“What do you mean?’ Barney asked.
“Do I misunderstand? Isn’t your intention to send Steven and Virginia?my patients?into the hell universe?”
That brought me up cold. I’d been ready and raging for action; but this was as if a leap had fetched me to the rim of Ginnungagap. The heart slammed in me. I stared at Ginny. She nodded.
The whole group registered various degrees of consternation. I scarcely noticed the babble that lifted or Barney’s quelling of it. Finally we all sat in a tautstrung silence.
“I must apologize to this committee,” Barney said. His tone was deep and measured as a vesper bell’s. “The problem that I set most of you was to collect and collate available information on the Low Continuum with a view to rescue operations. You did magnificently. When you were informed of Steve’s findings, you used them to make a conceptual breakthrough that may give us the method we want. But you were too busy to think beyond the assignment, or to imagine that it was more than a long‑range, rather hypothetical study: something that might eventually give us capabilities against further troubles of this nature. Likewise, those of you I discussed the political or religious aspects with didn’t know how close we might be facing them in reality.
“I saw no alternative to handling it that way. But Mrs. Matuchek reached me meanwhile, surreptitiously.” I gave her the whole picture, we discussed it at length and evolved a plan of campaign.” He bowed slightly toward Ashman. “Congratulations on your astuteness; Doctor.”
She knew, I thought in the shards of thinking, and yet no one could have told it on her, not even me?not till this instant, and then solely because she chose.
A part of me wondered if other husbands experience corresponding surprises.
She raised her hand. “The case is this,” she said with the same military crispness as when first I’d met her. “A small, skilled group has a chance of success. large, unskilled group has none. It’d doubtless sufl more than the Army or the Faustus teams did, sing they retreated quickly.”
“Death, insanity, or imprisonment in hell with everything that that implies‑” Ashman whispered. “You assume Steven will go.”
“I know better than to try stopping him,” she said.
That gave me a measure of self‑control again. I not unconscious of admiring glances. But mainly listened to her:
“He and I and Svartalf are as good a squad as you’ find. If anybody has a hope of pulling the stunt off, we do. The rest of you can help with preparations a with recovering us. If we don’t make it back, you’ll have the repositories of what has already been learned. Because this is a public matter. It goes far beyond our girl . . . agreed. That’s your main reason for assisiting us. To try and make sure your children and grandchildren will inherit a world worth having;”
She reached in her purse. “Damn,” she said, “I’m out of cigarets.”
She clung a lot of offers, but accepted mine. Our hands clung for a second. Ashman sat staring at his intertwined fingers. Abruptly he straightened and said, with a kind of smile:
“All right, I apologize. You must admit my reaction was natural. But you’re an able group. If you think you’ve found a way to enter hell and return unharmed, you could be right and you have my support. May I ask what your scheme is?”