“I am not afraid!”
“Not afraid? You? Sifting there, ready to commit hara-kari with that toy push button, and you tell me that you aren’t afraid. If your buddies knew how near you are to throwing away what they’ve fought for, they’d shoot you in a second. You’re afraid of them, too, aren’t you?”
Van Kleek thrust the push button away from him, and stood up; “I am not afraid!” he screamed, and came around the desk toward Gaines.
Gaines sat where he was, and laughed. “But you are! You’re afraid of me, this minute. You’re afraid I’ll have you on the carpet for the way you do your job. You’re afraid the cadets won’t salute you. You’re afraid they are laughing behind your back. You’re afraid of using the wrong fork at dinner. You’re afraid people are looking at you – and you are afraid that they won’t notice you.”
“I am not!” he protested. “You – You dirty, stuck-up snob! Just because you went to a high-hat school you think you’re better than anybody.” He choked, and became incoherent, fighting to keep back tears of rage. “You, and your nasty little cadets-”
Gaines eyed him cautiously. The weakness in the man’s character was evident now – he wondered why he had not seen it before. He recalled how ungracious Van Kleeck had been one time when he had offered to help him with an intricate piece of figuring.
The problem now was to play on his weakness, to keep him so preoccupied that he would not remember the peril-laden push button. He must be caused to center the venom of his twisted outlook on Gaines, to the exclusion of every other thought.
But he must not goad him too carelessly, or a shot from across the room might put an end to Gaines, and to any chance of avoiding a bloody, wasteful struggle for control of the road.
Gaines chuckled. “Van,” he said, “you are a pathetic little shrimp. That was a dead give-away. I understand you perfectly; you’re a third-rater, Van, and all your life you’ve been afraid that someone would see through you, and send you back to the foot of the class. Director – phiu! If you are the best the functionalists can offer, we can afford to ignore them – they’ll fold up from their own rotten inefficiency.” He swung around in his chair, deliberately turning his back on Van Kleeck and his gun.
Van Kleeck advanced on his tormentor, halted a few feet away, and shouted: “You – I’ll show you. – I’ll put a bullet in you; that’s what I’ll do!”
Gaines swung back around, got up, and walked steadily toward him. “Put that popgun down before you hurt yourself.”
Van Kleeck retreated a step. “Don’t you come near me!” he screamed. “Don’t you come near me – or I’ll shoot you – see if I don’t!”
This is it, thought Gaines, and dived.
The pistol went off alongside his ear. Well, that one didn’t get him. They were on the floor. Van Kleeck was hard to hold, for a little man. Where was the gun? There! He had it. He broke away.
Van Kleeck did not get up. He lay sprawled on the floor, tears streaming out of his closed eyes, blubbering like a frustrated child.
Gaines looked at him with something like compassion in his eyes, and hit him carefully behind the ear with the butt of the pistol. He walked over to the door, and listened for a moment, then locked it cautiously.
The cord from the push button led to the control board. He examined the hookup, and disconnected it carefully. That done, he turned to the televisor at the control desk, and called Fresno.
“Okay, Dave,” he said, “Let ’em attack now – and for the love of Pete, hurry!” Then he cleared the screen, not wishing his watch officer to see how he was shaking.
Back in Fresno the next morning Gaines paced around the Main Control Room with a fair degree of contentment in his heart. The roads were rolling – before long they would be up to speed again. It had been a long night. Every engineer, every available cadet, had been needed to, make the inch-by-inch inspection of Sacramento Sector which he had required. Then they had to cross-connect around two wrecked subsector control boards. But the roads were rolling – he could feel their rhythm up through the floor.