Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov (best novels of all time .txt) 📗

the time had come to halt for a moment.

Schwartz was moved. All those worlds to die—to fester and dissolve in horrible disease . . . Was he an Earthman after all? Simply an Earthman? In his youth he had left Europe and gone to America, but was he not the same man despite that? And if after him men had left a torn and wounded earth for the worlds beyond the sky, were they less Earthmen? Was not all the Galaxy his? Were not they all—all—descended from himself and his brothers?

He said heavily, “All right, I’m with you. How can I help?”

“How far out can you reach for minds?” asked Arvardan eagerly, with a hastening quickness as though afraid still of a last change of mind.

“I don’t know. There are minds outside. Guards, I suppose. I think I can reach out into the street even, but the farther I go, the less sharp it becomes.”

“Naturally,” said Arvardan. “But how about the Secretary? Could you identify his mind?”

“I don’t know,” mumbled Schwartz.

A pause . . . The minutes stretched by unbearably.

Schwartz said, “Your minds are in the way. Don’t watch me. Think of something else.”

They tried to. Another pause. Then, “No—I can’t—I can’t.”

Arvardan said with a sudden intensity, “I can move a bit—Great Galaxy, I can wiggle my feet. . . . Ouch!” Each motion was a savage twinge.

He said, “How hard can you hurt someone, Schwartz? Can you do it harder than the way you hurt me a while back, I mean?”

“I’ve killed a man.”

“You have? How did you do that?”

“I don’t know. It just gets done. It’s—it’s—” Schwartz looked almost comically helpless in his effort to put the wordless into words.

“Well, can you handle more than one at a time?”

“I’ve never tried, but I don’t think so. I can’t read two minds at one time.”

Pola interrupted. “You can’t have him kill the Secretary, Bel. It won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“How will we get out? Even if we caught the Secretary alone and killed him, there would be hundreds waiting for us outside. Don’t you see that?”

But Schwartz broke in, huskily, “I’ve got him.”

“Whom?” It came from all three. Even Shekt was staring wildly at him.

“The Secretary. I think it’s his Mind Touch.”

“Don’t let him go.” Arvardan almost rolled over in his attempts at exhortation, and tumbled off the slab, thumping to the floor with one half-paralyzed leg working futilely to wedge underneath his body and lift.

Pola cried, “You’re hurt!” and suddenly found the hinges of her arm uncreaking as she tried to lift her elbow.

“No, it’s all right. Suck him dry, Schwartz. Get all the information you can.”

Schwartz reached out until his head ached. He clutched and clawed with the tendrils of his own mind, blindly, clumsily—like an infant thrusting out fingers it can’t quite handle for an object it can’t quite reach. Until now he had taken whatever he could find, but now he was looking—looking—

Painfully, he caught wisps. “Triumph! He’s sure of the results. . . . Something about space bullets. He’s started them. . . . No, not started. Something else. . . . He’s going to start them.”

Shekt groaned. “They’re automatically guided missiles to carry the virus, Arvardan. Aimed at the various planets.”

“But where are they kept, Schwartz?” insisted Arvardan. “Look, man, look—”

“There’s a building I—can’t—quite—see. . . . Five points—a star—a name; Sloo, maybe—”

Shekt broke in again. “That’s it. By all the stars in the Galaxy, that’s it. The Temple of Senloo. It’s surrounded by radioactive pockets on all sides. No one would ever go there but the Ancients. Is it near the meeting of two large rivers, Schwartz?”

“I can’t—Yes—yes—yes.”

“When, Schwartz, when? When will they be set off?”

“I can’t see the day, but soon—soon. His mind is bursting with that—It will be very soon.” His own head seemed bursting with the effort.

Arvardan was dry and feverish as he raised himself finally to his hands and knees, though they wobbled and gave under him. “Is he coming?”

“Yes. He’s at the door.”

His voice sank and stopped as the door opened.

Balkis’s voice was one of cold derision as he filled the room with success and triumph. “Dr. Arvardan! Had you not better return to your seat?”

Arvardan looked up at him, conscious of the cruel indignity of his own position, but there was no answer to make, and he made none. Slowly he allowed his aching limbs to lower him to the ground. He waited there, breathing heavily. If his limbs could return a bit more, if he could make a last lunge, if he could somehow seize the other’s weapons—

That was no neuronic whip that dangled so gently from the smoothly gleaming Flexiplast belt that held the Secretary’s robe in place. It was a full-size blaster that could shred a man to atoms in an instantaneous point of time.

The Secretary watched the four before him with a savage sense of satisfaction. The girl he tended to ignore, but otherwise it was a clean sweep. There was the Earthman traitor; there the Imperial agent; and there the mysterious creature they had been watching for two months. Were there any others?

To be sure, there was still Ennius, and the Empire. Their arms, in the person of these spies and traitors, were pinioned, but there remained an active brain somewhere—perhaps to send out other arms.

The Secretary stood easily, hands clasped in contemptuous disregard of any possible necessity of quickly reaching his weapon. He spoke quietly and gently. “Now it is necessary to make things absolutely clear. There is war between Earth and the Galaxy—undeclared as yet, but, nevertheless, war. You are our prisoners and will be treated as will be necessary under the circumstances. Naturally the recognized punishment for spies and traitors is death—”

“Only in the case of legal and declared war,” broke in Arvardan fiercely.

“Legal war?” questioned the Secretary with more than a trace of a sneer. “What is legal war? Earth has always been at war with the Galaxy, whether we made polite mention of the fact or not.”

“Don’t bother with him,” said Pola to Arvardan softly. “Let him have his say and finish