Chapter 2

The killer spoke then, for the first time. His voice rang out in the
darkness, harsh with contempt and rage. It was in some respects a
surprising voice, the voice of an educated man. But it was also a voice
that had in it an accent that Corriston had heard before in verbal
documentaries and hundreds of newsreels; in clinical case histories,
microfilm recorded, in penal institutions, on governing bodies,
and wherever men were in a position to destroy others–or perhaps
themselves. It was the voice of an unloved, unwanted man.

The voice said: “You’re done for, my friend. I don’t know what the
Ramsey girl told you, but you came looking for me, and it’s too late
now for any kind of compromise.”

“I wasn’t looking for a deal,” Corriston said. “If it’s any
satisfaction to you, Miss Ramsey told me nothing. But I saw a man
killed; and I couldn’t find her afterwards. I think you know what
happened to her. Knife me, if you can. I’ll go down fighting.”

“That’s easy to say. Maybe you _didn’t_ come looking for me. But you
know too much now to go on living. Unless you–wait a minute! You
mentioned a deal. If you’re lying about the Ramsey girl and will tell
me where she is, I might not kill you.”

“I wasn’t lying,” Corriston said.

“Hell … you’re really asking for it.”

“I’m afraid I am.”

“It won’t be a pleasant way to die.”

“Any way is unpleasant. But I’m not dead yet. Killing me may not be as
easy as you think.”

“It will be easy enough. This time you won’t get past me.”

Corriston knew that the conversation was about to end unless something
unexpected happened. And he didn’t think there was much chance of that.
Had he been clasping a metal tool, he would have swung hard enough to
kill with it. But he wasn’t clasping anything. He was crouching low,
and suddenly he leapt straight forward into the darkness.

His head collided with a bony knee and his hands went swiftly out and
around invisible ankles. He tightened his grip, half expecting the
knife to descend and bury itself in his back. But it didn’t. The other
had been taken so completely by surprise that he simply went backwards,
suddenly, and with a strangled oath.

Instantly Corriston was on top of him. He shifted his grip, releasing
both of the struggling man’s ankles and remorselessly seizing his
wrists. He raised his right knee and brought it savagely downward,
again and again and again. A cry of pain echoed through the darkness.
The killer, crying out in torment, tried to twist free.

For an instant the outcome remained uncertain, a see-saw contest of
strength. Then Corriston had the knife and the struggle was over.

Corriston made a mistake then of relaxing a little. Instantly, the
killer rolled sideways, broke Corriston’s grip, and was on his feet.
He did not attempt to retaliate in any way. He simply disappeared into
the darkness, breathing so loudly that Corriston could tell when the
distance between them had dwindled to the vanishing point.

Corriston sat very still in the darkness, holding on tightly to the
knife. His triumph had been unexpected and complete. It had been close
to miraculous. Strange that he should be aware of that and yet feel
only a dark horror growing in his mind. Strange that he should remember
so quickly again the horror of a man gasping out his life with a
thorned barb protruding from his side.

It had begun a half-hour earlier in the general passenger cabin. It had
begun with a wonder and a rejoicing.

Tremendous and glittering, the Space Station had come floating up out
of the Big Dark like a golden bubble on an onrushing tidal wave. It
had hovered for an instant in the precise center of the viewscreen,
its steep, climbing trail shedding radiance in all directions. Then it
had descended vertically until it almost filled the lower half of the
screen, and finally was lost to view in a wilderness of space.

When it appeared for the second time, it was larger still and its
shadow was a swiftly widening crescent blotting out the nearer stars.

“There it is!” someone whispered.

It had been unreasonably quiet in the general passenger cabin, and for
a moment no other sound was audible. Then the whisper was caught up and
amplified by a dozen awestruck voices. It became a murmur of amazement
and of wonder, and as it increased in volume, the screen seemed to glow
with an almost unbelievable brightness.

Everyone was aware of the brightness. But how much of it was subjective
no one knew or cared. To a man in the larger darkness of space, a dead
sea bottom on Mars, or a moon-landing ship wrapped in eternal darkness
on a lonely peak in the Lunar Apennines may glow with a noonday
splendor.

“They said a space station that size could never be built,” David
Corriston said, leaning abruptly forward in his chair. “They quoted
reams of statistics: height above the center of the Earth in
kilometers, orbital velocity, relation of mass to maneuverability. The
experts had a field day. They went far out on a limb to convince anyone
who would listen that a station weighing thousands of tons would never
get past the blueprint stage. But the men who built it had enough
pride and confidence in human skill to achieve the impossible.”

The girl at Corriston’s side looked startled for an instant, as though
the ironclad assurance of so young a man was as much of a surprise as
his unexpected nearness, and somehow even more disquieting older.

She was certainly somewhat older than he was–about three or four
years. She was an exceptionally pretty girl, her fair hair fluffed out
from under a blue beret, her ship’s lounge jacket a youth-accentuating
miracle of casual tailoring that would have looked well on a woman of
any age. She had the kind of eyes Corriston liked best of all in a
woman: longlashed, observant, and bright with glints of humor.