Horn didn't answer. He didn't know the answer, and he had asked himself the same question. Why? Who had wanted Kohlnar killed? Who had paid Horn to kill him? And why was it important that Kohlnar didn't die a natural death?

It was important. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble and expense and risked his own life to set the plan underway. It had to be important. But it wasn't as important right now as getting away and staying alive.

"We're going to walk across the field," Horn said slowly. "You'll walk in front; I'll follow. Head for the scout. Climb the steps. Order the crew out. If you try anything, you'll die."

"All right," she said.

"Let's go," Horn said.

She walked in front of him across the field. It wasn't far to the little ship, maybe two hundred meters, but the reflected glory of the monument was brighter as they went toward it.

Wendre's walk was a little hesitant and stiff, but Horn decided it would pa.s.s unnoticed. Who would question one of Eron's Directors? Horn marched behind her at a respectful two-pace distance and a little to the left. It would take keen eyes to see, in the darkness, the pistol held low against his right thigh.

Half of the distance was behind them. Still no challenge. No suspicion. The field lay in night and silence, stirred only by the sweep of roving beams and the brisk click-click of their footsteps on the pavement.

The steep stairway leading up to the dark port of the scout was only a few steps away.

"Slowly," Horn whispered.

Obediently, Wendre slowed her pace.

Suddenly the odor of danger was stifling. Horn felt like screaming or running madly for the steps that led up toward freedom, up toward safety. He clamped his teeth firmly on his lower lip and stilled the eager trembling of his muscles. Of course there was danger. The farther he went, the more dangerous the situation became. It would build higher and higher until the scout blasted away from the mesa and got beyond the range of battleships, beyond pursuit.

In front of him, Wendre's shoulders straightened.

"I don't want to kill you," Horn whispered.

The shoulders slumped. She started up the steps.

Danger. Stirring close. Crouching in the darkness. Horn's eyes were busy in the masklike calm of his face. But he saw nothing.

Calm! Calm!

Horn climbed behind Wendre, watching her back, quickening his pace a little to close the gap between them. When they entered the ship, he must be only half a step behind.

Two more steps. One.

Danger! It exploded! Something moved in the shadow of the little ship. At the first flicker, Horn shoved Wendre forward, instinctively.

The bullet whined between them and screamed off the rounded hull of the ship.

"Guards!" Wendre was shouting. "The a.s.sa.s.sin. Guar-"

The clanging of the port cut off her words. That way was closed. Wendre had tricked him. But it hadn't been a trick. There had been a shot.

And Horn was spinning, waiting for the second shot, braced against it. Before it came, his own gun spat. A m.u.f.fled thud came from the shadows beside the ship. A groan. A whisper of cloth.

A sound of men running. Shouts. The searchlights hesitated and began to converge.

Horn was leaping down the steps. Two long strides brought him to the ground. He didn't hesitate. He ran toward the center of the field, toward the glowing monument.

Feet drew close behind him, many of them.

"There!" Horn shouted. "There he is!"

He ran hard, holding his gun in front of him. Behind, the running feet came on. But there were no shots.

They were running into a fantasy of leaping, shifting, many-colored shadows, painting them with paint-dipped fingers....

"There he goes!" someone shouted.

Behind, distantly, came the creaking of an opening port. A woman's shouts were indistinguishable.

You're quick, Wendre, Horn thought. But not quite quick enough.

A hunter has to know what he is hunting. The guards didn't. No one knew what he looked like, not even Wendre. She knew that he was dressed like a guard, but she was the only one. As long as the chase continued, as long as the guards weren't mustered, inspected, questioned, searched, they couldn't find him. Before then, he would have to fade back into the hills. The far hills, this time.

Someone pulled abreast of him. The long desert trip, the thirst, the hunger, the lack of sleep had weakened him. But the guard beside him was looking ahead, looking for an a.s.sa.s.sin.

a.s.sa.s.sin, a.s.sa.s.sin. The word hammered in Horn's brain. What is an a.s.sa.s.sin? What does he look like? How can you tell him from other men?

The Victory Monument drew close. Guards streamed by on both sides as Horn's stride faltered. His breath came raggedly.

He had time to wonder about the bullet that had pa.s.sed so close to him. Close but too far. A foot in front. Fantastic inaccuracy for a guard. It had pa.s.sed through the s.p.a.ce where Wendre had been a moment before, where she would have been if Horn hadn't pushed her through the lock. Wendre? Had the bullet been meant for her?

Were there other a.s.sa.s.sins?

And then Horn was beside the towering cube, glowing with the giant picture of the Cl.u.s.ter's surrender. The platform was gone, and he wondered why he was here instead of running with the guards toward the distant hills, and then he understood. He could never make it. He could never survive another chase; he didn't have the strength to escape again. Again his instinct had been quicker than his judgment.

Here was escape. The only possible escape. Dangerous. Possibly fatal. But escape, if he lived through it. There was no other chance.

He tried to remember the Terminal he had inspected on Quarnon Four, the Terminal that stood outside the capital like a monument to futility. Somewhere in the Cl.u.s.ter there had been another, just like it, identical with Eron's Terminals to the minutest detail. They had never come to life. They had been dusty mausoleums for years.

Horn felt along the smooth black wall. Close to one corner was a crack. He traced it as high as he could reach; it went on up. Down, it turned a corner a few centimeters from the pavement, paralleled it for a meter and turned up again. A rectangle. The door.

Horn leaned against it. It swung in. Horn slipped into a dimly lit room and let the three-meter-tall door swing shut behind him. There was no one in the long room.

Horn turned back to the door. Beside it was a circular disk, slightly recessed into the wall. Horn put his hand over it and tugged at the door handle. It was immovable.

Horn turned back into the room, feeling a moment of security. Where were the technicians? Gone to aid in the search? Or hadn't they moved in yet? Perhaps the Tube wasn't ready for operation. Horn felt a flash of panic.

It subsided as he inspected the room. He remembered. This was a dining hall. Plastic plates stacked at the far end of the room for disposal were soiled.

Horn pa.s.sed through an archway into a room lined with bunks and lockers. Four doors opened off it. The first would be the control room, the second a communications room, the third- Horn palmed the disk beside the door. The door slid aside. Horn stepped into a huge, domed chamber, nine hundred meters high and almost as wide. Offset a little from the center was a ma.s.sive, N-iron mounting for a giant, gun-shaped tube. It slanted upward. At a hole even larger than itself, the tube joined the dazzling brilliance of the real Tube. The floor trembled a little, as if the whole thing were in steady movement.

It was, Horn realized. It would have to follow the apparent movement of Eron.

At this end of the metal tube was a hinged cradle. The ships were brought into the cube on the many-wheeled dollies that rolled along the grooved tracks. The cradle lowered to receive them, raised them up, and shoved them forward into the main lock.

Horn ran toward the mounting and scrambled up the ladder welded to one of the beams. The first joint was two hundred meters from the pavement. Railed steps led upward toward the main lock at a thirty-degree angle. At the top was a door. Beside it was a disk. Horn hesitated and palmed it.

Beyond was a small room. The walls were lined with s.p.a.cesuits, supported at the armpit by pegs. Personnel lock, Horn thought. He closed the door behind him.

He picked out a suit that seemed about the size of the one the Guard had issued him. He got into it with the ease of long practice.

He lowered the plastic helmet over his head and clamped it down. He shoved his hands into the gauntlets and felt them click against the metal cuffs. Gauges reflected their information against the front of the helmet. Air supply: 12 hours. Water: one liter. Food: two emergency rations. Closures: airtight.

He brushed his hand against the breastplate. The dials vanished. He walked heavily toward a door in the far wall. It slid aside to reveal a narrow cubicle lit by a single glowing plate in the ceiling.

Opposite Horn was another door. He palmed the disk beside it, but it didn't open. Instead, the door behind him closed. For a moment he stood there helplessly, feeling the sweat begin to trickle down his sides, and then the door slid open. Horn walked into a great tube, half a kilometer long, one hundred meters in diameter.

He began to run toward the far end of the tube, closed by giant doors. When he reached them he was winded again. At eye level, just to the right of the crack between the doors, was another disk. It was red. Above it was printed: DANGER-EMERGENCY.

Horn took a deep breath. Beyond the doors lay the Tube, and the Tube led to Eron, away from Earth and danger.

Was Eron better than Earth? For him, it was. Earth was death. Eron, at least, was uncertainty. Once there, if he could blend into that teeming hive of humanity, he could disappear. They would never find him.

He stood at the mouth of a second, darker tunnel and thought the thoughts he had thought before. Only this tunnel was deadlier. He remembered the buzzard that had flared so brilliantly against the Tube wall. The touch of the Tube was death.

Could he make it in a s.p.a.cesuit?

Slowly he raised his hand toward the red disk. The metal gauntlet closed over- He fell, fell into endless night, fell toward Eron, thirty light years away....

THE HISTORY.

Eron....

Bitter child of a negligent mother. Sp.a.w.ned and forgotten.

Eron. Man's greatest challenge. Man's greatest triumph.

You had nothing but hate; that you gave freely. You froze man while he compressed your thin air to make it breathable. You scourged him while he searched futilely for useful minerals and fertile soil. You changed him; you made him as hard and bitter as yourself.

It's not surprising that he turned from you to the endless seas of s.p.a.ce. Trade; raid. There was little difference between them.

Legend says that Roy Kellon found you, but legend is mistress to any man. Why should he have chosen you? Almost any world would have been fairer, sweeter, kinder. And you are nearly thirty light years from Earth, the journey of a weary lifetime.

Eron. Where are you now? Man changed you more than you changed him. He hid you beneath an expanding skin of metal and put you at the center of a star-flung empire. You sit there, tamed, obedient, holding it together with golden strings.

Eron. You are the Hub. All roads lead to you....

8.

OUT OF CHAOS ...

Nothing. Nowhere. Lightless, soundless, weightless.... Nothing. Nothing to see or hear or feel. Formless, unreal.... Nothing.

The universe was dark, was dead, was gone. The world had ended.

No stars, no warmth, no life. The night had won, and the light was forever gone. Death had conquered. The great clock of creation had run down. The great energy gradient had been flattened. Hot, cold-there were no words for those. No motion. Nothing.

Infinity was a dark sameness. Here, there-the terms were meaningless. Nowhere was everywhere; everywhere was nowhere.

One consciousness in the eternal night, stunned, reeling, afraid. One life living in the endless death. One thing aware when awareness was futile. One mind thinking when the time for thought was done.

Horn screamed. Soundlessly. Without movement. It was a shocking, mental thing without physical extensions, imprisoned with the narrow, impervious sh.e.l.l of the mind. It was lightning captured in a hollow ball.

No breath dilated his nostrils or stirred his lungs. No pump throbbed rhythmically in his chest. No muscles tensed or relaxed. He was a consciousness, hopelessly alone.

One mind, spinning in infinity.

Think! Think!

Infinity split. Creation!

Consciousness in the womb, weightless, eternally falling, endless distances below, above, around. That's wrong. Think! No up, no down. All directions were outward.

Consciousness. A mind to think. Existence. Circular proof. Outside of this, nothing.

Birth!

Upon one fact a man can construct a universe. Always one fact, always the same. I think-I am. Reality begins with me. I am the universe! I am the creator.

Create, then. Everything is destroyed but you. There is nothing alive but you. There is no thought, no memory, but yours. Create!

The universe was falling through the void. Falling or weightless? Distinction meaningless: ident.i.ty. Falling. Hold fast to that. A thing must fall from somewhere, fall to somewhere, fall through something.

Cling to it. Cling to sanity. Create.

Falling from somewhere. From a place of weight and solidity. Earth. Horn created Earth, complete, with green plains and gray mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas, blue sky, white clouds, and sunlight. He peopled it with animals and men. Earth. His creation filled him with longing. But Earth was behind him. He was falling from there.

Falling to somewhere. To a place of weight and solidity. Eron. Horn created Eron, complete, steel-jacketed, cold, the hub of a giant wheel, spokes reaching across the stars. Beneath the icy metal skin, he tunneled it out and peopled it with mole-men, scampering blindly through the tunnels. Eron. It was in front of him. He was falling to there.

Falling through something. Falling through one of the golden spokes. The Tube. Horn created the Tube, complete, a golden shimmering of energy outside; within, a black nothingness, an empty, timeless void, foreshortening s.p.a.ce or expanding time so that a distance of light years could be spanned in hours. He peopled it with a man, himself. He was falling through it.

Reality. Horn created it....

Memory returned. With it came sanity. Sensation was still missing, but he had these two, and he must hug them tightly or go mad. He had fallen up into the Tube, up into nothingness and insanity. He was still there, but now he had a mind that worked.

He willed his mind to feel. At the end of eternity, he gave up. Either his mind was isolated or there was nothing to feel.

Eternity. The Tube was timeless, too. Every instant was eternity.