The Year's Best Science Fiction 11

WARRIOR GORDON R. DICKSON

The spaceliner coming in from New Earth and Freiland, worlds under the Sirian sun, was delayed in its landing by traffic at the spaceport in Long Island Sound. The two police lieutenants, waiting on the bare concrete beyond the shelter of the Terminal buildings, turned up the collars of their cloaks against the hissing sleet, in this unweather-proofed area. The sleet was turning into tiny hailstones that bit and stung all exposed areas of skin. The gray November sky poured them down without pause or mercy, the vast, reaching surface of concrete seemed to dance with their white multitudes.

“Here it comes now,” said Tyburn, the Manhattan Complex police lieutenant, risking a glance up into the hailstorm. “Let me do the talking when we take him in.”

“Fine by me,” answered Breagan, the spaceport officer, “I’m only here to introduce you—and because it’s my bailiwick. You can have Kenebuck, with his hood connections, and his millions. If it were up to me, I’d let the soldier get him.”

“It’s him,” said Tyburn, “who’s likely to get the soldier —and that’s why I’m here. You ought to know that.”

The great mass of the interstellar ship settled like a cautious mountain to the concrete two hundred yards off. It protruded a landing stair near its base like a metal leg, and the passengers began to disembark. The two policemen spotted their man immediately in the crowd.

“He’s big,” said Breagan, with the judicious appraisal of someone safely on the sidelines, as the two of them moved forward.

“They’re all big, these professional military men off the Dorsai world,” answered Tyburn, a little irritably, shrugging his shoulders against the cold, under his cloak. “They breed themselves that way.”

“I know they’re big,” said Breagan. “This one’s bigger.”

The first wave of passengers was rolling toward them now, their quarry among the mass. Tyburn and Breagan moved forward to meet him. When they got close they could see, even through the hissing sleet, every line of his dark, unchanging face looming above the lesser heights of the people around him, his military erectness molding the civilian clothes he wore until they might as well have been a uniform. Tyburn found himself staring fixedly at the tall figure as it came toward him. He had met such professional soldiers from the Dorsai before, and the stamp of their breeding had always been plain on them. But this man was somehow more so, even than the others Tyburn had seen. In some way he seemed to be the spirit of the Dorsai, incarnate.

He was one of twin brothers, Tyburn remembered now from the dossier back at his office. Ian and Kensie were their names, of the Graeme family at Foralie, on the Dorsai. And the report was that Kensie had two men’s likability, while his brother Ian, now approaching Tyburn, had a double portion of grim shadow and solitary darkness.

Staring at the man coming toward him, Tyburn could believe the dossier now. For a moment, even, with the sleet and the cold taking possession of him, he found himself believing in the old saying that, if the born soldiers of the Dorsai ever cared to pull back to their own small, rocky world, and challenge the rest of humanity, not all the thirteen other inhabited planets could stand against them. Once, Tyburn had laughed at that idea. Now, watching Ian approach, he could not laugh. A man like this would live for different reasons from those of ordinary men— and die for different reasons.

Tyburn shook off the wild notion. The figure coming toward him, he reminded himself sharply, was a professional military man—nothing more.

Ian was almost to them now. The two policemen moved in through the crowd and intercepted him.

“Commandant Ian Graeme?” said Breagan. “I’m Kaj Breagan of the spaceport police. This is Lieutenant Walter Tyburn of the Manhattan Complex Force. I wonder if you could give us a few minutes of your time?”

Ian Graeme nodded, almost indifferently. He turned and paced along with them, his longer stride making more leisurely work of their brisk walking, as they led him away from the route of the disembarking passengers and in through a blank metal door at one end of the Terminal, marked Unauthorized Entry Prohibited. Inside, they took an elevator tube up to the offices on the Terminal’s top floor, and ended up in chairs around a desk in one of the offices.

All the way in, Ian had said nothing. He sat in his chair now with the same indifferent patience, gazing at Tyburn, behind the desk, and at Breagan, seated back against the wall at the desk’s right side. Tyburn found himself staring back in fascination. Not at the granite face, but at the massive, powerful hands of the man, hanging idly between the chair arms that supported his forearms. Tyburn, with an effort, wrenched his gaze from those hands.

“Well, Commandant,” he said, forcing himself at last to look up into the dark, unchanging features, “you’re here on Earth for a visit, we understand.”

“To see the next-of-kin of an officer of mine.” Ian’s voice, when he spoke at last, was almost mild compared to the rest of his appearance. It was a deep, calm voice, but lightless—like a voice that had long forgotten the need to be angry or threatening. Only . . . there was something sad about it, Tyburn thought.

“A James Kenebuck?” said Tyburn.

“That’s right,” answered the deep voice of Ian. “His younger brother, Brian Kenebuck, was on my staff in the recent campaign on Freiland. He died three months back.”

“Do you,” said Tyburn, “always visit your deceased officers’ next of kin?”

“When possible. Usually, of course, they die in line of duty.”

“I see,” said Tyburn. The office chair in which he sat seemed hard and uncomfortable underneath him. He shifted slightly. “You don’t happen to be armed, do you, Commandant?”

Ian did not even smile.

“No,” he said.

“Of course, of course,” said Tyburn, uncomfortable. “Not that it makes any difference.” He was looking again, in spite of himself, at the two massive, relaxed hands opposite him. “Your . . . extremities by themselves are lethal weapons. We register professional karate and boxing experts here, you know—or did you know?”

Ian nodded.

“Yes,” said Tyburn. He wet his lips, and then was furious with himself for doing so. Damn my orders, he thought suddenly and whitely, I don’t have to sit here making a fool of myself in front of this man, no matter how many connections and millions Kenebuck owns.

“All right, look here, Commandant,” he said, harshly, leaning forward. “We’ve had a communication from the Freiland-North Police about you. They suggest that you hold Kenebuck—James Kenebuck—responsible for his brother Brian’s death.”

Ian sat looking back at him without answering.

“Well,” demanded Tyburn, raggedly after a long moment, “do you?”

“Force-leader Brian Kenebuck,” said Ian calmly, “led his Force, consisting of thirty-six men at the time, against orders farther than was wise into enemy perimeter. His Force was surrounded and badly shot up. Only he and four men returned to the lines. He was brought to trial in the field under the Mercenaries Code for deliberate mishandling of his troops under combat conditions. The four men who had returned with him testified against him. He was found guilty and I ordered him shot.”

Ian stopped speaking. His voice had been perfectly even, but there was so much finality about the way he spoke that after he finished there was a pause in the room while Tyburn and Breagan stared at him as if they had both been tranced. Then the silence, echoing in Tyburn’s ears, jolted him back to life.

“I don’t see what all this has to do with James Kenebuck, then,” said Tyburn. “Brian committed some . . . military crime, and was executed for it. You say you gave the order. If anyone’s responsible for Brian Kenebuck’s death then, it seems to me it’d be you. Why connect it with someone who wasn’t even there at the time, someone who was here on Earth all the while, James Kenebuck?”

“Brian,” said Ian, “was his brother.”

The emotionless statement was calm and coldly reasonable in the silent, brightly-lit office. Tyburn found his open hands had shrunk themselves into fists on the desk top. He took a deep breath and began to speak in a flat, official tone.

“Commandant,” he said, “I don’t pretend to understand you. You’re a man of the Dorsai, a product of one of the splinter cultures out among the stars. I’m just an old-fashioned Earthborn—but I’m a policeman in the Manhattan Complex and James Kenebuck is . . . well, he’s a taxpayer in the Manhattan Complex.”

He found he was talking without meeting Ian’s eyes. He forced himself to look at them—they were dark un-moving eyes.

“It’s my duty to inform you,” Tyburn went on, “that we’ve had intimations to the effect that you’re to bring some retribution to James Kenebuck, because of Brian Kenebuck’s death. These are only intimations, and as long as you don’t break any laws here on Earth, you’re free to go where you want and see whom you like. But this is Earth, Commandant.”

He paused, hoping that Ian would make some sound, some movement. But Ian only sat there, waiting.

“We don’t have any Mercenaries Code here, Commandant,” Tyburn went on harshly. “We haven’t any feud-right, no droit-de-main. But we do have laws. Those laws say that, though a man may be the worst murderer alive, until he’s brought to book in our courts, under our process of laws, no one is allowed to harm a hair of his head. Now, I’m not here to argue whether this is the best way or not; just to tell you that that’s the way things are.” Tyburn stared fixedly into the dark eyes. “Now,” he said, bluntly, “I know that if you’re determined to try to kill Kenebuck without counting the cost, I can’t prevent it.”

He paused and waited again. But Ian still said nothing.

“I know,” said Tyburn, “that you can walk up to him like any other citizen, and once you’re within reach you can try to kill him with your bare hands before anyone can stop you. 1 can’t stop you in that case. But what I can do is catch you afterward, if you succeed, and see you convicted and executed for murder. And you will be caught and convicted, there’s no doubt about it. You can’t kill James Kenebuck the way someone like you would kill a man, and get away with it here on Earth —do you understand that, Commandant?”

“Yes,” said Ian.

“All right,” said Tyburn, letting out a deep breath. “Then you understand. You’re a sane man and a Dorsai professional. From what I’ve been able to learn about the Dorsai, it’s one of your military tenets that part of a man’s duty to himself is not to throw his life away in a hopeless cause. And this cause of yours, to bring Kenebuck to justice for his brother’s death, is hopeless.”

He stopped. Ian straightened in the movement preliminary to getting up.

“Wait a second,” said Tyburn.

He had come to the hard part of the interview. He had prepared his speech for this moment and rehearsed it over and over again—but now he found himself without faith that it would convince Ian.

“One more word,” said Tyburn. “You’re a man of camps and battlefields, a man of the military; and you must be used to thinking of yourself as a pretty effective individual. But here, on Earth, those special skills of yours are mostly illegal. And without them you’re ineffective and helpless. Kenebuck, on the other hand, is just the opposite. He’s got money—millions. And he’s got connections, some of them nasty. And he was born and raised here in Manhattan Complex.” Tyburn stared emphatically at the tall, dark man, willing him to understand. “Do you follow me? If you, for example, should suddenly turn up dead here, we just might not be able to bring Kenebuck to book for it. Where we absolutely could, and would, bring you to book if the situation were reversed. Think about it.”

He sat, still staring at Ian. But Ian’s face showed no change, or sign that the message had gotten through to him.

“Thank you,” Ian said. “If there’s nothing more, I’ll be going.”

“There’s nothing more,” said Tyburn, defeated. He watched Ian leave. It was only when Ian was gone, and he turned back to Breagan, that he recovered a little of his self-respect. For Breagan’s face had paled.

Ian went down through the Terminal and took a cab into Manhattan Complex, to the John Adams Hotel. He registered for a room on the fourteenth floor of the transient section of that hotel and inquired about the location of James Kenebuck’s suite in the resident section; then sent his card up to Kenebuck with a request to come by to see the millionaire. After that, he went on up to his own room, unpacked his luggage, which had already been delivered from the spaceport, and took out a small, sealed package. Just at that moment there was a soft chiming sound and his card was returned to him from a delivery slot in the room wall. It fell into the salver below the slot and he picked it up, to read what was written on the face of it. The penciled note read: Come on up—K.

He tucked the card and the package into a pocket and left his transient room. And Tyburn, who had followed him to the hotel, and who had been observing all of Ian’s actions from the second of his arrival through sensors placed in the walls and ceilings, half rose from his chair in the room of the empty suite directly above Kenebuck’s, which had been quietly taken over as a police observation post. Then, helplessly, Tyburn swore and sat down again, to follow Ian’s movements in the screen fed by the sensors. So far there was nothing the policeman could do legally—nothing but watch.

So he watched as Ian strode down the softly carpeted hallway to the elevator tube, rose in it to the eightieth floor and stepped out to face the heavy, transparent door sealing off the resident section of the hotel. He held up Kenebuck’s card with its message to a concierge screen beside the door, and with a soft sigh of air the door slid back to let him through. He passed on in, found a second elevator tube, and took it up thirteen more stories. Black doors opened before him—and he stepped one step forward into a small foyer to find himself surrounded by three men.

They were big men—one, a lantern-jawed giant, was even bigger than Ian—and they were vicious. Tyburn, watching through the sensor in the foyer ceiling that had been secretly placed there by the police the day before, recognized all of them from his files. They were underworld muscle hired by Kenebuck at word of Ian’s coming; all armed, and brutal and hairtrigger—mad dogs of the lower city. After that first step into their midst, Ian stood still. And there followed a strange, unnatural cessation of movement in the room.

The three stood checked. They had been about to put their hands on Ian to search him for something, Tyburn saw, and probably to rough him up in the process. But something had stopped them, some abrupt change in the air around them. Tyburn, watching, felt the change as they did; but for a moment he felt it without understanding. Then understanding came to him.

The difference was in Ian, in the way he stood there. He was, saw Tyburn, simply . . . waiting. That same patient indifference Tyburn had seen upon him in the Terminal office was there again. In the split second of his single step into the room he had discovered the men, had measured them, and stopped. Now, he waited, in his turn, for one of them to make a move.

A sort of black lightning had entered the small foyer. It was abruptly obvious to the watching Tyburn, as to the three below, that the first of them to lay hands on Ian would be the first to find the hands of the Dorsai soldier upon him—and those hands were death.

For the first time in his life, Tyburn saw the personal power of the Dorsai fighting man, made plain without words. Ian needed no badge upon him, standing as he stood now, to warn that he was dangerous. The men about him were mad dogs; but, patently, Ian was a wolf. There was a difference with the three, which Tyburn now recognized for the first time. Dogs—even mad dogs—fight, and the losing dog, if he can, runs away. But no wolf runs. For a wolf wins every fight but one, and in that one he dies.

After a moment, when it was clear that none of the three would move, Ian stepped forward. He passed through them without even brushing against one of them, to the inner door opposite, and opened it and went on through.

He stepped into a three-level living room stretching to a large, wide window, its glass rolled up, and black with the sleet-filled night. The living room was as large as a small suite in itself, and filled with people, men and women, richly dressed. They held cocktail glasses in their hands as they stood or sat, and talked. The atmosphere was heavy with the scents of alcohol, and women’s perfumes and cigarette smoke. It seemed that they paid no attention to his entrance, but their eyes followed him covertly once he had passed.

He walked forward through the crowd, picking his way to a figure before the dark window, the figure of a man almost as tall as himself, erect, athletic-looking with a handsome, sharp-cut face under whitish-blond hair that stared at Ian with a sort of incredulity as Ian approached.

“Graeme . . . ?” said this man, as Ian stopped before him. His voice in this moment of off-guardedness betrayed its two levels, the semi-hoodlum whine and harshness underneath, the polite accents above. “My boys . . . you didn’t—” he stumbled, “leave anything with them when you were coming in?”

“No,” said Ian. “You’re James Kenebuck, of course. You look like your brother.” Kenebuck stared at him.

“Just a minute,” he said. He set down his glass, turned and went quickly through the crowd and into the foyer, shutting the door behind him. In the hush of the room, those there heard, first silence then a short, unintelligible burst of sharp voices, then silence again. Kenebuck came back into the room, two spots of angry color high on his cheekbones. He came back to face Ian.

“Yes,” he said, halting before Ian. “They were supposed to . . . tell me when you came in.” He fell silent, evidently waiting for Ian to speak, but Ian merely stood, examining him, until the spots of color on Kenebuck’s cheekbones flared again.

“Well?” he said, abruptly. “Well? You came here to see me about Brian, didn’t you? What about Brian?” He added, before Ian could answer, in a tone suddenly brutal. “I know he was shot, so you don’t have to break that news to me. I suppose you want to tell me he showed all sorts of noble guts—refused a blindfold and that sort of—”

“No,” said Ian. “He didn’t die nobly.”

Kenebuck’s tall, muscled body jerked a little at the words, almost as if the bullets of an invisible firing squad had poured into it.

“Well . . . that’s fine!” he laughed angrily. “You come light-years to see me and then you tell me that! I thought you liked him—liked Brian.”

“Liked him? No.” Ian shook his head. Kenebuck stiffened, his face for a moment caught in a gape of bewilderment. “As a matter of fact,” went on Ian, “he was a glory hunter. That made him a poor soldier and a worse officer. I’d have transferred him out of my command if I’d had time before the campaign on Frieland started. Because of him, we lost the lives of thirty-two men in his Force, that night.”

“Oh.” Kenebuck pulled himself together, and looked sourly at Ian. “Those thirty-two men. You’ve got them on your conscience, is that it?”

“No,” said Ian. There was no emphasis on the word as he said it, but somehow to Tyburn’s ears above, the brief short negative dismissed Kenebuck’s question with an abruptness like contempt. The spots of color on Kenebuck’s cheeks flamed.

“You didn’t like Brian and your conscience doesn’t bother you—what’re you here for, then?” he snapped.

“My duty brings me,” said Ian.

“Duty?” Kenebuck’s face stilled, and went rigid.

Ian reached slowly into his pocket as if he were surrendering a weapon under the guns of an enemy and did not want his move misinterpreted. He brought out the package from his pocket.

“I brought you Brian’s personal effects,” he said. He turned and laid the package on a table beside Kenebuck. Kenebuck stared down at the package and the color over his cheekbones faded until his face was nearly as pale as his hair. Then slowly, hesitantly, as if he were approaching a booby-trap, he reached out and gingerly picked it up. He held it and turned to Ian, staring into Ian’s eyes, almost demandingly.

“It’s in here?” said Kenebuck, in a voice barely above a whisper, and with a strange emphasis.

“Brian’s effects,” said Ian, watching him.

“Yes . . . sure. All right,” said Kenebuck. He was plainly trying to pull himself together, but his voice was still almost whispering. “I guess...that settles it.”

“That settles it,” said Ian. Their eyes held together, “Good-by,” said Ian. He turned and walked back through the silent crowd and out of the living room. The three muscle men were no longer in the foyer. He took the elevator tube down and returned to his own hotel room.

Tyburn, who, with a key to the service elevators, had not had to change tubes on the way down as Ian had, was waiting for him when Ian entered. Ian did not seem surprised to see Tyburn there, and only glanced casually at the policeman as he crossed to a decanter of Dorsai whiskey that had since been delivered up to the room.

“That’s that, then!” burst out Tyburn, in relief. “You got in to see him and he ended up letting you out. You can pack up and go, now. It’s over.”

“No,” said Ian. “Nothing’s over yet.” He poured a few inches of the pungent, dark whiskey into a glass, and moved the decanter over another glass. “Drink?”

“I’m on duty,” said Tyburn, sharply.

“There’ll be a little wait,” said Ian, calmly. He poured some whiskey into the other glass, took up both glasses, and stepped across the room to hand one to Tyburn. Tyburn found himself holding it. Ian had stepped on to stand before the wall-high window. Outside, night had fallen; but—faintly seen in the lights from the city levels below—the sleet here above the weather shield still beat like small, dark ghosts against the transparency.

“Hang it, man, what more do you want?” burst out Tyburn. “Can’t you see it’s you I’m trying to protect—as well as Kenebuck? I don’t want anyone killed! If you stay around here now, you’re asking for it. I keep telling you, here in Manhattan Complex you’re the helpless one, not Kenebuck. Do you think he hasn’t made plans to take care of you?”

“Not until he’s sure,” said Ian, turning from the ghost-sleet, beating like lost souls against the windowglass, trying to get in.

“Sure about what? Look, Commandant,” said Tyburn, trying to speak calmly, “half an hour after we hear from the Freiland-North Police about you, Kenebuck called my office to ask for police protection.” He broke off, angrily. “Don’t look at me like that! How do I know how he found out you were coming? I tell you he’s rich, and he’s got connections! But the point is, the police protection he’s got is just a screen—an excuse—for whatever he’s got planned for you on his own. You saw those hoods in the foyer!”

“Yes,” said Ian, unemotionally.

“Well, think about it!” Tyburn glared at him. “Look, I don’t hold any grief for James Kenebuck! All right—let me tell you about him! We knew he’d been trying to get rid of his brother since Brian was ten—but blast it, Commandant, Brian was no angel, either—”

“I know,” said Ian, seating himself in a chair opposite Tyburn.

“All right, you know! I’ll tell you anyway!” said Tyburn. “Their grandfather was a local kingpin—he was in every racket on the eastern seaboard. He was one of the mob, with millions he didn’t dare count because of where they’d come from. In their father’s time, those millions started to be fed into legitimate businesses. The third generation, James and Brian, didn’t inherit anything that wasn’t legitimate. Hell, we couldn’t even make a jaywalking ticket stick against one of them, if we’d ever wanted to. James was twenty and Brian ten when their father died, and when he died the last bit of tattle-tale gray went out of the family linen. But they kept their hoodlum connections, Commandant!”

Ian sat, glass in hand, watching Tyburn almost curiously.

“Don’t you get it?” snapped Tyburn. “I tell you that, on paper, in law, Kenebuck’s twenty-four-carat gilt-edge. But his family was hoodlum, he was raised like a hoodlum, and he thinks like a hood! He didn’t want his young brother Brian around to share the crown-prince position with him— so he set out to get rid of him. He couldn’t just have him killed, so he set out to cut him down, show him up, break his spirit, until Brian took one chance too many trying to match up to his older brother, and killed himself off.”

Ian slowly nodded.

“All right!” said Tyburn. “So Kenebuck finally succeeded. He chased Brian until the kid ran off and became a professional soldier—something Kenebuck wouldn’t leave his wine, women and song long enough to shine at. And he can shine at most things he really wants to shine at, Commandant. Under that hood attitude and all those millions, he’s got a good mind and a good body that he’s made a hobby out of training. But, all right. So now it turns out Brian was still no good, and he took some soldiers along when he finally got around to doing what Kenebuck wanted, and getting himself killed. All right! But what can you do about it? What can anyone do about it, with all the connections, and all the money and all the law on Kenebuck’s side of it? And, why should you think about doing something about it, anyway?”

“It’s my duty,” said Ian. He had swallowed half the whiskey in his glass, absently, and now he turned the glass thoughtfully around, watching the brown liquor swirl under the forces of momentum and gravity. He looked up at Tyburn. “You know that, Lieutenant.”

“Duty! Is duty that important?” demanded Tyburn. Ian gazed at him, then looked away, at the ghost-sleet beating vainly against the glass of the window that held it back in the outer dark.

“Nothing’s more important than duty,” said Ian, half to himself, his voice thoughtful and remote. “Mercenary troops have the right to care and protection from their own officers. When they don’t get it, they’re entitled to justice, so that the same thing is discouraged from happening again. That justice is a duty.”

Tyburn blinked, and unexpectedly a wall seemed to go down in his mind.

“Justice for those thirty-two dead soldiers of Brian’s!” he said, suddenly understanding. “That’s what brought you here!”

“Yes.” Ian nodded, and lifted his glass almost as if to the sleet-ghosts to drink the rest of his whiskey.

“But,” said Tyburn, staring at him, “you’re trying to bring a civilian to justice. And Kenebuck has you out-gunned and out-maneuvered—”

The chiming of the communicator screen in one corner of the hotel room interrupted him. Ian put down his empty glass, went over to the screen and depressed a stud. His wide shoulders and back hid the screen from Tyburn, but Tyburn heard his voice.

“Yes?”

The voice of James Kenebuck sounded in the hotel room.

“Graeme—listen!”

There was a pause.

“I’m listening,” said Ian, calmly.

“I’m alone now,” said the voice of Kenebuck. It was tight and harsh. “My guests have gone home. I was just looking through that package of Brian’s things . . .” He stopped speaking and the sentence seemed to Tyburn to dangle unfinished in the air of the hotel room. Ian let it dangle for a long moment.

“Yes?” he said, finally.

“Maybe I was a little hasty . . .” said Kenebuck. But the tone of his voice did not match the words. The tone was savage. “Why don’t you come up, now that I’m alone, and we’ll . . . talk about Brian, after all?”

“I’ll be up,” said Ian.

He snapped off the screen and turned around.

“Wait!” said Tyburn, starting up out of his chair. “You can’t go up there!”

“Can’t?” Ian looked at him. “I’ve been invited, Lieutenant.”

The words were like a damp towel slapping Tyburn in the face, waking him up.

“That’s right . . .” he stared at Ian. “Why? Why’d he invite you back?”

“He’s had time,” said Ian, “to be alone. And to look at that package of Brian’s.”

“But . . .” Tyburn scowled. “There was nothing important in that package. A watch, a wallet, a passport, some other papers . . . Customs gave us a list. There wasn’t anything unusual there.”

“Yes,” said Ian. “And that’s why he wants to see me again.”

“But what does he want?”

“He wants me,” said Ian. He met the puzzlement of Tyburn’s gaze. “He was always jealous of Brian,” Ian explained, almost gently. “He was afraid Brian would grow up to outdo him in things. That’s why he tried to break Brian, even to kill him. But now Brian’s come back to face him.”

“Brian . . . ?”

“In me,” said Ian. He turned toward the hotel door.

Tyburn watched him turn, then suddenly—like a man coming out of a daze, he took three hurried strides after him as Ian opened the door.

“Wait!” snapped Tyburn. “He won’t be alone up there! He’ll have hoods covering you through the walls. He’ll definitely have traps set for you . . .”

Easily, Ian lifted the policeman’s grip from his arm.

“I know,” he said. And went.

Tyburn was left in the open doorway, staring after him. As Ian stepped into the elevator tube, the policeman moved. He ran for the service elevator that would take him back to the police observation post above the sensors in the ceiling of Kenebuck’s living room.

When Ian stepped into the foyer the second time, it was empty. He went to the door to the living room of Kenebuck’s suite, found it ajar, and stepped through it. Within the room was empty, with glasses and overflowing ashtrays still on the tables; the lights had been lowered. Kenebuck rose from a chair with its back to the far, large window at the end of the room. Ian walked toward him and stopped when they were little more than an arm’s length apart.

Kenebuck stood for a second, staring at him, the skin of his face tight. Then he made a short almost angry gesture with his right hand. The gesture gave away the fact that he had been drinking.

“Sit down!” he said. Ian took a comfortable chair and Kenebuck sat down in the one from which he had just risen. “Drink?” said Kenebuck. There were a decanter and glasses on the table beside and between them. Ian shook his head. Kenebuck poured part of a glass for himself.

“The package of Brian’s things,” he said, abruptly, the whites of his eyes glinting as he glanced up under his lids at Ian, “there was just personal stuff. Nothing else in it!”

“What else did you expect would be in it?” asked Ian, calmly.

Kenebuck’s hands clenched suddenly on the glass. He stared at Ian, and then burst out into a laugh that rang a little wildly against the emptiness of the large room.

“No, no . . .” said Kenebuck, loudly. “I’m asking the questions, Graeme. I’ll ask them! What made you come all the way here, to see me, anyway?”

“My duty,” said Ian.

“Duty? Duty to whom—Brian?” Kenebuck looked as if he would laugh again, then thought better of it. There was the white, wild flash of his eyes again. “What was something like Brian to you? You said you didn’t even like him.”

“That was beside the point,” said Ian, quietly. “He was one of my officers.”

“One of your officers! He was my brother! That’s more than being one of your officers!”

“Not,” answered Ian in the same voice, “where justice is concerned.”

“Justice?” Kenebuck laughed. “Justice for Brian? Is that it?”

“And for thirty-two enlisted men.”

“Oh—” Kenebuck snorted laughingly. “Thirty-two men . . . those thirty-two men!” He shook his head. “I never knew your thirty-two men, Graeme, so you can’t blame me for them. That was Brian’s fault; him and his idea— what was the charge they tried him on? Oh, yes, that he and his thirty-two or thirty-six men could raid enemy Headquarters and come back with the enemy Commandant. Come back . . . covered with glory.” Kenebuck laughed. “But it didn’t work. Not my fault.”

“Brian did it,” said Ian, “to show you. You were what made him do it.”

“Me? Could I help it if he never could match up to me?” Kenebuck stared down at his glass and took a quick swallow from it then went back to cuddling it in his hands. He smiled a little to himself. “Never could even catch up to me.” He looked whitely across at Ian. “I’m just a better man, Graeme. You better remember that.”

Ian said nothing. Kenebuck continued to stare at him; and slowly Kenebuck’s face grew more savage.

“Don’t believe me, do you?” said Kenebuck, softly. “You better believe me. I’m not Brian, and I’m not bothered by Dorsais. You’re here, and I’m facing you—alone.”

“Alone?” said Ian. For the first time Tyburn, above the ceiling over the heads of the two men, listening and watching through hidden sensors, thought he heard a hint of emotion—contempt—in Ian’s voice. Or had he imagined it?

“Alone—Well!” James Kenebuck laughed again, but a little cautiously. “I’m a civilized man, not a hick frontiersman. But I don’t have to be a fool. Yes, I’ve got men covering you from behind the walls of the room here. I’d be stupid not to. And I’ve got this . . .” He whistled, and something about the size of a small dog, but made of smooth, black metal, slipped out from behind a sofa nearby and slid on an aircushion over the carpeting to their feet.

Ian looked down. It was a sort of satchel with an orifice in the top from which two metallic tentacles protruded slightly.

Ian nodded slightly.

“A medical mech,” he said.

“Yes,” said Kenebuck, “cued to respond to the heartbeats of anyone in the room with it. So you see, it wouldn’t do you any good, even if you somehow knew where all my guards were and beat them to the draw. Even if you killed me, this could get to me in time to keep it from being permanent. So, I’m unkillable. Give up!” He laughed and kicked at the mech. “Get back,” he said to it. It slid back behind the sofa.

“So you see . . .” he said. “Just sensible precautions. There’s no trick to it. You’re a military man—and what’s that mean? Superior strength. Superior tactics. That’s all. So I outpower your strength, outnumber you, make your tactics useless—and what are you? Nothing.” He put his glass carefully aside on the table with the decanter. “But I’m not Brian. I’m not afraid of you. I could do without these things if I wanted to.”

Ian sat watching him. On the floor above, Tyburn had stiffened.

“Could you?” asked Ian.

Kenebuck stared at him. The white face of the millionaire contorted. Blood surged up into it darkening it. His eyes flashed whitely.

“What’re you trying to do—test me?” he shouted suddenly. He jumped to his feet and stood over Ian, waving his arms furiously. It was, recognized Tyburn overhead, the calculated, self-induced hysterical rage of the hoodlum world. But how would Ian Graeme below know that? Suddenly, Kenebuck was screaming. “You want to try me out? You think I won’t face you? You think I’ll back down like that brother of mine, that . . .” He broke into a flood of obscenity in which the name of Brian was freely mixed. Abruptly, he whirled about to the walls of the room yelling at them. “Get out of there. All right, out! Do you hear me? All of you! Out—”

Panels slid back, bookcases swung aside and four men stepped into the room. Three were those who had been in the foyer earlier when Ian had entered for the first time. The other was of the same type.

“Out!” screamed Kenebuck at them. “Everybody out. Outside, and lock the door behind you. I’ll show this Dorsai, this . . .” Almost foaming at the mouth, he lapsed into obscenity again.

Overhead, above the ceiling, Tyburn found himself gripping the edge of the table below the observation screen so hard his fingers ached.

“It’s a trick!” he muttered between his teeth to the un-hearing Ian. “He planned it this way! Can’t you see that?”

“Graeme armed?” inquired the police sensor technician at Tyburn’s right. Tyburn jerked his head around momentarily to stare at the technician.

“No,” said Tyburn. “Why?”

“Kenebuck is.” The technician reached over and tapped the screen, just below the left shoulder of Kenebuck’s jacket image. “Slugthrower.”

Tyburn made a fist of his aching right fingers and softly pounded the table before the screen in frustration.

“All right!” Kenebuck was shouting below, turning back to the still-seated form of Ian, and spreading his arms wide. “Now’s your chance. Jump me! The door’s locked. You think there’s anyone else near to help me? Look!” He turned and took five steps to the wide, knee-high-to-ceiling window behind him, punched the control button and watched as it swung wide. A few of the whirling sleet-ghosts outside drove from out of ninety stories of vacancy, into the opening —and fell dead in little drops of moisture on the window-sill as the automatic weather shield behind the glass blocked them out.

He stalked back to Ian, who had neither moved nor changed expression through all this. Slowly, Kenebuck sank back down into his chair, his back to the night, the blocked-out cold and the sleet.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, slowly, acidly. “You don’t do anything? Maybe you don’t have the nerve, Graeme?”

“We were talking about Brian,” said Ian.

“Yes, Brian . . .” Kenebuck said, quite slowly. “He had a big head. He wanted to be like me, but no matter how he tried—how I tried to help him—he couldn’t make it.” He stared at Ian. “That’s just the way, he never could make it—the way he decided to go into enemy lines when there wasn’t a chance in the world. That’s the way he was—a loser.”

“With help,” said Ian.

“What? What’s that you’re saying?” Kenebuck jerked upright in his chair.

“You helped him lose,” Ian’s voice was matter-of-fact. “From the time he was a young boy, you built him up to want to be like you—to take long chances and win. Only your chances were always safe bets, and his were as unsafe as you could make them.”

Kenebuck drew in an audible, hissing breath.

“You’ve got a big mouth, Graeme!” he said, in a low, slow voice.

“You wanted,” said Ian, almost conversationally, “to have him kill himself off. But he never quite did. And each time he came back for more, because he had it stuck into his mind, carved into his mind, that he wanted to impress you—even though by the time he was grown, he saw what you were up to. He knew, but he still wanted to make you admit that he wasn’t a loser. You’d twisted him that way while he was growing up, and that was the way he grew.”

“Go on,” hissed Kenebuck. “Go on, big mouth.”

“So, he went off-Earth and became a professional soldier,” went on Ian, steadily and calmly. “Not because he was drafted like someone from Newton or a born professional from the Dorsai, or hungry like one of the ex-miners from Coby. But to show you you were wrong about him. He found one place where you couldn’t compete with him, and he must have started writing back to you to tell you about it—half rubbing it in, half asking for the pat on the back you never gave him.”

Kenebuck sat in the chair and breathed. His eyes were all one glitter.

“But you didn’t answer his letters,” said Ian. “I suppose you thought that’d make him desperate enough to finally do something fatal. But he didn’t. Instead he succeeded. He went up through the ranks. Finally, he got his commission and made Force leader, and you began to be worried. It wouldn’t be long, if he kept on going up, before he’d be above the field officer grades, and out of most of the actual fighting.”

Kenebuck sat perfectly still, a little leaning forward. He looked almost as if he were praying, or putting all the force of his mind to willing that Ian finish what he had started to say.

“And so,” said Ian, “on his twenty-third birthday—which was the day before the night on which he led his men against orders into the enemy area—you saw that he got this birthday card . . .” He reached into a side pocket of his civilian jacket and took out a white, folded card that showed signs of having been savagely crumpled but was now smoothed out again. Ian opened it and laid it beside the decanter on the table between their chairs, the sketch and legend facing Kenebuck. Kenebuck’s eyes dropped to look at it.

The sketch was a crude outline of a rabbit, with a combat rifle and battle helmet discarded at its feet, engaged in painting a broad yellow stripe down the center of its own back. Underneath this picture was printed in block letters, the question—”why fight it?”

Kenebuck’s face slowly rose from the sketch to face Ian, and the millionaire’s mouth stretched at the corners, and went on stretching into a ghastly version of a smile.

“Was that all ... ?” whispered Kenebuck.

“Not all,” said Ian. “Along with it, glued to the paper by the rabbit, there was this—”

He reached almost casually into his pocket.

“No, you don’t!” screamed Kenebuck triumphantly. Suddenly he was on his feet, jumping behind his chair, backing away toward the darkness of the window behind him. He reached into his jacket and his hand came out holding the slugthrower, which cracked loudly in the room. Ian had not moved, and his body jerked to the heavy impact of the slug.

Suddenly, Ian had come to life. Incredibly, after being hammered by a slug, the shock of which should have immobilized an ordinary man, Ian was out of the chair on his feet and moving forward. Kenebuck screamed again— this time with pure terror—and began to back away, firing as he went.

“Die, you—! Die!” he screamed. But the towering Dorsai figure came on. Twice it was hit and spun clear around by the heavy slugs, but like a football fullback shaking off the assaults of tacklers, it plunged on, with great strides narrowing the distance between it and the retreating Kenebuck.

Screaming finally, Kenebuck came up with the back of his knees against the low sill of the open window. For a second his face distorted itself out of all human shape in a grimace of its terror. He looked, to right and to left, but there was no place left to run. He had been pulling the trigger of his slugthrower all this time, but now the firing pin clicked at last upon an empty chamber. Gibbering, he threw the weapon at Ian, and it flew wide of the driving figure of the Dorsai, now almost upon him, great hands outstretched.

Kenebuck jerked his head away from what was rushing toward him. Then, with a howl like a beaten dog, he turned and flung himself through the window before those hands could touch him, into ninety-odd stories of unsupported space. And his howl carried away down into silence.

Ian halted. For a second he stood before the window, his right hand still clenched about whatever it was he had pulled from his pocket. Then, like a toppling tree, he fell.

—As Tyburn and the technician with him finished burning through the ceiling above and came dropping through the charred opening into the room. They almost landed on the small object that had come rolling from Ian’s now lax hand. An object that was really two objects glued together. A small paintbrush and a transparent tube of glaringly yellow paint.

“I hope you realize, though,” said Tyburn, two weeks later on an icy, bright December day as he and the recovered Ian stood just inside the Terminal waiting for the boarding signal from the spaceliner about to take off for the Sirian worlds, “what a chance you took with Kenebuck. It was just luck it worked out for you the way it did.”

“No,” said Ian. He was as apparently emotionless as ever; a little more gaunt from his stay in the Manhattan hospital, but he had mended with the swiftness of his Dorsai constitution. “There was no luck. It all happened the way I planned it.”

Tyburn gazed in astonishment.

“Why . . .” he said, “if Kenebuck hadn’t had to send his hoods out of the room to make it seem necessary for him to shoot you himself when you put your hand into your pocket that second time—or if you hadn’t had the card in the first place—” He broke off, suddenly thoughtful. “You mean . . . ?” he stared at Ian. “Having the card, you planned to have Kenebuck get you alone ... ?”

“It was a form of personal combat,” said Ian. “And personal combat is my business. You assumed that Kenebuck was strongly entrenched, facing my attack. But it was the other way around.”

“But you had to come to him—”

“I had to appear to come to him,” said Ian, almost coldly. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have believed that he had to kill me—before I killed him. By his decision to kill me, he put himself in the attacking position.”

“But he had all the advantages!” said Tyburn, his head whirling. “You had to fight on his ground, here where he was strong . . .”

“No,” said Ian. “You’re confusing the attack position with the defensive one. By coming here, I put Kenebuck in the position of finding out whether I actually had the birthday card, and the knowledge of why Brian had gone against orders into enemy territory that night. Kenebuck planned to have his men in the foyer shake me down for the card— but they lost their nerve.”

“I remember,” murmured Tyburn.

“Then, when I handed him the package, he was sure the card was in it. But it wasn’t,” went on Ian. “He saw his only choice was to give me a situation where I might feel it was safe to admit having the card and the knowledge. He had to know about that, because Brian had called his bluff by going out and risking his neck after getting the card. The fact Brian was tried and executed later made no difference to Kenebuck. That was a matter of law—something apart from hoodlum guts, or lack of guts. If no one knew that Brian was braver than his older brother, that was all right; but if I knew, he could only save face under his own standards by killing me.”

“He almost did,” said Tyburn. “Any one of those slugs—”

“There was the medical mech,” said Ian, calmly. “A man like Kenebuck would be bound to have something like that around to play safe—just as he would be bound to set an amateur’s trap.” The boarding horn of the spaceliner sounded. Ian picked up his luggage bag. “Good-by,” he said, offering his hand to Tyburn.

“Good-by ...” he muttered. “So you were just going along with Kenebuck’s trap, all of it. I can’t believe it . . .” He released Ian’s hand and watched as the big man swung around and took the first two strides away toward the bulk of the ship shining in the winter sunlight. Then, suddenly, the numbness broke clear from Tyburn’s mind. He ran after Ian and caught at his arm. Ian stopped and swung half-around, frowning slightly.

“I can’t believe it!” cried Tyburn. “You mean you went up there, knowing Kenebuck was going to pump you full of slugs and maybe kill you—all just to square things for thirty-two enlisted soldiers under the command of a man you didn’t even like? I don’t believe it—you can’t be that cold-blooded! I don’t care how much of a man of the military you are!”

Ian looked down at him. And it seemed to Tyburn that the Dorsai face had gone away from him, somehow become as remote and stony as a face carved high up on some icy mountain’s top.

“But I’m not just a man of the military,” Ian said. “That was the mistake Kenebuck made, too. That was why he thought that stripped of military elements, I’d be easy to kill.”

Tyburn, looking at him, felt a chill run down his spine as icy as wind off a glacier.

“Then, in heaven’s name,” cried Tyburn. “What are you?”

Ian looked from his far distance down into Tyburn’s eyes and the sadness rang as clear in his voice finally, as iron-shod heels on barren rock.

“I am a man of war,” said Ian, softly. . With that, he turned and went on; and Tyburn saw him black against the winter-bright sky, looming over all the other departing passengers, on his way to board the spaceship.