"Come on, the other place; hurry!" he ordered.

Sarnax swore in exasperation. "Help me with her, Dirzed!" he implored.

Verkan Vall turned his head, to see the two a.s.sa.s.sins drag Dalla to her feet and hustle her away from the gun room; she was quite senseless, and they had to drag her between them. Verkan Vall gave a quick glance into the gun room; two of the Starpha servants and a man in rather flashy civil dress were lying on the floor, where they had been shot as they had jumped down from above. He saw a movement at the edge of the irregular, smoking, hole in the ceiling, and gave it a short burst, then fired another at the exit from the descent tube.

Then he took to his heels and followed the a.s.sa.s.sins and Hadron Dalla into Prince Jirzyn"s apartment.

As he ran through the open door, the a.s.sa.s.sins were letting Dalla down into a chair; they instantly threw themselves into the work of barricading the doorway so as to provide cover and at the same time allow them to fire out into the central well.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ]

For an instant, as he bent over her, he thought Dalla had been killed, an a.s.sumption justified by his knowledge of the deadliness of Akor-Neb bullets. Then he saw her eye-lids flicker. A moment later, he had the explanation of her escape. The bullet had hit the game bag at her side; it was full of spools of metal tape, in metal cases, and notes in written form, pyrographed upon sheets of plastic ring fastened into metal binders. Because of their extreme velocity, Akor-Neb bullets were sure killers when they struck animal tissue, but for the same reason, they had very poor penetration on hard objects. The alloy-steel tape, and the steel spools and spool cases, and the notebook binders, had been enough to shatter the little bullet into splinters of magnesium-nickel alloy, and the stout leather back of the game bag had stopped all of these. But the impact, even distributed as it had been through the contents of the bag, had been enough to knock the girl unconscious.

He found a bottle of some sort of brandy and a gla.s.s on a serving table nearby and poured her a drink, holding it to her lips. She spluttered over the first mouthful, then took the gla.s.s from him and sipped the rest.

"What happened?" she asked. "I thought those bullets were sure death."

"Your notes. The bullet hit the bag. Are you all right, now?"

She finished the brandy. "I think so." She put a hand into the game bag and brought out a snarled and tangled mess of steel tape. "Oh, _blast_! That stuff was important; all the records on the preliminary auto-recall experiments." She shrugged. "Well, it wouldn"t have been worth much more if I"d stopped that bullet, myself." She slipped the strap over her shoulder and started to rise.

As she did, a bedlam of firing broke out, both from the two a.s.sa.s.sins at the door and from outside. They both hit the floor and crawled out of line of the partly-open door; Verkan Vall recovered his submachine-gun, which he had set down beside Dalla"s chair. Sarnax was firing with his rifle at some target in the direction of the lifter tubes; Dirzed lay slumped over the barricade, and one glance at his crumpled figure was enough to tell Verkan Vall that he was dead.

"You fill magazines for us," he told Dalla, then crawled to Dirzed"s place at the door. "What happened, Sarnax?"

"They shoved over the barricade at the lifter tubes and came out into the well. I got a couple, they got Dirzed, and now they"re holed up in rooms all around the circle. They--Aah!" He fired three shots, quickly, around the edge of the door. "That stopped that." The a.s.sa.s.sin crouched to insert a fresh magazine into his rifle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ]

Verkan Vall risked one eye around the corner of the doorway, and as he did, there was a red flash and a dull roar, unlike the blue flashes and sharp cracking reports of the pistols and rifles, from the doorway of the gun room. He wondered, for a split second, if it might be one of the fowling pieces he had seen there, and then something whizzed past his head and exploded with a soft _plop_ behind him. Turning, he saw a pool of gray vapor beginning to spread in the middle of the room. Dalla must have got a breath of it, for she was slumped over the chair from which she had just risen.

Dropping the submachine-gun and gulping a lungful of fresh air from outside, Verkan Vall rushed to her, caught her by the heels, and dragged her into Prince Jirzyn"s bedroom, beyond. Leaving her in the middle of the floor, he took another deep breath and returned to the drawing room, where Sarnax was already overcome by the sleep-gas.

He saw the serving table from which he had got the brandy, and dragged it over to the bedroom door, overturning it and laying it across the doorway, its legs in the air. Like most Akor-Neb serving tables, it had a gravity-counteraction unit under it; he set this for double minus-gravitation and snapped it on. As it was now above the inverted table, the table did not rise, but a tendril, of sleep-gas, curling toward it, bent upward and drifted away from the doorway. Satisfied that he had made a temporary barrier against the sleep-gas, Verkan Vall secured Dalla"s hunting pistol and spare magazines and lay down at the bedroom door.

For some time, there was silence outside. Then the besiegers evidently decided that the sleep-gas attack had been a success. An a.s.sa.s.sin, wearing a gas mask and carrying a submachine-gun, appeared in the doorway, and behind him came a tall man in a tan tunic, similarly masked. They stepped into the room and looked around.

Knowing that he would be shooting over a two hundred percent negative gravitation-field, Verkan Vall aimed for the a.s.sa.s.sin"s belt-buckle and squeezed. The bullet caught him in the throat. Evidently the bullet had not only been lifted in the negative gravitation, but lifted point-first and deflected upward. He held his front sight just above the other man"s knee, and hit him in the chest.

As he fired, he saw a wisp of gas come sliding around the edge of the inverted table. There was silence outside, and for an instant, he was tempted to abandon his post and go to the bathroom, back of the bedroom, for wet towels to improvise a mask. Then, when he tried to crawl backward, he could not. There was an impression of distant shouting which turned to a roaring sound in his head. He tried to lift his pistol, but it slipped from his fingers.

When consciousness returned, he was lying on his back, and something cold and rubbery was pressing into his face. He raised his arms to fight off whatever it was, and opened his eyes, to find that he was staring directly at the red oval and winged bullet of the Society of a.s.sa.s.sins. A hand caught his wrist as he reached for the small pistol under his arm. The pressure on his face eased.

"It"s all right, Lord Virzal," a voice came to him. "a.s.sa.s.sins"

Truce!"

He nodded stupidly and repeated the words. "a.s.sa.s.sins" Truce; I won"t shoot. What happened?"

Then he sat up and looked around. Prince Jirzyn"s bedchamber was full of a.s.sa.s.sins. Dalla, recovering from her touch of sleep-gas, was sitting groggily in a chair, while five or six of them fussed around her, getting in each others" way, handing her drinks, chaffing her wrists, holding damp cloths on her brow. That was standard procedure, when any group of males thought Dalla needed any help. Another a.s.sa.s.sin, beside the bed, was putting away an oxygen-mask outfit, and the a.s.sa.s.sin who had prevented Verkan Vall from drawing his pistol was his own follower, Marnik. And Klarnood, the a.s.sa.s.sin-President, was sitting on the foot of the bed, smoking one of Prince Jirzyn"s monogrammed and crested cigarettes critically.

Verkan Vall looked at Marnik, and then at Klarnood, and back to Marnik.

"You got through," he said. "Good work, Marnik; I thought they"d downed you."

"They did; I had to crash-land in the woods. I went about a mile on foot, and then I found a man and woman and two children, hiding in one of these little log rain shelters. They had an airboat, a good one. It seemed that rioting had broken out in the city unit where they lived, and they"d taken to the woods till things quieted down again. I offered them a.s.sa.s.sins" protection if they"d take me to a.s.sa.s.sins"

Hall, and they did."

"By luck, I was in when Marnik arrived," Klarnood took over. "We brought three boatloads of men, and came here at once. Just as we got here, two boatloads of Starpha dependents arrived; they tried to give us an argument, and we discarnated the lot of them. Then we came down here, crying a.s.sa.s.sins" Truce. One of the Starpha a.s.sa.s.sins, Kirzol, was still carnate; he told us what had been going on." The President-General"s face-became grim. "You know, I take a rather poor view of Prince Jirzyn"s procedure in this matter, not to mention that of his underlings. I"ll have to speak to him about this. Now, how about you and the Lady Dallona? What do you intend doing?"

"We"re getting out of here," Verkan Vall said. "I"d like air transport and protection as far as Ghamma, to the establishment of the family of Zorda. Brarnend of Zorda has a private s.p.a.ce yacht; he"ll get us to Venus."

Klarnood gave a sigh of obvious relief. "I"ll have you and the Lady Dallona airborne and off for Ghamma as soon as you wish," he promised.

"I will, frankly, be delighted to see the last of both of you. The Lady Dallona has started a fire here at Darsh that won"t burn out in a half-century, and who knows what it may consume." He was interrupted by a heaving shock that made the underground dome dwelling shake like a light airboat in turbulence. Even eighty feet under the ground, they could hear a continued crashing roar. It was an appreciable interval before the sound and the shock ceased.

For an instant, there was silence, and then an excited bedlam of shouting broke from the a.s.sa.s.sins in the room: Klarnood"s face was frozen in horror.

"That was a fission bomb!" he exclaimed. "The first one that has been exploded on this planet in hostility in a thousand years!" He turned to Verkan Vall. "If you feel well enough to walk, Lord Virzal, come with us. I must see what"s happened."

They hurried from the room and went streaming up the ascent tube to the top of the dome. About forty miles away, to the south, Verkan Vall saw the sinister thing that he had seen on so many other time-lines, in so many other paratime sectors--a great pillar of varicolored fire-shot smoke, rising to a mushroom head fifty thousand feet above.

"Well, that"s it," Klarnood said sadly. "That is civil war."

"May I make a suggestion, a.s.sa.s.sin-President?" Verkan Vall asked. "I understand that a.s.sa.s.sins" Truce is binding even upon non-a.s.sa.s.sins; is that correct?"

"Well, not exactly; it"s generally kept by such non-a.s.sa.s.sins as want to remain in their present reincarnations, though."

"That"s what I meant. Well, suppose you declare a general, planet-wide a.s.sa.s.sins" Truce in this political war, and make the leaders of both parties responsible for keeping it. Publish lists of the top two or three thousand Statisticalists and Volitionalists, starting with Mirzark of Bashad and Prince Jirzyn of Starpha, and inform them that they will be a.s.sa.s.sinated, in order, if the fighting doesn"t cease."

"Well!" A smile grew on Klarnood"s face. "Lord Virzal, my thanks; a good suggestion. I"ll try it. And furthermore, I"ll withdraw all a.s.sa.s.sin protection permanently from anybody involved in political activity, and forbid any a.s.sa.s.sin to accept any retainer connected with political factionalism. It"s about time our members stopped discarnating each other in these political squabbles." He pointed to the three airboats drawn up on the top of the dome; speedy black craft, bearing the red oval and winged bullet. "Take your choice, Lord Virzal. I"ll lend you a couple of my men, and you"ll be in Ghamma in three hours." He hooked fingers and clapped shoulders with Verkan Vall, bent over Dalla"s hand. "I still like you, Lord Virzal, and I have seldom met a more charming lady than you, Lady Dallona. But I sincerely hope I never see either of you again."

The ship for Dhergabar was driving north and west; at seventy thousand feet, it was still daylight, but the world below was wrapping itself in darkness. In the big visiscreens, which served in lieu of the windows which could never have withstood the pressure and friction heat of the ship"s speed, the sun was sliding out of sight over the horizon to port. Verkan Vall and Dalla sat together, watching the blazing western sky--the sky of their own First Level time-line.

"I blame myself terribly, Vall," Dalla was saying. "And I didn"t mean any of them the least harm. All I was interested in was learning the facts. I know, that sounds like "I didn"t know it was loaded," but--"

"It sounds to me like those Fourth Level Europo-American Sector physicists who are giving themselves guilt-complexes because they designed an atomic bomb," Verkan Vall replied. "All you were interested in was learning the facts. Well, as a scientist, that"s all you"re supposed to be interested in. You don"t have to worry about any social or political implications. People have to learn to live with newly-discovered facts; if they don"t, they die of them."

"But, Vall; that sounds dreadfully irresponsible--"

"Does it? You"re worrying about the results of your reincarnation memory-recall discoveries, the shootings and riotings and the bombing we saw." He touched the pommel of Olirzon"s knife, which he still wore. "You"re no more guilty of that than the man who forged this blade is guilty of the death of Marnark of Bashad; if he"d never lived, I"d have killed Marnark with some other knife somebody else made. And what"s more, you can"t know the results of your discoveries.

All you can see is a thin film of events on the surface of an immediate situation, so you can"t say whether the long-term results will be beneficial or calamitous.

"Take this Fourth Level Europo-American atomic bomb, for example. I choose that because we both know that sector, but I could think of a hundred other examples in other paratime areas. Those people, because of deforestation, bad agricultural methods and general mismanagement, are eroding away their arable soil at an alarming rate. At the same time, they are breeding like rabbits. In other words, each successive generation has less and less food to divide among more and more people, and, for inherited traditional and superst.i.tious reasons, they refuse to adopt any rational program of birth-control and population-limitation.

"But, fortunately, they now have the atomic bomb, and they are developing radioactive poisons, weapons of ma.s.s-effect. And their racial, nationalistic and ideological conflicts are rapidly reaching the explosion point. A series of all-out atomic wars is just what that sector needs, to bring their population down to their world"s carrying capacity; in a century or so, the inventors of the atomic bomb will be hailed as the saviors of their species."

"But how about my work on the Akor-Neb Sector?" Dalla asked. "It seems that my memory-recall technique is more explosive than any fission bomb. I"ve laid the train for a century-long reign of anarchy!"