Then the screening something must have been removed, for that dusk lifted suddenly. Presently the floor shuddered.
"You shouldn't have done that, Forester." The old man shook his white mane regretfully.
"Seafowl nested on that rock."
Weakly trembling, Forester brought his eyes back from the great cloud of fire and darkness still mushrooming upward to stand like an ominous symbol of ultimate destruction against the peaceful sky.
The three before him looked disturbingly unimpressed.
Ironsmith, who must have set up that unseen barrier against the light of the explosion, stood gravely with his arm still around the woman.
"Clay!" Ruth's voice was choked with a hurt concern. "What do you think you're doing?"
"I know what I'm doing." He limped grimly toward her.
"I'm going to smash your plot with the humanoids - this monstrous Compact to smother and mechanize all the human race.
I'm going to fight the machines for a better deal - to give every man, everywhere, the same freedom a few of you have sold us out to get." He swung vehemently to the sober man beside her.
"Ironsmith, I'm going to kill you.
I'm willing to bargain with any of the rest, but you've done too much.
Have you anything to say?" Mildly, Ironsmith said,
"You might specify your charges."
"I think they're wide enough." Forester grinned sardonically.
"You turned against your kind, to help the humanoids.
You spied on Starmont.
You sabotaged Project Thunderbolt.
You betrayed Mark White.
You wrecked our effort to change the Prime Directive.
Now you're building this platinum brain, to operate us all like more machines."
Trembling, he tried to lower his voice.
"Those are the crimes I know, and I think they're wicked enough." Gulping, he stiffened as if to a spasm of pain.
"I won't even ask how long you schemed to take my wife away.
Beside all the rest, that doesn't matter." His sick eyes flickered at Ruth. "Now, have you any defense to make?"
He paused, swaying on his bad knee, but Ironsmith stood calmly silent.
"Get away from him, Ruth!" Agony shivered in his voice.
"Because I don't want to hurt you - whatever you may have done.
With our lives, I suppose, some of the blame is mine.
But I'm going to kill this monstrous traitor now - and you'll be hurt if you stand too near."
"Please, Clay - don't be ugly." The woman didn't move, and her low voice seemed merely distressed.
"We can help you yet, if only you'll let us - and forget your silly threats."
She shook her head sadly, as he lifted his skinny fist. "Because you can't hurt us, really."
Standing in a paralysis of rage and helpless pain, he dazedly watched the glow of devotion on her face when she glanced at the calm man beside her, and he wondered blankly at the limpid pity in her eyes when she looked back at him.
"Please, Clay - won't you try to see it our way?" He saw her tears.
"Because there's nothing unfair about Frank. And nothing to blame but Project Thunderbolt.
I was always sorry for you, Clay, and I used to be sorry for myself.
Because the project was your wife and your child.
You never needed me."
Forester nodded unwillingly, stiff with his pain.
"Don't - don't blame Frank." She tried to control her trembling voice.
"Because he wouldn't take me away from Starmont until after you had abandoned me there, drugged with euphoride, when you wandered away on your insane adventuring.
He brought me here, and woke my memory, and taught me this real felicity.
We're in love, Clay.
I - I hope you'll try to wish us well."
Her white throat pulsed. "Won't you, Clay?"
"No!" With that choked sob, Forester pushed the child behind him to shield her from the fire of annihilation.
Swaying to the gray illness of his fury, he thrust his quivering fist at the two before him, and he tried to kill them both.
Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT
FORESTER TRIED with the weapon of his mind, and he waited for the man and the woman to die.