The Furies Read online

  "B-but he's here," said Benedick, gagging. "Here on Dombeck! I don't even need Sandor to tell!"

  "Art sure thou hast not imbibed too much?"

  "No, I tell you he's here!" He sat up, flung away the cloth. "That little city, Coldstream-" He pointed through the wall. "-I was there just a week ago. I know the place!"

  "You have had a dream-"

  "Wet your Flame! But I've not! I held his heart in these hands and saw it!"

  The Lynx winced at the profanity, but considered the possibility.

  "Then come with us to the library and see if you can do it again."

  "You better believe I can!"

  At that moment Corgo was drinking a cup of coffee and waiting for the town to wake up. He was considering his First Mate's resignation:

  "I never wanted to burn anyone, Cap. Least of all, the Guard. I'm sorry, but that's it. No more for me. Leave me here and give me passage home to Phillip's--that's all I want. I know you didn't want it the way it happened, but if I keep shipping with you it might happen again some day. Probably will. They got your number somehow, and I couldn't ever do that again. I'll help you fix the Wallaby, then I'm out. Sorry."

  Corgo sighed and ordered a second coffee. He glanced at the clock on the diner wall. Soon, soon . . .

  "That clock, that wall, that window! It's the diner where I had lunch last week, in Coldstream!" said Benedick, blinking moistly.

  "Do you think all that continuum-impact. . . . ?"-the Lynx.

  "I don't know"-Sandor.

  "How can we check?"

  "Call the flamin' diner and ask them to describe their only customer!"-Benedick.

  "That is a very good idea"-the Lynx.

  The Lynx moved to the phone-unit on Sander's desk.

  Sudden, as everything concerning the case had been, was the Lynx's final decision:

  "Your flyer, brother Sandor. May I borrow it?"

  "Why, yes. Surely . . ."

  "I will now call the local ICI office and requisition a laser-cannon. They have been ordered to cooperate with us without question, and the orders are still in effect. My executioner's rating has never been suspended. It appears that if we ever want to see this job completed we must do it ourselves. It won't take long to mount the gun on your flyer.-Benedick, stay with him every minute now. He still has to buy the equipment, take it back, and install it. Therefore, we should have sufficient time. Just stay with him and advise me as to his movements,"

  "Check."

  "Are you sure it's the right way to go about it?"-Sandor.

  "I'm sure. . . ."

  As the cannon was being delivered, Corgo made his purchases. As it was being installed, he loaded the light-boat and departed. As it was tested, on a tree stump Aunt Faye had wanted removed for a long while, he was aloft and heading toward the desert.

  As he crossed the desert. Benedick watched the rolling dunes, scrub-shrubs and darting rabbophers through his eyes.

  He also watched the instrument-panel.

  As the Lynx began his journey, Mala and Dilk were walking about the hull of the Wallaby. Mala wondered if the killing was over. She was not sure she liked the new Corgo so much as she did the avenger. She wondered whether the change would be permanent. She hoped not. . .

  The Lynx maintained radio contact with Benedick.

  Sandor drank xmili and smiled.

  After a time, Corgo landed.

  The Lynx was racing across the sands from the opposite direction.

  They began unloading the light-boat.

  The Lynx sped on.

  "I am near it now. Five minutes," he radioed back.

  "Then I'm out?"-Benedick.

  "Not yet"-the reply.

  "Sorry, but you know what I said. I won't be there when he dies."

  "All right, I can take it from here"-the Lynx.

  Which is how, when the Lynx came upon the scene, he saw a dog and a man and an ugly but intelligent quadruped beside the Wallaby.

  His first blast hit the ship. The man fell.

  The quadruped ran, and he burnt it.

  The dog thrashed through the port into the ship.

  The Lynx brought the flyer about for another pass.

  There was another man, circling around from the other side of the ship, where he had been working.

  The man raised his hand and there was a flash of light

  Corgo's death-ring discharged its single laser beam.

  It crossed the distance between them, penetrated the hull of the flyer, passed through the Lynx's left arm above the elbow, and continued on through the roof of the vehicle.

  The Lynx cried out, fought the controls, as Corgo dashed into the Wallaby.

  Then he triggered the cannon, and again, and again and again, circling, until the Wallaby was a smoldering ruin in the middle of a sea of fused sand.

  Still did he burn that ruin, finally calling back to Benedick Benedict and asking his one question.

  "Nothing"-the reply.

  Then he turned and headed back, setting the autopilot and opening the first-aid kit.

  ". . . Then he went in to hit the Wallaby's guns, but I hit him first"-Lynx.

  "No"-Benedick.

  "What meanest thou 'no? I was there."

  "So was I, for awhile. I had to see how he felt."

  "And?"

  "He went in for the puppy, Dilk, held it in his arms, and said to it, 'I am sorry.' "

  "Whatever, he is dead now and we have finished. It is over"-Sandor.

  "Yes."

  "Yes."

  "Let us then drink to a job well done, before we part for good."

  "Yes."

  "Yes."

  And they did.

  While there wasn't much left of the Wallaby or its Captain, ICI positively identified a synthetic heart found still beating, erratically, amidst the hot wreckage.

  Corgo was dead, and that was it.

  He should have known what he was up against, and turned himself in to the proper authorities. How can you hope to beat a man who can pick the lock to your mind, a man who dispatched forty-eight men and seventeen malicious alien life-forms, and a man who knows every damn street in the galaxy.

  He should have known better than to go up against Sandor Sandor, Benedick Benedict and Lynx Links. He should, he should have known.

  For their real names, of course, are Tisiphone, Alecto and Maegaera. They are the Furies. They arise from chaos and deliver revenge; they convey confusion and disaster to those who abandon the law and forsake the way, who offend against the light and violate the life, who take the power of flame, like a lightning-rod in their two too-mortal hands.

  (ebook v1.1 Some typos corrected)