Crompton Divided Read Online Free PDF Page B

interesting, I’m sure,’ Crompton said. ‘But what happens now?’
    Old John Blount smiled his ghastly death’s-head grin. ‘Now, Alistair, I think it is time for you to throw yourself upon my mercy.’
    Alistair was beginning to tremble. Then he noticed that he was beginning to tremble. A frown crossed his face, a frown of puzzlement. He was acting afraid of this man who held his life in his hands; but he really didn’t feel afraid of him. For after all, Crompton knew that he had taken his chance as a a man must do. That he had failed made no difference, finally. What mattered was that he had done his best.
    ‘I doubt very much whether you have any mercy,’ he said levelly. ‘So I’m not going to throw myself on that. I think I’ll just tell you to go screw yourself, and leave it at that. Go screw yourself, Mr. Blount.’
    Blount’s face registered psychopathic amazement, idiot incredulity, moronic disbelief. He stretched out one hand blindly toward Crompton. Strangling on sputum and rage, he cried, ‘You – you –’
    ‘Hee hee hee,’ Crompton said scornfully.
    Toto reacted to his master’s distress by swinging up his great fist, preparatory to splattering Crompton all over the wall. Crompton winced, but his eyes did not blink and his mouth did not twitch. Blount called out, ‘No, don’t hurt him!’
    Toto pulled the punch just in time, and suffered a double hernia from the sudden g-strain.
    ‘Crompton,’ the old man said, in a voice as light and faint as corn silk blowing over blue plastic, ‘do you know what the penalty is for your crime?’
    ‘Haven’t the foggiest,’ Crompton said.
    ‘Ten years in prison.’
    ‘I can do that standing on my head,’ Crompton retorted.
    ‘No doubt you can,’ Blount said. ‘That is why I am not going to have you arrested.’
    ‘You’re not?’
    The old man shook his head and smiled a tricky smile. ‘You are free to go, to the ends of the galaxy if you wish, in search of your missing personality components.’
    ‘So you knew about that!’
    ‘Of course. I make it my business to know about all of the freaks in my organization. I say to you, Go, Crompton, on your forlorn and hopeless quest. Ten years in stir is too good for you, but it is all that a despicably soft and corrupt judiciary will give you for your larceny, treachery, and bad manners. I want more than that! I want to pay you back more personally. So go, beyond the writ of Terran law. I will find you. My arm is long, my agents many, my revenge secure.’
    ‘What are you planning to do to me?’ Crompton asked.
    ‘Ah,’ Blount said, ‘that would be telling, wouldn’t it? Frankly, I’m not quite sure, and I’m in no hurry to make up my mind. There are so many piquant possibilities! I look forward to many pleasant hours of gloating over my plans, anticipating your frenzied and futile struggles, your wretched pleas, and your grasping horrified despair at the end.’
    ‘You’re sick,’ Crompton said.
    ‘Not half as sick as you’re going to be when I get my hands on you again, Crompton. This I promise you.’
    Crompton turned and walked away, numbed by the differential juvenescent’s hideous yet puerile threat. He presented his ticket to the ticket-tacker, and the ticket-tacker tacked a tick in the ticket’s upper right-hand corner and let Crompton pass aboard.
    He walked directly into the orange and gray module that ferried passengers to the orbiting spaceship many miles above.
    His numbness fell away as the ship soared high into yellow sunlight. Not even the thought of death can upset a man who is going into space for the first time. The journey into the unknown transcends the framework of anxiety, at least for a while.
     
     

 
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    Aboard the orbiting starship, the passengers fastened their safety belts and sipped from paper cups filled with orange juice. There was an awkward moment when the artificial gravity generator cut out and the hostesses floated into