Selected Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

code machine to launch bombs, with repeaters, maybe, buried all over the country. What would it be? Just a little lever to pull; thass all. How would the thing be hidden? In the middle of a lot of other equipment, that’s where; in some place where you’d expect to find crazy-looking secret stuff. Like an experiment station. Like right here. You beginning to get the idea?”
    “Shut up. I can’t hear her.”
    “The hell with her! You can hear her some other time. You didn’t hear a thing I said!”
    “She’s dead.”
    “Yeah. Well, I figure I’ll pull that handle. What can I lose? It’ll give those murderin’… what? ”
    “She’s dead.”
    “Dead? Starr Anthim?” His young face twisted, Sonny sank down to the cot. “You’re half asleep. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
    “She’s dead,” Pete said hoarsely. “She got burned by one of the first bombs. I was with her when she … she—Shut up, now, and get out of here and let me listen!” he bellowed hoarsely.
    Sonny stood up slowly. “They killed her, too. They killed her. That does it. That just fixes it up.” His face was white. He went out.
    Pete got up. His legs weren’t working right. He almost fell. He brought up against the console with a crash, his outflung arm sending the pickup skittering across the record. He put it on again and turned up the gain, then lay down to listen.
    His head was all mixed up. Sonny talked too much. Bomb launchers, automatic code machines—
    “You gave me your heart,” sang Starr. “You gave me your heart. You gave me your heart. You —”
    Pete heaved himself up again and moved the pickup arm. Anger, not at himself, but at Sonny for causing him to cut the disk that way, welled up.
    Starr was talking, stupidly, her face going through the same expression over and over again. “Struck from the east and from the Struck from the east and from the —”
    He got up again wearily and moved the pickup.
    “You gave me your heart. You gave me—”
    Pete made an agonized sound that was not a word at all, bent, lifted, and sent the console crashing over. In the bludgeoning silence he said, “I did, too.”
    Then, “Sonny.” He waited.
    “Sonny!”
    His eyes went wide then, and he cursed and bolted for the corridor.
    The panel was closed when he reached it. He kicked at it. It flew open, discovering darkness.
    “Hey!” bellowed Sonny. “Shut it! You turned off the lights!”
    Pete shut it behind him. The lights blazed.
    “Pete! What’s the matter?”
    “Nothing’s the matter, Son’,” croaked Pete.
    “What are you looking at?” said Sonny uneasily.
    “I’m sorry,” said Pete as gently as he could. “I just wanted to find something out, is all. Did you tell anyone else about this?” He pointed to the lever.
    “Why, no. I only just figured it out while you were sleeping, just now.”
    Pete looked around carefully while Sonny shifted his weight. Pete moved toward a tool rack. “Something you haven’t noticed yet, Sonny,” he said softly, and pointed. “Up there, on the wall behind you. High up. See?”
    Sonny turned. In one fluid movement Pete plucked off a fourteen-inch box wrench and hit Sonny with it as hard as he could.
    Afterward he went to work systematically on the power supplies. He pulled the plugs on the gas engines and cracked their cylinders with a maul. He knocked off the tubing of the Diesel starters—the tanks let go explosively—and he cut all the cables with bolt cutters. Then he broke up the relay rack and its lever. When he was quite finished; he put away his tools and bent and stroked Sonny’s tousled hair.
    He went out and closed the partition carefully. It certainly was a wonderful piece of camouflage. He sat down heavily on a workbench nearby.
    “You’ll have your chance,” he said into the far future. “And by heaven, you’d better make good.”
    After that he just waited.

THE GOLDEN HELIX
I
    T OD AWOKE FIRST, PROBABLY because he was so curious, so deeply