Venard turned. His chain rattled gently, without malice. He looked with studied insolence at the writhing-eyed Martian Guard who was coming toward him. Now it was removing the chain from the galling iron band about his waist. Another was doing the same with Larson. Guards stood at a slight distance with H-guns waiting to be drawn. Beneath his sour-smelling clothes, Venard grasped the memory-crystal.
The tale behind the crystals flashed quickly through his mind; because it was rather a sorrowfully lovely tale, and the moment could use a touch of alien beauty. In the pre-Solar Federation era, colorful sea-women of Venus, members of that semi-human and empirically intelligent race, were said to have carried the crystals while love remained true, but always ready to utilize the destructive power of the crystal for suicide when the lover whose face was captured in the cumulus depths of the sphere proved faithless.
Long before the Solar War the Venusians, with the ancient custom only legend, had made the memory-crystals and sold them to a few hardy tourists for stupendous amounts of Solar credits. It had even been said that much of the vital life stuff of the one portrayed was imprisoned in the crystalline gadget. But horrified by the slaughter and barbarisms of the approaching war, the opaque Venusians had retreated to their under-sea cities and had remained hidden, far removed from war's madness. Venard didn't blame them in a way, any more than he blamed the Jovians who had remained neutral. The Venusian Sea People were a timid, shy, highly aesthetic species, with a strange kind of non-physical, non-mechanical science—more of a philosophical, empirical mental science such as was embodied in the evolving of the memory-crystals.
The explosive power of the spheres wasn't anything tremendous; but this one could certainly wreck this particular part of Concentration Camp 7.
Venard watched the chains sliding through the Marto-alloy bands. He saw the ragged, hunched shapes of broken men and women sagging in horror and weakness as they were herded toward the oval door. And the door was opening again, maybe for the last time. A red, roaring flame was visible in there; a long quavering cry ripped through.
Venard stood back against the cold wall, raised the memory-crystal. He thought fleetingly that the figure in the sphere was so life-like that to destroy it was like murder. But Venard didn't care about murdering now. Not even murdering Vale's memory. Even memories were born to die.
"Earthmen!" he yelled suddenly, his voice cracking sharply against dulled minds like a whip-lash. Glazed eyes shifted. Bowed backs moved apathetically. A few bony hands pawed the air. "We'll die like men!" yelled Venard. He flourished the memory-crystal.
The Marties fell away. Their eye stalks writhed in abysmal fear. The dejected mass of filthy human wrecks lifted sunken faces, stared. It seemed that their minds were too dulled by shock and fear to even comprehend the meaning of a quick, clean death.
"Earthmen!" Venard's voice lashed out again. How long would it take the fanatical Marties to plunge at him in suicidal fervor? Not long. "Let's sing," he said it suddenly, on a mad impulse. These creatures must die as men. "The Terran Anthem hasn't been sung for a long time. Sing!"
There was magnetic driving power in his words. The Marties were trembling with indecision. Appendages were creeping toward H-guns. Venard made a threatening gesture with the memory-crystal. And the appendages stopped creeping—for a little while.