He slid the cowling back. As he started to drag the woman into the seat, he hesitated. He stared into her face. The face he had kissed many times in a thousand thousand adventure-dreams in a hundred imagined worlds. It was the same, but somehow, different. Her eyes returned his stare, unblinking, unrecognizing, unconcerned. Her flesh was strangely unresponsive to his hands. No resistance, no compliance, nothing at all.
The Guard was running and he was near. He stopped, leveled the meson blastgun. "I don't want to kill you," he shouted hysterically. "Give yourself up; I've never killed anything, and I don't want to kill you."
Brooks laughed crazily. "You'll kill her, too, if you fire at me. You'll kill the dreams of millions of your fellow Workers if you kill Glora Delar. Get back there now."
"You're too dangerous," the Guard said; "I've orders to kill you if you don't give yourself up, because you're insane."
Andy Brooks laughed. He tried to push Glora Delar into the skycar. He saw the Guard was going to risk a blast. He spun, dropped her body between them. It had flashed through his mind—if she died with him, then in a way, she would be his forever, only his, and she would never be shared with all the other millions of Workers.
A blazing light burned and blinded him. He fell gasping and crumbling with the deep and lasting agony. He lay in burning fog. He tried to get up. He couldn't move. Through a thickening blur he saw the Guard lurching toward him, his face white and contorted with horror.
Brooks' hand fumbled blindly, touched something. "Glora," he whispered. He slowly twisted his head. He had to do that much.
The skycar was a smoking melting pile, unrecognizable. Beside him lay something else, also smoking; a human outline, a framework of wire and metallic joints, bits of cloth and melting fluid, springs, some burned-out vacuum tubes, a condenser, a charred coil, other parts—all running down through a framework, a skeleton of red-hot wire. Charred hair sizzled in blue flame in the fine mesh of a metal skull. Glora Delar—
The Guard stood over Brooks. His face twisted, his voice came through a dense curtain of time and space and pain. "Been here for years, but I never suspected such a thing. I knew something was queer, but this! This is what they give us—puppets! Marionettes—wire and putty and plastic! She was my favorite actress too—my pin-up girl! just a second ago. Ha, ha, ha, funny isn't it? I fought for her a thousand times in the Lost World of Anghar, against the Armies of Vasca. This is what they give us for dreams!"
Brooks managed to turn his head so he wouldn't have to look at what lay beside him. The two pretending lovers still sat shoulder to shoulder by the lake. Beautiful golden people, staring over the water, romantic lovers. They were oblivious to what had happened. The lake was colored glass, unruffled. The clock-work swans glided over the shiny surface. The perfumed wind blew unchanged through dutifully nodding leaves of the water-lilies.