This is crazy, thought Horitz to himself. I'm dreaming. He took off the thin rawhide band he wore about his waist and handed it over to the doctor. I remember his face, he thought. His purple face as I.... But I didn't. I couldn't have!
The doctor took the belt, casting a sharp glance at Horitz, and held it up to the light in his gloved hands. He took a bulky instrument from his bag, clipped a section of the belt into its base and peered at it through the eyepieces. He looked up after a moment and nodded.
"Traces of human skin," he said. "This is undoubtedly the instrument which was used to kill Professor Thomasson."
"I think I understand now," said Dr. Ilyanov slowly, staring straight ahead of her. "We forgot one person who had a motive ... Oscar! He didn't want us to reach the stars...."
She turned until her wide gaze rested on Horitz's face. "And you shook hands with him!" she said.
The nightmare boiled up in Horitz's head. Impossible things, memories from nowhere, battled with his sanity: the silent decks, the slow, dreamlike progress upward into starlight ... and the hideous purple face, staring impersonally into his.
Raging, his mind retreated, flung itself away from the thing that was hurting it. He felt his body in motion, felt himself caught, struggling, but it was as if he were a far-off spectator. The words that came to him were meaningless.
Walsh and Sommers, holding him, looked at each other across the prostrate body. The muscles on Walsh's heavy forearms stood out, and there was sweat on Sommers' forehead. Gradually the struggles subsided: Horitz lay still and white, looking upward at nothing.
Dr. Ilyanov came to kneel over him. She said, "He will be cured. And he can't be punished, of course." She turned her head slowly toward the black shape across the room. "But—" she said—"neither can that thing!"
Oscar's tentacles writhed, delicately.