ELEVEN
Tragor sat facing the Chief Coordinator for the second time in four days, and if he had been shaken the first time he was infinitely more alarmed now. His shoulders were trembling so that he was sure the Coordinator would remark about it, and all of the color had drained from his face.
"Tragor," Kraii said, his eyes piercingly accusing, "your plan for Earth conquest has been a disastrous failure from first to last. Subject a man to struggle and hardship, you said—place his life in danger, and he will find an android woman impossible to resist! Well, did that fool of an artist find thirty android women irresistible? Did he? Answer me, Tragor."
It did not seem as though Tragor's face could have gone any paler. But suddenly it did. It seemed paler than pale, as if the receding blood had turned it into a thin tissue so hueless that the term "color" could not even be applied to it.
"His surrender would have been complete if the Earthwoman had not screamed," he said. "All of his resistance was gone."
"Tragor, have you lost your mind? Two-thirds of the men in high places on Earth have women they love just as compulsively. And if we put your miserable plan into operation a good many women would scream. Just the sight of us would start them screaming. You have proved conclusively that the Plan cannot work."
Tragor started to rise, appalled by the sudden fury which blazed in the Coordinator's eyes. He recoiled backwards and as he did so a hand-gun clattered on the chart stand before him. Kraii had whipped the hand-gun from beneath the stand so quickly that it seemed almost like a conjuring trick. But to deceive the eye of a Martian frozen with terror was no great feat and Kraii knew it.
He seemed to enjoy the sudden look of stricken disbelief in Tragor's stare. He seemed actually to relish inflicting such an irrevocable choice of evils on a Martian completely at his mercy.
"Do it now, Tragor," he said. "If you put it off even for a moment you'll waver and lack the courage to kill yourself. Then we shall have to execute you publicly. Think of the shame and disgrace of a public execution, Tragor. I am offering you the easiest choice first. Do it immediately. Right here and now. When it is over, I'll aerate the compartment thoroughly, so you need not worry on that score."
"No, I can't! You're asking too much of me!"