Al pushed himself away from the wall, toward Oakey across the room by the tier of drawers. But the reflexes of youth were on Oakey's side. The young man's punch caught Al flush on the jaw and the bearded commander went down.
When Al opened his eyes, Oakey was decelerating the circular ship into a spiral that would set it down on the planet.
Al raised himself on his arms and pulled himself toward the control panel. "You can't do this, Oakey. You're killing a world."
"What's that world to us?"
Al looked at the metal floor plates under his body. The cherry glow was flooding from his body into the plates. Al was gone farther than he thought. For months he must have been harboring the disease, just as Joe had been ill a long time before realizing it. Al's natural resistance, perhaps strengthened by long years of exposure to the radiations of space, must have held back the final stages until the tide had burst through in an overwhelming flood. Even when Al killed Joe, Al was near the last stages himself.
Al remembered Joe's last bid for survival. Joe was much like Oakey. Joe had hated to die, he wanted to live to have soil under his feet again. But the disease had to be wiped out. And Joe had fought with his last weapon, the energy ebbing from his body.
The energy....
Grim lines appeared deep around Al's eyes. He raised his hand from the floor. His brain throbbed. Yes, his brain was a battery of energy now, the energy of life. And the purpose of life was to preserve life, a single second, or a thousand million years. Not one life, but the race. That was the aim of life.
"Oakey." Al's voice hissed.