"All right," said Arliess, his voice husky. "Last chance, Mury, before I blow us to atoms. Call them back. Tell them to overhaul us and board. From the intensity of that signal, they can't be far away."
And indeed, even now the stars began to blur to the approach of the battle cruiser. Plainly, it had been trailing near; the dead detectors had told them nothing. Perhaps, after all, suspicion had been born behind the official calm facade. At any rate, here upon them were Algol and its guns.... Again the voice came through the phones, querulously now.
Mury, without making any sudden motion, pressed his release. With equal care he came to his feet, standing without effort against a little more than one gravity.
"The message sent," he said coolly, "will be 'Temporarily electrical failure. All under control.'" With that he knelt down in the narrow space between the crew-chairs and the instrument board.
"If that fool tries to jump me, Ryd, use the gun." His hands started to grope at the under panels of the control board, purposefully but without haste. "I'm going to disconnect the central fuse."
"You'll never touch it," said Arliess with a gasp. "I'm shorting the coil—now!"
Ryd had, in a dazed automatism, lifted the gun. It was heavy and unsteady in his gloved right hand. He stared with eyes out of focus and with a sense of nightmare; death was coming and he wanted to live, had to stop it somehow, anyhow, now—
Then all at once the gun steadied in his hand, burned hot as it spat its crisping thunderbolt. The cabin shook to the blast.
And the weapon slipped from Ryd's hand. He drew in air, sharp with ozone, in short sobbing gasps, and cowered in his padded seat, shaking uncontrollably. But he was alive, still alive.
Arliess crouched half in and half out of his seat. He brought up the pistol which he had snatched almost as it fell, trained it across the motionless bundle between them on the floor. Mury was dead, as dead as many another dreamer whose human tools have turned in his hands.