“The fourth dimension?” asked Lathrop, guessing at something he had long suspected.
“I cannot tell you that,” the creature said.
Lathrop nodded at the board. “Automatic, I presume. All we have to do is sit and wait. It’ll take us straight to Mars.”
“Quite correct,” the thing agreed.
“That,” said Stephen Lathrop, “is all I want to know.”
He rose casually, took a slow step forward, then moved swiftly. The thing grabbed frantically for the weapon in its belt, but was too slow. A single blow sent the weapon flying out of a squirming tentacle. The thing squealed pitifully, but there was no pity in Lathrop’s hands. They squeezed the life, surely and methodically, out of the writhing, lashing, squealing body.
The Earthman stood on wide-spread legs and stared down at the sprawling mass.
“That,” he said, “is for the years you took away from me. That is for making me grow old seeing things I wished I’d never seen. For never a moment of companionship when the sight of space alone nearly drove me mad.”
He dusted his hands together, slowly, thoughtfully, as if he tried to scrub something from them. Then he turned on his heel and walked away.
Suddenly he put out one hand to touch the wall. His fingers pressed hard against it. It was really there. A solid, substantial, metal thing.