The Altar at Asconel by John Brunner Page A

stretcher grated over the edge of the platform and was slammed flat. Blue eyes in a face which would normally have been ruddy and healthy, but had turned sallow, stared at the sky, not even turning to see into whose care she had been committed.
    “Catatone!” Spartak thundered, and rage so great that it overcame the force of the conditioning stormed into his limbs.
    “What did you say?” Vix cried.
    “She’s under catatone! It’s a paralyzant—they first got it from the poison of the Loudor ichneumon.” He stamped to the guardrail and stared down at the gray-haired woman.
    “Correct!” she applauded mockingly.
    Vix plucked at his arm. “Isn’t it as well?” he whispered. “After all, to have her—”
    Spartak brushed aside the other’s hand. “It’s the cruelest thing in the galaxy!” he blazed. “Because it
only
paralyzes! It doesn’t dull pain! How’d you like to be unable even to moisten your eyes by blinking—or move to relieve a cramped leg—or control your bowels?”
    He heard Vix draw his breath in sharply, and from the corner of his eye saw that the redhead was staring with dismay at the girl’s taut body.
    “And don’t you know why they did it?” Spartak raged on. “Because there’s so much lying and deceit going on in this once-proud Empire they’re afraid a mind-reader could tell a few unpleasant truths to the people they’re duping—like the man we met earlier, shy of his arm and his leg!”
    He saw, as clearly as through a telescope, that his taunt had made the gray-haired woman wince. Without conscious intent, he shot out his arm and seized the energy gun from Vix’s fumbling grasp. Trying desperately to stretch this moment of not-thinking to its utmost, he leveled the weapon and found the trigger.
    “Where’s the antidote?” he shouted, “Get me the antidote or I’ll burn you where you sit!”
    There was a dreadful silence. Incredulous, the guards turned at the foot of the ladder and stared up at him, shaking withthe effort of keeping the gun sighted on the gray-haired woman, but somehow finding the resources to go on,
    “We—we haven’t got it!” the woman quavered.
    “Then get it!” Spartak told her. “No, not you—you’re my hostage. Send one of these bullyboys for it. And tell him to run both ways!”
    Vix put his hands on the guardrail, clamping them till the knuckles were white. Seeming to draw strength from his brother’s example, he cried, “And tell that man below not to pull any tricks—I saw him move for his sidearm!”
    The guard who had tried to get at his gun jerked his hand back from his waist, holding it out at his side.
    “Hurry!” Spartak rasped. “Your conditioning is good. I might decide I have to give in—but I’ll burn you first!”
    The woman shrieked terrified orders, and the guards broke as one to dash back to the port control building and fetch what was required.
    The time that passed now was hardly human-scaled, inside Spartak’s over-strained mind. It was time slow enough to suit the growth of galaxies, the cooling of suns. Yet there was nothing in all of space except a frightened fat woman on a ridiculous little groundcar, trembling as the gun stayed aligned with her head.
    Could he endure? His guts were chilled with nausea; his vision was swimming and there were random, insane noises in his ears. The metal of the gun seemed alternately burning hot and freezing cold, and often he had the illusion that—like Vix—he was not gripping the trigger, but fumbling in front of and behind it.
    “There he comes!” Vix said. He pointed, but Spartak dared not look away from the sole focus of his attention.
    “Let him bring it up,” he breathed. “Put it alongside the girl’s head.”
    “Bring what up?” Vix glanced at him in wonder and not a little admiration. “Oh! Not the guard coming back—but Tiorin! I can see his red hair plainly!”
    “I don’t care about Tiorin,” Spartak said. A vague puzzlement flashed across his