Read Online The Edmond Hamilton Megapack: 16 Classic Science Fiction Tales by Edmond Hamilton - Free Book Online

Hyrst.
    I know you’re innocent, but they’ll never believe it. They’ll keep you on for further psychiatric tests. They might get near the truth, Hyrst—the truth about us.
    Suddenly Hyrst began to understand, not all and not clearly, something of what had happened to him. The obscuring mists began to lift from the borders of his mind.
    “What is the truth,” he asked in that inner quiet, “about us?”
    You’ve spent fifty years in the Valley of the Shadow. You’re changed, Hyrst. You’re not quite human any more. No one is, who goes through the freeze. But they don’t know that.
    “Then you too—”
    Yes. And I too changed. And that is why our minds can speak, even though I am on Mars and you are on its moon. But they must not know that. So don’t argue, don’t show emotion!
    The warden was waiting. Hyrst said aloud to him, slowly. “I have no statement to make.”
    The warden did not seem surprised. He went on, “According to your papers here you also denied knowing the location of the Titanite for which MacDonald was presumably murdered. Do you still deny that?”
    Hyrst was honestly surprised. “But surely, by now—”
    The warden shrugged. “According to this data, it never came to light.”
    “I never knew,” said Hyrst, “where it was.”
    “Well,” said the warden, “I’ve asked the question and that’s as far as my responsibility goes. But there’s a visitor who has permission to see you.”

    He and the doctor went out. Hyrst watched them go. He thought, So I’m not quite human. Not quite human any more. Does that make me more, or less, than a man?
    Both , said the secret voice. Their minds are still closed to you. Only our minds—we who have changed too—are open.
    “Who are you?” asked Hyrst.
    My name is Shearing. Now listen. When you are released, they’ll bring you down here to Mars. I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll help you.
    “Why? What do you care about me, or a murder fifty years old?”
    I’ll tell you why later , said the whisper of Shearing. But you must follow my guidance. There’s danger for you, Hyrst, from the moment you’re released! There are those who have been waiting for you.
    “Danger? But—”
    The door opened, and Hyrst’s visitor came in. He was a man something over sixty but the deep lines in his face made him look older. His face was gray and drawn and twitching, but it became perfectly rigid and white when he came to the foot of the bed and looked at Hyrst. There was rage in his eyes, a rage so old and weary that it brought tears to them.
    “You should have stayed dead,” he said to Hyrst. “Why couldn’t they let you stay dead?”
    Hyrst was shocked and startled. “Who are you? And why—”
    The other man was not even listening. His eyelids had closed, and when they opened again they looked on naked agony. “It isn’t right,” he said. “A murderer should die, and stay dead. Not come back.”
    “I didn’t murder MacDonald,” Hyrst said, with the beginnings of anger. “And I don’t know why you—”
    He stopped. The white, aging face, the tear-filled, furious eyes, he did not quite know what there was about them but it was there, like an old remembered face peeping up through a blur of water for a moment, and then withdrawing again.
    After a moment, Hyrst said hoarsely, “What’s your name?”
    “You wouldn’t know it,” said the other. “I changed it, long ago.”
    Hyrst felt a cold, and it seemed that he could not breathe. He said, “But you were only eleven—”
    He could not go on. There was a terrible silence between them. He must break it, he could not let it go on. He must speak. But all he could say was to whisper, “I’m not a murderer. You must believe it. I’m going to prove it—”
    “You murdered MacDonald. And you murdered my mother. I watched her age and die, spending every penny, spending every drop of her blood and ours, to get you back again. I pretended for fifty years that I too believed you were