"Help me," Petar said, and Joze turned to see that the doctor had fallen and Petar was kneeling over him. "He fainted, or a heart attack. What can we do?"
His anger was forgotten as Joze kneeled. The doctor seemed to be breathing regularly and his face wasn't flushed, so perhaps it was only a fainting spell. The eyelids fluttered. The priest brushed by and looked down over Joze's shoulder.
Dr. Bratos opened his eyes, looking back and forth at the faces bent over him. "I'm sorry," he said thickly, then the eyes closed again as if to escape the sight of them.
Joze stood and found that he was trembling. The priest was gone. Was it all over? Perhaps they might never have saved the alien, but they should have done better than this. Then he saw the wet spot on the floor and realized the book was gone.
"Father Perc!" he shouted, crying it out like an insult. The man had taken the book, the priceless book!
Joze ran out into the hall and saw the priest coming from the kitchen. His hands were empty. With sudden fear Joze knew what the old man had done and brushed past him into the kitchen and ran to the stove, hurling open the door.
There, among the burning wood, lay the book. It was steaming, almost smoking as it dried, lying open. It was obviously a book, there Were marks on the pages of some kind. He turned to grab up the shovel and behind him the fire exploded, sending a white flame across the room. It had almost caught him in the face, but he did not think of that. Pieces of burning wood lay on the floor, and inside the stove there was only the remains of the original fire. Whatever substance the book had been made of was highly inflammable once it had dried out.
"It was evil," the priest said from the doorway. "A Sao duh, an abomination with a book of evil. We have been warned, such things have happened before on Earth, and always the faithful must fight back—"
Petar pushed in roughly past him and helped Joze to a chair, brushing the hot embers from his bare skin. Joze had not felt their burn, all he was aware of was an immense weariness.
"Why here?" he asked. "Of all places in the world why here? A few more degrees to the west and the creature would have come down near Trieste with surgeons, hospitals, men, facilities. Or, if it had just stayed on its course a little longer, it could have seen the lights, and would have landed at Rijeka. Something could have been done. But why here?" He surged to his feet, shaking his fist at nothing — and at everything.
"Here, in this superstition-ridden, simple-minded backwater of the country! What kind of world do we live in where there is a five-million-volt electron accelerator not a hundred miles from primitive stupidity? That this creature should come so far, come so close. . why, why?"
Why?
He dumped back into the chair again feeling older than he had ever felt before and tired beyond measure. What could they have learned from this book?
He sighed, and the sigh came from so deep within him that his whole body trembled as though shaken by awful fever.
The Old Man had that look of intense glee on his face that meant someone was in for a very rough time. Since we were alone, it took no great feat of intelligence to figure it would be me. I talked first, bold attack being the best defense and so forth.
"I quit. Don't bother telling me what dirty job you have cooked up, because I have already quit and you do not want to reveal company secrets to me."
The grin was even wider now and he actually chortled as he thumbed a button on his console. A thick legal document slid out of the delivery slot onto his desk.
"This is your contract," he said. "It tells how and when you will work. A steel-and-vanadium-bound contract that you couldn't crack with a molecular disrupter."
I leaned out quickly, grabbed it and threw it into the air with a single motion. Before it could fall, I had my Solar out and, with a wide-angle shot, burned the contract to ashes.
The Old Man pressed the button again and another contract slid out on his desk. If possible, the smile was still wider now.
"I should have said a duplicate of your contract — like this one here." He made a quick note on his secretary plate. "I have deducted thirteen credits from your salary for the cost of the duplicate — as well as a hundred-credit fine for firing a Solar inside a building."
I slumped, defeated, waiting for the blow to land. The Old Man fondled my contract.
"According to this document, you can't quit. Ever. I therefore I have a little job I know you'll enjoy. Repair job. The Centauri beacon has shut down. It's a Mark III beacon…"
"What kind of beacon?" I asked him. I have repaired hyperspace beacons from one arm of the galaxy to the other and was sure I had worked on every type or model made. But I had never heard of this kind.
