Quickly, Glanville threw aside the object he had carried with him. He seized the pistol before Thornwald could move, then whispered, more to himself than to Thornwald: ‘Strange seas, Captain, I warned you…’ He crouched down and began to back away along the veranda, the pistol levelled at Thornwald’s chest.

Then the door on his left opened and before he could move the translucent figure of his wife stepped from the interior of the pavilion and knocked the weapon from his hand.

He turned to her angrily, then shouted at the headless spectre that stepped through him and strode off towards the dark ships moored in the centre of the lake.

Two hours after dawn the next morning Captain Thornwald finished his preparations for departure. In the last minutes he stood on the veranda, gazing out at the even sunlight over the empty lake as he wiped away the last traces of the aluminium paint with a solvent sponge. He looked down at the seated figure of Glanville tied to the chair by the table. Despite the events of the previous night, Glanville now seemed composed and relaxed, a trace even of humour playing about his soft mouth.

Something about this bizarre amiability made Thornwald shudder. He secured the pistol in his holster — another evening by this insane lake and he would be pointing it at his own head.

‘Captain…’ Glanville glanced at him with docile eyes, then shrugged his fat shoulders inside the ropes. ‘When are you going to untie these? We’ll be leaving soon.’

Thornwald threw the sponge on to the silver sand below the pavilion. ‘I’ll be going soon, Glanville. You’re staying here.’ When Glanville began to protest, he said: ‘I don’t think there’s much point in your leaving. As you said, you’ve built your own little world here.’

‘But…’ Glanville searched the captain’s face. ‘Frankly, Thornwald, I can’t understand you. Why did you come here in the first place, then? Where’s Judith, by the way? She’s around here somewhere.’

Thornwald paused, steeling himself against the name and the memory of the previous night. ‘Yes, she’s around here, all right.’ As if testing some unconscious element of Glanville’s memory, he said clearly: ‘She’s in the module, as a matter of fact.’

‘The module?’ Glanville pulled at his ropes, then squinted over his shoulder into the sunlight. ‘But I told her not to go there. When’s she coming back?’

‘She’ll be back, don’t worry. This evening, I imagine, when the timewinds blow, though I don’t want to be here when she comes. This sea of yours had bad dreams, Glanville.’

‘What do you mean?’

Thornwald walked across the veranda. ‘Glanville, have you any idea why I’m here, why I’ve hunted you all this way?’

‘God only knows — something to do with the emigration laws.’

‘Emigration laws?’ Thornwald shook his head. ‘Any charges there would be minor.’ After a pause, he said: ‘Murder, Glanville.’

Glanville looked up with real surprise. ‘Murder? You’re out of your mind! Of whom, for heaven’s sake?’

Thornwald patted the raw skin around his chin. The pale image of his hands still clung to his face. ‘Of your wife.’

‘Judith? But she’s here, you idiot! You saw her yourself when you arrived!’

‘You saw her, Glanville. I didn’t. But I realized that you’d brought her here with you when you started playing her part, using that mincing crazy voice of yours. You weren’t very keen on my going out to the module. Then, last night, you brought something from it for me.’

Thornwald walked across the veranda, averting his eyes from the wreck of the module. He remembered the insane vision he had seen the previous evening as he sat watching for Glanville, waiting for this madman who had absconded with the body of his murdered wife. The time-winds had carried across to him the image of a spectral ship whose rotting timbers had formed a strange portcullis in the evening sun — a dungeon-grate. Then, suddenly, he had seen a terrifying apparition walking across this sea of blood towards him, the nightmare commander of this ship of Hell, a tall woman with the slow rhythmic stride of his own requiem. ‘Her locks were yellow as gold… the nightmare life-in-death was she, who thicks man’s blood with cold.’ Aghast* at the sight of Judith’s head on this lamia, he had barely recognized Glanville, her mad Mariner, bearing her head like a wild lantern before he snatched the pistol.

Glanville flexed his shoulders against the ropes. ‘Captain, I don’t know about Judith… she’s not too happy here, and we’ve never got on with just ourselves for company. I’d like to come with you.’

‘I’m sorry, Glanville, there’s not much point — you’re in the right place here.’

‘But, Captain, aren’t you exceeding your authority? If there is a murder charge..

‘Not "captain", Glanville — "commissioner". I was promoted before I left, and that gives me absolute discretion in these cases. I think this planet is remote enough; no one’s likely to come here and disturb you.’

He went over to Glanville and looked down at him, then took a clasp knife from his pocket and laid it on the table. ‘You should be able to get a hand around that if you stand up. Goodbye, Glanville, I’ll leave you here in your gilded hell.’

‘But Thornwald… Commissioner!’ Glanville swung himself round in the chair. ‘Where’s Judith? Call her.’

Thornwald glanced back across the sunlight. ‘I can’t, Glanville. But you’ll see her soon. This evening, when the timewinds blow, they’ll bring her back to you, a dead woman from the dead sea.’

He set off towards the capsule across the jewelled sand.

The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race

Author’s note. — The assassination of President Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963, raised many questions, not all of which were answered by the Report of the Warren Commission. It is suggested that a less conventional view of the events of that grim day may provide a more satisfactory explanation. In particular, Alfred larry’s The Crucifixion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race gives us a useful lead.

Oswald was the starter.

From his window above the track he opened the race by firing the starting gun. It is believed that the first shot was not properly heard by all the drivers. In the following confusion Oswald fired the gun two more times, but the race was already under way.

Kennedy got off to a bad start.

There was a governor in his car and its speed remained constant at about fifteen miles an hour. However, shortly afterwards, when the governor had been put out of action, the car accelerated rapidly, and continued at high speed along the remainder of the course.

The visiting teams. As befitting the inauguration of the first production car race through the streets of Dallas, both the President and the Vice-President participated. The Vice-President, Johnson, took up his position behind Kennedy on the starting line. The concealed rivalry between the two men was of keen interest to the crowd. Most of them supported the home driver, Johnson.

The starting point was the Texas Book Depository, where all bets were placed on the Presidential race. Kennedy was an unpopular contestant with the Dallas crowd, many of whom showed outright hostility. The deplorable incident familiar to us all is one example.

The course ran downhill from the Book Depository, below an overpass, then onto the Parkland Hospital and from there to Love Air Field. It is one of the most hazardous courses in downhill motor-racing, second only to the Sarajevo track discontinued in 1914.

Kennedy went downhill rapidly. After the damage to the governor the car shot forward at high speed. An alarmed track official attempted to mount the car, which continued on its way, cornering on two wheels.