CHAPTER SEVEN
THE SATURN WEEKENDER was built like a pleasure yacht; it was ample for four, spacious for two, but not spacious enough for Foyle and Jiz McQueei~ Foyle slept in the main cabin; Jiz kept to herself in the stateroom.
On the seventh day out, Jisbella spoke to Foyle for the second time: «Let’s get those bandages off, Ghoul.»
Foyle left the galley where he was sullenly heating coffee, and kicked back to the bathroom. He floated in after Jisbella and wedged himself into the alcove before the washbasin mirror. Jisbella braced herself on the basin, opened an ether capsule and began soaking and stripping the bandage off with hard, hating .hands. The strips of gauze peeled slowly. Foyle was in agony of suspense.
«D'you think Baker did the job?» he asked. No answer.
«Could he have missed anywhere?» The stripping continued.
«It stopped hurting two days ago.» No answer.
«For God's sake, Jiz! Is it still war between us?»
Jisbella's hands stopped. She looked at Foyle's bandaged face with hatred. «What do you think?»
«I asked you.»
«The answer is yes.» «Why?»
«You'll never understand.»
«Make me understand.» «Shut up.»
«If it's war, why'd you come with me?»
«To get what's coming to Sam and me.» «Money?»
«Shut up.»
«You didn't have to. You could have trusted me.»
«Trusted you? You?» Jisbella laughed without mirth and recommenced the peeling. Foyle struck her hands away.
«I'll do it myself.»
She lashed him across his bandaged face. «You'll do what I tell you. Be still, Ghoul!»
She continued unwinding the bandage. A strip came away revealing Foyle's eyes. They stared at Jisbella, dark and brooding. The eyelids were clean; the bridge of the nose was clean. A strip came away from Foyle's chin. It was blue-black. Foyle, watching intently in the mirror, gasped.
«He missed the chin!» he exclaimed. «Baker goofed…”
«Shut up,» Jiz answered shortly. «That's beard.»
The innermost strips came away quickly, revealing cheeks, mouth, and brow. The brow was clean. The cheeks under the eyes were clean. The rest was covered with a blue-black seven day beard.
«Shave,» Jiz commanded.
Foyle ran water, soaked his face, rubbed in shave ointment, and washed the beard off. Then he leaned close to the mirror and inspected himself, Unaware that Jisbella's head was close to his as she too stared into the mirror. Not a mark of tattooing remained. Both sighed.
«It's clean,» Foyle said. «Clean. He did the job.» Suddenly he leaned further forward and inspected himself more closely. His face looked new to him, as new as it looked to Jisbella. «I'm changed. I don't remember looking like this. Did he do surgery on me too?»
«No,» Jisbella said. «What's inside you changed it. That's the ghoul you're seeing, along with the liar and the cheat.»
«For God's sake! Lay off. Let me alone!»
«Ghoul,» Jisbella repeated, staring at Foyle's face with glowing eyes. «Liar. Cheat.»
He took her shoulders and shoved her out into the companionway. She went sailing down into the main lounge, caught a guide bar and spun herself around. «Ghoul!» she cried. «Liar! Cheat! Ghoul! Lecher! Beast!»
Foyle pursued her, seized her again and shook her violently. Her red hair burst out of the clip that gathered it at the nape of her neck and floated out like a mermaid's tresses. The burning expression on her face transformed Foyle's anger into passion. He enveloped her and buried his new face in her breast.
«Lecher,» Jiz murmured. «Animal . . .»
«Oh, Jiz . .
«The light,» Jisbella whispered. Foyle reached out blindly toward the wall switches and pressed buttons, and the Saturn Weekender drove on toward the asteroids with darkened portholes.
They floated together in the cabin, drowsing, murmuring, touching tenderly for hours.
«Poor Gully,» Jisbella whispered. «Poor darling Gully . . .»
«Not poor,» he said. «Rich . . . soon.»
«Yes, rich and empty. You've got nothing inside you, Gully dear . Nothing but hatred and revenge.»
«It's enough.»
«Enough for now. But later?»
«Later? That depends.»
«It depends on your inside, Gully; what you get hold of.»
«No. My future depends on what I get rid of.»
«Gully. . . why did you hold out on me in Gouffre Martel? Why didn't you tell me you knew there was a fortune aboard 'Nomad'?»
«I couldn't.»
«Didn't you trust me?»
«It wasn't that. I couldn't help myself. That's what's inside me . . .what I have to get rid of.»
«Control again, eh Gully? You're driven.»
«Yes, I'm driven. I can't learn control, Jiz. I want to, but I can't.»
«Do you try?»
«I do. God knows, I do. But then something happens, and…”
«And then you pounce like a tiger.»
«If I could carry you in my pocket, Jiz . . . to warn me . . . stick a pin in me…”
«Nobody can do it for you, Gully. You have to learn yourself.»
He digested that for a long moment. Then he spoke hesitantly: «Jiz . about the money . . . ?»
«To hell' with the money.» «Can I hold you to that?» «Oh, Gully.»
«Not that I. . . that I'm trying to hold out on you. If it wasn't for 'Vorga,' I'd give you all you wanted. All! I'll give you every cent left over when I'm finished. But I'm scared, Jiz. 'Vorga' is tough . . . what with Presteign and Dagenham and that lawyer, Sheffield. I've got to hold on to every cent, Jiz. I'm afraid if I let you take one credit, that could make the difference between 'Vorga' and I.»
«Me.» He waited. «Well?»
«You're all possessed,» she said wearily. «Not just a part of you, but all of you.»
«Yes, Gully. All of you. It's just your skin making love to me. The rest is feeding on 'Vorga.'»
At that moment the radar alarm in the forward control cabin burst upon them, unwelcome and warning.
«Destination zero,» Foyle muttered, no longer relaxed, once more possessed. He shot forward into the control cabin.
So he returned to the freak planetoid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the Sargasso planet manufactured of rock and wreckage and the spoils of space disaster salvaged by The Scientific People. He returned to the home of Joseph and his People who had tattooed NOMAD across his face and scientifically mated him to the girl named Moira.
Foyle overran the asteroid with the sudden fury of a Vandal raid. He came blasting out of space, braked with a spume of flame from the forward jets, and kicked the Weekender into a tight spin around the junkheap. They whirled around, passing the blackened ports, the big hatch from which Joseph and his Scientific People emerged to collect the drifting debris of space, the new crater Foyle had torn out of the side of the asteroid in his first plunge back to Terra. They whipped past the giant patchwork windows of the asteroid greenhouse and saw hundreds of faces peering out at them, tiny white dots mottled with tattooing.
«So I didn't murder them,» Foyle grunted. «They've pulled back into the asteroid . . . Probably living deep inside while they get the rest repaired.»
«Will you help them, Gully?»
«Why?»
«You did the damage.»
«To hell with them. I've got my own problems. But it's a relief. They won't be bothering us.»
He circled the asteroid once more and brought the Weekender down in the mouth of the new crater.
«We'll work from here,» he said. «Get into a suit, Jiz. Let's go! Let's go!»
He drove her, mad with impatience; he drove himself. They corked up in their spacesuits, left the Weekender, and went sprawling through the debris in the crater into the bleak bowels of the asteroid. It was like squirming through the crawling tunnels of giant worm-holes. Foyle switched on his micro-wave suit set and spoke to Jiz.