THE LAST TWO ALIVE!
By ALFRED COPPEL
Aram Jerrold watched helplessly as Santane's
beast-rockets screamed into the Void bearing
madness to the Thirty Suns, and knew that
this was cosmic Armageddon ... the crimson
horror of Space-war would smash Galactic
Civilization utterly and forever! Yet in his
tortured mind a voice from the past commanded:
"You must save something from the ruins!"
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories November 1950.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The verdict, thought Aram Jerrold wearily, would be death. TheSupreme Council itself would demand it. He had rebelled against theTetrarchy—rebelled senselessly, desperately, without hope of successor escape—and the reckoning had come. The Government of the ThirtySuns would demand his life ... more, if the science of the SecurityPolice were up to it. Aram repressed a shudder. He knew that sciencewell. No one rose to a position of command in the Thirty Suns Navy orto membership in the Executive Committee of the Tetrarchy withoutrespect for the methods of the dread Greens.
The courtroom was dark, a pattern of sombre hues calculated toimpress a prisoner with the futility of hope. It had been weeks sinceJerrold had seen the sun. Weeks of endless interrogation and repeatednarcosynthesis. He had been shunted from Bureau to Bureau, fromDepartment to Department, each set of cogs in the vast governmentalmachinery of the Terminus probing him for evidence of sabotage orrebellion within its own structure. He had been badgered, beaten,drugged and threatened. Now, at last, the end of the ordeal seemednear. There remained only the sentence of death to be passed—themethod and place decided upon—and it would be done with. The ponderousbureaucracy of the Tetrarchy had wrung him dry, and now it preparedto cast him aside, satisfied that his rebellion was a purely personalaberration and not part of a widespread plot against the stability ofgalactic tyranny.
The drugs had clouded his vision, giving a nightmare mistiness to theshadowy courtroom. Jerrold could see that the room was empty but forthe guards and clerks and the black-masked tribunes. It would not do,of course, to let the people know that one of the chosen masters—amember of the Executive Committee—had suddenly become an insubordinaterebel and traitor.
Behind him a door opened, splitting the gloom with a fleeting wedge oflight. The wedge vanished and Aram Jerrold heard again the light, crispfootsteps. He knew without looking that it was Deve Jennet. She hadbeen in the courtroom every day, giving testimony, slamming doors inhis face. Doors that might possibly have led to freedom. Every day shehad driven another rivet into the chains of evidence that bound him,methodically, deliberately.
She passed by him without turning her head and took a seat near thetribune's dais. Jerrold stared at her through the mist that swamsickeningly before his eyes. Dimly, the memory of her as she had beenbefore this nightmare came to him. He remembered her, soft and yieldingin his arms through the long nights of Terminus. Nights filled withtenderness and longing talk of freedom for the two of them somewherebeyond the stars.
This was the same woman, but changed. The lustrous dark eyes were thesame, and the full lips. The same pale hair and slim body. But it satencased in a severely cut uniform, all femininity gone from it. Theuniform was green. The hate