Tony let the limp body slide down, and turned back to Jimmy. The boy was
dead. Zadah’s bullet had made a neat little hole in the brown shirt.
After a moment Tony carried the body of his brother to the plane and put
it aboard. He followed. He sent the gyro winging up over the desert.
Beneath him the Sahara stretched, a white wilderness under the flaming
heat of the Sun. To the north could be seen an encampment, the troopers
that had arrived, too late, at the mouth of Sub-Sahara. Tony set the
controls and fled beyond them.
The desert gave place to the Mediterranean, and that, in turn, to the
Pacific Ocean. The cool blueness of night folded down. Moonlight
silvered the waves.
Tony opened a trap-door in the floor and let the body of his brother
slide through. Phil rested in the temple of Osiris—and Jimmy would lie
beneath the waves that hid Atlantis.
He went back to the controls, staring ahead at an empty horizon.
Westward lay New York. He could go back there now; the motive for
keeping hidden had vanished. No one would know who the Merlin was. Some
men might guess, might be convinced that either Phil or Jimmy had stolen
the Earth Star—but they would never dare make an accusation, and Seth
Martell would need make no compromises with his honor and his ideals.
Only Tony would know that the Merlin had been his brother Phil.
For ten minutes he had been alone with Phil in the Temple of Osiris.
And, before the youth died, he had told Tony the truth—that he was the
Merlin. He had given his brother the Earth Star to keep. But no one
would ever know that now.
Tony’s throat was tight. He stared at the dim horizon of sky and sea,
knowing that beyond it lay New York, and a life he could take up again
where he had left it. A life he must live—alone.
A faint glow brightened to the west. The tallest towers of Manhattan
were pillars of light against the sky.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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