She can't die, she just
can't!'
'Now, now,' said Krause, 'There's no need to be heroic. You
sound like one of those detestable Wagnerian operas---all full of blood
oaths, and absurd quests to dubious ends. Damned prelude to the Nazis
is what they were, along with Nietzsche and all that, ‘Great men
create their own morality' horse-shit. Did you know Hitler was
impotent? That's why he never married Eva Braun. They say that
Goring used to wear eye make-up when they were alone, and---'
'Doctor, please!'
'Yes, yes, I know. You're sure that at any moment the lights will
go out, we'll hear the rumble from above, and the chance will be
lost. You underestimate me, young man. This laboratory will be intact,
and protected from radiation, ten thousand years from now. You forget
the lengths that a ‘mad German' will go to.' But seeing
William's anguish, he said. 'Yes, we'll save Kathy. And just
for the hell of it, why don't we save you, too? Since I don't
seem to have any other volunteers.'
William looked around him, then at the two elaborate suspension casks,
the best and most advanced in the world---made by Krause's own hands,
and prepared against every contingency.
'But what about you?'
'Me?' The old scientist laughed morosely. 'I'm an old man.
Do you think I want to crawl out of one of these things a hundred
centuries from now, and try to rebuild what's left of the world? No,
William, I don't mind dying.
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