Jery Delvin had a most unusual talent. He could detect the flaws in
any scheme almost on sight--even where they had eluded the best brains
in the ad agency where he worked. So when the Chief of World Security
told him that he had been selected as the answer to the Solar System's
greatest mystery, Jery assumed that it was because of his mental
agility.
But when he got to Mars to find out why fifteen boys had vanished from
a spaceship in mid-space, he found out that even his quick mind needed
time to pierce the maze of out-of-this-world double-dealing. For Jery
had become a walking bomb, and when he set himself off, it would be the
end of the whole puzzle of THE SECRET MARTIANS--with Jery as the first
to go!
Jack Sharkey decided to be a writer nineteen years ago, in the Fourth
Grade, when he realized all at once that "someone wrote all those
stories in the textbooks." While everyone else looked forward variously
to becoming firemen, cowboys, and trapeze artists, Jack was devouring
every book he could get his hands on, figuring that "if I put enough
literature into my head, some of it might overflow and come out."
After sixteen years of education, Jack found himself teaching high
school English in Chicago, a worthwhile career, but "not what one would
call zesty." After a two-year Army hitch, and a year in advertising
"sublimating my urge to write things for cash," Jack moved to New York,
determined to make a career of full-time fiction-writing.
Oddly enough, it worked out, and he now does nothing else. He says,
"I'd like to say I do this for fulfillment, or for cash, or because
it's my destiny; however, the real reason (same as that expressed by
Jean Kerr) is that this kind of stay-at-home self-employment lets me
sleep late in the morning."
1
I was sitting at my desk, trying to decide how to tell the women of
America that they were certain to be lovely in a Plasti-Flex brassiere
without absolutely guaranteeing them anything, when the two security
men came to get me. I didn't quite believe it at first, when I looked
up and saw them, six-feet-plus of steel nerves and gimlet eyes, staring
down at me, amidst my litter of sketches, crumpled copy sheets and
deadline memos.
It was only a fraction of an instant between the time I saw them and
the time they spoke to me, but in that miniscule interval I managed
to retrace quite a bit of my lifetime up till that moment, seeking
vainly for some reason why they'd be standing there, so terribly and
inflexibly efficient looking. Mostly, I ran back over all the ads I'd
created and/or okayed for Solar Sales, Inc. during my five years with
the firm, trying to see just where I'd gone and shaken the security
of the government. I couldn't find anything really incriminating,
unless maybe it was that hair dye that unexpectedly turned bright green
after six weeks in the hair, but that was the lab's fault, not mine.
So I managed a weak smile toward the duo, and tried not to sweat too
profusely.
"Jery Delvin?" said the one on my left, a note of no-funny-business in
his brusque baritone.
"... Yes," I said, some terrified portion of my mind waiting
masochistically for them to draw their collapsers and reduce me to a
heap of hot protons.
"Come with us," said his companion. I stared at him, then glanced
hopelessly at the jumble of things on my desk. "Never mind that stuff,"
he added.
I rose from my place, slipped my jacket from its hook, and started
across the office toward the door, each of them falling into rigid step
beside me. Marge, my secretary, stood wide-eyed as we passed through
her office, heading for the hall exit.
"Mr. Delvin," she said, her voice a wispy croak. "When will you be
back? The Plasti-Flex man is waiting for your--"