But maybe that was it: the fact that the sugarfeet were something other
than what Earth had claimed. That one I'd met was certainly no dumb
animal. He had a language; I'd heard that bartender talking to him.
That put him a few steps ahead of cats and dogs. Maybe a lot further.
But what difference did it make if the sugarfeet were or weren't
dumb animals? I didn't care one way or the other. And I was pretty
representative of an Earthman, wasn't I? Who'd care, anyhow, if it
turned out the sugarfeet were nearer human than had been supposed?
Well, I knew the who, if not the why.
Baxter obviously cared tremendously. Which deduction left me
approximately nowhere.
The air seemed to be getting staler by the minute. I found I could
breathe better lying flat on my back, not even using enough energy to
remain in a sitting position.
My skin was clammy with sweat from head to foot, my windpipe felt like
someone had just given it a brisk toweling with a hot doormat.
I thought desperately of pounding on that impervious stone door, in the
chance that my suffocation was an over-sight on their part. But I knew
in my heart it wasn't.
I held myself on the cot, fighting that deadly tug of irrational
emotion. If I was going to suffocate, I wanted to do it with as little
pain as possible.
My lungs, though were telling me a different story. They had that "time
to go up for air" feeling, the hideous pre-strangulation hot wave that
floods through the ribs, begging, and then ordering, the swimmer to
head to the surface before his lungs rip apart.
I fought the feeling, breathing faster to keep that dull nudging from
becoming a full-scale command. But it was harder and harder not to
fling myself at that bare store and try, in the last few minutes of
life, to dig my way free with my fingertips.
And then, with my eyes burning in my own perspiration, and tongue
half-protruding between gaping lips, I felt that stinging, prickling
sensation along my limbs.
Then a blinding blaze of blue-white sparks showered me, and I jumped to
my feet in fright.
The wall opposite the cell door was raggedly missing, its three-foot
slabs of granite jutting wildly into the area where their companions
had just been. And there was air; cold, chilling air, terribly thin to
breathe. But it was air, and I leaped through that gap like a madman,
flooding my hot lungs with the elusive draughts of black Martian night.
I staggered, dizzy at the sparseness of the atmosphere, and then
a tight clamp closed upon my arm and kept me from falling. A
three-fingered clamp.
I looked into the glittering face of the sugarfoot. It had the
collapser in its free hand, and its eyes were locked on mine. It was
waiting for me to say something.
"Brother," I said, managing a grin, "I would love coming with you, no
matter where!"
Surprisingly, it shook its dragon head, and made gestures toward my
blouse, then an upward movement of its arms.
"You want me to take it off?" I said, in bewilderment. "But I'm half
frozen already."
The sugarfoot was adamant. Again it pointed to the blouse, and did that
slip-it-over-your-head motion.
I gave up fighting it. The creature was obviously not inimical to me.
Even if it were, I thought, I owed it something for pulling me out of
that stone coffin.
Hoping pneumonia was less painful than outright suffocation, I
obediently tugged it, loose from within my belt, and slid the thing
over my head and off.
The sugarfoot took it from me, turned it inside-out, and held it out
close to my face for inspection, in the dim criss-cross lighting of
tiny Phobos and barely larger Deimos, as they scurried across the cold
black sky.
I stared stupidly at the inside surface of the blouse, the black one
which Baxter had insisted I wear, and then I caught the glint of
reflected moonlight where there should have been plain shirt material.
Tiny metallic filaments had been woven into the garment, too light and
flexible for the wearer to feel them, but strong enough not to break
with constant flexing.
I nodded, and handed the blouse back to the sugarfoot. "I see them.
Wires," I said. "But what does it mean?"
The sugarfoot pointed toward the Security prison, which at this point
of the topography was on the outside of the hills which surrounded
Marsport. Security had burrowed into those hills to make themselves an
escape-proof dungeon. Even though I was out of it, I hadn't yet, in the
real sense of the word, escaped. It was easily twenty below zero, and
the air was thin as the inside of a vacuum tube.
I was dizzy, and sick, and barely able to keep from falling, but I made
myself ask, "What's the blouse got to do with the prison?"
The sugarfoot pointed to the prison, the blouse, and made a circular
gesture with his finger.
"The prison...." I said slowly. "It--It tracks the shirt around!"
A nod. Then the sugarfoot turned its head and, extending that hollow
tongue, produced a shrill piercing whistle through the vibrating tip. I
heard a scrunching sound on the rocky hillside where we stood, and then
the damnedest little beast hove into view. It was about the size of a
burro. But it had six legs, no visible head or neck, and was covered
with spiky hairs that seemed more like lengths of straw than anything
else I could think of. This ambulant bale of hay approached us, and
halted before the sugarfoot. The sugarfoot whistled again, and from
somewhere in the front--I assume it was the front--of this creature, a
claw-tipped tentacle wormed out through the hay, and took the blouse
from the sugarfoot's hand. A third and final whistle, and the thing,
clutching the blouse, went off down the hillside with remarkable speed,
heading toward the open desert that lay sullenly gray beneath the
moonlight. It had that busy-busy-busy ant-motion to it, the front and
rear legs on one side moving forward simultaneously with the middle leg
on the opposite side, then a swift, jerky reverse and the other trio of
legs moved forward, giving it a strangely graceful--awkward wriggling
gait. But it was fast, damned fast. Within a minute, it was out of
sight.
I swayed woozily, and hung onto the sugarfoot's shoulder for support.
"Blazing a false trail, huh?"
It didn't answer, but reached out for me, and swung me up into its
powerful arms, as a man carries a child. It clacked something which
I took to be a term of reassurance, and then, holding me tightly so
I wouldn't get jounced to death, it took off in a leaping bound in a
direction at right angles to that taken by the hay-bale creature. It
jolted me a little, but the cold and lack of enough oxygen had taken
its toll of my stamina. I passed out before the third bound.
And when I awoke, there was warmth and air, and a comfortable bed
beneath me. And I was looking into the face of Snow White.
12
I forgot I was supposed to be mad at her. Instead of chewing her out
for her sneak-thievery, I grasped her soft little hands, and murmured,
"Are you okay?"
"Miraculously," she said. "I hadn't got twenty yards into town before
my face and name were being blazoned on every stereo in Marsport.
Things were a bit rough for a while."
I propped myself up on my elbows, the better to see that lovely face,
framed in a halo of silky pale yellow hair, and said, "What happened?
How'd you escape? What's with these mobs and sugarfeet, and--And where
are we, for pete's sake?"
"Whoa, boy!" she laughed, pressing me back onto the bed, her hands
lingering on my chest for a delicious moment before she sat back again.
"You've been very sick, whether you know it or not. Here, take a look."
She picked up her handbag from the floor, took out a small mirror, and
held it in front of my face. I took one look, then shut my eyes. My
face was the cheery color of porcelain, with purplish eyelids and gray
lips.
"What hit me?" I sighed, opening my eyes again.
"Oxygen-starvation, exposure, and near pneumonia. I thought you were
dead when Clatclit carried you in here. You've been sleeping for nearly
thirty-six hours."
"Clatclit?" I said. "Is that the ambient hunk of dextrose who blasted
me out of stir?"
"Let's not be colorful," said Snow, deprecatingly. "You owe your life
to him, you know."
"I know," I said. "That was the ad man in me coming through. But look,
my mind's a whirlpool of confusion. Could you please tell me what's
been going on here, anyhow?"
"Lie back and rest," said Snow, "and I will."
I burrowed deeper into the warm coverlet, sighed, and kept my eyes on
her lovely face. In the midst of her discourse, I even sneaked a hand
out and laid it gently over her own. It was smartly slapped, without
rancor, and I withdrew it from active duty for a while.
"Well, first thing, I'd like to apologize for that dirty trick I pulled
back on the _Valkyrie_," Snow said. My heart turned over, and I felt
an idiot grin of forgiveness spreading across my ghastly features. I
found it quite impossible to stay angry with the girl. As I've said,
something happens to my brain when around women.
"Accepted," I croaked.
"I knew that you'd have no trouble getting away from those Security men
I sent," she said smilingly.
"Then why did you send them?" I asked.
"To keep them from asking me any questions," she said, with a small
shrug. "For all I knew, they were expecting a man with the Amnesty.
However, knowing that just having it carried a lot of weight, I gave
them the order to pick you up as soon as they approached me at the
customs booth."
"And if they hadn't believed me?" I complained.
"Well," she said carefully, "I suppose I'd have sent them a note, or
something, telling them to release you."
"Thanks for the kind thought," I muttered.
Snow ignored my minor irritation, and went blithely on.
"My next move was to go to the Port Authority, and find out just where
the _Phobos II_ was berthed before takeoff. I thought that Ted might
have left me a clue of some sort."
"You sound as if he were expecting you to traipse up here after him," I
said, dubiously.
"He wouldn't count on my coming, if that's what you mean. But Ted's a
good kid. I've practically had to raise him myself. He knew I'd worry
if I didn't hear from him. He couldn't know, of course, that IS would
send forged letters to the relatives of the missing boys. So I assumed
that, if he had the chance, he'd leave a clue of some kind for me, in
case I did come."
"An assurance of sorts, you mean?"
"Something like that. Like 'I'm okay, Snow, so don't worry,' or some
such message. So that's what I looked for at the rocket berth."
"Just a minute," I interrupted. "I used to be a boy, once, myself, and
while I didn't have any sisters of my own, I knew a lot of buddies
who did. The last thing in the world they'd expect would be for their
sister to follow them into danger! Hell, they'd feel like sissies if
they had to count on a sister for aid."
"I--" Snow hesitated. "I'm not what you'd call the typical sister,
Jery."
"Oh?"
She blushed prettily. "When you have to raise a brother, you have to
learn a lot of things, if you're going to bring him up fairly normally.
I had to teach him to play ball, to box, to ski, to--Well, I was more
like a father to him than anything. So Ted, knowing my more belligerent
side, would just about figure I'd come storming up here to find him."
"I don't know," I pondered aloud. "If you and Ted have this friendly
relationship, why the hell would he put you to all this trouble? It
seems like a lousy thing on his part to go wandering off without a
word."
"It would be," Snow agreed, "unless there was a mighty important reason
for his going. And it wasn't without a word."
"Then you did find a message?" I exclaimed.
She nodded. "After a few minutes' inspection of the berth, I found it
scratched onto one of the supporting beams."
"Funny IS didn't spot it," I remarked.
"It's in our special _code_, silly!" Snow said. "To anyone else, it'd
look like hen scratches."
"Just what is this code of yours?" I asked, curious.
Snow looked at me a moment, frowning.
"I'll carry the secret to my grave." I said generously.