"That is not funny."
"It needs work," I admitted.
"Jery Delvin," said the Martian with open irritation, "time is
fleeting, and I cannot afford to dally while you play semantic
pingpong with my words! Kindly allow me to complete my statement of
this situation, or I shall decide by your flippancy that you no longer
desire the companionship of your woman!"
That one, I detected by the sudden stiffening of Snow's hand in mine, I
didn't need to translate. I shut up.
"This, then," the Martian went on more calmly, "is despite what your
scientists say, the center of your universe. If they will but compute
the masses, orbits and velocities of all other matter in the universe,
they will see that. Or are they yet aware of the universe in its
entirety?"
"Not--not quite," I said carefully, not wanting to chance losing Snow.
"Our astronomical instruments have a limited sensitivity to light. We
see pretty damned far, but there's always something more beyond."
"Very well, then, you'll have to take my word for it. However, if you
have properly understood the fact that our dimension exists at the
place of Location itself, you will see at once that our only possible
point of contact with your universe is at the central, non-moving
point."
"I think I see," I said. "If you tried making contact anywhere else,
it'd go speeding off from you, so to speak."
"Good. You understand perfectly. What Baxter proposes to do is to break
our liaison, thus confining us to our own dimension forever.
"He proposes to do this by detonating a segment of our physical
universe, one which coexists with yours. This will produce only the
slightest of jolts in our world, but the balance between the two
universes is so delicate that even this minor tremor will move us--by
moving our contact-material--out of alignment. And we, since we exist
in Location, cannot then move ourselves back."
"Would ... uh, would that be so terrible?" I asked nervously. "What do
you gain by the contact anyhow?"
"The contact," said the Martian. "It is something we have always had.
We don't need it, but we like less the idea of having it arbitrarily
taken from us."
"Oh," I said. "I don't suppose you happen to know Baxter's angle in all
this? I mean the reason for his urge to destroy you."
"Power," the Martian said simply. "You have heard of the Amnesty, of
course?"
"Have I!" I muttered.
"Well, then. You know that the wearer cannot be countermanded by any
but the combined veto of the World President and Philip Baxter himself."
"Yes," I said, puzzled.
"Then who, if Philip Baxter were to wear the Amnesty, could countermand
him?"
I realized with a shock that no one on the three planets of Earth's
domain could, the way the rules were set up.
"But people wouldn't stand for a dictator," I argued. "They'd vote out
the power of the Amnesty."
"And if there was no more vote? Jery Delvin, Interplanetary Security
is currently the most powerful organization in your world. Its agents
possess the most invincible of weapons, the collapser ray-gun. Philip
Baxter wields the power, even now. But he desires that it should become
known."
"Known?" said Snow uncertainly.
"He means, Snow, that it's no fun being the boss if nobody knows it.
The more I think of it, the more I think Baxter can actually get away
with it." I returned my attention to the Martian. "If he's held off
taking over until you people were unhitched from our universe, then you
must be a threat to him!"
"Only in his mind, Jery Delvin. He learned that we exist. He also
learned that we had non-Earthly abilities. He decided that we therefore
were superior in knowledge of weapons of destruction. One cannot be a
successful dictator when another being has more power, or if one thinks
such is the case."
"Then you haven't such weapons?"
"We have. But, as I told you, physical contact between our races is
impossible." It gave a shrug. "Any attempt on our part to use our
weapons would result in that very jolt we are trying so desperately to
avoid."
"I get it. You can shoot the charging rhino, but the recoil knocks you
off the cliff."
"Overly metaphoric but substantially correct. So you must destroy
Baxter for us."
"I'd like nothing better. I can get back to Earth, and alert the
president, and maybe get the wheels rolling for an investigation of IS."
"Impossible!" the Martian snapped. "We dare not wait any longer. As
yet, Baxter has confided his _modus operandi_ to no one. Once he tells
another man, then that man tells a third, and soon we become hopelessly
vulnerable. No, the man himself must be destroyed, not just his power.
When he dies, the power will die with him if you then tell your story."
"But I can't just walk up to him and kill him," I said.
"Since we are completely aware that you can, I must take it that you
mean you will not."
"No, not that, exactly. But look, he's been a stinker, I know, but it's
not in my power to destroy a fellow human being in cold blood."
"Then we shall heat your blood, Jery Delvin," the Martian replied. "We
will warm it with the racking anger you shall feel against us, knowing
that these human children shall perish if you fail!" A cunning light
came into the Martian's eyes. "And not only these children," it said.
"But your woman as well!"
"No!" I cried, grabbing hold of Snow in both my arms. "I'll do it, but
just leave her alone!"
"She stays here with us until you return successful."
"She does not!" I yelled, shaking. "I can't leave the woman I love with
a creep that looks to her like a blob of black sparklers! I--"
With cold horror, I realized that my arms were embracing nothingness.
Snow was standing, wide-eyed, ten feet away.
"Jery!" she cried, trying to come toward me. Instead, her steps slid
over that shimmering metallic blur, and she remained in place.
"We who live in the heart of Location," said the Martian affably, "have
a certain mastery over locale."
"You can't do this," I said unreasonably. Because it was quite obvious
it was being done. Inexorably.
"Snow--" I said, and couldn't go on. The vision of Snow was moving
back from me, or I was moving backward, or both. But the gap between
us widened by the second. Then I was back in the rocky red tunnel, the
parabolite sphincter narrowing swiftly before my face.
"Be--be careful, Snow!" I called, like an imbecile.
The wall was solid again.
17
Simultaneous with that parabolite wall shutting in my face, three
disturbing thoughts occurred to me: One, Baxter didn't have the
Amnesty; Snow did! Probably in that catch-all handbag of hers. Two, if
the Ancients could float me and Snow and the Space Scouts about like so
much helium, why the hell didn't they just de-localize Baxter into a
snake pit or something? And three, if physical contact was impossible
between the races, how in heaven's name did they gimmick the Brain back
on Earth? Which was also, come to think of it, moving awfully fast
in relation to their liaison-point with the geocentric point of the
universe!
A very baffled man, I began feeling my way down the tunnel toward that
mighty roar of underground waters. The light paled and grew gray as I
moved away from the parabolite wall. Then I was in darkness, feeling
the bare stone with my fingers as I stepped carefully toward the
increasing volume of ragged sound.
Then the wall curved away from my outstretched fingertips, and I knew I
stood at the brink of that precarious arch of rock. There was nothing
but blackness there, now.
"Clatclit!" I hollered over the boom of the river waters. "Clatclit,
it's me, Jery!"
The rush of the boiling rapids was too great, however. It thundered
by and swept the faint vibration of my voice along with it into that
enormous well to my right.
Then I remembered Clatclit's manner of instruction to that hay-bale
beast, what seemed like ages ago, out on the craggy Martian hillside. I
put hooked thumb and forefinger into my mouth, and let off a piercing
whistle.
Ahead of me in the darkness there was a glimmering of visibility, and
then a feeble pink taillight waggled slowly up and down, far back
beyond the other end of the bridge. Clatclit wasn't chancing moving as
close to the death-dealing spray as before.
However, though a more powerful beam had been necessary to see by when
I'd been moving into darkness, the pale glow was sufficient for the
return trip. All I needed was a beacon, something to sight upon, so I
wouldn't go astray in my slow crawl across that slippery curve of rock.
Yes, crawl. This trip, I negotiated the arch on hands and knees.
And then I was across and hurrying down the corridor to the bend around
which Clatclit shivered and waited. He stood up from his slouch against
the wall, from which weary stance he'd been waving me onward with his
taillight.
"Wow!" I said, catching dim sight of him in the weak glow of his
water-pitted trylon. The sharp ruby glint was missing from his
erstwhile pyramidic facets; now they looked dull crimson, and ropy,
like taffy that has congealed after boiling over and dribbling down
the side of the saucepan. "Does it hurt?" I asked, feeling partially
responsible.
Side-to-side motion.
"It bothers you in some way, though, is that it?"
Nod.
"How?" I asked, unable to think of a yes-no question.
Clatclit pointed to my wrist, shook his head, pointed to my wrist
again, and gestured upward, then nodded.
"Time. No ... other time. Uh ... Earth?"
Headshake. He rose on tiptoe and pointed up again.
"Beyond Earth. The sun!"
Nod.
"You mean that at this time, it doesn't bother you. But it will later,
when you need the scales for absorbing sunlight?"
A very weary nod.
"Damn, that's rough. Will they grow back again?"
Pause. Nod. Tiptoe point. Three taps on wrist. Shrug.
"Yes. When the sun makes three times--In three days' time?"
Nod. Wrist-tap. Hands clasped to belly. Disgusted shrug.
"But in the meantime, you go hungry, sort of?"
Nod. Then, the social amenities taken care of, Clatclit pointed to me,
to the ground, and looked questioningly.
"The Ancients have decided I'm to bump off Baxter," I said. "Then
they'll release Snow and the boys. Not before."
Clatclit stared at me a moment, placed a hand on my shoulder, and
shook his head, like a sympathetic friend. Then he took his claws and
made a tugging, struggling motion with them, as though trying to tear
something which wouldn't give. He followed it up with an incongruously
comic coin-flipping motion to the back of his hand. It was his devious
way of expressing the slang phrase, "Tough luck."
"You said it," I muttered. "Come on, though. The less time I leave Snow
with the blob of black sparklers, the better. I've got to get to the
spaceport."
Clatclit nodded and began his lumbering waddle off into the labyrinth.
The Ancients probably expected me to book passage on the next Earth
flight, to assassinate Baxter. They didn't know he was sitting right in
their laps, in the Security sector of the field. It was just as well.
I didn't relish the possibility of my elimination if they knew he was
right where a sugarfoot could blast him as well as anybody.
As I trailed Clatclit up the wearisome slope that was taking us to the
surface, I did some heavy thinking. The Ancients, before Earthmen first
landed on Mars, probably had wandered about the planet freely, on the
surface, living in their dwellings of parabolite, using their artifacts
of the same impervious mineral. Then Earth, that paradoxically
peace-loving and war-making planet, lands colonists. The Ancients, just
from plain discretion, hide themselves and observe these unwelcome
newcomers. Once it becomes clear to them that there is a potential
menace from Baxter--who is no young chicken, having been in power
before the first landing--they stay hidden, and start scheming to get
rid of this guy who can jolt them out of their liaison.
I pondered over that bit. The Ancient had said that Baxter intended
doing it by detonating a portion of their contact-material. Hell, they
must mean parabolite! What other substance in the solar system was so
alien to--
And with that thought, I suddenly knew the secret of that apparently
impervious mineral's strength. No wonder it could not be destroyed! It
was only in existence in our skimpy three dimensions in a fractional
way. One-fourth of it was always present in the Ancients' world, since
it couldn't _fit_ into our universe in its entirety. And that meant not
only one-fourth of its apparent mass, but one-fourth of even its atomic
structure!
Even the collapsers, working on subatomic particles, were at a
disadvantage. You can't nudge an electron out of orbit if it isn't
actually fixed in that orbit. Three-quarters of those four-dimensional
electrons were always cushioned by that elusive final segment that lay
outside our universe. So trying to destroy parabolite by force was in
the same class as trying to shatter a rubber ball with a hammer; a
rubber ball which was hanging from an elastic cord, in fact! It just
gave into the other dimension and rebounded frisky as ever.
"Boy," I thought, "this is going to put the skids under that scientific
theory about parabolite's imperviousness. Parabolic molecules, ha!
Well, it was a good theory while it lasted; it fit the known facts, at
least. Hell, the stuff even has the wrong name! It ought to be called
Elasto-plast, or some such euphonic label."
Clatclit paused in his climb up the tunnel slope, and turned a querying
stare on me.
"Was I talking aloud?" I asked.
Curious nod.
"Sorry, it's nothing," I said, indicating that he should proceed with
our journey. "Just the salesman in me coming to life. You can't have
public interest without catchy trade-names. Once an ad man, always an
ad man."
Clatclit looked positively bewildered.
"Sorry. Business talk," I explained.
He shrugged and continued his upward climb, with me tagging after the
bobbing pink taillight.
* * * * *
As secure as the maximum-security Security prison was supposed to be,
we got in with no trouble. The planet must be a regular yarn-ball
of those rocky tubes. If you know the layout, you can apparently get
anywhere from anywhere.
Our only excursion from the steady upward climb had been a brief
stop-off in one of those fungus-lighted rooms. Clatclit picked up my
collapser and returned it to me.
I felt infinitely more confidant of success with its thick golden
handle jutting out of my holster once more. Perhaps I could just find
Baxter, sneak a bolt into his face, and scurry off into the labyrinth
on Clatclit's heels.
I knew, even as I thought it, that I wouldn't be able to just blast
him like that. I'd probably have to face up to him, pull an "All
right, pardner--draw!" sort of sentence on him, and then pray that
I was faster. It was unthinkable for me to act in any other manner.
The give-a-guy-a-chance instinct was part of our national heritage,
something called the code of the West, handed down to us by pioneer
forefathers.
The method of ingress to the building was simplicity itself. The tunnel
we'd been negotiating came to an abrupt end at a wall of granite slabs
such as had buttressed my prison cell. I reached for the collapser, but
Clatclit laid a restraining claw on my hand.
I watched, curious, as he put his left ear-orifice to the wall and
listened intently. Then, seeming satisfied, he put his hands on the
biggest slab of granite and pushed.
Nothing happened for a moment. Then the slab began to pivot about some
central axis, and a one-foot gap was exposed on either side of its
bulk. Beyond the open spaces, bright fluorescent tubing lighted a grim
prison corridor.
"Isn't there an easier way to the spaceport?" I said.
A prison meant guards, and guards meant collapsers, and collapsers
meant, possibly, good-by Jery Delvin.
But Clatclit shrugged, pointed into the tunnel, and made zig-zag
motions with both hands, all the while shaking his head in weary
disgust.
"There is, but it'd take forever to get there, huh?" I interpreted. He
nodded. Oh well.
Clatclit leading the way, we sidled through the right-hand gap, then he
pressed the mammoth stone back into place.
"You're coming with me all the way?" I asked, surprised. Somehow, I'd
thought his guideship ended at the same place the tunnel did.
Clatclit nodded vigorously.
"Is it that the Ancients don't trust me?"
Headshake.
"You have nothing better to do?"
Negative.
"Okay, I'll bite. Why?"
Clatclit stepped toward me, placed a hand on my shoulder, then placed
his free hand over my heart, moved it over his own, held up two fingers
and crossed them.
"Because we're friends," I said softly.
Clatclit nodded.
It took us an hour to locate Baxter. Clatclit showed no signs of
surprise when I did not go to the ticket office and book a passage for
Earth. Apparently, not being in on the finer points of the Ancients'
scheme, he found no wild incongruity in my being brought all the
way from Earth to obliterate a man who could just as easily have
been dispatched by a sugarfoot. Or else, through some extrasensory
awareness, something born of our friendship, he knew that imparting the
location of Baxter to the Ancients might well mean my death.
Whatever his reasons, Clatclit simply followed me in my progress
through the prison dungeon which, thanks to its completely escape-proof
stone-corked cells, was left without guards. We went up into the more
well-appointed section of the building, the warmly plastic-decorated
halls that were open to the public who passed through the Security
inspection when entering or leaving the planet. It was good business to
hide the grimmer realities from colonists or casual tourists.
And those who learned about the dungeons were never in a position to
pass the word around. Your first view of a Security dungeon was usually
your last view of anything.
The public part of the building had too many people in it to suit
me. Even if I could get by the flight officials and robo-scanners
unchallenged, Clatclit couldn't. The building was rigidly off-limits to
extraterrestrials.
So we went up the outside.
Built against, and a good ways into, the high hills that surrounded
the town, the building was easy prey for anyone who cared to clamber
up the rocky slopes from which it jutted and climb through a window.
These slopes were lighted, but not patrolled. After all, under ordinary
circumstances, no one in his right mind would try sneaking into an IS
stronghold!
Baxter, as it turned out, was seated at a desk not unlike his own back
on Earth, in the very office where I'd been last interrogated by the
team of Charlie and Foster. He was staring into space, and smoking a
cigar, the solitary incandescent lamp on his desk making his ice-white
mane of hair a sort of angelic aurora about that pleasantly rubicund
face. It was like seeing Satan sporting a good-conduct medal.
Clatclit and I were crouched outside the window, on a narrow ledge we'd
reached from the slope. To my intense interest, lying before Baxter, in
the glaring circle of lamplight, was the black shirt I'd been wearing
when I was rescued by Clatclit, the shirt which had been towed off by
that hay-bale to obviate Baxter's being able to track the route of my
flight.
I was about to whisper a question about the shirt to Clatclit, when
Baxter turned partway about in his chair, and started to stub out the
cigar in a black onyx ashtray. The question stuck in my throat, as I
caught sight of Baxter's breast.
On a silver chain about his throat, he wore the Amnesty!
18
Something was very definitely wrong.
Until that moment when Baxter turned, I'd been certain that the Amnesty
was in Snow's possession. And now here it was, gleaming in bright red
and bronze against the front of his crisp black linen blouse.
The sight of it twanged a chord in my mind, and I crouched there on
that narrow ledge, trying to grasp the fleeting thread of thought. The
Amnesty was exactly the same color as that parabolite wall down in the
tunnels, the barrier to the lair of the Ancients. Was it a coincidence
that this token of power was designed to match in shade and intensity
of color that unearthly mineral of another dimension?
A queer notion began to take root in my mind. Baxter had given me the
Amnesty before I set off to find the missing boys. Or had he? Was that
the Amnesty I'd carried, or a copy, a perfect duplicate constructed not
of metal, but the impervious mineral.
My brain was spinning as little unimportant facts suddenly burgeoned
and grew, and took on terrible significance. According to our science,
parabolite was invulnerable to all tools, and could not be worked or
shaped. Yet the Martian had said to me that Baxter possessed the means
to disengage the fragile bond that linked the two dimensions by--The
truth came home to me with an icy shock.
By detonating a portion of their contact-material! And the Amnesty, my
Amnesty, was that material. I looked past Baxter to the black blouse,
its lining sparkling beneath the incandescent lamplight with thousands
of tiny metal filaments, and then I knew at last Baxter's monstrous
plan.
Cold fury welled up inside me. I could easily, at that moment, have
leveled my collapser at him and flashed him out of existence with no
more feeling than that engendered by crushing a gnat between finger and
thumb. My hand was sliding back toward that cold metal handle jutting
from my holster, when there came an interruption.
The door before Baxter's desk opened, and Charlie and Foster came in.
Clatclit and I ducked back from the pane, and listened, holding our
breaths.
"About time!" Baxter growled. "Since you two are alone, I assume this
was another wild goose chase!"
His fist slammed down atop the crumpled shirt, and I caught his
meaning. Apparently, when they'd discovered my cell empty, they'd
tracked my trail by whatever electronic device followed up the location
of that rigged garment, and had been led miles astray in the Martian
desert, finding only the empty blouse at the end of their quest.
"Yes and no, sir," Charlie said. "It's--it's the weirdest thing."
"Well? What?" Baxter snapped angrily.
Charlie, while replying, was unhitching a sort of tanklike apparatus
from his back, from which a flexible tube ran into the end of
the pistol at his belt. With the surprise of sudden memory, I
recognized one of the weapons of the earlier settlers at Marsport: a
sugarfoot-repelling water pistol, with three-gallon ammunition tanks.
"We got out the pack, sir, when we returned."
"Yes, yes," Baxter interrupted violently. "You took the dogs and
trailed Delvin by scent from his cell. Fine. But did you find him!"
"We had trouble, sir. It was outside the crater, and the dogs needed
air-booster muzzles, which cut down their sense of smell. And the trail
was spread way out, too, as if Delvin had only touched the ground every
thirty feet or so!"
I remembered Clatclit's bounding transportation from the cell, and had
to smile. The dogs must have been starting and stopping every five
minutes over that sporadic trail.
Baxter, at the end of his patience, flattened both hands on the
desktop, and grated, spacing his words for emphasis, "Did you find him?"
Charlie exchanged a look with Foster, then hung his head. "No, sir, we
didn't."
"Lost the trail, I suppose," Baxter growled.
"No, we kept at it, all right," Charlie said. "It took us underground,
into the lava tunnels and grottos. We even found a cot where he'd been
sleeping."
I stared at Clatclit. They'd done better than I thought possible.
Clatclit tilted his head to one side and shrugged. It meant the same
thing in both our languages.
"Of course, you idiot!" Baxter said, with disgust. "It's obvious he
had help from the sugarfeet. I'd have guessed that the moment I saw
the intervals of his trail! What else but a man carried by a sugarfoot
could travel in bounds like that?"
"Gravity here's only half that of Earth," Charlie protested weakly.
"Even so," Baxter muttered, "only an Olympic champ could make leaps
like that! You've seen Delvin. Did you really think that gawky frame of
his had such galvanic energy?"
I could resent his slurs later. Right now, I wanted to find out just
how damned far those guys had tracked me.
"But we finally came to a bridge, over an underground river, sir. At
the end of the tunnel beyond it, the trail came to a dead end, in front
of a whole damned wall of parabolite. And something about that wall
scared hell out of the dogs, too! They were whining, high up the scale,
like they do when there's something wrong, and growling at that wall,
sir."
Halfway through Charlie's discourse, I had jerked my head around to
stare a baffled question at Clatclit. Where, I was about to ask him,
were you when the posse scuttled by?
But he'd already anticipated the question, and I watched as he pointed
to himself, then made a serpentine forward-stab with his hand, then an
up-down-and-around motion with his palms over his torso.
"You scooted up the tunnel for a brisk toweling?" I said.
A firm nod.
I couldn't blame him. After all, Snow and I were gone for a spell. No
reason for him to stand there and melt with the water already beading
his candy-coated hide. So that meant that Charlie and Foster were
outside the wall while Snow and I were in council with the Martian. I
found I was glad Clatclit hadn't been there to spot them. Because if he
had been, and they had those water guns, I'd have found nothing but a
sticky puddle where I'd left a friend. If, indeed, I'd been able to get
back that far.
Baxter's voice interrupted my thoughts. "And so," he said, mockingly
bitter, "you return once again, empty-handed!"
"Not quite, sir," said Foster, stepping forward and setting a trim
plastic rectangle on end atop the desk. "We found this just outside
that wall."
It was Snow's handbag. Probably she'd dropped it in her initial fright
when that wall had gaped open before us. I hadn't noticed it then,
because I'd been pretty shaken, too. And when I made my ungracious exit
from the Martian's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't den, the handbag was
already gone, on its way up to Baxter via Foster.
Apparently Clatclit had known a shorter route to the IS building than
the IS men did.
Baxter had the bag in his hands, now, staring at it with the first
faint flush of elation coming into his face. "But this must be that
girl's bag! The one who stole that other Amnesty!"
It hit me like a blow in the stomach. Of course! Baxter had had no idea
that I was with Snow. Not until now. And he knew Snow had that Amnesty,
the one he planned to use to blow the Martians out of our dimension.
And now he knew where she was: deep in the rock of the planet, with a
virtual bomb on a chain about her neck!
He didn't need his gimmicked blouse any longer, the one he was going to
use to track me until I was in the chamber of the Ancients. That had
been his plan, of course. The Amnesty was a remote-controlled bomb,
which I, as his dupe, was to have worn during my search for the boys.
Baxter, knowing that I'd find them, and the Ancients with them, had
suggested that I wear that blouse so that he could trail me into their
lair. Then the flick of a switch, and Jery Delvin would be blasted
to shreds, while the Martians found themselves stranded forever in
immovable Location.
And yet I was still puzzled. How could he have known that I'd find
them? I decided not to vaporize him just yet. I had a few points to
clear up, or go out of my mind wondering about for the rest of my days.
I unholstered the collapser, slid the window open with one hand, and
swung my legs over the sill.
"Good evening, gentlemen," I said.
They didn't seem very glad to see me.
Charlie and Foster stood stiffly before the desk, watching me warily as
I completed my clamber into the room. Their eyes widened a fraction as
Clatclit sprang lightly in after me, but that was all. Baxter, however,
had lifted one eyebrow, and was appraising me carefully, as if trying
to gauge the intensity of my emotions. No one said a word for a minute,
while Clatclit shut the window and came to stand a bit behind me, to my
right, leaving the show to me.
Baxter found his voice first. When he spoke, it was in the casual
friendly tone he'd used at our first meeting, his inflection giving
no sign that I had him covered by the most deadly weapon in the solar
system.
"Since I am still alive," he said dryly, "I can only assume that you
want to see me about something before I die, else you would have
blasted me through that window."
"That's very accurate," I said grimly. "If you'll tell your men to be
seated, and to keep their hands where I can watch them, I'll lower this
barrel a bit. I wouldn't want an accidental finger twitch to terminate
our conversation."
Charlie and Foster, white-faced, looked at Baxter. He gave a curt nod,
and they sat down. I stayed back from the desk, keeping my back against
the wall beside Clatclit. I didn't want anyone else coming in and
sneaking up behind me. Baxter swung slightly about in his chair to face
me, then laced his fingers on his knees.
"Now that we're settled," he said, "what can I do for you, Mister
Delvin?"
"Baxter," I said, "I just came from seeing one of the Ancients. He and
I had a long talk."
Baxter never flickered an eyelash. He just nodded and waited politely
for me to continue.
"It seems you are a menace to them. They stand in the way of your
ambition, and must be destroyed. However, the Ancients, even with their
extra dimension, don't seem to have any increase in brain power. Their
evaluation of your intentions is without doubt the correct one, but as
to their interpretation of your motives, they're full of hot air."
A slight smile of grudging approval appeared on his round face. "Very
good, Mister Delvin. Well thought out. Tell me, just what do they think
I'm after?"
"According to them, you want to be the visible kingpin of the
tri-planet civilizations, instead of just running things from behind
the scenes. For a while, I thought it made sense, too. But then it
occurred to me that this puppet-control of our worlds is just the sort
of position that would appeal to you, Baxter. You'd enjoy being the
secret master of Venus, Earth and Mars. I could imagine you chuckling
to yourself, delighting in being an apparent public servant, and
saying to yourself, 'The fools; if they only knew--' Am I right?"
Baxter's smile grew broader. "In substance, yes. I do rather like being
the kingpin incognito, as it were. But go on, you were about to make a
point."
"Well, if that were the case, then the Ancients wouldn't have to be
destroyed, sent back to their dimension forever. You'd be suited by the
status quo. Alien beings on Mars would just be alien beings on a Mars
which you still controlled. So there's got to be something more that
you want. You have all the power I know of, right now. So there can be
only one thing left for you to want: some power I don't know of."
"I must congratulate you on your perspicacity," he said. "Yes, there
is something more, Mister Delvin. That much I will tell you. But as to
what it is--" He spread his hands. "I don't see that it's your concern."
"You--" I said, then paused. His insouciance was not in keeping with
his situation. Therefore, the situation was not the one which I
thought it was. "You're pretty chipper," I said, "for a man held at
collapser-point."
"Oh? Am I being chipper?" he said, all raised eyebrows and facetious
wonder. "I hadn't noticed."
"You fool," I said softly.
Baxter's amiable smile vanished and a hard light came into his eyes.
"What do you mean?" he said, through clenched teeth.
"I mean," I said gently, but with deadly earnest, "that the Brain back
on Earth selected me because of my mental abilities. I mean, Baxter,
that I can figure things out faster than you can dream them up."
"The Brain picked you," he said coldly, "because it was rigged by the
Ancients. And for no other reason."
I nodded. "And the Ancients rigged it to pick the man most likely to
succeed in your destruction."
Baxter was suddenly silent. He watched me intently.
I lounged against the wall, waving the muzzle of the collapser up and
down slowly. "Let me clue you in to my reasoning, Baxter old man,"
I grinned. "This is a collapser. It is in working order. You do not
fear it. Ergo, you have some protection from it. I would deduce that
you are at present wearing a shield of some sort. A shield which you
have kept secret from everyone but yourself and the inventor, who is
probably long since dead, if I know your approach to things."
Charlie and Foster turned and looked at him, their eyes bugging out
in surprise. Till that moment, they'd thought their weapon invincible
against anything.
"You astound me," Baxter said, admiringly. "But there's something you
don't know about the shield. It protects not by _de_flection, but by
_re_flection."
"I could have gotten that part figured out, too, if I just allowed
my mind to wander a bit through the paths yours seems to prefer.
Nice work. Not only are you protected, but your assailant is himself
destroyed."
"And so, Mister Delvin," Baxter smiled, starting to get up from his
chair to come and disarm me.
"And so," I said, "nothing!"
Baxter stopped on hearing the easy confidence of my voice. He
hesitated, looked at me.
"You shouldn't have kept it a secret," I said, smiling. "Charlie and
Foster, here, are therefore quite vulnerable to the ray." It was
rewarding to see their increased pallor. "So, you guys," I addressed
them, "unless you want to go out in a blaze of blue sparks, how about
tying this silly old man to his chair?"
They faltered only the fraction of an instant, and then they had a
furious, cursing Baxter neatly hooked at ankles and wrists to his chair
with their security-manacles.
"All right," Baxter growled deep in his throat, when they had been
gun-gestured back to their places. "You are clever, Delvin! So what
happens now? Do you beat me to death with your fists, or what?"
"If necessary," I said. A brief flicker of fear went across his face.
"But so far as I'm concerned, destroying you need not mean physical
dissolution. I don't care so much about Baxter the man as I do about
Baxter the kingpin. To keep my end of the bargain, I can simply report
what I know to the World Congress, and have you stashed away where you
can never carry out any of your totalitarian schemes."
The normal ruddiness of Baxter's face was superseded by a sickly gray.
"You can't--" he said, then stopped. At the moment, it was quite
apparent that I could.
"And as for your big secret power," I said, calmly and without
boasting, "it took me about two seconds' brainwork to guess what it is."
Baxter just sat and smoldered, his mouth clamped shut.
"The Ancients," I said, "live in Location, with a capital _L_. I've
already experienced a demonstration of their logistic powers. They had
me bobbing around like a balloon down in their weird little cavern. And
they were also able, not so long ago, to manipulate the workings of the
International Cybernetics Brain across a void millions of miles wide.
That, by me, shows one power which any would-be dictator would give a
hell of a lot to get ahold of: teleportation."
Baxter stared at me in furious amazement.
"But," I went on, "there seemed to be a couple of details which didn't
jibe, if that were the case. If they could manage control over cosmic
distances so easily, why should they go to the trouble of getting a
man, me, to bump you off? Why not simply teleport you into something
fatal? That would be the easier method. But they didn't do it.
Therefore, for some reason, they couldn't. Well then, Jery, I thought
to myself, what could the reason be? In their dimension, that of
ultimate Place, or Location, distances have no meanings. Everything in
creation is Here. So what held them up? What kept them from snatching
you? Obviously, only one thing could, Baxter: the contact-material,
parabolite."
He kept his features rigid, but sweat was beading his brow. It gleamed
like diamonds in the lamplight.
"It seems that the Ancients can only control areas where their
contact-material is present. Until the mineral was found by Earth
scientists, that place was on Mars only. Then some of the material
was taken back to Earth, for museums, for analysis, and even for
paperweights and such. My guess is that one of the technicians who runs
the Brain has a hunk of the stuff on his desk, right?"
Baxter narrowed his eyes, then relaxed and nodded. "Yes. As soon as
I figured out the Brain had been gimmicked, I went there to check. I
had it removed immediately. Then I refed the data into the Brain, and
found the name of the man who should have been sent here to destroy the
Ancients."
I nodded. "Your own. Philip Baxter. Which is why you sped up here so
damned fast after I arrived. And also why you had to toss me into a
cell. One thing eludes me, though. What gave you the hint that the
Brain might have been rigged?"
Baxter smiled wearily. "Your loss of the Amnesty. When these idiots
here called me, my first reaction was to chew them out and to have you
released. It was only after talking to you that it dawned on me that
you seemed ill-equipped for the task I had in mind. I got to wondering
about the Brain, then. That's when I went over to see for myself, and
found the parabolite."
I nodded again. "Yes. In their cavernful of the stuff, they could float
me all over the place. When some of the stuff was near the Brain, they
could control that. But nothing else. Nothing that was not in the
presence of the mineral. That is, excepting one part of the mineral:
the chunk that comprises the false Amnesty. Something had to happen
to that hunk of it. Something that simultaneously rendered that piece
out of their control, and told them that you were a menace to their
existence in this dimension."
"If you think I'll tell you that--" he said angrily.
"No need to. I've figured out that one, too. When I first figured out
just what parabolite was, I compared it to a rubber ball on an elastic
cord. Trying to destroy it by force was impossible. It just bounced and
swung into the cushion of its fourth dimension. But, sticking with the
analogue, what happens if the rubber ball is attacked from all sides
simultaneously? It has nowhere to go, then. And, I asked myself, what
could attack parabolite from even its extra dimension? What, except
another piece of parabolite? Oh, not in the frictive way, like diamond
cutting diamond. You still controlled only three of the dimensions
using that method. And it had been tried already by scientists and
found useless. So you had to attack it on the no-dimensional level.
Since the three forms of matter--solid, liquid and gas--all must exist
with height, breadth and depth, you had to use the only thing in our
universe that we have besides matter: energy. Fire? No, heat had been
tried already. Atomic dissolution? A bit better, perhaps; a battery
of collapsers, working on the subatomic level, had managed to destroy
a fraction of a gram of the stuff, simply from the laws of _chance_
encounters with parabolite molecules in the fourth dimension. A ray as
powerful as the collapser-ray undoubtedly accidentally gets generated
in an extra dimension, but only in the most minor way, not nearly
enough for your purpose."
"And what," Baxter asked between tautened lips, "is my purpose?"
"Since your rule-the-worlds dream necessitates the ability to teleport
your agents wherever you please, you must have parabolite wherever you
please. This in turn necessitates pulverizing the mineral down to its
very molecules, and sowing it into the atmosphere of the three planets.
Then you will be free to take complete command. The hitch, of course,
is that the pulverization of parabolite would engender, as the Ancient
put it, a jolt. A jolt which would unlatch Location from our dimension,
sending the Ancients off forever. They didn't like the idea, and so
they set out to destroy you."
Baxter's jaw, during the last part of my narrative, had gone slack, and
he stared at me idiotically. I had to grin.
"Yes, I know what suffering you're going through at this moment, Baxter
old boy. 'All for nothing,' you're telling yourself. If you had only
known, huh?"
"You--you mean," he licked his dry lips and stared at me, horribly
upset, "that all I had to do to be rid of the Ancients was to go ahead
with my scheme? Simply pulverizing a hunk of that stuff would have sent
them off?"
I nodded, ironically. "Yes. No need to rig a bomb, to send me seeking
them, to try and set this bomb off in their midst. You could have set
it off right back on Earth, and been just as rid of them."
"No need," he repeated dully. Then, suddenly alert; "Set it off? How
did you know?"
"It was the only form of energy that hadn't been tried," I said, with
a shrug. "Self-energy. Back on Earth, you ran that disc of parabolite
through a hot atomic pile, and it became intensely radioactive, since
the deadly emanations of the pile are even less than subatomic, and
have no dimensions. Then a shielding coating of nullifying gamma
plasm, the same stuff we use to keep our rocket chambers from dosing
the passengers with deadly rays, and neat nickel plate over that.
Emboss it with the seal of the World President, lacquer it in the
colors of IS, and you have a neat, but incredibly potent, little
fission bomb."
"And how could I set this off?" Baxter sneered. "Aren't you forgetting
that the parabolite's at less than a critical mass?"
"Same way the old H-bomb worked," I said. "Under the gamma plasm,
beside the radioactive parabolite, you have an atomic bullet, the kind
the foot soldiers used in the Third World War. As for tracking it and
detonating it, you must have a refinement of the tracking stuff you had
in that blouse of mine. As the old H-bomb was triggered by an atomic
bomb, so the parabolite, even at less than critical mass, could be
triggered by the remotely-detonated atomic bullet. You planned to blow
up the Ancients, and me with them, Baxter. Then you could go ahead and
set off similar bombs, one each on Venus, Earth and Mars. The fallout
would stay with the planets forever, even after losing its potency. And
you could teleport your agents anywhere you chose."
"And the Ancients?" said Baxter.
"They reasoned out your intentions when you made that chunk of
parabolite radioactive. Why do that unless you intended detonating
it? But the very act of making it fissionable somehow took the
teleportation-whammy out of it. They couldn't use it to snatch you,
even when you were near it. Probably, since it seems the only likely
reason, they couldn't use it because it was too atomically hot for them
to work with." I was finished. I waited.
"Mister Delvin," said Baxter, after a long moment. "What do you intend
to do, now?"
"Keep you in cuffs," I said. "Send an emergency call to the World
Congress. See you corked into one of your own granite cells. With the
air supply turned on, however. Though I wouldn't mind you having an
hour or two of what I went through the other night."
"And," Baxter turned his head and nodded toward the handbag on the
desk, "what about her?"
"She was being held conditional to my removing you as a menace," I
said. "Consider yourself removed."
Baxter smiled. "And if the Ancients are not satisfied? What if they
still desire my death, not simply my imprisonment?"
I thought it over. "In that case, I'd be forced to comply with their
wishes."
To his credit, this unexpected statement on my part only stopped his
tongue for a moment. He immediately tried a new approach. "And if the
Ancients decide to destroy her anyhow?"
"Why should they?" I said, less sure of myself.
He cocked his head to one side, watching me. "No," he shook his
head, "now I think of it, they wouldn't destroy her. They'd hold her
captivity over your head, forcing you to return so that they might
destroy you."
"Me?" I said, startled.
"Surely you can see why?" he went on smoothly. "After all, why were
they out to destroy me, Mister Delvin?"
"Because you knew--" I said, then halted, stunned.
"--How to destroy them," Baxter finished for me. "The selfsame
information which you now possess. What do you think your chances are
for survival now?"
My guard wavered in that fleeting moment of realization. I caught the
flicker of movement just a second too late.
Charlie, out of my thoughts for an instant, had whipped his collapser
out of his holster and brought it to bear on me.
But even before I could bring my own weapon up in a futile attempt at
a duel which would have resulted in probably two fatalities, iron-hard
claws gripped my shoulder and I was carried hurtling to the floor by
Clatclit's full weight on my back. To the floor just behind Baxter's
chair.
Charlie, spinning about to keep me in range, touched the trigger. There
was a shriek. A shriek that died the split second in which it was born,
and then my world disappeared in a blinding shower of blue-white sparks.
When Clatclit and I got up again, Charlie and Foster were missing,
along with most of the corridor wall. Baxter was just standing up from
the lopped-off remnants of his chair, the manacles at his wrists and
ankles having been dissolved by the bolt which could not destroy him.
The bolt had rebounded from his shielding force to destroy its
perpetrator, Charlie, and Foster, the hapless bystander.
Before I could toss aside my useless weapon and attack him barehanded,
Baxter had yanked up another weapon from the floor. It was one of the
old-fashioned water guns, its flexible hose running back to tanks
filled with gallons of sugarfoot-destructive fluid.
"If you place any value on the existence of this creature who has just
saved your life, Delvin, you will hand over that weapon to me at once."
Clatclit looked at me. I sighed, and tossed the collapser to Baxter.
What the hell, it wouldn't work on him, anyhow.
"And now," said Baxter, dropping the water weapon and covering us with
the one which was deadly to both our hides, "I am going to need your
help."
19
"Well, this is a switch!" I remarked. "The kingpin needs a hand!"
"It is a comedown," Baxter said wryly, "but you see, my late agent's
fatal heroics have had a distressing side effect."
"Oh?" I said, looking about the shards of room that were still extant
on the corridor side. "I don't see anything."
"That," Baxter remarked, "is precisely the point, Mister Delvin. A
moment or two ago, not three yards to the left of where those fools
were sitting--no, don't bother looking, there's only empty space
there now--there was a small sending set. I brought it all the way
from Earth with me. In fact, that is the reason I was sitting in this
room tonight. Had my agents reported to my satisfaction that you were
present among the Ancients, I should have used that set to detonate the
atomic bullet in the false Amnesty. However--"
"Your trigger went bye-bye," I finished. "Need I say I am elated?"
"I take it the woman, the one wearing the false Amnesty, means
something to you?" Baxter said. "The Ancients seemed to set some store
in her captivity's coercive power over you."
"She does," I admitted. "Which is why I'm happy you no longer possess
the means to set that damned thing off."
I had no particular love for the Ancients, but I didn't much like the
thought of Snow being blasted into radioactive rubble.
"Well, then, if you desire to save her, you and your friend are going
to guide me down to that cavern where they dwell, and--"
Footsteps pounded down the corridor, and then a squad of armed guards
came into view. They saw Baxter and halted, and their leader stepped
forward.
"Sir," he said, "Our detectors reported a collapser being--" his gaze,
forgetful of military deportment, took a second to wander bug-eyed
over the more truncated sections of the room, "--being used in this
vicinity."
"Congratulations," Baxter remarked sarcastically. "Your eyes might give
you the selfsame information, corporal. One has been used. I have the
situation in hand, however. You may take your men and go."
"Yes, sir," the young man said, obviously fighting an urge to break
protocol and ask what the hell happened.
"Oh! And corporal," Baxter said, as the boy began to organize his squad.
"Sir?"
"You might scratch Myers and Gibson off the payroll list. Send their
families the usual telegrams of condolence."
The corporal's eyes bugged even more so, and he swallowed noisily
before mumbling "Yes, sir" again and departing.
"That was pretty callous, even from you," I said, as the sounds of
their footsteps dwindled and disappeared.
"Not callous at all. Efficient."
"Callous."
Baxter shrugged. "In any case, come along you two. The sooner I rid
myself of these Ancients, the better."
There was nothing else we could do. Dejectedly, Clatclit began moving
off in his lumbering lope toward the staircase. I followed, no cheerier
than he. Baxter brought up the rear. So far as I could see, in
selecting me as the tool of Baxter's destruction, the Ancients had made
the error of their four-dimensional lives!
Then, almost all the way down to the main floor, I heard the murmur of
voices. We were nearing the terminal lobby, the point where passengers
were checked on and off the planet. As we turned at the landing, I
saw that the lobby was filled with a throng of people, some of them
patiently answering questions of the flight-listing robots, others
having baggage weighed, and still others engaging off-duty pilots and
technicians in casual conversation. It was a normal enough scene, one
to be found in any rocket terminal on Earth or off it.
But there was something wrong about it. I slowed my descent of the
stairs and tried to place the uncertainty, the queasy foreboding I felt
centering about my heart.
Then I had it. There were no women present. Not one woman could I see
in that apparently casual group of passengers. And there was a quiver
of tingling tension in the air, a very palpable sensation of mental
concentration trembling on the brink of action.
Baxter sensed it too. I could feel his own progress slowing behind me
on the stairs. "What--?" he said.
Then it happened. At the far end of the immense room, one of the
security guards let out a cry. I shot my gaze toward the sound, and
saw that a man beside him had yanked his collapser from his holster.
Other guards came alert all over the place, and they started toward the
man on a run. And they were all of them neatly tripped, shoved, and
clubbed, while a brilliant crackle of free electrons sealed the fate of
the first guard.
The Neo-Martian revolution was starting. Some of the guards managed to
get shots off before they were overcome by weight of numbers. People
vanished in blinding flares of energy, amid shouts of fierce rage from
their companions.
"There's one!" someone shouted, and a clump of these desperate
insurgents turned toward the stairs, where Clatclit and I stood. They
were looking past us, at Baxter.
Then the Security Chief fired the collapser in his hand, the humming
bolt of dissolving-power buzzing right past my ear. But he hadn't fired
at the men below. He'd fired directly at the fluorescent fixture that
glowed in the center of the ceiling. Suddenly, the flash that marked
its passage was the only lighting in that room. Then the cascade of
sparks died, and we were standing in blackness.
I grabbed Clatclit's arm, hoping we could make a break for freedom in
the dark, but Baxter had out-thought me there, too.
Another throbbing beam of energy from behind us, and the floor was gone
before our feet, leaving a dizzy drop into emptiness, then even the
view of the abyss faded as the sparks of energy died. I stifled a cry
of alarm in my throat as Baxter's free hand flattened itself on my back
and shoved.
I staggered forward, and my foot came down on air. Then, my grip on
Clatclit's arm throwing him off balance, we plunged into the empty
space.
Somehow, writhing in midfall, Clatclit got his hard-scaled arms about
me, and he took the brunt of the landing on powerful legs and tail. My
left arm was numb from shoulder to elbow. I must have struck it on the
floor of the room below the lobby when we landed.
Another thump told me that Baxter had arrived, too. He did better than
we did. After all, he was expecting a fall when he took off from that
sliced-off brink. In another moment, he'd prodded us out into the
corridor of that first floor under ground level, where the lights were
still working. Then, taking a step back, he blasted away the flooring
of that room, too, to discourage anyone from following the way we'd
come. Incongruously, as he came back out, he shut the door.
"Afraid they'll grab at the knob on the way down?" I said, rubbing my
injured arm.
"Neatness," said Baxter, not to be outdone, "is a virtue."
"Come on, come on," Baxter said impatiently, waving the muzzle of the
collapser at us. "Can we get to the labyrinth from here?"
"Why bother, now?" I said, jerking a thumb toward the lobby above us.
"Way things look, you won't have any empire to come back to, even if
you do knock off the Ancients."
"A minor skirmish like this cannot but fail in its purpose," said
Baxter. "On my return, I fully expect to see the sky filled with
Security ships from Earth, leisurely razing the entire city."
"Won't that be rather difficult to write off as 'Unserviceable,' even
the way you keep inventory?" I needled.
"Move!" said Baxter, beyond patience.
Clatclit and I moved. We went back down the long ramp that led toward
the dungeons. At gunpoint or not, I called back over my shoulder, "By
the way, just what do you intend doing when we arrive at the ogre's
castle? I should think that it was the last place you'd want to be
found. Kind of like telling off a lion while your head's in his mouth."
Far off behind us, there was a growing shout of voices. Apparently, the
rebels had managed to negotiate what was left of the stairway and were
hot on our trail.
"Faster!" said Baxter, quite unnecessarily. I was in no mood to test
whether or not the rebels checked one's ideology before blasting away.
A disintegrated bystander is beyond apology. So we went faster.
We reached the dungeon level, and Clatclit proceeded to shove open that
movable section of wall. Baxter raised his eyebrows in surprise, but
then simply gun-motioned us through the gap. We went, and he followed a
moment later. I watched with amusement as he tried vainly to shove that
granite mass back into place. I don't know exactly what sugarfeet use
for muscles, but it beats what we've got.
Angrily, Baxter stepped back against the curved wall of the tunnel, and
said, "You! Move that back. We don't want them following us in here."
Clatclit moved over to obey, while I remarked, "Why not? Maybe they'll
get lost. It'll save your city-razing ships a little collapser-power."
Baxter ignored my statement, and simply waited until Clatclit had moved
back beside me, his taillight going on pyrotechnically as the moving
granite cut us off from the light in the dungeon corridor.
Then we were once again moving down that frozen-lava slope toward the
deeply hidden lair of the Ancients.
* * * * *
As we moved along, side by side, with Baxter coming relentlessly after
us, Clatclit's hands started working furiously. He flicked an index
finger toward me, then toward himself. Then he put the heels of his
hands together and, after a brief waggling of the fingertips, clamped
his hands into fists, and made that serpentine forward jab with one
hand. He was asking, in his pantomimic way, if he and I, under cover of
sudden blinkout of his taillight, might scoot off into the labyrinth
and escape Baxter.
I held up a forefinger and waggled it left and right in a signal of
"Better not, chum."