He grinned at her infuriatingly, replied, "I'm no _marlet_--that's a
very nasty word on Mars and most of these people understand it. Don't
you know you're in space?"
He set her gently back on her feet, holding her steady with one hand
gripping an upper arm. She knew she looked like an idiot, felt certain
everyone in the saloon was laughing at her. "I thought they had
artificial gravity on these ships," she said.
"They do," he told her. "But it's nothing like Earth-gravity. It
would use up all power if it were. You'll learn to navigate. Come on,
I'll show you how." He led her unprotesting into one of the corridors
outside the saloon.
She pulled herself free, promptly smacked her head none too gently
against the corridor wall. "I don't want a lesson now," she told him
angrily. "Besides, why aren't I sick?"
"You would be," he informed her with what she interpreted as a smug
expression, "if you hadn't been given your full quota of shots in the
Centromed this afternoon. You don't think they'd have allowed you
aboard otherwise, do you?"
"You had it all figured out, didn't you?" she snapped at him angrily.
"I'll give odds you even said something to Alan and Ray tonight that
got them involved in that horrible brawl!"
"It was nothing," he said with false modesty, flicking a non-existent
speck of dust from a bare forearm. "Just a bit of premeditated
Machiavelli. Anyone could have managed it."
"What are you trying to do to me?" she asked him desperately. "I'll
even bet my headaches were induced. Why pick on _me_? I don't want to
go to Mars--I never wanted to go there."
"Maybe because I'm in love with you," he said simply.
She ignored the intensity of his dark eyes, said, "You're not in love
with me. You didn't come to Earth until that twin of yours at the
brain-station sent you a message I was telepathic. You've only made
love to me to get me to Mars--for some selfish purpose of your own. Try
and deny it."
"In view of your current mood," he replied quietly, "I'd be seven kinds
of a sand-_lurtonk_ to try. You seem to have things all figured out
yourself. Very well, it's your privilege to look at my actions any way
you choose. But my purpose is not selfish!"
Something in the ring of his voice, in the determined set of his lower
face, told her he was speaking the truth. She said, "All right, what
purpose gives you the right to come to Earth, to violate everything I
cherish, to make me a voluntary kidnapee, to wreck my life and drag me
off to a planet I haven't even been trained for? What's to prevent me
from reporting it and having you arrested?"
"Nothing," he replied, "except that I'd probably be released as soon as
we reached Mars. If you still feel like this when we get there tomorrow
I shan't stand in the way of your returning." There was a new sag in
his shoulders, a weariness to the lines about his mouth.
"Oh, great!" she retorted. "Smash my job, my personal life, then say
you won't try to stop me from going back to it. How _can_ you go around
with so few ethics? What sort of person are you anyway?"
"A very serious one--a very worried one," he told her quietly and her
quick probe of his thoughts revealed him again to be speaking the
truth. He captured both her arms again, held her gently against the
wall, and so great was the hypnotic force of his personality that
despite her anger toward him she made no move to break away.
"You have a right to know--_now_," he told her. "I'm a Martian, a
third generation one, even though I was born and trained on Earth.
Conditions out there are only just beginning to be fit for human
infants. We're building the biggest thing Man has ever accomplished on
Mars--making a barren ruined planet live again, making it fit for men
and women and babies to inhabit.
"Right now we're up against the greatest danger we've faced since the
first few desperate years--maybe an even greater threat. We can't see
it, we don't even know what it is. But men and women on Mars are going
mad. Only a few of us can reach them--and thanks to a condition of the
planet we're all too overloaded to do the psychiatric work we should
do. We need telepaths."
A flash of something she had heard or read somewhere about the red
planet occurred to her. She said, "But doesn't the atmosphere or
something of Mars encourage telepaths? _You're_ one. Why come to Earth
for them? Why pick on me?"
"Because," he told her with the patience of exasperation, "we need
at least to maintain those telepaths we have--which aren't nearly
enough. You don't seem to realise that a genuine two-way telepath, even
among fourth generation Martians, occurs only about once in eleven
thousand six hundred births. And we need more than the few we have for
communications alone."
"Communications!" Lynne was honestly shocked. "Do you mean to tell me
that Mars has no--"
"No form of lateral electronic communications functions reliably on
Mars," he told her bluntly as if admitting a fact he hated to mention
about the planet he loved. "Don't ask me why--it's just so, that's
all. _Crehut_, do you think our best scientific brains haven't tried?
They believe the thinness of the atmosphere and the resulting weakness
of the Martian Heaviside Layer has something to do with it. We get
messages from Earth and the other planet-stations clearly and, with the
ato-reduced time lag, in a matter of seconds."
"And you have to use telepaths to transmit and receive?" She was almost
incredulous but her mind informed her he was telling the truth without
reserve.
"Whatever we can't heliograph or send over wire cables," he said
unhappily. "And the climate of Mars is rough on cables. Above the
ground the winds snap 'em. Underground they rot or the _czanworms_ eat
through them. Now do you begin to understand?"
"A--little," she replied hesitantly, unable to maintain her entirely
justified anger against his sincere appeal. "But what about this
threat--this madness? What is it?"
"We don't know." His face was shadowed. "There may still be life-forms
on Mars of which we know nothing--or perhaps manifestations of those we
thought safe that are dangerous. But something apart from atmosphere
or weather or diet or drink is creating insanity. And it seems to
be affecting our telepaths rather than others. Maybe our telepathic
minds are more open to whatever the influence is. I don't know." His
expression turned grim. "I've never allowed them--it--to affect _me_."
All at once she remembered the nightmare, the being alone in the
crystal tower, the crowding in upon her of unseen things that whispered
dreadful alluring suggestions, the sense of panic. She began to
understand it with growing certainty.
Lynne said, "My brother--Revere--he's one of those who's been affected,
isn't he?"
He hesitated, evidently felt the probe of her questing brain, nodded
reluctantly. He said, "Your brother is one of them. The _purt_ of it is
we don't dare send him back to Earth."
"I understand." She shuddered, felt a reassuring hand on her shoulder,
added, "He's mad, isn't he." It was statement, not query.
"I'm afraid so--at least part of the time," he replied. "But don't
worry. We have marvelous clinics on Mars. Once we get him to one of
them there's a good chance of a cure."
"You mean he isn't getting care now?" she asked, shocked.
Rolf shook his head, replied, his voice low, "Not yet--not until you
replace him. That's how short-handed we are. We've lost too many the
last few months. And there simply aren't any replacements. That's
why I rushed to Earth when I heard about you, why perhaps I used
unscrupulous methods to get you to come. There are less than a million
people on all of Mars."
She understood his unspoken analogy. Less than a million people--less
than a hundred telepaths, to maintain communications over the
entire planet. Then she thought of something else, said, "My
headaches--they're telepathic, aren't they? Caused when my brother has
one of his attacks?"
"That's right as nearly as we can judge," he told her. "You seem
to have an intense sympathetic affinity. It's not unusual between
identical telepaths."
"And there aren't many of those," she said idly. She looked at him.
"How about your brother, Rolf. Isn't he...?"
"Unfortunately not," he replied. "He has some tendency toward E.S.P.
but insufficiently strong to be reliable."
Lynne sensed his thoughts shifting to his brother, then to hers--and
was astounded by the depth of dislike he suddenly projected. It came
as another shock and she said, "You hate my brother, don't you, Rolf?
If you didn't you'd have managed to get him the care he must have to
survive."
"I don't hate your brother," he said wearily and she realised he spoke
the truth. What he felt for Revere Fenlay was the rather arrogant
dislike and distrust toward a weaker man that is so frequent among the
strong. Lynne resented it, resented him, bitterly.
She said, "Then why haven't _you_ replaced him? You're a telepath--why
haven't _you_ given him relief?"
Again he looked defeated and, with feminine illogic, her heart went out
to him. He said, "I wish I could--unfortunately I'm not permitted to go
out in the field alone."
Annoyed by her heart's betrayal she let herself think, _Ah, an
armlounge admiral, a user of men who saves his own skin!_ She watched
anger wash defeat from his face, for a moment felt fear at its
intensity. Then, without a word, he turned and left her alone in the
corridor.
She felt a cheap victor as with difficulty she made her way back to her
cabin. Nor was her self-esteem lifted when Joanna, sitting up in her
bunk, said, "You must be real _zwirch_, Fenlay, if Marcein came for
you. He's Communications Integrator for the whole ruddy planet--a real
big bomb. How about introducing me before we land?"
V
To her considerable surprise in view of her emotionally upset
condition, Lynne slept like the proverbial top. It took the combined
efforts of Joanna and the stewardess to get her awake and up and
dressed in time for the landing outside of New Samarkand. After a
momentary breathless hovering pause the big ship set itself down so
gently there was a hardly perceptible jar as it touched ground.
Feeling cumbrous in cold-resistant parkaed coverall and curiously alone
despite the cluster of passengers that waited with her in the airlock
foyer, Lynne looked about her for Rolf Marcein. She felt a certain
residue of guilt for her treatment of him during their last session,
despite the justification of her anger. Here, on the threshold of an
alien planet--_his_ planet--she needed him.
He might have betrayed her and her brother, kidnapped her, all but
seduced her--yet he was the sole human being she knew here. Her eyes
sought him desperately, finally saw him working his way through the
waiting passengers toward her.
He thrust an oddly-shaped little packet toward her, said, "Here--fasten
it on. It's an oxyrespirator--you'll need it. Use it whenever you feel
faint."
His manner was gravely polite and his thoughts were carefully masked.
He hadn't, she decided, forgiven her for that _armlounge admiral_
insult of the night before. She sent her apologies mentally, received
only a curt acknowledgement. She began to feel miserable.
Then, abruptly, the port was opened. With his arm steadying her Lynne
stepped out onto the escaramp platform, a couple of hundred meters
above the flat blast-scarred surface of the field. A thin chill wind
cut her face, a wind from out of a sky darker than that of Earth.
Her first reaction was of gauntness, of barrenness beyond anything
she had known on her home planet. The grounds around the Sahara
brain-center in which she had served her apprenticeship had been
lush with tropical growths--and even the desert around them had been
warm. But the vast reddish expanse of the spaceport looked cold and
uninviting--even the row of oddly-shaped metal buildings at its edge
had a shabby eroded untended appearance.
Her second reaction, as she rode the ramp down was of breathlessness.
The icy air stung the insides of her nostrils, as it did her face, but
failed to fill her lungs. Panic swept over her and she clutched at her
breast. Then Rolf's arms were around her from behind, his long strong
fingers were adjusting the oxyrespirator.
Lynne breathed deeply and felt a sudden surge of exhilaration. No
wonder, she thought irrelevantly, the Martians were more volatile than
Earthfolk. They must be constantly high on oxygen. She suppressed an
impulse to giggle as she reached the bottom of the moving ramp.
Her third reaction, as she took her first step on Mars, was of
weightlessness. Not the unhealthy weightlessness of the space-ship but
a buoyancy comparable to that of swimming in the Great Salt Lake or the
Dead Sea. Lynne sat rigidly on an urge to discover how high and far she
could jump, even encumbered by the aluminum coverall. She realised her
hair was blowing in the wind, pulled the parka over it.
"You'll do." Rolf looked her over disinterestedly, added, "Unless you
still want to go back to Earth."
It must have been the oxygen that made her reply, "What for? Now that
I'm here I might as well give it a run." Irresponsible or not, it was
worth it to see the softness that came into his dark eyes.
He took her arm and said gruffly, "Come on. We've got things to do. I'm
turning you over to Tony Willis. He'll brief you. He promised to be
here.... There he is, by the Administration Building."
There was no doubt about the warmth of Tony Willis' greeting--outwardly
or telepathically. He gave Rolf a bearhug, then turned quickly to
Lynne, pumped her right hand, said, "_Crehut_, I'm glad you got here!
But Rolf didn't warn us he was bringing a tearing beauty."
"Tearing mad most of the way," she said, unable to remain unresponsive
to Willis' warmth. He was a tubby bespectacled young man with an
irresistible grin. From him she felt no probe of her thoughts, knew
sudden overwhelming relief. Despite Rolf's assurance that there were
fewer than a hundred telepaths on Mars, subconsciously she had been
expecting to land on a planet where her innermost thoughts were open to
everyone. She was almost pathetically grateful that it was not so.
"Old Rolf must be losing his touch," said Willis, grinning. "He's our
ace-in-the-hole when it comes to--personal management. Has a thousand
lovely ladies eating right out of his hand."
"Shut up, you _czanworm_!" Rolf's thoughts revealed acute distress and
Lynne felt a little glow of triumph.