Dark Kensington had been dead for twenty-five years. It was a fact;
everyone knew it. Then suddenly he reappeared, youthful, brilliant,
ready to take over the Phoenix, the rebel group that worked to
overthrow the tyranny that gripped the settlers on Mars.
The Phoenix had been destroyed not once, not twice, but three times!
But this time the resurrected Dark had new plans, plans which
involved dangerous experiments in mutation and psionics.
And now the rebels realized they were in double jeopardy. Not only
from the government's desperate hatred of their movement, but also
from the growing possibility that the new breed of mutated monsters
would get out of hand and bring terrors never before known to man.
CHARLES L. FONTENAY writes: "I was born in Brazil of a father who
was by birth English and by parentage German and French, and of a
mother who was by birth American and by parentage American and
Scottish. This mess of internationalism caused me some trouble in
the army during World War II as the government couldn't decide
whether I was American, British, or Brazilian; and both as an
enlisted man and an officer I dealt in secret work which required
citizenship by birth. On three occasions I had to dig into the
lawbooks. Finally they gave up and admitted I was an American
citizen....
"I was raised on a West Tennessee farm and distinguished myself in
school principally by being the youngest, smallest (and consequently
the fastest-running) child in my classes ... Newspaper work has been
my career since 1936. I have worked for three newspapers, including
_The Nashville Tennessean_ for which I am now rewrite man, and
before the war for the Associated Press."
Mr. Fontenay is married, lives in Madison, Tenn., and has had one
other novel published by Ace Books.
* * * * *
1
It is a sea, though they call it sand.
They call it sand because it is still and red and dense with grains.
They call it sand because the thin wind whips it, and whirls its dusty
skim away to the tight horizons of Mars.
But only a sea could so brood with the memory of aeons. Only a sea,
lying so silent beneath the high skies, could hint the mystery of life
still behind its barren veil.
To practical, rational man, it is the Xanthe Desert. Whatever else he
might unwittingly be, S. Nuwell Eli considered himself a practical,
rational man, and it was across the bumpy sands of the Xanthe Desert
that he guided his groundcar westward with that somewhat cautious
proficiency that mistrusts its own mastery of the machine. Maya Cara
Nome, his colleague in this mission to which he had addressed himself,
was a silent companion.
Nuwell's liquid brown eyes, insistent upon their visual clarity, saw the
red sand as the blowing surface of unliving solidity. Only clarity was
admitted to Nuwell, and the only living clarity was man and beast and
vegetation, spotted in the dome cities and dome farms of the lowlands.
He and Maya scurried, transiting sparks of the only life, insecure and
hastening in the absence of the net of roads which eventually would bind
the Martian surface to human reality from the toeholds of the dome
cities.
In that opposite world which was the other side of the groundcar's seat,
Maya Cara Nome's opaque black eyes struggled against the surface. They
struggled not from any rational motivation but from long stubbornness,
from habit, as a fly kicks six-legged and constant against the surface
tension of a trapping pool.
Formally, Maya was allied to Newell's clarity and solidity, and she
could express this alliance with complete logic if called on. But behind
the casually blowing sand she sensed a depth. The shimmering atmosphere,
hostile to man, which sealed the red desert was a lens that distorted
and concealed by its intervention. The groundcar was a mechanical bug,
an alienness with which timorous man had allied himself; allied with it
against reality, she and Nuwell were hastened by it through reality,
unseeing, toward the goal of a more comfortable unreality.
The groundcar bumped and slithered, and an orange dust-cloud boiled up
from its broad tires and wafted away across the sculpted sand. The
desert stretched away, silent and empty, to the distant horizon; the
groundcar the only humming disturbance of its silence and emptiness. The
steel-blue sky shimmered above, a lens capping the red surface.
The groundcar rolled westward, slashing toward its goal from the distant
lowland of Solis Lacus. Far away, two men, machineless, plodded this
same Xanthe Desert toward the same goal; but they plodded southward,
approaching on a different radius.
They were naked. In a thin atmosphere without sufficient oxygen to
support animal life or even the higher forms of terrestrial plant life,
they wore no marsuits, no helmets, no oxygen tanks.
The man who walked in front was tall, erect, powerfully muscled. His
features and short-clipped hair were coarse, but self-assured
intelligence shone in his smoky eyes. He moved across the loose sand,
barefoot, with easy grace.
The--man?--that shambled behind him was as tall, but appeared shorter
and even more muscular because his shoulders and head were hunched
forward. His even coarser face was characterized by vacuously slack
mouth and blue eyes empty of any expression except an occasional brief
frown of puzzlement.
Toward a focal point: from the east, two people; from the north, two
people. If in the efficient self-assurance of Adam Hennessey could be
paralleled a variant harmony with the insistent surfaceness of S. Nuwell
Eli, does any coincidental parallelism exist between Brute Hennessey and
Maya Cara Nome?
Puzzlement was the climate of Brute's mind. This surface film of things
through which he ploughed his way, the swarming currents below the
surface--all were chaos. He grasped vaguely at comprehension without
achieving, the effective coalescence of electric ideas always falling
short before reaching consciousness.
The two men plodded, naked, through the loose sand. Above them in the
Mars-blue dome of day, the weak sun turned downward, warning of its
eventual departure.
A two-passengered groundcar and two men, widely apart, and yet bound for
the same destination....
The destination was a lone, sprawling building in the desert. It could
have been a huge warehouse, or a fortress, of black, almost windowless
Martian stone. The only outstanding feature of its virtually featureless
hulk was a tower which struck upward from its northern side.
As the summer afternoon progressed, Dr. G. O. T. Hennessey paced the
windy summit of the tower, peered frequently into the desert north
beneath a sunshading hand, and waggled his goat beard in annoyance under
his transparent marshelmet.
Had the helmet speaker been on or the air less thin, one might have
determined that Goat Hennessey was utilizing some choice profanity,
directed at those two absent personages whose names were, respectively,
Adam and Brute.
The airlock to the tower elevator opened and a small creature--a
child?--emerged onto the roof. Distorted, humpbacked and
barrel-chested, it scuttled on reed-thin legs to Goat's side. It wore no
marsuit.
"Father!" screeched this apparition, its thin voice curiously muffled by
the tenuous air. "Petway fell in the laundry vat!"
"For the love of space!" muttered Goat in exasperation. "Is there water
in it?"
When the newcomer gave no sign of hearing, Goat realized his helmet
speaker was off. He switched it on.
"Is there water in the vat?" he repeated.
"Yes, sir. It's full of suds and clothes."
"Well, go fish him out before he soaks up all the water. The soap will
make him sick."
The messenger turned, almost tripping over its own broad feet, and went
back through the airlock. Goat returned to his northward vigil.
Miles away, Nuwell slowed the groundcar as it approached the lip of that
precipitous slope bordering the short canal which connects Juventae Fons
with the Arorae Sinus Lowland. He consulted a rough chart, and turned
the groundcar southward. A drive of about a kilometer brought them to a
wide descending ledge down which they were able to drive into the canal.
Here, on the flat lowland surface, the canal sage grew thick, a
gray-green expanse stretching unbroken to the distant cliff that was the
other side of the canal. Occasionally above its smoothness thrust the
giant barrel of a canal cactus.
Nuwell headed the groundcar straight across the canal, for the chart
showed that the nearest upward ledge on the other side was conveniently
almost opposite. The big wheels bent and crushed the canal sage, leaving
a double trail.
The canal sage brought with it the comforting feeling of surface life
once more. This feeling, for no reason that he could have determined
consciously, released Nuwell's tongue.
"Maya," he said, in a voice that betrayed determination behind its
mildness, "I don't see any real reason for waiting. When we've cleared
up this matter at Ultra Vires and get back to Mars City, I think we
should get married."
She glanced at his handsome profile and smiled affectionately.
"I'm complimented by your impatience, Nuwell," she said. "But there is a
good reason for waiting, for me. When we're married, I want to be your
wife, completely. I want to keep your home and mother your children.
Don't you understand that?"
"That's what I want, too," he said. "That's my idea of what marriage is.
But, Maya, if you insist on finishing this government assignment, that
could be a long time off."
"I know, and I don't like it any better than you do, darling," said
Maya. "But it's cost the Earth government a great deal of trouble and
money to send me here, and you know how long it would take for them to
get a replacement to Mars for me. I don't feel that I can let them
down, and I don't think it would be much of a beginning to our marriage
for me to be running around ferreting out rebels during the first months
of it."
"That's another thing I don't like, Maya," said Nuwell. "It's dangerous,
and I don't want anything to happen to you."
"It's your work, too, and it's not absolutely safe for you, either. I'll
be sharing it with you when we're married, and for you it will go on for
a long time. I have a specific mission here, to locate the rebel
headquarters, and as soon as I've done that I'll be more than happy to
become just a contented housewife and leave the rest of it to you."
Nuwell shrugged, a little disconsolately, and turned his attention to
the task of negotiating the groundcar up the ascending slope.
She was a strange creature, this little Maya of his. She had been born
on Mars and, orphaned by some unknown disaster, had been cared for
during her first years by the mysterious, grotesque native Martians.
When they took her at last to one of the dome cities, she was sent to
Earth for rearing. And now she was back on Mars as an undercover agent
of the Earth government, seeking to ferret out the rebels known to be
engaging in widespread forbidden activities.
Often he did not understand her, but he wanted her, nevertheless.
Nuwell steered the groundcar slowly up the slope, over rubble and ruts,
avoiding the largest rocks. At last they reached the top, and the
groundcar arrowed out over the desert again, picking up speed.
Far to the left and ahead of them there was another dust-cloud drifting
up, one that was not of the thin wind, but nearly stationary. Nuwell
found the binoculars in the storage compartment and handed them to Maya.
"What's that over there?" he wondered. "Another groundcar? Take a look,
Maya."
Maya trained the glasses in the direction indicated, through the
groundcar's transparent dome. It was difficult to get them focused, for
the groundcar swayed and jolted, but at last she was able to make brief
identification.
"They're Martians, Nuwell," she said. "Can we drive over that way?"
"You've seen Martians before," he said.
"But I'd like to speak with them," she said. "I talk their language, you
know."
"Yes, I do know, darling, but that's utterly foolish. They're only
animals, after all, and we have to get to Ultra Vires before night, if
we can."
He kept the groundcar on its course.
Maya lapsed into disgruntled silence. Nuwell stole a sidelong glance
at her, his breath catching slightly at the curve of the petite,
perfectly feminine form beneath the loose Martian tunic and baggy
trousers. He reached over and patted her hand.
But Maya was offended. She kept her black head turned away from him,
looking out of the groundcar dome across the desert.
At their destination, Goat Hennessey peered eagerly into the distance,
searching.
This time, his watery blue eyes picked up two tiny figures on the
horizon. He watched them as they approached, finally detailing
themselves into two naked, pink creatures of manshape and only slightly
more than mansize.
"They made it," he muttered. "Both of them. Good!"
He turned and entered the airlock. As soon as its air reached
terrestrial density and composition, he removed his marshelmet.
Goat rode the elevator to the ground level, left it and hurried down a
corridor, reaching the outside airlock in time to admit the two figures.
Adam entered first, easily confident, carrying his head like a king.
Brute shambled behind him.
"Everything go all right?" asked Goat, his voice quavering in his
anxiety.
"Fine, father," said Adam, smiling to reveal savage, even teeth.
"Nothing unusual happen?"
"Nothing at all, sir."
"You forget, Adam?" mouthed Brute eagerly. "You forget you fall?"
Adam spun on him ferociously, raising a heavy hand in threat. Brute did
not cringe.
"I forget nothing!" snarled Adam. "You crazy Brute, I say it is
nothing!"
"But, Adam--"
"I say it is nothing!" howled Adam and sprang for him.
"Stop it!" snapped Goat, like the crack of a whip, and they froze in the
moment of their grappling. Sheepishly, they parted and stood side by
side before him.
"I'll listen to details after supper," said Goat. "The children are
hungry, and so am I."
2
Adam and Brute followed Goat Hennessey down the corridor, towering over
him like Saint Bernards on the heels of a terrier. They turned into the
dining room, a big square room centered with a rude table and chairs,
one wall pierced by a fireplace in which a big cauldron steamed over
smouldering coals.
The dining room swarmed with a dozen small creatures, human in their
pink flesh, more or less human in their twisted bodies. As soon as Goat
entered with Adam and Brute in tow, the assemblage set up a high-pitched
howling and twittering of anticipation and began beating utensils on the
dishes, table and walls.
"Quiet!" squawked Goat over the tremendous clatter, and the noise
subsided. They stood where they were, bright eyes fixed on him.
These were "the children." Some of them were humpbacked, like Evan,
the one who had carried the message to the tower. Some, like Evan, were
grotesquely barrel-chested, with or without the hump. Some were as thin
as skeletons, with huge heads; some were hulking miniatures of Brute.
One steatopygean girl was so bulky in legs and hindquarters that she
could waddle only a few inches with each step, yet her head and upper
torso were skinny and fragile.
Goat sat down at the head of the table, and immediately there was a
tumbling rush for places. Most of the children sat, chattering, while
two of the larger girls moved around the table, taking bowls to the
cauldron, filling them with a brownish stew and returning them.
They ate in silence. When supper was ended, the children scattered, some
to play, others to chores. Goat beckoned to Adam and Brute to follow
him. He led them down the corridor and into his study.
Goat turned on the light, revealing a book-lined, paper-stacked room
focused on a huge desk. He removed his marsuit to stand in baggy
trousers and loose tunic. Adam and Brute stood near the door, shifting
uncomfortably, for the study was normally forbidden ground.
Goat stood by a thick double window, looking out over the desert to the
west. The small sun disappeared beneath the horizon even as he looked,
leaving the fast-darkening sky a dull, faint red. Almost as though
released by the sunset, pale Phobos popped above the horizon and began
to climb its eastward way. The desert already was dark, but a stirring
above it bespoke a distant sandstorm.
Goat turned from the window and faced the pair.
"Well," he snapped harshly, "what happened?"
Adam smiled confidently.
"We did as you said, father," he answered. "We walked to the edge of the
canal, and we walked back. We had no water and we had no air. We did not
feel tired. We did not feel sick."
"Fine! Fine!" murmured Goat.
"Father ..." said Brute.
Goat turned his eyes to Brute, and savage irritation swept over him.
With that word, at that moment, Brute gave him a feeling of guilty
foreboding.
"Don't call me 'father!'" snapped Goat angrily.
"But you say call you father," protested Brute, the puzzled frown
wrinkling his brow. "What I call you if I not call you father?"
"Don't call me anything. Say 'sir.' What did you want to say?"
"Father, sir," began Brute again, "Adam forget. Adam fall."
With a muted roar, Adam swept his powerful arm in a backhanded arc that
caught Brute full on the side of his head. The blow would have felled an
ox, but Brute was not shaken. Apparently unhurt, he stood patiently, his
blue eyes on Goat with something of pleading in them.
"Adam, let him alone!" commanded Goat sharply. "Brute, what do you mean,
Adam fell?"
"We come back. We not far from canal. Adam fall. Adam sick. Adam turn
blue."
"It is lies, father!" exclaimed Adam, glaring at Brute. "It is not
true."
"Let him finish," instructed Goat. "I'll decide whether it's true. What
did you do, Brute?"
"I find cactus, father," answered Brute. "I make hole in cactus. I put
Adam inside. I put hole back. Adam stay in cactus. Then Adam break
cactus and come out again. We come back."
Goat cogitated. If Adam had shown, symptoms of oxygen starvation.... The
big canal cacti were hollow, and in their interiors they maintained
reserves of oxygen for their own use. More than once, such a cactus had
saved a Martian traveler's life when his oxygen supply ran short.
He turned to Adam.
"Well, Adam?" he asked.
"I tell you, father, it is lies! I do not fall. Brute does not put me in
the cactus."
"And why should he lie?" asked Goat blandly.
This stumped Adam for a minute. Then he brightened.
"Brute wants to be bigger and stronger than Adam," he said. "Brute knows
Adam is bigger and stronger than Brute, Brute does not like this. He
tells you lies so you will think Brute is bigger and stronger than
Adam."
"I know you are bigger brother, Adam," objected Brute, almost
plaintively. "I not try to be bigger. Why you say you do not fall?"
"I do not fall!" howled Adam. "I do not fall, you stupid Brute!"
Goat held up a stern hand, enforcing silence.
"I can't certainly settle this disagreement, but I'd be inclined to
accept what Brute says," said Goat thoughtfully. "You're smart enough to
lie, Adam. Brute isn't. The only thing I can do is to run the experiment
over. You shall go out again tomorrow, and this time I'll go with you."
"You'll see, father," said Adam confidently. "Adam will not fall."
"Perhaps not. But I must be sure. As much as I prefer your more human
characteristics, Adam, it's entirely possible that Brute has some
survival qualities that you lack."
"Is true, father," said Brute eagerly. "Some things kill Adam, they not
kill Brute."
"You lie!" cried Adam again, turning on him. "Why do you lie, Brute?"
"No lie," insisted Brute. "You know, is true."
"Lie! Lie!" shouted Adam. "Adam is bigger and stronger! What do you say
can kill Adam that does not kill Brute?"
"This," replied Brute calmly.
With an unhurried lunge, he picked up a heavy knife from Goat's desk. In
a single easy movement, he turned and slashed Adam's throat neatly.
Choking and gurgling, Adam sank to his knees, bright blood spouting from
his neck, while Goat stood frozen in horror. Adam fell prone, he kicked
and threshed convulsively like a beheaded chicken, then twitched and lay
still in a spreading pool of blood.
Brute calmly wiped the knife on his naked thigh and laid it back on the
desk.
"Adam dead," he said without emotion. "Brute not lie."
Dismayed fury erupted through Goat's veins and a red haze swept over his
eyes.
"You idiot!" he squawked. "So that won't kill you?"
Goaded beyond endurance, Goat seized the knife and swung it as hard as
he could against Brute's neck. It thunked like an ax biting into a tree
trunk, biting halfway through the flesh. Brute recoiled at the impact,
tearing the handle from Goat's feeble hands and leaving the knife blade
stuck in his throat.
Brute staggered momentarily. Then he reached up and jerked the knife
away. Blood spurted through his severed throat. Brute clapped a hand to
the wound, tightly.
For a moment, blood oozed through his fingers. Then, pale but steady,
Brute dropped his hand.
The wound had closed! Its edges already were sealed, leaving a raw, red
scar that no longer bled.
"Brute not lie," said Brute, the words forced out with some difficulty.
"It not kill Brute."
Stunned by astonishment and disbelief, Goat stared at him, his mouth
moving soundlessly.
"Go away," he whispered hoarsely at last. "Go out of here, monster!"
Obediently, Brute shambled out of the study. As he passed through the
door, Goat regained his voice and called after him:
"Tell the children to come and take away Adam's body."
* * * * *
Kilometers away, Maya Cara Nome and S. Nuwell Eli rode a groundcar that
moved swiftly across the interminable waves of the red sand. It swayed
through hollows and jounced over multiple ridges, Nuwell steering it
with some difficulty. In the steely sky, the small sun moved downward,
its brightness unimpaired by the occasional thin clouds which moved
before it.
The sun touched the western horizon, seemed to hesitate, dropped with
breathtaking suddenness, and the stars immediately began to appear in
the deepening twilight sky.
They stopped and had a compact meal, heated in the groundcar's
short-wave cooker. Then Nuwell switched on the headlights and they went
on again.
Soon afterward, a faint spot of light appeared in the desert far ahead
of them. As they approached it, it became a yellow-lighted window in a
huge black mass rearing up against the night sky. They had reached Ultra
Vires.
Nuwell announced their arrival over the groundcar radio and swung the
groundcar up beside the building's main entrance. He sealed the
groundcar's door to the building air-lock so they would not have to don
marsuits.
After a few moments, the airlock opened. They passed through it and were
greeted by a skinny, shriveled little man with watery blue eyes and a
goatee.
"I was expecting you, but not tonight," said this person, rather sourly.
"Well, come on in and I'll have the children fix you something to eat if
you haven't eaten."
"I'm S. Nuwell Eli," said Nuwell, holding out a hand which the other
ignored. "This is the terrestrial agent, Miss Maya Cara Nome. You are
Dr. Hennessey, I assume."
"That's right," said Goat. "Do you want supper?"
"No, thank you, we ate on the way," said Nuwell. "I'd like to get
started with the inspection as soon as possible."
"Inspection or investigation?" suggested Goat, sniffling. "Well, no
matter. I have nothing to hide."
He led them down a dim, dusty corridor, stretching deep into the dark
bowels of the building, and turned aside into a paper-stacked room which
evidently was his study. He went straight to a big desk, sat down,
swivelled his chair around and waved them to seats. Nuwell shuffled a
little uncomfortably, then sank into a chair, but Maya remained standing
by the door, her small traveling bag in her hand, indignation rising in
her.
"Before you settle down to charts and questions, Dr. Hennessey, do you
mind showing us to our rooms so we may wash away some of the travel
dust?" she asked icily, black eyes snapping.
At this, Goat jumped to his feet, sincere contrition in his face wiping
out all traces of his irritated gruffness.
"I'm very sorry!" he exclaimed. "I hope you will forgive my manners, but
I've lived and worked here alone in the desert so long that I had
forgotten the niceties of civilization."
This apology cleared the air. Goat showed them their overnight quarters,
adjoining rooms which were not luxurious but were reasonably
comfortable, and after a time the three of them congregated once more in
Goat's study, all of them in better humor.
"Let us have some wine first," suggested Goat. "This is very good red
wine, imported from Earth."
He went to the door and shouted into the corridor.
"Petway!"
Goat returned to his chair. A few moments later, a twittering noise
sounded in the corridor, then a horrible little apparition appeared in
the door. It was a child-sized creature, naked, grotesquely
barrel-chested and teetering on thin, twisted legs. Its hairless head
was skull-like, with gaping mouth and huge, round eyes.
Maya gasped, profoundly shocked. The little creature looked more like a
miniature Martian native than a human, but the Martians themselves were
not so distorted. She saw her own shock reflected in Nuwell's face.
"Petway, get us three glasses of wine," commanded Goat calmly.
Petway vanished and Goat turned briskly back to his guests.
"Now," he said, "I shall outline the progress of my experiments to you
and answer any questions you may have."
3
Maya's education was extensive, but it did not include the genetic
sciences. She was able to follow Goat's explanations and his references
to the charts he hung, one after another, on the wall of his study, but
she was able to follow them only in a general sense. The technical
details escaped her.
Nuwell seemed to have a better grasp of the subject. He nodded his dark,
curly head frequently, and occasionally asked a question or two.
"Surgery is performed with a concentrated electron stream on the cells
of the early embryo," said Goat. "I call it surgery, but actually it is
an alteration of the structure of certain specific genes which govern
the characteristics I am attempting to change. Such changes would, of
course, then be transmitted on down to any progeny.
"The earlier the embryo is caught, the easier and surer the surgery,
because when it has divided into too many cells the very task of dealing
with each one separately makes the time requirement prohibitive, besides
multiplying the chance for error. The Martians have a method of altering
the physical structure and genetic composition of a full-grown adult,
but this is far beyond the stage I've reached."
"The Martians?" repeated Nuwell in astonishment. "You mean the Martian
natives? They're nothing but degenerated animals!"
"You're wrong," replied Goat. "I know that's the general opinion, but I
had considerable contact with them a good many years ago. Perhaps most
of them are little more than strange animals. No one really knows. They
live simple, animal-like lives, holed up in desert caves, and they're
rarely communicative in any way. But I know from my own experience that
some of them, at least, are still familiar with that ancient science
that they must have possessed when Earth was in an earlier stage of life
than the human."
"This ... child ... that brought us the wine is one of the products of
your experiments?" asked Nuwell.
"Yes. Petway's pretty representative of the children, I'm afraid. I've
been trying to determine what went wrong. It could be an inaccuracy in
dealing with the genetic structure itself, or a failure to follow
exactly the same pattern of change in moving from one cell to another in
the embryo. If I could only catch one at the single cell stage!
"None of the children has turned out as well as my first two
experiments, Brute and Adam. Both of them were born about twenty-five
years ago--terrestrial years, that is--and developed into normal, even
superior physical specimens. Unfortunately, their mental development was
retarded. Adam was the brighter of the two, and Brute killed him
tonight, shortly before your arrival."
Maya shivered.
"Somehow, it seems horrible to me, experimenting with human lives this
way," she said.
"It's being done for a good cause, Maya," said Nuwell. "Dr. Hennessey's
objective is to help man live better on Mars. After all, there is
nothing nobler than the individual's sacrifice of himself for his
fellows, whether it's voluntary or involuntary."
"But what about the mothers of these children?" asked Maya.
"The big problem is to reach them as soon as possible after conception,"
said Goat, misinterpreting her question. "We do this by magnetic
detectors, which report instantly the conjunction of the positive and
negative. The surgery is performed, as quickly as possible, utilizing
the suspended animation technique which is being developed toward
interstellar travel."
"I wasn't asking about the technical aspects," said Maya. "What I want
to know is, what sort of mothers will permit you to experiment this way
on their unborn children, especially seeing the results you've already
obtained?"
Goat started to answer, but Nuwell forestalled him.
"There are some things that are none of your business, darling," he
said. "The terrestrial government sent you here on a specific
assignment, and I don't think you should inquire into matters which are
classified as secret by the local government, which don't have anything
to do with that assignment. Now, Dr. Hennessey, just what sort of
survival qualities have you been able to develop in these experiments?"
"There's no witchcraft involved," retorted Goat, with a sardonic
grimace.
"I haven't accused you," said Nuwell quickly.
"No, but I keep up with events, even out here, well enough to know that
you're the Mars City government's chief nemesis where there's any
suspicion of extrasensory perception. I doubt that you chose to make
this trip yourself without reason, Mr. Eli."
"It's merely a routine inspection," murmured Nuwell.
Goat indicated one of his charts, showing a diagram of genes and
chromosomes in different colors.
"This is my original chart," he said. "I copied it from one belonging to
the Martians many years ago, and my genetic alteration of Brute and Adam
were based on it. But I must have miscopied it, or else the Martians
didn't have the objective I thought they did in it, because I could find
no alteration of genes affecting lung capacity or oxygen utilization. My
own subsequent charts, on which later experiments were based, are
alterations of this."
"But just what is your objective, and how well have you succeeded?"
persisted Nuwell.
"Ability to survive under Martian conditions."
"I know. This is stated in all previous inspection reports. I want
something more specific."
"Why, ability to survive in an almost oxygen-free atmosphere, of course.
As well as can be determined, the Martians do this by deriving oxygen
from surface solids and storing it in their humps under compression,
very much like an oxygen tank.
"I've succeeded to some degree with my children. All of them can go an
hour or two without breathing. What I don't understand is that no
capacities like that were included in the genetic changes on Adam and
Brute, and yet they've gradually developed an ability to do much better.
Both of them were out on the desert the entire day today without
oxygen."
Nuwell was silent for a moment, tapping the tips of his fingers
together, apparently in deep thought. Then he said:
"Maya, I think we've reached the point where you had better retire to
your room and let us to talk privately. You can question Dr. Hennessey
in the morning about any attempts the rebels may have made to contact
him."
Maya obeyed silently, rather glad to get away and think things over
alone. When she had come to Mars as an agent of the Earth government, it
had not occurred to her that there would be areas of information from
which the local government would bar her. She recognized that such a
prohibition was perfectly valid, but she was a little offended,
nevertheless.
Her room was a spacious one on the ground level, and boasted one of
Ultra Vires' few large windows. Maya unpacked her bag, and gratefully
stripped off her boots and socks, her tunic and baggy trousers. In
underpants, she went into the small bathroom, washed cosmetics from her
face and brushed down her thick, short hair.
Donning her light sleeping garment, she sat down on the edge of her bed.
She was very tired from the long drive and, almost without thinking, she
did not get up to turn out the light. She thought at it.
The switch clicked and the light went out.
She felt foolish and a little frightened. She had never told Nuwell of
this sort of thing. Can a woman ask her witch-hunting lover: "Do you
think I'm a witch?"
With almost total recall, as though she heard it spoken, she remembered
the summation speech Nuwell had made the first time she had seen him in
action. He was prosecuting a man charged with conducting experiments
similar to the historic and outlawed Rhine experiments of Earth.
"_Gentlemen, we sit here in a public building and conduct certain
necessary human affairs in a dignified and orderly manner. We follow a
way of life we brought with us from distant Earth. Apparently, we are as
safe here as we would be on Earth._
_"I say 'apparently.' Sometimes we forget the thin barriers here that
protect us against disaster, against extermination. A rent in this
city's dome, a failure in our oxygen machinery, a clogging of our
pumping system by the ever-present sand, and most of us would die before
help could reach us from our nearest neighbors._
_"We live here under certain restrictions that many of us do not like.
Certainly, no one likes to be unable to step out under the open sky
without wearing a bulky marsuit and an oxygen tank. Certainly, no one
likes to be rationed on water and meat throughout the foreseeable
future._
_"But what we have to remember is that absolute discipline has always
been a requirement for those courageous souls in the vanguard of human
progress._
_"Witchcraft--the practice of extrasensory perception, if you prefer the
term--is forbidden on Mars because to practice it one must differ from
his fellow men when the inexorable dangers of our frontier demand that
we work together. To practice it, one must devote time and mental effort
to untried things when our thin margin of safety makes concentrated and
combined effort necessary for survival. That is why witchcraft is
forbidden on Mars._
_"Let those who yet cling to the wistful liberalism of Earth label us
conformists if they will. I say to you that until Mars is won for
humanity, we cannot afford the luxury of nonconformity._
_"Gentlemen, I give you the prosecution's case."_
Maya stared out the window. This whole side of Ultra Vires was dark,
except for a rectangle of light cast from a window a little distance
away--the window of Goat Hennessey's study. In this rectangle, the red
sand of the desert lay clear and stark.
Near the end of the rectangle lay an indistinct, crumpled, oblong
figure. Puzzled, Maya studied it. It looked like a body to her.
* * * * *
In the study, Nuwell gazed at the skinny doctor with angry brown eyes.
"The bulletins sent to you, as well as other researchers, gave specific
instructions that research was to be directed toward human utilization
of certain foods now being developed," accused Nuwell.
"I thought this was more important," replied Goat.
"You thought! You're not on Earth, where scientists can get government
grants and go jaunting off on wild research projects of their own."
"I still think this is more important," said Goat stubbornly. "I know
that all of us are expected to co-operate and stick to tried and
accepted lines so we won't be wasting time and material. Perhaps I was
wrong in not doing that initially. But now I've proved that this line
of research can be followed profitably, so its continuance now can't be
looked on as a waste of time."
"Scientists should leave political direction to more experienced men,"
said Nuwell in an exasperated tone. "This is not merely a matter of time
waste, or nonconformity. The Mars Corporation operates our sole supply
line to Earth, Dr. Hennessey, and that supply line brings to man on Mars
all the many things he needs to live here. The Earth-Mars run is an
expensive operation, and it's important that it remain economically
feasible for Marscorp to operate it.
"No matter how altruistic you may be about it, you get man to the point
that he doesn't depend on atmospheric oxygen here, and domes,
pressurized houses and groundcars, oxygen equipment--a great many things
are going to be unnecessary. But there'll still be a lot of other things
we'll have to have from Earth. Don't you realize what a disaster it
would be if Marscorp decided to drop the only spaceship line to Earth
because its cargo fell off to the point that it was economically
unsound?"
Goat looked at him with shrewd blue eyes.
"I think I can jump to a conclusion," he remarked mildly. "Marscorp has
some sort of control over the 'foods' you're trying to make practical
for human consumption in the approved experiments, doesn't it?"
"Well, yes. Marscorp wants to make man gradually self-sufficient on
Mars, and I think it's legitimate that Marscorp derive some economic
benefits from its efforts in that direction."
"I've wondered for some time just how close Marscorp and the government
were tied together," said Goat dryly. "Obviously, if I don't do as you
say, my supplies here will be cut off. So I have no choice but to
discontinue this work and turn my attention to the approved line."
"That isn't quite adequate now," said Nuwell. "You're going to have to
leave here and come to Mars City where you can do your research under
supervision. Your experimental humans here will be destroyed, of
course."
"Destroyed?" There was an agonized note to Goat's voice. "All of them?
How about the two mothers I have who haven't given birth yet?"
"You'd destroy them anyhow, as you have the others, not long after the
births. And that brings up another thing. When you get to Mars City,
watch your tongue. You almost revealed to Miss Cara Nome that the
government has been kidnapping an expectant mother now and then for your
experiments."
"Years of work, gone to waste," mourned Goat somberly. "When must I do
this?"
"As soon as possible. You'll be expected in Mars City within two weeks.
Now, I'd like to see these experimental humans."
A few moments later, they made their way together through a large
dormitory in which all of Goat's charges were sleeping. Nuwell shuddered
at the sight of the small, deformed bodies.
"I don't worry that you could ever take any of these to Mars City
undetected. But," he said, pointing to Brute, "that one looks too near
normal. I want to see him destroyed before I leave."
"Brute? But he's the most successful one I have left!"
"Exactly. That's why I want to see him destroyed, tonight."
Goat awoke Brute, and the monster man sleepily followed them back to the
study.
Goat picked up the huge knife, still stained with Adam's blood, and
looked Brute squarely in the face. Brute returned the gaze, no
comprehension in his dull blue eyes.
"You think I can't kill you, Brute?" said Goat coldly. "I'll show you!"
With a surgeon's precision, Goat plunged the sharp point between Brute's
ribs and into the heart.
_Shock swept over Brute's mind._
_Father kills me!_
_Reject! Reject!_
_Father, all kindness, all hope, all wisdom and love, wants me no more.
Father rejects me! Father kills me!_
_Despair!_
_Reject! Reject!_
_Blackness swept fading through Brute's despairing brain._
One agonized note of pleading in the pale-blue eyes, and they closed in
acceptance. Brute swayed and fell forward, crashing to the floor,
driving the knife into his chest to the hilt.
Brute shuddered and rolled over on his back. He lay sprawled, arms flung
out limply, the knife hilt protruding upward. He sighed, and his
breathing stopped.
Goat stared down at him. He picked up Brute's wrist and held it. There
was no pulse.
* * * * *
Shortly after dawn, Maya awoke. Remembering what she had seen dimly the
night before, she went curiously to the window.
There were two of them now. They were bodies, human bodies, naked and
unquestionably dead. In the night, the dry, vampirish Martian air had
dessicated them. They were skeletons, parchment skin stretched tightly
over the lifeless bones.
Even as she stood and looked, a group of figures appeared on the horizon
and came slowly nearer. They were Martians--monstrous creatures,
huge-chested, humpbacked, with tremendously long, thin legs and arms,
their big-eyed, big-eared heads mere excrescences in front of their
humps.
Trailing slowly through the desert toward Aurorae Sinus, they passed
near the skeleton bodies. One of the Martians saw them. He boomed
excitedly at the others, loudly enough for Maya to hear through the
double window.
The Martians stopped and gathered around the bodies.
What, she wondered, could interest them in two corpses? There was no
guessing. Martian motives and thought processes were alien and
incomprehensible, even to one who had lived among them and communicated
with them as a child.
One of the Martians picked up one of the corpses, and the whole group
moved away toward the lowland, the Martian carrying the body easily with
one long-fingered hand. Wisps of sandy dust trailed them as they
dwindled and slowly vanished.
The second body lay where they had left it. A gaping wound in its throat
seemed to mock her.
4
Fancher Laddigan made his way down a long dim corridor in the rear
portion of the Childress Barber College, in Mars City's eastern quarter.
He stopped and hesitated, with some trepidation, before an unmarked door
near the end of the corridor.
Completely bald, bespectacled and well up in years, Fancher looked like
a clerk and he had the instincts of a clerk. Yet he utilized that
appearance and those instincts in a perilous cause.
Fancher knocked timidly on the door. On receiving an indistinct
invitation from inside, he pushed it open and entered.
Fancher had a tendency to shiver every time he had occasion to see the
Chief, whose real name was unknown to Fancher and to most others here at
the barber college.
Small as a child in body, wagging a thin-haired head larger than
lifesize, the Chief surveyed Fancher with icy green eyes. The eyes were
large and round as a child's, but there was nothing childlike about
their expression. As though to deny his physical smallness, he smoked
one of the fragrant, foot-long cigars produced only in the Hadriacum
Lowlands.
"Sit down," commanded the Chief in a high, piping voice.
Fancher swallowed and sat, facing his superior across the big desk. The
Chief opened a drawer, took out another of the long cigars, and handed
it to Fancher. Fancher did not like cigars, but he had never dared say
so to the Chief. He lit it gingerly, coughed at his first inhalation,
and smoked at it dutifully and unhappily.
"You recognized this man certainly as Dark Kensington?" asked the Chief.
"Well ..." Fancher began, and started coughing again. The Chief fixed
him with an unwinking green stare. When the coughing spell ended,
Fancher sat silent, his eyes stinging with tears, fumbling at what he
wanted to say.
"You knew Dark Kensington before his disappearance twenty-five years
ago," said the Chief, with a trace of impatience in his tone. "I am told
that you saw this man and talked to him. You are qualified to recognize
Dark Kensington. Is this man Dark Kensington, or not?"
"Well," said Fancher again, "the man was walking alone across the
desert, and when someone picked him up he asked how he could find the
Childress Barber College, and of course our men heard of it and went out
to--"
"I have received a full report on the man's appearance and our initial
contact with him. I asked you a question."
"Well, Chief, it's a peculiar thing. If this man, as he is now, had
reappeared twenty-five years ago, I'd _know_ it was Dark Kensington. But
he looks exactly as Dark did when he disappeared, not one day older. And
he doesn't remember a thing beyond his disappearance except events of
the past two weeks, he says.
"Yet his memories of Dark's activities before his disappearance are
unquestionably accurate and clear. It's as though Dark had been put on
ice at the time of his disappearance and just now thawed out, without
any aging or memory during the interim."
"Perhaps he was," said the Chief dryly. "But is it possible that this
man, looking so much like Dark Kensington, could have studied
Kensington's personality and activities carefully and be posing as
Kensington?"
"No, sir," said Fancher promptly. "Dark and I were very close friends at
one time. He remembers that, although he had difficulty recognizing me
since I'm so much older. We went through some experiences together that
I never told to anyone, and I'm sure he didn't. He remembers them in
every detail. Like the way we trapped a sage-rabbit once when we'd run
out of supplies out in Hadriacum."
Fancher chuckled.
"Then we couldn't eat the thing," he reminisced.
"Very well, if you're sure of his identity, that's all I wish to know,"
said the Chief. "I don't want to be trapped by a Marscorp trick with
plastic surgery. But if this man is Dark Kensington, it's the best
fortune the Phoenix has met with in a long time."
He fell silent, and busied himself with papers on his desk, paying no
more attention to Fancher. Fancher waited, then concluded reasonably
that the interview was at an end. And, since the long cigar agonized
him, he rose and moved quietly toward the door.
"I have not given you permission to leave," said the Chief, without
raising either his eyes or his voice. "Kensington is due to arrive in a
few moments, and I want you here when I talk to him. If any of his words
or actions appear inconsistent in any way to you, I want you to let me
know."
Fancher sighed silently, returned to his chair and puffed disconsolately
on the cigar.
Some five minutes passed. Then there was a firm rap on the door.
"Come in!" called the Chief in his reedy voice.
The door opened, and in walked a man whose entire presence radiated
strength, confidence and the potentiality of instant violence. Dark
Kensington was tall and broad-shouldered, clad in dark-blue tunic and
baggy trousers. His face was darkly tanned, strong, handsome. His hair
was black as midnight. His eyes were startlingly pale in the dark face;
eyes of pale blue, remote and filled with light.
"I'm Dark Kensington," he said, striding up to the Chief's desk. "You're
the man known as the Chief?"
"Yes," answered the Chief, and waited.
Dark nodded to Fancher. Fancher, feeling rather green about the gills,
returned the greeting.
Dark turned his attention back to the Chief, and he, also, waited. There
was a long silence. The Chief broke it first.
"What do you know about Dr. G. O. T. Hennessey--Goat Hennessey?" asked
the Chief calmly.
Fancher blinked at this unexpected line of questioning. A cloud passed
over Dark's face, as though the name had triggered something in him
that he could not quite remember.
"He was a very good friend of mine," answered Dark, "although it seems
that something happened between us that I can't quite recollect. He was
one of the most brilliant geneticists of Earth, and came to Mars with an
experimental group that was to try to develop a human type that could
live more comfortably under Martian conditions. The project was backed
by the government."
He stopped. It was the Chief who added:
"Then Marscorp stepped in."
The expression on Dark's face was blank.
"You don't know what Marscorp is, do you?" asked the Chief curiously.
"The name's familiar," replied Dark. "It's a spaceline, isn't it?"
"If your amnesia is genuine, you might very well react in such a
fashion," said the Chief reflectively. "Marscorp is the Mars
Corporation, and it's the only spaceline that serves Mars now. It's a
giant combine on Earth which has a virtual monopoly on the spacelines
and exports and imports between Earth and all the colonized planets.
"Marscorp is against any development of human beings who can live under
natural extraterrestrial conditions, because that would end the
colonies' dependence on Marscorp for supplies. As it is, the colonies
literally can't live without Marscorp. Marscorp controls enough senators
and delegates in the World Congress to block other important projects if
the Earth government refuses to co-operate with it, so the
government--that is to say, Marscorp--put a ban on the experiments by
Hennessey and other scientists here."
"I remember the government ban on the projects, but I wasn't aware that
Marscorp had anything to do with it," said Dark. "Goat Hennessey was one
of a group of us who retired to the desert to continue work despite the
government ban."
"Goat sold out," said the Chief. "Perhaps your memory doesn't include
that important point, but Fancher remembers it well. It was a little
before my time. Goat sold out, and betrayed the others to the
government in return for assistance in carrying out more limited
experiments. Some of the group escaped and formed the nucleus of the
rebel movement which now is centered here at the Childress Barber
College. We call ourselves the Order of the Phoenix."
The Chief allowed himself the luxury of a very faint smile.
"Marscorp and the government call us the Desert Rats," he said. "Very
appropriate. They consider us in the same category as rats."
Dark had been standing, casually at ease, before the Chief's desk, with
the air of a man who does not tire from standing. Now he did something
Fancher would not have dared: without the Chief's invitation, Dark sat
down in a comfortable chair, leaned back and stretched out his legs in
relaxation.
"It's a little hard for me to realize there's a twenty-five-year gap in
my memory," he said. "It seems to me that it has been less than a month
ago that Goat and I were together, with other refugees from the
government edict, in the Icaria Desert. Why did you ask me about Goat?"
"Because the government brought him back to Mars City not three months
ago," answered the Chief. "None of us had any idea where he was, but it
turns out that the government has had him working under surveillance
some place in the Xanthe Desert north of Solis Lacus. Since it was not
far from Solis Lacus that you were picked up, I wondered if you had had
any contact with him."
"Not that I remember," said Dark. "Do you have another of those cigars?"
"Why, yes," answered the Chief, startled. He produced another Hadriacum
cigar and handed it to Dark. Dark lit it and puffed the fragrant smoke
with evident enjoyment.
"As I say, the last time I remember seeing Goat was in the Icaria
Desert, in a dome we had set up there," said Dark. "The next thing I
remember is waking up in the midst of some sort of cave in a different
part of Icaria, surrounded by Martians.
"I could communicate with them in a fashion--something I was never able
to do before--and they were able to write the name of the Childress
Barber College so I could read it. But they evidently don't
differentiate our dome cities by name. I had no idea the college was
here in Mars City until your men contacted me; I just assumed it was at
Solis Lacus."
"You'd have waged a merry search for it, clear on the other side of
Mars," remarked the Chief. "What was your purpose in finding it?"
"I don't know that I had any specific purpose," replied Dark easily. "I
gathered from the Martians that here I could find someone who concurred
with my philosophy of resisting the government edict against seeking
self-sufficiency on Mars, and this was more or less confirmed by your
two men who contacted me at Solis Lacus."
"I'll see to it that in the future they're not quite so frank until
they're sure of their man," said the Chief darkly. He looked quizzically
at Fancher, and Fancher nodded slightly. "But it's true. As a matter of
fact, the Phoenix follows the path toward self-sufficiency that you
recommended, rather than the one sought by Goat Hennessey."
"That's the wrong way to approach it," said Dark promptly. "Goat and the
other scientists were following a line offering valid possibilities in
their genetic research. The only reason the rest of us chose to attempt
the extrasensory powers--particularly teleportation--was that we were
not qualified in genetic research and this seemed a field in which we
stood a chance to contribute along alternate lines. The effort should be
followed along both lines."
"The government managed to capture all the scientists at the time of
your disappearance, and it was assumed that you had been captured, too,"
said the Chief. "We don't have any scientists in the Phoenix who are
capable of doing Goat Hennessey's type of research."
"You say he's in Mars City? I wonder if it would do any good for me to
contact him."
"I told you that he was the one who betrayed the whole thing to the
government, and he's been working under government supervision these
last twenty-five years. I wouldn't trust him."
The Chief surveyed Dark's strong face with speculative green eyes, then
added:
"As a matter of fact, we've made a certain amount of progress following
your line of research. Since there are probably a good many things you
discovered in this work that we haven't stumbled on yet, we could use
your help in developing it, if you're interested."
"Very definitely," answered Dark. "I'm interested in seeing what you've
done, and I'll be glad to help in any way I can."
"There's one thing," said the Chief, measuring his words. "I've held
this organization together despite some pretty severe reverses for more
than fifteen years now. The reason I've been able to do it is that I
expect and must insist on absolute obedience to my orders."
Dark smiled. "I said that I would be willing to help you," he replied
gently. "I follow no man's orders."
The green eyes fixed themselves unwinkingly on the pale-blue ones for a
long moment. The blue ones did not waver.
At last, to Fancher's utter amazement, the Chief nodded agreement.
5
Maya Cara Nome looked from her furnished room through cracked shutters
at the building across the street.
A barber college. The building at 49 Sage Avenue, Mars City, was a
barber college.
That surprised her. She didn't know exactly what she had expected: a
hospital, perhaps, or even a kindergarten. But a barber college!
But the source of the information she had received that 49 Sage Avenue
was the address she sought was unimpeachable. She had ferreted it out,
after a long time and through devious ways, and she was sure she could
trust it.
"The Childress Barber College" read the neatly lettered sign above the
door. Maya's landlady, moon-faced Mrs. Chan, had pointed out Oxvane
Childress to her as he left the building one day: a big man,
comfortably stomached, with a heavy brown beard which, even at that
distance, she could see was shot with gray.
As innocent as you please. Childress came out and went in, the students
went in and came out. Still, it was the address she had been given.
Maya had to gain entrance to the building. She could learn nothing
watching it from outside. She was established here as a tourist from
Earth; besides, the position and activities of women were prescribed
rigidly by Martian colonial convention, and women did not study to
become barbers on Mars.
She would have to have help. She, thought at once of Nuwell, and as
immediately rejected him.
"Maya, I don't see why you insist on working alone," he had complained.
"I can set the whole machinery of government in motion to help you,
whenever you need it."
"Primarily because you're well known and your activities are observed,"
she had answered. "Your whole government machinery hasn't been effective
in tracking down the rebel headquarters yet, and it's reasonable to
assume that the rebels have a fairly effective intelligence network. My
job is to find that headquarters, and if I were seen very often with you
or tried to utilize your government machinery, they'd have me pinpointed
pretty soon."
She left the window, filled a tiny basin with precious water, shrugged
out of her negligee and sponged her small, perfect body. She donned
form-fitting tunic, briefs and short skirt, pulled on knee-length socks
and laced up Martian walking shoes. She spent some time preparing her
hair and face.
Then she left the room and the house and walked uptown. The walk was
about a kilometer, along sidewalks bordered by cubical, functional
houses and trim lawns of terrestrial grass and small trees. Above the
city, its dome was opalescent in the morning sun.
The small houses gave way to larger business buildings, also cubical,
and the lawns dwindled and vanished. Farther down, the buildings were
even larger and the streets were wider and busier; but she was not
going into the heart of Mars City.
She turned into an office building, and studied the directory in the
lobby. The offices were those of doctors and lawyers. On the directory
she found "Charlworth Scion, Attorney-at-Law, Room 207."
There was no elevator. Maya walked up the stairs and down a corridor,
finding a door that had nothing on it but the number. She turned the
knob and went in.
The small outer office was uninhabited. It was carpeted and desked, with
two straight chairs against a wall, for clients. Through a door, she
could see part of the inner office, cluttered and stacked with papers
and books.
She stood there, hesitating. The outer door clicked shut behind her. At
the sound, a gray-haired, preoccupied man with spectacles and stooped
shoulders peered from the inner office.
"Oh!" he said. "I'm sorry, my secretary went to lunch a bit early today.
Can I help you, Miss?"
"I'm looking for Mr. Scion," she said.
"I'm Charlworth Scion."
"Terra outshines the Sun," said Maya.
Scion's eyes were suddenly wary behind the spectacles.
"Well, well," he murmured. "Come in, please."
She went into the cluttered inner office, and Scion closed and locked
the door.
"And you are ...?" said Scion behind his desk, his pale hands fumbling
aimlessly with papers.
"Maya Cara Nome," she said.
Scion found a paper and scanned it. He apparently found her name there.
"I'm surprised to see you here," he admitted. "Our information was that
you would be working entirely alone."
"I am," said Maya. "Or I was. I was told not to contact you unless I had
to, Mr. Scion, but it seems I'm going to need some help."
Scion inclined his head, but said nothing.
"As you may or may not know, my specific assignment is to locate the
nerve center of rebellious activity," said Maya. "It seems that the
rebels have an intelligence network about as effective as the
government's, and it was felt that a woman tourist from Earth might be
successful where any unusual probing by local agents might arouse
suspicion."
"That's true," conceded Scion. "I doubt that they're really sure of the
identity of more than a few of our agents, but sometimes I think they
have a card file on every person on Mars. We have to be very careful
that movements of our agents are consistent with their pretended
occupations."
"I have a reliable tip that their nerve center is the Childress Barber
College here," she said. "I can't find out anything, though, unless I
get into the building over a period of time. As a woman, I can't very
well apply to study barbering."
"No," said Scion. "I see your problem."
He turned to a filing cabinet, unlocked it and searched through it,
whistling tunelessly. He found a folder, pulled it out and studied it.
"If it is, they've certainly kept it well covered," he said. "There's
not a mark of suspicion entered against the Childress Barber College.
But here's a possibility for getting you in. The barber college employs
one secretary, female. Now, if you could take her place...."
Maya smiled.
"I might as well apply as a barber student," she said. "You propose to
remove a trusted member of their own group from their midst and replace
her with a complete unknown?"
"We don't know that she's a rebel," answered Scion. "If she isn't, she
can be lured away to another job at a much better salary. If she is, and
can't be lured ... well, there are other methods. The Mars City
Employment Agency is operated by one of our agents, and you'll be the
only secretary available when the barber college asks for a woman to
fill her place.
"Believe me, Miss Cara Nome, as easy as it is for a woman to get married
on Mars, it is difficult to find women to do any sort of business work.
It won't seem at all strange that you're the only one available."
"The only trouble is that I'm known in the neighborhood as a tourist
from Earth," objected Maya.
"Well," said Scion, "things have been more expensive than you planned
for on Mars. You've run short of money. You have to work for a while to
pay living expenses here until the next ship leaves for Earth."
"My account at the bank?"
"It will vanish quietly from the records," said Scion with a smile. "The
bank is a government institution."
"Very well," said Maya, taking her purse from his desk. "Let me know
when I'm to apply."
"You won't hear from me again," said Scion, shaking his head. "The
employment agency will notify you to appear at the barber college for an
interview."
Maya knew of Scion only as her emergency contact on Mars. She did not
know what position he held in that underground network of terrestrial
agents which was largely unknown even to Nuwell Eli, the government
prosecutor. But, whatever his position, he got things done in a hurry.
Within two weeks, Maya was typing up applications, examination reports
and supply orders in the Childress Barber College, joking and flirting
with barber students between classes, and naively declaiming to her
ostensible employer, phlegmatic Oxvane Childress, how lucky it was for
her that she was able to get a job right across the street from her
rooming house.
"The work's easy," rumbled Childress, explaining her tasks to her. "Any
time you want to take a coffee break with any of the young men, or go
uptown shopping, go ahead, as long as the work gets done. Just one
thing: you have to stay up here in the front of the building, and don't
ever go back in the classrooms. The instructors are mighty strict about
that, and that's one rule I won't stand to be violated."
This significant restriction convinced Maya she was on the right track.
But she needed to move cautiously, if she was not to arouse immediate
suspicion. So she adhered strictly to her role for nearly a month,
keeping her eyes open.
If it was a rebel operation, it was almost perfectly disguised.
Childress performed the duties of the administrative head of a barber
college, and nothing more. The students, about fifty of them, went in
and out at regular school hours, and she became casually acquainted with
a good many of them. The half-dozen instructors, whom she also came to
know, were less regular in their movements, but she could detect nothing
suspicious about them.
"We cut the hair of Mars," was the college's motto, and she learned that
it was the larger of only two barber colleges on the planet. Apparently,
it actually did supply graduate barbers to all the dome cities. It took
in customers for the students to practice on, and, although many of them
were strangers, some of them were prominent Mars City citizens whom she
knew by sight.
There was no question about it: partially, at least, it was a legitimate
barber college, whatever other activities it might mask. The only thing
noticeably unusual on the surface was that it was extremely selective in
its approval of students who applied for courses in barbering. She
discerned that through her processing of the applications.
If she was going to find out anything definite, she would have to get
into the forbidden rear portion of the building. But obviously there
were legitimate classrooms there, in addition to the activities she
suspected, and if she were caught nosing around the classrooms she would
be discharged at once for violation of the rules, without finding out
what she sought. She would have to hit it right the first time.
Biding her time and watching, she was able to learn, almost intuitively,
from the movements of students, customers and instructors, that the
classrooms in which barbering was actually taught were all concentrated
on the western side of the building. If there were any more sinister
activities, they occurred on the opposite side. Having determined this,
she planned her course of action.
Near the end of her first month at work, she chose her time one day
when Childress was downtown, leaving her alone in the business office.
The afternoon classes were in full swing.
Taking along a filled-out order form as an excuse, Maya walked quickly
down the corridor that stretched across the front of the building.
Carefully and quietly, she pushed open the door at the extreme end of
the corridor--a little surprised, as a matter of fact, to find it
unlocked.
She was in another corridor, that struck straight back to the rear of
the building.
She hesitated. There were doors spaced all along both sides of this
corridor. Did she dare attempt to open one, on the chance that the room
behind it was unoccupied?
Then she saw that one door, a little way down, stood half open. Quietly
she walked down the hall, not quite to the door, but near enough to it
to be able to see a large area of the room behind it.
There were people in there. In the part she was able to see, there were
half a dozen students seated, and one of the instructors standing among
them. Fortunately, their backs were to her.
Whatever they were studying, it was not barbering. There was an
occasional murmur of voices, but she could not make out the words.
Then she saw! On the table at the front of the room, which the students
faced, there was a big barber's basin.
As she watched, the basin slowly raised off the table and moved upward a
few inches. No one was near it, but it floated there, quivering and
tilting a little, in the air. And then, from it, slowly, the water
itself came up in a weird fountain, moved completely free of the basin
and hung above it in the air, gradually assuming the form of a globe.
Telekinesis! This was a class in telekinesis! The students were
concentrating on the basin and water, and lifting them into the air by
the power of their minds.
This was indeed the heart of the rebel movement. She had found what she
sought.
"Aren't you where you shouldn't be, young lady?" asked a calm masculine
voice behind her.
Shocked, terrified, she whirled. A tall, handsome, dark-haired man she
had never seen before was standing there, observing her quizzically. His
pale eyes seemed to look through her and beyond her.
She forced herself to casual composure.
"I don't believe I've met you," she said. "Are you one of the
instructors?"
"I'm Dark Kensington, one of the supervisors," he replied. "And you're
Miss Cara Nome, the secretary, who shouldn't be back here."
Had he noticed that she saw the telekinetic action? She glanced back at
the classroom. The basin was now comfortably ensconced back on the
table, full of water.
"I had this order, which I thought was of an emergency nature," she
said, offering it to him. "Mr. Childress wasn't in, and I thought I'd
better find one of the instructors so it could be approved and go out
right away."
Dark took it and glanced at it.
"I doubt that its emergency nature is as grave as you may have thought,"
he said soberly. "However, Mr. Childress would be better qualified to
judge that. You understand that I shall have to report this infraction
of the rules to him."
Suddenly, Maya was overwhelmed by an utterly terrifying sensation. It
seemed that these pale-blue eyes were looking into her mind, searching,
seeking to determine her thoughts and her true intention.
Instinctively, not knowing how she did it, she veiled her thoughts with
a psychic barrier. And, instinctively, she recognized that he detected
the barrier and could not penetrate it.
Telepathy? Why not, if they were experimenting successfully with
telekinesis?
"I'm sorry," she murmured hurriedly, and brushed past him. He did not
try to detain her.
She hurried back to the office. She hurried, but as she hurried down
first the one corridor and then the other, she discovered that her steps
were slowing involuntarily. A powerful force seemed to be detaining
her, attempting to draw her back.
Frightened but curious, she attempted to analyze this force even as she
struggled against it. She could not be sure--it was disturbing, either
way, but she could not be sure whether it was a telepathic thing or
merely the magnetic force of this man's powerful masculine personality
that pulled at her.
In a state of mental turmoil, she reached the office. Childress was not
yet back.
Should she wait for him?
Then, as suddenly as she had sensed Dark Kensington's telepathic
probing, she sensed something else. Somewhere in the back of the
building, he was talking to another man she had not seen before, and
within ten minutes Dark Kensington would be in this office. And the
prospect she faced was far more serious than mere discharge for
infringement of company rules.
She had to get in touch with Nuwell at once. She recognized that if she
could get out of this building and across the street to her rooming
house, she would be safe for a little while. She could telephone Nuwell
from there.
Grabbing her purse, she hastened out of the office.
6
The three men who stood by a table in the back lobby of the Childress
Barber College and checked off the departure of the men at regularly
spaced intervals were as different in appearance as they were in their
positions in the Order of the Phoenix.
Oxvane Childress, big and bearded, was the "front," and directed the
very necessary task of administering the Childress Barber College as a
genuine barber college. Childress was a prominent member of two of Mars
City's civic and social clubs, and careful examination of his activities
over a period of years would have thrown no suspicion on him.
The Chief, whose real name perhaps Childress knew but never spoke, was a
huge-headed midget who directed the far-flung activities of the Order of
the Phoenix as an underground rebel organization. He never left the
building, but reports were brought in to him from all over Mars. He knew
a great deal at any time about what the government and Marscorp were
doing, and he gave the orders for those moves aimed at maintaining the
secrecy of the Phoenix.
Dark Kensington, tall and pale-eyed, had moved at once into the natural
position of guiding the experimental work of the organization in
extrasensory perception and telekinesis. He was able to add his
knowledge of earlier work to the progress that had been made since his
disappearance, and co-ordinated the studies in the various dome cities.
A little behind the three stood Fancher Laddigan, doing the actual
checking with a pencil on a list in his hand.
"I think it's all unnecessary," rumbled Childress unhappily. "I watched
the girl carefully while she was here, and the usual checks were made
into her background. It's true she had some social contacts with Nuwell
Eli when she first came to Mars, but there's nothing sinister about that
association and it seems the last thing a Marscorp agent would do
openly. As far as I could determine, she just realized she'd violated a
rule and would be discharged for it, so she left before she could be
discharged."
"She hasn't returned to her rooming house," remarked the Chief in his
high, thin voice.
"Looking for another job, or maybe just on a trip," said Childress.
"After all, she's a terrestrial tourist. If this is all a false alarm,
how am I going to explain suspending operation of the college for a
period?"
"Remodeling," replied the Chief. "Work out the details and put a sign up
as soon as evacuation has progressed far enough."
"It may be unnecessary, Oxvane," said Dark, "but it's best not to take
chances. This telepathy is a very uncertain thing, and sometimes it's
hard to differentiate true telepathic communication from one's own hopes
or fears. But it seemed to me that I had the very definite sense that
Miss Cara Nome was seeking something with hostile intent, and it's
entirely possible that she saw part of one of the experiments through
that open door."
Two students appeared, gave their names to Fancher in an undertone, and
sauntered out the back door of the building.
"What's the status now?" asked the Chief.
"They were nineteen and twenty," answered Fancher precisely. "They're
part of Group C, which is going to Hesperidum. Group A goes to Regina,
Group B to Charax, Group D to Nuba and Group E to Ismenius."
"None to Solis?" asked Childress in surprise.
"No, sir, nor to Phoenicis, either," answered Fancher. "They're both so
far, and Solis is a resort, where they might be easier to detect. We're
using both public transport and private groundcars. All of them so far
have reported safely through the flower shop, except these last two, so
the government evidently hasn't thrown a ring around the building yet."
"And I don't think they will, either," growled Childress. "I tell you,
it's all unnecessary."
"Are things going smoothly here?" asked the Chief.
"Yes, sir," replied Fancher. "The last five men scheduled to leave are
taking care of any customers who come in, and the rest of them are
packing supplies into the trucks. As soon as I get word from the flower
shop that the last pair has cleared, I give another pair the word to
leave."
"It seems to be moving along well," said the Chief, and he turned his
green eyes upon Childress. "Is the business office manned?"
"Why--why, there's no one there right now," said Childress, taken aback.
"I think it would look extremely peculiar to any investigator if you
weren't there, frantically trying to locate a new secretary," said the
Chief quietly.
Childress left, in confusion. The Chief turned to Dark.
"I think Fancher's handling this very well without my help," he said.
"You know where your groundcar is, if we all have to make a run for
it?"
"Yes," answered Dark. "We won't be going together?"
"No," replied the Chief, and his lips twisted in a faint smile. "I have
my own method of exit, which should give them other things to think
about."
He left, moving with quick, short steps. Dark stayed for a few moments
more, then he too went back into the building to help with packing.
The Lowland Flower Shop, on the other side of Mars City, near the west
airlock, was the clearance point for the evacuees. The flower shop was
operated by a Phoenix agent, and each pair that left the barber college
passed through there before leaving the city to let those behind know
that they had not been stopped by government men. Other Phoenix agents
watched the heliport and bus station for any evidence that the
government was trying to block these routes out of Mars City.
The evacuation moved steadily, and it began to appear that Childress was
right. Singly, the first two of the five trucks moved out, and all of
the ESP instructors and thirty-two of the students had reported back
safe clearance from the flower shop, when....
Dark was moving a stack of charts from one of the classrooms to the
basement when bells all over the building set up a tremendous clangor.
Immediately the quiet evacuation dissolved into an uproar, with men
running and shouting and the bell ringing incessantly.
Dark knew what had happened. Childress, in the front office, had seen
government agents approaching, or perhaps they had actually entered the
building. He had pressed the alarm bell, then sought to delay them with
the righteous indignation suitable to the administrative head of a
barber college which is invaded by government officials.
The bells stopped suddenly, and the scattered shouting sounded strange
and thin in the comparative silence. Then the piping voice of the Chief
came over the loudspeakers spread throughout the building.
"Attention!" said the Chief. "We are temporarily safe. The alarm
automatically sealed all doors to the building behind the front
corridor.
"Kensington, please come to my office. The rest of you, tie up the
customers still here and leave them unharmed, and then leave the
building by the emergency exits. Scatter, and make your way by whatever
private transportation methods you can to the rendezvous assigned to
your respective group. Do not use public transportation, because
Marscorp will undoubtedly be checking public transport now."
Dark set the charts down on the stairs and made his way back to the
Chief's office. The Chief was sitting, tiny behind his big desk, his
face as serene as ever. He was puffing casually on one of the long
Hadriacum cigars.
Dark laughed.
"You don't have another of those cigars, do you?" he asked.
For the first time since he had been here, Dark saw the Chief's mouth
break into a full, broad smile.
"I think so," said the Chief, an undertone of delight bubbling in his
voice. He reached into the desk and pulled one out. Dark accepted it
gravely, and lit it.
"The last two evacuees haven't reported to the flower shop, and they're
overdue," said the Chief, his face getting serious. "Childress hasn't
reported back here by telephone, either, so the Marscorp gang probably
had already entered the building before he detected them and sounded the
alarm."
"What about Childress?" asked Dark. "What will happen to him?"
"He'll take the rap," answered the Chief. "His defense will be that if
there were any Phoenix activities going on here he didn't know about it.
He was just running a barber college in good faith. I don't think they
can prove otherwise."
"Do we have any idea what our situation is?" asked Dark.
"A very accurate idea. We have observers posted in the two houses at the
ends of our emergency exits, and they've been reporting to Fancher, in
the next room, by telephone. There's a force of about a hundred Mars
City policemen and plain-clothes agents in the streets all around the
building. They saw a squad go into the front, but evidently they didn't
have enough warning to let Childress know in time."
"Will the doors hold?"
The Chief's mouth quirked.
"They'll need demolition equipment to break them down," he said. "All
these have are heatguns and tear gas. One of the observers farther
downtown said he saw a tank heading this way, but if they don't already
know there are innocent customers in here, Childress will tell them."
"Then everybody gets away but Childress?"
"We hope. They're not going to ignore these surrounding houses,
especially with men drifting out of them and moving away. That's why I
want to stress the importance of one thing to you, Kensington: you're
too important for us to lose at this juncture, with your knowledge of
the original work done. That house at the end of your exit will have a
dozen or so of our men in it, waiting to drift away one by one, but you
can't afford to worry about them. I want you to get in that groundcar,
alone, and take off like Phobos rising."
"You're going out the other emergency exit?"
"That's none of your business. But, as a matter of fact, no. If you want
to see something that will throw consternation into this Marscorp
outfit, watch the roof of this building. Now, get moving, Kensington,
and good luck. Fancher and I will be leaving as soon as he gets all the
records packed."
The Chief held out his tiny hand, and Dark shook hands with him. Then
Dark left, went down into the basement and entered an underground door
in its eastern wall. He had to crawl through the tunnel driven through
the sand under the street.
He emerged in the basement of a house across the street, which
ostensibly was owned by Manfall Kingron, a retired space engineer. He
went upstairs.
About half the personnel of the barber college who had not been caught
by the alarm were roaming the rooms of the small house, drifting singly
out the back door at ten-minute intervals.
Dark went to the front window and looked across the street at the barber
college.
The street was full of men carrying heat pistols, moving restlessly,
facing the barber college. Some of them were in police uniform. Squads
of them moved about on the college grounds, and a few were in the yards
of houses on this side of the street.
Dark watched the roof.
As he did so, from its center a helicopter rose into the air, hovering
over the building, moving upward slowly.
So that was the Chief's escape method. He had smuggled a helicopter into
the domed city itself! But how was he to get out of the city in it?
The appearance of the copter threw the men outside into confused
excitement. They ran about, aiming their short-range heat beams futilely
up at the rising copter.
A military tank, undoubtedly the one the Chief had been told about, spun
around the corner. It stopped, and its guns swung upward toward the
copter. But they remained silent. Heavy heat beams or artillery could
puncture the city's protecting dome.
The copter went straight up, gathering speed. Up, and up, and it did not
stop!
It hit the plastic dome near its zenith. It tilted and staggered. It
ripped through the dome and vanished.
Immediately, sirens began to wail throughout the city. Doors clanged
shut automatically everywhere. Lights and warning signs flashed at every
street corner, advising citizens to run for the nearest airtight
shelter.
The dome was punctured!
Emergency crews would be up within minutes to repair the break, and very
little of the city's air would hiss away. But, in the meantime, every
activity in Mars City was snarled by the necessity to seek shelter. The
Chief had, indeed, created a situation of consternation in which it
would be easier for the Phoenix men to elude their enemies.
The armed men of the government forces were already running for the
houses in this area. Some of them were headed for the house from which
Dark watched.
The Phoenix men were donning marsuits. They would admit the refugees,
after requiring them to lay down their arms, and then leave the house in
their marsuits.
Dark grinned happily, and walked quickly through the house to the
attached garage. He climbed into the groundcar, started the engine, and
opened the garage door by the remote control mechanism on the dashboard.
Accelerating at full power, Dark drove the groundcar out of the garage
and spun into the street. The men afoot, seeking entrance to the houses,
paid no attention. The tank began to turn ponderously in his direction,
but by the time it was in a position to bring its guns to bear, Dark's
groundcar had reached the corner and raced around it into the broad
thoroughfare leading to Mars City's east airlock.
The airlock was only a dozen blocks away. The Chief's theory had been
that the government, depending on surprise in its move to surround the
Childress Barber College, would not attempt the complicated task of
checking all traffic passing through the airlock until it was realized
that some of the Phoenix men had escaped from the trap at the college.
Dark reached the airlock in minutes. The Chief's theory proved correct.
There were no police at the airlock, and the maintenance employee
stationed there did not even look up as Dark's approach activated the
inner door.
He drove the groundcar into the airlock. The inner door closed behind
him. The outer door opened, and Dark drove out onto the highway that
struck straight across the Syrtis Major Lowland toward the Aeria Desert
and Edom. It was as simple as that.
About ten miles out was the circular bypass highway that surrounded Mars
City, and Dark proposed to turn right on that, for his destination was
Hesperidum. The highway he was on would take him eastward, and
Hesperidum was about 8,000 kilometers southwest of Mars City--a little
better than two-days' drive at groundcar speed on the straight, flat
highways.
Dark reached over and set the groundcar's radio dial on the frequency
which had been agreed on for emergency Phoenix broadcasts during this
operation. If government monitors caught the broadcasts and jammed them,
there were alternate channels chosen. With only about two dozen radio
stations on all Mars, plus the official aircraft and groundcar band,
there was plenty of free room in the air.
There was nothing on the Phoenix frequency now but a little disconsolate
static.
The country through which he drove here was uninhabited lowland. The
human life on Mars, agricultural, industrial and commercial, was
concentrated under the domes of the cities. Except for a few tiny
individual domes at the edge of Mars City, there were no human
structures close to it except the airport and the spaceport, and these
were west and north of the city, respectively.
The highway struck straight and lonely through a faintly rippling sea of
gray-green canal sage, spotted occasionally with the tall trunk of a
canal cactus, rising above it. Later he would see infrequent dome farms,
but he could expect no more than two or three score of these in the
entire long drive to Hesperidum.
Dark slowed and entered the cloverleaf that took him onto the bypass
expressway. Even as he did so, the radio crackled and the thin voice of
the Chief sounded over the groundcar loudspeaker.
"Attention, Phoenix," said the Chief intensely. "Attention, Phoenix.
Emergency instructions. We have monitored reports that the government is
checking airlocks at all cities. Repeat: the government is checking
airlocks at all cities.
"Some Phoenix have been captured attempting to leave Mars City.
Instructions: those in Mars City do not attempt to leave but find
shelter with Phoenix friends. Those beyond dome without credentials, go
to assigned emergency rendezvous spots _outside_ dome cities. Repeat
instructions: those...."
Swearing under his breath, Dark pulled the groundcar to a stop beside
the highway. It was so simple! They should have foreseen that the
government would take such a step as soon as it was realized that the
Phoenix men were leaving Mars City. He himself evidently had gotten
through the airlock just in time.
But he had been assigned no outside rendezvous! Whether it was an
oversight or not, he did not know, but the only place he had been
instructed to go was Hesperidum. The only Phoenix contact he knew was
the South Ausonia Art Shop in Hesperidum; and now he could not enter the
city without being captured.
He had only one alternative: the Martians, in the Icaria Desert, halfway
around Mars. They would remember him and shelter him, and he was sure he
could find the spot.
He looked at his fuel gauge. The tank was full. It would not take him
quite there, but he could chance refueling at Solis Lacus, some 20,000
kilometers from Mars City. He could take the highway, turning out into
the desert to go around Edom, Aram and Ophir.
He put the groundcar in drive again, and made a U-turn in the highway.
He entered the cloverleaf and was halfway through it when he saw the
copter.
It was a red-and-white government copter, and it was descending at a
shallow angle toward him from the direction of Mars City. Dark switched
his radio to the official channel.
" ... await check. Repeat: groundcar in cloverleaf, stop at once and
await check."
Dark braked the groundcar to a stop. As soon as the copter grounded, he
could accelerate and escape.
But the copter did not ground. It hovered, directly over him. Then Dark
realized it was awaiting a patrol car from Mars City to check and take
him in custody if necessary.
Immediately, he put the groundcar in drive and whipped out of the
cloverleaf under full acceleration. If he could only achieve top speed,
350 kilometers-an-hour, the copter couldn't match it.
But the copter was on his tail at once as he swerved out of the tight
curve. Its guns spat fire.
There was a terrific impact, and the groundcar dome shattered above him.
Unprotected, he felt the air explode from the groundcar, from his
lungs. Oxygenless death poured in through the broken dome.
It all happened in an instant. Even as the dome shattered under the
copter's shell and Dark recognized the imminence of death, the groundcar
twisted out of control and careened from the highway. He felt it
spinning over and over, and then blackness closed in around him.
7
Maya had never seen Nuwell in such a state of sustained rage.
He strode back and forth in the private dining room of the Syrtis Major
Club, near the western edge of Mars City, slapping his fist into his
hand. His face usually was engaging and boyish, the wave of his dark
hair setting it off handsomely, but now it was flushed like that of a
petulant child and the lock of hair hung down over his forehead. Maya,
the only other person in the room, sat quietly and watched him pace.
"They had plenty of time and all the information they needed," stormed
Nuwell, "and yet they didn't get a single one of the key men! Most of
the rebels slipped out easily, right under their noses!"
Maya watched him detachedly. This was the man she had promised to marry,
and, as she had once or twice before, she was undergoing pangs of doubt.
After all, she had known Nuwell Eli only during the few months she had
been on Mars.
She had fallen in love with him for his charm, his intelligence, his
good-humored gentleness, but she did not like this display of temper. It
was not a controlled anger, but had something of the irrational in it.
"Childress was captured," she reminded him.
"Childress! A figurehead! He says he didn't know about the rebel
activities going on in the college, and he's so stupid I may not be able
to make a case against him."
Maya recognized that this element, the success of his prosecution, was a
very important factor to Nuwell.
"Are the twelve I identified the only ones captured?" asked Maya.
"Yes. Twelve captured, seven killed, and every one of them small fry.
The leaders undoubtedly got away in that copter. We blockaded the
airlocks fast, so most of the others are probably still in the city, but
we don't have any idea where to look for them."
"I may be able to help in that, when I get back from my swing around the
other cities," said Maya.
"I don't want you to go on that jaunt, Maya!" exclaimed Nuwell, swinging
around to face her with fierce emphasis. "You said when you had found
the headquarters, you'd resign the service and marry me. Now you want to
go all over Mars looking for rebels!"
"Nuwell, I can identify almost all of those who were at the barber
college," Maya remonstrated. "They've picked up some men at the airlocks
and others on the roads at several cities, and even Martian law won't
permit you to uproot those people and send them to Mars City just on
suspicion. They can't be sent here for me to identify: I'll have to go
there."
"We can work out some charges to get them extradited to Mars City,"
snapped Nuwell angrily. "I don't want you to go, Maya. I want you to
stay here and marry me, immediately."
"Aren't you being a little dictatorial, Nuwell?" she suggested coolly.
The warning implied in her remoteness seemed to trigger a polarized
reaction in Nuwell. The furious dark eyes melted suddenly, the stubborn
anger of the face altered on the instant to a sentimental, wistful smile
of appeal.
"Don't be angry, Maya," he pleaded, half-ruefully, half-humorously.
"It's just that I love you so much. It's just that I'm impatient for you
to be my wife."
Changeability is attributed to the feminine, but Maya was not able to
shift her mood as facilely as her fiance.
"If I'm worth marrying, I'm worth waiting for a little longer," she
said, with an edge to her voice. She was angry at Nuwell for acting so
like a spoiled child. "I'm going to see this job finished. I'm leaving
for Solis Lacus on the jetliner tonight."
"Solis Lacus!" he exclaimed in astonishment. "Why, Maya, that's halfway
around Mars!"
"That's exactly why the rebels might be more likely to go there. In
spite of the patrols, you know they haven't picked up all of the rebels
who escaped Mars City by groundcar. Any of them who headed for Solis
Lacus will be arriving there within the next two or three days. Then
I'll make a swing around and spend as much time as necessary at each of
the dome cities before coming back here."
The angry, stubborn expression swept across Nuwell's face again.
"Maya, I won't--" he began.
But at that moment, their guests began arriving. As the judge of Mars
City's superior court and his wife entered the room, Nuwell cut himself
off sharp and turned to greet them. His face cleared instantly, his lips
curved into a delighted smile and he welcomed them with such natural,
innocent charm that one would have thought he was incapable of frowning.
The presence of the guests seemed to intoxicate him with good-humor, and
when he had to leave in the midst of the party to drive Maya to the
airport he did not resume his argument. He merely kissed her good-bye
tenderly before she boarded the plane and begged her with melting eyes
to hurry back because he would be lonely every moment she was away.
So it was that Maya stretched in a reclining chair on the sundeck of the
Chateau Nectaris the next afternoon and permitted herself to be
disgusted with the entire planet Mars.
Maya's small, perfect body was kept minimally modest by one of those
scanty Martian sunsuits. A huge straw hat, woven of dried canal sage,
hid her beautiful face.
A disappointing resort area for an Earthwoman, this Solis Lacus Lowland.
No swimming, no boating, no skiing. No water and no snow. Just a vast
expanse of salty ground, blanketed with gray-green canal sage and dotted
with the plastic domes of the resort chateaus. Nothing to do but hike
in a marsuit or sun oneself under a dome.
She had chosen the Chateau Nectaris because it was the largest of the
resort spots, and therefore the most likely one to be chosen by men who
sought to hide out for a while. She had contacted the managers of all
the resort chateaus and all had agreed to let her know of the arrival of
any new guests.
There had been three of them during the morning, two arriving by
groundcar and one by copter, at three different chateaus. She had driven
to each one and circumspectly inspected the new guest, but none had been
anyone she recognized from the Childress Barber College.
In a way, she wished she had yielded to Nuwell's importunities. There
was much more of interest to do in Mars City. And Nuwell _was_ charming
and intelligent and rather dashing, and she did love him, and she did
want to marry him. But....
But she was right in wanting to help identify those rebels who had been
captured before she considered her task finished. And perhaps Nuwell had
been right in his implied disagreement with her idea of coming first to
Solis Lacus, so far from Mars City. Logically, would it not be harder to
lose oneself in a fashionable resort area than in a good-sized city? But
something within her had urged her to come here first. It was a hunch,
and she intended to play it.
With a sigh, Maya pushed the hat off her face and stared with exotically
slanted black eyes at the shining blur of the dome hundreds of feet
above her. She sat up, hugging her knees with her arms.
A score of other guests were sunning themselves here also. At her
movement, the unmarried men turned their eyes on her frankly; the
married ones did so furtively, to be promptly yanked back to attention
by their wives.
Maya's onyx eyes surveyed this dullness aloofly, then lifted over the
nearby parapet and across the sparse terrestrial lawn which would grow
only under the dome. The far cliffs of the Thaumasia Foelix Desert
loomed darkly, distorted through the dome's sides.
The dome's airlock opened to admit a groundcar. She watched it,
interestedly, as it scurried like a huge, glassy bug along the curving
road and disappeared under the parapet in front of the chateau. Mail
from Mars City, perhaps, or supplies. Maybe even a new guest.
Something struck her, now that the groundcar was no longer in sight. It
had been a little too far away to discern its details clearly, but there
was something strange about the appearance of that groundcar. A glassy
bug, but not entirely sleek and shiny. Rather like a bug that had come
out second best in an argument with another bug.
Maya arose, purposefully. She stretched lithely, to the delight of the
assembled viewers, and padded gracefully toward the chateau's
second-floor entrance, trailing the huge hat in one hand.
She walked lightly along the balcony over the lobby, toward her room. As
she turned its corner, passing the grand stairway, she could see the
chateau entrance and the registration desk.
The groundcar had brought a new guest. He was signing the registration
book, a tall, broad-shouldered man in a marsuit, holding his marshelmet
under his arm. Why would he be wearing a marsuit in a groundcar?
As she looked, he laid down the pen and turned. His face was darkly
tanned, strong, handsome. His hair was black as midnight, his eyes
startlingly pale in the dark face.
His gaze lifted to the balcony, and Maya ducked behind the big hat just
in time.
Dark Kensington!
Triumph swept through her. She had been right in coming here! This was
Dark Kensington, the man she had met once, just before the raid on the
college. This was one of the leaders!
The hat held casually to conceal her face, Maya walked on to her room.
The telephone was ringing as she entered. She dropped the hat on the
bed, and answered it.
"Miss Cara Nome, this is Quelman Gren, the manager," said the male voice
on the line. "You asked me to notify you about any new guests. One has
just registered."
"I saw him," she said. "What can you tell me about him?"
"He is registered as D. Kensington, from Hesperidum," answered Gren. "He
is just staying overnight. His groundcar dome was broken in an accident,
and he wants to have it replaced and the groundcar refueled."
"Thank you," said Maya. "Now, please put in a call for me to S. Nuwell
Eli in Mars City."
She had bathed and dressed for dinner by the time the call came through.
"Nuwell," she said, when he had identified himself on the other end of
the line, "I knew I was right in coming here. One of the rebel leaders
just registered."
"Are you sure?" he asked excitedly.
"Certainly I am. He was one of those who stayed hidden in the back of
the barber college, and I saw him for the first time the day of the
raid. He identified himself then as a supervisor. But he's just staying
overnight."
"That's long enough! I'll get a jet and be up in a few hours. Get the
police to take him in custody and hold him for me."
"Darling, there aren't any police at Solis Lacus," Maya reminded him.
"This is a private resort area. The nearest police are at Ophir."
There was a silence while Nuwell digested this.
"You say he's staying overnight?" Nuwell said then. "I can be there
before midnight with some men to take him in custody."
"I'm a trained agent," said Maya. "I can take him in custody for you."
"You'll do no such thing!" squawked Nuwell in alarm. "It's, too
dangerous! Now you listen to me, Maya. You stay out of sight of this man
and wait till I get there!"
"All right, darling, I'll use my own judgment," replied Maya demurely,
and hung up.
She sat and cogitated for a time. She was dressed for dinner, and she
had been looking forward to appearing in the dining room in the somewhat
sensational moulded, flame-red gown she had bought recently in Mars
City. She didn't relish the idea of having dinner sent to her room, and
sitting up here alone to eat it.
With sudden decision, she arose. She donned dark glasses and tossed a
powder-red veil over her dark hair. Kensington had only seen her once
and would not be expecting to see her here. If he saw her now, he
wouldn't recognize her.
Fifteen minutes later, she was sipping an extremely expensive martini in
the dining room when she raised her eyes to see Dark Kensington enter,
wearing a dark-red, form-fitting evening suit.
He paused just inside the door and stood there, slowly surveying the
room. His eyes fell on Maya and paused. Then he walked straight to her
table.
"May I join you, Miss Cara Nome?" he asked in a deep, controlled voice,
a rather sardonic smile on his lips.
She felt trapped, and irrationally angry at him for recognizing her.
"I'm afraid you've made a mistake," she said coldly. "That isn't my
name."
At this juncture, a helpful waiter appeared at Maya's elbow and asked in
an appallingly distinct tone:
"Would you care for another drink, Miss Cara Nome, or do you wish to eat
now?"
"An understandable mistake, since it's such a common name," said Dark,
sitting down opposite her. He turned pale-blue eyes, remote and filled
with light, on the waiter, and added: "She'll have another drink, and
bring me one of the same."
The waiter left, and Maya removed her dark glasses to level furious
black eyes at Dark.
"I could call the manager and complain that you're annoying me, you
know," she said.
"You could," he agreed somberly. "You seem to be a very efficient
tattletale. Or are you going to try to pretend that you weren't the one
responsible for the raid on the college?"
She recognized that she was well in for it. He was not going to play a
game of pretense. Well, she had tried--partly, anyway--to do as Nuwell
wanted.
Very deliberately, she opened her purse, realizing that Dark was
watching her closely, all his muscles tense. She took out a cigarette
case and a lighter, laying them side by side on the table, and he
relaxed visibly.
Maya extracted a cigarette and placed it between her lips casually. She
picked up the lighter and balanced it in her hand.
"I assume that you're not armed, Mr. Kensington," she said.
He shrugged and smiled, revealing strong white teeth.
"Hardly, in this suit," he replied. "I'm glad to see you've decided to
recognize me."
"I am," she said grimly. "Armed, I mean. This is not a cigarette
lighter, but a very efficient and deadly heatgun. You're under arrest,
Mr. Kensington, so I suppose you're having dinner with me whether you
like it or not. Now, do you mind being a gentleman and lighting my
cigarette, since this is not very good for the purpose?"
He looked at her face, then dropped his eyes to the lighter, still
smiling.
"You'd better take my word for it," she advised. "I don't want to kill
you, Mr. Kensington, but I won't hesitate. I'm an agent of the
terrestrial government."
Dark shrugged again. He produced a lighter and leaned forward to light
her cigarette, without a tremor.
The waiter returned with their drinks and an announcement.
"There's a telephone call for you from Mars City, Miss Cara Nome," he
said.
Maya kept her eyes on Dark.
"Can you bring a telephone to the table?" she asked the waiter.
"Certainly, Miss," he replied. He left, and returned a moment later with
a telephone. He set it before her and plugged it in under the table.
Juggling the lighter-gun gently in one hand, Maya picked up the phone.
As soon as she answered it, her ears were assailed by Nuwell's agonized
voice.
"Maya, I can't get up there tonight!" he said. "There aren't any jets
here, and these idiots refuse to bring one in from Hesperidum or Cynia
for me to use. I'll have to come up by groundcar."
Maya sat silent, stunned. It had not seemed too great a feat to her to
hold Dark captive with her disguised heatgun when she was anticipating
Nuwell's arrival within hours. But suddenly she felt like a hunter who
has snared a lion in a rabbit trap.
"Maya, are you there?" demanded Nuwell querulously. "We'll spell each
other at the wheel and drive up without stopping, but it will still take
two and a half days to get there."
Maya took a deep breath.
"Come ahead," she said in a steady voice. "I'll have your man waiting
for you when you get here."
"You'll what? But I thought you said he was only staying overnight!
Maya, don't you do anything rash!"
"I'm afraid I already have," she said, a little ruefully. "I have him
under arrest right now."
The noise at the other end of the line sounded like a dismayed shriek.
"You little fool!" he shrilled. "I told you not to do anything like
that! How can you hold a man like that for two days, single-handed? Call
in the police!"
"It seems to me that I already mentioned there aren't any around here,"
she reminded him patiently.
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Then Nuwell said,
with forced calm:
"I'm leaving immediately. In the name of space, Maya, be careful!"