Dark: _As soon as you can gather your men and material together. But
stay out of sight of the farm and don't attack until you hear from me. I
should be there within the next forty-eight hours._
The instructions given, the telepathic conference faded out, and Dark
was a solitary man plodding across the desert, pulling a loaded cart
behind him.
He came in sight of the Canfell Hydroponic Farm in just about the time
that he had predicted to Cheng, but waited until nightfall to approach
it. Phobos was abroad in the east at sunset, so Dark waited a little
longer, until the nearer moon plunged beneath the eastern horizon.
Deimos was not in the sky this night, and Phobos' disappearance left it
near pitch-dark.
Dark moved across the starlit desert, pulling his cart, to the walls of
the farm. The farm was not a massive, sprawling fortress like Ultra
Vires, because most of it was underground. The upper floor, in which
Happy's "Masters" lived and worked, was just below the ground level and
the underground vats were below it, extending considerably beyond it in
all directions. The only parts of the farm that projected above ground
were its four entrances, small buildings of white stone, each with its
own airlock.
Dark went through the airlock of the nearest one. These entrance
buildings were the barracks of the Toughs, in which they slept at night,
secure from the possibility of escape because no marsuits were available
to them. Dark had moved quietly through a barracks of sleeping Toughs
the night he had left the farm for Ultra Vires, but this time he had his
cart with him.
There was no alternative but a bold course. Spearing the light of an
electric torch before him, he walked down the aisle toward the barred
gate leading into the regions below, pulling the metal-wheeled cart
across the stone floor behind him.
Its clatter brought the whole barracks awake. On all sides of him arose
an angry growling and shouting, an upsurge from many throats of the
animal noises that were the Toughs' nearest approach to human language.
Dark moved forward steadily, keeping a telepathic "radar" out to warn
him of any impending attack.
The very boldness of his action paid off. Its openness apparently
convinced the Toughs that this was merely another, unusually noisy case
of one of the Masters returning to the farm at night--as Dark sensed had
occurred often before. Dark was not molested.
The barred gate had no controls on this side. Dark operated it
psychokinetically. It raised slowly, he pulled his cart through, and he
lowered it behind him and went on down the ramp into the underground
cavern.
He went straight to Old Beard's hiding place, and awoke him. Old Beard
greeted him joyously.
"I was afraid something had happened to you, you were gone so long,"
said Old Beard.
"I had to walk back," said Dark. "None of the groundcars at Ultra Vires
was in operating condition."
"Then there's no chance of the rest of us escaping," said Old Beard
disappointedly. "We can't get at the groundcars here, and the marsuits
you brought won't help. The oxygen supply of a marsuit isn't adequate to
take us from here to the nearest civilization."
"I think we can get to the groundcars," answered Dark confidently. "I
brought heatguns, as well as marsuits. Besides, I have a larger plan now
than merely escape."
He related to Old Beard all the things that had happened, including the
fact that Old Beard was his father.
"I am very happy," said Old Beard simply, tears in his pale eyes. "I
liked you very much from the first, Dark, and I'm glad that you can bear
the name of Dark Kensington rightfully."
When Dark told him of the plan for the conquest of the farm, Old Beard
stroked his beard thoughtfully.
"I'm afraid that the attack from within will depend largely on you and
me, although Shadow probably will be able to help effectively," said Old
Beard. "The Jellies aren't very aggressive and, even with a few
heatguns, I'm afraid they won't be of much use."
"How about the Toughs?"
"The Toughs would be fine, if you want to wipe out all the Masters and
all the Jellies, and possibly us, too. They're vicious and
unintelligent, and they can't be disciplined or depended upon."
"With the attack from the outside timed right, I think the three of us
can handle it," said Dark. "How many of the Masters are there?"
"Only ten," answered Old Beard. "And they aren't soldiers, but
scientists. But they do have weapons, and they know how to handle them.
They have to, in order to keep the Toughs from getting out of line."
"Perhaps we can whip the Jellies up to the point of causing a good deal
of initial trouble and confusion, and then the three of us move in at
the proper moment after the attack from outside is under way," said
Dark. "We might even turn the Toughs loose on them, without weapons."
Old Beard gave him a steady gaze from beneath bushy eyebrows.
"I don't think we want to use the Toughs," he said slowly. "I said there
are ten Masters, and that is correct. But they have a visitor who
arrived by copter several days ago. A visitor and a prisoner."
"A prisoner?"
"Yes, a prisoner who wasn't sent down to the vats, but is kept on the
upper floor. This prisoner is a black-haired, black-eyed woman."
"Maya!"
"Yes, I think the visitor is Nuwell Eli and the prisoner is your friend,
Maya."
16
Nuwell Eli sat with Placer Viceroy, director of the Canfell Hydroponic
Farm, in its large underground dining room, eating lunch. This meal was
not the tasteless, gelatin-like food that was fed to the Jellies and
Toughs and sold on the Martian market. It was a meal of thick, juicy
steaks from the dome farms around Hesperidum and vegetables from the
gardens inside the Mars City dome.
"We've been here better than a week, and she's still stubborn," Nuwell
said morosely. "Surely she has the intelligence to realize how
ridiculous and impractical is her sudden conversion to a lost rebel
cause. I'm half convinced that this Kensington fellow put her under some
sort of a hypnotic spell."
"You've been very gentle in your methods of conversion," said Placer.
"It isn't like you, Nuwell. If you want quick results, we could turn her
over to the Toughs for a while."
"No, I don't want her hurt. I love the woman and intend to marry her.
The whippings and humiliations are as far as I'm willing to go."
"A peculiar sort of love, if you don't mind my saying so," remarked
Placer.
Nuwell stared at him coldly.
"I do mind your saying so," he said. "My personal emotions are not
subject to your interpretation. But Martian wives are expected to obey
their husbands with deference and, by Saturn, I'm going to break her of
that liberal terrestrial training!"
"You'd have the legal right to take the steps necessary for that, if she
were married to you," Placer pointed out.
"But the little fool refuses to marry me now!" exclaimed Nuwell in
exasperation. "If she hadn't refused, do you think I'd have brought her
here? But I couldn't take her to one of the cities, except as a prisoner
to be tried for sedition and treason, as long as she expresses this
violent and open support of the rebel cause. Whether you consider it
love or not, I want the woman for myself. I don't want her imprisoned or
executed."
"Perhaps if she were presented with that alternative, she'd be more
reasonable about it," murmured Placer.
"Don't you think I've threatened her with it? She just says that she'd
rather die or go to prison than go back on her convictions and knuckle
under to me. If she could only forget that she'd ever met that man
Kensington!"
"Well, as for that, it might not be so hard to arrange," suggested
Placer quietly.
Nuwell stared at him.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"You're not familiar with the details of our work here, are you,
Nuwell?"
"I thought I was, pretty well. But what you just said doesn't strike a
chord."
"As you know, the Toughs and Jellies are originally criminals and
vagabonds you have smuggled to us for experimental purposes. One major
effect of our initial glandular experiments with them, which makes them
into Toughs and Jellies, is that they lose all memory of their past."
"I don't want a flabby woman, like a Jelly!" exclaimed Nuwell with a
shudder.
"I think we could eliminate the memory, permanently, without any
physical changes at all," said Placer. "There are some pretty good
scientists here. I expect the operation would cut down her thinking
ability pretty heavily, though. I think it would still be slightly
higher than that of the Jellies, but you couldn't ever expect her again
to get above the intellectual level of a child of six or eight
terrestrial years."
"I don't care anything about an intelligent woman," answered Nuwell
ruthlessly. "If she weren't so proud of her intelligence now, I wouldn't
have so much trouble with her. I want her as a beautiful woman, which is
all a woman has a right to expect from a man, and if she were less
intelligent and more tractable I might be able to train her to become
the sort of wife a man of my profession and position requires."
Placer speared a bite of steak, casually, with his fork.
"Any time you say the word," he said carelessly.
"I'll give her the rest of today," said Nuwell with decision. "I'll work
her over again with the whip this afternoon, and if she doesn't break
I'll tell her what she can expect. Then, if that doesn't do the trick,
I'll turn her over to you the first thing tomorrow."
"Tonight would be better," suggested Placer. "The initial surgery takes
only about thirty minutes, and she'd do better to rest a night after
that. It alone will remove a great deal of her volitional power. The
entire series of operations will require about three days."
"Tonight it is, then," said Nuwell, "if she doesn't break this
afternoon."
Maya sat in her locked room, her tunic and trousers covering the red
welts on her back and legs. The tasteless gelatin which had been her
only food since their arrival almost gagged her with every spoonful, but
she had eaten all her lunch. She needed all the strength she could get
to maintain her defiance.
She was in the grip of dull, unrelenting pain, physically and
emotionally. Her flesh ached from yesterday's beating, and she was sick
at heart at the revelation of Nuwell's essential brutality and
callousness. She had thought him a sensitive and intelligent man, and
she had admired him for this even after some of his exhibitions of
childish temper had disillusioned her as to the glowing nobility which
she had at first attributed to him.
She had felt a warm attraction to him and, when she thought Dark was
dead, she had been willing to marry him on the basis, not of the
passionate love she now felt for Dark, but of a mellow tenderness which
she conceived a sound basis for an understanding life together.
But now! She shuddered at the thought that she might have married him,
and perhaps lived all her life with him, thinking him to be gentle and
kind. Whatever happened to her, she felt fortunate that this crisis had
brought to her view the hidden side of him, that heretofore had been
seen only by his partners in political manipulation and by the
unfortunate victims of his prosecution.
Her shoulders drooped wearily. She stared across the room. It was as
bare as a prison cell, which intrinsically it was.
There was a glass on the washbasin. It was made of heavy metal, with no
sharp edges. Did Nuwell think she would commit suicide? Not as long as
she knew Dark was alive!
Her mind touched the glass. It quivered. It tilted and fell to the floor
with a clang.
She looked at it with mild curiosity as it rolled into a corner. She
hadn't done that for a long time, not since she suppressed it because of
Nuwell's hatred of witchcraft.
It was telekinesis. She had had the power since she was a child. It
seemed that she remembered using it often, and in rather startling ways,
when she was a small child with the Martians. But when she went to
Earth, she gradually stopped playing with it, except in small ways when
she was alone, because it seemed to make her elders very uncomfortable.
Telekinesis was ESP. It did not mean that she had any other ESP powers.
But there was her experience in the copter....
Her mind reached out. At once, like a shock, she was in contact with
Dark. His mind turned to hers at once.