* * * * *
Mark laughed. "Of course you're not! That little show at the spaceport
was faked, had to be. And," he smiled a little, "thanks for adding the
touch of realism. Moreover, your spacer is in safe hands."
"Well, son, congratulations!" Ketrik grinned broadly. "You sure had me
fooled. But what about the rest of the Council, if they learn that I'm
on Earth--"
"By the time they do, it won't matter. You won't be here." Mark stopped
his pacing, turned to the famed adventurer. "Ketrik, I sent for you
because I need you desperately! Earth needs you! I have reason to
believe that Earth is facing the greatest danger in its history."
"Earth." The bronzed exile spoke the word quietly, but with a world of
contempt.
"Well, then, the entire System! Even Perlac. I believe it will strike
first at Earth, in fact may already have done so."
"And this danger. Danger from what?"
"Ketrik, you'll probably think me a fool--but I don't know! It's so
damned vague it's terrifying. I do have an accumulation of data that
points to Mars. I want you to go there."
"Mars? A second-rate power. Their race is dying out, and their science
goes with it."
Mark shook his head. "Don't underrate Dar Vaajo! He's an old man
now, but cunning. An opportunist. He's never forgotten how Princess
Aladdian of Venus, through her treaty with Earth, put an end to his
dreams of conquest."[2]
[Footnote 2: _Alcatraz of the Starways_, Planet Stories, May, 1943.]
"Yes, I remember it well." Ketrik was thoughtful. "But how could Dar
Vaajo make a play now against the power of Earth, or for that matter
Perlac?"
Mark permitted himself a smile. He didn't miss the implication that
Perlac, too, was fast becoming a power to be reckoned with.
"I'll give you the facts," he said quietly, "and you can judge. About
two years ago, Dar Vaajo stopped all Uranium shipments from Mars. That
in itself is comparatively unimportant. What is important, is the Earth
Council. Now consider, Ketrik--I've been close to these men for four
years. Very often it has seemed to me that where rudimentary logic
should dictate a course of action, they incomprehensibly choose to
follow another. So it was with this Uranium embargo. They might easily
have forced a showdown, but instead, they seemed satisfied with Dar
Vaajo's peculiar evasions.
"Of course, about this time Earth's quarrel with Perlac was reaching
a crisis. But even there, I noticed definite trends of irrational
thinking on the part of the Members. At our frequent sessions to
discuss the Perlac question, they seemed to appreciate all the factors
involved--even that we were fast losing our best scientific talent to
Perlac. Yet their damned egotisms crept through, dictating to their
reason. Ketrik, I swear to you that when they voted sending a fleet
of Patrollers out to Jupiter to prevent your men from landing there,
I did everything in my power to prevent it. But again my voice was
one against eleven. And believe me, the majority vote of Council is
final--irrevocable."
"I have reason to know that," Ketrik said. "But, Mark, I still fail to
see this danger you spoke of."
"I'm getting to it. And this is the part that's frightening. About a
month ago, in my own home, I set up a secret Cerebro-Scanner. Know what
that is?"
"Never heard of it."
"It's new, and plenty dangerous in the wrong hands. Works on a ray
principle. Produces elaborate graphs of an individual's mental and
emotional co-ordinates. Well, on a secret wave-length I probed the
minds of my fellow Council Members!" Mark smiled. "Yes, I'd probably
receive sentence of death if they knew, but the end justified the
means. Ketrik, the resulting graphs reveal that the cerebro-thalamic
co-ordinates of the Council Members do not vary in the slightest! They
are the same down to ten decimal points!"