all that, and try to bring order out of chaos."
Trilling didn't say anything for a moment. He just looked at me, but
his gaze was not unsympathetic.
"There's something I'd like to have you hear, Ralph," he said, when the
silence had lengthened between us and become almost minute-long. "We
have a new, round-the-clock recording to replace the one we've been
transmitting at intervals, night and day, for five years. I won't even
ask you how many times you've heard it, because you travel around a lot
and must have memorized it word for word. But this one is better, I
think. At least, it appeals to me more. A hundred million people will
hear it, starting tomorrow. It will be on every tele-screen."
He bent over his desk and removed a miniature tape-recorder from the
upper right hand drawer. He set it down on the desk and clicked it on.
"Just one passage I'd like you to listen to, Ralph. Not the whole
recording. This is it--"
The voice that came from the tape was a very good reading voice, one
of the best I'd ever heard. The man was probably a poet. But the words
themselves interested me more.
"... so bright with promise has Man's future become that all of the old
animosities, the old hates, will soon seem alien to us and strange. A
new world is in the making. Who can deny it? The colonization of Mars
has fulfilled the deepest instincts of Man's nature, and provided scope
for a growth that is as natural to him as breathing.
"The desire to know more, to explore the unknown, to reach out toward
constantly expanding horizons can only be satisfied by boldly accepting
what the advance of modern science has brought within our grasp. The
colonization of Mars is a tribute to Man's stubborn refusal to be
easily discouraged or to let mechanical difficulties, no matter how
formidable, stand in his way. A tribute as well to his constructive
genius, his daring and breadth of vision."
Trilling clicked the tape recorder off, returned it to his desk, and
turned to face me again.
"That, Ralph, is the dream," he said. "You and I know what the reality
is like. But the millions who will listen to that recording do not.
They still believe--and hope."
I was silent for a moment, not quite sure how he'd take what I was
going to say. I went over it in my mind, searching for just the right
words. It took me a full minute to find them, but he didn't grow
impatient.
"I'm not sure the Board is wise in putting out that kind of propaganda.
Or any kind of propaganda. After all, we're not trying to sell Mars to
anyone. We're doing something that has to be done--you might almost
say we're just trying, in a very earnest way, to plug up a gap in the
biggest dam that was ever built, to keep the flood waters from carrying
us all to destruction."
"You're wrong, Ralph," he said. "It isn't just propaganda. A dream
always has to go striding on ahead of reality. It may seem strange to
you, but the reality does not frighten or discourage me. Mars is a new
world and on a new world there has to be--not one, but many beginnings."
He paused an instant, then added: "That's why we're sending you to
Mars, Ralph. There will have to be another beginning. It won't show
too much on the surface. No matter how successful you are, for the
colony will remain what it is basically--an experiment in survival.
All of a new world's energy will remain, and the turbulence and the
hard-to-endure disappointments. But you can help the Colonists go
back, and feel the way they did when the first passenger rocket settled
down on the red desert sand forty million miles from Earth and the
Space Age took on a new dimension."
4
There was only one small window in Trilling's office. But I could see
that the sky outside was still bright with stars, and the glimmer of
the ceiling lamp made the metal surface above us seem to fall away and
dissolve into a much wider expanse of star-studded space.
The ceiling-mirrored image of the lamp itself looked like the Sun,
blazing in noonday brightness directly overhead and out beyond were
galaxies and super-galaxies strung like beads on a wire across the
great curve of the universe.
It was just an illusion, of course. You could see the same thing in the
light-mirroring depths of a glass of wine, if you stared hard enough.
But for an instant it seemed to bring bigness, vastness right into the
room with us.
I was conscious of the silence again, lengthening, hanging heavy
between us, as if we'd each said too much, or possibly ... not quite
enough.
Then Trilling bent and removed something else from his desk. I couldn't
see what it was until he set it down directly in front of me, because
it was much smaller than the midget tape recorder and his hand covered
it.
A flat metal box, wafer-thin, doesn't provide much scope for
speculation, and I was pretty sure that the object inside was a tiny
metal precision instrument or a watch or a medal even before he said:
"This should make Joan change her mind, Ralph!" and snapped the box
open.
The insignia caught and held the light, a two-inch silver hawk with its
wings outspread. The white lining of the box made it stand out, as if
it were flying through fleecy clouds high in the sky, and symboling in
its flight far more than just the elevation of one man to the highest
command post the Martian Colonization Board had the authority to bestow.
The significance of that finely-wrought, seldom-worn silver bird
was not lost on me. In the maze of a hundred legends, a hundred
witness-confirmed stories of triumph and disappointment, of heroic
progress and tragic back-tracking, it had remained an important link
between Earthside expectations and what was actually taking place on
Mars.
Only one man could wear it at any one time, and only four men had worn
it since the establishment of the colony. All four were dead now, their
gravestones a white gleaming on the red desert sand a few miles north
of the colony.
"Well, Ralph?" Trilling said.
I tried hard to maintain my composure, to say just the right thing,
because I'd lived long enough to know there are depths beyond depths to
some emotions that can't be put into words. Attempt to talk the way you
feel, and you're sure to sound a little ridiculous. I was only certain
of one thing. No man could wear that insignia and not feel, resting
upon his shoulders, a responsibility so tremendous that whatever pride
he might take in it would have to be tempered by humility--if he wanted
to go on wearing it for long.
Trilling seemed aware of what was passing through my mind, for he made
it easy for me. He simply smiled, snapped the box shut with a briskness
that was almost casual, and handed it to me.
"You've got real massive military prestige now, Ralph," he said. "Right
at the moment the Board would be gravely concerned if you wore that
insignia in public. But there's nothing to prevent you from wearing
it in the privacy of your own home. Later on the Board may decide you
can accomplish more by coming right out and letting the colonists know
there's a lion in the streets who intends to do more than just roar.
A safe, protective kind of lion--dangerous only to over-ambitious men
with destructive ideas."
I started to reply but he waved me to silence. "Hold on, Ralph--let me
finish. You won't be wearing that insignia in public straight off. But
I hope you'll have enough good sense to make the best possible use of
it to overcome the first really big obstacle in your path."
He nodded. "It will be a kind of blackmail, in a way--morally
reprehensible. You'll be taking advantage of something it isn't in a
woman's nature to resist. But you have no choice. You've got to go to
Mars and if you went alone you'd be about as useful to us as a celibate
kangaroo, all packaged and ready to be sent on a journey to the
taxidermist."
He seemed to realize it wouldn't have to be quite that drastic, for
he grimaced wryly. "All right, all right. You could go out and find
another woman and I probably could talk the Board into being the
opposite of stuffy about it. But I happen to know what kind of man you
are, and how you feel about Joan. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure
she's the only woman in the world for you."
There was nothing I could say to that. I had the insignia in my
inner breast pocket, and I knew that there were few obstacles it
couldn't blast away on Earth or on Mars, if I kept remembering what it
symbolized with Joan at my side.
I went out into the cool night again, past that long tremendous
building with just one of its floors ablaze, past the big sky ships
looming like sentinel ghosts on their launching pads, past winking
lights and speeding cars and pedestrians walking slowly and something
inside of me made me feel I'd undergone a kind of sea change, and could
face whatever the future might hold without grabbing for a life-line
that didn't exist.
It was a good way to feel. A man had to sink or swim without having
a life-line thrown to him--if he hoped to live long enough to change
things around in an important way on Mars. He had to keep his head and
breast the raging currents with the sturdiest kind of overhand strokes,
or be drawn down into the undertow and battered senseless against the
rocks that lined the shoreline.
The change must have shown a little on the surface, in the set of
my jaw or just the way I was walking, because no less than three
pedestrians turned to stare at me as I went striding past them on my
way to the New Chicago Underground.
I was almost at the northern entrance of the big, tree-lined square
directly opposite the Administration Building when it hit me--the
memory-recall, the swift emergence from its cubby-hole deep in my mind
of the narrow brush I'd had with Death and hadn't even discussed with
Trilling.
It had been a mistake not to discuss it, because it concerned the Board
as much as it did me. Someone who knew about the insignia--or had made
a shrewd guess as to just how big a job was awaiting me on Mars--had
wanted me dead. The attempt on my life took on a much larger, more
crucial dimension when viewed in that light.
There were three hundred million people in the United States, and if
I'd been just a private citizen, with no more than my own safety at
stake, I could have lost myself in that immense ocean of humanity for
a week or a month and gained a brief respite. There are plenty of ways
you can protect yourself against a surprise attempt on your life, if
you have the time to take safety precautions. When there's a would-be
assassin at large who is dead set on measuring you for a coffin you
have to work the problem out carefully, with a minimum of risk.
It takes skill and psychological insight, but it can be done. You've
just got to remember that an assassin is never quite normal. Even when
a socio-political motivation is the governing passion of his life
you're one jump ahead of him the instant you've figured out exactly how
his mind works.
In fact, one of those safety precautions could have been protecting me
as I crossed the square, if I hadn't let my stubborn pride stand in the
way. Why hadn't I asked Trilling to provide me with armed protection?
Two alert bodyguards, trailing me on the street and down into the
Underground and standing watch outside my apartment all night long--and
staying fifty paces behind me until the Mars' rocket zero-count ended
and the big sky ship took off with a roar ... would have given the
Board the kind of reassurance they had a right to expect.
I started to turn back, then changed my mind abruptly. I'd taken just
as great a risk by walking from the lakeside to the skyport right after
the attack, hadn't I? And I'd be in the Underground in another three or
four minutes, with people around me and--
All right. It was an out-of-focus rationalization and nothing more--an
attempt to find an excuse for not turning back. But when I do something
reckless for complicated reasons, when I've forged ahead despite
my better judgment, I'm usually just impulsive enough to carry the
folly-ball all the way across the goal line.
It was the thing I'd have to guard most against on Mars, that
damnable twisted pride and impulsiveness, that taking of too much for
granted when I started to do something I knew was unwise, but had an
overpowering urge to carry out anyway.
Every weaving shadow beneath the double row of trees that towered
on both sides of me could have cloaked a crouching figure adjusting
another small mechanical killer to the deadliest possible angle of
flight. But I had another reason for not wanting to go back. Trilling
might fall in with the armed guard idea but I doubted it like hell.
I could picture him saying instead: "Ralph, even an armed car can be
blown up. You're staying under lock and key all night ... right here in
the Administration Building."
I could even picture him saying much the same thing to Joan, her image
bright enough on his office tele-screen to be visible from where I'd be
standing: "He's not coming home tonight, Joan. We're sending an armored
car to pick you up in the morning. Wait, hold on--I'll let you talk to
him!"
And I could almost hear her replying: "Don't bother to send the car.
I'm not going with him. Please don't think too harshly of me, please
try to understand. I just can't--"
I started down the long boulevard on the far side of the square, still
walking rapidly and feeling suddenly confident I'd been justified
in not turning back. I could see the entrance to the Underground
glimmering in the darkness a hundred feet ahead of me and there were
people all around me walking in both directions. I wasn't even troubled
by the feeling that everyone gets at times--that something terrible and
unexpected can happen right in the midst of a crowd, if only because
the presence of many people exposes you to a dangerously wide range of
unpredictable human emotions.
For the barest instant, when I crossed the narrow strip of pavement
directly in front of the kiosk, fear tugged at my nerves and I felt
myself growing tense. But I became calm again the moment I looked
around and saw that the only pedestrian within thirty feet of me was a
hurrying girl with a portfolio under her arm. When she saw how intently
I was staring at her she frowned and a look of annoyance came into her
eyes.
Oh, for God's sake, I told myself, get rid of this nagging uncertainty,
and stop behaving like a fool. If he intended to try again tonight I'd
know by now. He's missed a dozen very good chances, so something must
be making him super-cautious, if he hasn't keeled over just from the
strain of watching me refuse to die. Killing's never easy, even for a
professional. It must be a little like being cut open, watching your
own blood pouring out of you, because all violence inflicts a two-way
trauma ... severe enough at times to make even a mad slayer fling down
his gun before going on a rampage of indiscriminate slaughter.
There were arguments I could have used to wrap it up even tighter--such
as the way he'd be trapped and blasted down almost instantly if he
launched another attack on me so close to the spaceport's three
interlocking, hyper-sensitive security alert systems.
But I didn't even pause to weigh them, because right up to that minute
I'd done very well, and the fear which had come upon me had been as
brief as an autumnal flurry of wind when you're coming around a tall
building at breakneck speed.
* * * * *
I let the girl dart past me, taking my time, and in another five
seconds was descending into the big, brightly lighted cavern that was
New Chicago's intercity pride.
As every school kid knows, the New Chicago Underground is six years
old, and is the largest, smoothest-running transportation system in the
world. It cost seven billion dollars to build and has almost as many
tracks and suburban off-shoots as station guards.
It interlocks, spirals outward in a half dozen directions and
circles back upon itself. In a way, it's like the serpent you see
in bas-reliefs dating back three thousand years, in Babylonian and
Pre-Dynastic Egyptian tombs, for instance, or on totem poles in the
Northwest ... a serpent that's continually swallowing its own tail.
It's the oldest archeological art-form on Earth and is supposed to
symbolize Eternal Life.
But to some people at least the New Chicago Underground symbolizes
something far more gloomy. If you're not careful to board just the
right train you can get lost in its tomblike, spiraling immensity and
feel as helpless as a wandering ghost or an experimental laboratory
animal caught up in a blind maze. You can be carried fifty miles
in the wrong direction and look out through the windows of a train
traveling at half the speed of sound, and see a country landscape or
the wide sweep of Lake Michigan five minutes after you've settled down
in a comfortable chair and become absorbed in the news of the day on
micro-film.
You'll stare out and the section of the city where your home is located
just won't be sweeping past. You'll have to get off at the next
station, perhaps twenty or thirty miles further on, ride back, and
board another train. It's seldom quite as frustrating as that, but only
because most of the riders have been conditioned to keep their wits
about them through a nightmare kind of trial-and-error apprenticeship.
You've got to stay alert until you've boarded a train with just the
right combination of numerals on its destination plate. It isn't hard
to do, unless you're carrying a tiny silver hawk in a wafer-thin
case, and your destination may be changed without warning and with
unbelievable infamy by someone capable of great evil who would much
prefer not to have you board a train at all.
I could almost picture him weaving in and out between the platform
crowds--faceless so far, but quite possibly glassy-eyed with little
waltzing death-heads in the depth of his pupils. An unknown human
cipher intent on my destruction, refusing to be discouraged by the
failure of a small mechanical killer to do the job for him.
If I'd had a strong reason to believe I actually was being followed, if
he'd come right out into the open and I could have caught a glimpse of
him, however brief, I'd have felt a subconscious relief that would have
kept me on guard and confident. It would have given me an edge that not
even the fact that I had no gun could have taken away from me.
It's the unknown and unpredictable that's unnerving, the realization
that invisible eyes may be scrutinizing you from a distance and the
brain behind them deciding that it would be a great mistake to let a
failure of nerve or concern for the consequences interfere with what
had to be done.
He wouldn't be wanting me to wear that insignia ever--on Earth or on
Mars--and just knowing that made me almost miss my train as it came
rushing toward me.
The train was so crowded I had to stand, but I had no complaint on
that score. In a seat, with people jamming the aisle in front of me,
I'd have been wedged in even more securely. In a standing position I
could edge forward and back and keep an eye on the passengers who were
holding fast to the horizontal support rail on both sides of me.
5
There were twenty-five or thirty passengers wedged into the middle
section of the train, all standing in slightly cramped postures and
most of them unsmiling. I knew exactly how they felt. Not being able
to get a seat in an off-hour in the evening can be irritating. But
right at the moment there was no room in my mind for annoyance. A
slow, hard-to-pin-down uneasiness was creeping over me again, as if a
pendulum were swinging back and forth somewhere close to me, ticking
out a warning in rhythm--and I couldn't shut out the sound of it.
Just my over-strained nerves, of course. How could it have been
anything else? I turned and looked at the man standing next to me. He
was middle-aged, conservatively dressed, and had a square-jawed, rather
handsome face, with a dusting of gray at his temples.
He was frowning slightly and his expression didn't change when I broke
the rule of silence which was customarily observed in the Underground.
"No reason for all the seats to be gone at this hour," I said.
The crazy kind of over-exuberance mixed with peevishness that makes
some people say things like that to total strangers a dozen times a day
had always seemed inexcusable to me. But when you're under tension you
sometimes break all the habits of rational behavior you've imposed on
yourself in small matters.
My excuse was that I simply wanted to test the firmness and steadiness
of my own voice, to make sure that, deep down, I wasn't nearly as
apprehensive as I was beginning to feel.
"Yes, I know," the gray-templed man agreed. "It burns me up a little
too. But I guess it just can't be helped at times. Operating an
Underground this size must be an awful train-scheduling headache."
"Headache or not," I said. "There's no excuse for it."
He smiled abruptly, exposing large, white teeth and I noticed that
there was something almost birdlike in the way his eyes lighted up.
Small, black, very bright eyes they were, under short-lashed lids, and
quite suddenly he made me think of a magpie alighting on a limb, taking
off and alighting again, hardly able to restrain an impulse to chatter.
"What it boils down to," he said, "is the old quarrel between a
pedestrian and a man in a car. Neither can understand or sympathize
with the other's point of view. Fifteen million people ride this
Underground every day and to them it's a poor slob's service at best.
That's because they feel themselves to be the victims, at the receiving
end. But you've got to remember that safety precautions pose a problem.
Avoiding accidents comes first and the New Chicago Transportation
System, considering its colossal size, does pretty well in that
respect."
"People have been killed," I said, and could have bitten my tongue
out. Why let him even suspect that I was thinking about something that
wasn't tied in with his argument at all, why give him the slightest
hint? The Underground's accident record was good and couldn't have
justified such cynicism on my part. And just suppose he wasn't the
garrulous, middle-aged business man he appeared to be--
A very sinister game can start in just that way, with everything
favoring the alerted party until he lets the other know that he's on
his guard and is having uneasy thoughts. That's where the danger lies,
in a subconscious betrayal, a slip of the tongue that will precipitate
violence faster than it would ordinarily occur.
If a killer feels that he must move swiftly, before suspicion can
become a certainty, the odds shift in his favor. He has the advantage
of surprise. He becomes alerted too, and necessity acts as a goad--a
kind of trigger-mechanism. He'll act more quickly and decisively,
without the careful planning that may prompt him to talk too much and
give himself away.
He'll take risks that are dangerous and could destroy him, strike
with witnesses present and all escape routes blocked. If he has to,
he'll strike even in a crowded Underground train with the next station
minutes away. And that kind of audacity sometimes pays off.
I told myself that I was imagining things, jumping to a completely
unwarranted conclusion. The conversation of the man next to me was
exactly what you'd expect from a magpie. He was carefully sidestepping
all realistic appraisals of the Underground's shortcomings, trying his
best to look at the problem from all sides, even if it meant being
shallow and over-optimistic. He was the citizen with a smiling face,
the rather likeable guy--why should one hold it against him?--who was
trying his best to be fair to everybody, even if he had to burst a
blood-vessel doing it.
Realizing all that made me feel less tense and part of the nightmare
feeling I'd been experiencing went away. But not quite all of it and
when the train passed into an unlighted tunnel and the aisle went dark
apprehension began to mount in me again.
What if he was putting on an act, and wasn't the kind of man he
appeared to be at all? What does a killer look like? Certainly age had
nothing to do with it. He can be young or old--eighteen or seventy-five.