sealed envelope on him and when I tore it open there was a card in
it. It wasn't a Board clearance card. It was a Wendel Atomics private
police card and it identified him as the kind of secret agent you'd
trade in for a snake if you _had_ to have something poisonous on
board and were given a free choice in the matter. The Wendel police
are little better than hired killers--although perhaps a few of them
are generous-minded enough to feel that when you've beaten a man
insensible it's going a little too far to put a bullet in him as well.
And the Wendel secret agents are the worst sadists of the lot. They're
hand-picked for shrewdness and when you get intelligence along with
brutality there's no refinement of cruelty that won't be resorted to
when the going gets rough."
"Good God!" I said. "So that's why--No ... no. It doesn't quite explain
why just the sight of Helen Barclay emerging from the robot enraged him
the way it did. Just the fact that there was a woman stowaway on Board
shouldn't have angered him at all. It wasn't his headache, because
he was merely masquerading as a crewman. Even a man who felt some
responsibility in the matter would have only been a little angered."
Littlefield nodded. "Don't think that hasn't occurred to me. If he'd
never set eyes on her before, or had no idea who she was ... it's hard
to see why he should have become enraged, as you say. That's why I've
gone to such lengths to make sure she was telling us the full truth
when she explained why getting to Mars was so important to her."
He didn't have to read from the paper he was still holding to help
me recall in detail everything she'd said during that part of the
question-and-answer session. It had made too deep an impression on
me. It had also struck a vital nerve, because it was tied in with my
assignment. Not directly, because I could have completed my big job
without so much as talking to her again. But she was going to Mars
because of something that Wendel Atomics had done.
Wendel Atomics was the exposed nerve, because anything that had to do
with the Martian power combines was of vital interest to me, if only on
the general information level.
In her case it was a personal matter, just between Wendel and herself.
A very small matter to Wendel but overwhelmingly important to her.
Her brother, an electronic engineer, was dying by inches in a Wendel
laboratory. Slow, radio-active poisoning meant very little to Wendel
Atomics apparently, when just one small human cog was afflicted with it
and they still needed his services.
So she had used her own knowledge of electronics and a very great
resourcefulness and a high I.Q. to stow away in a cybernetic robot and
was on her way to Mars to see what a woman of courage, entirely alone,
could do to save the life of the only brother she had.
She had tried to get a clearance from the Board and failed and that
explained how she happened to be in the New Chicago spaceport bar when
my own life had been in even more immediate danger ... because slow,
radio-active poisoning takes a long time to kill and if you can stop it
in time there's always a chance that the victim will recover.
"I've been checking up ever since you left," Littlefield was saying.
"I managed to get through to Earth on the needle frequencies and
Trilling knows now that you showed me the silver bird. The code
I used to tell him that was too complicated to be broken by the
big-brained inhabitants of Alpha Centauri's third planet, if--as seems
unlikely--such a planet exists."
"And you didn't even tell me," I said. "I suppose I should be burned up
about it."
"No, you shouldn't be. I just saved you a lot of unnecessary
explaining. You can talk to Trilling all you want to from here on in,
but I've cushioned the shock for you, taken a little of the edge off
the way he seemed to feel for a minute or two."
"Well ... all right," I said. "Just what did you tell him."
"I asked him to do what he could to confirm her story. So far
everything she told us seems to check out. Of course, they haven't been
able to turn up too much, and she could still be lying. But we may get
more on it later on. Don't count on it, though. I may not even be able
to contact Trilling again. The needle frequencies are as unreliable as
hell, as you know."
"But you just said I could talk to Trilling myself--"
"If we're lucky. You can't express yourself with precision when you're
as troubled as I am right now."
I was troubled too ... perhaps more than he was. But just trying to
make that concern dwindle a little by turning all the knobs on and off
kept me from thinking about it.
"Well ... he could have recognized her," I said. "There could have
been a link there, since he was a Wendel secret agent and her brother
works for Wendel. Maybe they sent him her brother's photograph over the
needle frequencies and said: 'Look around for a girl who resembles this
man and keep an eye on her. She's one little girl we're worried about."
"Oh, sure, that could be it."
"It wouldn't sound quite so ludicrous, Commander, if it was her
photograph they managed somehow to send him. Maybe they secured one
from her brother without his knowing about it. But still--it wouldn't
make much sense. Why should they fear her enough to put a secret agent
on her trail? One helpless woman forty million miles from Mars. He
couldn't have known she'd smuggle herself on board the rocket in a
cybernetic robot ... because his rage when he discovered her precluded
that. And why would he make the trip if he was out to get her and, for
all he knew to the contrary, she was still somewhere in New Chicago?"
"If he was trailing her he could have suspected she might be on board
and may have been searching everywhere for her," Littlefield pointed
out. "That would even explain his rage when he finally got his hands
on her, if we remember the kind of sadistic human animal he was.
Frustration alone could produce a rage as violent as that in a Wendel
agent--days and nights of fruitless searching. But ... I agree with you
that it doesn't make sense otherwise. The stumbling block, as you say,
is the difficulty in imagining how Wendel Atomics could possibly regard
her as that serious a menace. Or fear her at all, for that matter."
That was as far as we got. The officer-section communication
instrument on Littlefield's desk started buzzing and he swung about to
pick it up, with an almost joyful eagerness.
I was sure that at any other time he'd have accepted that call with
no visible display of emotion, just as a routine necessity. But when
you've reached a stone wall in a discussion of vital importance and the
odds against your making any further progress seem insurmountable, for
the moment at least, practically any interruption will be as welcome as
sunlight after a drenching rain or a peasoup fog. It's certainly better
than beating your head against stone.
He listened for perhaps ten seconds with the instrument pressed to his
ear, with no pronounced change of expression. Then his face blanched
and a look of horror came into his eyes.
He slammed the instrument down and headed for the door on the run,
completely unmindful of his dignity. Then he seemed to remember that he
owed me an explanation--a man of principle will usually take a second
or two out for that even when his home is in flames--and turned a yard
from the door to shout at me.
"Someone got the nose-cone panel open, climbed outside and is crawling
along the airframe toward the jet section! He's wearing magnetic boots
and if I'm not mistaken he's equipped with everything he needs to blow
the rocket apart."
When he saw the look on my face he added reassuringly. "We've still got
a good chance of stopping him in time, because he just climbed out.
But we'll have to bring most of the airframe into sharp focus on the
viewplate, and pinpoint his every movement."
It came as such a shock to me that I felt I had a good chance of
suffocating, just from the way my throat tightened up and my heart
started pumping blood at twice its usual rate.
I'm not quite sure how I managed to follow him at a distance of not
more than fifteen feet, down three intership ladders and along four
branching passageways, without once stopping to get my breath back. I
doubt if I could have done that anyway.
Right foot, then left, right left, right left, Ralphie boy, and don't
give up the ship. Never give up the ship when there's a chance to save
it. There's nothing painful about being vaporized in space. Remember
that, keep it firmly in mind. Nothing painful, nothing sad ... just a
quick end to all you've had.
I don't know why I thought the Chart Room looked deserted, like
a big, unoccupied mausoleum with tiers for coffins--dozens of
coffins--running up both of its sides. No coffins yet, just the empty
shelves, for burial time had not yet arrived. But how could the Chart
Room have looked deserted, when it wasn't at all?
There were a dozen officers standing in front of the big lighted screen
and when we crossed the room to join them without announcing our
arrival--well, that made fourteen.
I can't even explain how I got the idea there was a chill in the air
that seemed to wrap itself around me in moist, clinging folds, because
no section of the sky ship was more comfortably heated.
I didn't spend more than a minute or two trying to puzzle it out,
because the "furious sick shapes of nightmare," to quote from a poem
I wasn't sure I'd ever read, only disturb you when you give them more
encouragement than they're entitled to.
The only really important thing was that we could see him in bent
light on the big screen--a tiny, spacesuited figure climbing along the
airframe, laden down with something cumbersome that he kept pushing
before him in a completely weightless way as he inched further and
further toward the rocket's stern.
All at once, I knew what was going to happen to him. I was as sure of
it as I am that I have two big toes that point a little inward and that
Joan sometimes tenderly jokes about.
Between Earth and Mars space isn't empty. It hasn't been empty for more
than half a century, which is a pretty good record on the survival
scale for man-made, mechanical implants. The early Sputniks didn't last
one-tenth as long.
I knew without waiting for Commander Littlefield to finish what he
was saying to one of the officers and issue a command that the needle
frequencies scattered throughout the void on all sides of us were the
only composite weapon we could count on to save the sky ship and all
the people between its decks who didn't want to be vaporized. And that
took in practically everyone on board.
Sure, I know. Everyone had thought that the millions of filament-thin
wires which had been put into orbit around Earth in the seventh and
eighth decades of the twentieth century and later into orbit around
Mars and far out into interstellar space would only be used for
purposes of communication. Project Needles, or, if you want to be
strictly technical, Project West Ford.
God grant that they may some day be used in no other way. But when a
man climbs out on the airframe of a sky ship, for the sole purpose of
blowing it up----
There is only one way I can do justice to the speed with which it
happened and the awful, mind-numbing finality of it. It is not
something which should be recorded in a paragraph, a page, but in two
sentences at most.
Commander Littlefield issued a command, and a light on the instrument
panel blinked, and a million magnetized filaments converged, united and
so united, converged again on the airframe of the sky ship. There was a
blinding flash of light and the tiny human figure was gone.
The first words Commander Littlefield spoke, after that, were to me.
"Whoever he was, he must have wanted her dead pretty badly ... to have
been willing to blow up the sky ship and kill himself in the process."
There was a strange look on his face and his gray eyes met mine with a
question in them.
Then he spoke the question aloud. "Or was it you, Ralph, whom he had in
mind?"
9
The clang of the opening port was still ringing in my ears when I
walked out of the sky ship with Joan on my arm and looked down over the
big metal corkscrew directly beneath me. I knew straight off I'd made
a mistake. I should have looked up at the sky instead. I should have
squared my shoulders, drawn the crisp, tangy air deep into my hangs and
established rapport with Mars more gradually.
A delay of only a moment or two would have spared me the too sudden
shock of finding myself three hundred feet in the air, dazzled by an
unexpected brightness, and supported by nothing I'd have cared to trust
my weight to on Earth.
We were standing on a thin strip of metal, a mere spiderweb tracery,
and if I'd lost my balance and gone crashing through the guard rail
there would have been no mountaineer's rope to save me. What was worse,
I'd have taken Joan with me.
The danger was illusionary, of course ... solely in my mind. The
underwriters go to a great deal of expense and trouble to make sure
there will be no tragic accidents when the big risks have been left
behind in space.
The guard rail was chest-high and sturdy enough, and no one had ever
gone crashing through it. But you can't reason with a feeling, and for
an instant the yawning emptiness beneath me made me feel that I was
already past the rail, twisting and turning, flailing the air in a
three-hundred-foot plunge.
I was sure that Joan was experiencing the same kind of irrational
giddiness, for she drew in her breath sharply and a shiver went
through her. A fear of great heights is one phobia that is shared by
practically everyone.
The big metal corkscrew beneath us was the landing frame into which
the rocket had descended and we were standing high up on that enormous
spiral, which curved down and outward like an immense silvery cocoon.
A figure of speech, sure. But not as wide of the mark as most of the
images that flash across your mind when you're keyed up abnormally and
a lot of new colors, and sights and sounds rush in on you and upset all
of your calculations as to how sober-minded you're going to stay. Your
grasp on reality slips a little, as if you were holding it right before
your eyes like a book, and wearing glasses so strong that the print
blurs. You're in a fantasy world of your own creating, seeing things
that can't be blamed on whoever wrote the book. A fussy, unimaginative
little guy, perhaps, who has spent most of his life within sight of his
own doorstep and has never felt the great winds of space blowing cold
upon him.
There's a big, night-flying Sphinx moth with death-heads on each of its
wings, and there were times when I'd thought of the Mars ship as not so
different from that kind of moth. And now it was as if the sky ship had
turned back into a caterpillar again, and spun a cocoon for itself, and
was quietly reposing in the pupa stage, its rust-red end vanes folded
back, its long length mottled and space-eroded where the atomic jets
had seared it.
There was nothing wrong in giving my imagination carte-blanche to go
into free fall like that, because when you're standing on a dizzy
height staring down at a new world forty million miles from Earth
you've got to let the strangeness and bursting wonder of it ... along
with the dire forebodings ... take firm hold of you. Otherwise you
won't feel yourself to be a part of it, won't be equipped with what it
takes to probe beneath the surface of things in a realistic way and
feel like a native son even in the presence of the unknown.
Three hundred feet below me more activity was taking place than I had
ever seen crowded into an area of equal size on Earth. Just as a guess,
I'd have said that the spaceport's disembarkation section was about six
hundred feet square. But right at that moment I had no real stomach for
guessing games--only a hollowness where my stomach was supposed to be.
Far below the disembarkation section was in high gear, and the clatter
of it, the rushings to and fro, the grinding and screeching of giant
cranes, and atomic tractors, and rising platforms crowded to capacity
with specialized robots, most of them scissor-thin and all of them
operated by remote control ... would have half-deafened me if I'd been
standing a hundred feet lower down.
Even from the top of the spiral the clamor had to be heard to be
believed. But what astounded me most was the newness, brightness,
sharply delineated aspect of everything within range of my vision.
I could see clear to the edge of the spaceport, and the four other
securely-berthed rockets stood out with a startling clarity, their nose
cones gleaming in the bright Martian sunlight. The big lifting cranes
stood out just as sharply, and although the zigzagging tractors looked
like painted toys, red and blue and yellow, I would have sworn under
oath that not one of them cast a shadow.
The twenty-five or thirty human midgets who were moving in all
directions across the field, between machines that seemed too
formidable to be trusted had the brittle, sheen-bright look of figures
cut out of isinglass.
Another illusion, of course. There had to be shadows, because there
was nothing on Mars that could have brought about that big a change in
the laws of optics. But by the same token the length and density of
shadows can be altered a bit by atmospheric conditions, making light
interception turn playful. So I didn't strain my eyes searching for
deep purple halos around the human midges.
My only immediate concern was to reassure Joan in a calm and forceful
way and escort her safely down to ground level, without letting her
suspect that I shared her misgivings as to the stability of the spiral.
It was ridiculous on the face of it. But, as I've said, you can't argue
with a feeling that whispers that your remote, dawn age ancestors must
have felt the same way when they climbed out on a limb overhanging a
precipice, and felt the whole tree begin to sway and shake beneath them.
"Hold tight to the rail and don't look down," I cautioned. "There's
no real danger ... because a first-rate welding job was done on this
structure. Barring an earthquake, it should be just as safe a century
from now."
I shot a quick, concerned glance at her along with the warning. I guess
I must have thought she'd be more shaken than she was, for she smiled
when she saw the look of surprise in my eyes. It took me half a minute
to realize that my guess as to how she'd be taking it hadn't gone so
wide of the mark. Her pallor gave her away.
"A century would be much too long to wait," she breathed. "Another five
minutes would be too long. If it's going to collapse, I'd rather find
out right now."
I nodded and we started down. Several other passengers had emerged from
the port and were looking up at the sky or downward as I'd done. Three
men and a woman had emerged ahead of us and were almost at the base of
the spiral. So far nothing had happened to them.
I've often toyed with the thought that there may be windows in the mind
we can see out of sometimes--at oblique angles and around corners and
without turning our heads. I could visualize the passengers who were
descending behind us more clearly than you usually can in a mind's eye
picture. Each face was in sharp focus and there was no blurring of
their images as they moved. It was as if I was staring straight up at
them through a crystal-clear pane of glass.
In that astonishingly bright inner vision--why look up and back when I
did not doubt its accuracy?--Commander Littlefield was wasting no time
in setting a good example. He'd descended the spiral so many times that
great height meant nothing to him. He'd be ascending and descending at
least ten more times just in the next few hours. But this was his big
moment. I could already picture him striding across the disembarkation
section to the Administration Unit with his shoulders held straight,
and announcing officially, with a ring of pride in his voice, that the
trip had been completed in record time, and the rocket had been berthed
successfully. He was descending now with a confident smile on his lips,
his Mars' legs buoyantly supporting him.
Behind him came the small group who had been closest to us in space.
They were doing their best to stay calm, but there was a slight flicker
of apprehension in their eyes. Our section had been the first to
disembark, because Littlefield had agreed with me that it might have
seemed a little strange if I'd been accorded that privilege and it had
been denied to the others. Why give anyone who might have outwitted
every screening precaution the idea that I might be a man apart, with
so big a job awaiting me on Mars that getting started on it without
delay was damned important to me. It was natural enough for one or two
sections to be cleared fast and emerge with the Commander. But others
would have to await their turn in line and quarantine checkups could
drag along for hours.
"It's funny how long it takes to get even a little lower when you're
this high up," Joan said, her fingers tightening on my arm. "We're not
anything like as high as when we started. But nothing down below looks
any larger."
"We're not a fourth of the way down, and the human eye is a very poor
judge of distances," I said, reassuringly. "It would be better if you
let go of my arm and just kept your right hand on the rail. We sway
more this way."
"When you look down from the observation roof of the North-Western
University Building you can see all of New Chicago, and practically
half of Lake Michigan," she complained breathlessly. "But it never made
me feel as giddy as this."
"You had a firmer support under you," I said. "But not a safer one.
There's no danger at all. You can be absolutely sure of that. What
could happen to us?"
It was one of those silly questions you sometimes ask when you want to
reassure someone you're a little concerned about. But a silly question
can sometimes be answered in a totally unexpected way--suddenly,
terribly and with explosive violence. It can be answered by a voice
of thunder out of the sky, or a wild, savage cry in the night, or in
a quieter way, but with just as terrifying an outcome. There are a
hundred cataclysms of nature which can give the lie to what you thought
was only a silliness.
No matter where you are or how secure you feel, never ask what
could happen in a world where nothing is sure, where no one is ever
completely safe. Death is death. From end to end of his big estate may
be a lifetime's journey for some men. But he can cover the distance
with the speed of light, because Death is one space traveler--the only
one--who knows exactly how to outdistance light.
Even if you're alone in a steel-walled vault it's a dangerous question
to ask. It's ten times as dangerous when you're descending a swaying
metal corkscrew forty million miles from Earth and there may be someone
eighty feet above you who has failed twice as Death's emissary and
would be covered with shame if it happened again.
I felt hardly anything for an instant when the dart sliced deep into
the soft flesh between my shoulder blades. I didn't even know it was
a dart and kept right on walking. It was as if a bee had stung me--a
tired bee who couldn't sting very hard. There was just a little stab of
pain, a burning sensation that lasted less than a second.
I felt it, all right. But it didn't startle me enough to stop me dead
in my tracks. A thing like that seldom does, if you're moving steadily
forward. It takes a second or two after you've felt the pain for the
implications to dawn on you.
When they did the pain was back, and this time it was excruciating.
My whole shoulder was laced with fire, as if a red-hot iron had been
laid against it. If right at that moment I'd smelled an odor of burning
flesh I'd have been sure there could be no other explanation, despite
its transparent absurdity.
Even then I kept right on walking. I staggered a little but I bit
down hard on my underlip to avoid crying out. I didn't want to alarm
Joan until I was sure. It could still have been just a very severe
muscular spasm--the kind of agonizing cramp that can hit you in the leg
sometimes in the middle of the night, so that you awake out of a deep
sleep bathed in cold sweat, and with your teeth chattering.