"I don't know," he told her.
"I ... feel miserable," she sobbed.
"It's a tough load to bear," he said softly, putting a hand on her
shoulder.
"It's unfair," she said shakily. "Look, Jack, I know you too well to
believe that hard exterior. You put that on because you're excessively
soft inside and people can hurt you too easily if you're not careful.
I am like that, but I'm not as soft as you are."
Jack laughed a bit. It was a false laugh, designed to lift her out of
the doldrums.
It failed.
"For eight long years," she said earnestly, "I've taken from Ralph
everything that any woman would find ideal. I've had companionship,
tenderness, love and affection. Complete compatibility. He's met my
every mood. And not only because it will please me for him to mirror my
moods, but because he feels that way too, and his moods change as mine
do. He is absolutely happy to follow or lead me into any change of mood
and we're never far apart. I've been protected and loved by the man I
wanted. That's perfection.
"But for four of those years, I've been unable to reciprocate."
"Now, Jenna, that's not true."
"I love him--even more, now. And I'd do nothing to stand in the way
of his happiness. But Jack, remember I'm Martian and he is denied his
right to command a battle squadron. Because of me. He's stuck in this
noncombat group--because of my heritage. In all that time, he has never
shown it, yet he must know. If anything, he has become more tender,
more protecting, more affectionate. More tolerant. Yet what can I do to
give him release from this? Suicide isn't the proper answer. That would
deprive me of what I want, and his desire is not completely to the
service. But he cannot have his cake and eat it too."
"That's quite a load, Jenna," said Grant tenderly. "I hadn't realized."
"I ignore it, mostly. But there are times when it creeps up and gets
me. I wake at night, thinking deeply. I fret, and go sleepless, wishing
there were a way out."
"I think you've well made up for it."
"No," she said with a shake of his head. "He must feel denied of his
right to honor by his affiliation--made in the face of public objection
to mixed-marriage. I ... am now worse. An enemy alien."
"You are a Terran citizen," stated Grant.
"I have papers to prove it," she said scornfully. "And any doctor that
didn't see the papers but examined me perfunctorily would pronounce
me Martian. Ours will always be--a sterile marriage. It cannot be
otherwise. Yet until this shadow came, we were both happy."
"Poor Jenna," said Grant, putting her head down on his shoulder and
patting the back of it. "And now that the first doubt has crept in,
the rest of Pandora's Troubles all come roaring in through the initial
breach."
"And now this," she sobbed. "Grant, it's worse than torture."
* * * * *
Grant's mind whipped back and forth between several types of torture
he'd heard about and wondered what she meant.
"No amount of torture could pry a secret from you, could it?" she asked.
"I like to think I'm that way," he said.
"You think a lot of me," she said. "Would you talk to save me from
torture?"
A bead of sweat popped out on Jack's forehead as he thought it
over. "That's a double curse," he said grimly. "You'd prefer
torture to misloyalty and I'd be torn between the two because it is
against all natural instincts for a male to harm a female. That's a
forty-thousand-year heritage, Jenna."
"Well," she said, "I'm in that position but I'm without the means to
say the word and relieve his torture."
"And he," said Grant, with feeling, "is pretty much in the same boat."
"Before this all happened there was enough to outweigh any doubt. But
I'm practically accused of treachery."
Grant smiled tolerantly. "Most of that is in your own mind," he said
gently. "You've kept your fears bottled up too long, and they're
fermenting into all sorts of questionings and worries."
"Then I'm not really under suspicion?"
Grant laughed. "My dear, if they're reading your mind without your
will, that's not treachery. Frankly, I've studied the problem myself,
and I know that such is impossible. In no known science has there
ever been a situation where a transmitter can be heard without the
transmitter aware of its output. By 'transmitter' I mean people
talking, men holding radioactives, radio, subradio, light, sound, and
fury. Furthermore, since unwitting aid is ruled out, if such aid is
given, it is given willingly. And that, Jenna, I refuse to believe."
"Truly?" she pleaded.
"I'll stake my life on it," he said. "All the evidence may be damning
but somehow, it's too pat. Coincidence may be a little strained, but
far from improbable in any sense. Fact of the matter is, Jenna, there's
no sense in going out on the Q-T. I'm going out with all recorders open
and working furiously, I'm going to record not only my ideas, but my
transient thoughts and my overt acts. I'll show 'em a bold front. And,
by showing a bold front, I'll win. And if I do not, you'll all know
just what goes on and you'll know how to act on the next one."
Grant laughed and shook the girl gently. He removed a handkerchief from
his breast pocket and dabbed her wet eyes with it, and told her to get
that elfin chin up again.
"Thanks," she whispered, the tears welling up again. "Thanks, Jack ...
for ... faith!"
* * * * *
When the door opened to admit Lindsay, her face was once more composed.
She put down her cigarette and said: "Any ideas, Ralph?"
His worried face grew darker. "It seems to get down to the problem of
defusing a bomb that explodes when you approach it with that intent."
Grant laughed. "As I said before, we can detonate 'em but it's hard on
the personnel."
"Oh, Jack!" cried Jenna.
"Well," he grinned, "it's true. And regardless of whether we lose a few
fellows who'd prefer death anyway, we are most definitely keeping the
production areas uncontaminated. That's something."
Lindsay scowled. "It's not good enough," he said. "A man's life should
be worth more than that."
Grant shook his head. "It's more than mere production, Ralph.
Production means many lives. And is one man's life worth more than many
men's?"
"To me, my life is."
Grant laughed, taking the sting out of his matter-of-fact statement,
"You're selfish."
Lindsay nodded glumly. "I admit it. How're you going to tackle that
one out there?"
"Boldly, brashly, and brazenly. Whatever agency is manipulating these
things will find me slightly different. I hope I'm confusing enough to
make them wonder."
"I wish--" said Lindsay.
"Forget it," said Jack. "I've got to go, and there's little sense in
stewing about it. I'll be back, and then we can handle the rest of
these things with ease. No chin up, fella. You're in the hot spot of
doing a hard job."
"I know," he muttered.
When he looked up, Grant had left.
Lindsay passed his hand over his face with the gesture of a completely
baffled and worn-out man. He looked up at his wife. "Jenna," he
pleaded, "is there--?"
"Don't you trust me, Ralph?"
"My whole being cries out to trust you, Jenna. But there is still
wonder."
"There is nothing I can say that will erase that. Nothing. If I am
actress enough to play treachery, I'm also liar enough to swear a false
oath."
Lindsay nodded.
"Nothing," she repeated dully.
"You think a lot of Grant," he said flatly.
"I've loved them all," she said.
"Grant more than the rest."
"Jack, despite his hard exterior, is an understanding soul."
"That may save him," muttered Lindsay.
"Ralph!"
The jocular voice of Jack Grant broke in: "I'm taking off in the battle
buggy now."
"And then again it may not," said Lindsay harshly.
"I'm not a machine, Ralph. I'm a woman."
"So was Circe!"
"Is that what you think of me?"
The loudspeaker chattered: "This is no road for a human being, folks.
They paved it with rubble, I think. My tools are rattling around like
mad. If any agency is using anything for detection, they're listening
to the rattle of machinery in this battle buggy."
Jenna and Ralph faced the radio panel and both hated it for its flat
tones. But they could not turn it off.
"He'll go like Roberts, like Harris," snarled Lindsay. "Like--Lacy."
"No!"
"We'll see," he said tritely.
* * * * *
Silence fell, and then the voice again: "I'm approaching the thing.
Y'know, it's fearfully quiet out here with the area evacuated and all
machinery stopped. The wall shields make the landscape unreal, like the
ghost-sequence in a horror movie. Terra was never intended to be seen
under a greenish light. You know how people look under mercury vapor
lights? That's how Terra looks, sort of."
"Jenna?"
"Yes Ralph."
"You're not ... you're not--?"
"What can I say?" she pleaded. "I'm only human."
He looked up bitterly. The question was in his eyes. He did not need
to voice it. Jenna knew what he was thinking. And he knew that she
understood, for the hurt was in her eyes.
"Hey!" came Grant's voice. "I've got us a mascot! C'mere, Ears. Nice
fella. 'Tis a woebegone pup, spaniel. Lonely and aching for someone to
scratch his tummy. Up, Ears! You're my good luck! The mutt is sitting
on the seat like he knew what it was all about. A sharp little rascal.
I'll bring him home to you."
Jack drove on, one hand on the wheel and the right hand on the dog's
head, stroking gently. _Who_, he wondered, _would leave a pet in a
contaminated area? Abandoned to something that no dog could possibly
understand._
And he thought, briefly, that he and the dog were in the same boat.
"You can carry my tool bag," he told the pup over the rumble of the
battle buggy.
Jenna and Ralph listened to Grant talking to the dog. The man rattled
on, speaking lightly, caressingly to the animal, and his words were
banal to the tensity in the scanning room.
"I wish I knew," said Lindsay.
"Ralph, stop it!" cried his wife. "Stop playing around the point. If
you think I'm guilty, come out and say so!"
"I'm ... not certain."
"Have you no faith in me?"
"Jenna, I--"
"Folks, I'm stopping the buggy, and Ears and I will go over and see
that thing right now. So far, there's been no mental disturbances,
Jenna. That's the one thing I'm watching for."
Lindsay looked at her.
"I don't feel anything," she said. He wondered, again, and it was in
his face.
Her voice went out, and Grant answered. "If either of us feel
anything--?"
"I'll let you know," she promised.
"Will you?" muttered her husband.
"I will," she blazed at him.
"Lindsay," snapped Grant, "get off of it! Jenna has no more treachery
in her soul than I have, and I know my own heart!"
* * * * *
Ralph Lindsay calmed. Jenna looked at him and knew that the man
outside was a sort of safety valve. Her husband was on the verge of
breakdown, she guessed, and she was in a nervous state herself. The
man out there had been holding the group together for hours, now. What
would happen if he went--?
"No!" she pleaded.
But something inside of her knew that he would go, like the rest.
"No!" she said with a half-scream.
"'No' what?" asked Lindsay.
"Grant mustn't!"
Lindsay looked at her. "Isn't that his job?" he said flatly.
"Yes, but--"
"Perhaps you can fix it," said her husband cynically. She looked at him
in disbelief. Was this the man she loved?
Then he turned the knife in the wound. "Or," he said vindictively, "is
that _your_ job?"
"Lindsay, shut up, you fool!"
Lindsay opened his mouth and then closed it again. "Trouble with you,
Lindsay, is that you've a rankle or two in your system which should
have been burned out a long time ago. You poor fool, don't you know
that every man reaches a crossroad every day? There's not one of us
who mustn't give up something to get something else. That's why we
have asylums--for people who can't make up their minds, or people who
dislike their decisions and try to go back, mentally. The normal man
accepts his decision and uses that as experience in making the next
one, instead of sitting there, spending his life wondering what if
he'd taken the other road. Add up your life, Lindsay, and see whether
the credits are better than the debits. You can't have everything!"
Then the tone of his voice changed.
"I'm leaving the battle buggy now, and Ears and I are approaching the
thing. I have no fear of it, really. I'm ... curious. What makes these
things go off? This, fellers, is a physical phenomenon, developed by
human beings--"
"Martians," corrected Lindsay.
"They're classified as human," snapped Grant. "And a lot of them are
more human than the pure-white Terran. Spinach, I call it. Anyway,
there is a simple explanation for all this and when it is uncovered,
all of your rantings and ravings will go to pieces like a bit of
charred paper. Call it telepathy if you want--I'm not discounting
though I'm skeptical--but I don't feel any warnings yet."
Jenna sat down, closed her eyes, and composed her body into a relaxed
pose. She said nothing. Lindsay noted, and said: "Keep it coming,
Grant."
"Well," said Grant, "we're at the critical hundred feet, Ears and I.
Come here, mutt! That thing is dangerous! Dog doesn't care, folks.
Y'know, there's nothing like having a mutt around to teach you faith.
Jenna?"