Joseph Heidel looked slowly around the dinner table at the five men,
hiding his examination by a thin screen of smoke from his cigar. He was
a large man with thick blond-gray hair cut close to his head. In three
more months he would be fifty-two, but his face and body had the vital
look of a man fifteen years younger. He was the President of the
Superior Council, and he had been in that post--the highest post on the
occupied planet of Mars--four of the six years he had lived here. As his
eyes flicked from one face to another his fingers unconsciously tapped
the table, making a sound like a miniature drum roll.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Five top officials, selected, tested,
screened on Earth to form the nucleus of governmental rule on Mars.
Heidel's bright narrow eyes flicked, his fingers drummed. Which one? Who
was the imposter, the ringer? Who was the Martian?
Sadler's dry voice cut through the silence: "This is not just an
ordinary meeting then, Mr. President?"
Heidel's cigar came up and was clamped between his teeth. He stared into
Sadler's eyes. "No, Sadler, it isn't. This is a very special meeting."
He grinned around the cigar. "This is where we take the clothes off the
sheep and find the wolf."
Heidel watched the five faces. Sadler, Meehan, Locke, Forbes, Clarke.
One of them. Which one?
"I'm a little thick tonight," said Harry Locke. "I didn't follow what
you meant."
"No, no, of course not," Heidel said, still grinning. "I'll explain it."
He could feel himself alive at that moment, every nerve singing, every
muscle toned. His brain was quick and his tongue rolled the words out
smoothly. This was the kind of situation Heidel handled best. A tense,
dramatic situation, full of atmosphere and suspense.
"Here it is," Heidel continued, "simply and briefly." He touched the
cigar against an ash tray, watching with slitted shining eyes while the
ashes spilled away from the glowing tip. He bent forward suddenly. "We
have an imposter among us, gentlemen. A spy."
He waited, holding himself tense against the table, letting the sting of
his words have their effect. Then he leaned back, carefully. "And
tonight I am going to expose this imposter. Right here, at this table."
He searched the faces again, looking for a tell-tale twitch of a muscle,
a movement of a hand, a shading in the look of an eye.
There were only Sadler, Meehan, Locke, Forbes, Clarke, looking like
themselves, quizzical, polite, respecting.
"One of us, you say," Clarke said noncommittally, his phrase neither a
question nor a positive statement.
"That is true," said Heidel.
"Bit of a situation at that," said Forbes, letting a faint smile touch
his lips.
"Understatement, Forbes," Heidel said. "Understatement."
"Didn't mean to sound capricious," Forbes said, his smile gone.
"Of course not," Heidel said.
Edward Clarke cleared his throat. "May I ask, sir, how this was
discovered and how it was narrowed down to the Superior Council?"
"Surely," Heidel said crisply. "No need to go into the troubles we've
been having. You know all about that. But how these troubles originated
is the important thing. Do you remember the missionary affair?"
"When we were going to convert the Eastern industrial section?"
"That's right," Heidel said, remembering. "Horrible massacre."
"Bloody," agreed John Meehan.
"Sixty-seven missionaries lost," Heidel said.
"I remember the Martian note of apology," Forbes said. "'We have
worshipped our own God for two-hundred thousand years. We would prefer
to continue. Thank you.' Blinking nerve, eh?"
"Neither here nor there," Heidel said abruptly. "The point is that no
one _knew_ those sixty-seven men were missionaries except myself and you
five men."
* * * * *
Heidel watched the faces in front of him. "One case," he said. "Here's
another. Do you recall when we outlawed the free selection system?"
"Another bloody one," said Sadler.
"Forty-eight victims in that case," Heidel said. "Forty-eight honorable
colonists, sanctioned by us to legally marry any couple on the planet,
and sent out over the country to abolish the horrible free-love
situation."
"Forty-eight justices of the peace dead as pickerels," Forbes said.
"Do you happen to remember _that_ note of apology?" Heidel asked, a
slight edge in his voice. He examined Forbes' eyes.
"Matter of fact, yes," said Forbes, returning Heidel's stare steadily.
"'You love your way, we'll love ours.' Terribly caustic, what?"
"Terribly," said Heidel. "Although that too is neither here nor there.
The point again, no one except the six of us right here knew what those
forty-eight men were sent out to do."
Heidel straightened in his chair. The slow grating voice of Forbes had
taken some of the sharpness out of the situation. He wanted to hold
their attention minutely, so that when he was ready, the dramatics of
his action would be tense and telling.
"There is no use," he said, "in going into the details of the other
incidents. You remember them. When we tried to install a free press, the
Sensible Art galleries, I-Am-A-Martian Day, wrestling, and all the
rest."
"I remember the wrestling business awfully well," said Forbes. "Martians
drove a wrestler through the street in a yellow jetmobile. Had flowers
around his neck and a crown on his head. He was dead, of course.
Stuffed, I think...."
"All right," snapped Heidel. "Each one of our efforts to offer these
people a chance to benefit from our culture was snapped off at the bud.
And only a leak in the Superior Council could have caused it. It is a
simple matter of deduction. There is one of us, here tonight, who is
responsible. And I am going to expose him." Heidel's voice was a low
vibrant sound that echoed in the large dining room.
The five men waited. Forbes, his long arms crossed. Sadler, his eyes on
his fingernails. Meehan, blinking placidly. Clarke, twirling his thumbs.
Locke, examining his cigarette.
"Kessit!" Heidel called.
A gray-haired man in a black butler's coat appeared.
"We'll have our wine now," Heidel said. There was a slight quirk in his
mouth, so that his teeth showed between his lips. The butler moved
methodically from place to place, pouring wine from a silver decanter.
"Now then, Kessit," Heidel said, when the butler had finished, "would
you be kind enough to fetch me that little pistol from the mantel over
there?" He smiled outwardly this time. The situation was right again; he
was handling things, inch by inch, without interruption.
He took the gun from the old man's hands. "One thing more, Kessit. Would
you please light the candles on the table and turn out the rest of the
lights in the room. I've always been a romanticist," Heidel said,
smiling around the table. "Candlelight with my wine."
"Oh, excellent," said Locke soberly.
"Quite," said Forbes.
Heidel nodded and waited while the butler lit the candles and snapped
off the overhead lights. The yellow flames wavered on the table as the
door closed gently behind the butler.
"Now, then," Heidel said, feeling the tingling in his nerves. "This,
gentlemen, is a replica of an antique of the twentieth century. A
working replica, I might add. It was called a P-38, if my memory serves
me." He held the pistol up so that the candlelight reflected against the
glistening black handle and the blue barrel.
There was a polite murmur as the five men stretched forward to look at
the gun in Heidel's hands.
"Crude," Sadler said.
"But devilish-looking," Forbes added.
"My hobby," Heidel said. "I would like to add that not only do I collect
these small arms, but I am very adept at using them. Something I will
demonstrate to you very shortly," he added, grinning.
"Say now," nodded Meehan.
"That should be jolly," Forbes said, laughing courteously.
"I believe it will at that," Heidel said. "Now if you will notice,
gentlemen," he said touching the clip ejector of the pistol and watching
the black magazine slip out into his other hand. "I have but five
cartridges in the clip. Just five. You see?"
They all bent forward, blinking.
"Good," said Heidel, shoving the clip back into the grip of the gun. He
couldn't keep his lips from curling in his excitement, but his hands
were as steady as though his nerves had turned to ice.
The five men leaned back in their chairs.
"Now then, Meehan," he said to the man at the opposite end of the table.
"Would you mind moving over to your left, so that the end of the table
is clear?"
"Oh?" said Meehan. "Yes, of course." He grinned at the others, and there
was a ripple of amusement as Meehan slid his chair to the left.
"Yes," said Heidel. "All pretty foolish-looking, perhaps. But it won't
be in a few minutes when I discover the bastard of a Martian who's in
this group, I'll tell you that!" His voice rose and rang in the room,
and he brought the glistening pistol down with a crack against the
table.
* * * * *
There was dead silence and Heidel found his smile again. "All right, now
I'll explain a bit further. Before Dr. Kingly, the head of our
laboratory, died a few days ago, he made a very peculiar discovery. As
you know, there has been no evidence to indicate that the Martian is any
different, physically, from the Earthman. Not until Dr. Kingly made his
discovery, that is."
Heidel looked from face to face. "This is how it happened," he went on.
"Dr. Kingly ..."
He paused and glanced about in false surprise. "I beg your pardon,
gentlemen. We might as well be enjoying our wine. Excellent port. Very
old, I believe. Shall we?" he asked, raising his glass.
Five other glasses shimmered in the candlelight.
"Let us, ah, toast success to the unveiling of the rotten Martian who
sits among us, shall we?" Heidel's smile glinted and he drank a quarter
of his glass.
The five glasses tipped and were returned to the table. Again there was
silence as the men waited.
"To get back," Heidel said, listening with excitement to his own voice.
"Dr. Kingly, in the process of an autopsy on a derelict Martian, made a
rather startling discovery ..."
"I beg your pardon," Forbes said. "Did you say autopsy?"
"Yes," said Heidel. "We've done this frequently. Not according to base
orders, you understand." He winked. "But a little infraction now and
then is necessary."
"I see," said Forbes. "I just didn't know about that."
"No, you didn't, did you?" said Heidel, looking at Forbes closely. "At
any rate, Dr. Kingly had developed in his work a preserving solution
which he used in such instances, thereby prolonging the time for
examination of the cadaver, without experiencing deterioration of the
tissues. This solution was merely injected into the blood stream,
and ..."
"Sorry again, sir," Forbes said. "But you said blood stream?"
"Yes," Heidel nodded. "This had to be done before the cadaver was a
cadaver, you see?"
"I think so, yes," said Forbes, leaning back again. "Murdered the
bastard for an autopsy, what?"