"Calling you. Calling you," came the sweetish feminine sing-song from
the talk-see on the desk. The button blinked red but the screen didn't
come on. Len pushed the lever, but the screen stayed black. Scat smiled
thinly.
"Jonas Scatterday and Len Cutt," came a slow, deep whisper from the
black screen. "This is the voice of the Mystic X. Bronsco will not
tolerate bug-lovers. We are, however, giving you one chance; get out
now and take your bugs with you, and you won't be harmed."
Len joggled the lever futilely. "Blacked out their end," he surmised.
"Halloween stunts. I got a mind to put _The Ghoul Laughs_ in the
projector and play it back at them."
But he didn't look quite as amused as he sounded.
The button went black, and Len stood there, remembering things. "It was
Mystic X who blew up the Martian Clinic the _Free Martian_ started
in Scarnston."
"Right," said Scat. "Let's get some sleep."
* * * * *
Toward morning he awoke with a start. He groped out and found the
switch, but the lights didn't come on; the darkness was absolute. While
he slept, the glastic had somehow been rendered opaque.
As he lay there, he heard the unmistakable click of pinchers from the
transmission room and the faint moan of the beam. He realized then what
must have happened. Lighting power was local--in conformity with some
Bronsco ordinance. So they'd been able to cut it off. But beam power
was regional--and they weren't tampering with that yet. Click-Click had
taken in the situation and had decided not to wake him or Len while he
and his pals got out the morning edition. Human beings couldn't operate
very effectively until the lighting system had been jury-rigged on beam
power.
The busy clicking continued. Scat smiled. Martian perception was
independent of light; Click-Click must be getting a kick out of this.
Still, he'd better get up. He'd dreamed some improvements in the
editorial. Probably gone out already, but they could always back-tape
and dub in the changes.
In the morning he and Len strolled out in front. Every square inch of
glastic was covered with black paint, still sticky and glistening from
the spray guns.
"Kinda like the new color," remarked Len, loudly for the benefit of
some passers-by. "Black for Free Martia!"
Scat sent him out to try and buy some food and rent sleeping quarters
in the Bronsco Recreational Center, which occupied the Number Two
skylon. Just for the sake of the record. Len would discover that the
hostelry was full up and that, by some strange mischance, there didn't
happen to be any food in Bronsco today.
A chalked sign--_Kill the Bugs_--came coasting by on the
slidewalk. Scat put down his foot in front of it and let the slidewalk
do the erasing.
Back in the transmission room he discovered that Click-Click's three
companions had increased to five during the night.
"Passengers for the Underground Skyway?" asked Scat. And this time he
just thought the question.
Click-Click coded an affirmative. "From Ten Mile. They guessed we must
be in the neighborhood from the Martian Tape we're running in the
_Newsbeam_. All the Martians out at Ten Mile are picking up the
Tape--beam-perception or the good old telepathic grapevine. They're
crazy about it; it's the first entertainment they've had in months."
The Martian Tape was one of the trickiest things that Scat handled.
Any hint of agitation or even of attempted enlightenment among
owned Martians was strictly forbidden--that was one point where the
government would crack down fast. Hence the Martian Tape, adapted to
beam-perception, had to be, and was, purely recreational--devoted to
vastly complex brain-teasers in solid geometry and other mental sports
dear to Martians.
Click-Click continued, "These two somehow managed to slip past the bug
guard; they're begging me to send them to the Reservation."
3
The Martian Reservation had been established in Antarctica by an
administration noted for its uneasy and fluctuating liberalism--much
like the present one. The Reservation had been a bone of contention
ever since. On it, Martians were to all intents free from human
supervision. Although conditions were none too good, and food supply
was always a critical problem, it served as a beacon of hope to
enslaved Martia. It was largely because of the existence of the
Reservation that border patrols, ground and sky, local and regional,
had been made almost fantastically heavy.
"You've told them the dangers?" asked Scat.
"They still want to go."
"Okay then; get the cans ready. And for cripes sake keep them in the
icebox until!"
There were a half dozen pallid, flat-chested youths waiting in the
outer office. They acted nervous, and whenever the slidewalk in front
creaked with the weight of a passer-by, they'd all look around quickly
and then remember that you couldn't see through the glastic any more.
When no footsteps came, they'd relax a little.