The prisoner-escapees, what was left of them, were an unpleasant
sight. Explosive decompression in airless space does curious things to
men's bodies. Blood boils in the veins and flesh bursts from internal
pressures. Also, there are heat-cold curiosities, with half a body
burnt raw on the sunward side, and the rest frozen iron-hard with a
lacy overlay of snowflake patterns in red.
Holden was still alive, by a miracle. Forward compartments had held
together when the makeshift spacer blew its flimsy self inside out. He
was alive but not talking. They brought the bulging mass of pulped,
purple flesh back to Mars and dumped it in a basket. There was no face,
no eyes, no recognizable hands or feet. For the time that remained to
him, Holden would be less than a functioning animal, fed by tube, cared
for by people he could not see or hear, living a precarious existence
on the raw, black fringe of life. Holden was through talking. And for
any practical purpose, through living.
"Too bad," said Grannar, looking into the basket. "He could have told
us about a lot of things ... if he'd wanted to."
"Holden was a nice guy before he knew Bart Roper," Torry snapped
angrily.
"You sound pretty bitter about Roper."
"I should be. I know him better than you do. I am bitter about Roper."
"Because of Holden?" pressed Grannar.
"Not ... Holden. But it might as easily have been me in that basket.
Six years ago I was Roper's partner. I got out quickly when I found out
some of his business methods. And I had very little he could steal from
me then. A lot of people have a variety of good reasons to hate Roper.
Just say that I'm one of them."
Grannar whistled a Martian tune. The sound was shrill and eery in the
thin air.
"You may as well ride back to the city in the police car with me," he
suggested. "We can talk--"
"Talk!" blurted Torry. He swore savagely. "All this ugly business
for nothing. You haven't found Roper yet. You don't even know if he
made good his escape from your prison moon. In short, you don't know
anything."
"True, up to a point," agreed the policeman quietly. "There are always
many things I don't know. So I concentrate on the few things I do
know. For example, you're very much interested in finding Roper. I'm
wondering why. You can tell me about that on our way back to the city.
About Roper himself, I know a few minor facts. Nobody has ever escaped
from Phobos, the prison moon, but Roper may have managed it. With
outside help, he got materials and fittings smuggled in to construct
a scratch spacer. It blew up, as we know, but Roper may have expected
that. In a good spacesuit, he could have survived. Since we still
haven't found him, dead or alive, he's probably circling somewhere in a
private orbit, waiting to be picked up."
"It could be a long wait. One man is hard to find in all that space."
"Not necessarily. A code transmitter powered by transuranic alloys
would keep sending indefinitely. And Roper could have agreed upon being
picked up at some point of a fixed orbit by his outside friends. We'll
find him, I think. In the meantime, we have you ... and some questions.
Wait in my car. I'll be with you as soon as I thumbprint some papers."
* * * * *
Torry stumbled across the barren sand wastes of the spaceport, pitted
or glazed here and there by old take-off blasts. Without trouble he
located the half track vehicle bearing police insignia. He got in
and settled himself sourly to await Grannar's probing third degree.
He meditated grimly on Roper, himself, and his reasons for coming to
Mars....
Had it only been last night he arrived? It seemed eternities ago.
Coming in from Earth by short orbit express, green with deceleration
sickness, he had wondered why he was in such a rush. After four years
a cold trail would not get any colder. It had not, of course. It was
hot when he arrived and had been getting hotter by the minute. Only the
fact of being aboard the express at the time of the prison break had
cleared him in Grannar's eyes of being involved physically. And even
that alibi did not erase suspicion from Grannar's suspicious nature.
Grannar was shrewd and deadly, a born hunter of men. Since the Martians
never trust each other, most of the policing is done by hirelings from
other planets. Grannar was an Earthman originally. But he was a long
way from home, and twenty years on Mars had made him more Martian than
the natives. He was hard, smart, dangerous, and a tough man to fool.
Torry had learned that at once last night.
But Grannar's return to the police car cut short his reverie. Torry
watched the official cross the spaceport toward him, impressed by
the lithe grace and sureness of movement over treacherous sand. Mars
does something to a man who stays there. The body dries up and the
soul withers, but if he survives, a man grows into something lean and
leathery with pantherish strength and easy, poised motions.
Grannar vaulted to the driver's seat and slammed on power. With a skirl
of steering runners, the half track took off toward the bubble city of
New Chicago, named without tenderness by some long forgotten exile.
Grannar drove with careless violence, but the half track skimmer shot
among the dunes and low, lichen-clad hills without incident.
There is no truth to the charge that it takes as long to get from the
spaceport to New Chicago as it does to reach Mars from Earth. But the
distance is impressive and the going rough. Grannar talked as he drove,
seeming casual, but his questioning had the same icy skill and unerring
judgment.
"We'll start at the beginning," he said.
"There is no beginning," Torry jerked out angrily. "I got in last
night. Fresh from the spaceport and customs, I put a coin in the public
visiphone and asked Central Information about Roper. Central had no
information and returned my coin. It was a police trap. Your men picked
me up, searched me with a Geiger counter and found the coin. You keep
faintly radioactive coins in the visiphone machines for Central to
return when someone is curious about police business. It came out even.
You found out I was curious about Roper, and I found out he is police
business, and his case is current. Do you think I'd be fool enough to
call such attention to myself if I knew about Roper's prison break?"
"You might be. And it might be smart. That way you'd find out what the
police knew and what they were doing. And it could be an alibi in case
the breakout was delayed. We'll skip those possibilities for now. You
were mulish last night about certain questions. I'm still not clear
about why you are so desperate to find Roper. Why?"
Torry smiled coldly. "That's easy. I have to find him for a legal
release. Preferably dead, which will make things easier for everybody.
But if he's alive, I want his signature and prints on some papers."
"Why? What papers?"
Torry hesitated. "It's a touchy subject. A personal matter. Nothing to
do with the police."
"I'll be the judge of that. Keep talking."
"Have you ever spent five years on an asteroid all by yourself?"
Grannar grunted. "Fortunately not. Twenty years on Mars is bad enough
for me. Have you?"
Torry's face twisted in bitterness. "I have. I cracked up my one-man
spacecan while prospecting in the asteroids. I was there five years
until a survey ship happened by. There were minerals, low grade
transuranics, but good enough to work when you had nothing else to do.
I worked out the whole asteroid and had a good payload for the survey
ship when it brought me back. Not a big fortune, but a stake that
looked pretty good to me. I'm not rich now, but I can get along without
skipping meals."
"What's the connection with Roper?"
"None in that part of it. I went prospecting after I'd dissolved my
partnership with Roper. Times were bad, and I couldn't tie up with a
decent job. There was a girl--"
"There usually is. Who was she?"
"Rose Mead, then. She promised to wait for me. She didn't. She's
Roper's wife now. Not that I blame her too much. A year can be a long
time, and five years is longer when you're a castaway on a small
asteroid. Nothing to look at but a skyful of stars. Nothing to breathe
but hydroponic-cycle air. No food but your homemade synthetics and
the green stuff you grow in your chemical vats. You work and eat and
sleep, and any idea can become an obsession. Sometimes it's one woman,
sometimes an imaginary harem. I had a 3-d picture of Rose. It helped to
hold me together, or maybe it just channeled an idea that was bound to
go haywire."
"You're beginning to make sense," commented Grannar. "So you have an
obsession about Roper's wife?"
"I call it that. But I figure that all my money is not worth much if
it won't buy just one thing I've dreamed about for five long years.
There's a technicality about divorcing a man who's away from Earth, in
space. Rose is funny about it. But she's agreed that her marriage was
a mistake. She'll marry me if I can prove Roper is dead, or can get a
release from him."
"Is the girl worth all this trouble?"
* * * * *
Torry grinned cynically. "Probably not. But Rose is a good, sound,
practical minded girl. Maybe my money looks good to her. Roper left her
four years ago with hardly any resources. For myself, after five years
of dream stuff, a solid human girl like Rose looks pretty good. Dream
stuff looks fragile, but it's mighty tough eating for a daily diet."
"So you want to find Roper. Preferably dead, you say. Does that include
pushing him off a cliff if you find him?"