"Well, so long, mate," he grunted, and spun around and dug his toes
in the sand and was away. I stood there staring at his rapidly
disappearing form for a few moments and then looked back once more at
the house. A tattered cotton curtain was just swinging to in the dirty,
sand-blown window. That seemed to mean the woman had been watching. I
sighed, shrugged again and went away myself.
When I got back to Security Headquarters, I went to the file and began
to rifle through pictures. I didn't find the woman, but I did find the
man.
He was a killer named Harry Smythe.
I took the picture into the Chief's office and laid it on his desk,
waited for him to look down at it and study it for an instant, and then
to look back up to me. Which he did.
"So?" he said.
"Wanted, isn't he?"
He nodded. "But a lot of good that'll do. He's holed up somewhere back
on Earth."
"No," I said. "He's right here. I just saw him."
"_What?_" He nearly leaped out of his chair.
"I didn't know who he was at first," I said. "It wasn't until I looked
in the files--"
He cut me off. His hand darted into his desk drawer and pulled out an
Authority Card. He shoved the card at me. He growled: "Kill or capture,
I'm not especially fussy which. Just _get_ him!"
I nodded and took the card. As I left the office, I was thinking of
something which struck me as somewhat more than odd.
I had idly listened to a little half-breed Martian boy whistling part
of the William Tell Overture, and it had led me to a wanted killer
named Harry Smythe.
* * * * *
Understandably, Mr. Smythe did not produce himself on a silver platter.
I spent the remainder of the afternoon trying to get a lead on him and
got nowhere. If he was hiding in any of the places I went to, then he
was doing it with mirrors, for on Mars an Authority Card is the big
stick than which there is no bigger. Not solely is it a warrant, it is
a commandeer of help from anyone to whom it is presented; and wherever
I showed it I got respect.
I got instant attention. I got even more: those wraithlike tremblings
in the darker corners of saloons, those corners where light never seems
quite to penetrate. You don't look into those. Not if you're anything
more than a ghoul, you don't.
Not finding him wasn't especially alarming. What was alarming, though,
was not finding the Earthwoman and her little half-breed Martian son
when I went back to the tumbledown shack where they lived. It was
empty. She had moved fast. She hadn't even left me a note saying
good-by.
That night I went into the Great Northern desert to the Haremheb
Reservation, where the Martians still try to act like Martians.
It was Festival night, and when I got there they were doing the dance
to the two moons. At times like this you want to leave the Martians
alone. With that thought in mind, I pinned my Authority Card to my
lapel directly above my badge, and went through the gates.
The huge circle fire was burning and the dance was in progress.
Briefly, this can be described as something like the ceremonial dances
put on centuries ago by the ancient aborigines of North America. There
was one important exception, however. Instead of a central fire, the
Martians dig a huge circular trench and fill it with dried roots of the
_belu_ tree and set fire to it. Being pitch-like, the gnarled fragments
burn for hours. Inside this ring sit the spectators, and in the exact
center are the dancers. For music, they use the drums.
The dancers were both men and women and they were as naked as Martians
can get, but their dance was a thing of grace and loveliness. For an
instant--before anyone observed me--I stood motionless and watched
the sinuously undulating movements, and I thought, as I have often
thought before, that this is the one thing the Martians can still do
beautifully. Which, in a sad sort of way, is a commentary on the way
things have gone since the first rocket-blasting ship set down on these
purple sands.
I felt the knife dig my spine. Carefully I turned around and pointed my
index finger to my badge and card. Bared teeth glittered at me in the
flickering light, and then the knife disappeared as quickly as it had
come.
"Wahanhk," I said. "The Chief. Take me to him."
The Martian turned, went away from the half-light of the circle. He led
me some yards off to the north to a swooping-tent. Then he stopped,
pointed.
"Wahanhk," he said.