Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe January 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.
_Rejuvenation for the millions--or rejuvenation for the five
hundred lucky ones, the select ones, that can be treated
each year? Tough, independent Senator Dan Fowler fights a
one-man battle against the clique that seeks perpetual power
and perpetual youth, in this hard-hitting novel by Alan E.
Nourse. Why did it have to be his personal fight? The others
fumble it--they'd foul it up, Fowler protested? But
why was he in the fight and what was to happen to Senator
Fowler's fight against this fantastic conspiracy? Who would
win?_
martyr
_by ... ALAN E. NOURSE_
"I can break him, split his Criterion Committee wide open
_now_ while there's still a chance, and open rejuvenation up
to everybody...."
* * * * *
Four and one half hours after Martian sunset, the last light in the
Headquarters Building finally blinked out.
Carl Golden stamped his feet nervously against the cold, cupping his
cigarette in his hand to suck up the tiny spark of warmth. The night
air bit his nostrils and made the smoke tasteless in the darkness.
Atmosphere screens kept the oxygen in, all right--but they never kept
the biting cold out. As the light disappeared he dropped the
cigarette, stamping it sharply into darkness. Boredom vanished, and
warm blood prickled through his shivering legs.
He slid back tight against the coarse black building front, peering
across the road in the gloom.
It was the girl. He had thought so, but hadn't been sure. She swung
the heavy stone door shut after her, glanced both left and right, and
started down the frosty road toward the lights of the colony.
Carl Golden waited until she was gone. He glanced at his
wrist-chrono, and waited ten minutes more. He didn't realize that he
was trembling until he ducked swiftly across the road. Through the
window of the low, one-story building he could see the lobby
call-board, with the little colored studs all dark. He smiled in
unpleasant satisfaction--no one was left in the building. It was
routine, just like everything else in this god-forsaken hole. Utter,
abysmal, trancelike routine. The girl was a little later than usual,
probably because of the ship coming in tomorrow. Reports to get ready,
supply requisitions, personnel recommendations--
--and the final reports on Armstrong's death. Mustn't forget that. The
_real_ story, the absolute, factual truth, without any nonsense. The
reports that would go, ultimately, to Rinehart and only Rinehart, as
all other important reports from the Mars Colony had been doing for so
many years.
Carl skirted the long, low building, falling into the black shadows of
the side wall. Halfway around he came to the supply chute, covered
with a heavy moulded-stone cover.
Now?
It had taken four months here to know that he would have to do it this
way. Four months of ridiculous masquerade--made idiotic by the
incredible fact that everyone took him for exactly what he pretended
to be, and never challenged him--not even Terry Fisher, who drunk or
sober always challenged everything and everybody! But the four months
had told on his nerves, in his reactions, in the hollows under his
quick brown eyes. There was always the spectre of a slip-up, an
aroused suspicion. And until he had the reports before his eyes, he
couldn't fall back on Dan Fowler's name to save him. He had shook
Dan's hand the night he had left, and Dan had said, "Remember, son--I
don't know you. Hate to do it this way, but we can't risk it now--"
And they couldn't, of course. Not until they knew, for certain, who
had murdered Kenneth Armstrong.
They already knew why.
* * * * *
The utter stillness of the place reassured him; he hoisted up the
chute cover, threw it high, and shinned his long body into the chute.
It was a steep slide; he held on for an instant, then let go.
Blackness gulped him down as the cover snapped closed behind him.
He struck hard and rolled. The chute opened into the commissary in the
third deep-level of the building, and the place was black as the
inside of a pocket. He tested unbroken legs with a sigh of relief, and
limped across to where the door should be.
In the corridor there was some light--dim phosphorescence from the
Martian night-rock lining the walls and tiling the floor. He walked
swiftly, cursing the clack-clack his heels made on the ringing stone.
When he reached the end of the corridor he tried the heavy door.
It gave, complaining. Good, good! It had been a quick, imperfect job
of jimmying the lock, so obviously poor that it had worried him a
lot--but why should they test it? There was still another door.
He stepped into the blackness again, started across the room as the
door swung shut behind him.
A shoe scraped, the faintest rustle of sound. Carl froze. His own
trouser leg? A trick of acoustics? He didn't move a muscle.
Then: "Carl?"
His pocket light flickered around the room, a small secretary's
ante-room. It stopped on a pair of legs, a body, slouched down in the
soft plastifoam chair--a face, ruddy and bland, with a shock of sandy
hair, with quixotic eyebrows. "Terry! For Christ sake, what--"
The man leaned forward, grinning up at him. "You're late, Carl." His
voice was a muddy drawl. "Should have made it sooner than this,
sheems--seems to me."
Carl's light moved past the man in the chair to the floor. The bottle
was standing there, still half full. "My god, you're _drunk_!"
"Course I'm drunk. Whadj-ya think, I'd sober up after you left me
tonight? No thanks, I'd rather be drunk." Terry Fisher hiccupped
loudly. "I'd always rather be drunk, around this place."
"All right, you've got to get out of here--" Carl's voice rose with
bitter anger. Of all times, of _all_ times--he wanted to scream. "How
did you get in here? You've _got_ to get out--"
"So do you. They're on to you, Carl. I don't think you know that, but
they are." He leaned forward precariously. "I had a talk with Barness
this morning, one of his nice 'spontaneous' chats, and he pumped the
hell out of me and thought I was too drunk to know it. They're
expecting you to come here tonight--"
Carl heaved at the drunken man's arm, frantically in the darkness.
"Get _out_ of here, Terry, or so help me--"
Terry clutched at him. "Didn't you hear me? They _know_ about you.
Personell supervisor! They think you're spying for the Eastern
boys--they're starting a Mars colony too, you know. Barness is sure
you're selling them info--" The man hiccupped again. "Barness is an
ass, just like all the other Retreads running this place, but I'm not
an ass, and you didn't fool me for two days--"
Carl gritted his teeth. How could Terry Fisher know? "For the last
time--"
Fisher lurched to his feet. "They'll get you, Carl. They can try you
and shoot you right on the spot, and Barness will do it. I had to tell
you, you've walked right into it, but you might still get away if--"
It was cruel. The drunken man's head jerked up at the blow, and he
gave a little grunt, then slid back down on the chair. Carl stepped
over his legs, worked swiftly at the door beyond. If they caught him
now, Terry Fisher was right. But in five more minutes--
The lock squeaked, and the door fell open. Inside he tore through the
file cases, wrenched at the locked drawers in frantic haste, ripping
the weak aluminum sheeting like thick tinfoil. Then he found the
folder marked KENNETH ARMSTRONG on the tab.
Somewhere above him an alarm went off, screaming a mournful note
through the building. He threw on the light switch, flooding the room
with whiteness, and started through the papers, one by one, in the
folder. No time to read. Flash retinal photos were hard to superimpose
and keep straight, but that was one reason why Carl Golden was on Mars
instead of sitting in an office back on Earth--
He flipped the last page, and threw the folder onto the floor. As he
went through the door, he flipped out the light, raced with clattering
footsteps down the corridor.
Lights caught him from both sides, slicing the blackness like hot
knives. "_All right, Golden. Stop right there._"
Dark figures came out of the lights, ripped his clothing off without a
word. Somebody wrenched open his mouth, shined a light in, rammed
coarse cold fingers down into his throat. Then: "All right, you
bastard, up stairs. Barness wants to see you."
They packed him naked into the street, hurried him into a
three-wheeled ground car. Five minutes later he was wading through
frosty dust into another building, and Barness was glaring at him
across the room.
* * * * *
Odd things flashed through Carl's mind. You seldom saw a Repeater get
really angry--but Barness was angry. The man's young-old face (the
strange, utterly ageless amalgamation of sixty years of wisdom,
superimposed by the youth of a twenty-year-old) had unaccustomed lines
of wrath about the eyes and mouth. Barness didn't waste words. "What
did you want down there?"
"Armstrong." Carl cut the word out almost gleefully. "And I got it,
and there's nothing you or Rinehart or anybody else in between can do
about it. I don't know _what_ I saw yet, but I've got it in my eyes
and in my cortex, and you can't touch it."
"You stupid fool, we can _peel_ your cortex," Barness snarled.
"Well, you won't. You won't dare."
Barness glanced across at the officer who had brought him in.
"Tommy--"
"Dan Fowler won't like it," said Carl.
Barness stopped short, blinking. He took a slow breath. Then he sank
down into his chair. "Fowler" he said, as though dawn were just
breaking.
"That's right. He sent me up here. I've found what he wants. Shoot me
now, and when they probe you Dan will know I found it, and you won't
be around for another rejuvenation."