[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
With never a moment to rest, the pursuit
through space felt like a game of hounds
and hares ... or was it follow the leader?
Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the
Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him.
His fear-borne gaze traveled into the dimly illumined Venusian gin
mill. The place was like an evil caldron steaming with a brew whose
ingredients had been culled from the back corners of three planets.
Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco
smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. Here and
there, Ben saw moving figures. He could not tell if they were Earthmen,
Martians or Venusians.
Someone tugged at his greasy coat. He jumped, thinking absurdly that it
was the dead man's hand.
"_Coma esta, senor?_" a small voice piped. "_Speken die Deutsch?
Desirez-vous d'amour? Da? Nyet?_"
Ben looked down.
The speaker was an eager-eyed Martian boy of about ten. He was like
a red-skinned marionette with pipestem arms and legs, clad in a torn
skivvy shirt and faded blue dungarees.
"I'm American," Ben muttered.
"Ah, _buena_! I speak English _tres_ fine, _senor_. I have Martian
friend, she _tres_ pretty and _tres_ fat. She weigh almost eighty
pounds, _monsieur_. I take you to her, _si_?"
Ben shook his head.
* * * * *
He thought, _I don't want your Martian wench. I don't want your opium
or your Devil's Egg or your Venusian kali. But if you had a drug that'd
bring a dead man to life, I'd buy and pay with my soul._
"It is deal, _monsieur_? Five dollars or twenty _keelis_ for visit
Martian friend. Maybe you like House of Dreams. For House of Dreams--"
"I'm not buying."
The dirty-faced kid shrugged. "Then I show you to good table,--_tres
bien_. I do not charge you, _senor_."
The boy grabbed his hand. Because Ben could think of no reason for
resisting, he followed. They plunged into shifting layers of smoke and
through the drone of alcohol-cracked voices.
They passed the bar with its line of lean-featured, slit-eyed
Earthmen--merchant spacemen.
They wormed down a narrow aisle flanked by booths carved from Venusian
marble that jutted up into the semi-darkness like fog-blanketed
tombstones.
Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO_{2}-breathing
Venusians, the first he'd ever seen.
They were smoky gray, scaly, naked giants, toads in human shape.
They stood solitary and motionless, aloof, their green-lidded eyes
unblinking. They certainly didn't look like telepaths, as Ben had heard
they were, but the thought sent a fresh rivulet of fear down his spine.
Once he spied a white-uniformed officer of Hoover City's Security
Police. The man was striding down an aisle, idly tapping his neuro-club
against the stone booths.
_Keep walking_, Ben told himself. _You look the same as anyone else
here. Keep walking. Look straight ahead._
The officer passed. Ben breathed easier.
"Here we are, _monsieur_," piped the Martian boy. "A _tres_ fine table.
Close in the shadows."
Ben winced. How did this kid know he wanted to sit in the shadows?
Frowning, he sat down--he and the dead man.
He listened to the lonely rhythms of the four-piece Martian orchestra.
The Martians were fragile, doll-like creatures with heads too large for
their spindly bodies. Their long fingers played upon the strings of
their _cirillas_ or crawled over the holes of their flutes like spider
legs. Their tune was sad. Even when they played an Earth tune, it still
seemed a song of old Mars, charged with echoes of lost voices and
forgotten grandeur.
For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead
man. He thought, _What are they doing here, these Martians? Here, in
a smoke-filled room under a metalite dome on a dust-covered world?
Couldn't they have played their music on Mars? Or had they, like me,
felt the challenge of new worlds?_
He sobered. It didn't matter. He ordered a whiskey from a Chinese
waiter. He wet his lips but did not drink. His gaze wandered over the
faces of the Inn's other occupants.
_You've got to find him_, he thought. _You've got to find the man with
the red beard. It's the only way you can escape the dead man._
* * * * *
The dead man was real. His name was Cobb. He was stout and flabby and
about forty and he hated spacemen.
His body was buried now--probably in the silent gray wastes outside
Luna City. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a
part of Ben as sight in his eyes.
Sometimes the image would be shuffling drunkenly beside him, its lips
spitting whiskey-slurred curses.
Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist
thudded into its jaw. More often, the face would be frozen in the
whiteness of death. The large eyes would stare. Blood would trickle
from a corner of the gaping mouth.
You can forget a living man. You can defeat him or submit to him or
ignore him, and the matter is over and done. You can't escape from a
memory that has burned into your mind.
It had begun a week ago in Luna City. The flight from White Sands had
been successful. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate.
He stopped alone in a rocketfront bar for a beer. The man named Cobb
plopped his portly and unsteady posterior on the stool next to him.
"Spacemen," he muttered, "are getting like flies. Everywhere, all you
see's spacemen."
He was a neatly dressed civilian.