There was a humming sound for a few seconds right after I'd finished dialing and it gave me a chance to scrutinize Wendel's face to see how he was taking it.
He was terrified, all right. But his lips were still set in defiant lines and I was sure that if he could have gotten a grip on my throat right at that moment getting his fingers unlocked wouldn't have been easy.
I thought that when Sherwood's image appeared on the screen there would be just one minute of hard-to-live-through uncertainty—that he'd back up what I'd told Wendel with his hand on the rocket release button and look straight at me, as if awaiting a signal I had no intention of giving.
But I suddenly realized I didn't know just how it was going to be. Would Wendel stay defiant right up to the end, would he defeat me through sheer stubbornness, even though he was mortally terrified?
But there was one thing I did know. For the first time, as I waited for Sherwood's image to appear on the screen, I knew with absolute certainty, beyond any possibility of doubt, that I could never go through with it.
The rocket had to be prepared and ready—the nuclear deterrent had to be a reality—or I could never have carried the bluff through with the kind of confidence that just the knowledge that you're holding the highest cards in the deck can give you.
I had to feel that Ijust might give the signal.
But vaporizing the plant would have cost the lives of thirty thousand people and not more than a fourth of them were vicious criminals. I just couldn't see myself ordering a nuclear bomb to be dropped on more than twenty thousand completely innocent Wendel plant engineers and laboratory technicians.
Perhaps I shouldn't have felt that way, because if the Wendel Combine took over the Colony three or four times that number of innocent people would perish, or sink into degradation and become completely enslaved. But I did feel that way and—well, I wouldn't have to live with what I'd done, because I'd be killed by the blast. But I didn't want that on my conscience even as a dead man.
I couldn't go through with it, but had I ever really intended to? It didn't mean I couldn't win, didn't change what I'd come to do. If I could carry my bluff through without flinching, right up to the zero-count instant, there was a very good chance that Wendel would crack. A very good chance still.
I had the highest cards in the deck and was only handicapped in one way. If the zero-count instant came and Wendel didn't crack I couldn't play them.
I've never really believed in miracles. But if you're holding what you think are the highest cards, and something happens to your hand you never dreamed could happen—if you look and see you've got a card that's even higher, just slipped in between the others as a gift ... well, that's pretty close to a miracle, isn't it?
I thought when Sherwood's image appeared on the screen he'd be sitting alone behind his desk, with his thumb on the rocket-release button. But he wasn't alone and when I saw who was with him I almost stopped breathing....
Joan was with him and she was looking straight at me out of the screen.
"Don't do it, Ralph!" she pleaded. "Oh, God, no—"
Then I saw that she was staring past me and without turning I knew that she was appealing to Wendel with the same look of pleading desperation in her eyes. "If he gives the signal his command will be obeyed. And he'll do it unless you stop him! When you've lived with a man in the intimacy of marriage—yes, that's important and I have to say it—you know him better than anyone else. You know what he's capable of. He'll give the signal unless you do as he says, because the insignia he's wearing gives him no choice. If you don't stop him now ...you'll die with him!"
I turned then and stared straight at Wendel. I'd never seen a man sag before in quite the way he did. All of the life seemed to go out of his eyes. His defiance gave way to a look of utter hopelessness, of abject surrender, and he sank so low in his chair that he seemed on the verge of slumping to the floor, despite Lynton's grip on his shoulders.
His voice, when he spoke, scarcely rose above a whisper. "All right, Graham," he said. "You win."
As I turned back to the screen and saw the look of overwhelming relief and gratefulness in Joan's eyes I couldn't help wondering how close she had been to being right. Had the insignia really given me any choice? If Wendel had stayed defiant and refused to crack—would I have gone through with it? How much does any man know abouthimself?
I'd probably never know the answer.
In the days that followed every one of the Wendel agents were rounded up and returned to Earth to stand trial. I never did find out the identity of the agent who had shot the dart at me from high up on the spiral or the one who had sent a little mechanical killer in my direction by the shores of Lake Michigan in New Chicago.
It didn't worry me at all, because I was sure that both of those delightful characters were among the agents who had been rounded up in the mopping up operations.
Oh, yes—they rescued her with her hair in disarray and no longer standing high up on her head. Three days later, drifting through empty space about three hundred thousand miles from Mars. She's in prison now and will have to answer charges. But I intend to go all out in the plea I'll make in her defense when she comes up for trial.
Some judges are enlightened and merciful and others are harsh tyrants, but with the backing of the Board I'm not too worried about the outcome. If it goes against us, I'll take it to the highest court in the land, and the backing of the Board carries plenty of weight there too.
Eventually I forgave Commander Littlefield.
"I'm a hard man, Ralph," he said, standing in the starlight outside the Port Administration Section with a crumpled sheet of paper in his hand, right after he'd received assurances from Earth he'd be placed in command of a new sky ship. "I did what I did because I am what I am. I knew that her life hung in the balance, that every word we exchanged increased the danger. But when I weighed that against the future of the Colony—I felt I had no choice. I knew what a full confession would mean to us."
I never saw Nurse Cherubin again. She married her doctor and they were honeymoon passengers on the next scheduled Earth trip, which took place while I was busy making sure that the whole Wendel Combine would come apart at the seams. It was a little like watching a volcanic explosion and keeping the lava flow channeled with the full weight of the Board's authority.
Joan and I have become Martian Colony residents for the duration. I mean by that there will always be new battles to be fought in a war that will never end ... as long as Man stays a part of the universe. There's something embattled about him that you don't find in any other species. Maybe it's good and maybe it's bad, but it helps to explain why he keeps building for the future, He never knows—and just not knowing makes him want to build as sturdily as he can.
You never prize anything so much as when you feel you're about to lose it. So you fight to preserve it, and when you've done that you've built up enough excess energy to want to make a stab at something better. And when that's threatened you'll fight again and so on until the final curtain.
It's just the way things are.
THE END
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NAKED TO THE STARS
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A WAY HOME
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THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT
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Planet In Danger!
There was trouble brewing on Mars—badtrouble. Two giant industrial empires fought for control there, and their struggle imperiled the whole Mars colony. Civil war—atomic civil war—could break out any second, leaving Earth's only foothold in Space a mass of radio-active rubble.
But both antagonists were too politically powerful for the Colonization Board to take a direct hand. One man was needed to take charge—one man who could act fast and decisively, brutally if he had to.
Ralph Graham got the job.
And then people began dying around him....
In MARS IS MY DESTINATION, veteran authorFrank Longspins a fast suspense story in the classic tradition of "action" science-fiction—a story of Tomorrow and a crisis in the advance into Space.
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