I've always wanted to buy a policeman. Now you can afford to do your job. I'm seeing Ferax first, but with or without his help, I'm going after Roper.
I've always wanted to buy a policeman. Now you can afford to do your job. I'm seeing Ferax first, but with or without his help, I'm going after Roper.
Terse instructions followed. Torry did not expect too much of Grannar, but the man represented law and authority as far as either existed on Mars, and dealing with Roper, Ferax, and the Martians all at once was scarcely a one-man job.
Trans-U Miners Union housed itself in a citadel remarkable even on Mars. It occupied the center of a large area, cleared, floodlighted and surrounded by a charged wire fence. Inside the defense circle were booby traps triggered for the first careless step off marked pathways patrolled by robot guards. Torry's metal ident card got him through the gateway by tripping electronic relays, and each incorruptible robot guard passed him after being shown the card.
At the building doorway he had to satisfy a series of dubious and hard bitten human questioners, but his pass and the magic name of Ferax got him inside.
Doors opened. Robot voices directed him across echoing lobbies to a bank of elevators. In a locked cage he descended five floors below surface level. In the corridor another bodiless voice spoke:
"End of the hall. Door on the right."
Torry followed directions. The ritual was getting on his nerves. His footsteps echoed hollowly. The place smelled damp and moldy as a tomb. Opening the door on the right with a wave of his keyed pass, he realized that it was, in a sense, a tomb. There was a body in it. A dead body.
Ferax sprawled across an ornate desk of Venusian chibar wood and kru-leather.
Luminous particles from a blaster discharge still danced in the air. A lingering bite of charred, exploding flesh stung the nostrils. There was little left of the torso, but a lolling globular head identified the corpse. A discarded gun clanked as Torry's foot kicked it. He hesitated, then picked it up and renewed the charge. It was an automatic reflex of defense, and fingerprint evidence was not likely to matter now. If found on the spot he would have little chance for explanations.
The thing had happened only minutes ago. Whoever did it, the killer must still be close at hand. A roving flicker of pale radiance warned Torry that a scanner was in use. By whom? From where? No complex mental processes were needed to convince Torry that he was in a bad spot. The goon squads were notorious for acting first and asking questions afterwards.
Getting into the citadel to see Ferax had been interesting enough. Getting out again promised to be more so. If he ever got out.
The office door was opening slowly. Silently Torry glided behind it. Reaching around it, he snatched cloth and flesh and dragged a struggling form into the room.
"Tharol Sen!" The girl was panting, her periwinkle eyes wide and glazed with horror.
Torry subdued her writhings by jamming the blaster muzzle hard into her flesh.
"Talk low," he ordered. "But talk fast. Why did you kill Ferax?"
"I didn't. I found him like that, just a moment ago. I heard the blaster and looked in quickly. Then I hid in the office across. I heard something and came back here. That's all I know." Her voice ended on a wail.
Torry jerked up the elfin face and studied it savagely. For some reason he believed her. But there was more to explain, even if someone else had killed the labor racketeer, and little time for explanations.
"How did you get in here?" he snapped. "And why?"
She threw back her head in a characteristic gesture. Her eyes sparkled.
"Roper had come here. He was so long that I got worried. I came through...." She stopped talking suddenly.
"Through the transmitter? I know about it, so you can call it by the right name."
Tharol Sen nodded numbly.
"That means Roper killed him."
The girl jerked angrily. "Bart Roper wouldn't do that. He wouldn't kill an unarmed man. Probably you killed him, and just want to throw the blame on ... on us."
Torry ignored her. "Roper would be too smart to leave any evidence. So I'll leave it for him." From his pocket he took a small lighter with a name engraved on it, quickly scrubbed it free of prints and dropped it on the floor as if it had fallen in the excitement of murder. It would not carry conviction, but it would be proof of Roper's presence and his reputation would do the rest.
"You fool," said Tharol Sen. "I'm a witness, and I saw you do that. I'll testify."
"Do that," taunted Torry viciously, "if it ever comes to a trial. Who'll believe you? And I don't think the strong arm boys will wait for a trial. If you can get back through that transmitter screen, we'd better do it before someone finds us here."
"Take you?" she snarled. "I'd rather die here."
"You have that choice."
She changed her mind. Torry did not misread the flash of wicked triumph on her face. He did not have to.
"All right," she yielded. "Bart Roper will know how to take care of you. Come ahead, if you dare. The transmitter screen is in the opposite office."
Torry sighed bitterly. "I'll chance Roper. I've already had one session with the goons."
The quicksilver screen was three-dimensional, and possibly four, since it seemed to exist in two places at once and linked them without regard to intervening distance. It was a hollow cylinder supported by metal framework, and the insubstantial fabric glowed and pulsed with electrical current. Inside was darkness and a sense of infinite space. Walking through the odd fabric one encountered nothing material, but a prickling touched every skin surface, then soaked through the bone centers.
Leaving the force field of the screen was more exhilarating, and almost painful. It was like breaking an electrical contact; muscles jerked spasmodically, hair stood on end, and hot sparks discharged from any moist portions of the skin. Torry had not realized how drenched his body was in cold sweat. He stepped out, gasping.
He stepped into paradise, or hell. Unreality.
Martian subcellar gardens are startling to outsiders. In the air was the bitter tang of narcotic incense. Smoke distorted vision. Nightmarish fantasies of mobile murals in rich colors writhed on the walls. The ceiling was an illusion of sky and stars, complete with intricacies of celestial mechanics, and the flooring resembled grassy sward, set with miniature pools and cool, gurgling streams, crossed by arching bridges of carved and tined ivory. Singing birds and trilling winged serpents filled the air with sound and motion. Luminous bubbles rose and burst above lighted, musical fountains. Musicians toyed with the acrid melodies of ancient Mars, and only close inspection proved the dancing girls 3-d projections.
It was a painstaking reproduction, pitiful and exquisite, of the richly barbaric and luxuriant youth of a now-dying planet. To a Martian, it would have been nostalgic and lovely. To Torry, fresh from the scent of blood and death, it was a garish mockery, like a painted corpse.
Torry recoiled painfully, both from the setting and from the living man who seemed part of it.
Sen Bas was as dried and shriveled as a Martian mummy. Only his eyes seemed alive.
"You can put away your gun," said Sen Bas, his wrinkled face a mask of malicious humor. "You are in no danger here."
Oddly, there was no feeling of menace, and Torry found himself putting away his weapon. Will power beat from Sen Bas as it does from hypno machines, and his personality held fearful compulsion.
"But he's—" began Tharol Sen hysterically.
Still smiling, Sen Bas nodded like a bizarre doll with a swinging pendulum attached to its head. "No matter. Since we made a deal with Roper when we picked him up off Phobos, we must do as he says ... in some matters. Roper has gone ahead. He wants this man, Torry, sent to him ... there. There is use for him ... where Roper has gone. Until then, he is our guest, and we must show him every courtesy."
Torry studied the old man calmly. "You can use place names, Sen Bas. I know about the transuranics on Triton and Pluto. But how could Roper have gone ahead when we were using the transmitter? It can't be three places at once."
Sen Bas frowned. "No, it cannot. Unfortunately, it has many limitations. This is a second model copied by my engineers for study and experiment. To our distress we have learned that ores of the heavy metals cannot be transmitted since their radioactivity has an effect on the force field. But now, with trouble coming, this model must be destroyed."
From a pouch Sen Bas drew a tiny sub-sonic whistle upon which he blew a soundless note. Martian technicians quickly appeared. Sen Bas issued commands, and the transmitter was rapidly dismantled and removed to incinerators.
"Good idea," approved Torry. "Ferax is dead. The police—"
"I know. The transmitter is not as instantaneous as it seems to the user. Time also is distorted, as well as space. Hours have passed. You are the last person known to have seen Ferax, so you are wanted by the police and others for questioning. I was not certain you would come through the screens, so my agents are scouring the city for you. Roper has gone ahead to Triton, and wants you to join him there where we can make contact."
"How long will that take?"
Sen Bas blinked. "Who knows? My scientists say it depends on the relative positions of Triton and Mars. The best time will be in five or six days, but you may have to go sooner. Tharol Sen can show you around, and when the time is right, she will take you to the transmitter. It is securely hidden where the police will not find it. In the meantime—"
"I'm a prisoner?"
Sen Bas giggled. "Not exactly. Say, my guest. Your only jailers are outside. Let us hope they will stay there until you can go to Roper ... as he requested."
"Roper must have been in a hurry to get away," grated Torry.
"He was. For excellent reasons. A Solar Survey ship is due off Triton at any time. Roper wanted to be in sole possession of the satellite, with samples to make good his claims to minerals."
Suddenly, everything happened at once. Shrill alarms blared from a dozen quarters. Red lights flared ominously. A fusillade of shots broke out.
Sen Bas swore luridly in Martian. "The police!"
Heavy explosions thundered overhead. The ceiling cracked, opened wide. An avalanche of steel and stone and breaking glass roared into the subcellar gardens. Dust clouds blinded Torry.
IV
From the collapsing roof tons of debris poured into the underground gardens and spread over the floor like advancing mountains. Dust choked, Torry staggered blindly before it in panic to avoid being caught and buried. It was like a swift, deadly race with an engulfing landslide.
Free of the confusion and deafening tumult, he turned to look about for Sen Bas and the girl. In the dust cloud it was impossible to see anything. Masses of masonry and fused glass from the collapsing cavern roof continued to detach themselves and crash down in random uproar. Cautiously, Torry picked his way over the mounds of rubble, searching.
A feeble cry led him to Sen Bas. The aged Martian looked like a tattered bundle of red rags. Half buried under a hillock of shattered stone and twisted steel, the old man showed little sign of life, save for still-glittering eyes and husks of sound emerging from bloodless lips. Spreading stains of red seeped from beneath the prisoning blocks.
"If I can lift the stones, can you drag yourself out?" asked Torry.
"Don't—think—so!" gasped Sen Bas.
"Where can I find help?"
"Don't try. Go—quickly. Save yourself. The alarms—police—maybe union killers. Go—"
"Not yet," snapped Torry. "We'll worry about the rest after I get you out."
The old man protested. "I'm—old. Does not matter. Get to—transmitter. My people must have—"
Ignoring him, Torry worked. Feverishly he searched for and found a length of reinforcing steel. With it, he dug into debris of glass and stone and tortured steel. Mass by mass, he levered it up and rolled it aside. Fingers raw, steel bending in his hands, he strained to uncover the writhing, bleeding form of Sen Bas. At last he wedged up the last mass and reached under to drag out the ancient Martian. Sen Bas screamed as he came free, but the agony left his face.
"You're hurting him," raged Tharol Sen. She stumbled toward them, her face a mask of hate.
"No!" cried Sen Bas. Gathering breath, he whispered, "He saved me." Then pallor flooded his pinched features.
Torry knelt beside him, not even looking at the girl. "Shut up!" he ordered. "Get bandages—painkilling drugs. He's badly crushed, bleeding to death. Don't argue. Hurry!"
Sen Bas blinked. "Do as he says...." Tharol Sen disappeared.
Alone, Sen Bas stared curiously at his rescuer. "I should have ordered you both to the transmitter. My men could care for me ... if it matters."
"Not soon enough. Roper can wait."
Sen Bas shook his head. "Roper might. My people cannot. We need heavier metals to power our underground cities. We are a dying race."
"You're a dying man. Don't talk."
The old Martian composed his features with great dignity. "What better time? Our need is desperate. We must claim the transuranics on Triton. Even though they must be freighted here, since they cannot be brought through the transmitter. We tried it, and failed. You know Roper. Will he deal fairly with us?"
Torry shook his head sadly. "No."
Sen Bas did not seem surprised. "I feared that. Will you?"
"I'll try, though I'll have to do what seems best when I get to it."
Sen Bas relaxed. "That is good enough. Did you come to Mars to kill him?"
A shiver wrenched Torry, his eyes glazed. "I haven't decided yet."
"Perhaps it would be best. But he will not be easy to kill. Tharol Sen will take you to him. Perhaps by the time fate has to choose between you and Roper, her blindness will be gone, and she can make a clear choice of her own...."
"How did you—"
With a convulsive grimace, Sen Bas was dead. Moments later, when Tharol Sen appeared loaded with medical supplies, Torry glared at her. Her face a chalk mask, she whimpered.
"Forget it," Torry said angrily. "It's too late for tears."
"Why did you try to save him?"
"If you have to ask, you'd never understand."
Tharol Sen shuddered. "I don't understand anything about you. Who you are. Why you hate us so—"
"Who says I do?"
"Roper. He says—"
"Never mind what he says. I suppose there's no use trying to convince you that he never tells the truth if a lie will serve as well. He's a known criminal, a thief and swindler, and even a murderer. A man who abandoned his wife on Earth, and a small child he's never seen. Frankly, I don't understand you, and I'm not sure I'd want to. You're quite determined to marry him?"
"Quite." Tharol Sen stiffened.
"Well, that's your hard luck. He's no good. No good for you, or anyone. Not even for himself."
"Nothing you can say matters. He told me about that wife. She's too sane, too normal and practical for him. He thinks that I—"
Torry was not listening. Contrasting Tharol Sen with Rose, he was almost inclined to agree with Roper, and envy him such a loyal and spirited defender. The girl was pure-blood Martian, with all the eery beauty of the strange race. She was young but vibrantly alive and human. There was emotional depth in her, and a passionate savagery that might inspire a man to passion, or to devotion, depending upon the man.
"Besides," finished Tharol Sen, "there is no other man like him."
"Not quite like him, fortunately." Torry laughed bitterly. "I'm a lot like him, if you haven't noticed. But nicer ... and sometimes smarter."
"That's a matter of opinion," she said acidly. "Yours and mine. But you do resemble him. You're ... you're not—"
"I'm afraid I am. I'm ashamed to admit it, but Bart Roper and I had the same mother. He's my half-brother."
Her face was puzzled. "Then why—"
Torry tightened visibly. "I don't know. Or maybe I just don't want to face it yet. We hate each other as only brothers can. You'd better know that before you take me to him. I may have to kill him."
Tharol Sen sneered. "I don't think you can kill him. I'll take you to him because both Roper and my grandfather wanted me to. Roper can deal with you as he sees fit. But if I think you're a danger to him, I'll kill you. Understand that."
Torry shrugged. "On that basis I'll accept your help. Now you'd better find that transmitter. I suspect that the explosions were the police or the goon squads breaking in."
"They were," she said nastily. "They ran into booby traps in the upper levels. It will take them a while."
"I wouldn't count on too much time," warned Roper. "Grannar is a smart policeman, and the goon squads seemed to know their work."
"This way."
Tharol Sen was coldly aloof, and seemed both preoccupied and depressed, which was natural. She went ahead, wordlessly, and Torry followed, lost in his own reflections. At the far end of Sen Bas' wrecked garden was a steel-arched doorway, high, sombre and gothic. Beyond, and below, lay the sprawling vastness of vaults and caverns which was the Martian underworld. Long, curvings ramps led downward into a complex of subsurface workings far below New Chicago.
They descended and slipped quietly across large, echoing platforms whose dimensions were lost in gloom. Metal-shod stairways spiraled upward and downward into invisible infinities. Deep shafts vibrated with strange sounds the ear could not catch or identify. Freight tunnels were yawning maws of darkness, like the staring, sightless eyes of some mythical monster created on too large a scale for man to understand.
Torry grew tense and nervous. He began to sense patterns of shivering, eery movement about him. Walls and ceilings closed in suddenly, and he could make out vague, monstrous forms set into niches within walls carved of bedrock. Old-Martian gods in sculpture—leering stone spectres, goblin-like, and subtly obscene.
Tharol Sen paused. Her hand sought Torry's and drew him close, but not in friendliness. She whispered harshly, warning him to silence and extreme caution.
"I was wrong. The police have broken through. Some are already in the vaults."
She followed a maze of barely visible threadlike guidelines of luminosity set into the metallic tiling. A few steps more brought them to a wide platform, from which many tunnel mouths opened. Along one wall ranged banks of elevators. Beyond were ranks of empty pneumatic tube cars on tracks which angled in sharp descent into wells a level below the platform. Spidery Martian hieroglyphs labeled various shafts and the tube terminals. Tharol Sen studied the markings closely before making her choice.
"I have been here only once before," she complained. "It is not easy to find the way. But I think the police will have more trouble."
She selected a pneumatic tube car. Torry boosted her to the door flap. She settled herself in the tiny seat cradle, then from inside, extended him a helping hand. For the first time she noticed his blistered palms and raw fingers. He grunted painfully as she drew him up beside her.
"I should have bandaged your hands," she mused.
Torry snorted. "Can you drive this shuttle? It has more gadgets than a space ship."
"One way to find out," murmured Tharol Sen icily, poking a slim finger at a keyboard of colored studs. Distant machinery whirred and whined. Flaps banged shut and the shuttle car shot forward and down at sickening speed. Tharol Sen laughed, and the sound was of ice chips trickling on metal foil.
Air whipped angrily about the shell of thin metal. There was no gut wrenching nausea of acceleration, only sharp awareness of speed. Movement became a blur streaming past the transparent plastic cartop. It was like being part of a hollow missile fired from an air gun. As the car's original impetus diminished, speed dwindled. The car dipped and slowed, then ran into a stop valve, like a piston in a closed cylinder, and stopped on a dense cushion of compressed air.
Another vista of platforms radiated away from the terminal.
Gripping Torry's hand, Tharol Sen dragged him firmly along the platform, then down a steep slant to the lowest levels. At intervals, radilumes provided glaring light, but shadows of raw fantasy lingered curiously near the walls. Tomblike oppression gathered around them. Panic grows quickly underground; weight of rock pressing overhead translates itself to the brain in terms of claustrophobia.
Metallic decking became raw stone floor, and an endless tunnel unwound before them. Torry lost all track of direction, even the primary up and down. They went through underground workings like city streets lined with open front factories. Gray, barren vistas of workrooms were relieved by the stark symmetries of sleek machines, shielded atomic converters, and patiently revolving turbines. Here was the marvelously efficient underground economy of the old Martian civilization, still functioning and serving the remnants of a great race of builders and scientists.
On soaring cantilevered balconies and in alcoves, Torry glimpsed cliff like structures of offices and dwellings. Giant compressors labored to force a mighty pulse of breakable air—but the atmosphere was warm, dry and stifling. Runnels of sweat ran down Torry's body and vanished in quick evaporation; fever and exertion alternated in him; he blew hot and cold as energy burned away too quickly, and as drying sweat produced intense, quick chills. Temperatures dropped. Air seemed denser and was poisonously clouded with dust, but it was cool. Slowly it became chill and depressing with a hint of dampness in it. They came into a maze of galleries and pits, tunnels and vaults, less used and uninhabited portions of the deep-workings.
It was like a world apart, a place of dim storage bins with natural refrigeration, of packing sheds piled high with mountains of commercial molds, bales of dry, compressed and packed mushrooms. It smelled stale and foul, the air hideous with a powdery mist of mold dust and spores, and the incredible mustiness of mushroom spoilage. These caverns were empty of life, as if the troglodyte Martians had long ago joined their mummied dead.
Weakness suddenly caught up with Torry. Dizzy, he caught in panic at Tharol Sen for support. Grudgingly, after a moment's hesitation, she granted the help.
"I'm sorry," Torry apologized. "It's been a rather active three days. I guess Ferax and his boys hurt me more than I had thought."
"They are good at hurting people," admitted the girl. "You still want to go on in this condition?"
"Don't mind me. Just give me a minute." Torry was painfully aware of her strong, slender body beneath the filmy garments of spidersilk. To change the subject, he said, "Don't tell me you're planning to venture out to Pluto or Triton in that costume?"
Tharol Sen made a face. "Hardly. There are spacesuits ready. We'll need them, don't worry. Roper says Triton is hardly livable at all, even protected. You'll find out if you've the nerve to go through with me."
"So Planet X is not even a planet, just one of Neptune's moons?"
"Perhaps it was a planet once. Both Pluto and Triton are not like the rest of the solar system planets. They may have been two stray worlds from outer space, captured long ago by our sun. For their size they have mass out of all proportion. The quantities of heavy metals beyond uranium give them extreme weight and density. Pluto has a density of over fifty times that of water. Triton not so much, but still greater by far than Earth's density, which is roughly five or six times that of water. Though smaller than Mercury or Ganymede, Triton has a gravity only slightly less than Earth's and a far denser atmosphere blanket."
Torry laughed grimly. "That's a big speech for you."
"Too long a speech," she agreed irritably. "Especially with the police close behind us."
Torry sighed. "Okay. We'll go on. This is a lot of trouble over one slimy mirage salesman."
"Mirage salesman? Why do you call him that?"
"Simple enough. That's all he's ever peddled. Pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to tempt the greedy and unwary. And rainbows are circular, with no beginning and no end. Haven't you ever heard the term?"
"I have now. I wondered, that's all. There are mirages on Triton. He'll have plenty to sell."
Torry snorted. "I can see you've bought one."
Flasher signals on the wall began to blink rapidly.
They moved steadily onward, faster than before, into a still more shadowy region. Light itself seemed to exist only at long intervals where age-old radilumes performed a feeble service. The spongy floor of rotten bedrock was scummed over with moss to make for slippery footing. Formations of natural rock seemed like stage furniture designed by elves and gnomes, in which stone mimicked monstrosities of the vegetable world. Fat, knotted stalagmites suggested tree trunks, and the darkness overhead appeared like shadowy densities of foliage. Seepage had fretted the walls into lacy limestone traceries like a fern forest. They went on, with tense silence savage between them.
Alarm blinkers flashed light codes of rapid pursuit.
"Your people must have had much contact with the police to have worked out such a set-up," observed Torry.
Tharol Sen nodded. "We have been persecuted for centuries. Not many Earthfolk have ever been here. Nor any others but my own people."
"Yet the police seem to be finding their way."
Tharol Sen frowned. "That puzzles me," she admitted. "How could they come here at all unless someone has betrayed us?"
From close behind sounded the loud buzzing of a radiation detector. A thin pencil beam flashed at them and splashed wetly over the cavern wall ahead. Rock shattered in a brittle, crunchy explosion. Murderous chips deluged the tunnel.
Torry lunged at the girl, dragging her down in a savage fall. More beams of light licked out, this time from several directions. Continuous thunders roared and reverberated, stunning ears and brains with concussion and sound. Roughly, Torry thrust the girl into a wall niche for shelter.
"The police!" wailed Tharol Sen.
"Looks as if we're trapped. We'd better give ourselves up."
She stared at him with contempt. "You still have your gun. If you're afraid, give it to me."
"One gun against a dozen. No thanks."
Waiting for a lull in the blast uproar, Torry called out. His voice rang hollowly in the cavern, still shuddering with echoes of the explosions.
"Hold your fire. We're coming out."
Grannar's voice answered. "Throw out your gun first."
Torry complied. His gun rattled on the floor of rock.
Pushing Tharol Sen sullenly before him, Torry stood clear. In a moment, the tunnel was full of uniformed figures.
Grannar studied Torry with some amusement. "You needn't have gone so fast. I got your note, but your trail ran into a dead end at Ferax's office. It took time to pick it up again but we found it beside Sen Bas' body in his gardens. Clever deal, Torry. Using radioactive dust on your shoes like that. Shall we handcuff Tharol Sen and take her back?"
"No," answered Torry glumly. "She's going to show us the way to Roper."
"So you betrayed us?" asked Tharol Sen, contempt making her face ugly.
"That's a matter of opinion."
Grannar broke in. "Better pick up your gun, Torry. You may need it. How many men shall we take?"
Torry shrugged. "That depends on the number of spacesuits available. How many, Tharol Sen?"
"Three," she replied bitterly. "Do you think two of you dare tackle Roper alone?"
"I think so. How about it, Grannar?"
The policeman grunted.
The matter transmitter was already set up. Upon its folding framework the screen glittered like woven quicksilver, vibrating to the hum of electro magnetic flow.
"Will this take us directly to Roper?" asked Grannar.
"Not quite," said Torry, grinning. "It's a delicate adjustment. Mars and Neptune both in motion, and Triton's orbit and axial rotation to consider. We'll be somewhere on Triton—"
"But Triton has more land surface than Earth. Can we find—"
Torry gestured. "She'll find him for us. Have your men stand by and switch on the transmitter every three hours."
Dressed for space, the three entered the screen.
V
Planet X—or Neptune's moon, Triton—was a vast mirage with many facets. Atmosphere was as dense and still as water in ocean deeps. Sky was cloudless, but not clear, apparently built up of different layers of gases, and the light was both glaring and erratic. At a distance of over three and a half billion miles from the Sun, most of the light was not sunlight, and the little that came through the air ocean was filtered and absorbed into curious colors and intensities. Other illumination sources were auroral displays, radioactive hotspots that glowed like eery ghosts, and volcanic outbursts of crimson or gold.
Surface pressure of the atmospheric ocean was extreme, and the gas densities and weird light gave an uncanny submarine illusion. Venturing onto the surface of Triton, Torry felt like a diver in that long-past period when man's last frontier on Earth had seemed the ocean deeps. Gravity, greater than on Mars, but less than Earth's, gave a sense of buoyancy; the spacesuiting was not unlike ancient diving costume; and the thickness of the atmosphere itself suggested deep, still water.
Most disturbing of all were the mirages. All the familiar effects of Earth mirages were present but magnified and even multiplied into infinite complexities. To a scientist of optics or meteorology, Triton would be a superb laboratory. To Torry, it was—
Near madness...!
Mirages by hundreds and thousands floated between surface and zenith, or hugged the ground like captive nightmares. Pinnacled dream mountains rose from bases of empty air. Phantom battlements and mock castles stormed upward from nothing. Magnified rockeries became goblin cities, looming near or far in equal scale. Water glittered in the sky and on the ground, and floating debris became fleets of fairy argosies. Lateral mirages played eery jokes with distance. All images seemed unreal, and diffraction haloed them with misty, rainbow coloring.
Triton itself was bleak, savage, merciless, nearly windless but for vagrant currents of slow-moving dense air, like currents in an ocean.
By levels, temperatures were absurdly high or low, depending upon location or freak circumstances. It was a lifeless world, inhospitable to man. But it wore a mask and costume of exotic, lying beauty, and masquerade was hard to distinguish from the harsh reality. Anything definite was hard to distinguish.
Grannar turned up the microphone in his helmet, and his words rattled from Torry's speaker.
"How can we find Roper in such a madhouse as this?" he roared.
Torry winced as the amplified outburst thundered in his ears.
"Simple enough," he replied. "Fine detective you are. There's a radio compass built into Tharol Sen's suit. Roper's sending all the time. She'll go to him like a homing pigeon."
"Pigeon is right," muttered Grannar. "Hope it's not too far. A little more of this would make me neurotic. Can we trust her?"
Torry laughed. "Yes and no. She hates us, but she'll lead us to Roper. That transmitter is his only way back to Mars. And hers, too. Isn't that right, Tharol Sen?"
Fortunately her reply did not come through clearly.
Following the radio compass, which behaved erratically due to magnetic discharges, they moved through the wilderness of the mirages. Progress was deceptive, without reliable landmarks. Rugged terrain made treacherous going. Megalithic cities and monstrous mountains appeared and disappeared like patterns in a kaleidoscope. In the eccentric lighting, vision itself seemed to flicker as treacherously as a three-d projector running out of balance. Constant distortions and fading out produced mental nausea and physical insecurity.
Torry was not sure where his next step would take him. One instant he seemed to flounder on the edge of abyss. The next, he would be climbing what seemed an interminable mountain, only to have solid floors of rock shimmer and vanish before his eyes. It was impossible to see where they were going, or even be certain what it was like where they had just been. Only the needle of the radio compass held any steadiness at all, and that jerked into wild whirlings now and then as magnetic currents ebbed and flowed in the ground.
They seemed, through rifts in the mirages, to be traversing a monstrous field of jagged boulders, inclined slightly upward. Even these rocks were not always as substantial as they looked, but for the most part, they were real obstacles. The thought crossed Torry's mind that it would be a bad place for an ambush if Roper were so inclined.
When the facts materialized his fears, the pencil beam of a blaster cutting through the mirages seemed only part of a dazzling auroral display.
The explosion that followed demonstrated its reality. Rock chips and larger fragments rained about them. In the dense medium of atmosphere, the shock wave was terrific, and even his spacesuit did not completely insulate the blow. All three were flung about as if by earthquake. Torry missed his footing and went down in a long sprawl, which saved his life.
The second blaster flash would have targeted him dead center. It flickered harmless over him, touched the nearby boulders to sudden glare, then lost itself in fearful detonation. Dodging the hail of debris, Torry crawled quickly to shelter behind a larger boulder. With gauntleted hands, he tested its solidity before he trusted himself to relax.
A harsh cry of pain and terror echoed in his ears. Its tones held desperation. And the voice was Grannar's.
By concentrating Torry could dimly make out the figure of the detective. Grannar lay in a tumbled heap, threshing wildly and trying to hold shut great rents in his space suit. He seemed to be injured, for one leg was motionless while the rest of his body worked in convulsions.
Torry left his shelter and bounded toward the casualty. He bundled Grannar roughly to his feet and hustled him into the nearest tangle of solid rocks. A hastily aimed blaster beam hurried him at the task. Crouching down, he examined Grannar. The policeman was conscious, swearing valiantly. His leg was broken. Inside the space suit it would be impossible to set the fracture. And outside, the toxic gases of Triton would make short work of human breathing. Even the rents in the suiting were dangerous.
Working quickly, Torry clipped together the rents and sealed them hermetically with compound from the repair kits.
"That's the best I can do," he told the policeman grimly as his eyes searched in vain for a sign of Roper. "You'll have to stand the rest till we can get out of here and back to Mars."
"What are our chances of getting out?"
A man does not shrug in a spacesuit. "Not good," said Torry. "Roper can keep us pinned here as long as he likes."
"How long d'you think that'll be?"
Torry grunted. "Till he gets tired of it and decides to stalk us and kill us. Or till I go out and get him."
"I see. It's like that, eh? Where's the girl?"
"Who knows? She's either hiding out in the rocks, like us, or she's found a way to join Roper. Does it matter?"
"Not to me," mused Grannar. "I just hoped maybe she wasn't as rotten as Roper ... that she might give us a chance."
"Don't count on it," said Torry spitefully. "She might be as pure as an angel, but Roper's sold her a bill of goods. Feeling as she does about him, she'd kill either of us as quickly as Roper would."
They waited in silence, while mirages came and went around them, as light shifted, or slight currents stirred in the turbid air. If Roper were a mirage salesman, he had certainly made his stand in the wholesale house. Under other circumstances, Torry might have found the displays interesting, even entertaining—but at the moment, his reflections were as poisonous as the air on Triton.
Colors flared and faded like a cross-spectrum of inferno.
Grannar was restless with the pain in his leg. His squirming infected Torry, who leaned out above the barrier of rocks waving his hand violently. As he hoped, he attracted attention. A thin wire of light kissed the rocks of the barrier. Chips pelted like hail, and the force of the blast set up thunderous echoes in his helmet.
"He must have rigged a scanner of some sort. Such shooting is too good for a man with mirages in his eyes. Would something like infra-red help?"
"I don't know," groaned Grannar. "In any case, we haven't the time or the means to work out a scanner."
"I think I'll try crawling out of here. If I keep low, I might be able to work around and come up behind him. Is it all right with you if I give it a try?"
"Why not? Outside of your life, what have you got to lose?"
"I hate to leave you here unless you want it that way. But there's not much future for you, anyhow, if I stay."
"Do whatever you like. I guess I owe you something, and I like to pay my debts. Any other last wishes?"
"Just one. I want him...."
"Roper? You want to kill him?" Grannar sounded baffled.
"Kill or cure."
"I don't understand."
"You want him on Mars for murder. He's wanted on Earth for lesser crimes. That gives you priority. You can demand and get extradition for him to Mars, which means quick death in the atomic disintegrators, or slow death in the prison mines. On Earth, they have a clinic for incurables like Roper. It's a free choice for them, euthanasia or voluntary submission to the clinic."
Grannar hesitated. "I know about that. But isn't such a treatment almost as dangerous as being killed outright, and a lot tougher on the subject?"
"It can be," granted Torry flatly. "Sometimes the hypnotic memory-blanking or the shock treatment wrecks the brain. And the glandular surgery and hormone dosage can turn a man into a freak and monster. If it works, the criminal is rebuilt mentally and morally, re-created with a new personality, and completely new educational background. He's hardly the same man, and often his old friends can't recognize him physically."
Grannar's eyes narrowed. "In Roper's case, that might be an advantage. Of course I'm familiar with the clinic and its work in rehabilitating incorrigibles. But do you think any treatment could work the miracle with Roper?"
"I don't know and don't care. People like Roper help make life colorful and interesting. But they're too hard on everyone around them. His adolescent-stasis carries his own damnation for him. He's miserably unhappy, along with everyone who knows him. He imagines he's smarter and superior to other people, and that it's his duty to prey on them. Mentally, he's a rotten-spoiled child. But a dangerous one. Like the one rotten apple, he spreads his rottenness through the whole barrel."
"I'm familiar with that theory of crime but I don't go along with it. I'm not convinced you can unspoil a rotten apple, and I doubt if it's worth while to try."
"No matter," said Torry grimly. "If they fail on him, they'll destroy him. Either way, it will make a better world for everyone. Probably I hate him more than you do. But I'm willing to give him this last chance if you'll let me."
Grannar laughed ironically. "Have it your way, if you can take him. It's out of my hands, actually. Though, as a cop, I'd be better satisfied if you burned him down here, I'll settle for your clinic. It's a nasty enough choice, anyhow. If you can capture or kill him, go ahead. I'll gladly resign my share of the brute to you. And you'll earn it. Do you really think you can crawl out of here and circle him?"
Torry glanced sourly at the flickering mirages. "I can try," he said slowly.
It was a mirage that saved Torry.
Going proved even rougher than he had expected. Squirming over unknown terrain is hard, even in conditions of fair visibility. On Triton, with its constantly varying light, and the ever-present confusion of mirages, it was fantastic. The cumbersome space suit was no help.
Darkness thickened around him, but the mirages grew worse, as he toiled up the slope. Loose stones rattled about him in tiny avalanches, and he went more carefully, lest they betray him to Roper. Sweat bathed him inside his insulated costume, and steam misted the helmet's face plate before he could get the thermal conditioners functioning properly. A bad foothold earned him a nasty fall, and the rough suiting and acid sweat combined to burn painful blisters on hands and knees.
In grim determination approximating madness, he plunged upward and onward. He found an eroded ravine and groped blindly along it, wondering what fearful liquids had gashed such a gully on such a nightmarish world.
Alien dusk gathered, and in the hollow of the ravine writhed coils of living light. At intervals, he avoided the hot glaring flares of radioactive hotspots. Torry followed the barren fissure, and strange sounds and fleeting light-phantoms followed him. And a river of dense, sluggish air funneled upward through the gully, whispering of ugly, forgotten events upon a forgotten world. In the uneasy sky overhead, electrical discharges wove networks of colored lightnings, which crackled and hissed as static in his earphones.
Nearing the upper end of the gully, Torry halted and took stock of his surroundings. He estimated progress, and wondered how he would ever find his quarry. His quest seemed one more mad illusion in the sequence of mirages. He freed his blaster from its magnetic belt clip and examined it for charge. Crawling with the weapon in his hand was awkward, but it would be suicide to be caught reaching for it. Grimly he worked his way to the notch of the ravine and poked out his head.
Ironically, it was the mirage that saved him.
A lateral mirage, distorting both distance and direction, showed him a sharp image, inverted, of Roper aiming carefully in the opposite direction.