The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Secret MartiansThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Secret MartiansAuthor: Jack SharkeyRelease date: December 11, 2015 [eBook #50668]Most recently updated: October 22, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET MARTIANS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Secret MartiansAuthor: Jack SharkeyRelease date: December 11, 2015 [eBook #50668]Most recently updated: October 22, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: The Secret Martians
Author: Jack Sharkey
Author: Jack Sharkey
Release date: December 11, 2015 [eBook #50668]Most recently updated: October 22, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET MARTIANS ***
THE SECRET MARTIANSby JACK SHARKEYACE BOOKS, INC.23 West 47th Street,New York 36, N. Y.THE SECRET MARTIANSCopyright, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.All Rights ReservedPrinted in U.S.A.[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
by JACK SHARKEY
ACE BOOKS, INC.23 West 47th Street,New York 36, N. Y.
THE SECRET MARTIANSCopyright, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.All Rights Reserved
Printed in U.S.A.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
MASTER SPY OF THE RED PLANET
Jery Delvin had a most unusual talent. He could detect the flaws in any scheme almost on sight—even where they had eluded the best brains in the ad agency where he worked. So when the Chief of World Security told him that he had been selected as the answer to the Solar System's greatest mystery, Jery assumed that it was because of his mental agility.
But when he got to Mars to find out why fifteen boys had vanished from a spaceship in mid-space, he found out that even his quick mind needed time to pierce the maze of out-of-this-world double-dealing. For Jery had become a walking bomb, and when he set himself off, it would be the end of the whole puzzle of THE SECRET MARTIANS—with Jery as the first to go!
Jack Sharkey decided to be a writer nineteen years ago, in the Fourth Grade, when he realized all at once that "someone wrote all those stories in the textbooks." While everyone else looked forward variously to becoming firemen, cowboys, and trapeze artists, Jack was devouring every book he could get his hands on, figuring that "if I put enough literature into my head, some of it might overflow and come out."
After sixteen years of education, Jack found himself teaching high school English in Chicago, a worthwhile career, but "not what one would call zesty." After a two-year Army hitch, and a year in advertising "sublimating my urge to write things for cash," Jack moved to New York, determined to make a career of full-time fiction-writing.
Oddly enough, it worked out, and he now does nothing else. He says, "I'd like to say I do this for fulfillment, or for cash, or because it's my destiny; however, the real reason (same as that expressed by Jean Kerr) is that this kind of stay-at-home self-employment lets me sleep late in the morning."
I was sitting at my desk, trying to decide how to tell the women of America that they were certain to be lovely in a Plasti-Flex brassiere without absolutely guaranteeing them anything, when the two security men came to get me. I didn't quite believe it at first, when I looked up and saw them, six-feet-plus of steel nerves and gimlet eyes, staring down at me, amidst my litter of sketches, crumpled copy sheets and deadline memos.
It was only a fraction of an instant between the time I saw them and the time they spoke to me, but in that miniscule interval I managed to retrace quite a bit of my lifetime up till that moment, seeking vainly for some reason why they'd be standing there, so terribly and inflexibly efficient looking. Mostly, I ran back over all the ads I'd created and/or okayed for Solar Sales, Inc. during my five years with the firm, trying to see just where I'd gone and shaken the security of the government. I couldn't find anything really incriminating, unless maybe it was that hair dye that unexpectedly turned bright green after six weeks in the hair, but that was the lab's fault, not mine. So I managed a weak smile toward the duo, and tried not to sweat too profusely.
"Jery Delvin?" said the one on my left, a note of no-funny-business in his brusque baritone.
"... Yes," I said, some terrified portion of my mind waiting masochistically for them to draw their collapsers and reduce me to a heap of hot protons.
"Come with us," said his companion. I stared at him, then glanced hopelessly at the jumble of things on my desk. "Never mind that stuff," he added.
I rose from my place, slipped my jacket from its hook, and started across the office toward the door, each of them falling into rigid step beside me. Marge, my secretary, stood wide-eyed as we passed through her office, heading for the hall exit.
"Mr. Delvin," she said, her voice a wispy croak. "When will you be back? The Plasti-Flex man is waiting for your—"
I opened my mouth, but one of the security men cut in.
"You will be informed," he said to Marge.
She was staring after me, open-mouthed, as the door slid neatly shut behind us.
"W-WillI be back?" I asked desperately, as we waited for the elevator. "At all? Am I under arrest? What's up, anyhow?"
"You will be informed," said the man again. I had to let it go at that. Security men were not hired for their loquaciousness. They had a car waiting at the curb downstairs, in the No Parking zone. The cop on the beat very politely opened the door for them when we got there. Those red-and-bronze uniforms carry an awful lot of weight. Not to mention the golden bulk of their holstered collapsers.
There was nothing for me to do but sweat it out and to try and enjoy the ride, wherever we were going.
"Youare Jery Delvin?"
The man who spoke seemed more than surprised; he seemed stunned. His voice held an incredulous squeak, a squeak which would have amazed his subordinates. It certainly amazed me. Because the speaker was Philip Baxter, Chief of Interplanetary Security, second only to the World President in power, and not even that in matters of security. I managed to nod.
He shook his white-maned head, slowly. "I don't believe it."
"But I am, sir," I insisted doggedly.
Baxter pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes for a moment, then sighed, grinned wryly, and waggled an index finger at an empty plastic contour chair.
"I guess maybe you are at that, son. Sit down, sit down."
I folded gingerly at knees and hips and slid back into the chair, pressing my perspiring palms against the sides of my pants to get rid of their uncomfortably slippery feel. "Thank you, sir."
There was a silence, during which I breathed uneasily, and a bit too loudly. Baxter seemed to be trying to say something.
"I suppose you're wondering why I've called—" he started, then stopped short and flushed with embarrassment. I felt a sympathetic hot wave flooding my own features. A copy chief in an advertising company almost always reacts to an obvious cliche.
Then, with something like a look of relief on his blunt face, he snatched up a brochure from his kidney-shaped desktop and his eyes raced over the lettering on its face.
"Jery Delvin," he read, musingly and dispassionately. "Five foot eleven inches tall, brown hair, slate-gray eyes. Citizen. Honest, sober, civic-minded, slightly antisocial...."
He looked at me, questioningly.
"I'd rather not discuss that, sir, if you don't mind."
"Do you mind if I do mind?"
"Oh ... Oh, well if you put it like that. It's girls, sir. They block my mind. Ruin my work."
"I don't get you."
"Well, in my job—See, I've got this gift. I'm a spotter."
"A what?"
"A spotter. I can't be fooled. By advertising. Or mostly anything else. Except girls."
"I'm still not sure that I—"
"It's like this. I designate ratios, by the minute. They hand me a new ad, and I read it by a stopwatch. Then, as soon as I spot the clinker, they stop the watch. If I get it in five seconds, it passes. But if I spot it in less, they throw it out and start over again. Or is that clear? No, I guess you're still confused, sir."
"Just a bit," Baxter said.
I took a deep breath and tried again.
"Maybe an example would be better. Uh, you know the one about 'Three out of five New York lawyers use Hamilton Bond Paper for note-taking'?"
"I've heard that, yes."
"Well, the clinker—that's the sneaky part of the ad, sir, or what we call weasel-wording—the clinker in that one is that while it seems to imply sixty percent of New York lawyers, it actually means precisely what it says: Three out of five. For that particular product, we had to question seventy-nine lawyers before we could come up with three who liked Hamilton Bond, see? Then we took the names of the three, and the names of two of the seventy-six men remaining, and kept them on file."
"On file?" Baxter frowned. "What for?"
"In case the Federal Trade Council got on our necks. We could prove that three out of five lawyers used the product. Three out of those five. See?"
"Ah," said Baxter, grinning. "I begin to. And your job is to test these ads, before they reach the public. What fools you for five seconds will fool the average consumer indefinitely."
I sat back, feeling much better. "That's right, sir."
Then Baxter frowned again. "But what's this about girls?"
"They—they block my thinking, sir, that's all. Why, take that example I just mentioned. In plain writing, I caught the clinker in one-tenth of a second. Then they handed me a layout with a picture of a lawyer dictating notes to his secretary on it. Her legs were crossed. Nice legs. Gorgeous legs...."
"How long that time, Delvin?"
"Indefinite. Till they took the girl away, sir."
Baxter cleared his throat loudly. "I understand, at last. Hence your slight antisocial rating. You avoid women in order to keep your job."
"Yes, sir. Even my secretary, Marge, whom I'd never in a million years think of looking at twice, except for business reasons, of course, has to stay out of my office when I'm working, or I can't function."
"You have my sympathy, son," Baxter said, not unkindly.
"Thank you, sir. It hasn't been easy."
"No, I don't imagine it has...." Baxter was staring into some far-off distance. Then he remembered himself and blinked back to the present. "Delvin," he said sharply. "I'll come right to the point. This thing is.... You have been chosen for an extremely important mission."
I couldn't have been more surprised had he announced my incipient maternity, but I was able to ask, "Me? For Pete's sake, why, sir?"
Baxter looked me square in the eye. "Damned if I know!"
I stared at him, nonplussed. He'd spoken with evidence of utmost candor, and the Chief of Interplanetary Security was not one to be accused of a friendly josh, but—"You're kidding!" I said. "You must be. Otherwise, why was I sent for?"
"Believe me, I wish I knew," he sighed. "You were chosen, from all the inhabitants of this planet, and all the inhabitants of the Earth Colonies, by the Brain."
"You mean that International Cybernetics picked me for a mission? That's crazy, if you'll pardon me, sir."
Baxter shrugged, and his genial smile was a bit tightly stretched. "When the current emergency arose and all our usual methods failed, we had to submit the problem to the Brain."
"And," I said, beginning to be fascinated by his bewildered manner, "what came out?"
He looked at me for a long moment, then picked up that brochure again, and said, without referring to it, "Jery Delvin, five foot eleven inches tall—"
"Yes, but read me the part where it says why I was picked," I said, a little exasperated.
Baxter eyed me balefully, then skimmed the brochure through the air in my direction. I caught it just short of the carpet.
"If you can find it, I'll read it!" he said, almost snarling.
I looked over the sheet, then turned it over and scanned the black opposite side. "All it gives is my description, governmental status, and address!"
"Uh-huh," Baxter grunted laconically. "It amuses you, does it?" The smile was still on his lips, but there was a grimness in the glitter of his narrowing eyes.
"Not really," I said hastily. "It baffles me, to be frank."
"If you're sitting there in that hopeful stance awaiting some sort of explanation, you may as well relax," Baxter said shortly. "I have none to make. IC had none to make. Damn it all to hell!" He brought a meaty fist down on the desktop. "No one has an explanation! All we know is that the Brain always picks the right man."
I let this sink in, then asked, "What made you ask for a man in the first place, sir? I've always understood that your own staff represented some of the finest minds—"
"Hold it, son. Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. We asked for no man. We asked for a solution to an important problem. And your name was what we got. You, son, are the solution."
Chief of Security or not, I was getting a little burned up at his highhanded treatment of my emotions. "How nice!" I said icily. "Now if I only knew the problem!"
Baxter blinked, then lost some of his scowl. "Yes, of course;" Baxter murmured, lighting up a cigar. He blew a plume of blue smoke toward the ceiling, then continued. "You've heard, of course, of the Space Scouts?"
I nodded. "Like the old-time Boy Scouts, only with rocket-names for their various troops in place of the old animal names."
"And you recall the recent government-sponsored trip they had? To Mars and back, with the broadly-smiling government picking up the enormous tab?"
I detected a tinge of cynicism in his tone, but said nothing.
"What a gesture!" Baxter went on, hardly speaking directly to me at all. "Inter-nation harmony! Good will! If these mere boys can get together and travel the voids of space, then so can everyone else! Why should there be tensions between the various nations comprising the World Government, when there's none between these fine lads, one from every civilized nation on Earth?"
"You sound disillusioned, sir," I interjected.
He stared at me as though I'd just fallen in from the ceiling or somewhere. "Huh? Oh, yes, Delvin, isn't it? Sorry, I got carried away. Where was I?"
"You were telling about how this gesture, the WG sending these kids off for an extraterrestrial romp, will cement relations between those nations who have remained hostile despite the unification of all governments on Earth. Personally, I think it was a pretty good idea, myself. Everybody likes kids. Take this jam we were trying to push. Pomegranate Nectar, it was called. Well, sir, it just wouldn't sell, and then we got this red-headed kid with freckles like confetti all over his slightly bucktoothed face, and we—Sir?"
I'd paused, because he was staring at me like a man on the brink of apoplexy. I swallowed, and tried to look relaxed.
After a moment, he found his voice. "To go on, Delvin. Do you recall what happened to the Space Scouts last week?"
I thought a second, then nodded. "They've been having such a good time that the government extended their trip by—Why are you shaking your head that way, sir?"
"Because it's not true, Delvin," he said. His voice was suddenly old and tired, and very much in keeping with his snowy hair. "You see, the Space Scouts have vanished."
I came up in the chair, ramrod-straight. "Their mothers—they've been getting letters and—"
"Forgeries, Fakes. Counterfeits."
"You mean whoever took the Scouts is falsifying—"
"No.Mymen are doing the work. Handpicked crews, day and night, have been sending those letters to the trusting mothers. It's been ghastly, Delvin. Hard on the men, terribly hard. Undottedi's, misuse of tenses, deliberate misspellings. They take it out of an adult, especially an adult with a mind keen enough to get him into Interplanetary Security. We've limited the shifts to four hours per man per day. Otherwise, they'd all be gibbering by now!"
"And your men haven't found out anything?" I marvelled.
Baxter shook his head.
"And you finally had to resort to the Brain, and it gave you my name, but no reason for it?"
Baxter cupped his slightly jowled cheeks in his hands and propped his elbows on the desktop, suddenly slipping out of his high position to talk to me man-to-man. "Look, son, an adding machine—which is a minor form of an electronic brain, and even works on the same principle—can tell you that two and two make four. But can it tell you why?
"Well, no, but—"
"That, in a nutshell is our problem. We coded and fed to the Brain every shred of information at our disposal; the ages of the children, for instance, and all their physical attributes, and where they were last seen, and what they were wearing. Hell, everything! The machine took the factors, weighed them, popped them through its billions of relays and tubes, and out of the end of the answer slot popped a single sheet. The one you just saw. Your dossier."
"Then I'm to be sent to Mars?" I said, nervously.
"That's just it," Baxter sighed. "We don't even know that! We're like a savage who finds a pistol: used correctly, it's a mean little weapon; pointed the wrong way, it's a quick suicide. So, you are our weapon. Now, the question is: Which way do we point you?"
"You got me!" I shrugged hopelessly.
"However, since we have nothing else to go on but the locale from which the children vanished, my suggestion would be to send you there."
"Mars, you mean," I said.
"No, to the spaceshipPhobos II. The one they were returning to Earth in when they disappeared."
"They disappeared from a spaceship? While in space?"
Baxter nodded.
"But that's impossible," I said, shaking my head against this disconcerting thought.
"Yes," said Baxter. "That's what bothers me."
Phobos II, for obvious reasons, was berthed in a Top Security spaceport. Even so, they'd shuttled it into a hangar, safe from the eyes of even their own men, and as a final touch had hidden the ship's nameplate beneath magnetic repair-plates.
I had a metal disk—bronze and red, the Security colors—insigniaed by Baxter and counterembossed with the President's special device, a small globe surmounted by clasping hands. It gave me authority to do anything. With such an identification disc, I could go to Times Square and start machine gunning the passers-by, and not one of New York's finest would raise a hand to stop me.
And, snugly enholstered, I carried a collapser, the restricted weapon given only to Security Agents, so deadly was its molecule-disrupting beam. Baxter had spent a tremulous hour showing me how to use the weapon, and especially how to turn the beam off. I'd finally gotten the hang of it, though not before half his kidney-shaped desk had flashed into nothingness, along with a good-sized swath of carpeting and six inches of concrete floor.
His parting injunction had been. "Be careful, Delvin, huh?"
Yes, parting. I was on my own. After all, with a Security disc—the Amnesty, they called it—such as I possessed, and a collapser, I could go anywhere, do anything, commandeer anything I might need. All with no questions asked. Needless to say, I was feeling pretty chipper as I entered the hangar housingPhobos II. At the moment, I was the most influential human being in the known universe.
The pilot, as per my videophoned request, was waiting there for me. I saw him as I stepped into the cool shadows of the building from the hot yellow sunlight outside. He was tall, much taller than I, but he seemed nervous as hell. At least he was pacing back and forth amid a litter of half-smoked cigarette butts beside the gleaming tailfins of the spaceship, and a fuming butt was puckered into place in his mouth.
"Anders?" I said, approaching to within five feet of him before halting, to get the best psychological effect from my appearance.
He turned, saw me, and hurriedly spat the butt out onto the cement floor. "Yes, sir!" he said loudly, throwing me a quivering salute. His eyes were a bit wild as they took me in.
And well they might be. An Amnesty-bearer can suddenly decide a subject is not answering questions to his satisfaction and simply blast the annoying party to atoms. It makes for straight responses. Of course, I was dressing the part, in a way. I wore the Amnesty suspended by a thin golden chain from my neck, and for costume I wore a raven-black blouse and matching uniform trousers and boots. I must have looked quite sinister. I'm under six feet, but I'm angular and wiry. Thus, in ominous black, with an Amnesty on my breast and a collapser in my holster, I was a sight to strike even honest citizens into quick examinations of conscience. I felt a little silly, but the outfit was Baxter's idea.
"I understand you were aboard thePhobos IIwhen the incident occurred?" I said sternly, which was unusual for my wonted demeanor.
"Yes, sir!" he replied swiftly, at stiff attention.
"I don't really have any details," I said, and waited for him to take his cue. As an afterthought, to help him talk, I added, "At ease, by the way, Anders."
"Thank you, sir," he said, not actually loosening much in his rigid position, but his face looking happier. "See, I was supposed to pilot the kids back here from Mars when their trip was done, and—" He gave a helpless shrug. "I dunno, sir. I got 'em all aboard, made sure they were secure in the takeoff racks, and then I set my coordinates for Earth and took off. Just a run-of-the-mill takeoff, sir."
"And when did you notice they were missing?" I asked, looking at the metallic bulk of the ship and wondering what alien force could snatch fifteen fair-sized young boys through its impervious hull without leaving a trace.
"Chow time, sir. That's when you expect to have the little—to have the kids in your hair, sir. Everyone wants his rations first—You know how kids are, sir. So I went to the galley and was about to open up the ration packs, when I noticed how damned quiet it was aboard. And especially funny that no one was in the galley waiting for me to start passing the stuff out."
"So you searched," I said.
Anders nodded sorrowfully. "Not a trace of 'em, sir. Just some of their junk left in their storage lockers."
I raised my eyebrows. "Really? I'd be interested in seeing this junk, Anders."
"Oh, yes, sir. Right this way, sir. Watch out for these rungs, they're slippery."
I ascended the retractable metal rungs that jutted from a point between the tailfins to the open airlock, twenty feet over ground level, and followed Anders inside the ship.
I trailed Anders through the ship, from the pilot's compartment—a bewildering mass of dials, switches, signal lights and wire—through the galley into the troop section. It was a cramped cubicle housing a number of nylon-webbed foam rubber bunks. The bunks were empty, but I looked them over anyhow. I carefully tugged back the canvas covering that fitted envelope-fashion over a foam rubber pad, and ran my finger over the surface of the pad. It came away just slightly gritty.
"Uh-huh!" I said, smiling. Anders just stared at me.
I turned to the storage lockers. "Let's see this junk they were suddenly deprived of."
Anders, after a puzzled frown, obediently threw open the doors of the riveted tiers of metal boxes along the rear wall; the wall next to the firing chambers, which I had no particular desire to visit. I glanced inside at the articles therein, and noted with interest their similarity.
"Now, then," I resumed, "the thrust of this rocket to get from Mars to Earth is calculated with regard to the mass on board, is that correct?" He nodded. "Good, that clears up an important point. I'd also like to know if this rocket has a dehumidifying system to keep the cast-off moisture from the passengers out of the air?"
"Well, sure, sir!" said Anders. "Otherwise, we'd all be swimming in our own sweat after a ten-hour trip across space!"
"Have you checked the storage tanks?" I asked. "Or is the cast-off perspiration simply jetted into space?"
"No. It's saved, sir. It gets distilled and stored for washing and drinking. Otherwise, we'd all dehydrate, with no water to replace the water we lost."
"Check the tanks," I said.
Anders, shaking his head, moved into the pilot's section and looked at a dial there. "Full, sir. But that's because I didn't drink very much, and any sweating I did—which was a hell of a lot, in this case—was a source of new water for the tanks."
"Uh-huh." I paused and considered. "I suppose the tubing for these tanks is all over the ship? In all the hollow bulkhead space, to take up the moisture fast?"
Anders, hopelessly lost, could only nod wearily.
"Would it hold—" I did some quick mental arithmetic—"let's say, about twenty-four extra cubic feet?"
He stared, then frowned, and thought hard. "Yes, sir," he said, after a minute. "Even twice that, with no trouble, but—" He caught himself short. It didn't pay to be too curious about the aims of an Amnesty-bearer.
"It's all right, Anders. You've been a tremendous help. Just one thing. When you left Mars, you took off from the night side, didn't you?"
"Why, yes, I did, sir. But how did you—?"
"No matter, Anders. That'll be all."
"Yes, sir!" He saluted sharply and started off.
I started back for Interplanetary Security, and my second—and I hoped, last—interview with Chief Baxter. I had a slight inkling why the Brain had chosen me; because, in the affair of the missing Space Scouts, my infallible talent for spotting the True within the Apparent had come through nicely. I had found a very interesting clinker.
"Strange," I remarked to Chief Baxter when I was seated once again in his office, opposite his newly replaced desk. "I hardly acted like myself out at that airfield. I was brusque, highhanded, austere, almost malevolent with the pilot. And I'm ordinarily on the shy side, as a matter of fact."
"It's the Amnesty that does it," he said, gesturing toward the disc. It lay on his desk, now, along with the collapser. I felt, with the new information I'd garnered, that my work was done, and that the new data fed into the Brain would produce some other results, not involving me.
I looked at the Amnesty, then nodded. "Kind of gets you, after awhile. To know that you are the most influential person in creation is to automatically act the part. A shame, in a way."
"The hell it is!" Baxter snapped. "Good grief, man, why'd you think the Amnesty was created in the first place?"
I sat up straight and scratched the back of my head. "Now you mention it, I really don't know. It seems a pretty dangerous thing to have about, the way people jump when they see it."
"It is dangerous, of course, but it's vitally necessary. You're young, Jery Delvin, and even the finest history course available these days is slanted in favor of World Government. So you have no idea how tough things were before the Amnesty came along. Ever hear of red tape?"
I shook my head. "No, I don't believe so. Unless it had something to do with the former communist menace? They called themselves the Reds, I believe...."
He waved me silent. "No connection at all, son. No, red tape was, well, involvement. Forms to be signed, certain factors to be considered, protocol to be dealt with, government agencies to be checked with, classifications, bureaus, sub-bureaus, congressional committees. It was impossible, Jery, my boy, to get anything done whatsoever without consulting someone else. And the time lag and paperwork involved made accurate and swift action impossible, sometimes. What we needed, of course, was a person who could simply have all authority, in order to save the sometimes disastrous delays. So we came up with the Amnesty."
"But the danger. If you should pick the wrong man—"
Baxter smiled. "No chance of that, Jery. We didn't leave it up to any committee or bureau or any other faction to do the picking. Hell, that would have put us right back where we'd been before. No, we left it up to the Brain. We'd find ourselves in a tight situation, and the Brain after being fed the data, would come up with either a solution, or a name."
I stared at him. "Then, when I was here before, I was here solely to receive the Amnesty, is that it?"
Baxter nodded. "The Brain just picks the men. Then we tell the men the situation, hand over the Amnesty, and pray."
I had a sudden thought. "Say, what happens if two men are selected by the Brain? Who has authority over whom?"
Baxter grimaced and shivered. "Don't even think such a thing! Even your mentioning such a contingency gives me a small migraine. It'd be unprecedented in the history of the Brain or the Amnesty." He grinned, suddenly. "Besides, it can't happen. There's only one of these—" he tapped the medallion gently "—in existence, Jery. So we couldn't have such a situation!"
I sank back into the contour chair, and glanced at my watch. Much too late to go back to work. I'd done a lot in one day, I reasoned. Well, the thing was out of my hands. Baxter had the information I'd come up with, and it had been coded and fed to the Brain. As soon as the solution came through, I could be on my way back to the world of hard and soft sell.
"You understand," said Baxter suddenly, "that you're to say nothing whatever about the disappearance of the Space Scouts until this office makes the news public? You know what would happen if this thing should leak!"
The intercom on Baxter's desk suddenly buzzed, and a bright red light flashed on. "Ah!" he said, thumbing a knob. "Here we go, at last!"
As he exerted pressure on the knob, a thin slit in the side of the intercom began feeding out a long sheet of paper; the new answer from the Brain. It reached a certain length, then was automatically sheared off within the intercom, and the sheet fell gently to the desktop. Baxter picked it up and swiftly scanned its surface. A look of dismay overrode his erstwhile genial features.
I had a horrible suspicion. "Not again?" I said softly.
Baxter swore under his breath. Then he reached across the desktop and tossed me the Amnesty.
"I hope you know what you're doing," said Baxter at the gleaming glass doorway of the spaceport. "Why a man who has absolute authority should choose to ride public transportation when he could have his pick of the fleetest government ships on Earth—"
I didn't tell him it was because of little details like stereovision, autobars, and, not least of all, comfort, that I had chosen to ride theValkyrie. She sat waiting even now, far out in the center of the landing strip, two hundred towering feet of silver, crammed with all the luxuries engineering ingenuity could put aboard her. I had, thanks to a government credit card, a private cabin. I intended to enjoy myself, this trip.
I'd managed to convince Baxter that it was less likely the public would suspect there was anything amiss if I went to Mars incognito, with the Amnesty worn under my clothing, for use only in emergencies. An Amnesty-bearer arriving on Mars in a government ship might cause talk. Disastrous talk.
Baxter was rattling on and on, giving me the names of my contacts on Mars for the seventeenth time, and I was giving him perfunctory nods as though I was paying attention, though I was actually watching the other passengers leaving the check-in desk. After all, I'd be in space with them for almost two days. You never know what might develop.
The co-rider I had in mind was a girl, with hair like irridescent cornsilk, and a figure that made the stereovision starlets look 2-D in comparison. She had her back to me, but even before she turned around, I knew she was beautiful. It was just the way she stood there, facing the passenger-check robot. She—well, shestoodlike a girl who is beautiful.
Then she turned around, and I gave my instincts an A plus.
Her eyes were the deepest of blues, actually a purple tone, and they were wide, serious and shining. There was a certain determination about the set of her jaw that I liked, and her lips were like soft red velvet. A man could kiss those lips and sink slowly into warm crimson seas; lose himself in the heated softness of their gentlest pressures.
"Delvin!"
Baxter's voice shattered my reverie, and I tore my eyes from the girl, though the after-effects of dreaming left my mind in confused fragments. "Huh?" I said, looking at his face and almost failing to recognize it.
"I said—" Baxter's voice was impatient and over loud, "—that you had best, in the interests of open-space safety, not flash that Amnesty while you're aboard theValkyrie. Passengers have a way of working themselves into a panic that is almost an uncanny gift! They'll all start suspecting their neighbors of treason, or worse, and—"
But I wasn't hearing his diatribe any more. As he'd spoken that first sentence, the girl with the shimmering cornsilk hair had been passing within a few feet of us, and I'd felt, rather than actually seen, her slender shoulders stiffen beneath the blue silken fabric of her blouse. And she'd hesitated for a moment in midstep, as though she were going to turn about and see which man in the universe was the one to whom the Amnesty had been given.
I watched her move out into the sunlight, crossing the field in brisk but dainty strides. Any second now, I told myself. She thinks she hasn't been seen. She's getting far enough away so that—Aha! Now!
Halfway to the ship, the girl turned, apparently busily concerned about the clasp of her handbag, as though it had come open without warning. I kept my head turned, to look as though I were watching Baxter. But my eyes were still on her. She looked at me. Then she turned and went on toward the ship.
"Had to see who I was!" I said to myself. "So now she knows I've got the Amnesty. And so—And so,what?"
Since antigravity, artificial gravity, and low-thrust take-offs were still in the realm of science-fiction, even the luxury liners like theValkyriehad to bed their passengers down in shock-absorbing couches until the ship was free of gravitation. So it wasn't until we'd achieved escape velocity from Earth that I saw the girl again.
I'd decided to wander into the lounge and try to locate her. It would be an easy task if she were present, what with her startling good looks. But it turned out to be even simpler than that.
She came to me.
I was just easing myself out of my couch, when my cabin door opened and closed. And locked.
That last part intrigued me even before I turned about. I was wondering what sort of menace I had to meet, and bewailing the fact that the collapser was still in my luggage, when I saw who my visitor was. I started to smile, but the smile left as I saw the saw-edged steak knife in her hand.
"Listen, whoever you are!" she said. Her voice was low, angrily intense, but still a pleasure to hear, somehow.
"I'm listening, I assure you!" I said, politely. "A voice like yours doesn't caress these tired old eardrums every day."
She accorded my compliment a smile, but it was a bleak one, and there was a certain wry lift to her left eyebrow. "Very suave, I'm sure," she said. "But I'm not in the mood, thank you. Now, you just sit down on your bunk and behave, and—"
"Mind if I get a cigarette?" I asked, gesturing toward my traveling case. I tried to be casual about it, but I must have failed. I lose my head around women, as I've said.
"I'll get them for you," she said, waving the knife's glittering blade at me. I moved away and sat on the edge of my bunk. She flicked the clasp open, and spread the two halves apart. There were two shirts and some underwear in the case, plus the collapser. Not a cigarette to be seen. She looked at me, narrow-eyed.
"I don't smoke," I explained weakly.
"You Amnesty-bearers!" she grated between even, white teeth. "Ready to destroy everybody with impunity, aren't you! You wouldn't even wait to find out what I wanted!"
"I haven't said a word," I pointed out delicately.
"You lied about the cigarettes," she accused.
"How would you treat a stranger who burst into your cabin with an unsheathed knife?" I said, exasperated.
She looked down at the knife, and reddened. "Maybe I was a bit abrupt about this. It's just that—" Her face suddenly crinkled up, and her deep blue-violet eyes burst into tears. Then the knife fell to the carpet, and her face was buried in her hands. I leaned forward and removed the knife from within her reach, then took her by the shoulders.
She whimpered hopelessly, between shuddering sobs, "Am I under arrest?"
"Depends," I said. "Depends entirely on why you came in here like this. And what my possession of the Amnesty has to do with it. And how," I added, puzzled, "you seemed to know so much about Amnesty-bearers and their vile dispositions!"
She took her hands from her face, streaked with tears, and said, with a shy grin, "I was guessing at that part. I just kind of assumed they'd all be pretty intolerant. Who wouldn't be, with all that power?"
"Well,Iwouldn't for one," I said defensively. "I only bite when I'm bitten."
She found a handkerchief somewhere and began sopping up the wet spots from her complexion; a complexion, I noted happily, that did not come off with water.
"Have a chair," I said, and rang for the steward. "I hope you drink?"
"Not a lot," she admitted. "But I could use one right now."
"Good," I said, watching her as she poised gracefully on the chair before my cabin's private stereo set. "By the way, my name's Jery. Jery Delvin."
She flushed scarlet again, and said, "Mine is White."
"First name?" I asked. She paused. "What is your first name?"
She looked at the carpet. "Snow," she said softly.
"For real?" I said. "Like with the dwarfs?"
She nodded, as one who'd been over the same conversational ground many wearisome times in the past. "Mother was a Walt Disney fan, back in the Age of Movies."
I shook my head, and rang for the steward again. "I think we both could use a drink."
Later, the puzzled steward departed for the dining salon to return the steak knife which Snow had "accidentally" picked up. We sipped our drinks in mutual silence for a minute or two, regarding one another over the rims of our tumblers. To me, Snow was looking better by the minute. I even had a momentary thought of flashing the Amnesty at her to see if those red velvet lips could fulfill in a tactile way the promise they made visually.
But instead, I said, "Tell me, do you always attack Amnesty-bearers with the nearest weapon you can lay hold of?"
Snow laughed musically, shaking her head. "I didn't mean to come in at full threat, Jery," she said softly. "I just wanted some sort of defense in case—Well, Amnesty-bearers think they can askanythingof a person, and—"
She left the explanation unfinished, but I found myself glad I hadn't tried pulling rank for a fast romance. "I'm very curious to know just what you did come in here for, Snow. Or did you just want a peep at the Amnesty? I saw you react when Baxter let it slip back at the spaceport."
"Is that who that was? Chief Baxter, of International Security?" she exclaimed.
I realized I was blurting things, and sighed, "Damn, I'm talking too much."
Snow's eyes gave me the once-over, and she tilted her head to one side, curiously. "You know, Jery, you don't look like a government official. You seem to be just an average man."
I thought of my dossier and frowned. "Not quite average, I'm afraid. I can be hopelessly confused by women."
Snow digested this, then shrugged. "Like I said, you seem to be just an average man."
I laughed. "I guess I'd better explain."
I told her all about my erstwhile job at Solar Sales, and my mental bloc regarding females. When I finished, she was fighting a grin. It was a losing fight. The grin won.
"If I'd known that, I'd have skipped that steak knife and just entered in a bikini," she said.
"You wouldn't have to go even that far," I told her. "One friendly wink of your big blue eyes and I'd be putty."
Snow raised her eyebrows appraisingly. "Hmmm. I'll have to remember that in the future." It was in fun, but I caught a tinge of serious consideration in it. It gave me an uneasy feeling, a feeling that brought me sharply back to my main query, from which I'd been sidetracked a few moments before.
"But you still haven't told me why you came in here."
"To find you. I figured that if an Amnesty-bearer was on his way to Mars, there was big trouble. And I think I know what the trouble is, but I need some of the answers you can give me."
"What do you want with government information?" I said, trying to be stiffly formal. "And what makes you think I'd give it to you?"
"Two reasons," she said, answering my last question first. "I can simply wink a big blue eye—unless you've been pulling my leg—and get all the information I desire."
"That's only one reason," I said carefully. "What else makes you think I'd tell you the information?"
Snow eyed me soberly, and her face hovered between grim determination and fathomless concern. "My brother Ted is one of the missing Space Scouts."
"Don't pretend," Snow said. "I know. The last two letters from Ted convinced me something was wrong. He never wrote those letters."
I thought of Baxter's agents sweltering to turn out perfect facsimiles of children's letters, all for nothing. I sighed, and determined to make one last effort to keep the secret a secret. "You're imagining things. Sometimes, when a person is in an alien environment—which you must admit a strange planet is—their outlook changes a bit."
She was staring at me, her eyes disconcertingly steady, just waiting for me to complete my lie, hardly listening to me. I gave it up and stopped. Snow, seeing I was through, unclasped her handbag and handed me a letter.
I read it through. When I was finished, I looked at her with what I hoped was a noncommittal expression.
"See what I mean?" said Snow. "Threel's inreally, and terrible spellings ofancientandMartian. But words like ruins and civilization come through perfectly. It's an obvious attempt on the part of someone to deceive me. I just know something's wrong. That's why I drained my savings account and took this flight. I've got to find out what's happened."
"You could have gone to the police." I suggested lamely.
"I did." Snow's voice was cold and flat. "They laughed at me, said I was imagining things. I don't really blame them; all I have to go on is a hunch. That, plus the fact that Ted didn't say anything in our special code."
I closed my eyes and groaned. She would have a special code with her brother! "Sure he didn't simply overlook it?" I tried.
Snow's face was solemnly earnest. "In one letter, by the longest stretch of the imagination, possibly. But not two in a row." She leaned forward, her eyes housing desperation. "So when I learned that you, an Amnesty-bearer, were aboard, I just knew it had to be connected with whatever happened to Ted. There is something wrong, isn't there!"
I hesitated, wondering what to do. This thing was a tightly kept secret, one which I'd sworn to keep. On the other hand, Snow had the most devastating blue eyes. I shifted in my position and felt cold metal bump lightly against my chest beneath my blouse. I'd forgotten about the Amnesty. Hell! I was the most influential, powerful person in the universe, wasn't I? If I wanted to plaster the secret across the face of the moon, no one had the authority to say no. Not even Baxter, however purple he might turn at the idea, could tell me not to do anything! And hadn't I been picked by the Brain? Didn't that mean that my instincts in this thing would be the correct ones?
I took one more look into her deep blue eyes and decided that even if it was the most disastrous thing to do, I was going to tell her the truth.
"It depends on what you mean bywrong," I said.
Snow's brow crinkled. "Then the boys have vanished?"
I nodded, and she went deathly pale. "But don't worry," I said quickly. "It may not be as bad as we think."
"What!" she gasped. "Fifteen little boys missing on an alien planet, and it may not be bad? Are you out of your mind?"
"If you'll calm down a bit and let me explain." I suggested.
Snow leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. "Go ahead," she said resignedly.
I told her about my being picked up at work by the Security Agents, of my meeting with Baxter, and of my investigation ofPhobos II. She listened that far in silence, then could hold back no longer.
"But what did you find in those lockers? And what does the takeoff thrust and the dehumidifying system have to do with the boys' disappearance?"
I smiled reassuringly at her. "Listen, Snow. Baxter, myself, and probably you, too, have one reaction in common about the boys' vanishment from a ship in space. Our very first word on the subject is an incredulous 'Impossible.' Of course, we're using it in the colloquial sense; that of 'I don't believe it!' But if we take it in its literal sense, we'll be absolutely correct. Such a thingisimpossible."
Snow opened her mouth, but I shushed her unspoken words with a wave of my hand. "I know, you're about to spout something about magnetic grapples and mid-space boardings, or even about long distance teleporting rays—none of which have as yet, so far as we know, been invented—or some such rot. But what are the arguments against these two solitary possibilities?
"As to the first; Anders, the pilot, would surely have noticed another ship in his vicinity. The meteorite warnings would have begun jangling when the ship was still hundreds of miles away. And if it could, somehow, evade the signalling devices, Anders would still have heard the ship make contact. You can't drive up in a spaceship big enough to hold at least fifteen normal-sized boys, besides your own crew, and just not be noticed!
"So we come to the second, and only other, possibility: Were the boys kidnapped by some ultrasuper teleportation beam? The answer, of course, is a resounding, 'Hell, no!'"
Snow frowned. "Why?"
"The thrust, Snow, that's why. If that weight were suddenly removed from the ship—boys of Space Scout age usually run to an average weight of one hundred pounds, or, in this case, a total of about fifteen hundred pounds—if that weight had suddenly become missing, then Anders' fuel consumption, remaining the same but with less mass to thrust, would have made him overshoot Earth. This, however, did not happen. In fact, the gauges in the pilot's compartment plainly show that the ship's mass was, on landing, within a fraction of an ounce of its takeoff mass. Therefore, no mass at all was lost in space except that expended by the consumption of fuel."
Snow shook her head, bewildered. "But that doesn't make sense!" she cried. "If they weren't taken off the ship in space, and they weren't aboard her when she landed, then—" All at once, she got it, and sat back with a sharp gasp.
"Exactly," I said. "They never even left Mars."
"But you said that this man Anders had seen to it that they were all aboard before takeoff."
"Which I have no doubt he did. But the civilian mind skips a few details when it thinks over his report. They see him look at the boys, nod, then go up front and press the starter button. It doesn't happen quite that simply. There are a lot of other things to be done. Anders had to go into the pilot's cabin, strap himself in place, check the guages which showed his course, mass, fuel supply, thrust control, oxygen-nitrogen mixture, and a million and one other things. He had to check the last and most important dial examined before takeoff; the one which told him that each of the fifteen takeoff racks in the ship were occupied."
"But—" Snow cut in, bewildered, leaning forward.
"Let me finish." She set her mouth and sat back again. "He had to know that, because takeoff thrust on a human beingnotsnugly in his padded rack would probably squash him to pieces against a bulkhead. So there had to be something in those racks in order to fool Anders into thinking that the scouts were still aboard; something which, by the time Anders had maneuvered the ship into its flight vector, would be gone without leaving a trace, or not much of a trace, unless one were actually looking for it."
"What?" asked Snow, fascinated.
"Ice," I said. "Hunks of ice in every one of the fifteen bunks. Ice which the temperature control unit would commence to melt immediately."
"But that would mean ice blocks of hundred-pound weights! They couldn't melt so fast. Wouldn't Anders be likely to come back to the racks and find them still there?"
"Not," I said, "with the efficiency of the temperature control system. Sharp deviations from comfortable levels in a spaceship can be disastrous. So the thermostat in the ship is set for a rigid fifty-five degrees, and it's built to keep the interior heat at that level. Put fifteen-hundred pounds of ice on board, and the heat in the rack cabin goes up, trying to get the temperature back to its correct level. The ice, lying there melting, absorbs the heat swiftly. So more heat is pumped into the room. Well, figure fifteen minutes before all the ice was liquified. More than enough of a margin of safety."
"Safety for whom?" Snow asked.
"For whoever didn't want Anders finding any evidence of how the disappearance was accomplished. About an hour passed between takeoff and the time he checked the cabin. You must remember that Anders had to maneuver the ship free of Mars' gravity, set his course for Earth, and then make a final check of all his equipment before going back into the ship proper. That takes plenty of time."
"But how could you figure this out?" Snow asked, her eyes wide with interest. "And where did the ice come from?"
"From the night side of Mars," I said. "Where the temperature drops below zero as soon as the sun has gone down. Remember, the ship was in a landing berth, and had just been prepared for a takeoff. The technicians would have moved away to be clear of the blast. In fact, they'd all be inside their shacks, having coffee against the chilly weather they'd been exposed to. All it took was someone bright enough to get hold of the water tank, and to spray the water into any handy container where it would freeze solid in a few seconds. Then the chunks of ice were substituted for the boys in the bunks, and Anders took off with no one but himself on board."
"You reasoned this out?" Snow said, incredulously. "How?"
"My gift for spotting, which I told you about. Once I knew that the boys could not have been kidnapped from space, and that something had to be making up for their mass aboard thePhobos II, I tried to think ofwherethis something could be kept. It wasn't in the open, nor in any of the storage space. Therefore, it had to be within the bulkheads. But what could go within the bulkheads? Only water which had been taken from the air to keep the humidity down. And yet this water had to remain—without a container, mind you—in the fifteen racks at takeoff time so that Anders' dial would register them as all being securely in place before he pressed the starter. So in what form could water sit on a bunk without a container?"
Snow smiled helplessly, "Ice, of course. You make it sound almost idiotically simple." Then her face fell. "But it's only a theory, isn't it! Or is it?"
I shrugged. "It seems borne out by a few things, Snow. When I entered thePhobos, I checked beneath the canvas covering on one of the takeoff racks. There was grit there, which is a little unusual on a military vessel, with their one-track-mindedness about things being spic and span. And water running through canvas, taking along the dirt that even a military white-glove inspection can't find, leaves behind a residue of grit."
"It still doesn't seem enough," she said wistfully, as if begging me to prove my theory correct for her peace of mind. I was glad to oblige.
"There's more. Water weighs in at 62.4 pounds per cubic foot. So, fifteen hundred pounds of water would occupy approximately twenty four cubic feet; the exact surplus found aboard thePhobos II, in the bulkhead tubing."
Snow looked startled, but still unconvinced. "To kidnap fifteen boys, without Anders noting even the slightest sign of a struggle or disturbance...."
I nodded. "Right. It is odd, isn't it! This bothered me, too, until I checked the contents of those storage lockers."
"Oh. I'd forgotten about that!" she exclaimed. "What did you find?"
"Roughly, without going into precise itemization, there were bottles of space sickness capsules, clean handkerchiefs, toothbrushes, packets of soap and the like."
"And the like?" Snow remarked. "What likeness is there between those things?"
I smiled happily, and told her, simply, the clinker I'd spotted at once on seeing those items: "They're all items which small boys hate with almost apocalyptic fury. But I did not find such things as jackknives, candy, chewing gum—Shall I go on?"
"You mean that whoever kidnapped the boys took along the things which the boys wanted?" she asked, her lovely voice making an unbelieving squeak on the last word.
"I mean," I said softly, "that I believe the Space Scouts left thePhobos IIof their own free will."
By evening of the following day we were in descent toward Marsport; a slow planet-circling downward spiral with a steady braking by the nose jets, lest we hit the atmosphere too fast and burn up. Even a thin atmosphere like that of Mars was no fun to enter at interplanetary speeds.
Snow, looking through the viewport beside her chair in the lounge, sighed gently and turned her lovely gaze back to my face. "I wish—" she began softly.
I laid my hand upon hers. "We've been over that, Snow. You must return to Earth. You haven't a chance of finding those boys. Hell, if you had, the Brain would have picked you. And I, with the Amnesty, can go anywhere, do anything, get results in a hurry."
"But if I came with you...." she pleaded in a tense whisper.
I shook my head, with finality. "I've told you over and over. You wreck my spotter's instinct, Snow. If you're with me, I'll never be able to locate those boys. I'll miss even obvious clues."
"You weren't so fuddleheaded yesterday when you told me how you'd reasoned out the real facts about the disappearance," she accused.
"Hell, your presence affects my thinking, not my memory! Come on, now, see it my way, will you?"
I stood up. "It looks like good-by for a while, Snow."
She faced me, solemnly. "Yes, it does. You'll be careful, won't you? And you'll let me know if—if—"
"I promise. Before I let Baxter know, even!"
We stood like that a moment, scarcely a foot apart, and I fought an impulse to take her into my arms. Then, with no warning, she flung her arms about my neck, and I had my first taste of those red velvet lips.
Then she was gone from the lounge. I glanced at the wall chronometer, and began to move toward my cabin in a hurry. Less than five minutes till set-down. I entered at a dead run.
I'd barely lashed myself to the rack when the landing thrust began. However, I'd taken two antipressure tablets, as per the instructions posted in the room, and I was comfortably unconscious even before the pressure began to grow.
When I awoke, there were two men in red and bronze uniforms standing over my rack. They didn't seem very pleased to find me there. One of them had my bag open, and was holding my collapser in his hand, and the look he was giving me wasn't the cheeriest I'd ever seen.
"What are you guys doing here?" I demanded. In speaking, I tried to gesture. That's when I became aware of the cold steel manacles on my wrists. "What the hell?"
The one with the weapon hefted it thoughtfully in his palm. "Don't you know it's a death-penalty offense to have possession of a collapser, chum?" he said.
The other one, not waiting for my answer, began undoing the straps across my body, and assisting me to my feet.
"Say, look, what do you guys mean by coming here and—"
"We were alerted," said the first man. "By an Amnesty-bearer."
I simply stared at him for an unbelieving instant. Then I said, "You're crazy! There's only one Amnesty in existence, and—"
With horrible clarity, I recalled Snow's impassioned farewell in the lounge, and the way her hands had darted about; my neck.
I brought my manacled hands up to my blouse and felt frantically for the red and bronze disc. The Amnesty was gone.
"Come along, now," said the one who'd helped me up.
"Where are we going?" I demanded.
"You're to be held incommunicado," he said, "until the Amnesty-bearer returns. Come along, now. We haven't got all day!"
"Day?" I said, and looked toward the viewport. Sure enough the glaring Martian sunlight was pouring into the cabin. "But we were landing on the night side," I said, confused.
"You did," said the one with the collapser. "Only it was arranged that you'd stay asleep for a while, till we could get here."
"Arranged how?" I choked furiously. Then I remembered the capsules I'd taken. I looked toward the instruction posted on the inside of the cabin door. Now that I was in no great hurry, I could see where someone had, with ordinary pen and ink, gone over the numeral 1, and made it into a passable 2. Someone, I thought bitterly, with shimmering cornsilk hair and red velvet lips!
"Now, just a minute, you guys, I can explain." I said.
"Stow it," said the one with the gun. "Come on, get moving."
"When Chief Baxter hears about this—" I growled.
He laughed. "You know Baxter has no authority to over-ride an Amnesty-bearer's orders!" Once again, he motioned with the collapser in the direction of the door.
"Well then, boys," I said, in as threatening a tone as I could muster, "let your fat heads chew on this for a while: the girl who has that Amnesty stole it from me! You just get hold of Baxter and verify it. Because if you don't, there are going to be two slightly-used Security Agent's uniforms for sale!"
They looked at each other, frowning. Then the one with the gun scowled. The other guy paled. "Say, Charlie, what if there is something to his story? What do you think we ought to do?"
Charlie blinked and thought hard. Then a smile crossed his face. "Nothing," he said. "We were given orders by an Amnesty-bearer, and all we have to do is carry them out to be in the clear."
"Oh, yeah?" I grunted. "Five'll get you ten Baxter thinks differently!"
The one who wasn't Charlie hesitated, and his grip, hitherto vise-tight on my upper arm, went suddenly slack. "Disobeying an Amnesty-bearer is unprecedented," he said carefully.
"So is the theft of the Amnesty!" I shouted in exasperation.
The other one looked at Charlie. "Maybe we ought to call Baxter, just in case."
"In my book," Charlie muttered, "that's not holding a guy incommunicado!"
"The hell it's not," I snorted. "I won't communicate with him. You two guys do it. Do it any way you can square it with your sense of duty. Either tell Baxter you have a man in custody by the name of Jery Delvin or that the Amnesty is in the possession of a blue-eyed blonde girl, and see what he says!"
Two hours later, I was facing the image of a purple-faced Chief Baxter on an interplanetary videoscreen. "Sorry to be so long, Delvin," he said apologetically. "But I'd left orders not to be disturbed. Anyway, I've given the men instructions to return the collapser to you, and an authorization permit for it, in case you meet any more agents."
"Which heaven forbid!" I growled. "No red tape with an Amnesty. Ha!"
"Uh. Yes. So you can continue with your search, Delvin. Have you found anything interesting?"
"Full report when I get back, Baxter," I said. "Right now, I have a date with a beautiful blonde."
"A date?" he choked out. "But—"
"Signing off," I said, and cut the circuit. I belted the collapser into place around my waist, and started off for the city proper. Somewhere in Marsport there was a lovely blonde girl named Snow White, who could do anything, anything at all, and get away with it. Anything but one thing.
She couldn't get within a foot of me again! Not if I had anything to say about it.