Just then, he staggered and put a hand to his forehead.
“What's the matter?” I asked him.
“Damn headache,” he said. “It's the planet. Some of us get saroche, you know. Altitude sickness. The atmosphere isn't quite built up to normal yet."
As I made no comment, he finally added, “Guess I'll go back now. This is getting me down."
I watched him in troubled silence as he staggered away in pain down the hill. But I did not watch him for long. Suddenly, I, too, staggered. But I did not hold my head. I was merely astounded by the sight of the sleth as it appeared abruptly out of thin air within ten feet of me.
On its surface I saw the angry face of Sanal, and I knew that he had been listening to our conversation. I also knew that the sleth could be rendered invisible.
“I made him go away,” said Sanal. “Will you please return here at once?"
There was something in his tone and facial expression that intimated that I really had no choice in the matter.
“I'm coming,” I told him. “I'd like to explain something to you."
“I think that is in order,” he answered, coldly. “Come quickly."
As I walked back over the hill, trailed by a very silent sleth, I wondered if I should regret having taught Kria English in exchange for lessons in her own tongue. And at the same time I realized that she must know about all this, because for Sanal to know she would have had to serve as interpreter!
* * *
CHAPTER IX
SHE was there with Drganu and Sanal when I arrived at the semitransparent “sky island” that was Sanal's home. Again I thought from the looks of her she should have been crying. But then the dark thought assailed me that Vanyans had no tears. And superstition asked the question: Is the race human that cannot cry?
She lowered her eyes, refusing to look at me, and it irritated me.
“Well?” I said to Sanal. “I'm here.” It did not look like this was going to be an old fashioned evening at home with the folks. It had more of an air of the Inquisition.
“You are a spy against your wife's people,” accused Sanal, in even tones. “Why?"
I told him. And I added, “I'm glad it's come up, Sanal. Let's get down to brass tacks. You know I want to help establish permanent peace between our worlds as much as you do. That's why I agreed to play it their way. I wanted proof that you were friends, not enemies. Now what's all this secret business? What are you hiding? For example, many scientific institutions on Earth have politely requested an exchange of biological information relative to comparative physiology between our races. In short, they would like to study an X-ray of a Vanyan. This you flatly refuse. If your structure is slightly different, why should that matter?"
Drganu appeared to tense, as though with anger, but he said nothing. Kria looked at me then and I saw the old mystery in her eyes. It was lost gods crying in a bottle at the bottom of the sea. A message from afar-untranslatable.
Sanal got up from his chair and paced the floor. “That is our business,” he retorted, bluntly. “But it has nothing to do with the safety of your world. Nothing!"
“Then why won't you tell me!? I almost yelled.
All three of them stared at me. There was a prolonged silence.
“Listen to me,” said Sanal, at last. “If your world destroys us, it will lose more than us. You had better do something to prevent them from attacking."
“There's another point,” I argued. “You have no instinct of self-preservation. During the anti-Vanyan uprising on Earth you were calm as clams. Now you face the prospect of total annihilation with the bland statement that we will lose more than you. Why!"
“Don't ask me that, because I won't tell you. But I want to tell you this. I shall be forced to bring all this to the attention of the Council immediately. However, to bring this out into the open would definitely increase interplanetary tension. We will handle the situation secretly, from our side, if you'll do a little counter-espionage for our side."
“What?"
“You became a spy for Earth merely to prove to your own people that we were friends. Now I want you to be a spy for us for a reason that is equally constructive. Please realize that our weapons are not the kind that cause death. We cannot tolerate killing. We could not harm you. But if you tell us Earth is ready to attack us, we might be able to prevent such an event-without bloodshed."
“But-what about your magnetic disintegration? That could snuff out a world!"
“Its end use is related to physical obstacles. We dig great shafts with it and level mountains or clear our path of meteors and other debris during space flight. The disintegrator is not intended for killing."
“But it could be used as such."
“We could not use it for that purpose, but you could."
All this time I was doing private thinking of my own. I actually wanted to see what Earth was up to. I wanted to talk to the authorities and see how bad the situation was getting. If I could pretend to spy for the Vanyans, it would keep their knowledge of my activities under cover. I could play the game both ways and with my own deck of cards.
“Suppose I go to Earth,” I said, “and look things over for you. I'd have to have a logical excuse-some vital secret to bring back. Can you think of something that would appear to be a vital secret yet which wouldn't harm you if you revealed it to me?"
“Yes,” said Drganu.
Kria and Sanal looked at him wonderingly.
“One thing you did not examine very closely in your tour of our world was the sleth. I believe it would be valuable for Earthmen to be able to duplicate it, and you could offer the secret information-of which you only became aware tonight-that they can be made invisible."
“That's it!” exclaimed Sanal. “I think we can give you plans for the sleth, but I'll have to take it up with Council. The sleth, you know, emits various types of rays which could be considered as weapons. Your own people would look upon it as a rare acquisition, indeed, which, in fact, it is."
* * * *
So it was decided. I knew I was playing both ends against the middle, and I didn't like it. To have denied my espionage against them in the face of concrete evidence which they had picked up by means of the sleth would have really created an obstacle for our side. Actually, playing their game was subterfuge on my part, but my objectives were sincere both ways. And that was what made it so difficult.
I tried to make up with Kria, but she resisted me.
“There are things here more important than individuals,” she said. “I love you, Raymond, but I am bound to things beyond myself.” She walked toward our room.
I began to follow, but both Sanal and Drganu laid a hand on my arm. I might have shaken them off, but there was a strange expression in their eyes which detained me.
“Among ourselves,” said Sanal, we are telepathic-and more. We feel the other's suffering. Your only recourse now is to prove to her that your marriage-can continue.” That did it. I flared up. “Where I come from, a man's wife is his property! It's a mutual situation, actually, but even one's own relatives have no right to interfere. I have certain prerogatives as her husband. If I want her to come to Earth with me, I can take her when the times comes-or she can stay for good!"
“You wish-to take her to Earth with you?"
“Not now. But I'm just saying she's my wife, which is a very personal business."
“That is understandable, but among our kind one's world, one's society, the entire welfare of the race, is a personal business, too."
I went to “town” that night, via the teletransportation system, and stayed with the U. S. Consul. Motter had already left for Earth ... I availed myself of the Consul's private liquor stock and asked him if he could fix me up with an Earthside suit of clothes...
* * *
CHAPTER X
IN THREE days I was on my way to Earth with a set of Vanyan plans for the sleth. Inasmuch as I had a chance to go in a ship piloted by Vanyans rather than Earthmen, I was sup
plied with a little case containing shots of the serum they had given me before for the purpose of enabling me to withstand more than ordinary maximums of acceleration and deceleration. Which was to come in handy later.
In Washington Motter traced me down immediately and I told him about the sleth. To make it look good I added that although the sleth was strategic stuff I had used it as an excuse to come home and get a better briefing as to what was going on. Again-both sides against the middle. But it worked. He took me in on the inside.
The situation was worse than I had thought. Public opinion was in favor of action against the Vanyans. Aside from the United Nations, the U.S. Congress was in a dither. U.N. decisions were slow in coming, and the President was faced with the necessity of thinking in terms of U. S. safety, regardless of U. N. decisions. Moreover, there was a sort of tacit agreement that Mars fell outside the scope of U. N. machinery as far as aggression or war was concerned. In other words, the Vanyan Government was not a U. N. member and therefore Mars was a sitting duck for anyone who wanted to take a pot shot at it. In fact it seemed the U.N. was hoping somebody would make a move so as to take the hot potato out of their hands.
I was present in Washington at a secret hearing on the Vanyan situation-strictly from the point of view of our own government. As an authority on Vanyan affairs and in the Vanyan way of thinking and the Vanyan language, I was questioned from time to time, but in all cases I perceived that I was regarded as a minor cog in the machinery. At the last minute it was decided to bring in a U.N. representative and go over the situation.
Before my eyes I suddenly saw the definite plans for an attack taking shape, and I demanded the floor. Grudgingly, they yielded it.
“I have it on authority,” I said, “that the Vanyans are incapable of killing. I suggest an alternative. Call them in and explain the grounds for your fears and tell them the only way the situation can be relieved is for them to move somewhere else."
This proposal was met with a general ripple of laughter. The U.N. representative, an Englishman named Spaulding, answered me.
“As a citizen of a nation possessing a long history in colonization,” he said, “I can appreciate the possibility of a man's going native and wishing to speak for the aliens among whom he has long resided. But there is something in legend pertaining to the dangers of eating the lotus too long. Pearl Harbor was a pointed example. I am afraid we shall have to reject your opinions as being distorted by your personal attachment to the Vanyans through your marriage with one of the heathens."
“An uncalled for insult,” I retorted. “Rather than reverting to stereotyped form, I'll overlook the insult in consideration of its source."
The chairman of the committee rapped his gavel smartly and glared at me.
“But don't destroy the Vanyans,” I warned. “You will be the losers-not they."
“Is he nuts?” queried one committee member.
To make a long story short, it looked like an attack was imminent, and I could do nothing about it. I walked out, stamping my heels. Motter came out after me and took hold of my shoulder.
“Sanders. Watch yourself!"
I jerked loose and walked away from him. Which was all the provocation he needed to put a spy on my trail from there on out. I expected that and acted accordingly.
* * * *
The fellow who was tailing me must have been confused when I went to the Lincoln Memorial and stood around like a tourist reading the Gettysburg Address and gaping at the moonlit Potomac. I was really having a mental wrestling match with two sets of emotions. There was my country and my world, which I felt was not in danger, in spite of official opinions on the subject. Yet as an assigned agent employed by the Government it was not for me to question, but to do, I suppose. Then on the other hand, there was my wife and her people, whom I loved and trusted. Moreover, idealism came into the picture in regard to Earth's human society. I felt that the Vanyans could benefit us beyond measure and that we were on the verge of killing the golden goose.
Question: Should I warn the Vanyans? And if the Government was right, after all? Well, take it from there and you'll know what was going through my head.
I read the Gettysburg Address about a dozen times, but that didn't help. Far out in the sky beyond the Potomac was a little red light that was Mars. It was gradually losing some of its red as the mighty machines of the Vanyans gradually released the oxygen from the soil and veiled the planet over with a thickening atmosphere. Science, knowledge, wisdom-benevolence. About to be destroyed.
Question: If Earth destroyed Mars and was actually wrong in doing so-then what? A terrible loss to Mankind. I was convinced that a historical blunder was being made. Moreover, fifty thousand wonderful people were involved.
I spoke their language. I thought in their language. I lived in their thoughts. This was an extra soul, which fought with my own.
Decision was mercifully taken out of my hands when a Vanyan disc suddenly swooped down in front of the memorial building. I caught the sound of scurrying footsteps as the agent tailing me ducked for cover. I think they paralyzed him.
Two Vanyans walked up the steps of the memorial building and addressed me in their own tongue. I was wanted back on Mars immediately. One of them carried a paralysis generator. Since it was more graceful to enter their disc on my own feet, I went with them.
How did they find me? Now that it looked like the chips were going down they were showing more of their cards. Personal direction finders. Mine had been set up shortly after my arrival on Mars. The Vanyans were benevolent and wise, but they were also smart. At least they weren't lotus eaters, themselves, even if I might have been accused of being one by the U. N. representative.
* * *
CHAPTER XI
WE were not long under way when the fireworks started. A communication was received by my “escorts” to the effect that I was to be returned to Earth at once. But inasmuch as the directive issued from the Government of the United States, they did not obey it. They were under orders from their own government to bring me in.
The ship's commander came to me and asked me if I had any acceleration serum for myself. When I asked him why, he turned on his three dimensional visiscope and I pretty nearly fainted.
Following us was not a ship, or a squadron, but every flying disc we had-an unsuspected fleet of them. They were far astern but coming fast. I felt very sick as I realized what had happened. My capture alerted the attack. They could wait no longer. This was it.
“It wouldn't make much difference if I didn't have any serum, would it?” I said to the Vanyan officer. “You wouldn't wait around here for my sake, would you?"
He smiled. “We feel that you are partially a Vanyan now. You deserved that much consideration.” Without further comment, he turned and walked toward the control room.
I knew what was coming, so I brought out my little case and gave myself a shot of serum. And just in time. As I flung myself onto a couch, the lights went out.
Inside my head...
I drifted between unconsciousness and fitful dreaming-awful delirium, in which I saw atom bombs crashing into Mars and making tall mushrooms over the wreckage of my wonder world.
“The fools!” I remember shouting once, referring to the Vanyans. “They wouldn't put up defenses! They'll be obliterated!"
And of course I know I must have called out Kria's name many times. Destruction or no destruction, she was my wife. I loved her and I didn't want her to die. Now the veneer of civilization was peeling off down to primordial instinct.
“To hell with everything!” I shouted. “They won't kill her!"
We maintained a good lead all the way, and in fact got ahead of the Earth fleet. When we swept in alongside the Palace of the Council at Tharsis, I knew I only had about an hour in which to act if anything was to be salvaged.
* * * *
I went with the guards directly into a Vanyan Council. I saw the U.S. Consul and other Earth dignitaries scuttling out of the buildin
g in haste, entirely unmolested. Evidently the warning had come through. They were on their way to the Earth-built ships-ships that had been built on Earth by Earthmen, thanks to a Vanyan supply of a peculiar element that went into the makeup of the relay units controlling them. The Vanyans’ own gift was being turned against them.
When I came into the Council Chamber I looked around for Sanal and Drganu and Kria. None of them was present. I dashed to the speakers’ podium and yelled at all of them in Vanyan.
“Tell me the truth! Will you defend yourselves?"
A grave body of Masters looked back at me. They shook their heads negatively. Ralsyan, my one acquaintance among them, spoke.
“And it is your loss,” he said. “Not ours."
“But you're not just going to sit here!” I shouted.
“It is too late to do aught else. We know what we sought now. The answer is: Earth is not ready for the higher way of life."
I shook my head, trying to clear it of dizziness, “All right! Then why was I recalled to Mars?"
“That you will discover in due time."
“The time is due right now. Listen, I can't understand your attitude and I'm not waiting...!” I ran to the nearest guard and took his paralysis generator from him. Before they could recover from their surprise, I paralyzed the entire assemblage. I did not have to leave the room in order to escape. There was a first rate teletransporter there and I knew Sanal's call number.
* * * *
So it was that in less than half a minute I stood in Sanal's private “sky island” once more, paralyzer in hand. Sanal and Drganu and Kria were there. They had been watching me in the three-dimensional viewer, and now they were on their feet, forewarned. Kria hung her head and ran to her room-our room.
“I want all three of you to come with me,” I said. “This idea of sitting idly by and waiting for the destruction is insane. Now you'll do it my way or I'll force you to do it!"
“We appreciate your concern for us,” said Sanal, “but it's too late. However, in regard to your own safety—"
Martian Honeymoon and Beyond the Darkness Page 6