Ritchie was still only a comparatively little man, despite his boasts. But there was nothing to stop him growing. He knew it. There would be a time when, if he and Morgan and I were placed as we had been, he could say casually, if he liked: "Shoot him dead, Morgan."
And Morgan could do it, then. Nothing would happen to either of them. Ritchie, by that time, would have things organized his way.
Only now did I really understand how vitally important we lieutenants had been back on Earth, what an enormous responsibility we had had, and how two of us at least had misused it.
Lieutenant Porter had brought Ritchie along, and I had brought Morgan Smith. Porter was lucky -- he wasn't going to see the consequences of his choice.
I was.
8
Betty didn't have a miscarriage, but her baby was born dead. We went to see her, expecting grief and hysteria.
We didn't see it. Betty was curiously calm and unconcerned. I think she had known all along that she would lose her baby, and that it would break her heart.
Leslie and I were silent as we left the hospital. Leslie wasn't back at work yet, but it would be only a day or two before she was. Eventually on Mars human beings would probably lose a lot of their physical strength through not taking enough vigorous exercise to develop it. Meantime, however, a person who would have been weak on Earth was quite capable of vigorous movement on Mars.
We were silent because we had seen a girl who had lost everything, and because we knew what it had done to her. Betty was too heartbroken, too lost to cry, to be anything but calm and apparently unconcerned.
It wasn't what had happened to Betty that mattered. If Leslie had lost me and then her baby, it wouldn't have finished Leslie. She would have cried violently, been miserable for a while, and then started to build new things into her life to replace what she had lost.
Betty wasn't going to do any rebuilding. She didn't have Leslie's capacity for that. What wouldn't have broken Leslie or Aileen or Caroline had broken Betty once and for all, beyond repair. We knew that, and didn't want to talk about it.
Presently Leslie deliberately dragged her mind and mine off Betty.
"Now we must see about giving Pat a little brother," she said brightly.
I protested. I had no quarrel with the idea in general, I said -- not in the least. "But I want to have my beautiful wife just the way she is for a little while," I added.
I hadn't told her what Ritchie had said. I didn't see what good it would do to tell her.
A few days after Leslie came back to work, the food in the settlement began to improve. There could have been a general improvement before if all the extra supplies hadn't been passed on to pregnant women. Now there weren't nearly so many, and the diet of Winant in general siowly improved in both quantity and variety.
The exploration parties had paid off. They found no vast tracts of arable land, certainly, but they found a lot of little bits. Quite a few groups were taken away to work elsewhere -- by spaceship, of course. That was the only means of transport we had.
The cattle were allowed to breed, a few of the older bulls were slaughtered, and there was a little fresh meat at last. Eggs remained in short supply for a while as chickens were hatched. There still was scarcely any milk, but it would be only a matter of time before there was plenty for everybody.
The weather was becoming much more predictable. For one thing, the climate of Mars was still settling after the big change that had come over it. For another, we were becoming more used to the signs, and what had been, at first, storms completely without warning now gave us enough advance information to enable us to gauge their intensity.
We eased off a little in our work. It was too hot in mid-summer, as it was now, to carry on with the same backbreaking labor. And the urgency wasn't as great now. We had turned the corner as far as the agricultural and accommodation problems were concerned.
Instead of devoting all our energies to providing rough-and-ready new accommodation, we now had half our force employed on refining what had been started. Slowly the cliffs were being faced with concrete, the various levels reinforced, lined, floored. We were no longer primitive cave dwellers. Our flats were beginning to resemble what we had been used to back on Earth. We couldn't paper our walls or finish them in wood, and we had no material for curtains or slip covers. But we had plenty of plaster and paint, and gradually the right plastics were being evolved to replace the cloth and leather we wouldn't have for a long time.
Landmark after landmark was passed. We had electric light long before we had water closets and taps and baths. However, these came at last. For a time we had electric radiators in the rooms. Then these disappeared and the whole block of flats had an efficient electric heating system. Big windows were put into the front rooms. None of them opened. We weren't going to make the mistake that had been made so often in Earth buildings, the mistake of having two independent and incompatible ventilation systems.
There were no outside staircases. At one time we had had to climb to our caves over the cliff face, and in high winds two or three people had been blown off the crude ladders and killed. Now there were ten broad stairways in the interior of the block, behind the flats. Soon there would be elevators.
Old maids' hostel was cleared away -- there weren't many spinsters left. We now had five thousand flats at least started, some of them almost finished.
The future would have been bright if it hadn't been for Ritchie. He was still working assiduously at his self-appointed job of undermining everything that was done, with considerable success. I saw that clearly, now that I had stopped underestimating him.
The work parties were gradually dissolving. I hardly ever saw Morgan now. I knew he was with Ritchie most of the time. And Aileen didn't have to have much to do with 92 or with Ritchie. Occasionally PLs had to report on their parties, and they were still held responsible for their people. However, the emergency period being almost over, there was more freedom for everyone. Whether it was a good thing or not, our daily life was becoming more and more like what it had been on Earth.
In the council it was becoming harder and harder to get anyone to commit himself over Ritchie. I could understand that only too well. I was only one of many PLs who didn't want to oppose him too conspicuously. I didn't fawn on him. There was no pretense that I approved of him in any way.
But I didn't dare risk Leslie and Pat.
Though Ritchie was as strong as an ox, he had never done any work in Winant. First there had been his broken leg, and when that was no longer an excuse he had got round a doctor and had himself declared unfit for hard manual labor. Later still he had too much power for anyone to be able to do anything about him.
His top-floor flat was now a well-appointed suite, at least five times as luxurious as any other dwelling in Winant. With him or near him lived Morgan and a dozen other men whom he seemed to control absolutely.
The effect of the luxury in which Ritchie lived was much more serious than it appeared on the surface. Everyone knew that Ritchie had started off level with them. They saw the gulf that had opened between him and them, and resented him, hated him, feared him, admired him, envied him.
Only two others in the whole community had accomplished anything remotely resembling what Ritchie had accomplished. They were Giuseppe Bonelli and PL Smythe, both opportunists like Ritchie, though not in the same class.
However, it's not worth saying much about Bonelli and Smythe, for just about the time when they were coming into prominence, Ritchie had them murdered.
Just like that.
This time, of course, Ritchie himself had an absolutely unshakable alibi. He had been on his sunroof with twenty other people, hand-picked as reliable witnesses. Morgan didn't have as good a natural alibi, but he had a perfectly sound bought one.
Of course we were fools to let Ritchie get away with it. We should have strung him up without trial if we could. But who was going to be the ringleader in a scheme like that, which might fail? Who was go
ing to be known as the man who tried to get Ritchie hanged?
Not I.
One evening I met Morgan in the passages, and to my astonishment he grinned at me. I didn't want to have anything to do with him, but I was so surprised I stopped.
"Okay, Bill," he said. "We fought long enough."
I waited.
"You brought me here," he went on, "and I'm grateful. I didn't like you when you could push me around. Now you can't. No one can. You can shake or not, as you like, and I don't give a damn."
He held out his hand.
"I'd shake, Morgan," I said, "if I thought we could both really mean it."
"What do you mean?" he asked quickly, with a flash of the old resentment.
"I don't think you can honestly shake hands in friendship with anybody any more, Morgan. And I'm sorry for it."
"I've got plenty of friends," he snapped.
I shrugged. "No doubt."
Quickly he recovered his good humor. The whole act was obviously based on Ritchie. Morgan wasn't with Ritchie because he was afraid of him, but because he admired him. Ritchie was all he wanted to be. And if Ritchie never took offense, Morgan wanted never to take offense either.
"All right," he said. "But there's no reason why we should snarl every time we see each other, is there?"
"None at all," I said civilly. "I'm not snarling."
And then on impulse I made what I knew was my last appeal to Morgan.
"Morgan," I said, "if you're carrying on the way you're doing because you think it's too late to do anything else -- don't. You can always start again. Always."
"You mean -- "
"I mean if you've killed men, that doesn't mean you must always be a killer. It's never too late. The people you're moving among now probably sneer when anyone says anything like that, but sneering at a thing doesn't make it false. It isn't too late for you, Morgan."
He hesitated, uncertain. He had lost his angry defiance. He seemed to be open to reason again, which he hadn't been the last time I talked to him.
"What could I do?" he asked almost defensively.
"I don't know. You'd have to find that out for yourself. But you could do something. And Betty would help you."
"Betty?" He stared at me for a moment as if he didn't know anybody called Betty. Then he laughed, not bitterly but with real mirth. "Betty!" he exclaimed, and laughed again.
He was still laughing when Betty herself came hurrying upstairs. I looked at her in surprise. Instead of plain work clothes she wore a soft blouse and a long, pleated skirt which swung gracefully about her thin legs. She was very attractive.
"I was looking for you, Morgan," she said.
"Okay," he said. "Let's go." He grinned at me, and they went off together.
I went to our flat, puzzled. The last I knew of Betty and Morgan, just after she came out of the hospital, they had been complete strangers. Yet they had gone away arm in arm.
It looked as if Ritchie had changed his mind, and as if Morgan, knowing he couldn't have Aileen, was making the best of Betty.
It looked that way for just six hours. Late that night Aileen came quietly into our flat with Sammy. Though they were quiet, I knew at once that something was very wrong.
"Ritchie has made up his mind," she told us. "I'm to marry Morgan -- marry, you'll notice. I'm to do it willingly or else."
Leslie started to speak, but Aileen went on in the same controlled voice. "He didn't stop there. He told me or else what."
First, Sammy would die. Then Leslie. Then me.
Ritchie meant it. At first shrewd and careful, he was becoming drunk with power. He realized he had the power to do almost anything that crossed his mind -- and what good was power if it wasn't used?
"He told me," I said. "He does things just to prove he can."
Aileen nodded. "He got the idea of marrying Betty," she said. "Yes, Betty. Your Betty. He wants to marry her and make her happy. So he's giving her everything she asks for, and -- "
"Betty!" I exclaimed. "Then that's why she went with Morgan. What's her point of view on this -- marrying Ritchie?"
Aileen shrugged. "She doesn't care. She doesn't care about anything. I think she goes to the flat just to be near Morgan. That's over, really -- even for her it's over. But she still has to see him."
She dismissed Betty with a gesture. "You know," she went on, "it never crossed my mind until tonight that Ritchie was mad. Even now I don't think he is, except in that one thing. If you do mad things, even things you don't want to do, just to show people you can do them, you're crazy, aren't you?"
"What happened, Aileen?" Leslie asked.
"It was a party. They got me there, and Sammy -- "
"It was easy enough," Sammy said quietly, bitterly. "Morgan came and pointed a gun at us, and we went."
"Ritchie doesn't like wild parties," Aileen went on. "But then, you see, he was showing some friends and a few other PLs and some people he hasn't quite got in his pocket what he could do. It was the wildest party that anyone ever threw. Everything happened, short of murder. He keeps his murders discreet, and there was nothing discreet about this. You were nearly there, Leslie."
"Huh?"
"Oh, you'd have come, just as we went. Somebody suggested getting you to come and making you dance naked -- "
"For Pete's sake!"
"And you'd have done that too. You'd have realized it didn't really matter beside the threats Ritchie would have used, and meant. But Betty vetoed it. That was the only crazy thing that was stopped, though, and it was only half stopped. I had to stand in for you."
"You don't mean," said Leslie incredulously, "that Ritchie made his own daughter -- "
"You're missing the point," said Aileen coolly. "Ritchie is the boss. Nobody shares his power with him, though he may give in to Betty on a point or two. I don't matter any more than anyone else. Only he matters -- "
"He is crazy," said Leslie. "I see the pattern, but it's a crazy pattern."
"Maybe. Anyway, we needn't talk about the other things that happened, sane or insane. None of that makes any difference any more, and Ritchie is going to stop being a nuisance or an emperor or a terror or whatever he is. If nobody else is going to do anything about him, I am."
I looked at Sammy, but there was nothing to be learned from him. He was looking broodingly at Aileen.
"Killing is nasty," said Aileen in the same quiet, controlled tone, "and killing one's own father is so much nastier that I didn't even consider it until now. But it's got to be done. Already he has guards. Soon there'll be more of them. I'm one of the few people left who can get close to him. You couldn't, Bill. Sammy couldn't"
She took a deep breath.
"I'm going to kill him, but I don't want to die. I don't think I deserve to die for it. Will you help me? Will you lie, knowing people will believe you?"
Sammy had called me a tough nut, and perhaps he had had some reason. I said without hesitation:
"I'll help you, Aileen. I'll lie."
Leslie and Sammy and I were watching, on the ground. Ritchie, Morgan, and Aileen were on the sunroof -- occasionally we saw one of them. With luck, we were going to see a murder.
The most plausible accident that could befall Ritchie was to fall from the sunroof to the ground. Everyone could believe in an accident like that -- or make himself believe it.
We had argued, but Aileen and I were stubborn. Neither of us could see that it was wrong, or cared even if it was. If, back on the lifeship, I had known what Morgan would do later, I'd have seen to it that he never reached Mars. I'd have made sure something happened to him, something fatal -- and I wouldn't have felt I was a criminal. There is, after all, a great difference between execution and murder. Aileen was executing Ritchie, knowing he deserved execution, knowing someone had to do it. She was probably right, too, when she said she was one of the few people who could do it.
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