The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction Novel

by Frank Belknap Long

  In some respects he was imprisoned in a way that was almost too unbelievable for the human mind to grasp. The walls of his cell were the constellations, the barriers to his freedom space itself.

  The chartroom was a cell too, but it had no real confining power over him. He could walk out of the chart room simply by unlocking the viewport and swinging it wide open. He could walk out into the larger prison of space—and die in five seconds with his lungs on fire.

  On the thirteenth day Mars loomed out of the inscrutable darkness ahead like some great accusing eye that had fastened itself on the ship with a malignance all its own. It filled one-fifth of the viewport, rust-red over most of its surface, but also pale blue in patches, a blue which shaded off into a kaleidoscope of colors that seemed to hover chiefly like the shifting, almost hueless cloudiness of a hot summer haze.

  On the morning of the fifteenth day, the ship, decelerating under sidethrusts from its powerful retardation rockets, cut off its engines and, free-coasting through a landing ellipse of seventy degrees, landed safely on Mars.

  It landed in the open desert, twenty miles from Ramsey’s citadel, and eighty-seven miles from the first Martian colony. But Corriston received no praise at all for his navigational skill.

  Five minutes after the engines ceased to throb a blow on the head felled him, a brutal blow from behind.

  “Tie him up,” Henley said. “We’re not killing him, not just yet.”

  “But I don’t see why—” a cold voice started to protest.

  “Damn you, Stone, I know what I’m doing. Keep your thoughts to yourself.”

  15

  Corriston sat very straight and still in the darkness, his back against cold metal, his eyes on the distant glow of the heating lamp. He could see the lamp through a wide panel opening in the bulkhead directly opposite him. Wherever his eyes fell there was the glimmer of light on metal. But the warmth of the lamp would have left him close to freezing had it not been supplemented by the heating units inside his heavy clothing.

  He didn’t know how he was going to free himself. His hands were securely handcuffed and the sharp metal was biting into his flesh. Turning and twisting about did him no good at all.

  He didn’t know how he was going to free himself, but he refused to give up hope. There had to be a way.

  You could begin on one of your captors, on a human being with a great deal to lose or gain. You could try to penetrate his armor, sound out his human weaknesses. Or you could set to work on the handcuffs at your wrists, struggling in an almost hopeless attempt to draw your hands through them in some way or get them unlocked without a key.

  He decided to try the first way. He raised his voice. “Stone?” he called out. “Can you hear me?”

  There ensued a silence. Then Stone’s voice came back loud and clear. “Sure, I can hear you. What do you want?”

  “I’d like to talk to you,” Corriston said.

  “About what?”

  “About you. What are you getting out of this? You’ve nothing to lose by being frank with me. Henley would never believe anything I might say.”

  “You’re right about that,” Stone said. “But why should I talk to you? I’ll tell you something that may surprise you. Keeping you alive was Henley’s idea. He figured we might need you. He figured that if Ramsey wouldn’t listen to us he might listen to you—a Space Station officer. He figured we might need you to convince Ramsey we’re not bluffing. Someone who knows we’re not bluffing. Someone who knows we’d kill his daughter before we gave him a third chance to make up his mind and hand over the dough.”

  “A third chance? I thought—”

  “You think too much, Corriston. I’ll spell it out for you. Henley is on his way now to give Ramsey his first chance. He may succeed or he may not. If he doesn’t succeed he’ll come back and take you to the fortress with him. That will be Ramsey’s second chance. He won’t get a third.”

  “I see,” Corriston said. “But I asked you a question you didn’t answer. How much do you stand to get out of this? What is your split, your percentage? Don’t tell me; I’ll guess. Henley is promising you fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. But how much ransom do you think he’ll get from Ramsey? Two million, at least. Possibly twenty million. Does that kind of split satisfy you, Stone? Remember, when that ransom is paid, every law enforcement agency on Earth goes into operation. It starts off in a quiet suite of offices, with just one owl-faced little guy shuffling some papers.

  “It starts off that way, but in the space of one hour you’re a man marked for destruction. The military goes into action. From Earth to Mars your photograph is televised. Ten thousand trained experts are thrown into the operation. You’ve suddenly become important, an accessory to the kidnapping of the wealthiest girl on Earth.

  “How does that set with you, Stone? They’ll get you in the end. No, I’ll qualify that. They’ll get you unless Ramsey gives you a split of at least a million dollars. With a million dollars you’d have a one in five chance of covering your tracks, of hiding out indefinitely. But Ramsey won’t give you anything like that kind of a split. You know that as well as I do. He’ll have to cover his own tracks and he’ll need all of the two million—or twenty million—for himself. Or most of it.

  “I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. Your real interest lies in preventing that kidnapping before it’s too late. He’s getting ready to double-cross you, Stone. It was in the back of his mind all the time. He’s looking out only for himself.”

  “I don’t think so,” Stone said. “My split, since you brought the matter up, is half a million. He’s demanding six million in ransom. That’s twelve times what I’m getting and what Jim Saddler is getting. But I’ve no complaints. He organized and planned everything.

  “I’ll be honest with you. That doesn’t mean a damn thing to me. I’m no good when it comes to taking a risk like that, but does that mean he’s better than I am? Do you think I’d string along with him if I believed that for a moment?

  “Hell, no. I’m using him, don’t you see? I’m letting him take the big gamble, and I stay in the background…doing practically nothing. So if I clear a half million, what have I to complain about?”

  “Nothing, I suppose,” Corriston said.

  “You’re damned right. But I don’t think I like the way you said that. There’s something in your voice that I don’t like.”

  “That’s too bad,” Corriston said.

  “Maybe you think I don’t mean what I said. Is that it?”

  Corriston tightened his lips. He could hear Stone’s footsteps coming toward him through the darkness. They were heavy steps, advancing slowly, with a slight shuffling sound. They paused twice and then came on again, and the silence between pauses seemed almost crushingly thick.

  Corriston suddenly realized that he knew almost nothing about Stone. He had taken the man pretty much for granted, a killer’s accomplice without much personality, a sullen-faced scoundrel who was good at obeying orders and standing ready to silence anyone Henley disliked with a well-placed kick in the head.

  But what if he did have personality after all? Suppose there were hidden depths in him, a hidden reservoir of malice which he kept concealed until he felt a mad impulse to start laughing or bragging or proving to someone he disliked that he was as potentially dangerous as Henley—perhaps even more dangerous. And suppose he decided to back up his boasting with a quick knife thrust or a gun blast at almost point-blank range?

  It wasn’t a pleasant thought, and the flicker of a match between Stone’s cupped hands did nothing to dispel Corriston’s uneasiness. The small, bright flame brought Stone’s features into sharp relief for an instant. The lips had an ugly set to them, and the eyes were slitted, gleaming. He was making no effort to keep his hate from showing, and the instant the match went out he lit another.

  He seemed to be advancing slowly on pu
rpose, as if aware that his stealth and deliberation had begun to un-nerve Corriston. Corriston felt himself stiffening, moving more closely back against the wall. Breathing quickly, he told himself that he hadn’t much time, that he must be careful not to overreach himself.

  There was another moment of silence, of stillness, while the shuffling ceased. Then Stone was very close in the darkness, his hands cupped about a third match, a mocking smile on his lips.

  It was a blunder on his part. Before he could move again Corriston was upon him.

  There are times when a handcuffed man is at a disadvantage in a furiously waged and uncertain struggle, but Corriston suffered no disadvantage. For ten minutes he had been reminding himself that a blow along the side of the neck, just under the jaw, could paralyze and even kill if it were delivered with sufficient force.

  A sharp, flat-of-the-hand blow could do it. But handcuffs were better, and Corriston lashed out now with his manacled wrists upraised, so that the handcuffs grazed Stone’s neck twice lightly and then almost splintered his jawbone with a rotor-blade violence.

  The blow not only stunned Stone, it lifted him clear of the deck. He staggered forward and fell heavily, his breath leaving his lungs in an agonizing sob.

  Corriston leaned back against the wall again for an instant, breathing heavily. Then he knelt beside Stone and went through his pockets until he found the handcuff key. It was difficult. He had to do a lot of awkward fumbling with his fingers, and even with the key in his possession, getting the cuffs off was far from easy. But somehow he managed it, perhaps because he had unusually flexible fingers and knew that if he failed, Stone would see to it that he got no second chance this side of eternity.

  He stood very straight and still in the darkness, his eyes focused on Stone’s white face. There was no need for him to strike a match. He had taken from Stone not only the key, but a small pocket flashlight which Stone had apparently preferred not to use.

  There was something else he had taken from Stone—his gun. He held the weapon now, very firmly centered on Stone, while he waited for him to come to.

  Ordinarily he wouldn’t have cared if Stone had never opened his eyes again; but now he had to wait and see. The ship was so large that to explore it compartment by compartment until he found the one in which Helen Ramsey was being held prisoner would be dangerously time-consuming. So, if Stone recovered consciousness within fifteen or twenty minutes and could tell him, so much the better.

  If not, better wait and see. He waited, shifting his gun only a little from weariness as the minutes dragged on, wondering if he had not made a mistake in waiting at all.

  Finally Stone stirred and groaned. Corriston bent and shook him by the shoulders. He took firm hold of his shoulders and shook him vigorously, feeling no pity for him at all.

  He got the truth out of him by threatening him with violence, by threatening to kill him if he kept anything back. Stone kept nothing back. Just remembering the blow that had felled him, loosened his tongue. But the gun helped too, the gun wedged so closely against his ribs under his heart that he feared that if he breathed too heavily he would breathe his last.

  “I won’t lie to you,” he said desperately, pleadingly. “You haven’t a chance. There’s a photoelectric alarm system outside the compartment, and Jim Saddler is sitting just inside the door. He has a gun trained on her. His orders are to shoot her dead if anyone so much as attempts to get inside that door.”

  “Meaning me?”

  “It means you, Lieutenant. I’m not lying; I swear it. You won’t stand a chance. Henley will be coming back in a few hours now. You’d better get out while you’re still in one piece.”

  Corriston was tempted to hurl Stone back against the wall and shout at him: “It doesn’t matter whether I go out of here in one piece or dead on a stretcher. She’s the only thing I care about.”

  But he caught himself just in time. Stone thought in the most primitive imaginable terms. You couldn’t go to a Stone Age man and say: “My own skin doesn’t mean a goddam thing to me. I’m in love. If she dies I die. Can’t you understand that? If she dies, my life will be over.”

  He said instead: “All right. I guess it means I’ve got to get help.”

  “You’ll never get help,” Stone said, summoning from some defiant depths within himself a little courage. “The colony is eighty-seven miles from here. You couldn’t cross the desert on foot. No one could cross it on foot, not when the temperature drops at night to fifty below. But you’d better not stay. He’d better head for Ramsey’s citadel. That’s your only chance. It’s only twenty miles from here.”

  Let him think that, a voice within Corriston warned. Let him think that I’ll head for the citadel. Otherwise he may attempt to get word to Ramsey somehow. I can tie him up and leave him in a state of shock, but if he thinks I’m heading for the colony, even a state of shock may not stop him. Saddler may come down here looking for him. Once he’s freed, if he thinks I’m heading for the Colony.…

  Corriston said: “Damn you, Stone, I ought to kill you. I ought to put a bullet through your heart right now. I don’t know why I can’t. It’s a weakness in me.”

  “I’d kill you, Corriston, if I had the chance. But I’m glad you have that kind of a weakness.”

  Corriston stared at him incredulously. “You’re certainly outspoken. You were pleading for your life a moment ago—going soft, as you’d put it. Now you’re talking realistically, analyzing your own motivations and mine.”

  “I’m not quite as dumb as you think me, Corriston.”

  “All right. Let’s say you’re not dumb. Few people are, when it comes to a matter of life or death. That’s beside the point right now. I’ve got to tie you up. Where can I find some rope?”

  “It would be much simpler to lock me in a vacant compartment.”

  “All right. Then I’ll lock you in one of the compartments. You can pick your own compartment. I’d advise you not to waste my time. Pick your own compartment and I’ll slide the bolt fast on the outside.”

  Stone showed no disposition to put up an argument. Corriston kept the gun pressed into the small of his back and he seemed to realize that his life hung by a thread.

  They found a compartment that was small and dark, and into it Stone walked at gunpoint, offering no protest, and answering the questions Corriston put to him readily enough.

  “You’ll find all the equipment you need at the end of this passageway,” Stone said. “Activate the third door on your left. Anything else you’d like to know?”

  Corriston shook his head. He walked out of the compartment backwards, keeping his gun trained on Stone until he was in the corridor. Then he swung the door shut and shot the bolt home.

  He had no trouble at all in finding the equipment he knew he’d need, thanks to Stone’s generosity. Stone could afford to be generous, he reflected bitterly. The Henley combine still held all of the trump cards.

  He cursed the time it took him to equip himself for a near-suicidal crossing of eighty-seven miles of Martian desert. He would travel on foot, after nightfall, and in freezing cold. The compartment in which he labored was a basal compartment, and set in the massive bulkhead, against which he leaned with his bootstraps still unlaced, was an airlock opening directly on the Martian plain.

  He collected the smaller articles first, setting them down in a row on a long metal bench directly opposite the airlock: three compasses, each weighing perhaps twenty ounces; a cathode ray compass; a non-magnetic compass and a sun compass. The sun compass would perhaps prove the most valuable until darkness fell. The sun, shining down with brilliance from the clear Martian sky, could throw a directional kind of shadow, enabling a man on foot to take fairly accurate bearings without the use of sighting and viewing instruments.

  To the compasses on the bench he added five map coordinates and a Lambert conformal projection chart.

  Food
concentrates came next: four shining aluminum cubes, four inches by four inches, which would go into the knapsack on his back. Then a canteen, already filled with sterilized water from the ship’s central water supply system.

  Next, he took from the locker the right kind of clothing: a tubeflex inner suit with a warm lining and a heavy outer suit equipped with heat lamps.

  Oxygen masks next—oxy-respirators, to be exact. One to attach to the face and one to hold in reserve as a spare. They covered only a third of the face, but that third had everything to do with a man’s staying alive and vigorous in the thin air of Mars. When night fell, and the cold descended, oxy-respirators were not enough. Then you had to pull down the entire front of your helmet and stagger on with your sight impaired, for in a cold that was almost beyond endurance, helmets had a way of clouding over from time to time.

  The clouding over of the vision plate was not too important. It could be constantly wiped clean. But if his brain started “clouding over” too.…

  He dismissed the possibility from his mind. He was clothed now, fully clothed, and ready to depart.

  He started moving toward the airlock, feeling and looking like a giant beetle of the tropics, feeling awkward, cumbersome and insecure. His boots were weighted, and the bulge of the oxygen tank on his shoulder made him look almost hunchbacked in the cold light glimmer that turned the bulkhead into a mirroring surface as he advanced.

  He manipulated the airlock and it opened with a slow, steady droning and then he was passing through it, still moving awkwardly.…

  At last! He was out on the Martian desert in bright sunlight, staring up at the clear blue sky.

  The first few miles were not difficult at all. He walked away from the ship with his shoulders held straight, the cumbersome feeling dissipated by the lightness of his stride in the incredibly light gravity.

  The air pressure about him was less than seventy millimeters of mercury. The thought sprouted in his mind that he was the god Mercury striding along with winged shoes, and for the first five miles his weighted boots did seem to develop wings.