The 13th Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack

by Lester Del Rey

  Haines scanned down the page, noting the salient facts. The writer had kept his tongue in his cheek, but under the faintly mocking words there was the information he wanted. The rocket might work; man was at last on his way toward the conquests of the planets. There was no mention of another rocket; obviously, then, that one must have been built in secret in a futile effort to beat Oglethorpe’s model.

  But that was unimportant. The important thing was that he must stop the flight! Above all else, man must not make that trip! There was no sanity to it, and yet somehow it was beyond mere sanity. It was his duty to prevent any such voyage, and that duty was not to be questioned.

  He returned quickly to the newsboy, reached out to touch his shoulder, and felt his hand jerk back to avoid the touch. The boy seemed to sense it, though, for he mined quickly. “Paper?” he began brightly before recognizing the stranger. “Oh, it’s you. Watcha want?”

  “Where can I find a train to New York?” Haines pulled a quarter from his pocket and tossed it on the pile of papers.

  The boy’s eyes brightened again. “Four blocks down, tuihn right, and keep goin’ till you come to the station. Can’t miss it. Thanks, mister!”

  * * * *

  The discovery of the telephone book as a source of information was Haines’ single major triumph, and the fact that the first Oglethorpe he tried was a colored street cleaner failed to take the edge off it. Now he trudged uptown, counting the numbers that made no sense to him; apparently the only system was one of arithmetical progression, irrespective of streets.

  His shoulders were drooping, and the lines of pain around his eyes had finally succeeded in drawing his brows together. A coughing spell hit him, torturing his lungs for long minutes, and then passed. That was a new development, as was the pressure around his heart. And everywhere was the irritating aroma of men, gasoline, and tobacco, a stale mixture that he could not escape. He thrust his hands deeper into his pockets to avoid chance contact with someone on the street, and crossed over toward the building that bore the number for which he was searching.

  Another man was entering the elevator, and he followed mechanically, relieved that he would not have to plod up the stairs. “Oglethorpe?” he asked the operator uncertainly.

  “Fourth floor, Room 405.” The boy slid the gate open, pointing, and Haines stepped out and into the chromium-trimmed reception room. There were half a dozen doors leading from it, but he spotted the one marked “James H. Oglethorpe, Private,” and slouched forward.

  “Were you expected, sir?” The girl popped up in his face, one hand on the gate that barred his way. Her face was a study in frustration, which probably explained the sharpness of her tone. She delivered an Horatio-guarding-the-bridge formula. “Mr. Oglethorpe is busy now.”

  “Lunch,” Haines answered curtly. He had already noticed that men talked more freely over food.

  She flipped a little book in her hand and stared at it. “There is no record here of a luncheon engagement, Mr.—”

  “Haines. Dr. Lurton Haines.” He grinned wryly, wriggling a twenty-dollar bill casually in one hand. Money was apparently the one disease to which nobody was immune. Her eyes dropped to it, and hesitation entered her voice as she consulted her book.

  “Of course, Mr. Oglethorpe might have made it some time ago and forgotten to tell me—” She caught his slight nod, and followed the bill to the corner of the desk. “Just have a seat, and I’ll speak to Mr. Oglethorpe.”

  She came out of the office a few minutes later, and winked quickly. “He’d forgotten,” she told Haines, “but it’s all right now. He’ll be right out, Dr. Haines. It’s lucky he’s having lunch late today.”

  James Oglethorpe was a younger man than Haines had expected, though his interest in rocketry might have been some clue to that. He came out of his office, pushing a Homburg down on curly black hair, and raked the other with his eyes. “Dr. Haines?” he asked, thrusting out a large hand. “Seems we have a luncheon engagement.”

  Haines rose quickly and bowed before the other had a chance to grasp his hand. Apparently Oglethorpe did not notice, for he went on smoothly. “Easy to forget these telephone engagements, sometimes. Aren’t you the cancer man? One of your friends was in a few months ago for a contribution to your work.”

  They were in the elevator then, and Haines waited until it opened and they headed for the lunchroon in the building before answering. “I’m not looking for money this time, however. It’s the rocket you’re financing that interests me. I think it may work.”

  “It will, though you’re one of the few who believes it.” Caution, doubt, and interest were mingled on Oglethorpe’s face. He ordered before turning back to Haines. “Want to go along? If you do, there’s still room for a physician in the crew.”

  “No, nothing like that. Toast and milk only, please—” Haines had no idea of how to broach the subject, with nothing concrete to back up his statements. Looking at the set of the other’s jaw and the general bulldog attitude of the man, he gave up hope and only continued because he had to. He fell back on imagination, wondering how much of it was true.

  “Another rocket made that trip, Mr. Oglethorpe, and returned. But the pilot was dying before he landed. I can show you the wreck of his machine, though there’s not much left after the fire—perhaps not enough to prove it was a rocketship. Somewhere out on Mars there’s something man should never find. It’s—”

  “Ghosts?” suggested Oglethorpe, brusquely.

  “Death! I’m asking you—”

  Again Oglethorpe interrupted. “Don’t. There was a man in to see me yesterday who claimed he’d been there—offered to show me the wreck of his machine. A letter this morning explained that the Martians had visited the writer and threatened all manner of things. I’m not calling you a liar, Dr. Haines, but I’ve heard too many of those stories; whoever told you this one was either a crank or a horror-monger. I can show you a stack of letters that range from astrology to zombies, all explaining why I can’t go, and some offer photographs for proof.”

  “Suppose I said I’d made the trip in that rocket?” The card in the wallet said he was Haines, and the wallet had been in the suit he was wearing, but there had also been the glasses and cigarettes for which he had no use.

  Oglethorpe twisted his lips, either in disgust or amazement. “You’re an intelligent man, Dr. Haines; let’s assume I am, also. It may sound ridiculous to you, but the only reason I had for making the fortune I’m credited with was to build that ship, and it’s taken more work and time than the layman would believe. If a green ant, seven feet high, walked into my office and threatened Armageddon, I’d still go.”

  Even the impossible impulse recognized the equally impossible. Oglethorpe was a man who did things first and worried about them when the mood hit him—and there was nothing moody about him. The conversation turned to everyday matters and Haines let it drift as it would, finally dragging out into silence.

  * * * *

  At least, he was wiser by one thing; he knew the location of the rocket ground and the set-up of guards around it—something even the newspapermen had failed to learn, since all pictures and information had come through Oglethorpe. There could no longer be any question of his ability to gain desired information by some hazy telepathic process. Either he was a mental freak, or the accident had done things to him that should have been surprising but weren’t.

  Haines had taken a cab from the airport, giving instructions that caused the driver to lift his eyebrows; but money was still all-powerful. Now they were slipping through country even more desolate than the woods around Haines’ house, and the end of the road came into view, with a rutted muddy trail leading off, marked by the tires of the trucks Oglethorpe had used for his freighting. The cab stopped there.

  “This the place?” the driver asked uncertainly.

  “It is.” Haines added a bill to what had already been paid
and dismissed him. Then he dragged his way out to the dirt road and followed it, stopping for rest frequently. His ears were humming loudly now, and each separate little vertebra of his back protested at his going on. But there was no turning back; he had tried that, at the airport, and found the urge strong enough to combat his weakening will.

  “Only a little rest!” he muttered thickly, but the force in his head lifted his leaden feet and sent them marching toward the rocket camp. Above him the gray clouds passed over the moon, and he looked up at Mars shining in the sky. Words from the lower part of the drummer’s vocabulary came into his throat, but the effort of saying them was more than the red planet merited. He plowed on in silence.

  Mars had moved over several degrees in the sky when he first sighted the camp, lying in a long, narrow valley. At one end were the shacks of the workmen, at the other a big structure that housed the rocket from chance prying eyes. Haines stopped to cough out part of his lungs, and his breath was husky and labored as he worked his way down.

  The guards should be strung out along the edge of the valley. Oglethorpe was taking no chances with the cranks who had written him letters and denounced him as a godless fool leading his men to death. Rockets at best were fragile things, and only a few men would be needed to ruin the machine once it was discovered. Haines ran over the guards’ positions, and skirted through the underbrush, watching for periods when the moon was darkened. Once he almost tripped an alarm, but missed it in time.

  Beyond, there was no shrubbery, but his suit was almost the shade of the ground in the moonlight, and by lying still between dark spells, he crawled forward toward the rocket shed, undetected. He noticed the distance of the houses and the outlying guards and nodded to himself; they should be safe from any explosion.

  The coast looked clear. Then, in the shadow of the building, a tiny red spark gleamed and subsided slowly; a man was there, smoking a cigarette. By straining his eyes, Haines made out the long barrel of a rifle against the building. This guard must be an added precaution, unknown to Oglethorpe.

  * * * *

  A sudden rift in the thickening clouds came, and Haines slid himself flat against the ground, puzzling over the new complication. For a second he considered turning back, but realized that he could not—his path now was clearly defined, and he had no choice but to follow it. As the moon slid out of sight again, he came to his feet quietly and moved toward the figure waiting there.

  “Hello!” His voice was soft, designed to reach the man at the building but not the guards behind in the outskirts. “Hello, there. Can I come forward? Special inspector from Oglethorpe.”

  A beam of light lanced out from the shadow, blinding him, and he walked forward, at the best pace he could muster. The light might reveal him to the other guards, but he doubted it; their attention was directed outward, away from the buildings.

  “Come ahead,” the answer came finally. “How’d you get past the others?” The voice was suspicious, but not unusually so. The rifle, Haines saw, was directed at his midsection, and he stopped a few feet away, where the other could watch him.

  “Jimmy Durham knew I was coming,” he told the guard. According to the information he had stolen from Oslethorpe’s mind, Durham was in charge of the guards. “He told me he hadn’t had time to notify you, but I took a chance.”

  “Hmmm. Guess it’s all right, since they let you through; but you can’t leave here until somebody identifies you. Keep your hands up.” The guard came forward cautiously to feel for concealed weapons. Haines held his hands up out of the other’s reach, where there was no danger of a direct skin to skin contact. “Okay, seems all right. What’s your business here?”

  “General inspection. The boss got word there might be a little trouble brewing and sent me here to make sure ward was being kept, and to warn you. All locked up here?”

  “None. A lock wouldn’t do much good on this shack; that’s why I’m here. Want I should signal Jimmy to come and identify you so you can go?”

  “Don’t bother.” Conditions were apparently ideal, except for one thing. But he would not murder the guard! There must be some other way, without adding that to the work he was forced to do. “I’m in no hurry, now that I’ve seen everything. Have a smoke?”

  “Just threw one away. ’Smatter, no matches? Here.”

  Haines rubbed one against the friction surface of the box and lit the cigarette gingerly. The raw smoke stung against his burning throat, but he controlled the cough, and blew it out again; in the dark, the guard could not see his eyes watering, nor the grimaces he made. He was waging a bitter fight with himself against the impulse that had ordered the smoke to distract the guard’s attention, and he knew he was failing. “Thanks!”

  One of the guard’s hands met his, reaching for the box. The next second the man’s throat was between the stranger’s hands, and he was staggering back, struggling to tear away and cry for help. Surprise confused his efforts for the split second necessary, and one of Haines’ hands came free and out, then chopped down sharply to strike the guard’s neck with the edge of the palm. A low grunt gurgled out, and the figure went limp.

  Impulse had conquered again! The guard was dead, his neck broken by the sharp blow. Haines leaned against the building, catching his breath and fighting back the desire to lose his stomach’s contents. When some control came back, he picked up the guard’s flashlight, and turned into the building. In the darkness, the outlines of the great rocketship were barely visible.

  * * * *

  With fumbling fingers, Haines groped forward to the hull, then struck a match and shaded it in his hands until he could make out the port, standing open. Too much light might show through a window and attract attention.

  Inside, he threw the low power of the flashlight on and moved forward, down the catwalk and toward the rear where the power machinery would be housed. It had been simple, after all, and only the quick work of destruction still remained.

  He traced the control valves easily, running an eye over the uncovered walls and searching out the pipes that led from them. From the little apparatus he saw, this ship was obviously inferior to the one that had crashed, yet it had taken years to build and drained Oglethorpe’s money almost to the limit. Once destroyed, it might take men ten more years to replace it; two was the minimum, and in those two years—

  The thought slipped from him, but some memories were coming back. He saw himself in a small metal room, fighting against the inexorable exhaustion of fuel, and losing. Then there had been a final burst from the rockets, and the ship had dropped sickeningly through the atmosphere. He had barely had time to get to the air locks before the crash. Miraculously, as the ship’s fall was cushioned by the house, he had been thrown free into the lower branches of a tree, to catch, and lose momentum before striking earth.

  The man who had been in the house had fared worse; he had been thrown out with the wrecked wall, already dead. Roughly, the stranger remembered a hasty transfer of clothing from the corpse, and then the beam had dropped on him, shutting out his memory in blackness. So he was not Haines, after all, but someone from the rocket, and his story to Oglethorpe had been basically true.

  Haines—he still thought of himself under that name—caught himself as his knees gave under him, and hauled himself up by the aid of a protruding bar. There was work to be done; after that, what happened to his own failing body was another matter. It seemed now that from his awakening he had expected to meet death before another day, and had been careless of the fact.

  He ran his eyes around the rocket room again, until he came to a tool kit that lay invitingly open with a large wrench sticking up from it. That would serve to open the valves. The flashlight lay on the floor where he had dropped it, and he kicked it around with his foot to point at the wall, groping out for the wrench. His fingers were stiff as they clasped around the handle.

  And, in the beam of light, he noticed h
is hand for the first time in hours. Dark-blue veins rose high on flesh that was marked with a faint pale-blue. He considered it dully, thrusting out his other hand and examining it; there, too, was the blue flush, and on his palms, as he turned them upward, the same color showed. Blue!

  The last of his memory flashed back through his brain in a roaring wave, bringing a slow tide of pictures with it. With one part of his mind, he was working on the valves with the wrench, while the other considered the knowledge that had returned to him. He saw the streets of a delicate, fairy city, half deserted, and as he seemed to watch, a man staggered out of a doorway, clutching at his throat with blue hands, to fall writhing to the ground! The people passed on quickly, avoiding contact with the corpse, fearful even to touch each other.

  Everywhere, death reached out to claim the people. The planet was riddled with it. It lay on the skin of an infected person, to be picked up by the touch of another, and passed on to still more. In the air, a few seconds sufficed to kill the germs, but new ones were being sent out from the pores of the skin, so that there were always a few active ones lurking there. On contact, the disease began an insidious conquest, until, after months without sign, it suddenly attacked the body housing it, turned it blue, and brought death in a few painful hours.

  Some claimed that it was the result of an experiment that had gone beyond control, others that it had dropped as a spore from space. Whatever it was, there was no cure for it on Mars. Only the legends that spoke of a race of their people on the mother world of Earth offered any faint hope, and to that they had turned when there was no other chance.

  He saw himself undergoing examinations that finally resulted in his being chosen to go in the rocket they were building feverishly. He had been picked because his powers of telepathy were unusual, even to the mental science of Mars; the few remaining weeks had been used in developing that power systematically, and implanting in his head the duties that he must perform so long as a vestige of life remained to him.