by Sam Merwin
generating."I can assure you you'd have a chance to reveal the charms nature gaveyou without shame."
She laughed with a sudden change of spirits. "It's at least a half hoursince dinner. Let's take a dip." She tossed back her lustrous dark hairwith a shake of her head and her hands went to the clasp of her halter,a moment later to that of her shorts. "Come on," she called, extendingher arms to expose her exciting young body before him. "The water willcool us off."
It didn't work out that way, of course. Lindsay was barely in thetub-pool before Maria's arms were about his neck, her body close againsthis, her lips thrusting upward toward his own. For a moment he feltpanic, said, "Hey! What if somebody comes? Your father--"
"Silly! Nobody will," she replied, laughing softly.
His last rational thought for quite awhile was, _Oh well--I'm hardly ina position to get the Secretary General's daughter angry._
* * * * *
False dawn was spreading its dim fanlight over the eastern horizon as hecoptered back to his official quarters in the city. Trying to restoresome order to thoughts and emotions thoroughly disrupted by theunexpected events of the evening, he wondered a little just what he hadgot himself into.
Mars, of course, was scarcely a Puritan planet, populated as it was bythe hardiest and most adventurous members of the human race, of allraces. But there had been something almost psychopathic about Maria'spassion. It had been far too intense to have been generated solelythrough regard for him.
The girl had made love to him simply to relieve her own inner tensions,he thought wryly. Lacking a man she could love, walled in by the highofficialdom of her father's lofty position, she had turned to him in thesame way she turned to the anti-computer movement--as a way of feelingless lonely for a while. Still, it had been sweet--if a littlefrightening in retrospect.
And it had been a little decadent too.
With the copter on autopilot he lit a cigarette and forced his thoughtsaway from the girl. He wondered if the Governors of Mars weresufficiently in key with the current feelings of Earthfolk to understandfully how deep the repercussions from his speech might go. He wonderedif they had considered fully the possibility of interplanetary war.
True, Mars was undoubtedly better equipped to defend itself against suchattack than was Earth. Like the mother planet it had its share of robotrockets capable of launching a counterattack. And thanks to thecomparative sparseness and decentralization of its population it was farless vulnerable to attack.
But war between the planets would be destructive of far more than citiesand the people that lived in them. It would mean inevitably a breakdownof the entire fabric of civilized humanity--a tenuous fabric, true, butall that existed to maintain man.
And an isolated Mars, even if self-sufficient, would be a sorrysubstitute for a red planet that was part of the United Worlds. It wouldmean a setback of generations, perhaps centuries.
He began to feel a new understanding of the importance of his mission.With understanding came something akin to fear lest he should not beable to accomplish it without disaster. It was going to be his job toinaugurate some sort of therapy for Earth's illness. It was, in effect,one man against a planet.
Considering the men and women with whom he had talked that day he wasunable to take the assassination threat too seriously. Somehow theseneurotics and warped zealots, with their allergies and distortion kits,seemed unlikely to undertake or carry through any such drastic action.Their very inhibitions would forbid it.
Not that Maria had been exactly inhibited. Damn! The girl refused tostay out of his thoughts. He recalled what she had told him of herconspiracy against the computers, of its aims and methods. And again hesmiled wryly to himself.
They were like spoiled children, he thought. A little group ofover-intense young men and women, neurotic, excitable, unstable, meetingin one another's houses or in expensive cafes, plotting little coupsthat never quite came off.
From certain unguarded phrases Maria had dropped during the lessfrenetic periods of their evening together, he gathered that theircurrent aim was actual physical sabotage of Giac, the mightiest of allcomputers about to be unveiled, before it went into work.
They didn't even realize, he thought, that sabotage would avail themnothing in the long run--or the short either. Destruction of thecomputers would not cure Earth. It might easily increase the reliance ofEarthfolk upon their cybernetic monsters. What was needed to effect acure was destruction of human confidence in and reliance upon thesemachines.
And how in hell, he wondered, was he going to manage that?
* * * * *
To a man from level, water-starved Mars the sight of New Orleans stillablaze with lights at five o'clock in the morning was something of amiracle. Mars had its share of atomic power-plants, of course, but suchsources had proved almost prohibitively costly as providers of cheappower.
That was true on Earth too, of course, but Earth had its rivers, itswaterfalls, its ocean tides to help out. More important, it averagedsome fifty million miles closer to the Sun, thus giving it immensestorage supplies of solar heat for power. Without these resources thethousand-square-mile expanse of intricately criss-crossed artificiallighting that was the United Worlds capital would have been impossible.
Lindsay wondered how any people possessed of a planet so rich could beafflicted with such poverty of soul. Or was this very opulence thecause? His own planet was comparatively poor--yet nervous breakdownswere few and far between. There the ugly strove for beauty, instead ofthe reverse.
He parked the copter on the garage-plat, pressed the button, and watchedit sink slowly out of sight to its concealed hangar. Like all Martiannatives to leave for Earth, he had been warned about the intense heatand humidity that assailed most of the mother planet, especially in theUW capital. Yet the night breeze felt pleasantly cool against his faceand its thickness was like the brush of invisible velvet against hisskin. Perhaps, he thought, he was more of an Earthling than threegenerations of Martian heredity made likely.
He did miss the incredible brilliance of the Martian night skies. Hereon Earth the stars shone as puny things through the heavy atmosphere.
But, he thought guiltily, he did not have as severe a pang ofhomesickness as he ought.
In a state of self-bemusement he rode the elevator down to his suite onthe ninety-first story. And was utterly unprepared for the assault whichall but bore him to the floor as he stepped out into his own foyer.
Since the attack came from behind and his assailant's first move was totoss a bag over his head, Lindsay had no idea of what the would-beassassin looked like. For a moment he could only struggle blindly toretain his balance, expecting every instant to feel the quick searingheat of a blaster burn through his back.
But no heat came, nor did the chill of a dagger. Instead he felt hisattacker's strong hands encircle his neck in a _judo_ grip.
This was something Lindsay understood. He thrust both his own hands upand backward, getting inside the assassin's grip and breaking it. Histhumbnails dug into nerve centers and he bent an arm sharply. There wasa gasp of agony and he felt a large body crumple under the pressure.
* * * * *
Lindsay's first impulse was to summon the constabulary. His second,after examining the face of his would-be slayer, was to drag the maninto the shelter of his apartment, revive him and seek to learn what hecould about the attempt.
To his astonishment he discovered that he knew the man. His assignedmurderer was long, red-headed Pat O'Ryan rated as a top gladiator, atennis and squash champion whose reputation was almost as widespreadamong sporting fans on Mars as on Earth. Lindsay had remodeled his ownbackhand, just the year before, upon that of the man sent to kill him.
He got some whiskey from the serving bar beside the vidar screen, poureda little of it between the unconscious killer's lips. O'Ryan sputteredand sat up slowly, blinking. He said, "Get me some gin, will you?"
; Lindsay returned the whiskey to its place, got the requested liquor,offered some neat to the tennis player in a glass. O'Ryan downed it,shuddered, looked at Lindsay curiously. He said, "What went wrong?You're supposed to be dead."
Lindsay shrugged and said, "I know some _judo_ too. You weren't quitefast enough, Pat."
O'Ryan moaned again, reached for the bottle. Then he said, "I remembernow. Thank God you got my right arm--I'm left-handed."
"I know," Lindsay told him laconically.
The would-be assassin looked frightened. He said, "How do you know?"
"I play a little tennis myself," Lindsay told him. "How come they sent aman like you on such a mission?"
"Top gladiator--top assignment," said the athlete. "We're supposed to dosomething besides play games for our keep."
"That's a wrinkle in the social setup I