by Jack Sharkey
“That is correct, Jery Delvin. And so, our desire is that you—”
“Damn it!” I exploded. “Stop taking so much for granted! Before I even scratch where it itches to please you guys, I want to see those kids! And in damned good shape, too!”
Snow held onto my arm and trembled. This was it. Now we’d know for sure if the boys were all right.
The Martian looked exasperated, but then he reached an arm out from himself—I couldn’t tell exactly, without getting a blinding headache, just which way his arm went, left, right, up or down. But he reached away from himself in some direction or other, and the next moment, the shimmering blur of metallic flooring between him and us gave way to a red-bronze platform of parabolite which rose like a sluggish elevator on close-intervalled narrow rods of the same mineral. Then, as the apparatus halted, I realized that these rods were more than just supports for that slab of rock. They were bars.
And huddled together in this escape-free cage, I saw the fifteen missing Space Scouts.
“Snow!”
One of the boys, his hair as raven as Snow’s was blonde, tore away from the group and .rushed over to the bars, jamming his arms between them to reach out for her.
“Ted!” Snow cried, and rushed over to him. It was kind of awkward, embracing with the bars in the way, but they did it anyhow.
“Ted, dear Ted! Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” he said, with a note of uncertainty. “Yeah, I guess we are. Only, I was almost giving up on you.”
“Have you,” the Martian’s icy voice cut into the reunion, “seen quite enough?”
“Hold your horses!” I hollered at him through the cage. “She hasn’t checked him for broken bones, yet!”
The Martian, whether out of patience or alien incomprehension of my sarcasm, left the cage where it was, and stood waiting.
“I knew you’d get my message, Snow!” said Ted eagerly, quite forgetting his doubts of a few seconds before. “I just knew it. When do we get out of here, hey? We want to go home!”
Apparently adventure lost its tang when the cage had first been lowered into the—the whatever it was that served us as a floor. The other boys had come up to the bars, now, all of them looking at Snow with longing, as the next best thing to a human-type mother.
“Oh, you poor kids,” Snow sobbed suddenly. “Have they been feeding you? When did you last wash your face, Ted?”
“They don’t feed us at all!” Ted said sorrowfully. “It’s been weeks now since we ran out of candy, and—”
“Jery Delvin!” the Martian’s voice interrupted imperiously. "Before that look on your woman’s face erupts into some more of her tiresome vituperation, will you explain to her what a metabolic stasis is?”
“Sure,” I said, folding my arms. “As soon as you explain it to me!”
The Martian seemed to be gathering himself for a cry of utter exasperation. Then he caught hold of himself and said with rigid calm, “We merely have held the children within a field of radiation that obviates the necessity of their taking alimental nourishment.”
Snow looked over her shoulder at me, wonderingly.
“He means, honey, that they fixed it somehow so the kids didn’t need to eat. I guess it was simpler than running a catering service.”
“Didn’t need to eat!” she exploded. “Doesn’t that blob of black sparklers know that growing boys need food to grow!”
“There’s no need to be redundant!” said the Martian.
“To what?” she cried, standing back from the cage to glare at him the better, with arms akimbo. The Martian took this golden opportunity to let the cage drop suddenly back out of our ken. The shimmering blur of metallic luster was once more at our feet.
“Oh!” she cried, stepping forward and staring down. “Ted! Teddy!”
“Jery, Jery, Jery,” Snow murmured tearfully, turning about and burrowing her nose into my chest, while I held her helplessly. “He looked s-so hungry!”
I decided to let her sob. Neither I nor the Martian, no matter what our brain power, could drive this fixed notion out of her pretty little head.
“Now that you have seen them,” said the Martian, “perhaps we can get to the business at hand?”
I seemed to be out of dilatory alibis.
“Okay,” I said. “What do you want from me?”
“We want you to destroy Philip Baxter,” said the Martian.
16
“Destroy Baxter?” I echoed stupidly. "I was dragged all the way from Earth to do that?”
“Since we are here, and you were there,” said the Martian, condescendingly, “what other choice did we have?”
“You could have sent a letter,” I muttered.
“Hardly,” the Martian said, unperturbed. “Since physical contact between our two dimensions is impossible.”
“It is?” I said, surprised.
“Of course!” the Martian snapped. “If it were not, we’d have destroyed Baxter ourselves.”
“Why didn’t you use the sugarfeet?” I asked, bewildered. “Clatclit seems to have shown no ineptness in disintegrating other Earthmen.”
“For the simple reason,” said the Martian, with cold anger, “that on your wretchedly humid planet, a sugarfoot would be corroded to death before it could locate him. If, of course, it had already overcome the other obvious difficulties such as getting there, since Earth does not permit immigration of alien species.”
Like a hot spark flaring where only ice had been before, a tiny light of hope began to burn in my heart. The Martians, for all their four-dimensional superiority, didn’t know that Baxter was on Mars! Hell, why should they? I knew Baxter personally, and I didn’t know he was on Mars until he was good and ready to let me know it.
“Jery—” said Snow, about to spill the beans.
“Ixnay, lover!” I growled. “Unless you want these guys tossing in the hand, and switching to Plan C! Remember?”
I hoped she’d recall what had happened to those would-be rebels once the Ancients no longer had a use for them. I could tell, a second later, by her involuntary gasp, that she did.
“What was the import of that exchange?” the Martian asked, fairly smoldering with suspicion. “Your idioms were elusive.”
“My woman was about to beg me not to do your will,” I lied carefully. “I merely pointed out to her that if I refused, you would simply obliterate us and utilize some other scheme.”
“Intelligent thinking, Jery Delvin,” said the Martian. For a horrible moment, I thought he meant he’d caught onto my misinterpretation of my words. Then I knew all was well, relatively, as he went on. “As to the method of destruction, we leave it to you to choose. However, haste is of paramount importance to us.”
“Excuse me,” I interrupted, “but would you answer me one probably idiotic question?”
"If it is within my range of information,” said the Martian.
“Well, just why are you so set on getting rid of Baxter? Mind you, I have no overwhelming affection for him myself. But I can’t figure your angle.”
“The motivation is the usual, basic one. Even you humans follow it: Survival.”
“Survival?” I repeated, blinking.
“Philip Baxter possesses the knowledge of the method of our destruction,” said the Martian. “That in itself is a bad thing, but he has two more things besides this knowledge that make his removal imperative. He also possesses the means and the intention of using this means.”
“What?” said Snow, losing the pedantic thread.
"He means, honey, that Baxter’s not only got the know-how to bump off this bunch, but the wherewithal and the urge.”
"You Earthmen have a rather colorful succinctness of speech,” the Martian observed.
Snow looked at me for help. “We what?”
I grinned at her despite our situation. “We talk purty,” I interpreted. Then turning back to the Martian: “But if there cannot be physical contact between the races, why worry about Baxter? It
seems to me that the worst he could do is snub you!”
“I’d better give you a bit more detail.”
“Wait a minute.” I held up a hand in protest. "If you tell me what Baxter knows then won’t I be—”
“A threat to us? No. I do not intend to tell you the specific manner in which we can be destroyed, simply the nature of the destruction.”
“All right. What?”
“You’re aware, of course, of the geocentric theory of the universe?”
“Mmmm, I’ve heard of it. Isn’t that the theory, once held by people on earth, that the Earth was the center of all creation, and the sun revolved around it, not vice-versa?”
“That is the one. Now, though your race believed it to be a false theory—”
“It is false!” I protested.
“For Earth, yes. But not, you see, for Mars. This place where you now stand, this brief liaison-point between our dimension and yours, is the center of your physical universe.”
“You’re crazy,” I said. “Why, the sun alone is too massive to swing about this planet, let alone everything else! It’d be like a small boy trying to twirl a ten-ton boulder on the end of a rope; even if he managed, somehow, to get it started in motion, within ten seconds it’d be swinging him!”
“And if this small boy had another ten-ton boulder on the other side of him?”
“Well—uh…”
“And another one above, and below, and in all directions from him? What then?”
I thought it over. “He’d be a mighty tired boy.”
“That is not funny.”
“It needs work,” I admitted.
“Jery Delvin,” said the Martian with open irritation, “time is fleeting, and I cannot afford to dally while you play semantic pingpong with my words! Kindly allow me to complete my statement of this situation, or I shall decide by your flippancy that you no longer desire the companionship of your woman!”
That one, I detected by the sudden stiffening of Snow’s hand in mine, I didn’t need to translate. I shut up.
“This, then,” the Martian went on more calmly, “is despite what your scientists say, the center of your universe. If they will but compute the masses, orbits and velocities of all other matter in the universe, they will see that. Or are they yet aware of the universe in its entirety?”
“Not—not quite,” I said carefully, not wanting to chance losing Snow. “Our astronomical instruments have a limited sensitivity to light. We see pretty damned far, but there’s always something more beyond.”
“Very well, then, you’ll have to take my word for it. However, it you have properly understood the fact that our dimension exists at the place of Location itself, you will see at once that our only possible point of contact with your universe is at the central, non-moving point.”
“I think I see,” L said. “If you tried making contact anywhere else, it’d go speeding off from you, so to speak.”
“Good. You understand perfectly. What Baxter proposes to do is to break our liaison, thus confining us to our own dimension forever.
“He proposes to do this by detonating a segment of our physical universe, one which coexists with yours. This will produce only the slightest of jolts in our world, but the balance between the two universes is so delicate that even this minor tremor will move us—by moving our contact material—out of alignment. And we, since we exist in Location, cannot then move ourselves back.”
“Would…uh, would that be so terrible?” I asked nervously. “What do you gain by the contact anyhow?”
“The contact,” said the Martian. “It is something we have always had. We don’t need it, but we like less the idea of having it arbitrarily taken from us.”
“Oh,” I said. “I don’t suppose you happen to know Baxter’s angle in all this? I mean the reason for his urge to destroy you.”
"Power,” the Martian said simply. “You have heard of the Amnesty, of course?”
“Have I!” I muttered.
“Well, then. You know that the wearer cannot be countermanded by any but the combined veto of the World President and Philip Baxter himself.”
“Yes,” I said, puzzled.
“Then who, if Philip Baxter were to wear the Amnesty, could countermand him?”
I realized with a shock that no one on the three planets of Earth’s domain could, the way the rules were set up.
“But people wouldn’t stand for a dictator,” I argued. “They’d vote out the power of the Amnesty.”
“And if there was no more vote? Jery Delvin, Interplanetary Security is currently the most powerful organization in your world. Its agents possess the most invincible of weapons, the collapser ray-gun. Philip Baxter wields the power, even now. But he desires that it should become known.”
“Known?” said Snow uncertainly.
“He means, Snow, that it’s no fun being the boss if nobody knows it. The more I think of it, the more I think Baxter can actually get away with it.” I returned my attention to the Martian. “If he’s held off taking over until you people were unhitched from our universe, then you must be a threat to him!”
“Only in his mind, Jery Delvin. He learned that we exist. He also learned that we had non-Earthly abilities. He decided that we therefore were superior in knowledge of weapons of destruction. One cannot be a successful dictator when another being has more power, or if one thinks such is the case.”
“Then you haven’t such weapons?”
“We have. But, as I told you, physical contact between our races is impossible.” It gave a shrug. “Any attempt on our part to use our weapons would result in that very jolt we are trying so desperately to avoid.”
“I get it. You can shoot the charging rhino, but the recoil knocks you off the cliff.”
“Overly metaphoric but substantially correct. So you must destroy Baxter for us.”
“I’d like nothing better. I can get back to Earth, and alert the president, and maybe get the wheels rolling for an investigation of IS.”
“Impossible!” the Martian snapped. “We dare not wait any longer. As yet, Baxter has confided his modus operandi to no one. Once he tells another man, then that man tells a third, and soon we become hopelessly vulnerable. No, the man himself must be destroyed, not just his power. When he dies, the power will die with him if you then tell your story.”
“But I can’t just walk up to him and kill him,” I said.
“Since we are completely aware that you can, I must take it that you mean you will not.”
“No, not that, exactly. But look, he’s been a stinker, I know, but it’s not in my power to destroy a fellow human being in cold blood.”
“Then we shall heat your blood, Jery Delvin,” the Martian replied. “We will warm it with the racking anger you shall feel against us, knowing that these human children shall perish if you fail!” A cunning light came into the Martian’s eyes. “And not only these children,” it said. "But your woman as well!”
“No!” I cried, grabbing hold of Snow in both my arms. “I’ll do it, but just leave her alone!”
“She stays here with us until you return successful.”
“She does not!” I yelled, shaking. “I can’t leave the woman I love with a creep that looks to her like a blob of black sparklers! I—”
With cold horror, I realized that my arms were embracing nothingness. Snow was standing, wide-eyed, ten feet away.
“Jery!” she cried, trying to come toward me. Instead, her steps slid over that shimmering metallic blur, and she remained in place.
“We who live in the heart of Location,” said the Martian affably, “have a certain mastery over locale.”
"You can’t do this,” I said unreasonably. Because it was quite obvious it was being done. Inexorably.
“Snow—” I said, and couldn’t go on. The vision of Snow was moving back from me, or I was moving backward, or both. But the gap between us widened by the second. Then I was back in the rocky red tunnel, the parabolite sphincter n
arrowing swiftly before my face.
“Be—be careful, Snow!” I called, like an imbecile.
The wall was solid again.
17
Simultaneous with that parabolite wall shutting in my face, three disturbing thoughts occurred to me: One, Baxter didn’t have the Amnesty; Snow did! Probably in that catchall handbag of hers. Two, if the Ancients could float me and Snow and the Space Scouts about like so much helium, why the hell didn’t they just de-localize Baxter into a snake pit or something? And three, if physical contact was impossible between the races, how in heaven’s name did they gimmick the Brain back on Earth? Which was also, come to think of it, moving awfully fast in relation to their liaison point with the geocentric point of the universe!
A very baffled man, I began feeling my way down the tunnel toward that mighty roar of underground waters. The light paled and grew gray as I moved away from the parabolite wall. Then I was in darkness, feeling the bare stone with my fingers as I stepped carefully toward the increasing volume of ragged sound.
Then the wall curved away from my outstretched fingertips, and I knew I stood at the brink of that precarious arch of rock. There was nothing but blackness there, now.
“Clatclit!” I hollered over the boom of the river waters.
"Clatclit, it’s me, Jery!”
The rush of the boiling rapids was too great, however. It thundered by and swept the faint vibration of my voice along with it into that enormous well to my right.
Then I remembered Clatclit’s manner of instruction to that hay-bale beast, what seemed like ages ago, out on the craggy Martian hillside. I put hooked thumb and forefinger into my mouth, and let off a piercing whistle.
Ahead of me in the darkness there was a glimmering of visibility, and then a feeble pink taillight waggled slowly up and down, far back beyond the other end of the bridge. Clatclit wasn’t chancing moving as close to the death-dealing spray as before.
However, though a more powerful beam had been necessary to see by when I’d been moving into darkness, the pale glow was sufficient for the return trip. All I needed was a beacon, something to sight upon, so I wouldn’t go astray in my slow crawl across that slippery curve of rock. Yes, crawl. This trip, I negotiated the arch on hands and knees.