by Jack Sharkey
Charlie, spinning about to keep me in range, touched the trigger. There was a shriek. A shriek that died the split second in which it was born, and then my world disappeared in a blinding shower of blue-white sparks.
When Clatclit and I got up again, Charlie and Foster were missing, along with most of the corridor wall. Baxter was just standing up from the lopped-off remnants of his chair, the manacles at his wrists and ankles having been dissolved by the bolt which could not destroy him.
The bolt had rebounded from his shielding force to destroy its perpetrator, Charlie, and Foster, the hapless bystander.
Before I could toss aside my useless weapon and attack him barehanded, Baxter had yanked up another weapon from the floor. It was one of the old-fashioned water guns, its flexible hose running back to tanks filled with gallons of sugarfoot-destructive fluid.
“If you place any value on the existence of this creature who has just saved your life, Delvin, you will hand over that weapon to me at once.”
Clatclit looked at me. I sighed, and tossed the collapser to Baxter. What the hell, it wouldn’t work on him, anyhow.
“And now,” said Baxter, dropping the water weapon and covering us with the one which was deadly to both our hides, “I am going to need your help.”
19
“Well, this is a switch!” I remarked. “The kingpin needs a hand!”
“It is a comedown,” Baxter said wryly, “but you see, my late agent’s fatal heroics have had a distressing side effect.”
“Oh?” I said, looking about the shards of room that were still extant on the corridor side. “I don’t see anything.”
“That,” Baxter remarked, “is precisely the point, Mister Delvin. A moment or two ago, not three yards to the left of where those fools were sitting—no, don’t bother looking, there’s only empty space there now—there was a small sending set. I brought it all the way from Earth with me. In fact, that is the reason I was sitting in this room tonight. Had my agents reported to my satisfaction that you were present among the Ancients, I should have used that set to detonate the atomic bullet in the false Amnesty. However—”
“Your trigger went bye-bye,” I finished. “Need I say I am elated?”
“I take it the woman, the one wearing the false Amnesty, means something to you?” Baxter said. “The Ancients seemed to set some store in her captivity’s coercive power over you.”
“She does,” I admitted. “Which is why I’m happy you no longer possess the means to set that damned thing off.”
I had no particular love for the Ancients, but I didn’t much like the thought of Snow being blasted into radioactive rubble.
“Well, then, if you desire to save her, you and your friend are going to guide me down to that cavern where they dwell, and—”
Footsteps pounded down the corridor, and then a squad of armed guards came into view. They saw Baxter and halted, and their leader stepped forward.
“Sir,” he said, "Our detectors reported a collapser being—” his gaze, forgetful of military deportment, took a second to wander bug-eyed over the more truncated sections of the room, “—being used in this vicinity.”
“Congratulations,” Baxter remarked sarcastically. “Your eyes might give you the selfsame information, corporal. One has been used. I have the situation in hand, however. You may take your men and go.”
“Yes, sir,” the young man said, obviously fighting an urge to break protocol and ask what the hell happened.
“Oh! And corporal,” Baxter said, as the boy began to organize his squad.
“Sir?”
“You might scratch Myers and Gibson off the payroll list. Send their families the usual telegrams of condolence.”
The corporal’s eyes bugged even more so, and he swallowed noisily before mumbling “Yes, sir” again and departing.
“That was pretty callous, even from you," I said, as the sounds of their footsteps dwindled and disappeared.
“Not callous at all. Efficient."
“Callous.”
Baxter shrugged. “In any case, come along you two. The sooner I rid myself of these Ancients, the better.”
There was nothing else we could do. Dejectedly, Clatclit began moving off in his lumbering lope toward the staircase. I followed, no cheerier than he. Baxter brought up the rear.
So far as I could see, in selecting me as the tool of Baxter’s destruction, the Ancients had made the error of their four-dimensional lives!
Then, almost all the way down to the main floor, I heard the murmur of voices. We were nearing the terminal lobby, the point where passengers were checked on and off the planet. As we turned at the landing, I saw that the lobby was filled with a throng of people, some of them patiently answering questions of the flight-listing robots, others having baggage weighed, and still others engaging off-duty pilots and technicians in casual conversation. It was a normal enough scene, one to be found in any rocket terminal on Earth or off it.
But there was something wrong about it. I slowed my descent of the stairs and tried to place the uncertainty, the queasy foreboding I felt centering about my heart.
Then I had it. There were no women present. Not one woman could I see in that apparently casual group of passengers. And there was a quiver of tingling tension in the air, a very palpable sensation of mental concentration trembling on the brink of action.
Baxter sensed it too. I could feel his own progress slowing behind me on the stairs. “What—?” he said.
Then it happened. At the far end of the immense room, one of the security guards let out a cry. I shot my gaze toward the sound, and saw that a man beside him had yanked his collapser from his holster. Other guards came alert all over the place, and they started toward the man on a run. And they were all of them neatly tripped, shoved, and clubbed, while a brilliant crackle of free electrons sealed the fate of the first guard.
The Neo-Martian revolution was starting. Some of the guards managed to get shots off before they were overcome by weight of numbers. People vanished in blinding flares of energy, amid shouts of fierce rage from their companions.
"There’s one!” someone shouted, and a clump of these desperate insurgents turned toward the stairs, where Clatclit and I stood. They were looking past us, at Baxter.
Then the Security Chief fired the collapser in his hand, the humming bolt of dissolving-power buzzing right past my ear. But he hadn’t fired at the men below. He’d fired directly at the fluorescent fixture that glowed in the center of the ceiling. Suddenly, the flash that marked its passage was the only lighting in that room. Then the cascade of sparks died, and we were standing in blackness.
I grabbed Clatclit’s arm, hoping we could make a break for freedom in the dark, but Baxter had out-thought me there, too.
Another throbbing beam of energy from behind us, and the floor was gone before our feet, leaving a dizzy drop into emptiness, then even the view of the abyss faded as the sparks of energy died. I stifled a cry of alarm in my throat as Baxter’s free hand flattened itself on my back and shoved.
I staggered forward, and my foot came down on air. Then, my grip on Clatclit’s arm throwing him off balance, we plunged into the empty space.
Somehow, writhing in midfall, Clatclit got his hard-scaled arms about me, and he took the brunt of the landing on powerful legs and tail. My left arm was numb from shoulder to elbow. I must have struck it on the floor of the room below the lobby when we landed.
Another thump told me that Baxter had arrived, too. He did better than we did. After all, he was expecting a fall when he took off from that sliced-off brink. In another moment, he’d prodded us out into the corridor of that first floor under ground level, where the lights were still working. Then, taking a step back, he blasted away the flooring of that room, too, to discourage anyone from following the way we’d come. Incongruously, as he came back out, he shut the door.
“Afraid they’ll grab at the knob on the way down?” I said, rubbing my injured arm.
“Neatness,” said Baxter, not to be outdone, “is a virtue."
“Come on, come on,” Baxter said impatiently, waving the muzzle of the collapser at us. “Can we get to the labyrinth from here?”
"Why bother, now?” I said, jerking a thumb toward the lobby above us. "Way things look, you won’t have any empire to come back to, even if you do knock off the Ancients.”
“A minor skirmish like this cannot but fail in its purpose,” said Baxter. “On my return, I fully expect to see the sky filled with Security ships from Earth, leisurely razing the entire city.”
“Won’t that be rather difficult to write off as ’Unserviceable,’ even the way you keep inventory?” I needled.
“Move!” said Baxter, beyond patience.
Clatclit and I moved. We went back down the long ramp that led toward the dungeons. At gunpoint or not, I called back over my shoulder, “By the way, just what do you intend doing when we arrive at the ogre’s castle? I should think that it was the last place you’d want to be found. Kind of like telling off a lion while your head’s in his mouth.”
Far off behind us, there was a growing shout of voices. Apparently, the rebels had managed to negotiate what was left of the stairway and were hot on our trail.
"Faster!” said Baxter, quite unnecessarily. I was in no mood to test whether or not the rebels checked one’s ideology before blasting away. A disintegrated bystander is beyond apology. So we went faster.
We reached the dungeon level, and Clatclit proceeded to shove open that movable section of wall. Baxter raised his eyebrows in surprise, but then simply gun-motioned us through the gap. We went, and he followed a moment later. I watched with amusement as he tried vainly to shove that granite mass back into place. I don’t know exactly what sugarfeet use for muscles, but it beats what we’ve got.
Angrily, Baxter stepped back against the curved wall of the tunnel, and said, “You! Move that back. We don’t want them following us in here.”
Clatclit moved over to obey, while I remarked, “Why not? Maybe they’ll get lost. It’ll save your city-razing ships a little collapser-power.”
Baxter, ignored my statement, and simply waited until Clatclit had moved back beside me, his taillight going on pyrotechnically as the moving granite cut us off from the light in the dungeon corridor.
Then we were once again moving down that frozen-lava slope toward the deeply hidden lair of the Ancients.
As we moved along, side by side, with Baxter coming relentlessly after us, Clatclit’s hands started working furiously.
He flicked an index finger toward me, then toward himself. Then he put the heels of his hands together and, after a brief waggling of the fingertips, clamped his hands into fists, and made that serpentine forward jab with one hand. He was asking, in his pantomimic way, if he and I, under cover of sudden blinkout of his taillight, might scoot off into the labyrinth and escape Baxter.
I held up a forefinger and waggled it left and right in a signal of “Better not, chum.”
He put his palms up, fingers flipping open in a mute “Why not?”
I curled the fingers of my right hand into the palm, then pointed the index finger forward, and lifted my thumb up; an antique Earth gesture dating back to the times when hand guns had fanning hammers on them. I spun the muzzle of this simulated weapon up, down, and every which way, to indicate to Clatclit that Baxter might manage, through sheer blind blasting, to polish us off before we got very far.
Clatclit slammed his right fist into his left palm in a furious symbol of an exasperated "Damn!”
“What are you two plotting up there?” Baxter demanded suddenly.
“We were discussing the futility of a lights-out scurry for cover, since that weapon of yours would slice right through these tunnels,” I said, deciding the truth was the best way to avoid suspicious repercussions. “If your bolt didn’t get us, the falling ceiling might.”
“I’m glad you’re using your intelligence, Delvinr” Baxter answered. Then: “Why are we stopping?”
"Because,” I said, halting where Clatclit had suddenly paused in his forward motion, “that thunder you hear is the reason the Ancients never find themselves neck-deep in the sugarfeet. An impassable river is up ahead.”
“Impassable?” Baxter scowled.
"Not for us, but for Clatclit, here,” I said. “He can’t even go around this comer without risking deadly corrosion. And, in case you didn’t notice back in your office, he’s had a pretty nasty exposure already.”
“Nevertheless,” said Baxter, “I must insist that he either accompany us, or be destroyed right here.”
“What!" I said, appalled. “You can’t ask him to do that! He wouldn’t last any longer than you would in boiling oil!”
"I certainly do not intend to leave him here,” Baxter snapped. “He might alert others of his kind, and—”
“And what?” I growled. “You could fend off a million of them with that weapon of yours.”
“And risk the ceiling falling in on my head?” Baxter said. “No, Delvin, I’m not about to take that chance.”
“And just how,” I said savagely, “did that peanut brain of yours plan on your getting out of here without him?”
Baxter paused, his gun hand wavering.
“Because if he melts in the river, or is vaporized right here and now, you will be stuck without a light. Stuck in a rock-hard maze that you couldn’t negotiate alone if you had a light.”
Baxter just stared, thinking furiously.
“Of course,” I went on, “you could simply aim that thing upward, and disintegrate your way out. But that, too, might make the ceiling fall in. And if it didn’t, you’d have the small difficulty of climbing the glass-sided well you’d created. Climbing, by the way, into the Martian desert, where there is no air, no water, and very little heat. You’d be dessicated, suffocated, and a popsicle to boot!”
"I—I could very easily slant the bolt into Marsport,” Baxter blustered. “I could climb the slope easily enough, and there’d be fresh air waiting for me, too.”
“Yeah,” I mocked, folding my arms. “Fresh air and a city full of insurgent Baxter-haters. Assuming, of course, that you didn’t strike an underground stream in the process, and get washed away into the depths of the planet when your hold-off stance with the collapser tired you out, when you’d completely dissipated the charge.”
“I—” Baxter said, desperately nervous.
“And also assuming,” I continued, “that you know in which direction Marsport is, chum! Of course, you could swing that thing in a full circle of slant-blasts toward the surface, but then that would make the ceiling fall in, wouldn’t it, once you’d cut away all supports.”
Baxter trembled with impotent rage, but his gun’s muzzle was finally slumped all the way toward the floor of the tunnel. He was beaten, and he knew it.
And that’s when I jumped him.
My still-working right arm shot down and gripped his right wrist, a very awkward stance to take, but my left arm was still weak and useless from my fall. But Clatclit moved in, then, his rocky talons sinking like so many fangs into Baxter’s right arm, all three of us a writhing tangle on the tunnel floor, each of us frantically aware that the gun had better not emit any bolts while an arm, leg or tail flailed in front of it.
Baxter shrieked with fear and rage as those steely fingers took hold. I think he was too upset otherwise to feel the pain.
And then a bolt buzzed blindingly into the tunnel, and as we all three flattened ourselves and waited for the ceiling to come crashing down, it spattered into nothingness against the wall.
We sat up, staring at the spot where the so-called invincible bolt had simply been dissipated, all of us looking pretty silly, flat on our bottoms, leaning back on our hands on that curved stone surface, momentarily losing sight of our belligerent behavior of a moment before.
“The wall!” I said, first to realize the significance. But I couldn’t go on. Baxter finished for me.
; “It’s parabolite!” he cried.
Then my eyes were dazzled by the blaze of light that suddenly materialized all around us, and my stomach turned over sickeningly as I realized that the converse was probably true: We had just materialized inside the dazzling light!
We were, all three of us, within the metallic-shimmering chamber of the ancient Martians.
“Well done, Jery Delvin,” said a familiar voice, and then the light before us trembled and warped, and I was looking into the disconcerting triple face of the Ancient again.
I was not, however, in the mood for compliments.
“Where is my woman?” I said peremptorily.
“On your departure, she expressed a desire to inquire further into the health of her sibling,” said the Martian. “She is even now with him and his companions.”
“In that cage?” I cried angrily.
“I assure you she is—”
“Kindly forego the lecture on metabolic stasis and raise the damned thing, will you?” I interrupted.
The Martian warped and sparkled in a dizzying movement that I could only interpret as a shrug, and then the huge parabolite cage came rising up from that not-quite-then flooring.
“Jery!”
“Snow, baby!”
We clung to each other awkwardly, and our lips met be. tween the columnar bars. I pulled back and called, "Can’t you open this thing up, now?”
“Your mission is not quite accomplished, Jery Delvin,’ said the Martian. “The man Philip Baxter is within our realm, but as yet undestroyed.”
“You mean I’ve still got to—”
“As told you repeatedly: Physical contact between our races is impossible, Jery Delvin.”
“Hey, what about that?” I said. “After I left here, I got to wondering how, if what you just said is true, you people were able to manipulate the Brain to select me.”
“The Brain of which you speak works on a principle oi force-fields, generated by induction coils. We simply placed the right counterforces in the right places. No actual contact was necessary.”