The Secret Martians by Jack Sharkey (best historical fiction books of all time TXT) 📗

"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 narrowing swiftly before my face.

"Be—be careful, Snow!" I called, like an imbecile.

The wall was solid again.

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 catch-all 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.

And then I was across and hurrying down the corridor to the bend around which Clatclit shivered and waited. He stood up from his slouch against the wall, from which weary stance he'd been waving me onward with his taillight.

"Wow!" I said, catching dim sight of him in the weak glow of his water-pitted trylon. The sharp ruby glint was missing from his erstwhile pyramidic facets; now they looked dull crimson, and ropy, like taffy that has congealed after boiling over and dribbling down the side of the saucepan. "Does it hurt?" I asked, feeling partially responsible.

Side-to-side motion.

"It bothers you in some way, though, is that it?"

Nod.

"How?" I asked, unable to think of a yes-no question.

Clatclit pointed to my wrist, shook his head, pointed to my wrist again, and gestured upward, then nodded.

"Time. No ... other time. Uh ... Earth?"

Headshake. He rose on tiptoe and pointed up again.

"Beyond Earth. The sun!"

Nod.

"You mean that at this time, it doesn't bother you. But it will later, when you need the scales for absorbing sunlight?"

A very weary nod.

"Damn, that's rough. Will they grow back again?"

Pause. Nod. Tiptoe point. Three taps on wrist. Shrug.

"Yes. When the sun makes three times—In three days' time?"

Nod. Wrist-tap. Hands clasped to belly. Disgusted shrug.

"But in the meantime, you go hungry, sort of?"

Nod. Then, the social amenities taken care of, Clatclit pointed to me, to the ground, and looked questioningly.

"The Ancients have decided I'm to bump off Baxter," I said. "Then they'll release Snow and the boys. Not before."

Clatclit stared at me a moment, placed a hand on my shoulder, and shook his head, like a sympathetic friend. Then he took his claws and made a tugging, struggling motion with them, as though trying to tear something which wouldn't give. He followed it up with an incongruously comic coin-flipping motion to the back of his hand. It was his devious way of expressing the slang phrase, "Tough luck."

"You said it," I muttered. "Come on, though. The less time I leave Snow with the blob of black sparklers, the better. I've got to get to the spaceport."

Clatclit nodded and began his lumbering waddle off into the labyrinth. The Ancients probably expected me to book passage on the next Earth flight, to assassinate Baxter. They didn't know he was sitting right in their laps, in the Security sector of the field. It was just as well. I didn't relish the possibility of my elimination if they knew he was right where a sugarfoot could blast him as well as anybody.

As I trailed Clatclit up the wearisome slope that was taking us to the surface, I did some heavy thinking. The Ancients, before Earthmen first landed on Mars, probably had wandered about the planet freely, on the surface, living in their dwellings of parabolite, using their artifacts of the same impervious mineral. Then Earth, that paradoxically peace-loving and war-making planet, lands colonists. The Ancients, just from plain discretion, hide themselves and observe these unwelcome newcomers. Once it becomes clear to them that there is a potential menace from Baxter—who is no young chicken, having been in power before the first landing—they stay hidden, and start scheming to get rid of this guy who can jolt them out of their liaison.

I pondered over that bit. The Ancient had said that Baxter intended doing it by detonating a portion of their contact-material. Hell, they must mean parabolite! What other substance in the solar system was so alien to—

And with that thought, I suddenly knew the secret of that apparently impervious mineral's strength. No wonder it could not be destroyed! It was only in existence in our skimpy three dimensions in a fractional way. One-fourth of it was always present in the Ancients' world, since it couldn't fit into our universe in its entirety. And that meant not only one-fourth of its apparent mass, but one-fourth of even its atomic structure!

Even the collapsers, working on subatomic particles, were at a disadvantage. You can't nudge an electron out of orbit if it isn't actually fixed in that orbit. Three-quarters of those four-dimensional electrons were always cushioned by that elusive final segment that lay outside our universe. So trying to destroy parabolite by force was in the same class as trying to shatter a rubber ball with a hammer; a rubber ball which was hanging from an elastic cord, in fact! It just gave into the other dimension and rebounded frisky as ever.

"Boy," I thought, "this is going to put the skids under that scientific theory about parabolite's imperviousness. Parabolic molecules, ha! Well, it was a good theory while it lasted; it fit the known facts, at least. Hell, the stuff even has the wrong name! It ought to be called Elasto-plast, or some such euphonic label."

Clatclit paused in his climb up the tunnel slope, and turned a querying stare on me.

"Was I talking aloud?" I asked.

Curious nod.

"Sorry, it's nothing," I said, indicating that he should proceed with our journey. "Just the salesman in me coming to life. You can't have public interest without catchy trade-names. Once an ad man, always an ad man."

Clatclit looked positively bewildered.

"Sorry. Business talk," I explained.

He shrugged and continued his upward climb, with me tagging after the bobbing pink taillight.

As secure as the maximum-security Security prison was supposed to be, we got in with no trouble. The planet must be a regular yarn-ball of those rocky tubes. If you know the layout, you can apparently get anywhere from anywhere.

Our only excursion from the steady upward climb had been a brief stop-off in one of those fungus-lighted rooms. Clatclit picked up my collapser and returned it to me.

I felt infinitely more confidant of success with its thick golden handle jutting out of my holster once more. Perhaps I could just find Baxter, sneak a bolt into his face, and scurry off into the labyrinth on Clatclit's heels.

I knew, even as I thought it, that I wouldn't be able to just blast him like that. I'd probably have to face up to him, pull an "All right, pardner—draw!" sort of sentence on him, and then pray that I was faster. It was unthinkable for me to act in any other manner. The give-a-guy-a-chance instinct was part of our national heritage, something called the code of the West, handed down to us by pioneer forefathers.

The method of ingress to the building was simplicity itself. The tunnel we'd been negotiating came to an abrupt end at a wall of granite slabs such as had buttressed my prison cell. I reached for the collapser, but Clatclit laid a restraining claw on my hand.

I watched, curious, as he put his left ear-orifice to the wall and listened intently. Then,