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

licked his dry lips and stared at me, horribly upset, "that all I had to do to be rid of the Ancients was to go ahead with my scheme? Simply pulverizing a hunk of that stuff would have sent them off?"

I nodded, ironically. "Yes. No need to rig a bomb, to send me seeking them, to try and set this bomb off in their midst. You could have set it off right back on Earth, and been just as rid of them."

"No need," he repeated dully. Then, suddenly alert; "Set it off? How did you know?"

"It was the only form of energy that hadn't been tried," I said, with a shrug. "Self-energy. Back on Earth, you ran that disc of parabolite through a hot atomic pile, and it became intensely radioactive, since the deadly emanations of the pile are even less than subatomic, and have no dimensions. Then a shielding coating of nullifying gamma plasm, the same stuff we use to keep our rocket chambers from dosing the passengers with deadly rays, and neat nickel plate over that. Emboss it with the seal of the World President, lacquer it in the colors of IS, and you have a neat, but incredibly potent, little fission bomb."

"And how could I set this off?" Baxter sneered. "Aren't you forgetting that the parabolite's at less than a critical mass?"

"Same way the old H-bomb worked," I said. "Under the gamma plasm, beside the radioactive parabolite, you have an atomic bullet, the kind the foot soldiers used in the Third World War. As for tracking it and detonating it, you must have a refinement of the tracking stuff you had in that blouse of mine. As the old H-bomb was triggered by an atomic bomb, so the parabolite, even at less than critical mass, could be triggered by the remotely-detonated atomic bullet. You planned to blow up the Ancients, and me with them, Baxter. Then you could go ahead and set off similar bombs, one each on Venus, Earth and Mars. The fallout would stay with the planets forever, even after losing its potency. And you could teleport your agents anywhere you chose."

"And the Ancients?" said Baxter.

"They reasoned out your intentions when you made that chunk of parabolite radioactive. Why do that unless you intended detonating it? But the very act of making it fissionable somehow took the teleportation-whammy out of it. They couldn't use it to snatch you, even when you were near it. Probably, since it seems the only likely reason, they couldn't use it because it was too atomically hot for them to work with." I was finished. I waited.

"Mister Delvin," said Baxter, after a long moment. "What do you intend to do, now?"

"Keep you in cuffs," I said. "Send an emergency call to the World Congress. See you corked into one of your own granite cells. With the air supply turned on, however. Though I wouldn't mind you having an hour or two of what I went through the other night."

"And," Baxter turned his head and nodded toward the handbag on the desk, "what about her?"

"She was being held conditional to my removing you as a menace," I said. "Consider yourself removed."

Baxter smiled. "And if the Ancients are not satisfied? What if they still desire my death, not simply my imprisonment?"

I thought it over. "In that case, I'd be forced to comply with their wishes."

To his credit, this unexpected statement on my part only stopped his tongue for a moment. He immediately tried a new approach. "And if the Ancients decide to destroy her anyhow?"

"Why should they?" I said, less sure of myself.

He cocked his head to one side, watching me. "No," he shook his head, "now I think of it, they wouldn't destroy her. They'd hold her captivity over your head, forcing you to return so that they might destroy you."

"Me?" I said, startled.

"Surely you can see why?" he went on smoothly. "After all, why were they out to destroy me, Mister Delvin?"

"Because you knew—" I said, then halted, stunned.

"—How to destroy them," Baxter finished for me. "The selfsame information which you now possess. What do you think your chances are for survival now?"

My guard wavered in that fleeting moment of realization. I caught the flicker of movement just a second too late.

Charlie, out of my thoughts for an instant, had whipped his collapser out of his holster and brought it to bear on me.

But even before I could bring my own weapon up in a futile attempt at a duel which would have resulted in probably two fatalities, iron-hard claws gripped my shoulder and I was carried hurtling to the floor by Clatclit's full weight on my back. To the floor just behind Baxter's chair.

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