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

scowl. "Yes, of course;" Baxter murmured, lighting up a cigar. He blew a plume of blue smoke toward the ceiling, then continued. "You've heard, of course, of the Space Scouts?"

I nodded. "Like the old-time Boy Scouts, only with rocket-names for their various troops in place of the old animal names."

"And you recall the recent government-sponsored trip they had? To Mars and back, with the broadly-smiling government picking up the enormous tab?"

I detected a tinge of cynicism in his tone, but said nothing.

"What a gesture!" Baxter went on, hardly speaking directly to me at all. "Inter-nation harmony! Good will! If these mere boys can get together and travel the voids of space, then so can everyone else! Why should there be tensions between the various nations comprising the World Government, when there's none between these fine lads, one from every civilized nation on Earth?"

"You sound disillusioned, sir," I interjected.

He stared at me as though I'd just fallen in from the ceiling or somewhere. "Huh? Oh, yes, Delvin, isn't it? Sorry, I got carried away. Where was I?"

"You were telling about how this gesture, the WG sending these kids off for an extraterrestrial romp, will cement relations between those nations who have remained hostile despite the unification of all governments on Earth. Personally, I think it was a pretty good idea, myself. Everybody likes kids. Take this jam we were trying to push. Pomegranate Nectar, it was called. Well, sir, it just wouldn't sell, and then we got this red-headed kid with freckles like confetti all over his slightly bucktoothed face, and we—Sir?"

I'd paused, because he was staring at me like a man on the brink of apoplexy. I swallowed, and tried to look relaxed.

After a moment, he found his voice. "To go on, Delvin. Do you recall what happened to the Space Scouts last week?"

I thought a second, then nodded. "They've been having such a good time that the government extended their trip by—Why are you shaking your head that way, sir?"

"Because it's not true, Delvin," he said. His voice was suddenly old and tired, and very much in keeping with his snowy hair. "You see, the Space Scouts have vanished."

I came up in the chair, ramrod-straight. "Their mothers—they've been getting letters and—"

"Forgeries, Fakes. Counterfeits."

"You mean whoever took the Scouts is falsifying—"

"No. My men are doing the work. Handpicked crews, day and night, have been sending those letters to the trusting mothers. It's been ghastly, Delvin. Hard on the men, terribly hard. Undotted i's, misuse of tenses, deliberate misspellings. They take it out of an adult, especially an adult with a mind keen enough to get him into Interplanetary Security. We've limited the shifts to four hours per man per day. Otherwise, they'd all be gibbering by now!"

"And your men haven't found out anything?" I marvelled.

Baxter shook his head.

"And you finally had to resort to the Brain, and it gave you my name, but no reason for it?"

Baxter cupped his slightly jowled cheeks in his hands and propped his elbows on the desktop, suddenly slipping out of his high position to talk to me man-to-man. "Look, son, an adding machine—which is a minor form of an electronic brain, and even works on the same principle—can tell you that two and two make four. But can it tell you why?

"Well, no, but—"

"That, in a nutshell is our problem. We coded and fed to the Brain every shred of information at our disposal; the ages of the children, for instance, and all their physical attributes, and where they were last seen, and what they were wearing. Hell, everything! The machine took the factors, weighed them, popped them through its billions of relays and tubes, and out of the end of the answer slot popped a single sheet. The one you just saw. Your dossier."

"Then I'm to be sent to Mars?" I said, nervously.

"That's just it," Baxter sighed. "We don't even know that! We're like a savage who finds a pistol: used correctly, it's a mean little weapon; pointed the wrong way, it's a quick suicide. So, you are our weapon. Now, the question is: Which way do we point you?"

"You got me!" I shrugged hopelessly.

"However, since we have nothing else to go on but the locale from which the children vanished, my suggestion would be to send you there."

"Mars, you mean," I said.

"No, to the spaceship Phobos II. The one they were returning to Earth in when they disappeared."

"They disappeared from a spaceship? While in space?"

Baxter nodded.

"But that's impossible," I said, shaking my head against this disconcerting thought.

"Yes," said Baxter. "That's what bothers me."

3

Phobos II, for obvious reasons, was berthed in a Top Security spaceport. Even so, they'd shuttled it into a hangar, safe from the eyes of even their own men, and as a final touch had hidden the ship's nameplate beneath magnetic repair-plates.

I had a metal disk—bronze and red, the Security colors—insigniaed by Baxter and counterembossed with the President's special device, a small globe surmounted by clasping hands. It gave me authority to do anything. With such an identification disc, I could go to Times Square and start machine gunning the passers-by, and not one of New York's finest would raise a hand to stop me.

And, snugly enholstered, I carried a collapser, the restricted weapon given only to Security Agents, so deadly was its molecule-disrupting beam. Baxter had spent a tremulous hour showing me how to use the weapon, and especially how to turn the beam off. I'd finally gotten the hang of it, though not before half his kidney-shaped desk had flashed into nothingness, along with a good-sized swath of carpeting and six inches of concrete floor.

His parting injunction had been. "Be careful, Delvin, huh?"

Yes, parting. I was on my own. After all, with a Security disc—the Amnesty, they called it—such as I possessed, and a collapser, I could go anywhere, do anything, commandeer anything I might need. All with no questions asked. Needless to say, I was feeling pretty chipper as I entered the hangar housing Phobos II. At the moment, I was the most influential human being in the known universe.

The pilot, as per my videophoned request, was waiting there for me. I saw him as I stepped into the cool shadows of the building from the hot yellow sunlight outside. He was tall, much taller than I, but he seemed nervous as hell. At least he was pacing back and forth amid a litter of half-smoked cigarette butts beside the gleaming tailfins of the spaceship, and a fuming butt was puckered into place in his mouth.

"Anders?" I said, approaching to within five feet of him before halting, to get the best psychological effect from my appearance.

He turned, saw me, and hurriedly spat the butt out onto the cement floor. "Yes, sir!" he said loudly, throwing me a quivering salute. His eyes were a bit wild as they took me in.

And well they might be. An Amnesty-bearer can suddenly decide a subject is not answering questions to his satisfaction and simply blast the annoying party to atoms. It makes for straight responses. Of course, I was dressing the part, in a way. I wore the Amnesty suspended by a thin golden chain from my neck, and for costume I wore a raven-black blouse and matching uniform trousers and boots. I must have looked quite sinister. I'm under six feet, but I'm angular and wiry. Thus, in ominous black, with an Amnesty on my breast and a collapser in my holster, I was a sight to strike even honest citizens into quick examinations of conscience. I felt a little silly, but the outfit was Baxter's idea.

"I understand you were aboard the Phobos II when the incident occurred?" I said sternly, which was unusual for my wonted demeanor.

"Yes, sir!" he replied swiftly, at stiff attention.

"I don't really have any details," I said, and waited for him to take his cue. As an afterthought, to help him talk, I added, "At ease, by the way, Anders."

"Thank you, sir," he said, not actually loosening much in his rigid position, but his face looking happier. "See, I was supposed to pilot the kids back here from Mars when their trip was done, and—" He gave a helpless shrug. "I dunno, sir. I got 'em all aboard, made sure they were secure in the takeoff racks, and then I set my coordinates for Earth and took off. Just a run-of-the-mill takeoff, sir."

"And when did you notice they were missing?" I asked, looking at the metallic bulk of the ship and wondering what alien force could snatch fifteen fair-sized young boys through its impervious hull without leaving a trace.

"Chow time, sir. That's when you expect to have the little—to have the kids in your hair, sir. Everyone wants his rations first—You know how kids are, sir. So I went to the galley and was about to open up the ration packs, when I noticed how damned quiet it was aboard. And especially funny that no one was in the galley waiting for me to start passing the stuff out."

"So you searched," I said.

Anders nodded sorrowfully. "Not a trace of 'em, sir. Just some of their junk left in their storage lockers."

I raised my eyebrows. "Really? I'd be interested in seeing this junk, Anders."

"Oh, yes, sir. Right this way, sir. Watch out for these rungs, they're slippery."

I ascended the retractable metal rungs that jutted from a point between the tailfins to the open airlock, twenty feet over ground level, and followed Anders inside the ship.

I trailed Anders through the ship, from the pilot's compartment—a bewildering mass of dials, switches, signal lights and wire—through the galley into the troop section. It was a cramped cubicle housing a number of nylon-webbed foam rubber bunks. The bunks were empty, but I looked them over anyhow. I carefully tugged back the canvas covering that fitted envelope-fashion over a foam rubber pad, and ran my finger over the surface of the pad. It came away just slightly gritty.

"Uh-huh!" I said, smiling. Anders just stared at me.

I turned to the storage lockers. "Let's see this junk they were suddenly deprived of."

Anders, after a puzzled frown, obediently threw open the doors of the riveted tiers of metal boxes along the rear wall; the wall next to the firing chambers, which I had no particular desire to visit. I glanced inside at the articles therein, and noted with interest their similarity.

"Now, then," I resumed, "the thrust of this rocket to get from Mars to Earth is calculated with regard to the mass on board, is that correct?" He nodded. "Good, that clears up an important point. I'd also like to know if this rocket has a dehumidifying system to keep the cast-off moisture from the passengers out of the air?"

"Well, sure, sir!" said Anders. "Otherwise, we'd all be swimming in our own sweat after a ten-hour trip across space!"

"Have you checked the storage tanks?" I asked. "Or is the cast-off perspiration simply jetted into space?"

"No. It's saved, sir. It gets distilled and stored for washing and drinking. Otherwise, we'd all dehydrate, with no water to replace the water we lost."

"Check the tanks," I said.

Anders, shaking his head, moved into the pilot's section and looked at a dial there. "Full, sir. But that's because I didn't drink very much, and any sweating I did—which was a hell of a lot, in this case—was a source of new water for the tanks."

"Uh-huh." I paused and considered. "I suppose the tubing for these tanks is all over the ship? In all the hollow bulkhead space, to take up the moisture fast?"

Anders, hopelessly lost, could only nod wearily.

"Would it hold—" I did some quick mental arithmetic—"let's say, about twenty-four extra cubic feet?"

He stared, then frowned, and thought hard. "Yes, sir," he said, after a minute. "Even twice that, with no trouble, but—" He caught himself short. It didn't pay to be too curious about the aims of an Amnesty-bearer.

"It's all right, Anders. You've been a tremendous help. Just one thing. When you left Mars, you took off from the night side, didn't you?"

"Why, yes, I did, sir. But how did you—?"

"No matter, Anders. That'll be all."

"Yes, sir!" He saluted sharply and started off.

I started back for Interplanetary Security, and my second—and I hoped, last—interview with Chief Baxter. I had a slight inkling why the Brain had chosen me; because, in the affair of the missing Space Scouts, my infallible talent for spotting the True within the Apparent had come through nicely. I had found a very interesting clinker.

4

"Strange," I remarked to Chief Baxter when I was seated once again in his office, opposite his newly replaced desk. "I hardly acted like myself out at that airfield. I was brusque, highhanded, austere, almost malevolent with the pilot. And I'm ordinarily on the shy side, as a matter of fact."

"It's the Amnesty that does it," he said, gesturing toward the