Chapter III

For three interminable days I sat around the old oxy-plant, eating and sleeping and thinking, and the monotony of it got deadlier and deadlier. I couldn't even switch on my communications equipment for the news since Captain Giles and his lads might be making spot patrols, and the localized radiation of my receiving unit would be enough to pinpoint me.

I had a fair idea of what went on with Shanig, though. No homo can operate after his fashion without making enemies, and the bigger his business the more powerful his enemies. Vigilance becomes the price of existence, financially speaking, and it was on that point that I figured Shanig had over-reached himself.

All that was pure guesswork, of course, until the afternoon of the third day. Then I had unexpected confirmation of it, brought by the last person on Mars I dreamed of seeing.

I was in the _Annabelle's_ cabin with Cora when the helicar settled in front of my makeshift hangar. I came out on the double with my Quantrell ready, and saw Cheryl Trayne standing in the warehouse entrance. The sun, hanging low on the desert's rim, outlined her tantalizingly against a blaze of light and made her hair a shimmering halo of burnished copper.

It was so wonderful to see her, but at the same time I was a little disappointed. It had been a pleasant possibility that she might change her mind about that Phobos trip, but to have her track me down like this.

"How did you find me?" I demanded. "And who's with you?"

She gave me a child's trusting smile, a reversal of her old haughty brush-off that gave me the devil of a jolt until I remembered Cora in the _Annabelle's_ cabin. Cheryl was as deep under Cora's spell now as she must have been under Joey's before--

"Never mind that," I said. "How did you get away from Shanig's smiley? Is Shanig out of his trance, too?"

She looked puzzled, as if she were trying to remember something tremendously important.

"I came alone," she said. "I traced you through Joey, after Mr. Shanig sent Perry away with him. I remembered then how Joey always faced toward the east when he was quiet. He used to crouch for hours in his cage when no one was near him and stare in this direction. After he was gone it came to me that he sensed another smiley somewhere was calling to it. And if there was another smiley on Mars...."

"Then I had brought it and I'd be with it," I finished for her. "Neat enough. I only hope no one else thought of it."

She gave me that trusting smile again, and my conscience dealt me a sharp nudge. I went over and gave her a khiff root.

"Chew it," I said. "Never mind the taste. It'll make you as good as new."

She took it obediently, and a couple of minutes later something like horror chased the contentment out of her face. She stared at me, her green eyes turning angry.

"You must have enjoyed seeing me like that," she said acidly. "It never occurred to me that I'd fall under the other smiley's influence if I found you or I'd never have--"

"You'd never have dared come at all," I said. "You'd have been afraid I'd bring up that Phobos jaunt again, and you couldn't have said no with Cora around."

She bit her lip in the way she had, and I could see her admitting reluctantly that she might just possibly have misjudged me.

"All right, you found me," I said. "Now give. What happened? How did Shanig get rid of Joey and why did you hunt me down if you're still nursing a phobia against Phobos?"

* * * * *

"Shanig's underofficials at Solar Shipping rescued him," she said. "They couldn't reach him at first because everyone they sent fell under the smiley's influence. But they had to do something. Shanig was like an irresponsible child, giving away company holdings as well as his own. They were so frantic that--"

"I tried to warn him," I pointed out. "He turned cherub the instant Perry arrived with Joey, didn't he? Word of it got around in nothing flat and his competitors, his enemies, starting phonovising him right and left. They must have stood in line at the telewrite stations to take his holdings and Solar's. A couple of days of that must have practically ruined him and Solar Shipping as well. How did they snap him out of it?"

"They phonovised him to step out on his window balcony. When he came out to the rail they knocked him off with a freeze gun and caught him with a net in the street below. He almost went mad when he realized what he had done."

I grinned for two reasons. I had been right and Shanig had lost his shirt. It served him right.

"So Shanig is starting from scratch again. What line is he taking?"

For the first time she looked scared.

"A line you didn't anticipate. Solar's stockholders have ordered him to recover what he gave away, and he's taking no chances on losing what personal holdings he has left. He tried to eliminate Perry and me the minute he snapped back to normal, and he'll have you erased as soon as you're taken."

I stared at her. "That's going pretty far, even for Shanig. Why should he beam us out?"

She gave me an exasperated look. "Because he's afraid you might force Perry and me to swear that he tricked you on your contract release. It didn't matter before when he was powerful enough to smother the charge, but he's been so hard hit that he can't risk a reversal of that contract now. Don't you see? If you brought suit for reparations and won it would ruin him. The only way Shanig can make himself safe is to eliminate you as claimant or to get rid of Perry and me as witnesses."

It was a deadly sort of logic. I had expected Shanig to yell foul but I hadn't looked for a planet-wide homo hunt with myself as the quarry.

"It's up to us, then," I said. "We'll have to settle Shanig first or he'll get us as sure as sin."

She didn't look so frightened now as embarrassed.

"That's why I came to you. We can keep out of Shanig's way, perhaps, but poor Perry is trapped. Someone will have to get him out of that horrible place before Shanig reaches him."

I gaped a little over that one. "What horrible place? Where is Perry?"

"At the Argonaut Club," she said. "As soon as Shanig was himself again he photovised Perry and ordered him to take the smiley there, partly to get Joey away and partly to cut down breakage expense at the Argonaut. Perry's been there all day, associating with Eetee outlanders and drinking skohl like any common spacehand. He'll drink himself to death before Shanig finds a way to get to him, if we don't hurry."

I laughed until my face hurt. I couldn't help it. The idea of Perry Acree drinking himself blind in the Argonaut's rowdy company was too much. Thinking about the prayer-meeting hush that Joey must be laying over the toughest shot-slot in the System made it all the funnier until the real reason for Cheryl's hunting me down percolated through my skull and sobered me up.

Her motive was enlightening, but not flattering.

* * * * *

"So that's why you risked your luscious hide to find me," I said. "To talk me into dragging that idiot dwarf out of the Argonaut. Am I right?"

She looked hopping mad and pleading at the same time, which is quite a trick even for a redhead.

"You can do it if anyone can. I checked on your background this morning, and it seems that--well, that you may not be the windbag I thought you after all. One asteroid prospector told me that you--"

"Never believe a chunk-hopper," I told her. "They lie for fun or on principle, depending on the circumstances. But I'm not interested in Perry Acree. If he hadn't tipped Shanig to my smiley none of this would have happened. The _Annabelle_ would be clear of debt and I'd be in the Argonaut instead of Perry. Why should I risk my neck for that simpering sycophant?"

She had trouble telling me why. Having to ask my help burned her plenty, and its being Perry's fault made it worse. She turned pink and talked in circles, not meeting my eye, and when I finally guessed how she had meant to persuade me you could have clubbed me down with a sand thistle.

"You really _are_ sold on that puling parasite," I said. "Look, are you sure he's worth a weekend on Phobos?"

"Beast!" she cried, and slapped my face.

"Good enough," I said when my ears stopped ringing. "Faint heart never haggled with fair hell-cat. Let's go rescue your skohl-swilling light of love."

I moved Cora's little tungsten cage into the helicar and Cheryl took us up. We didn't have to wait for darkness. The split-second Martian twilight took care of that in the wink of an eye.

The two-hour flight was almost pleasant. The stars over our speeding helicar glittered down like far, frosty eyes and the gritty red ocean of desert under us lost its harshness and took on a magic pattern of soft, shifting shadows. Phobos paced us across the black night sky like a swift silver morning-star, and the little gray jackals crept out of their dens and howled at her with all the pent-up loneliness of a million, million years.

Cheryl shivered at their keening, and the thought that she could be as skittish as other women gave me a little jolt of surprise.

"Mournful little beggars, aren't they?" I said. "I wonder what they'd think of Earth, with its big yellow moon all night in the sky?"

Cheryl didn't answer, but it seemed to me that she thawed out a little. It was almost cozy in the helicar after that until the dusty neon haze of Areopolis ballooned up out of the desert.