Chapter IV: Part 4

"It sounds like water!" I said. "Like more water than I thought there was on this whole spaceborne Death Valley!"

"Jery!" Snow's fingers dug into my palm. "If this is the way to the Ancients, then this must be what Clatclit meant when he told you he could only take you so far and no further!"

"Sure it is!" I exclaimed excitedly. "A child could have figured it out. What else but water could impede these rock-hard things!"

Clatclit was slowing his pace and moving more carefully. Then, not ten feet in front of him, the fiery glow of his tail tip was reflected from a million foaming, shifting wet surfaces. He took another few courageous steps, then halted, pressed back against the curve of the tunnel wall.

He'd averted his gaze from the raging torrent beyond him, but his outstretched hand still pointed in that direction. I felt a cold wet spray on my face, and saw, with a little shock, that some of the glittering facets of Clatclit's scaly hide were already becoming pocked and eroded.

"We'll have to go fast," I said, releasing Snow's hand only to clutch her arm tightly against my side. "If we take too long, our luciferous friend here will be a sticky red puddle. And I don't intend crossing that in the dark!"

"_That_" was a jagged ridge of rock that continued forward from where our segment of tunnel ended, scant feet beyond Clatclit's cowering form. It was glistening with pools of black water and wet froth, flung up there by the raging river that passed less than a foot beneath its slightly arched surface. The torrent rushed angrily from somewhere in the hollow blackness to our right, leaped and sprayed past the natural bridge of rock, barely two feet wide, that lay before our feet, and then--

My stomach grew sick at the sight just to the left of the bridge.

The vaulted tunnel which contained this black Martian river dipped and dropped. The river, just beyond our frail bridge, was a black cataract falling into the heart of the planet.

"Jery," Snow said, shivering. "Hold me. Hold me tight, or I'll never get across that!"

"It's all right," I said, with a calm tone that surprised the hell out of me. "Here." I got directly behind her and ran my hands along the undersides of her forearms, gripping them tightly midway to her wrists. "Now, just walk as I direct you, Snow. Close your eyes if you want. I won't guide you wrong."

"I trust you, Jery," she said softly.

"Okay then, honey." I kept my voice gentle, soothing. "Left foot forward. No, a bit more. There! Okay, now the right foot." She swayed a little in my grasp, on the first slippery section of that dangerous arch of rock. "Easy! That's it, honey, you're doing fine. Now your left. Ah! Okay. And then the right. Swell."

Step by nightmare step, we crossed the arch, Snow moving her feet blindly forward in exploratory shuffles, and I, forgetting my own danger in my concern for her, moving steadily with her, eyeing each spot on that rock ahead of her feet for safety. The light grew dimmer by the minute as we crept further and further from Clatclit.

I wondered how long I could have stood in a spray of liquid caustic or acid, holding a light for some friends.

Then the last step was made, and without my knowing how it happened, Snow was tightly in my arms, facing me now, her silky hair against my cheek, her arms locked about my waist.

"Easy, baby, easy." I mumbled into her ear. "We've arrived, we're okay. Just relax."

She turned her face up to mine, and I forgot to speak. Suddenly my mouth was down on hers, hard, my arms crushing her against me. We clung like that for a dizzy moment, then broke apart.

"Snow," I gripped her wrists and held her there, staring at me. "Snow, darling, if we ever get out of this alive--"

"I know," she breathed. "I know, Jery. I love you!"

I kissed her again, gently, this time. Then we started off down the tunnel, away from Clatclit's light. I hoped he wasn't melted beyond repair. I knew, though, after that shattering exchange of affection with Snow, that I sure was!

Behind us the light vanished. I looked back, but could discern neither Clatclit, nor the rock bridge, nor the torrent.

"I guess we feel our way from here on in," I remarked.

"No," said Snow, halting close beside me. "There, up ahead, Jery! A light."

Together we moved down the tunnel. The light grew in intensity. Then we'd reached the lighted area. We were face to face with a peculiar red-bronze stone wall. No other tunnels led off from where we stood. There was no direction we could go from there except back toward that perilous underground cataract.

"Could we have come the wrong way?" Snow asked. "Maybe we missed a turnoff back there in the tunnel where it was darker."

"No," I said. "I had my hands feeling the walls all the way from the bridge onward, until we could see our way. This must be the right place."

Then on a sudden instinctive hunch I turned to Snow. "Got a lipstick in that handbag of yours?"

She looked at me blankly, but nodded, and produced the slim metal tube for my inspection.

I took it from her fingers, slipped off the cap, and twirled up a half-inch of the glossy red wax. "Now let's see if I'm right about this wall," I said, and made a streaking motion across the rough surface with the lipstick.

The end of the wax cylinder came away a bit disturbed by its apparent contact with the surface before us, but the wall held no trace, no mark, not even a smudge. I saw the little curls of sheared-off wax falling down the face of the wall to the floor of the tunnel.

I handed the lipstick back to a bewildered Snow.

"Just as I thought," I said. "That, honey, is the rock known as parabolite. The toughest, most impervious substance in the solar system. Nothing marks it, scratches it, or even budges it. We couldn't get past here with an intercontinental size collapser!"

"But Jery, look!" Snow cried, pointing at the wall. I looked. The flat wall of parabolite, the impervious mineral, was going slowly concave in the center. I took hold of Snow by the shoulders, and pulled her back from that rapidly deepening hemisphere, expecting--I don't know _what_ I was expecting. But I was scared speechless.

The thing bulged back away from us until its diameter was equal to that of the tunnel itself, and then, before my hypnotized gaze, the deepest section of the ruddy mineral gaped, like a hole suddenly pricked in the side of a bubble. The remainder of the parabolite wrenched violently away from the opening, leaving us a clear gateway into--

Into a vast chamber of eye-disturbing metal, that shifted and shimmered in some mind-chilling fashion that made me want to turn and run with Snow back down that black tunnel behind us.

"Come in, Jery Delvin," said the voice of an _ancient Martian_.

15

Snow and I stepped into the great gleaming chamber. I was very much disconcerted when the wall behind us contracted suddenly back into place. Wherever we were, we were there until the Ancients decided to let us out.

"Who is the person with you?" said a voice. It had a frowning note to it, but I could not discern the source of the words anywhere in that silver-white blur of metal universe that spread away from us in all directions.

"She--" I said as boldly as possible, feeling like an escapee from Fenimore Cooper "--she is my woman!"

Silence. Then, "She will be allowed."

"Allowed to what?" I demanded.

"Allowed to be," said the voice, without emotion.

Snow's fingers nearly went through my hand.

"Well, thanks," I said, figuring politeness wouldn't hurt. I held tight to Snow, supplementing our hand grip with an arm-in-arm lock. We took another step forward. "Where are you?" I asked.

"You must come forward," said the voice.

I took another step, then another, then came to a startled halt.

As if materializing out of the air, the Martian was before me. I stared at him, stupified.

"What's the matter, Jery? What is it?" Snow said. Then she looked where I was looking, giving a little scream.

"It's all right, honey," I said, with hollow courage. "He's a little impressionistic, but--"

"He?" she cried, clinging to me. "That--that thing?"

I looked at her, mystified, then back at the sort-of man I was standing before. He made my head spin a bit, what with apparently seeing him from front view and both profiles simultaneously, but he was mannish looking.

"This guy, the Martian, honey," I said. "Maybe you didn't take enough steps forward."

"She cannot see me as you see me, Jery Delvin," said the Martian. "Her eyes only convey to her a fantastic whirl of hideous light and dark shapes. She, along with most others of your race, cannot apprehend my form as you can. This is why you were chosen, Jery Delvin."

"That's crazy," I protested. "You're there, aren't you? You reflect light into the eyes, right? Why can't she see you?"

"The human eye is not the animal eye," said the Martian. "An animal eye sees only meaningless shapes; animals use all their senses to identify objects. But the human eye sees concepts, Jery Delvin. Where an animal merely discerns eyes, feeding apparatus and breathing vents, the human eye sees a face. Actually, there is no such thing as a face."

It was true enough, in a way, that the human eye tended to group otherwise unrelated objects into concepts of non-actual reality.

"So how come I can see you, and she can't?" I reiterated.

"You are gifted to see true," said the Martian. "Your mind apprehends concepts where it has previously expected to find none. You relate what you see, and correctly. As in the case of your deriving so much information from your conversation with Clatclit. Another man would not have succeeded in that."

I shook my head, confused. "But I--I see you!"

"No, Jery Delvin. Your mind sees me. Your eyes alone could not possibly view me since I am never entirely here to be viewed. Your eyes see one part of me, then another, then another and another. But your mind rejects the idea that I am four separate entities, and sees me as I am, a unit."

"You're here, you say, but you're not here, too?" I choked, feeling positively giddy.

"I am not a three-dimensional creature," said the Martian. "We whom you call the Ancients are existing in four dimensions."

"I thought Einsteinian physics says that _time_ is the fourth dimension," I said slowly.

"It is not _time_," said the Martian. "It is _place_ that is the fourth dimension. What is _here_, Jery Delvin? Or _there_? Remember, there is no _here_ or _there_ except in relationship to something else. If only one small globe of rock comprised existing matter, Jery Delvin, where would it be?"

"It--That's silly. _One_ thing can't be anywhere!" I said. "It'd just be floating in a void." Trying to picture such a void made my brain whirl. I gave it up.

"I'm glad you understand," said the Martian. "Very well, then. We, your Ancients, are existing in a perfect _here-ness_, of which you can have no concept at all. We are living in not _a_ location, but in _location_ itself."

"It's no use," I said. "I can't even picture it."

"You're not supposed to," said the Martian, with a mechanical smile of contempt. "Even your mind, Jery Delvin, cannot fathom the magnitude of our being."

"Hold on a minute!" I said, changing the subject. "Clatclit told me that you expected to compel my cooperation by keeping the Space Scouts your prisoners unless I obeyed you."

"That is correct, Jery Delvin. And so, our desire is that you--"

"Damn it!" I exploded. "Stop taking so much for granted! Before I even scratch where it itches to please you guys, I want to see those kids! And in damned good shape, too!"

Snow held onto my arm and trembled. This was it. Now we'd know for sure if the boys were all right.

The Martian looked exasperated, but then he reached an arm out from himself--I couldn't tell exactly, without getting a blinding headache, just which way his arm went, left, right, up or down. But he reached away from himself in some direction or other, and the next moment, the shimmering blur of metallic flooring between him and us gave way to a red-bronze platform of parabolite which rose like a sluggish elevator on close-intervalled narrow rods of the same mineral. Then, as the apparatus halted, I realized that these rods were more than just supports for that slab of rock. They were bars.

And huddled together in this escape-free cage, I saw the fifteen missing Space Scouts.

"Snow!"

One of the boys, his hair as raven as Snow's was blonde, tore away from the group and rushed over to the bars, jamming his arms between them to reach out for her.

"Ted!" Snow cried, and rushed over to him. It was kind of awkward, embracing with the bars in the way, but they did it anyhow.

"Ted, dear Ted! Are you all right?"

"Yeah," he said, with a note of uncertainty. "Yeah, I guess we are. Only, I was almost giving up on you."

"Have you," the Martian's icy voice cut into the reunion, "seen quite enough?"

"Hold your horses!" I hollered at him through the cage. "She hasn't checked him for broken bones, yet!"

The Martian, whether out of patience or alien incomprehension of my sarcasm, left the cage where it was, and stood waiting.

"I knew you'd get my message, Snow!" said Ted eagerly, quite forgetting his doubts of a few seconds before. "I just knew it. When do we get out of here, hey? We want to go home!"

Apparently adventure lost its tang when the cage had first been lowered into the--the whatever it was that served us as a floor. The other boys had come up to the bars, now, all of them looking at Snow with longing, as the next best thing to a human-type mother.

"Oh, you poor kids," Snow sobbed suddenly. "Have they been feeding you? When did you last wash your face, Ted?"

"They don't feed us at all!" Ted said sorrowfully. "It's been weeks now since we ran out of candy, and--"

"Jery Delvin!" the Martian's voice interrupted imperiously. "Before that look on your woman's face erupts into some more of her tiresome vituperation, will you explain to her what a metabolic stasis is?"

"Sure," I said, folding my arms. "As soon as you explain it to me!"

The Martian seemed to be gathering himself for a cry of utter exasperation. Then he caught hold of himself and said with rigid calm, "We merely have held the children within a field of radiation that obviates the necessity of their taking alimental nourishment."

Snow looked over her shoulder at me, wonderingly.

"He means, honey, that they fixed it somehow so the kids didn't need to eat. I guess it was simpler than running a catering service."

"Didn't need to eat!" she exploded. "Doesn't that blob of black sparklers know that growing boys need food to grow!"

"There's no need to be redundant!" said the Martian.

"To what?" she cried, standing back from the cage to glare at him the better, with arms akimbo. The Martian took this golden opportunity to let the cage drop suddenly back out of our ken. The shimmering blur of metallic luster was once more at our feet.

"Oh!" she cried, stepping forward and staring down. "Ted! Teddy!"

"Jery, Jery, Jery," Snow murmured tearfully, turning about and burrowing her nose into my chest, while I held her helplessly. "He looked s-so hungry!"

I decided to let her sob. Neither I nor the Martian, no matter what our brain power, could drive this fixed notion out of her pretty little head.

"Now that you have seen them," said the Martian, "perhaps we can get to the business at hand?"

I seemed to be out of dilatory alibis.

"Okay," I said. "What do you want from me?"

"We want you to destroy Philip Baxter," said the Martian.

16

"Destroy Baxter?" I echoed stupidly. "I was dragged all the way from Earth to do that?"

"Since we are here, and you were there," said the Martian, condescendingly, "what other choice did we have?"

"You could have sent a letter," I muttered.

"Hardly," the Martian said, unperturbed. "Since physical contact between our two dimensions is impossible."

"It is?" I said, surprised.

"Of course!" the Martian snapped. "If it were not, we'd have destroyed Baxter ourselves."

"Why didn't you use the sugarfeet?" I asked, bewildered. "Clatclit seems to have shown no ineptness in disintegrating other Earthmen."

"For the simple reason," said the Martian, with cold anger, "that on your wretchedly humid planet, a sugarfoot would be corroded to death before it could locate him. If, of course, it had already overcome the other obvious difficulties such as getting there, since Earth does not permit immigration of alien species."

Like a hot spark flaring where only ice had been before, a tiny light of hope began to burn in my heart. The Martians, for all their four-dimensional superiority, didn't know that Baxter was on Mars! Hell, why should they? I knew Baxter personally, and I didn't know he was on Mars until he was good and ready to let me know it.

"Jery--" said Snow, about to spill the beans.

"Ixnay, lover!" I growled. "Unless you want these guys tossing in the hand, and switching to Plan C! Remember?"

I hoped she'd recall what had happened to those would-be rebels once the Ancients no longer had a use for them. I could tell, a second later, by her involuntary gasp, that she did.

"What was the import of that exchange?" the Martian asked, fairly smoldering with suspicion. "Your idioms were elusive."

"My woman was about to beg me not to do your will," I lied carefully. "I merely pointed out to her that if I refused, you would simply obliterate us and utilize some other scheme."

"Intelligent thinking, Jery Delvin," said the Martian. For a horrible moment, I thought he meant he'd caught onto my misinterpretation of my words. Then I knew all was well, relatively, as he went on. "As to the method of destruction, we leave it to you to choose. However, haste is of paramount importance to us."

"Excuse me," I interrupted, "but would you answer me one probably idiotic question?"

"If it is within my range of information," said the Martian.

"Well, just why are you so set on getting rid of Baxter? Mind you, I have no overwhelming affection for him myself. But I can't figure your angle."

"The motivation is the usual, basic one. Even you humans follow it: Survival."

"Survival?" I repeated, blinking.

"Philip Baxter possesses the knowledge of the method of our destruction," said the Martian. "That in itself is a bad thing, but he has two more things besides this knowledge that make his removal imperative. He also possesses the means and the intention of using this means."

"What?" said Snow, losing the pedantic thread.

"He means, honey, that Baxter's not only got the knowhow to bump off this bunch, but the wherewithal and the urge."

"You Earthmen have a rather colorful succinctness of speech," the Martian observed.

Snow looked at me for help. "We what?"

I grinned at her despite our situation. "We talk purty," I interpreted. Then turning back to the Martian: "But if there cannot be physical contact between the races, why worry about Baxter? It seems to me that the worst he could do is snub you!"

"I'd better give you a bit more detail."

"Wait a minute." I held up a hand in protest. "If you tell me what Baxter knows then won't I be--"

"A threat to us? No. I do not intend to tell you the specific manner in which we can be destroyed, simply the nature of the destruction."

"All right. What?"

"You're aware, of course, of the geocentric theory of the universe?"

"Mmmm, I've heard of it. Isn't that the theory, once held by people on earth, that the Earth was the center of all creation, and the sun revolved around it, not vice-versa?"

"That is the one. Now, though your race believed it to be a false theory--"

"It is false!" I protested.

"For Earth, yes. But not, you see, for Mars. This place where you now stand, this brief liaison-point between our dimension and yours, is the center of your physical universe."

"You're crazy," I said. "Why, the sun alone is too massive to swing about this planet, let alone everything else! It'd be like a small boy trying to twirl a ten-ton boulder on the end of a rope; even if he managed, somehow, to get it started in motion, within ten seconds it'd be swinging him!"

"And if this small boy had another ten-ton boulder on the other side of him?"

"Well--uh ..."

"And another one above, and below, and in all directions from him? What then?"

I thought it over. "He'd be a mighty tired boy."

"That is not funny."

"It needs work," I admitted.

"Jery Delvin," said the Martian with open irritation, "time is fleeting, and I cannot afford to dally while you play semantic pingpong with my words! Kindly allow me to complete my statement of this situation, or I shall decide by your flippancy that you no longer desire the companionship of your woman!"

That one, I detected by the sudden stiffening of Snow's hand in mine, I didn't need to translate. I shut up.

"This, then," the Martian went on more calmly, "is despite what your scientists say, the center of your universe. If they will but compute the masses, orbits and velocities of all other matter in the universe, they will see that. Or are they yet aware of the universe in its entirety?"

"Not--not quite," I said carefully, not wanting to chance losing Snow. "Our astronomical instruments have a limited sensitivity to light. We see pretty damned far, but there's always something more beyond."

"Very well, then, you'll have to take my word for it. However, if you have properly understood the fact that our dimension exists at the place of Location itself, you will see at once that our only possible point of contact with your universe is at the central, non-moving point."

"I think I see," I said. "If you tried making contact anywhere else, it'd go speeding off from you, so to speak."

"Good. You understand perfectly. What Baxter proposes to do is to break our liaison, thus confining us to our own dimension forever.

"He proposes to do this by detonating a segment of our physical universe, one which coexists with yours. This will produce only the slightest of jolts in our world, but the balance between the two universes is so delicate that even this minor tremor will move us--by moving our contact-material--out of alignment. And we, since we exist in Location, cannot then move ourselves back."

"Would ... uh, would that be so terrible?" I asked nervously. "What do you gain by the contact anyhow?"

"The contact," said the Martian. "It is something we have always had. We don't need it, but we like less the idea of having it arbitrarily taken from us."

"Oh," I said. "I don't suppose you happen to know Baxter's angle in all this? I mean the reason for his urge to destroy you."

"Power," the Martian said simply. "You have heard of the Amnesty, of course?"

"Have I!" I muttered.

"Well, then. You know that the wearer cannot be countermanded by any but the combined veto of the World President and Philip Baxter himself."

"Yes," I said, puzzled.

"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.

17

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, seeming satisfied, he put his hands on the biggest slab of granite and pushed.

Nothing happened for a moment. Then the slab began to pivot about some central axis, and a one-foot gap was exposed on either side of its bulk. Beyond the open spaces, bright fluorescent tubing lighted a grim prison corridor.

"Isn't there an easier way to the spaceport?" I said.

A prison meant guards, and guards meant collapsers, and collapsers meant, possibly, good-by Jery Delvin.

But Clatclit shrugged, pointed into the tunnel, and made zig-zag motions with both hands, all the while shaking his head in weary disgust.

"There is, but it'd take forever to get there, huh?" I interpreted. He nodded. Oh well.

Clatclit leading the way, we sidled through the right-hand gap, then he pressed the mammoth stone back into place.

"You're coming with me all the way?" I asked, surprised. Somehow, I'd thought his guideship ended at the same place the tunnel did.

Clatclit nodded vigorously.

"Is it that the Ancients don't trust me?"

Headshake.

"You have nothing better to do?"

Negative.

"Okay, I'll bite. Why?"

Clatclit stepped toward me, placed a hand on my shoulder, then placed his free hand over my heart, moved it over his own, held up two fingers and crossed them.

"Because we're friends," I said softly.

Clatclit nodded.

It took us an hour to locate Baxter. Clatclit showed no signs of surprise when I did not go to the ticket office and book a passage for Earth. Apparently, not being in on the finer points of the Ancients' scheme, he found no wild incongruity in my being brought all the way from Earth to obliterate a man who could just as easily have been dispatched by a sugarfoot. Or else, through some extrasensory awareness, something born of our friendship, he knew that imparting the location of Baxter to the Ancients might well mean my death.

Whatever his reasons, Clatclit simply followed me in my progress through the prison dungeon which, thanks to its completely escape-proof stone-corked cells, was left without guards. We went up into the more well-appointed section of the building, the warmly plastic-decorated halls that were open to the public who passed through the Security inspection when entering or leaving the planet. It was good business to hide the grimmer realities from colonists or casual tourists.

And those who learned about the dungeons were never in a position to pass the word around. Your first view of a Security dungeon was usually your last view of anything.

The public part of the building had too many people in it to suit me. Even if I could get by the flight officials and robo-scanners unchallenged, Clatclit couldn't. The building was rigidly off-limits to extraterrestrials.

So we went up the outside.

Built against, and a good ways into, the high hills that surrounded the town, the building was easy prey for anyone who cared to clamber up the rocky slopes from which it jutted and climb through a window. These slopes were lighted, but not patrolled. After all, under ordinary circumstances, no one in his right mind would try sneaking into an IS stronghold!

Baxter, as it turned out, was seated at a desk not unlike his own back on Earth, in the very office where I'd been last interrogated by the team of Charlie and Foster. He was staring into space, and smoking a cigar, the solitary incandescent lamp on his desk making his ice-white mane of hair a sort of angelic aurora about that pleasantly rubicund face. It was like seeing Satan sporting a good-conduct medal.

Clatclit and I were crouched outside the window, on a narrow ledge we'd reached from the slope. To my intense interest, lying before Baxter, in the glaring circle of lamplight, was the black shirt I'd been wearing when I was rescued by Clatclit, the shirt which had been towed off by that hay-bale to obviate Baxter's being able to track the route of my flight.

I was about to whisper a question about the shirt to Clatclit, when Baxter turned partway about in his chair, and started to stub out the cigar in a black onyx ashtray. The question stuck in my throat, as I caught sight of Baxter's breast.

On a silver chain about his throat, he wore the Amnesty!

18

Something was very definitely wrong.

Until that moment when Baxter turned, I'd been certain that the Amnesty was in Snow's possession. And now here it was, gleaming in bright red and bronze against the front of his crisp black linen blouse.

The sight of it twanged a chord in my mind, and I crouched there on that narrow ledge, trying to grasp the fleeting thread of thought. The Amnesty was exactly the same color as that parabolite wall down in the tunnels, the barrier to the lair of the Ancients. Was it a coincidence that this token of power was designed to match in shade and intensity of color that unearthly mineral of another dimension?

A queer notion began to take root in my mind. Baxter had given me the Amnesty before I set off to find the missing boys. Or had he? Was that the Amnesty I'd carried, or a copy, a perfect duplicate constructed not of metal, but the impervious mineral.

My brain was spinning as little unimportant facts suddenly burgeoned and grew, and took on terrible significance. According to our science, parabolite was invulnerable to all tools, and could not be worked or shaped. Yet the Martian had said to me that Baxter possessed the means to disengage the fragile bond that linked the two dimensions by--The truth came home to me with an icy shock.

By detonating a portion of their contact-material! And the Amnesty, my Amnesty, was that material. I looked past Baxter to the black blouse, its lining sparkling beneath the incandescent lamplight with thousands of tiny metal filaments, and then I knew at last Baxter's monstrous plan.

Cold fury welled up inside me. I could easily, at that moment, have leveled my collapser at him and flashed him out of existence with no more feeling than that engendered by crushing a gnat between finger and thumb. My hand was sliding back toward that cold metal handle jutting from my holster, when there came an interruption.

The door before Baxter's desk opened, and Charlie and Foster came in. Clatclit and I ducked back from the pane, and listened, holding our breaths.

"About time!" Baxter growled. "Since you two are alone, I assume this was another wild goose chase!"

His fist slammed down atop the crumpled shirt, and I caught his meaning. Apparently, when they'd discovered my cell empty, they'd tracked my trail by whatever electronic device followed up the location of that rigged garment, and had been led miles astray in the Martian desert, finding only the empty blouse at the end of their quest.

"Yes and no, sir," Charlie said. "It's--it's the weirdest thing."

"Well? What?" Baxter snapped angrily.

Charlie, while replying, was unhitching a sort of tanklike apparatus from his back, from which a flexible tube ran into the end of the pistol at his belt. With the surprise of sudden memory, I recognized one of the weapons of the earlier settlers at Marsport: a sugarfoot-repelling water pistol, with three-gallon ammunition tanks.

"We got out the pack, sir, when we returned."

"Yes, yes," Baxter interrupted violently. "You took the dogs and trailed Delvin by scent from his cell. Fine. But did you find him!"

"We had trouble, sir. It was outside the crater, and the dogs needed air-booster muzzles, which cut down their sense of smell. And the trail was spread way out, too, as if Delvin had only touched the ground every thirty feet or so!"

I remembered Clatclit's bounding transportation from the cell, and had to smile. The dogs must have been starting and stopping every five minutes over that sporadic trail.

Baxter, at the end of his patience, flattened both hands on the desktop, and grated, spacing his words for emphasis, "Did you find him?"

Charlie exchanged a look with Foster, then hung his head. "No, sir, we didn't."

"Lost the trail, I suppose," Baxter growled.

"No, we kept at it, all right," Charlie said. "It took us underground, into the lava tunnels and grottos. We even found a cot where he'd been sleeping."

I stared at Clatclit. They'd done better than I thought possible. Clatclit tilted his head to one side and shrugged. It meant the same thing in both our languages.

"Of course, you idiot!" Baxter said, with disgust. "It's obvious he had help from the sugarfeet. I'd have guessed that the moment I saw the intervals of his trail! What else but a man carried by a sugarfoot could travel in bounds like that?"

"Gravity here's only half that of Earth," Charlie protested weakly.

"Even so," Baxter muttered, "only an Olympic champ could make leaps like that! You've seen Delvin. Did you really think that gawky frame of his had such galvanic energy?"

I could resent his slurs later. Right now, I wanted to find out just how damned far those guys had tracked me.

"But we finally came to a bridge, over an underground river, sir. At the end of the tunnel beyond it, the trail came to a dead end, in front of a whole damned wall of parabolite. And something about that wall scared hell out of the dogs, too! They were whining, high up the scale, like they do when there's something wrong, and growling at that wall, sir."

Halfway through Charlie's discourse, I had jerked my head around to stare a baffled question at Clatclit. Where, I was about to ask him, were you when the posse scuttled by?

But he'd already anticipated the question, and I watched as he pointed to himself, then made a serpentine forward-stab with his hand, then an up-down-and-around motion with his palms over his torso.

"You scooted up the tunnel for a brisk toweling?" I said.

A firm nod.

I couldn't blame him. After all, Snow and I were gone for a spell. No reason for him to stand there and melt with the water already beading his candy-coated hide. So that meant that Charlie and Foster were outside the wall while Snow and I were in council with the Martian. I found I was glad Clatclit hadn't been there to spot them. Because if he had been, and they had those water guns, I'd have found nothing but a sticky puddle where I'd left a friend. If, indeed, I'd been able to get back that far.

Baxter's voice interrupted my thoughts. "And so," he said, mockingly bitter, "you return once again, empty-handed!"

"Not quite, sir," said Foster, stepping forward and setting a trim plastic rectangle on end atop the desk. "We found this just outside that wall."

It was Snow's handbag. Probably she'd dropped it in her initial fright when that wall had gaped open before us. I hadn't noticed it then, because I'd been pretty shaken, too. And when I made my ungracious exit from the Martian's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't den, the handbag was already gone, on its way up to Baxter via Foster.

Apparently Clatclit had known a shorter route to the IS building than the IS men did.

Baxter had the bag in his hands, now, staring at it with the first faint flush of elation coming into his face. "But this must be that girl's bag! The one who stole that other Amnesty!"

It hit me like a blow in the stomach. Of course! Baxter had had no idea that I was with Snow. Not until now. And he knew Snow had that Amnesty, the one he planned to use to blow the Martians out of our dimension. And now he knew where she was: deep in the rock of the planet, with a virtual bomb on a chain about her neck!

He didn't need his gimmicked blouse any longer, the one he was going to use to track me until I was in the chamber of the Ancients. That had been his plan, of course. The Amnesty was a remote-controlled bomb, which I, as his dupe, was to have worn during my search for the boys. Baxter, knowing that I'd find them, and the Ancients with them, had suggested that I wear that blouse so that he could trail me into their lair. Then the flick of a switch, and Jery Delvin would be blasted to shreds, while the Martians found themselves stranded forever in immovable Location.

And yet I was still puzzled. How could he have known that I'd find them? I decided not to vaporize him just yet. I had a few points to clear up, or go out of my mind wondering about for the rest of my days.

I unholstered the collapser, slid the window open with one hand, and swung my legs over the sill.

"Good evening, gentlemen," I said.

They didn't seem very glad to see me.

Charlie and Foster stood stiffly before the desk, watching me warily as I completed my clamber into the room. Their eyes widened a fraction as Clatclit sprang lightly in after me, but that was all. Baxter, however, had lifted one eyebrow, and was appraising me carefully, as if trying to gauge the intensity of my emotions. No one said a word for a minute, while Clatclit shut the window and came to stand a bit behind me, to my right, leaving the show to me.

Baxter found his voice first. When he spoke, it was in the casual friendly tone he'd used at our first meeting, his inflection giving no sign that I had him covered by the most deadly weapon in the solar system.

"Since I am still alive," he said dryly, "I can only assume that you want to see me about something before I die, else you would have blasted me through that window."

"That's very accurate," I said grimly. "If you'll tell your men to be seated, and to keep their hands where I can watch them, I'll lower this barrel a bit. I wouldn't want an accidental finger twitch to terminate our conversation."

Charlie and Foster, white-faced, looked at Baxter. He gave a curt nod, and they sat down. I stayed back from the desk, keeping my back against the wall beside Clatclit. I didn't want anyone else coming in and sneaking up behind me. Baxter swung slightly about in his chair to face me, then laced his fingers on his knees.

"Now that we're settled," he said, "what can I do for you, Mister Delvin?"

"Baxter," I said, "I just came from seeing one of the Ancients. He and I had a long talk."

Baxter never flickered an eyelash. He just nodded and waited politely for me to continue.

"It seems you are a menace to them. They stand in the way of your ambition, and must be destroyed. However, the Ancients, even with their extra dimension, don't seem to have any increase in brain power. Their evaluation of your intentions is without doubt the correct one, but as to their interpretation of your motives, they're full of hot air."

A slight smile of grudging approval appeared on his round face. "Very good, Mister Delvin. Well thought out. Tell me, just what do they think I'm after?"

"According to them, you want to be the visible kingpin of the tri-planet civilizations, instead of just running things from behind the scenes. For a while, I thought it made sense, too. But then it occurred to me that this puppet-control of our worlds is just the sort of position that would appeal to you, Baxter. You'd enjoy being the secret master of Venus, Earth and Mars. I could imagine you chuckling to yourself, delighting in being an apparent public servant, and saying to yourself, 'The fools; if they only knew--' Am I right?"

Baxter's smile grew broader. "In substance, yes. I do rather like being the kingpin incognito, as it were. But go on, you were about to make a point."