Chapter V: Part 5

"Well, if that were the case, then the Ancients wouldn't have to be destroyed, sent back to their dimension forever. You'd be suited by the status quo. Alien beings on Mars would just be alien beings on a Mars which you still controlled. So there's got to be something more that you want. You have all the power I know of, right now. So there can be only one thing left for you to want: some power I don't know of."

"I must congratulate you on your perspicacity," he said. "Yes, there is something more, Mister Delvin. That much I will tell you. But as to what it is--" He spread his hands. "I don't see that it's your concern."

"You--" I said, then paused. His insouciance was not in keeping with his situation. Therefore, the situation was not the one which I thought it was. "You're pretty chipper," I said, "for a man held at collapser-point."

"Oh? Am I being chipper?" he said, all raised eyebrows and facetious wonder. "I hadn't noticed."

"You fool," I said softly.

Baxter's amiable smile vanished and a hard light came into his eyes. "What do you mean?" he said, through clenched teeth.

"I mean," I said gently, but with deadly earnest, "that the Brain back on Earth selected me because of my mental abilities. I mean, Baxter, that I can figure things out faster than you can dream them up."

"The Brain picked you," he said coldly, "because it was rigged by the Ancients. And for no other reason."

I nodded. "And the Ancients rigged it to pick the man most likely to succeed in your destruction."

Baxter was suddenly silent. He watched me intently.

I lounged against the wall, waving the muzzle of the collapser up and down slowly. "Let me clue you in to my reasoning, Baxter old man," I grinned. "This is a collapser. It is in working order. You do not fear it. Ergo, you have some protection from it. I would deduce that you are at present wearing a shield of some sort. A shield which you have kept secret from everyone but yourself and the inventor, who is probably long since dead, if I know your approach to things."

Charlie and Foster turned and looked at him, their eyes bugging out in surprise. Till that moment, they'd thought their weapon invincible against anything.

"You astound me," Baxter said, admiringly. "But there's something you don't know about the shield. It protects not by _de_flection, but by _re_flection."

"I could have gotten that part figured out, too, if I just allowed my mind to wander a bit through the paths yours seems to prefer. Nice work. Not only are you protected, but your assailant is himself destroyed."

"And so, Mister Delvin," Baxter smiled, starting to get up from his chair to come and disarm me.

"And so," I said, "nothing!"

Baxter stopped on hearing the easy confidence of my voice. He hesitated, looked at me.

"You shouldn't have kept it a secret," I said, smiling. "Charlie and Foster, here, are therefore quite vulnerable to the ray." It was rewarding to see their increased pallor. "So, you guys," I addressed them, "unless you want to go out in a blaze of blue sparks, how about tying this silly old man to his chair?"

They faltered only the fraction of an instant, and then they had a furious, cursing Baxter neatly hooked at ankles and wrists to his chair with their security-manacles.

"All right," Baxter growled deep in his throat, when they had been gun-gestured back to their places. "You are clever, Delvin! So what happens now? Do you beat me to death with your fists, or what?"

"If necessary," I said. A brief flicker of fear went across his face. "But so far as I'm concerned, destroying you need not mean physical dissolution. I don't care so much about Baxter the man as I do about Baxter the kingpin. To keep my end of the bargain, I can simply report what I know to the World Congress, and have you stashed away where you can never carry out any of your totalitarian schemes."

The normal ruddiness of Baxter's face was superseded by a sickly gray. "You can't--" he said, then stopped. At the moment, it was quite apparent that I could.

"And as for your big secret power," I said, calmly and without boasting, "it took me about two seconds' brainwork to guess what it is."

Baxter just sat and smoldered, his mouth clamped shut.

"The Ancients," I said, "live in Location, with a capital _L_. I've already experienced a demonstration of their logistic powers. They had me bobbing around like a balloon down in their weird little cavern. And they were also able, not so long ago, to manipulate the workings of the International Cybernetics Brain across a void millions of miles wide. That, by me, shows one power which any would-be dictator would give a hell of a lot to get ahold of: teleportation."

Baxter stared at me in furious amazement.

"But," I went on, "there seemed to be a couple of details which didn't jibe, if that were the case. If they could manage control over cosmic distances so easily, why should they go to the trouble of getting a man, me, to bump you off? Why not simply teleport you into something fatal? That would be the easier method. But they didn't do it. Therefore, for some reason, they couldn't. Well then, Jery, I thought to myself, what could the reason be? In their dimension, that of ultimate Place, or Location, distances have no meanings. Everything in creation is Here. So what held them up? What kept them from snatching you? Obviously, only one thing could, Baxter: the contact-material, parabolite."

He kept his features rigid, but sweat was beading his brow. It gleamed like diamonds in the lamplight.

"It seems that the Ancients can only control areas where their contact-material is present. Until the mineral was found by Earth scientists, that place was on Mars only. Then some of the material was taken back to Earth, for museums, for analysis, and even for paperweights and such. My guess is that one of the technicians who runs the Brain has a hunk of the stuff on his desk, right?"

Baxter narrowed his eyes, then relaxed and nodded. "Yes. As soon as I figured out the Brain had been gimmicked, I went there to check. I had it removed immediately. Then I refed the data into the Brain, and found the name of the man who should have been sent here to destroy the Ancients."

I nodded. "Your own. Philip Baxter. Which is why you sped up here so damned fast after I arrived. And also why you had to toss me into a cell. One thing eludes me, though. What gave you the hint that the Brain might have been rigged?"

Baxter smiled wearily. "Your loss of the Amnesty. When these idiots here called me, my first reaction was to chew them out and to have you released. It was only after talking to you that it dawned on me that you seemed ill-equipped for the task I had in mind. I got to wondering about the Brain, then. That's when I went over to see for myself, and found the parabolite."

I nodded again. "Yes. In their cavernful of the stuff, they could float me all over the place. When some of the stuff was near the Brain, they could control that. But nothing else. Nothing that was not in the presence of the mineral. That is, excepting one part of the mineral: the chunk that comprises the false Amnesty. Something had to happen to that hunk of it. Something that simultaneously rendered that piece out of their control, and told them that you were a menace to their existence in this dimension."

"If you think I'll tell you that--" he said angrily.

"No need to. I've figured out that one, too. When I first figured out just what parabolite was, I compared it to a rubber ball on an elastic cord. Trying to destroy it by force was impossible. It just bounced and swung into the cushion of its fourth dimension. But, sticking with the analogue, what happens if the rubber ball is attacked from all sides simultaneously? It has nowhere to go, then. And, I asked myself, what could attack parabolite from even its extra dimension? What, except another piece of parabolite? Oh, not in the frictive way, like diamond cutting diamond. You still controlled only three of the dimensions using that method. And it had been tried already by scientists and found useless. So you had to attack it on the no-dimensional level. Since the three forms of matter--solid, liquid and gas--all must exist with height, breadth and depth, you had to use the only thing in our universe that we have besides matter: energy. Fire? No, heat had been tried already. Atomic dissolution? A bit better, perhaps; a battery of collapsers, working on the subatomic level, had managed to destroy a fraction of a gram of the stuff, simply from the laws of _chance_ encounters with parabolite molecules in the fourth dimension. A ray as powerful as the collapser-ray undoubtedly accidentally gets generated in an extra dimension, but only in the most minor way, not nearly enough for your purpose."

"And what," Baxter asked between tautened lips, "is my purpose?"

"Since your rule-the-worlds dream necessitates the ability to teleport your agents wherever you please, you must have parabolite wherever you please. This in turn necessitates pulverizing the mineral down to its very molecules, and sowing it into the atmosphere of the three planets. Then you will be free to take complete command. The hitch, of course, is that the pulverization of parabolite would engender, as the Ancient put it, a jolt. A jolt which would unlatch Location from our dimension, sending the Ancients off forever. They didn't like the idea, and so they set out to destroy you."

Baxter's jaw, during the last part of my narrative, had gone slack, and he stared at me idiotically. I had to grin.

"Yes, I know what suffering you're going through at this moment, Baxter old boy. 'All for nothing,' you're telling yourself. If you had only known, huh?"

"You--you mean," he 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 my injured arm.

"Neatness," said Baxter, not to be outdone, "is a virtue."

"Come on, come on," Baxter said impatiently, waving the muzzle of the collapser at us. "Can we get to the labyrinth from here?"

"Why bother, now?" I said, jerking a thumb toward the lobby above us. "Way things look, you won't have any empire to come back to, even if you do knock off the Ancients."

"A minor skirmish like this cannot but fail in its purpose," said Baxter. "On my return, I fully expect to see the sky filled with Security ships from Earth, leisurely razing the entire city."

"Won't that be rather difficult to write off as 'Unserviceable,' even the way you keep inventory?" I needled.

"Move!" said Baxter, beyond patience.

Clatclit and I moved. We went back down the long ramp that led toward the dungeons. At gunpoint or not, I called back over my shoulder, "By the way, just what do you intend doing when we arrive at the ogre's castle? I should think that it was the last place you'd want to be found. Kind of like telling off a lion while your head's in his mouth."

Far off behind us, there was a growing shout of voices. Apparently, the rebels had managed to negotiate what was left of the stairway and were hot on our trail.

"Faster!" said Baxter, quite unnecessarily. I was in no mood to test whether or not the rebels checked one's ideology before blasting away. A disintegrated bystander is beyond apology. So we went faster.

We reached the dungeon level, and Clatclit proceeded to shove open that movable section of wall. Baxter raised his eyebrows in surprise, but then simply gun-motioned us through the gap. We went, and he followed a moment later. I watched with amusement as he tried vainly to shove that granite mass back into place. I don't know exactly what sugarfeet use for muscles, but it beats what we've got.

Angrily, Baxter stepped back against the curved wall of the tunnel, and said, "You! Move that back. We don't want them following us in here."

Clatclit moved over to obey, while I remarked, "Why not? Maybe they'll get lost. It'll save your city-razing ships a little collapser-power."

Baxter ignored my statement, and simply waited until Clatclit had moved back beside me, his taillight going on pyrotechnically as the moving granite cut us off from the light in the dungeon corridor.

Then we were once again moving down that frozen-lava slope toward the deeply hidden lair of the Ancients.

* * * * *

As we moved along, side by side, with Baxter coming relentlessly after us, Clatclit's hands started working furiously. He flicked an index finger toward me, then toward himself. Then he put the heels of his hands together and, after a brief waggling of the fingertips, clamped his hands into fists, and made that serpentine forward jab with one hand. He was asking, in his pantomimic way, if he and I, under cover of sudden blinkout of his taillight, might scoot off into the labyrinth and escape Baxter.

I held up a forefinger and waggled it left and right in a signal of "Better not, chum."

He put his palms up, fingers flipping open in a mute "Why not?"

I curled the fingers of my right hand into the palm, then pointed the index finger forward, and lifted my thumb up; an antique Earth gesture dating back to the times when hand guns had fanning hammers on them. I spun the muzzle of this simulated weapon up, down, and every which way, to indicate to Clatclit that Baxter might manage, through sheer blind blasting, to polish us off before we got very far.

Clatclit slammed his right fist into his left palm in a furious symbol of an exasperated "Damn!"

"What are you two plotting up there?" Baxter demanded suddenly.

"We were discussing the futility of a lights-out scurry for cover, since that weapon of yours would slice right through these tunnels," I said, deciding the truth was the best way to avoid suspicious repercussions. "If your bolt didn't get us, the falling ceiling might."

"I'm glad you're using your intelligence, Delvin," Baxter answered. Then: "Why are we stopping?"

"Because," I said, halting where Clatclit had suddenly paused in his forward motion, "that thunder you hear is the reason the Ancients never find themselves neck-deep in the sugarfeet. An impassable river is up ahead."

"Impassable?" Baxter scowled.

"Not for us, but for Clatclit, here," I said. "He can't even go around this corner without risking deadly corrosion. And, in case you didn't notice back in your office, he's had a pretty nasty exposure already."

"Nevertheless," said Baxter, "I must insist that he either accompany us, or be destroyed right here."

"What!" I said, appalled. "You can't ask him to do that! He wouldn't last any longer than you would in boiling oil!"

"I certainly do not intend to leave him here," Baxter snapped. "He might alert others of his kind, and--"

"And what?" I growled. "You could fend off a million of them with that weapon of yours."

"And risk the ceiling falling in on my head?" Baxter said. "No, Delvin, I'm not about to take that chance."

"And just how," I said savagely, "did that peanut brain of yours plan on your getting out of here without him?"

Baxter paused, his gun hand wavering.

"Because if he melts in the river, or is vaporized right here and now, you will be stuck without a light. Stuck in a rock-hard maze that you couldn't negotiate alone if you had a light."

Baxter just stared, thinking furiously.

"Of course," I went on, "you could simply aim that thing upward, and disintegrate your way out. But that, too, might make the ceiling fall in. And if it didn't, you'd have the small difficulty of climbing the glass-sided well you'd created. Climbing, by the way, into the Martian desert, where there is no air, no water, and very little heat. You'd be dessicated, suffocated, and a popsicle to boot!"

"I--I could very easily slant the bolt into Marsport," Baxter blustered. "I could climb the slope easily enough, and there'd be fresh air waiting for me, too."

"Yeah," I mocked, folding my arms. "Fresh air and a city full of insurgent Baxter-haters. Assuming, of course, that you didn't strike an underground stream in the process, and get washed away into the depths of the planet when your hold-off stance with the collapser tired you out, when you'd completely dissipated the charge."

"I--" Baxter said, desperately nervous.

"And also assuming," I continued, "that you know in which direction Marsport is, chum! Of course, you could swing that thing in a full circle of slant-blasts toward the surface, but then that would make the ceiling fall in, wouldn't it, once you'd cut away all supports."

Baxter trembled with impotent rage, but his gun's muzzle was finally slumped all the way toward the floor of the tunnel. He was beaten, and he knew it.

And that's when I jumped him.

My still-working right arm shot down and gripped his right wrist, a very awkward stance to take, but my left arm was still weak and useless from my fall. But Clatclit moved in, then, his rocky talons sinking like so many fangs into Baxter's right arm, all three of us a writhing tangle on the tunnel floor, each of us frantically aware that the gun had better not emit any bolts while an arm, leg or tail flailed in front of it.

Baxter shrieked with fear and rage as those steely fingers took hold. I think he was too upset otherwise to feel the pain.

And then a bolt buzzed blindingly into the tunnel, and as we all three flattened ourselves and waited for the ceiling to come crashing down, it spattered into nothingness against the wall.

We sat up, staring at the spot where the so-called invincible bolt had simply been dissipated, all of us looking pretty silly, flat on our bottoms, leaning back on our hands on that curved stone surface, momentarily losing sight of our belligerent behavior of a moment before.

"The wall!" I said, first to realize the significance. But I couldn't go on. Baxter finished for me.

"It's parabolite!" he cried.

Then my eyes were dazzled by the blaze of light that suddenly materialized all around us, and my stomach turned over sickeningly as I realized that the converse was probably true: We had just materialized inside the dazzling light!

We were, all three of us, within the metallic-shimmering chamber of the ancient Martians.

"Well done, Jery Delvin," said a familiar voice, and then the light before us trembled and warped, and I was looking into the disconcerting triple face of the Ancient again.

I was not, however, in the mood for compliments.

"Where is my woman?" I said peremptorily.

"On your departure, she expressed a desire to inquire further into the health of her sibling," said the Martian. "She is even now with him and his companions."

"In that cage?" I cried angrily.

"I assure you she is--"

"Kindly forego the lecture on metabolic stasis and raise the damned thing, will you?" I interrupted.

The Martian warped and sparkled in a dizzying movement that I could only interpret as a shrug, and then the huge parabolite cage came rising up from that not-quite-there flooring.

"Jery!"

"Snow, baby!"

We clung to each other awkwardly, and our lips met between the columnar bars. I pulled back and called, "Can't you open this thing up, now?"

"Your mission is not quite accomplished, Jery Delvin," said the Martian. "The man Philip Baxter is within our realm, but as yet undestroyed."

"You mean I've still got to--"

"As told you repeatedly: Physical contact between our races is impossible, Jery Delvin."

"Hey, what about that?" I said. "After I left here, I got to wondering how, if what you just said is true, you people were able to manipulate the Brain to select me."

"The Brain of which you speak works on a principle of force-fields, generated by induction coils. We simply placed the right counterforces in the right places. No actual contact was necessary."

"Well, damn it," I said, after a glance back at Baxter and Clatclit, who were staring bewilderedly toward the source of the voice, "can't you just keep him here? He's bound to perish from lack of food, or water, or--"

"Jery Delvin, the metabolic stasis which I have already mentioned to you is not something we used specially for these boys. It is a necessary contingent of our world. Where there is absolute Location, there is absolutely no change of the sort you mentioned."

I gave up. "All right, all right. I won't argue the point. If you could get at him, I guess you would. Not a chance of dropping him down a hole, or something, though?"

"By the very nature of our world, hazardous localizing is an impossibility. Our universe possesses a self-regulatory locale-control that obviates the contingency of perilous placement of an individual."

"Their universe has what?" Snow asked me, her blue-violet eyes wide.

"A built-in safety feature," I muttered. "It figures, now that I think of it. If Location is absolute, it is One. That means that it's either all-safe, or all-dangerous. It can't have a bit of one thing and a bit another. Which means that I'm still carrying the ball."

"Correction," said Baxter, behind me, "you have fumbled."

I looked back at him. He had the collapser in his hand yet, despite our space-warping materialization in the cavern. And the muzzle was pointed right at Snow's breast, at the Amnesty.

"Jery!" she cried, hanging onto my arm.

"Baxter!" I yelled, stepping in front of her and flattening myself against the bars. "Give us a chance! If that damned thing triggers the parabolite, you'll go with us!"

"How little you know, Delvin," Baxter smiled. "There are any number of features of this other dimension which even your fantastic intellect has not guessed. Did it never occur to you to wonder just where I'd learned the construction of a teleportation machine?"

"I--I'd assumed you learned it somehow from the Ancients," I said. "Before they realized you intended their destruction."

"I take my hat off to you," said Baxter, with a slight nod of grudging admiration. "I didn't realize you'd thought things out quite that far."

"Hell, it was the only way you could have learned," I said. "But what's it got to do with--"

"With the fission-bomb?" Baxter said, smiling. "Why, only everything. You see, Delvin, teleported matter, in order to bypass distance, must travel in the place where there is no distance: the fourth dimension. And so, the brunt of the blast will be absorbed by the Ancients, not by me."

I heard the Martian gasp. Apparently, they weren't aware of this fact. It was more than just displacement they faced, it was death.

"Your agents," I temporized, "they'd then be using a system that transported them via radioactive chaos!"

Baxter shook his head. "Since the transfer is an instantaneous one, I rather doubt that they'd absorb any roentgens to speak of."

That seemed to be that. He was set to fire, and I was all out of arguments. And my stance between Snow and that ray-pistol was only a fleeting protection. She'd go about one second after I did.

Then, behind me in the cage, I heard a movement, and Snow gave a little cry. I jerked my head about.

Ted, with more sense than his sister, had simply taken the Amnesty from about her throat and flung it away. All of us followed its flight with dazzled eyes.

Baxter swung up the barrel of the collapser and fired. And in the same instant, the spinning disc halted, and then dodged out of the trajectory of the bolt.

The Martian was protecting himself in the only way he could: Changing the parabolite-bomb's location.

I crouched involuntarily, clutching Snow's hand through the bars, as the life-and-death contest went on. The tiny disc of destruction flitted here, there and everywhere, in a dizzying erratic course, while Baxter kept the trigger of the collapser depressed tightly, and slashed wildly in the eye-dazzling light of that place with the pulsing beam.

I wasn't in favor of the Ancients, exactly, but I was bound and determined to halt Baxter's reckless blasting with that gun, one flick of whose ray would disintegrate me, Snow or Clatclit, not to mention the frightened huddle of small boys in that cage. And there was one way to halt him.

"At him!" I cried to the Martian. "He won't fire if it's anywhere near himself!"

He must have heard me. The disc skidded to a wobbly halt, and then it dove like an eagle toward Baxter in a swift, graceful line. A straight line.

"ZIG-ZAG, YOU IMBECILE!" I yelled, an instant too late.

Even the poorest shot can track an object moving toward or away from him. Baxter's collapser caught the descending disc a good twenty yards before it got to him.

My eyes clamped shut against the monstrous blaze of heat and light. Then, Snow's hand tightly gripped in mine, I was enveloped in inky blackness, with nothing but empty air beneath the soles of my boots. And falling.

20

"Snow! Darling, are you all right?" I asked, getting groggily to my feet and pressing her hand between both of mine. The fall hadn't been as bad as the one I'd taken earlier through that hole in the floor, but it was enough to shake me up.

"Y-Yes, I think so, Jery," she said, pressing one slim hand to her forehead, then brushing a wisp of hair back out of her eyes. I took her tightly in my arms and held her.

Only then did I suddenly realize where we were.

The light came from the trylon tip of Clatclit's tail. It reflected in a red glow from the cavern floor, but vanished over our heads into an impenetrable darkness. Beyond Snow, I saw the Space Scouts getting to their feet. The kids were in much better shape than I was. With consistent bad luck, I'd taken the fall on my injured left arm, and now it was throbbing like crazy. Ted came rushing over to us.

Then I remembered Baxter and looked swiftly about. He was nowhere to be seen. "Clatclit!" I shouted.

My crystalline buddy came hurrying over to me, his little taillight bobbing as he ran. His glittering eyes looked a question at me.

"What happened to Baxter?" I said.

Clatclit pointed off into the darkness, and made that serpentine movement with his hand.

"Into the labyrinth?" I exclaimed. "But why?"

Clatclit pointed toward the floor. I followed his gesture with my eyes, and saw on the rocky ground the reason. The collapser lay there, its firing chamber cracked in half. It was useless as a coercion any more, unless Baxter had a good throwing arm.

"But why didn't you follow him?" I asked.

Disgusted stare. Clatclit pointed to me, Snow, and then the boys, and followed with an attention-getting tremor of his tail.

"Oh, yeah. We would have trouble getting out of here unguided, at that!" I said sheepishly. When Snow was around, I couldn't even see the obvious.

"Any chance Baxter can find his way out of here alone?" I said. "If he gets to the spaceport before we do, he may get back to Earth and get an army back here after us."

Clatclit thought it over. Then he placed an arm across my shoulders, and an arm across Snow's, and looked hopeful.

"Damn," I said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, "it's mighty nice of you to offer, but we can't spend the rest of our lives down here with you, Clatclit!" I shook my head. "We've got to get out of here and get the word to the World Congress before Baxter sews the Earth up tight."

"Say," Ted's small voice interrupted, "what happened to the bars and stuff, hey?"

I blinked, startled, and looked about us. Then, on an impulse, I dropped to my knees and felt the ground. It was plain old lava. I rocked back on my heels, bewildered, and then I understood, and started laughing.

"Jery, what is it?"

"Snow, baby, it's the laugh of the century, that's all. Unstable is hardly the word for the Ancients' universe! Not only did they dislocate, but they took their contact-material with them! MY guess is that right now there is no longer a splinter of parabolite in the solar system."

"But why is that funny?" she asked, as I got to my feet again.

"Because, honey, it means that all Baxter's deep, dire and devious schemes have come to naught, and by his own hand, at that! He'll never build his teleportation machine, now!"

"His what?" she said.

"You see, baby, he--Oh, hell, it's a long story. I'll tell you when we have more time. Right now, we have to head Baxter off, or things won't be very funny at all."

Following Clatclit's light, Snow, the boys and I moved swiftly across the floor of that vast cavern, emptied of its space-stressed metal lining and occupants after heaven knows how many eons of existence there. The only hitch we encountered in our upward race was that spray-happy torrent which Clatclit couldn't cross without dribbling to death. However, a Space Scout is true, brave, and loyal, and he always carries a rubber poncho inside his travel-kit. It took three of them to swaddle our guide, but, with the assistance of two of the more sure-footed Scouts, I was able to tote him bodily across that perilous bridge, with nothing showing of him but his taillight, and that high in the air, away from most of the eroding spray. Once unwrapped, he took the lead again, tail high. Then, Snow's hand tightly in mine, we all took off like cross-country racers up those winding tunnels of Mars.

We emerged on the hillside overlooking the airstrip, from one of those "Forbidden to Enter" cave mouths, in the bright glow of the sand-converter, towering at the far end of the field. Despite political intrigue, insurrection, and the disappearance of the entire Martian race from the solar system, it stood there on its girder legs, monotonously separating the molecules of ferrous oxide into molten iron and atmosphere.

"Things seem to be quiet at the terminal building," I observed, looking across the field. "I wonder who won the battle?"

"What battle?" said Snow.

"Boy, honey," I kissed her lightly on the forehead, "you are going to take years to bring up to date."

To forestall any more questions, I turned and started off across the landing field, with my alien-plus-female-plus-adolescent group tagging cautiously after me. I was just busy wishing I still had my collapser, when, from a cavemouth to our right, a pallid glow appeared, and then a figure darted out onto the strip, in the glow of the terminal lights.

Baxter! If he got inside first, and IS men were in charge--

But he hadn't seen me yet. I couldn't just hope for a rebel win. I took off like an Olympic sprinter, racing toward that staggering silhouette before me, my hands outstretched in the hopes of throttling him a bit before I turned him over to the World Congress. Unless, of course, the rebels ruled Marsport.

And then one of the more excitable Space Scouts blurted an involuntary, "Get him!"

Baxter whirled, five feet away from my fingertips. His right hand came swinging up toward my face.

And then I was coughing, and sneezing, and waving frantic hands at a blazing something that engulfed my features.

By the time I realized it was only tunnel-fungus, and at the same moment realized how Baxter had lighted his way out, he was on his way into the terminal, his old legs whipping like pistons. Well, he'd be the first to see who'd survived the battle. Clatclit and the others had caught up to me, by then, and we moved in a desperate bunch toward those lighted glass doors, in a last hope of getting our man before our man's men got us.

Any second I expected a cordon of armed guards to come galloping out of there with collapsers ablaze in our direction. Any moment now, we'd all be separated into hot protons and flying clouds of electronic sparks.

I came to a stumbling halt, and ceased all conjecture.

For just inside those glass doors, Chief Philip Baxter was standing with his hands raised over his head, and there were men approaching him with drawn weapons. And not the rebels, either. His own security guards! IS had won.

"Hey!" said Ted, tugging at my arm. "They must have gotten my message! Lucky thing the rebels were the losers, hey?"

I spun about, giving him a dazed look. "What message?" was all I could choke out.

"In the _Phobos II_," he said happily. "I scratched it on the wall over my takeoff rack."

"I didn't see any message," I complained.

"It was in code," he explained, with the head-shaking condescension toward an idiot of which only small boys are capable. "Snow and me, we have a secret code."

"I know that!" I growled. "But how in the world--"

He gave a lazy what-does-it-matter shrug. "You probably didn't notice it because you didn't know the code. Otherwise, it looks like chicken-scratches. But I was pretty sure a good cryptograph man would figure it out. It's only a substitution code, after all."

"And what was the message?" I said, repressing a sudden urge to swear at him.

Ted yawned idly and scratched his stomach. "I just said: 'Help! We have been kidnapped by Chief Baxter of Interplanetary Security. Sincerely yours, Ted White, Space Scout First Class.' It wasn't the truth, of course, but I figured it'd get an investigation started. And then Baxter's goose would be cooked."

Before I could mutter a small curse, there came a sudden blast of energy from the terminal building, and the glass doors came flying open. I saw a figure come dashing out of there, and realized that Baxter was once more on the loose.

"The shield!" I groaned.

His hands-over-the-head had been only a reflex action. I only gave one quick glance toward the terminal lobby, where the remaining men were just getting their wits about them, then I took off after him again.

It was going to be a close thing, I realized. He had a good lead on me. At the end of the strip opposite to where we'd emerged from the labyrinth stood a ship. It was Baxter's personal ship, marked with the colors and seal of IS. If he once got aboard, he could get away forever. But even worse, he could train his ship's artillery-size collapser on the entire spaceport, and blast us all out of existence.

I could see I wasn't going to make it. He was a full hundred yards ahead of me. By the time I reached the ship, he'd be pressing the starter button, and all I'd get for my efforts would be the searing fires of the rockets in my face as the great ship lifted.

Then a bounding, red-glinting form was whizzing past me, covering thirty feet at a leap. Clatclit was on the trail of the man who had threatened his destruction back in the labyrinth.

Shrill, furious clackings came from within those sharp-fanged jaws as the sugarfoot rapidly closed the gap between himself and the man.

And still, something kept me racing across that field, some subconscious foreboding that things weren't finished yet. Then Baxter came to a halt, still twenty yards from the ship, and turned about, something in his hand from the ship-readying cart. The hose for the water tanks!

"Clatclit!" I yelled frantically.

As if not realizing his danger, the hurtling form of my alien friend zoomed down toward Baxter, powerful claws held wide for grasping his enemy.

Things happened terribly fast. From behind me, I heard a scream, and then a curse. I staggered, and turned. Snow was wrestling on the ground with a Security Agent, one of the still-shaken survivors of the backlash of Baxter's shield. Evidently, he'd been about to try another shot at the fleeing Security Chief, and Snow, with unladylike good sense, had given him the benefit of one of her brother-training flying tackles, before we all died in a new rebounding ray.

A wild trilling whistle came from the ship, and I jerked my head about. Baxter had let loose with the hose, and Clatclit was rolling on the ground, in a wild effort to shake the caustic droplets from his melting scales.

My head was spinning. Which was to turn? Snow was in a furious fight with a full-grown man behind me, and my best friend was being dissolved before me. I didn't know what to do. Should I run and stop her from being vaporized, or him from being turned into taffy?

Baxter took the decision out of my hands.

"Delvin!" his voice came.

I turned back toward him. Clatclit, still shuddering with the shock of that water-spray, was facing me, Baxter behind him with an arm across the sugarfoot's throat. And in Baxter's other hand he held the water hose, its pistol-control barrel aimed right at Clatclit's eyes.

"Tell the others to stand back," he shouted, "or I'll burn your friend's eyes out!"

By now, Snow had explained the situation somewhat to the guard, I guess, because she and he came abreast of me and stopped, listening to Baxter's threat.

The guard's gun came up swiftly.

"Don't, you fool!" I said, my hand clamping on his wrist. "He's got a shield!"

"I know that," said the guard, whom I suddenly recognized as the corporal who had led his men to investigate the blast in the upper corridor. "I'm only going to disable the ship!"

"No," Baxter called. "If the ship goes, then so do this creature's eyes!"

The corporal looked at me, wavering. "It's--it's only a sugarfoot," he said, uncertainly.

"Only a--!" I shrieked. How could I tell this idiot what I felt for Clatclit! "You'll shoot over my bloody corpse!"

"We can't let Baxter get aloft in that thing!" the corporal said beseechingly. "If he does, we're all dead!"

I was trembling with fear and frustrated rage. Baxter was backing toward the ship, taking the weakened Clatclit backward with him. They were only a few feet from the entry port, now.

Then my hand went out, and I took the corporal's collapser from him. He stared at me confusedly, but let me take it.

"Everybody hit the dirt!" I said, lifting the weapon and taking careful aim. Guard, girl and Scouts took a dive.

I was neither aiming at Baxter, nor his ship. The blazing bolt of energy from the collapser, an instant before I joined Snow, the corporal and the Space Scouts on the ground, went where I'd intended it to.

Into the nearest supporting girder of the massive converter.

As in a slow-motion nightmare, the structure began to tilt with the uneven distribution of weight, toward the spot where a supporting leg should have been, and then the brightly burning rays of the ore-converting head came arcing down in a deadly sweep that passed over Baxter, Clatclit, and the ship, narrowly missing the spot where the rest of us lay. Then the power cables tore away, and the beam went out.

It was all over. The ship, of aluminum-magnesium alloys, was in perfectly fine shape. Clatclit, of pure sugar construction, was, if a bit water-sick, alive and healthy.

But Baxter--

The converter had been designed with one function: to turn ferrous oxide, plain old rusted iron, into its components. In the force of its ray, the oxide became free oxygen and molten iron. And the blood of a human being is made up of, amongst other things, tiny cells which have the presence of oxidized iron to thank for their bright red color.

When we got to Baxter, he was long past screaming. You can't make much noise when you're a solid blister, ten feet in diameter.

* * * * *