The Second IF Reader of Science Fiction Read online

  Q. You each had to have a book?

  A. Well, they only work for one person, see? I mean, if it’s anybody else’s book you can’t see it. You. can’t even tell it’s there.

  Gull frowned. It would be sticky trying to learn much about the book if one couldn’t see it. Still, even if the book itself were invisible, its effects were tangible indeed—or so said the account on the tapes. Reik had described his actions on entering Heliopolis:

  Harry he lemme his switchblade. I stuck it right through my cheeks, here. I didn’t bleed a drop, and then I kind of levitated myself, and after a while I did the Indian Rope Trick, except since I just had my good necktie for a rope I couldn’t get far enough up to disappear. You have to get like seventy-five per cent of your body height up before you disappear.

  Q. Could you disappear if you had a long enough rope?

  A. Hell, yes. Only I won’t. You get to a higher cycle of psychic Oneness like me and you don’t kid around with that stuff any more.

  Q. Did you do anything else?

  A. Well, not till after dinner. Then I put myself in a cataleptic trance and went to sleep. I didn’t do that any more after that, though. Catalepsy doesn’t really rest you. I was beat all the next day, but I figured, what the hell. I was still only on page seven.

  Gull sighed, relit his stogie and contemplated the shimmering perfection of his nails.

  And at that moment his door-chime sounded. Through the open switch of the announcer-phone came a sound of terrified sobbing and the throaty, somehow familiar voice of a frightened girl:

  “Please! Open the door quickly, I ’ave to see you. I beg you to ’urry, Meesta Gull!”

  Gull froze. He realized at once that something was amiss, for the name on his travel documents was not Gull. Steadily he considered the implications of that fact.

  Someone knew his real identity.

  Gull called, “One moment.” He was stalling for time, while his mind raced to cope with the problems that deduction entailed. If his identity were known, then security had been breached. If security were breached, then his mission was compromised. If his mission were compromised—

  Gull grinned tightly, careless of the possible camera-eye that would even now be recording his every move. If his mission were compromised the only intelligent, safe, approved procedure would be to return to Mars-port and give it up. And that, of course, was what Johan Gull would never do.

  Carefully, quickly, he slid into his socks and slippers, blew on his nails to make sure they were dry and threw open the door, one hand close to tie quick-draw pocket in his lounging robe where his gun awaited his need.

  “Thank God,” whispered the girl at the doorway. She was lovely. A slim young blonde. Blue eyes, in which a hint of recent tears stained the eyeshadow at the comers.

  Courteously Gull bowed. “Come in,” he said, closing the door behind her. “Sit down, if you will. Would you care for coffee? A drop of brandy? An ice cream?”

  She shook her head and cried: “Meesta Gull, your life is in ’ideous danger!”

  Gull stroked his goatee, his smile friendly and unconcerned. “Oh, come off it, my dear,” he said. “You expect me to believe that?” And yet, he mused, she was really beautiful, no more than twenty-seven, no taller than five feet three.

  And the tiny ridge at the hemline of her bodice showed that she carried a flame-pencil.

  “You must believe me! I ’ave taken a frightful chance to come ’ere!”

  “Oh, yes, no doubt,” he shrugged, gazing at her narrowly. It was her beauty that had struck him at first, but there were more urgent considerations about this girl than her charms. For one thing, what was that she carried? A huge bag, perhaps; it almost seemed large enough to be a suitcase. For another—

  Gull’s brows came together. There was something about her that touched a chord in his memory. Somewhere sometime he had seen that girl before. “Why do you come here with this fantastic story?” he demanded.

  The girl began to weep. Great soft tears streamed down her face like summer raindrops on a pane. But she made no sound and her eyes were steady on his. “Meesta Gull,” she said simply, “I come ’ere to save your life because I must. I love you.”

  “Hah!”

  “But it is true,” she insisted. “I love you more than life itself, Meesta Gull. More than my soul or my ’opes of ’Eaven. More even than my children—Kim, who is six; Marie Celeste, four; or little Patty.” She drew out a photograph and handed it to him. It showed her in a plain knitted suit, with three children grouped around a Christmas tree.

  Gull softened slightly. “Nice-looking kids,” he commented, returning the picture.

  “Thank you.”

  “No, really. I mean it.”

  “You’re being kind.”

  Gull started to reply, then stopped himself.

  For he was falling into the oldest trap in the business. He was allowing his gentler emotions to interfere with the needs of the assignment. In this business there was no room for sentiment, Gull thought wryly. Better men than he had been taken in by the soft passions and had paid for it, in death, in torture, in dismemberment—worst of all, in the failure of a mission. “Hell with all that stuff,” he said gruffly. “I still can’t accept your story.”

  “You must! The Black ’Ats ’ave a plan to kill you!” He shook his head. “I can’t take a stranger’s word for it.”

  The tears had stopped. She gazed at him for a long opaque moment. Then she smiled tantalizingly.

  “A stranger, Meesta Gull?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “I see.” She nodded gravely. “We ’ave never met, eh? And therefore I could not possibly know something about you—oh, something that perhaps is very private.”

  “What are you talking about? Get to the point!”

  “Something,” she continued, her eyes veiled but dancing with amusement, “that perhaps you ’ave told no one else. A—shall we say—a sore lip, Meesta Gull? Received, perhaps, in an alley in the Syrian quarter of Marsport?”

  Gull was startled. “Really! Now, look. I—confound it, how could you possibly know about that? I’ve mentioned it to no one!”

  She inclined her head, a tender and mocking gesture. “But it’s true! And there was no one there at the time! Not a single living soul but myself and the woman who trapped me!”

  The girl pursed her lips but did not speak. Her eyes spoke for her. They were impudent, laughing at him.

  “Well, then!” he shouted. He was furious at himself. There had to be some rational explanation! Why had he let her catch him off-balance like this? It was a trick, of course. It could be no more than that. There were a thousand possible explanations of how she could have found out about it—“Well, then! How did you know?”

  “Meesta Gull,” she whispered soberly, “please trust me. I cannot tell you now. In precisely seven minutes”—she glanced at her watch—“an attempt will be made on your life.”

  “Rot!”

  Her eyes flamed with sudden anger. “Idiot!” she blazed. “Oh, ’ow I ’ate your harrogance!”

  Gull shrugged with dignity.

  “Very well! Die, then, if you wish it. The Black ’Ats will kill you, but I will not die with you.” And she began to take off her clothes.

  Johan Gull stared. Then soberly, calmly he picked up his stogie, relit it and observed, “Your behavior is most inexplicable, my dear.”

  “Hah!” The girl stepped out of her dress, her lovely face bitter with anger and fear. A delicate scent of chypre improved the air.

  “These tactics will get you nowhere,” said Gull.

  “Pah!” She touched the catch on her carrying case.

  It fell open and a bright rubbery coverall fell out, with mask and stubby, bright tanks attached.

  “Good heavens!” cried Gull, startled. “Is that a warmsuit? SCUBA gear?”

  But the girl said only, “You ’ave four minutes left.”

  “You’re carrying this rather far,
you know. Even if there are Black Hats aboard, we can’t leave the submarine underwater.”

  “Three minutes,” said the girl calmly, wriggling into her suit. But she was wrong.

  The submarine seemed to run into a brick wall in the water.

  They were thrown against the forward wall, a Laoo oon of lovely bare limbs and rubbery warmsuit and Gull entwined in the middle. A huge dull sound blossomed around them. Gull fought himself free.

  The girl sat up, her face a mask of terror. “Oh, damn the damn thing,” she cried, shaking her wrist, staring at her watch. “I must’ve forgot to set it. Too late, Meesta Gull! We ’ave been torpedoed!”

  IV

  The warbling wheep-ioheep of alarm signals blended with a confused shouting from the steerage holds below. The cabin lighting flickered, went out, tried once more, failed and was replaced by the purplish argon glow of the standby system. A racking, shuddering crash announced the destruction of the nuclear reactor that fed the hydrojets; somewhere, water was pouring in.

  “ ’Urry, Meesta Gull!” cried the girl.

  “Of course,” said Gull, courteously assisting her with the warmsuit. He patted her shoulder. “Not to worry, my dear. I owe you an apology, I expect. At a more propitious time—”

  “Meesta Gull! The bulkheads ’ave been sabotaged!” Gull smiled confidently and turned to his escape procedures. Now that it was a matter of instant action he was all right. His momentary uncertainty was behind him.

  Coolly he reached into his pocket, unsnapped the little packet of microthin Standing Orders and scanned their titles. “Let me see, now. Checklist for air evacuation—no. Checklist for enemy attack, artillery. Checklist for enemy attack, ICBM. Checklist for—”

  “Meesta Gull,” she cried, with real fear in her voice. ’Ave you forgotten that these waters are the ‘abitat o’ the Martian piranha? You must ’urry!”

  “Well, what the devil do you think I’m doing? Now be still; I have it here.” And crossly Gull began to check off the items under Submarine torpedoing, Martian canals: Secret papers, maps, halazone tablets, passports, poison capsule, toothbrush, American Express card with metronome precision he stowed them away and instantly donned his own SCUBA gear. “That’s the lot,” he announced, glancing distastefully at the dirty froth of water that was seeping under the door. “We might as well be off, then.” He lowered the SCUBA mask over his face—and raised it again at once, to fish out a packet of Kleenex in its waterproof packet and add it to his stores. “Sorry. Always get a sniffly nose when I’m torpedoed,” he apologized, and flung open the door to the passageway.

  A three-foot wall of water broke into the cabin, bearing with it a short-circuited purser-robot that hummed and crackled and twitched helplessly in a shower of golden sparks. “Outside, quick!” cried Gull, and led the way through the roiled, tumbling waters.

  The brave old T Coronae Borealis had taken a mortal wound. Half wading, half swimming, they fought strongly against the fierce drive of inwelling waters toward an escape hatch. In the dim purple gleam of the standby circuits they could see little. But they could hear much—shouts, distant screams, the horrid sounds of a great ship breaking up.

  There was nothing they could do. They were lucky to be able to escape themselves.

  And then it was nothing; a few strong strokes upward, a minute of clawing through the gelid, fungal mass that prevented the canals’ evaporation and had concealed their water from earthly telescopes for a hundred years—and they were safe. Armed and armored in their SCUBA gear, they had no trouble with the piranhas.

  Gull and the girl dragged themselves out on the bank of the sludgy canal and stared back at the waters, gasping for breath. There were ominous silent ripples and whorls. They watched for long minutes. But no other head appeared to break the surface.

  Gull’s face was set in a mask of anger. “Poor devils,” he allowed himself, no more.

  But in his heart he was resolved. A hundred men, women and robots had perished in the torpedoing of the T Coronae. Someone would pay for it.

  Across the burning ochre sands they marched . . . then trudged then stumbled. The pitiless sun poured down on them.

  “Meesta Gull,” sobbed the girl. “It is ’ot.”

  “Courage,” he said absently, concentrating on making one foot move, and then the other. They had many miles to go. Gull’s maps had indicated a nearly direct route from the canal along the Sinus Sabaeus where the submarine was slowly beginning to rust, straight across the great hot sweep of Syrtis Major to Heliopolis. A direct route. But it was not an easy one.

  Step, and step. Gull thought sardonically of the two prospectors who had come out of this desert to start all the trouble. When they entered Heliopolis it had been on a magic carpet that slid through Mars’s thin air like a knife. Nice to have one now, he thought—though exhaustive tests had shown the carpet itself to be a discontinued Sears, Roebuck model from the looms of Grand Rapids. But somehow they had made it work—

  He sighed and called a halt. The girl fell exhausted to the sands.

  “Meesta Gull,” she whispered, “I cannot go much farther.”

  “You must,” he said simply. He fell to studying his maps, checking the line of sight to the distant hillocks that passed, on Mars, for mountains. “Right on,” he murmured with satisfaction. “See here. Seven more miles west and we’re in the Split Cliffs. Then bear left, and—”

  “You are not ’umanl I must ’ave rest—water!”

  Gull only shrugged. “Can’t be helped, my dear. But at least the sun will be behind us, now. We can do it.”

  “No, no!”

  “Yes,” said Gull sharply. “Good God, woman! Do you want to be caught out here after dark?” He sneezed. “Excuse me,” he said, fumbling a Kleenex out of the packet and wiping his nose.

  “Five minutes,” she begged.

  Johan Gull looked at her thoughtfully, dabbing at his nose. He had not solved the mystery she presented. There was every reason to be on guard. Yet she had truly warned him of the torpedoing of the submarine, and surely she could be no threat to him out here, as piteously weakened as she was. He replaced his breathing guard and dropped the Kleenex to the ground. A moment later the empty pack followed. It had been the last.

  But Gull merely scuffed sand over it with his foot and said nothing; no sense adding to her worries. He said chivalrously, “Oh, all right And by the way, what’s your name?”

  She summoned up enough reserves of strength to smile coquettishly. “Alessandra,” she murmured.

  Gull grinned and nudged her with his elbow. “Under the circumstances,” he chuckled, “I think I’ll call you Sandy, eh?”

  “Don’t jest, Meesta Gull! Even if we survive this trip, you ’ave still the Black ’Ats to face in ’Eliopolis.”

  “I’ve faced them before, my dear. Not to worry.”

  ’Ave you seen what they can do now? With their creatures from outer space?”

  “Well, no. But I’ll think of something.”

  She looked at him for a long and thoughtful minute. Then she said, “I know you will, Meesta Gull. It is love that tells me so.”

  V

  Step, and step. In Mars’s easy grasp a man can lift much, jump high. But to slog through desert sands is little easier than on Earth; the sliding grains underfoot rob him of strength and clutch at his stride. They were near exhaustion, Gull knew with clarity; and for the past half mile the girl had been calling to him.

  Gull closed his ears to her. He kept his eyes on his own lengthening shadow before him, even when he heard her sobbing. They had no strength to spare for conversation.

  “Meesta Gull,” she whispered brokenly. “Wait, please.” He kept on grimly, head down, feet moving like pendulums.

  “Meesta Gull! But I must ask you something.”

  Over his shoulder he murmured, “No time for that, old girl. Keep walking.”

  “But I ’ave to know.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” he said, and waited for her t
o catch up. “What is it now?”

  “Only this, Meesta Gull. If we are ’eading west, why is the sun behind us?”

  “Really, Sandy! I swear you have no consideration at all!”

  “I am most sorry, Meesta Gull. I only asked.”

  “You only asked,” he repeated bitterly. “You only asked! And now you know what I have to do? I have to stop and take out the maps and waste all kinds of time just to satisfy your damned curiosity. Of course we’re heading west!”

  “I really am very sorry.”

  “And the reason the sun’s behind us—Well, if you knew geometry—Look here. I’ll show you on the map.” She fell to the ground again as he pored over the charts, frowning at the horizon, returning to his grid lines. At length his expression cleared.

  “I thought so,” he said triumphantly. “Perfectly simple, my dear. Up you get.”

  With rough tenderness he helped her to her feet and set off again, smiling. She did not speak at first, but presently she ventured: “Meesta Gull, we are ’eading toward the sun now. And these seem to be our own footprints we are retracing.”

  Gull patted her good-humoredly. “Don’t worry, Sandy.”

  “But, Meesta Gull—”

  “Will you for God’s sake shut up?” Confounded women, thought Gull. How they did go on! And he might have said something harsh to the poor girl, except that that occurred which drove all thoughts of compass headings from both their minds.

  There was a terrible thunder of many hooves.

  Alessandra whimpered and clutched his arm. Gull stopped short, waiting; and over a rise in the ochre sands came a monstrous gray-green creature with six legs. It was huge as an elephant and its look was deadly; and it bore a rider, a huge, manlike, green-skinned creature with four arms, holding a murderous-looking lance.

  The thoat, for such it was, skidded to a stop before them. Its monstrous rider dismounted with a single leap.

  For an endless second the creature glared at them through narrowed, crimson eyes. Then it laughed with a sound of harsh and distant thunder.