David Starr Space Ranger (lucky starr) Page 10

  He would have to walk. The thought was not a particularly frightening one. The farm dome was little more than two miles away and he had plenty of oxygen. His cylinders were full. The Martians had seen to that before sending him back.

  He thought he understood them now. They did know the dust storm was coming. They might even have helped it along. It would be strange if, with their long experience with Martian weather and their advanced science, they had not learned the fundamental causes and mechanisms of dust storms. But in sending him out to face the storm, they knew he had the perfect defense in his pocket. They had not warned him of either the ordeal that awaited him or of the defense he carried. It made sense. If he were the man who deserved the gift of the force-shield, he would, or should, think of it himself. If he did not, he was the wrong man for the job.

  David smiled grimly even as he winced at the touch of his clothing against inflamed skin as he stretched his legs across the Martian terrain. The Martians were coldly unemotional in risking his life, but he could almost sympathize with them. He had thought quickly enough to save himself, but he denied himself any pride in that. He should have thought of the mask much sooner.

  The force-shield that surrounded him was making it easier to travel. He noted that the shield covered the soles of his boots so that they never made contact with the Martian surface but came to rest some quarter inch above it. The repulsion between himself and the planet was an elastic one, as though he were on many steel springs. That, combined with the low gravity, enabled him to devour the distance between himself and the dome in swinging giant strides.

  He was in a hurry. More than anything else at the moment he felt the need of a hot bath.

  By the time David reached one of the outer locks of the farm dome the worst of the storm was over and the light flashes on his force-shield had thinned to occasional sparks. It was safe to remove the mask from his eyes.

  When the locks had opened for him, there were first of all stares, and then cries, as the farmboys on duty swarmed about him.

  "Jumping Jupiter, it's Williams!"

  "Where've you been, boy?"

  "What happened?"

  And above the confused cries and simultaneous questioning there came the shrill cry, "How did you get through the dust storm?"

  The question penetrated, and there was a short silence.

  Someone said, "Look at his face. It's like a peeled tomato."

  That was an exaggeration, but there was enough truth to it to impress all who were there. Hands were yanking at his collar which had been tightly bound about his neck in the fight against the Martian cold. They shuffled him into a seat and put in a call for Hennes.

  Hennes arrived in ten minutes, hopping off a scooter and approaching with a look that was compounded of annoyance and anger. There were no visible signs of any relief at the safe return of a man in his employ.

  He barked, "What's this all about, Williams?"

  David lifted his eyes and said coolly, "I was lost."

  "Oh, is that what you call it? Gone for two days and you were just lost. How did you manage it?"

  "I thought I'd take a walk and I walked too far."

  "You thought you needed a breath of air, so you've been walking through two Martian nights? Do you expect me to believe that?"

  "Are any sand-cars missing?"

  One of the farmboys interposed hastily as Hennes reddened further. "He's knocked out, Mr. Hennes. He was out in the dust storm."

  Hennes said, "Don't be a fool. If he were out in the dust storm, he wouldn't be sitting here alive."

  "Well, I know," the farmboy said, "but look at Mm."

  Hennes looked at him. The redness of his exposed neck and shoulders was a fact that could not be easily argued away.

  He said, "Were you in the storm?"

  "I'm afraid so," said David.

  "How did you get through?"

  "There was a man," said David. "A man in smoke and light. The dust didn't bother him. He called himself the Space Ranger."

  The men were gathering close. Hennes turned on them furiously, his plump face working.

  "Get the Space out of here!" he yelled. "Back to your work. And you, Jonnitel, get a sand-car out here."

  It was nearly an hour before the hot bath he craved was allowed David. Hennes permitted no one else to approach him. Over and over again, as he paced the floor of his private office, he would stop in midstride, whirl in sudden fury, and demand of David, "What about this Space Ranger? Where did you meet him? What did he say? What did he do? What's this smoke and light you speak of?"

  To all of wliich David would only shake his head slightly and say, "I took a walk. I got lost. A man calling himself the Space Ranger brought me back."

  Hennes gave up eventually. The dome doctor took charge. David got his hot bath. His body was anointed with creams and injected with the proper hormones. He could not avoid the injection of Soporite as well. He was asleep almost before the needle was withdrawn.

  He woke to find himself between clean, cool sheets in the sick bay. The reddening of the skin had subsided considerably. They would be at him again, he knew, but he would have to fight them off but a little while longer.

  He was sure he had the answer to the food-poisoning mystery now; almost the whole answer. He needed only a missing piece or two, and, of course, legal proof.

  He heard the light footstep beyond the head of his bed and stiffened slightly. Was it going to begin again so soon? But it was only Benson who moved into his line of vision. Benson, with his plump lips pursed, his thin hair in disarray, his whole face a picture of worry. He carried something that looked like an old-fashioned clumsy gun.

  He said, "Williams, are you awake?"

  David said, "You see I am."

  Benson passed the back of his hand across a perspiring forehead. "They don't know I'm here. I shouldn't be, I suppose."

  "Why not?"

  "Hennes is convinced you're involved with this food poisoning. He's been raving to Makian and my- self about It. He claims you've been out somewhere and have nothing to say about it now other than ridiculous stories. Despite anything I can do, I'm afraid you're in terrible trouble."

  "Despite anything you can do? You don't believe Hennes's theory about my complicity in all this?"

  Benson leaned forward, and David could feel his breath warm on his face as he whispered, "No, I don't. I don't because I think your story is true. That's why I've come here. I must ask you about this creature you speak of, the one you claim was covered with smoke and light. Are you sure it wasn't a hallucination, Williams?"

  "I saw him," said David.

  "How do you know he was human? Did he speak English?"

  "He didn't speak, but he was shaped like a human." David's eyes fastened upon Benson. "Do you think it was a Martian?"

  "Ah"-Benson's lips drew back in a spasmodic smile-"you remember my theory. Yes, I think it was a Martian. Think, man, think! They're coming out in the open now and every piece of information may be vital. We have so little time."

  "Why so little time?" David raised himself to one elbow.

  "Of course you don't know what's happened since you've been gone, but frankly, Williams, we are all of us in despair now." He held up the gun-like affair in his hand and said bitterly, "Do you know what this is?"

  "I've seen you with it before."

  "It's my sampling harpoon; it's my own invention. I take it with me when I'm at the storage bins in the city. It shoots a little hollow pellet attached to it by a metal-mesh cord into a bin of, let us say, grain. At a certain time after shooting an opening appears in the front of the pellet long enough to allow the hollow within to become packed with grain. After that the pellet closes again. I drag it back and empty out the random sample it has accumulated. By varying the time after shooting in which the pellet opens, samples can be taken at various depths in the bin."

  David said, "That's ingenious, but why are you carrying it now?"

  "Because I'm wondering if I
oughtn't to throw it into the disposal unit after I leave you. It was my only weapon for fighting the poisoners. It has done me no good so far, and can certainly do me no good In the future."

  "What has happened?" David seized the other's shoulder and gripped it hard. "Tell me."

  Benson winced at the pain. He said, "Every member of the farming syndicates has received a new letter from whoever is behind the poisoning. There's no doubt that the letters and the poisonings are caused by the same men, or rather, entities. The letters admit it now."

  "What do they say?"

  Benson shrugged. "What difference do the details make? What it amounts to is a demand for complete surrender on our part or the food-poisoning attacks will be multiplied a thousandfold. I believe it can and will be done, and if that happens, Earth and Mars, the whole system, in fact, will panic."

  He rose to Ms feet. ''I've told Makian and Hennes that I believe you, that your Space Ranger is the clue to the whole thing, but they won't believe me. Hennes, 1 think, even suspects that I'm in it with you."

  He seemed absorbed in his own wrongs. David said, "How long do we have Benson?"

  "Two days. No, that was yesterday. We have thirty-six hours now."

  Thirty-six hours!

  David would have to work quickly. Very quickly. But maybe there would yet be time. Without knowing it Benson had given him the missing piece to the mystery.

  13. The Council Takes Over

  He said, "I don't want Hennes catching me. We've had-words."

  "What about Makian? He's on our side, isn't he?"

  "I don't know. He stands to be ruined by day after tomorrow. I don't think he has enough spine left to stand up to the fellow. Look, I'd better go. If you think of anything, anything at all, get it to me somehow, will you?"

  He held out a hand. David took it briefly, and then Benson was gone.

  David sat up in bed. His own uneasiness had grown since he had awakened. His clothes were thrown over a chair at the other end of the room. His boots stood upright by the side of the bed. He had not dared inspect them in Benson's presence; had scarcely dared look at them.

  Perhaps, he thought pessimistically, they had not tampered with them. A farmboy's hip boots are inviolate. Stealing from a farmboy's hip boots, next to stealing his sand-car in the open desert, was the unforgivable crime. Even in death, a farmboy's boots were buried with him, with the contents unremoved.

  David groped inside the inner pocket of each boot in turn, and his fingers met nothingness. There had been a handkerchief in one, a few odd coins in the other. Undoubtedly they had gone through his clothing; he had expected that. But apparently they had not drawn the line at his boots. He held his breath as his arm dived into the recesses of one boot. The soft leather reached to his armpit and crumpled down as Ms fingers stretched out to the toes. A surge of pure gladness filled him as he felt the soft gauze-like material of the Martian mask.

  He had hidden it there on general principles before the bath, but he had not anticipated the Soporite. It was luck, purely, that they had not searched the toes of his boots. He would have to be more careful henceforward.

  He put the mask into a boot pocket and clipped it shut. He picked up the boots; they had been polished while he slept, which was good of someone, and showed the almost instinctive respect which the farm-boy had for boots, anyone's boots.

  His clothes had been put through the Refresher Spray as well. The shining plastic fibers of which they were composed had a brand-new smell about them. The pockets were all empty, of course, but underneath the chair all the contents were in a careless heap. He sorted them out. Nothing seemed to be missing. Even the handkerchief and coins from his boot pockets were there.

  He put on underclothes and socks, the one-piece overall, and then the boots. He was buckling his belt when a brown-bearded farmboy stepped in.

  David looked up. He said coldly, "What do you want, Zukis?"

  The farmboy said, "Where do you think you're going, Earthie?" His little eyes were glaring viciously, and to David the other's expression was much the same as it had been the first day he had laid eyes on him. David could recall Hennes's sand-car outside the Farm Employment Office, himself just settling into the seat, and the bearded angry face glowering at him, while a weapon fired before he could move to defend himself.

  "Nowhere," said David, "that I need ask your permission."

  "That so? You're wrong, mister, because you're staying right here. Hennes's orders." Zukis blocked the door with his body. Two blasters were conspicuously displayed at either side of his drooping belt.

  Zukis waited. Then, his greasy beard splitting in two as he smiled yellowly, he said, "Think maybe you've changed your mind, Earthie?"

  "Maybe," said David. He added, "Someone got in to see me just now. How come? Weren't you watching?"

  "Shut up," snarled Zukis.

  "Or were you paid off to look the other way for a while? Hennes might not like that."

  Zukis spat, missing David's boots by half an inch.

  David said, "You want to toss out your blasters and try that again?"

  Zukis said, "Just watch out if you want any feeding, Earthie."

  He closed and locked the door behind him as he left. A few minutes passed and there was the sound of clattering metal against it as it opened again. Zukis carried a tray. There was the yellow of squash on it and the green of something leafy.

  "Vegetable salad," said Zukis. "Good enough for you."

  A blackened thumb showed over one end of the tray. The other end balanced upon the back of his wrist so that the farmboy's hand was not visible.

  David straightened, leaping to one side, bending his legs under him and bringing them down upon the mattress of the bed. Zukis, caught by surprise, turned in alarm, but David, using the springs of the mattress as extra leverage, launched into the air.

  He collided heavily with the farmboy, brought down one hand flatly on the tray, ripping it out of the other's grasp and hurling it to the ground while twining his other hand in the farmboy's beard.

  Zukis dropped, yelling hoarsely. David's booted foot came down on the farmboy's hand, the one that had been hidden under the tray. The other's yell be came an agonized scream as the smashed fingers flew open, releasing the cocked blaster they had been holding.

  David's hand whipped away from the beard and caught the other's unharmed wrist as it groped for the second blaster. He brought it up roughly, across the prone chest, under the head and out again. He pulled.

  "Quiet," he said, "or I'll tear your arm loose from its socket."

  Zukis subsided, his eyes rolling, his breath puffing out wetly. He said, "What are you after?"

  "Why were you hiding the blaster under the tray?"

  "I had to protect myself, didn't I? In case you jumped me while my hands were full of tray?"

  "Then why didn't you send someone else with the tray and cover him?"

  "I didn't think of that," whined Zukis.

  David tightened pressure a bit and Zukis's mouth twisted in agony. "Suppose you tell the truth, Zukis."

  "I-I was going to kill you."

  "And what would you have told Makian?" '

  "You were-trying to escape."

  "Was that your own idea?"

  "No. It was Hennes's. Get Hennes. I'm just following orders."

  David released him. He picked up one blaster and flicked the other out of its holster. "Get up."

  Zukis rolled over on one side. He groaned as he tried to lift his weight on a mashed right hand and nearly torn left shoulder.

  "What are you going to do? You wouldn't shoot an unarmed man, would you?"

  "Wouldn't you?" asked David.

  A new voice broke in. "Drop those guns, Williams," It said crisply.

  David moved Ms head quickly. Hennes was in the doorway, blaster leveled. Behind him was Makian, face gray and etched with lines. Hennes's eyes showed his intentions plainly enough and his blaster was ready.

  David dropped the blasters he
had just torn from Zukis.

  "Kick them over," said Hermes.

  David did so.

  "Now. What happened?"

  David said, "You know what happened. Zukis tried a little assassination at your orders and I didn't sit still and take it."

  Zukis was gabbling. "No, sir, Mr. Hennes. No, sir. It was no such thing. I was bringing in his lunch when he jumped me. My hands were full of tray; I had no chance to defend myself."

  "Shut up," said Hennes contemptuously. "We'll have a talk about that later. Get out of here and be back with a couple of pinions in less than no time."

  Zukis scrambled out.

  Makian said mildly, "Why the pinions, Hennes?"

  "Because this man is a dangerous impostor, Mr. Makian. You remember I brought him in because he seemed to know something about the food poisoning."

  "Yes. Yes, of course."

  "He told us a story about a younger sister being poisoned by Martian jam, remember? I checked on that. There haven't been too many deaths by poisoning that have reached the authorities the way this man claimed his sister's death had. Less than two hundred and fifty, in fact. It was easy to check them all and I had that done. None on record involved a twelve-year-old girl, with a brother of Williams' age, who died over a jar of jam."

  Makian was startled. "How long have you known this, Hennes?"

  "Almost since he came here. But I let it go. I wanted to see what he was after. I set Griswold to watching him____________________ ''

  "To trying to kill me, you mean," interrupted David.

  "Yes, you would say that, considering that you killed him because he was fool enough to let you suspect him." He turned back to Makian. "Then he managed to wiggle himself in with that soft-headed sap, Benson, where he could keep close check on our progress in investigating the poisoning. Then, as the last straw, he slipped out of the dome three nights ago for a reason he won't explain. You want to know why? He was reporting to the men who hired him-the ones who are behind all this. It's more than just a coincidence that the ultimatum came while he was gone."