Mars is My Destination, Frank Belknap Long [reading an ebook .TXT] 📗

frowning at his wife. "I did have a tough day and there's no sense in soft-pedaling it. Sometimes I almost wish we hadn't come to Mars. No matter how rigorous a Board screening is ... there are some things it can't tell you about yourself. Will you make a good father on a world without trees or grass, with no way of getting out into the green countryside and sitting down on the moss-covered bank of a trout stream, with your kid at your side and having a heart to heart talk with him in the cool shade of a big oak or cedar."

"The stew's good, Mom," Thomas said. "Is it all right if I fill up my plate again?"

"Did I ever say you couldn't, Thomas?" Grace Lynton snapped, unable to keep irritation out of her voice, despite her son's compliment. "There'll never be any food shortages in this house, if we have to sell all of the furniture."

"Leave enough for me, Thomas," Hedy Lynton said.

"Don't worry, I will," Thomas said. "But if you keep on eating the way you do you'll grow up fat, and no man in the Colony will marry a fat woman when there are so many thin ones."

"That's very well put, Thomas," Lynton said. "I have a brilliant son—practically a genius. But don't let it go to your head, boy. Unless you're in the electronic field or have some other technical specialty a straightforward, rugged he-man can do more for the Colony."

"What kind of talk is that, John?" Grace Lynton demanded. "There's nothing unmanly about a genius, in any field."

"No, I suppose not. But I wouldn't want him to be a poet or a painter. They just stand back and observe life and I'd like to see my son wade in fighting."

The daylight outside had started fading before Lynton and his wife had returned indoors. But now the quickly-arriving Mars' night was almost at hand, and the twilight had deepened outside and was giving way to complete darkness at the edge of the desert.

The two adults and four children seated about the table hadn't once glanced toward the window, for the food and contentious conversation had absorbed all of their attention.

It was Thomas who saw the light first, flickering on and off close to the shed. He had always wanted, deep down, in a secret way that he had never dared to discuss with anyone, to be an artist and paint at least a hundred pictures that would show the people who looked at them exactly what life on Mars was like. And his father's gaze, trained upon him in such a steady way, had made him squirm inwardly, as if his secret might at any moment be exposed. To avoid his father's gaze he'd looked straight out the window and seen the strange light flickering on and off.

"Dad!" he said.

"What is it, son?"

"There's a light moving around out in the yard, close to the shed."

If Thomas had suddenly toppled over dead his father could not have leapt up from the table with more horror in his eyes.

"Why ... why ... Good God! Wendel wouldn't go that far! It would be an act of madness!"

"John, you don't think—"

Thomas' mother was on her feet too now, her face drained of all color, her eyes darting to the window and back to the tight-lipped, violently trembling man at the head of the table. John Lynton's face had gone as white as her own.

For a minute Thomas thought that his father was going to rush right out into the yard and grab hold of the intruder, as fast as he'd leapt up from the table. Then he saw he'd guessed wrong about that.

Lynton crossed the room in five long strides, swung open the weapon locker and grabbed hold of a holstered hand-gun instead. He strapped the holster to his waist before whipping out the weapon and snapping off the safety mechanism.

He was starting for the door when Grace Lynton called out warningly: "John, don't! John!"

He swung about, staring at her in consternation. "Don't what? If they've tampered with those cylinders I'll make sure they won't live to blow up another man's home—or half the Colony!"

"You can't blast them down!" Her voice rose shrilly. "No, John! A hand-gun blast that close to a fuel cylinder would set off a chain reaction—"

"No, it won't. The blast is channeled. Don't be a fool, Grace. I know what I'm doing."

"You're the fool! You'll get us all killed!"

"If they've tampered with just one of those cylinders we won't have to worry about what a hand-gun blast will do. But they won't save their own skins before the big blast hits us. That's one thing I can make sure of."

He turned and was gone. She started to follow him out into the yard, but became aware of how dangerous that would be just in time. If she followed her husband the children would almost certainly follow her, for she couldn't order them to stay indoors and hope to be obeyed.

She rushed to the window and stared out, her face pressed to the pane.

She could feel Thomas pressing close to her—or was it Hedy or Susan? There was a heaviness in his body which made her almost sure it was Thomas. But that meant nothing, because she loved all of her children equally.

Suddenly she was sure it was Thomas, because he was speaking to her. "Take it easy, Mom! Dad'll take care of whoever it is. He's got a hand-gun to protect him."

"Oh, I know he has!" she wanted to scream. "It will be a beautiful way of protecting us all ... by sending us straight into eternity. God, dear God, don't let him blast. Don't—"

The blast came then, lighting up the darkness outside, making the windowpanes rattle. For an instant Grace Lynton could see her husband clearly, standing by the shed with a white flare spreading outward from his shoulders.

Then the flare dwindled and vanished and Grace Lynton had no way of knowing what had happened outside in the dark. She was sure of only one thing. She couldn't stay inside the house with her husband moving about a few feet from fuel cylinders that might blow up at any moment, for there was at least a fifty percent likelihood that the intruder had accomplished what he'd come to do, before Thomas had seen the light bobbing about in the yard.

She had straightened and was hugging her son to her, just starting to turn, when John Lynton's voice rang out sharply from the doorway.

"Grace! I blasted at him but he got away! Listen carefully. I've only a moment to talk."

He was standing in the doorway with the hand-gun reholstered at his waist, its handle gleaming dully. His pallor was startling, for it went far beyond mere paleness, as if all the blood had been drawn from his face artificially, leaving the skin gray and shrunken.

"I can't be sure, but I think ... one of the cylinders has been triggered to blow up," he went on quickly. "It isn't heating up. There'd be no heat—just a faint vibration. When I put my hand on the metal I was almost sure I could feel a vibration. We've got just one chance of staying alive—and I'll have to move fast. I'm going to take it to the Spaceport—I can get there in the conveyor truck in ten minutes—and have them dismantle it. They'll know how. I don't. I'll take all six of the cylinders, to make sure."

"John, no! It will blow up in the truck. I'm sure of it. We'd better all get out in the desert, as far away from it as we can. If we start right now and run—"

"We could go in the truck, Dad!" Thomas cried.

Lynton shook his head. "If just one cylinder blows up—it will take three miles of desert with it. If all six go ... twenty miles of desert. There are at least six thousand Colonists within three or four miles of us. There are less than a thousand people at the Spaceport. Only one big sky ship is still unloading. Better a thousand deaths than six or seven thousand ... if it blows up before they can dismantle it."

"But John—Oh, God, I don't know."

"It's the best way, the surest way. We can't think only of ourselves. If I drove straight out into the desert with it and it blows up within twenty minutes the fallout would still kill several thousand Colonists. The Spaceport's in the other direction, completely isolated. And I can get there in fifteen minutes ... even if I'm stopped by the Wendel police and have to blast my way to it."

"Why should they try to stop you? They'd die themselves—"

"Why did they send someone to trigger that bomb? They'll take any risk now, because they know that Endicott's new bluff could smash them. That cylinder is smaller than the first atomic bomb ever built—much smaller than the one that was dropped on Hiroshima—and if they have to explode a half-dozen of them in different parts of the Colony to demoralize the Colonists and discredit Endicott they're prepared to do it, apparently. Even if it kills thirty thousand people. Or maybe they figured the one I'm taking to the Spaceport—and I am taking it there, Grace—would make the Colonists think twice about taking any more Endicott fuel cylinders home with them."

"You're right, John," Grace Lynton said, with a firmness in her voice which surprised her. "We can't think only of ourselves. Until you come back—every moment will be a living death. But—you must do it. There's no other way."

"I'll be back," Lynton said. "I—I love you, Grace."

"And I love you, John—even though I've said cruel, cutting things at times. I love you very much."

"Take care of yourself, Dad," Thomas said.

"I will, son. Don't worry. Just be the man of the family and keep the kids in line until I get back."

13

I had no way of knowing how long I remained on the outer fringes of what was probably just a weakness-produced blackout before the outlines of the hospital room wavered back, becoming so clear again that I could see the foot of the bed, and a glass-topped table covered with small bottles and a roll of gauze bandage that looked about as big as a liquid fuel cylinder.

Someone who couldn't have been the doctor was sitting in a chair by the bed, leaning a little forward, his eyes level with mine. I was more than startled. An ice-cold measuring worm came out at the base of my spine and started inching its way upward, bunching itself up and lengthening out again, the way measuring worms do when they're trying to decide if you're just the right fit for a human-style coffin.

I had a visitor whose face would have chilled a perfectly well man prepared to defend himself against violence at the drop of a hat. He was looking at me with a glacial animosity in his stare, as if he resented the fact that I was still alive and would do something about it if I gave him the slightest encouragement.

Even without encouragement I had the feeling that my life hung by a thread which could snap at any moment, so long as he remained that close to me with no one standing by to interfere if he lost control of himself.

He didn't have a moronic or particularly brutal looking face. Intelligence of a high order had given his features a cast you couldn't mistake. It was the kind of look that went with disciplined thinking—long years of it—and behavior that was based on intellectual discernment, however much that discernment had been abused during moments of uncontrollable rage. Uncontrollable rage, as every psychologist knows, can tie the reasoning part of any man's mind into knots. Everything that was primitive in him seemed to be at the helm now, as if he bore me so much ill-will that he might be capable of trying to take my life with just his bare hands, if he happened to be unarmed. And I was far from sure of that.

His glacial gray eyes seemed to say: "I've got you exactly where I want you, chum. It won't do you any good to shout for help. It stands to reason that if I could get in here to talk to you at a time like this, throwing my weight around a little further would be no problem at all. Five minutes of privacy will suit me fine. After all, how long will killing you take?"

He was a fairly big man, compactly built, with hands that looked strong enough to bend a steel bar, if he didn't mind chancing a rush of blood to the head that might have been a little risky in a man his age.

I had no idea