Part 1 (1/2)
The Martian Cabal.
by Roman Frederick Starzl.
CHAPTER I
_Strange Intruder_
Sime Hemingway did not sleep well his first night on Mars. There was no tangible reason why he shouldn't. His bed was soft. He had dined sumptuously, for this hotel's cuisine offered not only Martian delicacies, but drew on Earth and Venus as well.
Yet Sime did not sleep well. He tossed restlessly in the caressing softness of his bed. He turned a k.n.o.b in the head panel of his bed, tried to yield to the soothing music that seemed to come from nowhere.
He turned another k.n.o.b, watched the marching, playing, whirling of somnolent colors on the domed ceiling of his room.
At last he gave it up. Some sixth sense had him all jumpy. It was not usual for Sime Hemingway to be jumpy. He was one of the coolest heads in the I. F. P., the Interplanetary Flying Police who patrolled the lonely reaches of s.p.a.ce and brought man's law to the outermost orbit of the far-flung solar system.
Now he jumped out of bed and examined the fastening of his door, the door to the hotel corridor. There was only one, and it was secure.
Windows there were none, and investigation showed that the small ports were all covered with their pivoted safety plates. He extinguished the light, swung aside one of the plates, and peered out into the Martian night. It was moonlight--both Deimos and Phobos were racing across the blue-black sky. The waters of Crystal Ca.n.a.l stretched out before him, seemingly illimitable. Sime knew that the distance to the other side was twenty miles or more. Clear-cut through the thin atmosphere of Mars, he could see the jeweled lights of South Tarog, on the other side.
The hotel grounds, too, were well lighted. Long, luminous tubes, part of the architecture of the buildings, aided the moons, shedding their serene glow on the gentle slope of the red lawns and terraces, the geometrically trimmed shrubs and trees. They were reflected warmly in the dancing waves of the ca.n.a.l, though Sime knew that even in this, the height of the summer season, the outside temperature was very near freezing.
Now a hotel guard came along. He carried at his belt a neuro-pistol, a deadly weapon whose beam would destroy the nervous structure of any living creature. He went past the port with measured stride, and Sime slid back the safety plate with a puzzled frown.
Why was he so nervous? This wasn't the first dangerous mission on which he had embarked in the course of his official duty. And danger was the element that gave zest to his life.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Clinging like leeches to the wall, the two men resisted the warped gravitational drag.]
He began a methodical examination of his room, peering under the bed, into closets, a wardrobe. Yet there was no sign of danger. Carefully he inspected his bed for signs of the deadly black mold from Venus that would, once it found lodgment in the pores of a man's skin, inexorably invade his body and in the s.p.a.ce of a few hours reduce him to a black, repulsive parody of humanity. But the sheets were unsullied.
Then his gaze fell on the mist-bath. Travelers who have visited Mars are, of course, familiar with this simple device, used to overcome to some extent the exceeding dryness of the red planet's atmosphere.
Resembling the steam bath of the ancients, there was just enough room in the cylindrical case for a man to sit inside while his skin was sprayed with vivifying moisture. But his head would project, and there was no head visible.
Nevertheless, so strong was Sime's intuition, he leveled his neuro-pistol at the cabinet and approached. With a sweep of his muscular arm he swung it open--and gasped!
The sight that greeted him was enough to make any man gasp, even one less young and impressionable than Sime. In all of his twenty-five years he had not seen a woman so lovely. Her complexion was the delicate coral pink of the Martian colonials--descendants of the original human settlers who had struggled with, and at last bent to their will, this harsh and inhospitable planet. She was little over five feet tall, although the average Martian is perhaps slightly bigger than his terrestrial cousin. Her hair was dark, like that of most Martians, drawn back from her forehead and fastened at the nape of her neck, from there to fall in an abundant, rippling cascade down her slim, straight back. Her figure was like those delicate and ancient creations of Dresden china to be seen in museums, but elastic, and full of strength. She was dressed in the two-piece garment universally worn by both s.e.xes on Mars--a garment, so historians say, that was called ”pyjamas” by our forebears.
And she was defiant. In her hand was a stiletto with long, slim blade.
Sime made a darting grasp for her wrist and wrung the weapon from her.
It fell to the metal floor with a tinkling clatter.
”And now tell me, young lady, what's the meaning of this?”
Suddenly she smiled.
”I came to warn you, Sime Hemingway.” She spoke softly and sweetly, and with effortless dignity.
”You came to warn me?”