Jack Sharkey

“ 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. ”

“ I saw the little curls of sheared-off wax falling down the face of the wall to the floor of the tunnel.
I handed the lipstick back to a bewildered Snow.
"Just as I thought," I said. "That, honey, is the rock known as parabolite. The toughest, most impervious substance in the solar system. Nothing marks it, scratches it, or even budges it. We couldn't get past here with an intercontinental size collapser!"
"But Jery, look!" Snow cried, pointing at the wall. I looked. The flat wall of parabolite, the impervious mineral, was going slowly concave in the center. ”

“ I rather judged that that four-inch crystalline dagger came in handy during a fight.
Clatclit made a gesture with both hands, and clacked something at me. His attitude and inflection were unmistakeable.
I gave him the Earth equivalent of the gesture, raising my right hand in a sort of lazy wave. "Hello, yourself," I said. "Snow seems to be having trouble communicating with you."
Clatclit nodded, and seated himself on that stool.
"What's this about her brother Ted?" I went on. "She asked if you knew where he was, and got a yes-no answer." ”

“ 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. ”

“ I had a metal disk—bronze and red, the Security colors—insigniaed by Baxter and counterembossed with the President's special device, a small globe surmounted by clasping hands. It gave me authority to do anything. With such an identification disc, I could go to Times Square and start machine gunning the passers-by, and not one of New York's finest would raise a hand to stop me.
And, snugly enholstered, I carried a collapser, the restricted weapon given only to Security Agents, so deadly was its molecule-disrupting beam. ”

“ I reiterated.
"You are gifted to see true," said the Martian. "Your mind apprehends concepts where it has previously expected to find none. You relate what you see, and correctly. As in the case of your deriving so much information from your conversation with Clatclit. Another man would not have succeeded in that."
I shook my head, confused. "But I—I see you!"
"No, Jery Delvin. Your mind sees me. Your eyes alone could not possibly view me since I am never entirely here to be viewed. Your eyes see one part of me, then another, then another and another. ”

“ My feet might find me a quick shortcut to the center of the planet, in that treacherous gloom.
Sugarfeet, I decided, could either see in the dark, or else they carried a handful of that white-glowing fungus with them when they went for a stroll.
I went back to the cot, and sat down to wait for Clatclit's appearance, passing the time by struggling back into my durex boots. I felt a bit more competent, once trousered and shod, than I had felt while lying beneath that coverlet in my shorts. A man without his pants is only half a man, somehow. ”

“ The sugarfoot released me, and I fell to the street panting. I managed to lift my head, and look back toward where my pursuers had been. They were gone.
I raised myself on my hands, and looked up into the scaly face of my rescuer, wary and alert. But the sugarfoot had lowered the collapser, and wasn't menacing me with it.
"Why did you kill those men?" I asked, bewildered.
It flickered out a horrible-looking tongue that resembled a segment of hollow rubber tubing, and made some clacking noises. I shook my head. The thing ceased making noises, and tried sign language instead. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As I trailed Clatclit up the wearisome slope that was taking us to the surface, I did some heavy thinking. The Ancients, before Earthmen first landed on Mars, probably had wandered about the planet freely, on the surface, living in their dwellings of parabolite, using their artifacts of the same impervious mineral. Then Earth, that paradoxically peace-loving and war-making planet, lands colonists. The Ancients, just from plain discretion, hide themselves and observe these unwelcome newcomers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What Baxter proposes to do is to break our liaison, thus confining us to our own dimension forever.
"He proposes to do this by detonating a segment of our physical universe, one which coexists with yours. This will produce only the slightest of jolts in our world, but the balance between the two universes is so delicate that even this minor tremor will move us—by moving our contact-material—out of alignment. And we, since we exist in Location, cannot then move ourselves back." ”

“ Snow got to her feet, apprehensive.
"It's all right," I said. "Remember. So far, they want me alive. I don't have to worry unless they think up a scheme that doesn't need me."
"No, Jery, I'm coming with you!" she said, clutching my arm. Those smooth little fingers bit in like dull teeth. She must have been better at sports than her pupil, Ted.
"Snow, the way I see it, this is going to be dangerous."
Her fists went to her hips. "And by what omniscience are you certain that I'll be safe back here?" she queried.
She had me there. The sugarfeet were being buddies at the moment. ”

“ 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 deflection, but by reflection."
"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." ”

“ I muttered.
"Hardly," the Martian said, unperturbed. "Since physical contact between our two dimensions is impossible."
"It is?" I said, surprised.
"Of course!" the Martian snapped. "If it were not, we'd have destroyed Baxter ourselves."
"Why didn't you use the sugarfeet?" I asked, bewildered. "Clatclit seems to have shown no ineptness in disintegrating other Earthmen."
"For the simple reason," said the Martian, with cold anger, "that on your wretchedly humid planet, a sugarfoot would be corroded to death before it could locate him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One, Baxter didn't have the Amnesty; Snow did! Probably in that catch-all handbag of hers. Two, if the Ancients could float me and Snow and the Space Scouts about like so much helium, why the hell didn't they just de-localize Baxter into a snake pit or something? And three, if physical contact was impossible between the races, how in heaven's name did they gimmick the Brain back on Earth? Which was also, come to think of it, moving awfully fast in relation to their liaison-point with the geocentric point of the universe! ”

“ The other boys had come up to the bars, now, all of them looking at Snow with longing, as the next best thing to a human-type mother.
"Oh, you poor kids," Snow sobbed suddenly. "Have they been feeding you? When did you last wash your face, Ted?"
"They don't feed us at all!" Ted said sorrowfully. "It's been weeks now since we ran out of candy, and—"
"Jery Delvin!" the Martian's voice interrupted imperiously. "Before that look on your woman's face erupts into some more of her tiresome vituperation, will you explain to her what a metabolic stasis is?" ”

“ Hell, everything! The machine took the factors, weighed them, popped them through its billions of relays and tubes, and out of the end of the answer slot popped a single sheet. The one you just saw. Your dossier."
"Then I'm to be sent to Mars?" I said, nervously.
"That's just it," Baxter sighed. "We don't even know that! We're like a savage who finds a pistol: used correctly, it's a mean little weapon; pointed the wrong way, it's a quick suicide. So, you are our weapon. Now, the question is: Which way do we point you?" ”

“ It took us an hour to locate Baxter. Clatclit showed no signs of surprise when I did not go to the ticket office and book a passage for Earth. Apparently, not being in on the finer points of the Ancients' scheme, he found no wild incongruity in my being brought all the way from Earth to obliterate a man who could just as easily have been dispatched by a sugarfoot. Or else, through some extrasensory awareness, something born of our friendship, he knew that imparting the location of Baxter to the Ancients might well mean my death. ”

“ The pilot, as per my videophoned request, was waiting there for me. I saw him as I stepped into the cool shadows of the building from the hot yellow sunlight outside. He was tall, much taller than I, but he seemed nervous as hell. At least he was pacing back and forth amid a litter of half-smoked cigarette butts beside the gleaming tailfins of the spaceship, and a fuming butt was puckered into place in his mouth.
"Anders?" I said, approaching to within five feet of him before halting, to get the best psychological effect from my appearance. ”