I almost turned and ran rather than be caught there, but I feared disaster. I ran to the end of the short corridor, into the central dome. You have a good idea of what I found, I think: those horrible bright spotlights on Morland, where he lay in his blood. And the bare cushion where the Martian plaque had rested only moments before.
Had the orange man seen me following him? I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now. Did the orange man know who I was? I didn’t know then, but now I fear the answer is yes. Did the orange man know I had recovered the weapon that incriminated me? I didn’t know–I didn’t even know if he knew the gun was mine.
I cautiously made my way back to the hotel. I put the pistol where you found it, took off my pressure suit, and later had what I hoped seemed like a relaxed nightcap in the lounge. It was a terrible alibi, no alibi at all. I could easily have been placed at the scene of the crime. But paradoxically I was not worried about that, for I had had time to consider that the taking of the Martian plaque was much too important to be left to the local patrollers or even the local Space Board detachment. Someone would be sent from Earth Central.
It was that person I wanted to see, and anything that pointed the finger at me–the lack of an alibi, for example–would get me to that person sooner.
Two weeks passed, filled with the bumbling inquiries of the locals. They searched this office, but never suspected this hiding place you have found so easily. I did my best to appear guilty.
Now the precaution is necessary. You have been gone for days. If I don’t speak to you within the next few hours, I fear it will be too late. I saw the orange man again today, caught a fleeting glimpse of him in a crowd of tourists at the shuttleport terminal.
One last thing. We have an acquaintance in common, you and I. You know him as your commander, your superior in the Board of Space Control. He is more than that, but I will leave the rest for him to tell, if he chooses. If necessary, I would like to be remembered to him.
Sparta pocketed the chip when it popped from the computer. She looked at Prott’s target pistol, still in its hiding hole. Prott’s apt description had confirmed the evidence of her senses, the evidence she had not wanted to accept.
The orange man
. The fussy, dapper, deadly little orange man.
And now she could sort out that faint and menacing presence, separate it even from the overwhelming odor of blood in the air. It was
his
smell, and to Sparta it was primal–as indelible and menacing as the smell of a dire wolf to a caveman.
Years ago, Sparta, disabled because her working memory had deliberately been destroyed, had been a patient in a sanatorium in Colorado. The orange man had come there to kill her. A doctor had died trying to save her. Three years before that, she had seen the orange man with her father and mother in Manhattan–the last time she could remember having seen either of her parents alive. But her subconscious told her there was more that it had to give up in memory, if only she could free it.
She walked a sleepy Polanyi and two of the local patrollers around Prott’s office, rehearsing the evidence with them. They bent and peered at the unfortunate hotel manager’s body; thereafter, while one of them photogrammed the dead man from every possible angle, the others stepped carefully around him.
She showed them the secret compartment with the pistol in it–it took only seconds on the computer terminal to establish that the gun was in fact registered to Prott–but she made no mention of the chip she’d found with it. She had an odd distaste for outright lies; without saying so, she let the lieutenant believe that Prott had conveyed his suspicions to her before their dinner appointment.
“I don’t know yet, Lieutenant,” Sparta said coolly. “I haven’t questioned the bartender in the Phoenix Lounge or any of the other potential witnesses. I should think you and your colleagues are competent to handle that.”
“We aren’t stupid, Inspector. Every route out of Labyrinth City has been under constant surveillance since the night of the murders. We’ve been particularly vigilant about traffic off the planet. If this socalled orange guy murdered Prott, I guarantee you he’s not getting off Mars.”
Blake was standing in a big steel shed, looking out a thick glass window at a raw dirt runway recently bulldozed from the sand and sprayed with polymer hardener. Out on the pad, ground crew in pressure suits were fueling a silver spaceplane, the
Kestrel
. Its swing-wings were extended and drooping; vapor billowed from the big hoses that pumped liquid hydrogen and oxygen into its booster tanks.
“We pulled in about three hours ago in the pitch dark. It’s light now. I’m out at the landing strip trying to cadge a lift out of here. They’ve got Khalid in the clinic for observation, but he’s in pretty good shape. You?”
“Lydia Zeromski sort of talked me into confessing.” He turned away from the window and the man who glanced at him curiously from behind the counter of the operations shed. “Apparently I wasn’t the first Mycroft–somebody in the local Space Board used this I.D. before, to play dirty tricks on the PWG.”
“Far be it from me to complain.” He looked around at the steel walls painted hospital green and white, at the torn charts and clipboards of yellow fax sheets hanging from nails. “The camp is a bit low on Taittinger at the moment, otherwise it’s a charming spa, rather like the Gulag Archipelago. Lacking only the scenic Siberian snow.”
“I’m sure the roughnecks around here would be delighted to see the last of me, no problem there. And Lydia’s my buddy now–she decided not to leave my bones to the wind–she’ll give me a ride back when she leaves in a couple of days. But there’s nothing out of here until then.”
“Khalid says he wants to stick around a while–he was headed this way anyway. They’re sending a marsplane for him next week. Marsplanes, after your experience . . . anyway, I was hoping to hitch a ride on Noble’s executive spaceplane.”
“Unfortunately my old friend’s been out of touch the last few months. I told the guys here at the field the whole truth, that I’m assisting the very important investigations of the very important Inspector Ellen Troy of the Board of Space Control, which even without Jack Noble to vouch for me makes me very important myself, and that I require immediate transportation to Labyrinth City.”
Blake looked at the two hairy characters behind the counter; the female was less friendly looking than the male. “They were, shall we say, amused. Something about the cost of liquid hydrogen. Maybe if you backed me up . . .”
She ignored his sarcasm. “Dewdney Morland was planning to steal the Martian plaque, with an accomplice. Morland was supposed to be the victim of an anonymous attacker–he was expecting to get drugged, probably. But instead his accomplice killed him.” Sparta briefly recited the contents of Prott’s chip, his identification and pursuit of the orange man. “Prott didn’t mention hearing any shots at all, just the alarm sounding. That’s when he ran into the hall and found Morland’s body, then Chin’s.”
“Yes. He was a brand-new sharpshooter. And when the orange man arrived, he had an extra murder on his hands and an unwanted murder weapon to dispose of. Morland must have told him the gun was Prott’s . . .”
“I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. He must have told Morland to sit down in front of the plaque’s display case, as if he were still studying it–he probably said he was going to knock him unconscious with Prott’s gun. But when Morland bent over the plaque, he killed him.”
“I don’t think so,” said Sparta. “I think he waited around for a couple of days, hoping Prott would be charged with the murders. When he realized that that part of the scheme had failed–that the local patrollers hadn’t found a murder weapon–it was too late: you and I were already on our way to Mars.”
“You
were on your way to Mars. Nobody knew about me,” Blake said. “And if you’re right, this guy knows who Inspector Ellen Troy really is.”
“What about it?” “Somebody stole a bunch of sounding rockets, penetrators. They couldn’t figure out what anyone would want with penetrators.”