Manly Wade Wellman - Chapbook 02 (6 page)

 
          
The
rest was momentarily drowned by a chorus of cries. Everyone had heard of
Malbrook. Then silence again.

 
          
“—but
the murderer escaped,” Congreve was informing whatever worlds might hear.
“Every officer is searching for him, and a reward of twenty thousand
value-units is being offered by Mr. Gillan Fielding, partner of the murdered
man, for any information leading to the capture of—”

 
          
“Twenty thou!”
ejaculated a man near Stover. “I’d like to
pick that up. I’d open a dive like this myself.”

 
          
“Not
me,” chimed in someone else. “I’d try to buy into the water monopoly run by the
Malbrook-Fielding combine. That’s where the dough is on Mars. Every year the
rates get higher and the demand bigger. Twenty thousand units, invested now—”

 
          
“Listen
to the description,” growled a man tersely.

 
          
“—twenty-three
years old, very large and strong,” Congreve was saying.
“Six-feet-three,
Earth measurement.
Terrestrial weight, about two
hundred pounds.
Martian weight, about eighty.
Smooth-shaven, blond hair, strong features. Well educated, a scientist,
pleasing personality.
Escaped in clothes stolen from police.”

 
          
“He
sounds like a television hero,” breathed a girl in the crowd.

 
          
“To
supplement this description, I will exhibit a late photograph of Dillon Stover,
accused of the murder of Mace Malbrook.”

 
          
Congreve’s
hand rose into view, with a rectangular piece of board. The vision-screen
concentrated upon it, making it larger and clearer until it filled the entire
screen, showing a vivid color-photo, taken three days before. Stover showed
erect, tall, smiling and carefree. He was wearing his golden costume, which
seemed doubly bright on the screen. The girl who had spoken before now gave
vent to a whistle as of admiration.

 
          
“What
a prince!” she cried.

 
          
Congreve’s
face returned. “I thank you,” he said. The screen darkened, and the music
resumed.

 
         
AT
ONCE a hubbub of chatter broke out. People of the middle- class section of
Pulambar were far noisier and more easily entertained than the bored
sophisticates of the High-tower Set. Stover steadied his hands, completing the
deal.

 
          
“Play
cards,” he said.

 
          
The
man beside him looked at him sharply. “You know, stranger, to judge from that
description, you might be the guy they’re after.”

 
          
“I
was thinking the same thing,” nodded Stover. “I’m about that size and age, and
blond. Maybe I ought to turn myself in for the reward. Who wants cards on
second deal?”

 
          
“But
the picture killed it,” went on the man beside him. “That bird in gold wasn't
anything like you.”

           
“Personally, I thought he looked
like a sissy,” grunted Stover.

           
He lost the next hand, cashed in and
casually left the table. The brief interlude of play had helped to calm and
encourage him. He was free and lost from pursuit, with a plan of campaign
beginning to form. He went toward the door.

 
          
“Wait,
big man,” said a clear voice behind him. It was the girl who had admired his
photograph on the vision screen. She was compact but comely, with red-dyed hair
and a flashing smile. “Where are you going?” “Your way,” replied Stover
promptly, feeling that a girl on his arm would be additional disguise.

 
          
They
went out together, approaching a series of doors that were marked ELEVATORS,
but she drew him away.

 
          
“Come
along,” she said. “I know an express that will drop us straight to the canal
level.”

 
          
“Just
what I want,” said Stover quite truthfully, and let her lead him along a
side-corridor. At the end was a metal door. “What’s your name?” he asked her,
to make conversation.

 
          
“Call
me Gerda,” she said. “Enter. And what shall I call you?”

 
          
“Parker,”
he improvised. They came into a small, messy-walled room with one barred window
and a telephone in a niche. “Here, Gerda, where’s the elevator? And don’t dig
your elbow into me like that.”

 
          
She
laughed. “There’s no elevator, and this isn’t my elbow. It’s a gun.” He sprang
away, and the weapon rose in her hand, a vicious electro- automatic. She
handled it with a forbidding ease. Her other hand slipped shut the catch on the
door.

 
          
“Don’t
try anything suicidal,” she bade him. “You’re my prisoner, Dillon Stover. That
fake dumb stare won’t help. I’ve seen several photos of you besides that one on
the televiso, and I had you spotted as soon as you walked into the game-dive.”

 
          
“You
were sent after me?” demanded Stover, giving up the farce.

 
          
“A
regiment of us were. We knew you hadn’t gone far. It was my luck to run across
you.”

 
          
“Congratulations,”
said Stover. “But the police will be more flattering than I.”

 
          
The
girl who called herself Gerda shook her red-dyed head. “Congratulations are
nice
..
But I know someone who will pay for you with
something besides congratulations and twenty thousand value-units.”

 
          
“Who?”
snapped Stover, for he knew she meant the murderer.

 
          
“You’ll
see soon enough,” she told him with one of her bright smiles, and put her free
hand on the telephone.

 
          
“Wait,”
he begged. “You speak of cash. More than the twenty thousand value-units the
police offer.
How much more?”

 
          
“Oh,”
said Gerda, her eyes wise above the leveled gun. “At least half as much again.”

 
          
“I’ll
double it,” said Stover, and she drew her hand back from the telephone. “May I
take the money from my belt-pouch?”

 
         
SHE
nodded permission, and he produced his notes. With what he had won at
indemnity, he had a little more than the forty thousand he had offered.
Counting off the surplus, he folded it and began to return it to his pouch.

 
          
“Wait,”
said Gerda greedily. “I’ll take the whole thing.”

 
          
Stover
reluctantly surrendered all his money. She took
it,
thrust it into her own pouch. Then without lowering her gun, she caught his
outstretched left hand in hers. A quick movement and she had snapped something
on his wrist.

 
          
“Bracelet,”
she said.
“Police bracelet.
Isn’t it pretty?”

 
          
Stover
lifted his arm, staring at the thing. It was a plain circlet of nickeled steel,
with a hinge and a lock. It bore a spherical device with a dial. From that
sphere came a soft whirring sound.

 
          
“What’s
it for?” demanded Stover, angrily.

 
          
Gerda
chuckled above her gun.

 
          
“Police
bracelet,” she said again. “It has a radio apparatus tuned to the waves of
police headquarters. You don’t feel anything now, but if you go, say, ten miles
from here, your whole body will vibrate to the amplified waves, as though you
were being subjected to a heavy rush of current. The farther you go, the more
drastic and painful the effect. Fifty miles away, you’d be done for—your
nervous system tortured to death.”

 
          
She
picked up the telephone and called a number.

 
          
“This
is Gerda,” she said into the transmitter. “You know—police undercover detail. I
have somebody you’re interested in.”

 
          
“You’re
taking my money and now you're selling me to the police!” cried Stover in
sudden comprehension. Gerda merely smiled at him.

           
“Wait,” she said into the
instrument, and then to Stover: “Not to the police. To somebody who will pay
more. I only put the bracelet on to prevent any accident. Try to get away from
me, and you’ll not get far. Now, stand easy—I haven’t finished phoning.”

 
          
She
turned back to the instrument. “You heard his voice,” she cooed into the phone.
“Is your price still offered? Then come at once to —” Stover made a frenzied
leap. An electro-automatic pellet zipped its way through his tousled hair even
as he twisted the weapon away. Tucking Gerda’s struggling body under one arm,
he seized the telephone.

 
          
“This
is Stover,” he grated into it. “While this she-rat of yours bragged, I jumped
her and took her gun away. I’ll get you next. Who is this?”

 
          
A gasp over the wire.
That was all. “Then I’ll come and get
you without any help. You killed Malbrook, didn’t you? You want to kill me
before the law learns I’m innocent, don’t you? But it won’t work! Don’t count
your Dillon Stovers before they’re dead and buried. Good-by until we meet for
the showdown!”

 
          
He
hung up, thrusting the captured gun into his tunic. Despite Gerda’s frantic
resistance, he coolly repossessed the money she had taken from him. Finally he
bound her hands with her own belt and gagged her with a strip torn from her
skirt. She glared above the gag.

 
          
“Good-by,
my bewitching little doublecrosser,” he bade her. “Stick to stool-pigeoning.
The police will back you—if they don’t catch you cheating. I’m going to catch
the blundering killer you tried to sell me to.”

 
          
“You’ll
never get away,” she raged, managing to spit out through the gag. “That
bracelet will bring you crawling back here.”

 
          
“I
won’t wear it long,” he said grimly. “It looks smashable.”

 
          
“Try
to cut or smash it,” she dared. “There’ll be an explosion that will tear your
arm off at the shoulder. You’ll not live through that. I’ll be seeing you soon,
big man—seeing you on your knees!”

 
          
“Don’t
hold your breath until then,” he answered curtly.

 
          
Unfastening
the door, he left, went down the hall and came to a corridor which led to an
exit. Moored there was a speedy-looking rocket flyer. He sprang in, turned on
the power, and sailed up and away.

 
         
LIKE
most young men of his day, Dillon Stover understood very well the workings of
rocket craft. This purloined one-seater was not the newest model, but it was
serviceable. He felt sudden elation. Nobody knew his jumping-off place save the
undercover girl, Gerda. By the time she escaped even that faint trail would be
lost. She would think twice about warning the police.
If she
appealed only to the unknown killer, and if that unknown killer came seeking
him, Stover would like nothing better.

 
          
“First,”
he decided, “I must get to another town and pose there under a new name and
personality. I’ll dope out this thing, maybe make a deal with some
law-enforcement body that isn’t too friendly with Congreve and the
Malbrook-Fielding combine — hello, this rocket isn’t any too well hung together
at that. I feel a funny vibration all up my left arm.
Must
come from the fuel-feed lever.”

 
          
He
took his hand from the fuel-feed lever. The vibration still quivered his left
arm, climbed and crawled into his shoulder and chest.

 
          
“Whup!”
said Stover aloud. “It’s that bracelet!”

 
          
Gerda,
whatever her shortcomings, had spoken the plain truth regarding this bit of
police equipment. At ten miles, she had warned, his body would be shaken as by
a heavy rush of current. The vibration now possessed his whole body, and Stover
felt sick.

 
          
The
car swayed and bucked under his ill-steadied controls, and he righted it with
an effort.

 
          
“This
can’t go on!” he muttered. “I’ll set her down on the sand—I’m well outside the
city—and see if I can’t squirm out of that bracelet.”

 
          
He
nosed down, but his run of bad luck was well in. In descending, he went still
farther from the police headquarters radio. In mid-flight, nausea possessed
him. His sight went black, his brain whirled and drummed.

 
          
With
one hand he strove to flatten out his flight for a landing, but the other—the
hand that wore the bracelet—refused to do its work. There was a shock, a crash
of sound, and Dillon Stover flew through the air like a football. He fell
sprawling in dry, powdery sand.

 
          
On
Earth, where his weight was more than double what it was on Mars, he probably
would not have risen from such a heavy fall. As it was, he rose very shakily.
The wrecked rocket was aflame. Overhead beamed the lights of other aircraft
speeding to investigate.

 
          
“Got
to get away from here,” he told himself groggily. “Get away—”

 
          
He
headed out into the desert. His feet sank into the dry sand as into fresh snow.
The vibrations from the bracelet still tingled in his arm and chest, made his
lungs pant and his heart race; but, on the ground and walking, they were more
endurable. The fall had made his nose bleed, and somehow this relieved his
distress for the time being. He walked on, on. His lesser Martian weight made
travel swift for his Earth-trained muscles, for all the binding sand around his
insteps and ankles.

 
          
Behind
him the lights of rocket craft were settling around the fire. He hoped that
their landings in the sand would obscure his footprints. Meanwhile, he wished
that he had a
drink,
about a two-quart swig of water,
such as Buckalew had given to the desert Martians.

 
          
Stover
had not taken a drink since before his trip to Malbrook’s. The liquid of his
prison meal had been used to disguise him. And this arid place, far away from
the city of
Pulambar
and its lake-evaporations, was drying,
dehydrating, even in the chilly Martian night.

 
         
HE
made the best of two miles’ journey away from the investigators,
then
stopped. Overhead hurtled the disc of Phobos, giving
him light whereby to examine the bracelet that dealt him so much misery. It was
not too tight upon his wrist. He poked a finger under it, twiddled it,
then
tugged.

 
          
A
red-hot pain shot through his forearm, as though all his joints were being
dislocated. He hastily took his finger away. Again he remembered the baleful
words of Gerda:
It will tear your arm off
at the shoulder.
Better let bad enough alone. Meanwhile, what wouldn’t he
give for a drink?

 
          
Trudging
onward, he pondered, despite his efforts to turn his mind elsewhere, on
drinkables. Cold lemonade on the kitchen table at his grandfather’s home, a
stein of beer at college, water trickling down a rock-face at Rogers, Arkansas,
the multitudinous beverages at the Zaarr—even the acid drink he had used for
his disguise at the prison. He tried to curse such thoughts away, but his voice
was thick and his tongue swollen.

 
          
Stover
was scientist enough to understand all this. The atmosphere of Mars was light,
one-third that of Earth. Plenty of oxygen made it fairly breathable, but it was
hungry for water. Mars had so little water to give, and that little did not
stay long
—the
lesser gravity could
not hold water vapor. And so, as the moisture in his body was sweated forth, it
was fairly snatched from him. He was dehydrating, like a prune or a date in a
Sahara
breeze, like a clay brick in a kiln.

 
          
Thirst
was making him forget the lesser agony of the bracelet.

 
          
“I’d
give up anything for a drink,” he thought.
“A thousand
dollars of my legacy.
My house in the
Ozarks, that
once belonged to my grandfather. I’d give up—but hold on. As a criminal I have
no property to give up. Who would help me, if anyone were here?
Buckalew?
I wonder.
Phogor?
I doubt
it.
Bee MacGowan?
Poor thing, she’d probably do what
she could for me. But how long can this go on?”

 
          
Not
long. For soon Dillon Stover fell on his face.

 
          
He
struggled up to his hands and knees. More than ever he was down to first
principles, a four-legged creature again, as man had been ages ago, before
civilization or even savagery, struggling for life against the bitterest of
environment.

 
          
He
didn’t intend to be killed, unjustly or otherwise. It wasn’t on the books. Not
for Dillon Stover. He managed to get up again. His tongue was swollen between
dry
lips,
his stout knees wavered under his weight
that seemed even more than Earth weight. But he’d get away from pursuit. And
he’d drink.

 
          
Water ahead!

           
Both moons were up now, and they
showed him a gleaming, rippling pool.
With trees on the far
side.
He gave a joyful croak, and tried to run toward it. Again he fell
forward and crawled painfully to the brink.

 
          
There
was no brink.

 
          
Mirage.
Or imagination.
Dillon
Stover would have wept, but there were no tears in his evaporated eyes. He sat,
elbows on knees, and struck his forehead with his knuckles.

 
         
A LITTLE recovery now, enough to know that the bracelet’s vibration
was increased to a sharp agony.
He had come miles away from Pulambar.
Suddenly he wished he were back, even in jail. After all, there was comfort
there, a bed to lie in, and doctors—and water. The Martians were right to prize
it. If he could only wet his lips and wash his eyes. Then he’d think a way out
for himself.

 
          
The
sun was going to come up.

 
          
That
would be the end. The dry Martian night had almost done for him; the blazing
sun would finish the job. Perhaps it was just as well to lie down and die as
quickly as possible. In the back of his head a little cluster of
scientific-thinking cells computed that his night in this desert approximated
five days of such an experience on Earth. Few people could survive that, even
if they were as strong as Dillon Stover, and got help at the eleventh hour. And
here was no help.

 
          
Wasn’t
there? He saw a shiny, semi-transparent blister among the sands, catching the
first rays of dawn.

 
          
Under
that would be Martians, a water plant—and water. Ever so little of the precious
stuff would be a blessing.

 
          
He
crawled there somehow. Remembering how the Martians inside a similar structure
had burrowed out to the jug Buckalew donated, Stover began to paw and dig with
his hands. The sand came away in great scooped masses. He got his head and
shoulders under the glasslike under-rim, poked like a mole into the interior.

 
          
Something
crept toward him, a Martian dweller. It had one of the artificial larynxes, for
it formed words he could understand:

 
          
“Who arre you?
Why do you darre—”

 
          
“My
name is Stover,” he whispered a wretched reply. “Dillon Stover. I am dying
without water. Help me. Just—”

 
          
And
he fainted.

 
          
So
this was heaven.

 
          
The
old talk about harps and songs and jeweled furniture had been wrong. It was
more like the
Zaarr, that
report. Heaven really
consisted in lying still in delicious dampness, with a
ten-times
blessed trickle of liquid into your open mouth.

 
          
Stover’s
eyes, no longer dried out, opened. And he saw heaven as well as felt it. The
dull-clouded inside of a semi-transparent dome, against which spread the long
branches and broad leaves of a blue-gray bush was above him, while around him
sprawled three bladder-bodied, six-tentacled, flower-faced Martians.

 
          
“Lie
sstill,” purred the one with an artificial voice-box. “You arre verry
ssick—nearr to death.’
⁷

 
          
“I’m
not,” protested Stover, and sat up.

 
          
His
dusty garments, stolen in a police dressing-room, had been removed. His naked
skin felt cool, moist, and relaxed. He touched his arm with a finger. There was
a sleek damp to it, like the damp of a frog.

 
          
“Lie
sstill,” said the Martian spokesman again. “If you do not fearr ssick- ness,
fearr then the coming of
a
ssearrch parrty.”

 
          
Stover
lay back at once in the neat sandy hollow where they had bedded him. “Are they
looking for me?” he asked anxiously.

 
         
THE
flowery head of his informant nodded, Terrestrial fashion. “Thrree timess they
have come herre to peerr in. We ssaw them coming, and each time we coverred you
with ssand to hide you. We told them we knew nothing of a fugitive Terrress-
trrial. A wind blew away yourr trrackss.”

 
          
Stover
was content to lie still now. “How long have I been here?” he asked.

 
          
“A day and a night.
It iss now the ssecond
forrenoon.”

 
          
Back
into Stover’s wakening mind floated memory of all that had transpired to bring
him here. So it was getting on toward
noon
. Three
noons
ago he had awakened in Buckalew’s luxurious
apartment, reckless and carefree. At
noon
the following day, he had been in the
police cell, again sleeping. When the third
noon
came, he had lain senseless in this poor
makeshift den where Martians huddled to keep life in themselves. And now—

 
          
“I’ll
be awake this
noon
,” he
said aloud. “I’ve got a lot of escaping to do.” To the Martian he said: “Which
way is the nearest city? Besides