Thunder and Roses (46 page)

A Jovian.

He looked at Hereford, who was pointing at the marks, so he knew that Hereford understood, too. He shrugged and pointed upward, beckoning. They went up, Belter leading.

They found themselves in a corridor, too low to allow them to stand upright. It was triangular in cross-section, with the point down and widened to a narrow catwalk. A wear-plate was set into each side and bore the same smooth scuffs. The deck, what there was of it between the sharply sloping sides, was composed of transverse rods. A creature which could grip with claws and steady itself with the sides of a carapace could move quite freely in such a corridor regardless of gravitic or accelerative effects, within reason.

“Damn!”

Belter jumped as if stabbed. Hereford tottered on his magna-grips and clutched at the slanted bulkhead for support. The single syllable had roared at them from inside their helmets. The effect was such that Belter all but swallowed his tongue. He pointed at himself in the dim green light and shook his head. Hereford weakly followed suit. Neither of them had spoken.

“Lousy Jovians—”

Belter, following a sudden hunch, laid his hand on Hereford’s shoulder to suggest that he stay put, and crept back to the bomb bay opening. He lay down, and cautiously put his head over the lip.

A long, impossibly black
something
was edging across the deck down there. Belter squeezed his eyes tightly closed and opened them wide, trying to see through the foggy green radiance. At last, he
discerned a small figure pulling and hauling at the shadow, the bomb, the … the lifeboat.

A human figure. A man. A man who must have come through the Invader’s defenses, even as he had. A man with a camouflaged boat.

But no one except a few Techs even knew that the boats had been completed. And the Council, of course.

The man below reached inside his boat and touched a control. It sank down to the deck next to the bomb rack as its magnetic anchors were activated. The man shut the escape hatch and shuffled toward the inboard partition, his blaster in hand, his head turning as he came.

Belter watched him until he discovered the ladder. Then he scrambled to his feet and, as fast as the peculiar footing would allow him, he scurried back to Hereford. His helmet receiver registered an angry gust of breath as the man below saw the short-paced ladder and the scuffmarks.

Belter slammed his helmet against Hereford’s. “It’s a Martian,” he gritted. “You might know it’d be a blasted Martian. Only a Martian’d be stupid enough to try to climb aboard this wagon.”

He saw Hereford’s eyebrow go up at this, but the peace-man did not make the obvious comment. He was silent as he followed Belter forward to the nearest turn in the corridor. They slipped around it, Belter conning its extension carefully. There was still, incredibly, no sign of life.

Just around the turn there was a triangular door, set flush into the slanted wall. Belter hesitated, then pressed it. It did not yield. He scrabbled frantically over its surface, found no control of any kind. Hereford grasped his arm, checked him, and when Belter stepped back, the old man went to his knees and began feeling around on the catwalk floor. The door slid silently back.

Belter slipped in, glanced around. But for a huddled, unmoving mass of some tattered matter in the corridor, there was nothing in the room, which was small. Belter waved the old man in. Hereford hopped over the sill, felt on the floor again, and the panel slid shut.

“How did you know how to open that door?” he asked when their helmets touched.

“Their feet … claws … what-have-you … are obviously prehensile or they wouldn’t have floors that are nothing more than close-set rungs. Obviously their door handles would be in the floor.”

Belter shook his head admiringly. “See what happens when a man thinks for a living?” He turned to the door, set his head against it. Very faintly, he could hear the cautious steps of the Martian. He turned back to Hereford. “I suppose I ought to go out there and pin his ears back. Martians have nothing in their heads but muscles. He’ll walk right up to the skipper of this ship if he has to wade through the crew to do it. But I’m mighty interested in just what he’s up to. We couldn’t be much worse off than we are. Do you suppose we could follow him close enough to keep him out of trouble?”

“There is no need for caution,” said Hereford, and his voice, distorted by the helmets, was like a distant tolling bell.

“What do you mean?”

Hereford pointed to the huddled mass in the corner. Belter crossed to it, knelt, and put out a hand. Frozen substance crumbled under his touch in a way which was familiar to him. He shrank back in horror.

“It’s—dead,” he whispered.

Hereford touched helmets. “What?”

“It’s dead,” said Belter dully. “It’s—homogenized, and frozen.”

“I know. Remember the three Jovian capital ships?”

“They couldn’t stand The Death,” Belter murmured. “They opened all the locks.”

He stood up. “Let’s go get that fool of a Martian.”

They left the room and followed the corridor to its end. There was another ladder there. They climbed it, and at the top Belter paused. “I think we’d better try for the control central. That’ll be the first thing he’ll go after.”

They found it, eventually, before the Martian did, possibly because they were not being as cautious. They must have passed him en route, but such was the maze of corridors and connecting rooms that that was not surprising. They still eschewed the use of their transmitters, since Belter preferred to find out exactly what the Martian was up to.

They had just opened a sliding door at the end of a passageway, and Belter was half through it when he stopped so suddenly that Hereford collided with him.

The room which spread before them was unexpectedly large. The bulkheads were studded with diamond-shaped indicators, and above them and over the ceiling were softly-colored murals. They glowed and shimmered, and since they were the first departure from the ubiquitous dim green, their immediate effect was shocking.

In the center of the chamber was a pair of control desks, a V pointing forward and a V pointing aft, forming another of the repeated diamond forms. There was a passage space, however, between the two V’s. In their enclosure was a creature, crouching over the controls.

It was alive.

It stirred, heaving itself up off the raised portion of the deck on which it lay. It was completely enclosed in a transparent, obviously pressurized garment. As it rose, Belter and Hereford shrank back out of sight. Belter drew his blaster.

But the creature was apparently not aware of them. It turned slowly to face the opposite corner of the room, and the sensory organ on its cephalothorax blushed pink.

There was a bold clanking from the corner of the room, which Belter felt through his shoes. Then the wall began to glow. A small section of it shone red which paled into white. It bellied momentarily, and then sagged molten. The Martian, blaster in hand, leapt through the opening.
And he could have opened that door
, thought Belter disgustedly.
Why does a Martian always have to do it the hard way?

The Martian stopped dead when he was clear of the simmering entrance. He visibly recoiled from the sudden apparition of color, and stood awed before those magnificent murals. His gaze dropped to the center of the room.

“So there is a defense,” he snarled. His transmitter was still blatantly operating. “Come on, Jupiter. I was wise to this whole stunt. Who did you think you fooled by poisoning your own forces on Titan? Invader, huh? Some stuff! Get out of there. Move now! I know you can understand me. I want to see that Death defense and the
controls. And there’s no sense trying to call your buddies. I’ve seen them all over the ship. All dead. Something saved you, and I mean to find out what it is.”

He raised his blaster. The Jovian quivered. Belter crossed his left arm across his body and grasped the edge of the door. He rested his blaster across his left forearm and squinted down the barrel. Hereford reached over his shoulder and drew the muzzle upward.

Belter turned furiously to him, but the old man shook his head and, astonishingly, smiled. His hand went to his belt. He threw his transmitter switch and said in his deep, quiet voice:

“Drop that blaster, son.”

The effect on the Martian was absolutely devastating. He went rod stiff, dropping his weapon so quickly that he all but threw it. Then he staggered backward, and they could hear his frightened gasping as he tried to regain his breath.

Belter strode out into the room and backed to the left bulkhead, stopping where he could cover both the Martian and the Jovian. Hereford shuffled over and picked up the blaster.

“P-peace Amalgamated!” puffed the Martian. “What in time are
you
doing here?”

Belter answered. “Keeping you from using your muscles instead of your brains. What do you think you’re doing?”

“Recon,” said the Martian sullenly.

“For who?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re doing it for Mars,” said Belter bluntly. “It would be just dandy if Mars had the Death defense now, wouldn’t it? You guys have been chafing at the bit for a long time.”

“We’re not crazy,” flashed the Martian. “We never did make peace with Jupiter, remember? We knew better. And now look.” He gestured at the Jovian. “What a pretty way to knock slices out of all the Solarian defenses. Just play Invader for a few years and scare the bedizens out of humanity. Wipe out what looks tough, and take advantage of the panic. Heh! Treaties with Jupiter! Why in blazes didn’t you exterminate them when you had the chance? Now, if Mars gets the Defense, we’ll handle the thing right. And maybe when the
smoke clears away we’ll be magnanimous enough to let Earth and the Colonies work for us.”

“All blast and brawn,” marveled Belter. “The famous Martian mouth.”

“Don’t you brag about brains. I know for a fact that our councilman tipped off that camouflage boats were being made in secret. If you didn’t act on it, it’s your hard luck.”

“In a way he did,” said Belter. “Enough, I imagine, to keep his little conscience clear. I’m here, for all that.”

“Not for long,” snapped the Martian, making a long sliding step.

“Look out, Hereford!”

Belter snapped a fine-focus shot at the Martian but he was late. The Martian was behind Hereford, grappling for the blaster which the Peace delegate still held in his hand. Hereford tried to spin away but was unsure of his footing in the gravitic shoes and succeeded only in floundering. The Martian suddenly shifted his attack to the blaster at Belter’s hip. He got it and danced clear. “I know the pantywaist won’t shoot,” he said, and laughed. “So it’s you first, Belter, and then old ‘Peace-in-our-Time.’ Then I’ll get the Death defense with or without the aid of the spider yonder.”

He swung the weapon on Belter, and the chairman knew that this was it. He closed his eyes. The blaster-flash beat on the lids. He felt nothing. He tried to open his eyes again and was astounded to discover that he could. He stood there staring at Hereford, who had just shot the Martian through the head. The man’s magna-grips held him upright as the air in his suit whiffed out, to hang in a mist like a frozen soul over his tattered head.

“I killed him, didn’t I?” asked Hereford plaintively.

“To keep the peace,” said Belter in a shaking voice. He skated over to the old man and took the blaster, which was still held stiffly out toward the dead man. “Killing’s a comparative crime, Hereford. You’ve saved lives.”

He went to the control table and put his hands on it, steadying himself against the broken sounds Hereford was making. He stared across the table at the great jelly-and-bone mass that was a Jovian. He would have given a lot for a translator, but such a machine had
never yet been made portable.

“You. Jovian. Will you communicate? Spread that membrane for ‘yes.’ Contract it for ‘no.’ ”

Yes
. The creature was perfectly telepathic, but with humans it had to be one way. A translator could convert its emanations into minute electronic impulses and arrange them into idea-patterns for which words were selected.

“Is there anything on this ship which can resist The Death?”

Yes
.

“You understand it?”

Yes
.

“Will you share your knowledge with the Council?”

Yes
.

“Can you deactivate all automatics on this ship?”

In answer the Jovian extended one of its four pseudoclaws, and placed it next to a control on the table. It was a small square housing, set so as to repeat the diamond motif. An orange pilot light glowed in its center, and next to it was a toggle. On the forward side of the toggle was an extremely simple symbol—two dots connected by two lines, each two-thirds of the distance between the dots, so that for the middle third they lay parallel, contiguous. On the after side of the toggle, the symbol differed. The dots were the same, but the lines were separated. It was obviously an indication of “open” and “closed” positions. The toggle slanted forward. Belter put his hand on it, looked at the Jovian.

The membrane spread affirmatively. Jovians did not lie. He pulled the toggle back and the pilot went out.

“This General Assembly has been called,” Belter said quietly into the mike, “to clear up, once and for all, the matter of the Invader and the contingent wild and conflicting rumors about a defense against The Death, about interstellar drives, about potential war between members of the Solar Federation, and a number of other fantasies.” He spoke carefully, conscious of the transmission of his voice and image to government gatherings on all the worlds, in all the domes, and on ships.

“You know the story of my arrival, with Hereford, aboard the Invader, and the later arrival of the Martian, and his”—Belter cleared his throat—“his accidental death. Let me make it clear right now that there is no evidence that this man was representing the Martian General Government or any part of it. We have concluded that he was acting as an individual, probably because of what might be termed an excess of patriotism.