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?"
"You are in grave danger. Your mission here is known, and powerful enemies are preparing to destroy you."
"You talk like you knew something, kid," Sime admitted. "What is my mission here?"
"You have been sent to Mars by the I. F. P. in the guise of a mining engineer. You are to discover what you can about a suspected plot of interplanetary financiers to plunge the Earth and Mars into a war."
"How so?" Sime asked enigmatically, concealing his dismay at the girl"s ready reply. Here was inside information with a vengeance!
"Several shiploads of gray industrial diamonds from Venus have been seized by war vessels carrying the insignia of the Martian atmospheric guard."
Sime nodded. "Go on!"
"Curiously enough, these raids were so timed that they were witnessed by the news telecasters. All of the people on Earth were thus eye-witnesses, and feeling ran high. Am I right?"
"Go on!"
"And of course you know about the raids on the Martian borium mines by pirates armed with modern weapons. In the fights, some of the pirates"
weapons were captured. They bore the ordnance marks of the terrestrial government."
"I"m way ahead of you, girlie!" Sime conceded. "Certain financial interests would like to see a war. They"re cookin" up these overt acts to get the people all steamed up till they"re ready to fight. I"ll go further, since you seem to know all about it anyway, and admit that I"m here to find out just who"s back of all this. And how does all that tie up with you hiding in my mist-bath with a long and mean lookin" knife?"
The girl dropped her dark lashes in a sidelong glance at the stiletto on the floor. There was a little smile on her lips.
"My usual weapon. Don"t you know most of us Martians go armed all the time?"
"Yeh?" Sime grinned skeptically. "And is it a habit of yours to hide in the bedroom of visiting policemen? Come on, kid. I"m going to turn you over to the guard."
For a second it looked as if she would make a dash for the blade glistening there on the floor. But she straightened up, and with a look of infinite scorn said:
"So the mighty policeman of the Sun calls a hotel guard, does he?
Please! Believe me, I am myself working for the same object as yourself--the prevention of a horrible war!"
She was pleading now.
"Believe me, you are against forces that you don"t understand! I can help you, if you will listen. Let me tell you, the Martian government is itself corrupted. The planetary president, Wilc.o.x, is in alliance with the war party. You will have to fight the police. You will have to fear poison. You will be set upon and killed in the first dark pa.s.sage. Yet if you help me you may accomplish your object. You must help me!"
"What do you want of me?"
"Help me change our government!"
Sime laughed shortly. He began to suspect that this amazing girl was demented. He thought of the powerfully entrenched rulers of this theoretically republican government. For more than two hundred years, if he remembered rightly, the Martians had been ruled by a small group of rich politicians.
"You propose a revolution?" he asked curiously.
"I propose the return of Princess Sira to the throne!" she declared vehemently. "But enough! Are you going to betray me--I, who have risked much to warn you? Or are you going to let me go?"