Part 2

Listening, Malovel caught an echo of a shout, then a burst of phuts. For a second he was startled. Then a gleam appeared in his eyes. As he had thought they would if he stopped the water for the fields, the humans had attacked the palace. Now he had a chance to use the esse again, to taste to the full the surge of power that came to him when he used that weapon.

At his word of command, the slave swung up in front of him what looked like a frosted mirror but which revealed what was happening where he sent the esse. The mirror showed a corridor, with Martians and humans fighting there.

A look of vast satisfaction appeared on Malovel's face. He caressed the squares on the arms of his throne chair.

"Once a bargain was made, Holy One," a voice said behind him.

Malovel spun in his chair. He stared in horror at what he saw there. The human, Sanderson, and the Martian, L'Sor. A Martian traitor! Behind them a secret door was open in the wall, a relic of the long-gone days when Malovel had used that exit. He had forgotten its existence. But L'Sor had smelled it out. Both the human and the Martian held the little weapons that the humans called bum-bum guns. L'Sor's weapon menaced the slave, who stood motionless.

"A bargain was made four years ago," Sanderson said.

"I changed my mind."

"Why?"

"Perhaps to start this fight, to give myself the pleasure of destroying you."

As he spoke, Malovel's fingers pressed a square. The human might be fast with the bum-bum gun but the esse was faster than any human action, as fast as light itself. As Malovel pressed the square, the esse formed.

A scream sounded in the room. Sanderson was shoved to one side. The esse caught something, Malovel did not quite see what it was. He poured power into it. Malovel caught a glimpse of the doll forming as the mighty fingers of the esse squeezed life from it.

A glimpse was all he caught. A bum-bum slug splashed his head over the room. The eager glow in his eyes seemed to turn into a yellow aura then lingered a second after he was gone. Then it went too.

* * * * *

Miss Tweedham went forward as quickly as she could. When the shouts and the phuts began, she was afraid, but she was even more afraid of losing sight of Big Marie. Then Big Marie did disappear. Miss Tweedham clutched her gun and waited, her heart up in her throat. A scream rang out ahead of her. The sound moved her forward and into the throne rooms of Malovel.

Malovel, headless, was lying stretched across his throne chair.

Staring down at something, Sanderson was kneeling on the floor. Miss Tweedham moved to his side, saw the object at which he stared.

He glanced up at her, nodded toward the object on the floor. "She shoved me out of the way and the esse got her. I had no idea it was that fast." His voice was tight with suppressed feelings.

"Back on Earth she killed two men. That was why she came to Mars. She died here, saving the life of a third man." Sanderson's face was wry and twisted.

The object on the floor was a doll with the features of Big Marie.

"Great One, work remains," L'Sor urged.

Sanderson rose. He lifted the body of Malovel from the throne chair, threw it across the room. Then he seated himself in the chair and began to study the controls. In the distance shouts sounded, Martians and humans locked in battle. The shouting of the Martians went into quick silence as Sanderson began to operate the controls on the arms of the chair.

A little later the humans were crowding into the room. They were a motley lot. Some were covered with blood, others carried arms in improvised slings, one supported himself between two companions. They looked at the occupant of the throne chair and began to grin.

"Well done, boys," John Sanderson said. "I never pulled a sweeter, cleaner, tougher job."

The room echoed with the fierce shouting of triumphant men.

Miss Tweedham went away.

When Sanderson found her, the stars were going down and the day was coming. Clutching her purse in one hand and the bum-bum gun in the other, she was seated on a bench outside the house where Big Marie had once lived. Sanderson came up. She moved and made room for him and he sat down beside her.

"Look," he said, pointing. "Water is coming down the ditches to our fields."

Miss Tweedham could see the water. Already the crops were responding to the magic touch of it. She could also see the glow on John Sanderson's face. The glow on his face was one of the nicest sights she had ever seen in her life. A man watching water come to parched fields....

"But I imagine you had a rather exciting night," he said, turning to her.

"Yes. Yes. It was that."

"Well, you will forget the horror of it. Maybe you can even learn to have fun telling your classes back on Earth about the wild night you spent on Mars." He grinned at her. "I don't know how you're fixed financially, but if you're broke, I imagine we can find passage money among us."

Miss Tweedham clutched her purse. "But what if I don't want to go back to Earth?"

His voice was gentle but with overtones of pain in it. "This is no place for a woman like you, a woman of refinement and culture."

"Why not?" she asked.

"Don't you know the truth about us yet?" he said, surprised. "Haven't you guessed it? None of us can go back to Earth. We're wanted men there."

"Criminals?" Miss Tweedham said, flinching.

"Yes." Sanderson choked over the word but he got it out.

"And what were you back on Earth?"

"I ran the Syndicate," Sanderson answered.

"Then that explains your genius for organization."

"I had had some experience in organization before I came here," Sanderson said, grimly. "That was why the boys made me boss. Now as to your return to Earth--"

"As I said before, maybe I don't want to go back."

Sanderson stared at her. "But you have to go back. You don't belong here."

"Maybe I came here for the same reason you and all the others came. Maybe I knew what I was coming to. Maybe I chose this place deliberately."

"What?" Sanderson gasped.

Miss Tweedham faced him without flinching. "You haven't asked me what I really was back on Earth."

"Eh? A school teacher--"

"You still haven't asked me."

"Eh? What were you?"

"A call girl," Miss Tweedham answered, without flinching.

"Uh--ah--"

"I'm not going back to that," Miss Tweedham said.

Sanderson sought for words. He stuttered them out. "Do--do you--do you think you will ever be a call girl again?"

"Only when you call," Miss Tweedham answered.

In the light of the coming dawn, John Sanderson's face showed beet red. Then, slowly, he began to grin. His eyes lifted from her, his gaze went to the fields where now the water was flowing in the irrigation ditches. "That's wonderful," he said.

Miss Tweedham did not know whether he was talking about what she had said, or the water bringing life to the parched fields. She decided that whatever he was talking about, the meaning was the same in the end.

"I'm going to see about the water," he said, rising.

She smiled. Deep in her heart she knew he was going there to feel the new growth beginning. When he was too far away to see what she was doing, she opened her purse. From it, she took a piece of stiff folded paper.

_Lifetime Teaching Certificate_, the paper said.

Slowly, Miss Tweedham tore the paper into tiny bits. She watched the dry, restless wind of Mars blow them away. Then she rose and followed John Sanderson toward the growing fields.