Part 2

For three interminable days I sat around the old oxy-plant, eating and sleeping and thinking, and the monotony of it got deadlier and deadlier. I couldn't even switch on my communications equipment for the news since Captain Giles and his lads might be making spot patrols, and the localized radiation of my receiving unit would be enough to pinpoint me.

I had a fair idea of what went on with Shanig, though. No homo can operate after his fashion without making enemies, and the bigger his business the more powerful his enemies. Vigilance becomes the price of existence, financially speaking, and it was on that point that I figured Shanig had over-reached himself.

All that was pure guesswork, of course, until the afternoon of the third day. Then I had unexpected confirmation of it, brought by the last person on Mars I dreamed of seeing.

I was in the _Annabelle's_ cabin with Cora when the helicar settled in front of my makeshift hangar. I came out on the double with my Quantrell ready, and saw Cheryl Trayne standing in the warehouse entrance. The sun, hanging low on the desert's rim, outlined her tantalizingly against a blaze of light and made her hair a shimmering halo of burnished copper.

It was so wonderful to see her, but at the same time I was a little disappointed. It had been a pleasant possibility that she might change her mind about that Phobos trip, but to have her track me down like this.

"How did you find me?" I demanded. "And who's with you?"

She gave me a child's trusting smile, a reversal of her old haughty brush-off that gave me the devil of a jolt until I remembered Cora in the _Annabelle's_ cabin. Cheryl was as deep under Cora's spell now as she must have been under Joey's before--

"Never mind that," I said. "How did you get away from Shanig's smiley? Is Shanig out of his trance, too?"

She looked puzzled, as if she were trying to remember something tremendously important.

"I came alone," she said. "I traced you through Joey, after Mr. Shanig sent Perry away with him. I remembered then how Joey always faced toward the east when he was quiet. He used to crouch for hours in his cage when no one was near him and stare in this direction. After he was gone it came to me that he sensed another smiley somewhere was calling to it. And if there was another smiley on Mars...."

"Then I had brought it and I'd be with it," I finished for her. "Neat enough. I only hope no one else thought of it."

She gave me that trusting smile again, and my conscience dealt me a sharp nudge. I went over and gave her a khiff root.

"Chew it," I said. "Never mind the taste. It'll make you as good as new."

She took it obediently, and a couple of minutes later something like horror chased the contentment out of her face. She stared at me, her green eyes turning angry.

"You must have enjoyed seeing me like that," she said acidly. "It never occurred to me that I'd fall under the other smiley's influence if I found you or I'd never have--"

"You'd never have dared come at all," I said. "You'd have been afraid I'd bring up that Phobos jaunt again, and you couldn't have said no with Cora around."

She bit her lip in the way she had, and I could see her admitting reluctantly that she might just possibly have misjudged me.

"All right, you found me," I said. "Now give. What happened? How did Shanig get rid of Joey and why did you hunt me down if you're still nursing a phobia against Phobos?"

* * * * *

"Shanig's underofficials at Solar Shipping rescued him," she said. "They couldn't reach him at first because everyone they sent fell under the smiley's influence. But they had to do something. Shanig was like an irresponsible child, giving away company holdings as well as his own. They were so frantic that--"

"I tried to warn him," I pointed out. "He turned cherub the instant Perry arrived with Joey, didn't he? Word of it got around in nothing flat and his competitors, his enemies, starting phonovising him right and left. They must have stood in line at the telewrite stations to take his holdings and Solar's. A couple of days of that must have practically ruined him and Solar Shipping as well. How did they snap him out of it?"

"They phonovised him to step out on his window balcony. When he came out to the rail they knocked him off with a freeze gun and caught him with a net in the street below. He almost went mad when he realized what he had done."

I grinned for two reasons. I had been right and Shanig had lost his shirt. It served him right.

"So Shanig is starting from scratch again. What line is he taking?"

For the first time she looked scared.

"A line you didn't anticipate. Solar's stockholders have ordered him to recover what he gave away, and he's taking no chances on losing what personal holdings he has left. He tried to eliminate Perry and me the minute he snapped back to normal, and he'll have you erased as soon as you're taken."

I stared at her. "That's going pretty far, even for Shanig. Why should he beam us out?"

She gave me an exasperated look. "Because he's afraid you might force Perry and me to swear that he tricked you on your contract release. It didn't matter before when he was powerful enough to smother the charge, but he's been so hard hit that he can't risk a reversal of that contract now. Don't you see? If you brought suit for reparations and won it would ruin him. The only way Shanig can make himself safe is to eliminate you as claimant or to get rid of Perry and me as witnesses."

It was a deadly sort of logic. I had expected Shanig to yell foul but I hadn't looked for a planet-wide homo hunt with myself as the quarry.

"It's up to us, then," I said. "We'll have to settle Shanig first or he'll get us as sure as sin."

She didn't look so frightened now as embarrassed.

"That's why I came to you. We can keep out of Shanig's way, perhaps, but poor Perry is trapped. Someone will have to get him out of that horrible place before Shanig reaches him."

I gaped a little over that one. "What horrible place? Where is Perry?"

"At the Argonaut Club," she said. "As soon as Shanig was himself again he photovised Perry and ordered him to take the smiley there, partly to get Joey away and partly to cut down breakage expense at the Argonaut. Perry's been there all day, associating with Eetee outlanders and drinking skohl like any common spacehand. He'll drink himself to death before Shanig finds a way to get to him, if we don't hurry."

I laughed until my face hurt. I couldn't help it. The idea of Perry Acree drinking himself blind in the Argonaut's rowdy company was too much. Thinking about the prayer-meeting hush that Joey must be laying over the toughest shot-slot in the System made it all the funnier until the real reason for Cheryl's hunting me down percolated through my skull and sobered me up.

Her motive was enlightening, but not flattering.

* * * * *

"So that's why you risked your luscious hide to find me," I said. "To talk me into dragging that idiot dwarf out of the Argonaut. Am I right?"

She looked hopping mad and pleading at the same time, which is quite a trick even for a redhead.

"You can do it if anyone can. I checked on your background this morning, and it seems that--well, that you may not be the windbag I thought you after all. One asteroid prospector told me that you--"

"Never believe a chunk-hopper," I told her. "They lie for fun or on principle, depending on the circumstances. But I'm not interested in Perry Acree. If he hadn't tipped Shanig to my smiley none of this would have happened. The _Annabelle_ would be clear of debt and I'd be in the Argonaut instead of Perry. Why should I risk my neck for that simpering sycophant?"

She had trouble telling me why. Having to ask my help burned her plenty, and its being Perry's fault made it worse. She turned pink and talked in circles, not meeting my eye, and when I finally guessed how she had meant to persuade me you could have clubbed me down with a sand thistle.

"You really _are_ sold on that puling parasite," I said. "Look, are you sure he's worth a weekend on Phobos?"

"Beast!" she cried, and slapped my face.

"Good enough," I said when my ears stopped ringing. "Faint heart never haggled with fair hell-cat. Let's go rescue your skohl-swilling light of love."

I moved Cora's little tungsten cage into the helicar and Cheryl took us up. We didn't have to wait for darkness. The split-second Martian twilight took care of that in the wink of an eye.

The two-hour flight was almost pleasant. The stars over our speeding helicar glittered down like far, frosty eyes and the gritty red ocean of desert under us lost its harshness and took on a magic pattern of soft, shifting shadows. Phobos paced us across the black night sky like a swift silver morning-star, and the little gray jackals crept out of their dens and howled at her with all the pent-up loneliness of a million, million years.

Cheryl shivered at their keening, and the thought that she could be as skittish as other women gave me a little jolt of surprise.

"Mournful little beggars, aren't they?" I said. "I wonder what they'd think of Earth, with its big yellow moon all night in the sky?"

Cheryl didn't answer, but it seemed to me that she thawed out a little. It was almost cozy in the helicar after that until the dusty neon haze of Areopolis ballooned up out of the desert.

IV

We came in low to avoid any radar net the port patrol might have up, and entered the sleeping city above the shadowy warrens of the native district.

"You'll have to be careful," Cheryl warned. "And quick. Shanig's men will be watching the Argonaut, and the police won't have forgotten you so soon."

"I'll be careful," I said, knowing better than she the sort of odds Shanig would favor. "The next question is where do I find you after I drag that case of arrested development out of there?"

She gave me an address. "I took a room there as soon as I realized that Shanig was after me. I doubt that he's been able to trace me so soon."

We dipped into an apartment house section and Cheryl set the helicar down in a night-quiet street. "Apartment Six-A," she said. And then, unexpectedly: "Take care of yourself, Bill, please. Don't do anything rash!"

I patted her shoulder reassuringly. "You may have to rescue _me_ before the night is over," I told her. "Stand by your phonovision and be ready to bring Cora in a hurry if I call you. I can't risk taking her into the Argonaut because of Joey, but I may need her if I run afoul of Shanig. Got it?"

She nodded and gave me her phonovision code. I got out of there and headed down the street while she took the helicar up to her apartment house roof landing.

It wasn't far. Fifteen minutes of fast walking through the back streets brought me up a dark alley to the Argonaut's side entrance. The service door was locked, of course, and as a consequence none of Shanig's uglies were guarding it.

I kicked it in and went through a dusty corridor into the smoky, skohl-pungent bar-room.

The instant I was inside I knew that Cheryl had been right. Joey was there, and he was radiating for all he was worth. There was the spellbound crowd for proof of that.

The Argonaut Club was known the breadth of the System as the toughest dive that ever sold a drunken rockethand a pitcher of drugged skohl. I wound up there every time I touched Mars, and I knew the dump down to the latest ray-burn on its dingy plastoid walls. You hit some pretty rowdy shot-slots in the other spaceports, but the Argonaut topped them all. The Argonaut was rough.

Ordinarily. Tonight it looked like a missionary's picnic.

At the bar, Earthies sporting two-week passage beards and Quantrell blasters bucked over grimy rocketroom coveralls, rubbed elbows with cat-whiskered yellow city Martians and their vicious little baboon-faced cousins from the deserts. Woolly blue tree men from Titan drank with squishy Venusians and tentacled Ionians. I saw a couple of Callistans in a corner, braced saw-horse-fashion on their jointless legs and sticklike tails, grinning happily while they fraternized with a pair of ponderous Europans. The Europans, coy as two honeymooning hippos under Joey's spell, blubbered amiably back and rolled in small polite circles on their little three-wheeled carts.

Even the bouncer was happy.

This last was an Earthie, a big, battered homo named Husky Harrigan who tipped the scales at two-fifty Earthweight and looked like a tuskless Mercurian sandhog, bristles and all. I had run into difficulties with him before. He had the disposition of a thwarted ape, wore brass knuckles the way other men wore finger rings, and was the prime reason for the Argonaut's tough reputation.

But tonight Harrigan was as gentle as a dove, circulating through the crowd and shaking hands with anything that had a hand to shake.

I spotted Perry Acree at once. He was sitting at a table with two Earthies and a spiny pink Ganymedan, drinking skohl straight from the pitcher and staring soulfully at nothing in particular. I made a bee-line for his table but brought up short when I heard Husky Harrigan roaring my name.

Force of habit made me set myself for trouble, but under Joey's spell, Harrigan was everybody's friend, even mine. He put out a hairy paw and grinned like a crocodile, whinnying with joy and showing a set of second-rate bridgework where somebody had kicked out a handful of teeth.

"Hey, kids, it's Blaster Bill Bailey!" he bellowed. "C'mon and have fun, Willie. First drink on the house!"

I nearly clipped him for that "Willie" crack before I thought. Not that I had scruples about clouting an oaf like Harrigan when he was in no position to strike back. I just couldn't afford the delay. Captain Giles' patrolies might be along any minute. And there was always Shanig.

* * * * *

So I pushed past Harrigan and yanked Perry to his feet.

"Cheryl's waiting for you, Stupid," I said. "Snap to it, before I write you off and keep the date myself."

He grinned vacuously and came along like a lamb.

The two patrolies looked in through the swinging doors up front when Perry and I were halfway to the service corridor. Their sunburned faces lighted up when they saw me, and they shoved the doors wider to command the room with their bell-mouthed freeze guns. Behind them on the street stood their tandem air-scooter, lights on and motor purring.

"You're under arrest, Bailey," one of them called. He was a corporal, and it was written all over him that he saw a sergeant's rating coming for this night's work. "Come out of that!"

I got a firmer grip on Perry's collar.

"Come and get me," I called back, knowing what would happen if they did.

They came in on the double with their freeze guns ready--and halted, looking sheepish, when the smiley's aura got to them.

"Aw, forget it," the corporal said. "You're a good guy, Bailey. Go ahead. Go anywhere you like."

"Sure," the other seconded. "Take our air-scooter if you want. Need any extra credits where you're going?"

I headed for the service with Perry again but we had waited too long. One of Shanig's uglies was standing in the doorway with a foolish grin on his face, and I knew there would be others waiting in the alley outside. And those others wouldn't be under Joey's influence.

So I cut for the front entrance instead, dragging Perry like a bag of old laundry. The patrolies' air-scooter stood purring at the curb. I draped Perry across it and jumped for the operator's seat, expecting to be beamed down any second. I'd have made it, too, but for Perry.

Perry had taken on a monumental load of skohl during the day, and the instant he was out of Joey's influence the inflated little ego of him demanded to be heard. He scrambled off the air-scooter, swelled out his size thirty-two chest and launched into an old rocketroom ballad--a smutty saga listing the personal iniquities of the Captain Crow who led the first Mars flight just before the turn of the century.

In nineteen hundred and ninety-two A _homo_ from Milwaukee Warmed up his jets and--

I quieted him with a rabbit punch and tossed him back on the air-scooter, but the damage was done. I hit the control seat again just as Shanig's crew swarmed out of the alley and surrounded us.

The air-scooter took off like a rocket when I gave it the gun, plowing straight through them. I hung on somehow, but Perry wasn't so lucky. He bounced once and pitched off, square into the enemy's hands.

When I looked back at the first street intersection they had scooped him up and were headed toward Solar Shipping in a hurry. The sight reassured me a little. They hadn't blasted Perry on the spot, which meant that they would probably hold him as hostage until they got Cheryl as well. One witness at large was as dangerous to Shanig as two, and the chances were he wouldn't risk beaming out one unless he could be sure of both.

I took the only course left, doubling the air-scooter back and skimming toward Shanig's offices.

V

The way the situation added up reminded me of the old historical thrillers I'd read as a kid, most of them written in the days when our rough-and-ready ancestors bought contraband skohl from underground talk-gentlies and rival groups of uglies hijinked each other with torpedoes. It was something like a present-day telemovie gripper in a sense, only there wasn't any Colonel Super in this plot to lend me a hand.

Not that I wasted time looking for help. I wasn't used to it.

Outside the Solar Shipping building I lifted the air-scooter and swooped up to the balcony outside Shanig's office windows. There wasn't time to set it down. I needed every second to get inside before Shanig could give the alarm.

I jumped, and the air-scooter went on without me into the night. It wouldn't have worked on Earth, but under Mars' .38 gravity an athletic homo has all the breaks. I landed just inside the guard-rail and dived through the balcony windows with a great crashing of glass before Shanig could clap a hand to the buzzer on his desk.

"Don't touch it," I said, and turned my Quantrell on him.

"You!" Shanig barked. His face went sallower than ever, but his hot black eyes didn't waver. "What do you want here?"

Down the corridor rose a sudden babel of voices--Shanig's crew returning with their prize.

"They got Acree," I said, heading for the phonovision unit beside Shanig's desk. "But if you make a sound before they get here you won't be able to use him. Clear?"

The screen lit up when I touched the switch. I punched the code Cheryl had given me, and drew the first deep breath I'd had for an hour when she looked out at me.

"Bring Cora over to Shanig's office on the double," I said. "I'm going to need her but quick!"

I cut her off without waiting for an answer and punched another number. Captain Giles stared out at me this time, his weathered hatched face clownish with astonishment.

"Get a crew of patrolies up to Shanig's offices," I said. "And make it fast or there's going to be more excitement here than you can write off your records in a month."

For the first time Shanig looked worried. He saw no threat in Cheryl's coming, not knowing about my second smiley. But if Captain Giles should arrive before Perry could be moved--

The crew of uglies outside crossed me up by buzzing Shanig's audiphone. "We got the little homo, Chief. Shall we bring him in?"

Shanig, knowing that I couldn't afford to beam him at this stage of the game, tipped them before I could stop him. "Take him away. Bailey's here!"

I jumped for the door, hoping to grab Perry before they got him away. I was too late. They were already out of the reception office. All I saw of Perry Acree was his heels.

That left us at stalemate. Shanig couldn't get away, and I couldn't leave him unguarded to go after Perry. I was racking my brain for the next move when it was taken out of my hands.

The phonovision screen beside Shanig's desk lighted up and one of his uglies looked out. "We got him where he won't be found, Chief. What next?"

And I let Shanig beat me to the jump again. "The girl is coming here. Intercept her!"

I made sure it wouldn't happen again by raying the phonovision unit to a heap of smoking junk. Reflected heat from the flash curled Shanig's eyebrows, but he didn't flinch.

"That finishes you, Bailey," he said. "My men have Acree safe. They'll have the girl the instant she appears. Under the circumstances it should be quite entertaining to watch you prove your position to the police."

He had me cold. Shanig could afford to wait but I couldn't.

* * * * *

It turned out that Shanig's handymen didn't share his confidence in the police. I heard them getting set in the reception-room corridor to block any dash I might make. When I sneaked a look through the balcony windows I caught a glimpse of another group working like beavers in the building across the alley. They were setting up a tripod affair which I recognized at a glance as a sleep-bomb catapult.

They had it charged to fire when Captain Giles and his patrolies arrived. A babble of confusion rose in the corridor again, and the Captain's harsh bellow silenced it like a hand across the mouth. A moment later he called through the doorway: "Stand fast, Bailey. We're coming in, and God help you if you give us trouble!"

I stood fast, giving up any hope of Cheryl's showing up in time. Having Cora along should make it easy enough for her to get into the building, but even Cora couldn't help if Captain Giles had already dragged me away.

Giles came around Shanig's desk toward me, his hatchet face thunderous. "I've warned you often enough, Bailey. This time you've gone too far."

Shanig treated himself to one of his sandpaper chuckles. "He'll probably give you some wild story designed to clear himself, Captain. Don't believe a word of it. I trusted him, and you can see what it led to!"

The Captain was taking my Quantrell blaster when my reprieve came. One of Shanig's uglies burst into the office with disaster written all over him.

"Chief, the girl's coming up in the lift with another smiley! The whole lower floor is hypnotized. She'd have got me too if the lift hadn't carried me out of reach!"

I'll give Shanig credit for this--he thought fast. He added up the score in a flash and lunged across the desk, yelling for his startled uglies to follow up. If Cheryl got to us with the smiley the jig was up, and he knew it.

He ripped the Quantrell blaster out of Captain Giles' hand and turned it on us. He meant to wipe out the lot and clear himself by laying the carnage to a battle between me and the patrol.

It was close, but not close enough.

A sudden serenity wiped the tension off his face like chalk marks off a blackboard. Captain Giles and his patrolies slacked off with him, caught in the same euphoric spell.

They stood smiling and docile while Cheryl Trayne strode in with Cora's little tungsten cage under her arm. If she had looked good to me before, right then she looked like a red-haired angel.

"Good girl," I said, and took over from there.

Shanig confessed on the spot to the slimy deal he had pulled over me, and signed a statement to that effect. He got on the reception-room phonovision and ordered his crew in the adjoining building to drop everything and return Perry Acree at once. He destroyed the bogus contract and took back the elastic check he had given me, and he enjoyed doing it. Cora, sensing Joey so close in the Argonaut Bar across the street, was working her mating call overtime.

"It was really inconsiderate of you to swindle our young friend William," the Captain said to Shanig. "Of course you won't object to serving a light sentence--say five years--to make amends?"

"Certainly not," Shanig said brightly, beaming back at him. "My only regret is that I must be separated from this adorable creature. I love smileys."