The Secret Martians

Jery Delvin had a most unusual talent. He could detect the flaws in any scheme almost on sight--even where they had eluded the best brains in the ad agency where he worked. So w...

He stared, then frowned, and thought hard. "Yes, sir," he said, after a minute. "Even twice that, with no trouble, but--" He caught himself short. It didn't pay to be too curiou...

"Not," I said, "with the efficiency of the temperature control system. Sharp deviations from comfortable levels in a spaceship can be disastrous. So the thermostat in the ship i...

I'd come to while lying on my back, but had chanced turning over on my face to get my body weight off my hands. A little life seemed to be oozing back into my thickened fingers....

"Look, Delvin, that's not what I mean. Everybody from Mars to Venus knows that the sugarfoots are dumb animals. So I'd like to know what you're trying to hand us."

"More or less," she admitted. "It seemed to want to take me with it, but I begged off as politely as possible, and went back into town. Only, when I got there, the first thing I...

"Unh-uh," I said. "Not in the way you mean. The sugarfeet, from planetary sympathies, are on the side of the Ancients. The Neo-Martians were anti-Earth, hence, anti-Baxter. So P...

"For the simple reason," said the Martian, with cold anger, "that on your wretchedly humid planet, a sugarfoot would be corroded to death before it could locate him. If, of cour...

Until that moment when Baxter turned, I'd been certain that the Amnesty was in Snow's possession. And now here it was, gleaming in bright red and bronze against the front of his...

To his credit, this unexpected statement on my part only stopped his tongue for a moment. He immediately tried a new approach. "And if the Ancients decide to destroy her anyhow?"

My eyes clamped shut against the monstrous blaze of heat and light. Then, Snow's hand tightly gripped in mine, I was enveloped in inky blackness, with nothing but empty air bene...