Part 2

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 curious about the aims of an Amnesty-bearer.

"It's all right, Anders. You've been a tremendous help. Just one thing. When you left Mars, you took off from the night side, didn't you?"

"Why, yes, I did, sir. But how did you--?"

"No matter, Anders. That'll be all."

"Yes, sir!" He saluted sharply and started off.

I started back for Interplanetary Security, and my second--and I hoped, last--interview with Chief Baxter. I had a slight inkling why the Brain had chosen me; because, in the affair of the missing Space Scouts, my infallible talent for spotting the True within the Apparent had come through nicely. I had found a very interesting clinker.

4

"Strange," I remarked to Chief Baxter when I was seated once again in his office, opposite his newly replaced desk. "I hardly acted like myself out at that airfield. I was brusque, highhanded, austere, almost malevolent with the pilot. And I'm ordinarily on the shy side, as a matter of fact."

"It's the Amnesty that does it," he said, gesturing toward the disc. It lay on his desk, now, along with the collapser. I felt, with the new information I'd garnered, that my work was done, and that the new data fed into the Brain would produce some other results, not involving me.

I looked at the Amnesty, then nodded. "Kind of gets you, after awhile. To know that you are the most influential person in creation is to automatically act the part. A shame, in a way."

"The hell it is!" Baxter snapped. "Good grief, man, why'd you think the Amnesty was created in the first place?"

I sat up straight and scratched the back of my head. "Now you mention it, I really don't know. It seems a pretty dangerous thing to have about, the way people jump when they see it."

"It is dangerous, of course, but it's vitally necessary. You're young, Jery Delvin, and even the finest history course available these days is slanted in favor of World Government. So you have no idea how tough things were before the Amnesty came along. Ever hear of red tape?"

I shook my head. "No, I don't believe so. Unless it had something to do with the former communist menace? They called themselves the Reds, I believe...."

He waved me silent. "No connection at all, son. No, red tape was, well, involvement. Forms to be signed, certain factors to be considered, protocol to be dealt with, government agencies to be checked with, classifications, bureaus, sub-bureaus, congressional committees. It was impossible, Jery, my boy, to get anything done whatsoever without consulting someone else. And the time lag and paperwork involved made accurate and swift action impossible, sometimes. What we needed, of course, was a person who could simply have all authority, in order to save the sometimes disastrous delays. So we came up with the Amnesty."

"But the danger. If you should pick the wrong man--"

Baxter smiled. "No chance of that, Jery. We didn't leave it up to any committee or bureau or any other faction to do the picking. Hell, that would have put us right back where we'd been before. No, we left it up to the Brain. We'd find ourselves in a tight situation, and the Brain after being fed the data, would come up with either a solution, or a name."

I stared at him. "Then, when I was here before, I was here solely to receive the Amnesty, is that it?"

Baxter nodded. "The Brain just picks the men. Then we tell the men the situation, hand over the Amnesty, and pray."

I had a sudden thought. "Say, what happens if two men are selected by the Brain? Who has authority over whom?"

Baxter grimaced and shivered. "Don't even think such a thing! Even your mentioning such a contingency gives me a small migraine. It'd be unprecedented in the history of the Brain or the Amnesty." He grinned, suddenly. "Besides, it can't happen. There's only one of these--" he tapped the medallion gently "--in existence, Jery. So we couldn't have such a situation!"

I sank back into the contour chair, and glanced at my watch. Much too late to go back to work. I'd done a lot in one day, I reasoned. Well, the thing was out of my hands. Baxter had the information I'd come up with, and it had been coded and fed to the Brain. As soon as the solution came through, I could be on my way back to the world of hard and soft sell.

"You understand," said Baxter suddenly, "that you're to say nothing whatever about the disappearance of the Space Scouts until this office makes the news public? You know what would happen if this thing should leak!"

The intercom on Baxter's desk suddenly buzzed, and a bright red light flashed on. "Ah!" he said, thumbing a knob. "Here we go, at last!"

As he exerted pressure on the knob, a thin slit in the side of the intercom began feeding out a long sheet of paper; the new answer from the Brain. It reached a certain length, then was automatically sheared off within the intercom, and the sheet fell gently to the desktop. Baxter picked it up and swiftly scanned its surface. A look of dismay overrode his erstwhile genial features.

I had a horrible suspicion. "Not again?" I said softly.

Baxter swore under his breath. Then he reached across the desktop and tossed me the Amnesty.

* * * * *

"I hope you know what you're doing," said Baxter at the gleaming glass doorway of the spaceport. "Why a man who has absolute authority should choose to ride public transportation when he could have his pick of the fleetest government ships on Earth--"

I didn't tell him it was because of little details like stereovision, autobars, and, not least of all, comfort, that I had chosen to ride the _Valkyrie_. She sat waiting even now, far out in the center of the landing strip, two hundred towering feet of silver, crammed with all the luxuries engineering ingenuity could put aboard her. I had, thanks to a government credit card, a private cabin. I intended to enjoy myself, this trip.

I'd managed to convince Baxter that it was less likely the public would suspect there was anything amiss if I went to Mars incognito, with the Amnesty worn under my clothing, for use only in emergencies. An Amnesty-bearer arriving on Mars in a government ship might cause talk. Disastrous talk.

Baxter was rattling on and on, giving me the names of my contacts on Mars for the seventeenth time, and I was giving him perfunctory nods as though I was paying attention, though I was actually watching the other passengers leaving the check-in desk. After all, I'd be in space with them for almost two days. You never know what might develop.

The co-rider I had in mind was a girl, with hair like irridescent cornsilk, and a figure that made the stereovision starlets look 2-D in comparison. She had her back to me, but even before she turned around, I knew she was beautiful. It was just the way she stood there, facing the passenger-check robot. She--well, she _stood_ like a girl who is beautiful.

Then she turned around, and I gave my instincts an A plus.

Her eyes were the deepest of blues, actually a purple tone, and they were wide, serious and shining. There was a certain determination about the set of her jaw that I liked, and her lips were like soft red velvet. A man could kiss those lips and sink slowly into warm crimson seas; lose himself in the heated softness of their gentlest pressures.

"Delvin!"

Baxter's voice shattered my reverie, and I tore my eyes from the girl, though the after-effects of dreaming left my mind in confused fragments. "Huh?" I said, looking at his face and almost failing to recognize it.

"I said--" Baxter's voice was impatient and over loud, "--that you had best, in the interests of open-space safety, not flash that Amnesty while you're aboard the _Valkyrie_. Passengers have a way of working themselves into a panic that is almost an uncanny gift! They'll all start suspecting their neighbors of treason, or worse, and--"

But I wasn't hearing his diatribe any more. As he'd spoken that first sentence, the girl with the shimmering cornsilk hair had been passing within a few feet of us, and I'd felt, rather than actually seen, her slender shoulders stiffen beneath the blue silken fabric of her blouse. And she'd hesitated for a moment in midstep, as though she were going to turn about and see which man in the universe was the one to whom the Amnesty had been given.

I watched her move out into the sunlight, crossing the field in brisk but dainty strides. Any second now, I told myself. She thinks she hasn't been seen. She's getting far enough away so that--Aha! Now!

Halfway to the ship, the girl turned, apparently busily concerned about the clasp of her handbag, as though it had come open without warning. I kept my head turned, to look as though I were watching Baxter. But my eyes were still on her. She looked at me. Then she turned and went on toward the ship.

"Had to see who I was!" I said to myself. "So now she knows I've got the Amnesty. And so--And so, _what_?"

5

Since antigravity, artificial gravity, and low-thrust take-offs were still in the realm of science-fiction, even the luxury liners like the _Valkyrie_ had to bed their passengers down in shock-absorbing couches until the ship was free of gravitation. So it wasn't until we'd achieved escape velocity from Earth that I saw the girl again.

I'd decided to wander into the lounge and try to locate her. It would be an easy task if she were present, what with her startling good looks. But it turned out to be even simpler than that.

She came to me.

I was just easing myself out of my couch, when my cabin door opened and closed. And locked.

That last part intrigued me even before I turned about. I was wondering what sort of menace I had to meet, and bewailing the fact that the collapser was still in my luggage, when I saw who my visitor was. I started to smile, but the smile left as I saw the saw-edged steak knife in her hand.

"Listen, whoever you are!" she said. Her voice was low, angrily intense, but still a pleasure to hear, somehow.

"I'm listening, I assure you!" I said, politely. "A voice like yours doesn't caress these tired old eardrums every day."

She accorded my compliment a smile, but it was a bleak one, and there was a certain wry lift to her left eyebrow. "Very suave, I'm sure," she said. "But I'm not in the mood, thank you. Now, you just sit down on your bunk and behave, and--"

"Mind if I get a cigarette?" I asked, gesturing toward my traveling case. I tried to be casual about it, but I must have failed. I lose my head around women, as I've said.

"I'll get them for you," she said, waving the knife's glittering blade at me. I moved away and sat on the edge of my bunk. She flicked the clasp open, and spread the two halves apart. There were two shirts and some underwear in the case, plus the collapser. Not a cigarette to be seen. She looked at me, narrow-eyed.

"I don't smoke," I explained weakly.

"You Amnesty-bearers!" she grated between even, white teeth. "Ready to destroy everybody with impunity, aren't you! You wouldn't even wait to find out what I wanted!"

"I haven't said a word," I pointed out delicately.

"You lied about the cigarettes," she accused.

"How would you treat a stranger who burst into your cabin with an unsheathed knife?" I said, exasperated.

She looked down at the knife, and reddened. "Maybe I was a bit abrupt about this. It's just that--" Her face suddenly crinkled up, and her deep blue-violet eyes burst into tears. Then the knife fell to the carpet, and her face was buried in her hands. I leaned forward and removed the knife from within her reach, then took her by the shoulders.

She whimpered hopelessly, between shuddering sobs, "Am I under arrest?"

"Depends," I said. "Depends entirely on why you came in here like this. And what my possession of the Amnesty has to do with it. And how," I added, puzzled, "you seemed to know so much about Amnesty-bearers and their vile dispositions!"

She took her hands from her face, streaked with tears, and said, with a shy grin, "I was guessing at that part. I just kind of assumed they'd all be pretty intolerant. Who wouldn't be, with all that power?"

"Well, _I_ wouldn't for one," I said defensively. "I only bite when I'm bitten."

She found a handkerchief somewhere and began sopping up the wet spots from her complexion; a complexion, I noted happily, that did not come off with water.

"Have a chair," I said, and rang for the steward. "I hope you drink?"

"Not a lot," she admitted. "But I could use one right now."

"Good," I said, watching her as she poised gracefully on the chair before my cabin's private stereo set. "By the way, my name's Jery. Jery Delvin."

She flushed scarlet again, and said, "Mine is White."

"First name?" I asked. She paused. "What is your first name?"

She looked at the carpet. "Snow," she said softly.

"For real?" I said. "Like with the dwarfs?"

She nodded, as one who'd been over the same conversational ground many wearisome times in the past. "Mother was a Walt Disney fan, back in the Age of Movies."

I shook my head, and rang for the steward again. "I think we both could use a drink."

Later, the puzzled steward departed for the dining salon to return the steak knife which Snow had "accidentally" picked up. We sipped our drinks in mutual silence for a minute or two, regarding one another over the rims of our tumblers. To me, Snow was looking better by the minute. I even had a momentary thought of flashing the Amnesty at her to see if those red velvet lips could fulfill in a tactile way the promise they made visually.

But instead, I said, "Tell me, do you always attack Amnesty-bearers with the nearest weapon you can lay hold of?"

Snow laughed musically, shaking her head. "I didn't mean to come in at full threat, Jery," she said softly. "I just wanted some sort of defense in case--Well, Amnesty-bearers think they can ask _anything_ of a person, and--"

She left the explanation unfinished, but I found myself glad I hadn't tried pulling rank for a fast romance. "I'm very curious to know just what you did come in here for, Snow. Or did you just want a peep at the Amnesty? I saw you react when Baxter let it slip back at the spaceport."

"Is that who that was? Chief Baxter, of International Security?" she exclaimed.

I realized I was blurting things, and sighed, "Damn, I'm talking too much."

Snow's eyes gave me the once-over, and she tilted her head to one side, curiously. "You know, Jery, you don't look like a government official. You seem to be just an average man."

I thought of my dossier and frowned. "Not quite average, I'm afraid. I can be hopelessly confused by women."

Snow digested this, then shrugged. "Like I said, you seem to be just an average man."

I laughed. "I guess I'd better explain."

I told her all about my erstwhile job at Solar Sales, and my mental bloc regarding females. When I finished, she was fighting a grin. It was a losing fight. The grin won.

"If I'd known that, I'd have skipped that steak knife and just entered in a bikini," she said.

"You wouldn't have to go even that far," I told her. "One friendly wink of your big blue eyes and I'd be putty."

Snow raised her eyebrows appraisingly. "Hmmm. I'll have to remember that in the future." It was in fun, but I caught a tinge of serious consideration in it. It gave me an uneasy feeling, a feeling that brought me sharply back to my main query, from which I'd been sidetracked a few moments before.

"But you still haven't told me why you came in here."

"To find you. I figured that if an Amnesty-bearer was on his way to Mars, there was big trouble. And I think I know what the trouble is, but I need some of the answers you can give me."

"What do you want with government information?" I said, trying to be stiffly formal. "And what makes you think I'd give it to you?"

"Two reasons," she said, answering my last question first. "I can simply wink a big blue eye--unless you've been pulling my leg--and get all the information I desire."

"That's only one reason," I said carefully. "What else makes you think I'd tell you the information?"

Snow eyed me soberly, and her face hovered between grim determination and fathomless concern. "My brother Ted is one of the missing Space Scouts."

6

"Don't pretend," Snow said. "I know. The last two letters from Ted convinced me something was wrong. He never wrote those letters."

I thought of Baxter's agents sweltering to turn out perfect facsimiles of children's letters, all for nothing. I sighed, and determined to make one last effort to keep the secret a secret. "You're imagining things. Sometimes, when a person is in an alien environment--which you must admit a strange planet is--their outlook changes a bit."

She was staring at me, her eyes disconcertingly steady, just waiting for me to complete my lie, hardly listening to me. I gave it up and stopped. Snow, seeing I was through, unclasped her handbag and handed me a letter.

I read it through. When I was finished, I looked at her with what I hoped was a noncommittal expression.

"See what I mean?" said Snow. "Three _l_'s in _really_, and terrible spellings of _ancient_ and _Martian_. But words like ruins and civilization come through perfectly. It's an obvious attempt on the part of someone to deceive me. I just know something's wrong. That's why I drained my savings account and took this flight. I've got to find out what's happened."

"You could have gone to the police." I suggested lamely.

"I did." Snow's voice was cold and flat. "They laughed at me, said I was imagining things. I don't really blame them; all I have to go on is a hunch. That, plus the fact that Ted didn't say anything in our special code."

I closed my eyes and groaned. She would have a special code with her brother! "Sure he didn't simply overlook it?" I tried.

Snow's face was solemnly earnest. "In one letter, by the longest stretch of the imagination, possibly. But not two in a row." She leaned forward, her eyes housing desperation. "So when I learned that you, an Amnesty-bearer, were aboard, I just knew it had to be connected with whatever happened to Ted. There is something wrong, isn't there!"

I hesitated, wondering what to do. This thing was a tightly kept secret, one which I'd sworn to keep. On the other hand, Snow had the most devastating blue eyes. I shifted in my position and felt cold metal bump lightly against my chest beneath my blouse. I'd forgotten about the Amnesty. Hell! I was the most influential, powerful person in the universe, wasn't I? If I wanted to plaster the secret across the face of the moon, no one had the authority to say no. Not even Baxter, however purple he might turn at the idea, could tell me not to do anything! And hadn't I been picked by the Brain? Didn't that mean that my instincts in this thing would be the correct ones?

I took one more look into her deep blue eyes and decided that even if it was the most disastrous thing to do, I was going to tell her the truth.

"It depends on what you mean by _wrong_," I said.

Snow's brow crinkled. "Then the boys have vanished?"

I nodded, and she went deathly pale. "But don't worry," I said quickly. "It may not be as bad as we think."

"What!" she gasped. "Fifteen little boys missing on an alien planet, and it may not be bad? Are you out of your mind?"

"If you'll calm down a bit and let me explain." I suggested.

Snow leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. "Go ahead," she said resignedly.

I told her about my being picked up at work by the Security Agents, of my meeting with Baxter, and of my investigation of _Phobos II_. She listened that far in silence, then could hold back no longer.

"But what did you find in those lockers? And what does the takeoff thrust and the dehumidifying system have to do with the boys' disappearance?"

I smiled reassuringly at her. "Listen, Snow. Baxter, myself, and probably you, too, have one reaction in common about the boys' vanishment from a ship in space. Our very first word on the subject is an incredulous 'Impossible.' Of course, we're using it in the colloquial sense; that of 'I don't believe it!' But if we take it in its literal sense, we'll be absolutely correct. Such a thing _is_ impossible."

Snow opened her mouth, but I shushed her unspoken words with a wave of my hand. "I know, you're about to spout something about magnetic grapples and mid-space boardings, or even about long distance teleporting rays--none of which have as yet, so far as we know, been invented--or some such rot. But what are the arguments against these two solitary possibilities?

"As to the first; Anders, the pilot, would surely have noticed another ship in his vicinity. The meteorite warnings would have begun jangling when the ship was still hundreds of miles away. And if it could, somehow, evade the signalling devices, Anders would still have heard the ship make contact. You can't drive up in a spaceship big enough to hold at least fifteen normal-sized boys, besides your own crew, and just not be noticed!

"So we come to the second, and only other, possibility: Were the boys kidnapped by some ultrasuper teleportation beam? The answer, of course, is a resounding, 'Hell, no!'"

Snow frowned. "Why?"

"The thrust, Snow, that's why. If that weight were suddenly removed from the ship--boys of Space Scout age usually run to an average weight of one hundred pounds, or, in this case, a total of about fifteen hundred pounds--if that weight had suddenly become missing, then Anders' fuel consumption, remaining the same but with less mass to thrust, would have made him overshoot Earth. This, however, did not happen. In fact, the gauges in the pilot's compartment plainly show that the ship's mass was, on landing, within a fraction of an ounce of its takeoff mass. Therefore, no mass at all was lost in space except that expended by the consumption of fuel."

Snow shook her head, bewildered. "But that doesn't make sense!" she cried. "If they weren't taken off the ship in space, and they weren't aboard her when she landed, then--" All at once, she got it, and sat back with a sharp gasp.

"Exactly," I said. "They never even left Mars."

"But you said that this man Anders had seen to it that they were all aboard before takeoff."

"Which I have no doubt he did. But the civilian mind skips a few details when it thinks over his report. They see him look at the boys, nod, then go up front and press the starter button. It doesn't happen quite that simply. There are a lot of other things to be done. Anders had to go into the pilot's cabin, strap himself in place, check the guages which showed his course, mass, fuel supply, thrust control, oxygen-nitrogen mixture, and a million and one other things. He had to check the last and most important dial examined before takeoff; the one which told him that each of the fifteen takeoff racks in the ship were occupied."

"But--" Snow cut in, bewildered, leaning forward.

"Let me finish." She set her mouth and sat back again. "He had to know that, because takeoff thrust on a human being _not_ snugly in his padded rack would probably squash him to pieces against a bulkhead. So there had to be something in those racks in order to fool Anders into thinking that the scouts were still aboard; something which, by the time Anders had maneuvered the ship into its flight vector, would be gone without leaving a trace, or not much of a trace, unless one were actually looking for it."

"What?" asked Snow, fascinated.

"Ice," I said. "Hunks of ice in every one of the fifteen bunks. Ice which the temperature control unit would commence to melt immediately."

"But that would mean ice blocks of hundred-pound weights! They couldn't melt so fast. Wouldn't Anders be likely to come back to the racks and find them still there?"