Part 2

"I will, pal," I said. "Thanks."

It felt good going down and for the first time I realized I had a hangover from the night before. And the night before that. And then I saw that Deborah's green eyes were wide open and fixed on me.

I took another slug, over and above Charley's little pained exclamation. I didn't like the look in those green eyes.

* * * * *

"Hey, Steve," Debby called in that indecent voice of hers. "I want to talk to you."

"You see, my friend," I said to the owner of the bottle, "she wants to talk to me."

"That makes you lucky," Charley said. He was very carefully putting the top back on the bottle.

"So, talk," I said to her.

"No, _you_ come over here for a change."

Then I knew something was wrong. In some crazy way Deborah and I operated on the same frequency. I could always sense things about her--and, I knew, she could about me, too. I grunted. I moved reluctantly. But I went over to her and sat down.

Her face was propped up by an elbow and about six inches from mine after she had drawn my head down for a real private tete-a-tete.

"Steve, I've got to talk to you."

She was real, damned pretty that close up. But that wasn't the reason I got the breathless feeling in my stomach. I wondered how much this was going to cost Universal. I was thinking in terms of money at that point.

"All right," I said. "I couldn't hit you even if I wanted to. What did you do this time?"

"Well. It's not awfully bad and it's not awfully good. It's a delicate situation. And I need your help."

My alarm grew. "Deborah!" I said warningly.

She drew a deep breath through a small, round red mouth. "I smuggled someone on board," she said very quietly.

Well, that was interesting. I patted her cheek; I wanted to wring her neck. "Fascinating," I said lightly. "Let me know how you make out with customs, or whatever."

I made like I was getting up. She grabbed my collar. "Steve!" she whispered, agonized about something.

"Mr. Lasker," I said briskly. "I'm your boss, not your friend. Take your problem to Charley; he's softheaded."

"I'll give Charley an exclusive," she whispered three inches from my face. "I could tie up the spacetron for the next two days with this story.

"This is Pundra Doh's wife!"

I sank back on my haunches and stared at her. "You've stowed a Martian _woman_ on this tub?"

She nodded a small nod, once.

I grabbed her by the shoulders and I guess it wasn't gently.

"The holiest of all holy Martian women, the Premier's woman!"

"Yes, Mr. Lasker."

I was speechless and, I will admit, scared. This was real serious business. This no newsman on Mars would wade into without a clearance covered with red seals and blazing with blue ribbons. The Martians were _touchy_ about their women, and they meant it.

And our doll, our Deborah had done this all by herself. But why? I asked the burning question even if it was crazy, "You didn't kidnap her, did you? Just for laughs or something?"

"Steve, please!"

She was scared. I loosened a button on my collar. "Okay, baby, give it to me. All of it. You realize this constitutes a breach of faith with the Martians. Not to mention an assault on U.F.S. policy. A lot of people are going to find their heads on the block if this gets out."

"Well, I don't know about that," Deborah said quietly. "I was asked to do this. To arrange this trip for Laapet, in exactly this way. And I gave it a lot of thought before I agreed to do it."

"Laapet? The lady's name?"

She nodded. She backed away a little, down on her elbow again. She had been upsetting that close; even with everything else charging through my brain, I noticed it. Had she?

"I was at the _Celestial_ when the first news from Ul broke," Deborah said. "I was about to go to bed, as a matter of fact, when the Martian innkeep hammered on my door and told me about the disaster. I packed my gear right away and got transportation for rescue headquarters. I figured the biggest picture-wise things would be happening there. Besides, I wanted to help if I could.

"I hadn't gone very far from the _Celestial_ when my vehicle was stopped by a Martian."

I listened to her story incredulously. It was eerie and unbelievable. There in the merciless cold of the white-lighted night desert Deborah had made the first crossing into the secret, private world of the Martians.

* * * * *

The man who intercepted her appeared out of the night, without warning. Tall and slender in a cloak of soft furs, his feet in fine leather quilted boots, the tall glittering oxygen cone crested with the phoenix-like emblem of the ruling group--he was regal, and tragic with uncertainty. He had no taste for his mission but he was urgent.

He frightened Deborah with his intensity but she trusted him. The way you always trusted the Martians. She left her chauffeur to wait for her and went with him in his machine. They drove into the desert for a long while in silence. He did not tell her what to expect, but it was obviously important and secret. He was without attendants. He did not even have a driver but operated his own vehicle.

"I could not understand why I had been chosen," Deborah said. "But I had the feeling that I was very unimportant, in myself."

They came to the rendezvous spot where one of the larger and better land machines waited--like a black monument rising from the white sand. Inside, Laapet waited. He had taken her to his sister, Pundra Doh's wife.

The compartment was luxurious and dimly lit. Laapet sat behind semi-opaque hangings, shy, frightened and all but invisible. But desperate. Her two children were in Ul and she was beside herself with anxiety for them.

Deborah's face was very soft and saddened. I understood something, suddenly, something I had not come close to before. Laapet was not a stowaway to Deborah, or a diplomatic catastrophe, but a woman distraught with concern for her children. If Deborah had any motivation it was to help this other woman--even if she broke the iron rules of the Martian code. She was, in that instant, an entire woman, herself.

And what could you do about it? Forget you were a good guy, too, someplace in your cynical old fibers? And just berate her for getting you involved in an absolutely untenable situation--one that would presently have the Ambassador, himself, running for a bromo fizz?

"So, she wanted to go to Ul. And you were the only woman going and she trusted you to understand?" I said it as gently as I could. Maybe Deborah understood that I understood, for once.

Deborah was thoughtful. "I don't understand all of it," she said slowly. "She was, naturally, not permitted to accompany the Premier. I'm sure she didn't even ask. If you know anything about the way they rear their children, here ..." she said expectantly, and I nodded because I had read a report or two on the subject.

"Well, it seems she had been ill--not physically, but emotionally, I gather. She was unstable and the children were sent to Ul on a holiday, to escape her tensions. Since they had been sent to Ul because of her, she felt it was her fault they were in danger. And because she knew they would receive no better attention, or be found more quickly, under the Martian code, she decided to go herself to make sure they would survive."

"They will not honor her for it," I said. And I was doubtful that Madame Pundra's stability had returned.

"I am sure they won't," Deborah said bitterly. "But I can understand that her children are worth more to her than her honor. And maybe that's an instinct that's common to all mothers regardless of their origin."

I couldn't argue with her. I didn't say that maybe if Madame Pundra had been well, emotionally, according to Martian standards, she wouldn't have done it. What was the point?

* * * * *

The generators of the _Starfish_ hammered through the silence that hung between us. I had never before been touched emotionally, myself, by anything Martian. And here, suddenly, I was a hapless party to a certain tragedy--all the more tragic because it was based on mores I did not understand entirely, or sympathize with.

"Maybe we can help her avoid dishonor?"

Deborah shrugged. "She will, in any event, confess to having petitioned us into helping her. The Martians do not dissemble. That will be enough to condemn her."

I shook myself out of a peculiar gloom. "There may be a way." I said, but I doubted it. "How did you ever get her on board? And where is she? And how did she ever hear about you?"

Deborah looked tired. "The plan was to smuggle her aboard in my portable developing unit; it worked out very smoothly. I don't know how she heard about me. I wish she hadn't."

"That makes two of us," I muttered. "Deborah?"

Her mouth shook a little. "Yes, Steve, I know." Her voice was a register lower and all but inaudible. "I'm glad I can count on you, you louse."

Something pretty incredible was happening to us. In spite of the way she phrased it she was suddenly not out there striding along manfully by herself, any more. Nor had she ever been. To have her suddenly lapse atavistically into a woman instead of a termagent was more than I could handle. I, who had all but resigned myself to the inevitable, eventual appeal of one of the moronic but less assertive ewes of our society! How had Deborah been flushed through the nets and traps and conditioners of our psychologists--to land, thus, a compound personality in my lap?

Here, I thought exultantly, is no glitteringly compatible equal with every brain impulse carefully measured, and every muscle vibrating in harmony with the males on her level. But a thoroughly mixed-up female in the romantic tradition of the last century!

"You damned little fake," I said huskily.

"It took you the longest time to figure me out," Deborah sighed. "I hope you'll treat it as a confidential disclosure or they'll try to cure me and make me _normal_."

"Heaven forbid!" I let her voice crawl up and down my spine with a freedom I'd never allowed before. It made me feel pretty drunk.

I looked at her and her eyes were green and wide. "God, you're beautiful," I said with the unbidden frankness that comes with any kind of drunkenness.

"You make me feel that way," she said.

I touched her hand very briefly. "It'll turn out as good as I can manage."

"I needed you, Steve. I was so afraid you wouldn't be there. I couldn't be alone with this one. She's going to _kill_ herself, Steve."

"Aren't any of her people interested in helping her? What about her brother?"

"Another potential suicide, I suppose," Deborah said bitterly. "He's with Pundra Doh in the lead ship. He will ostensibly take over when he reaches Ul."

"Well, heaven bless him."

* * * * *

I didn't have to go back and sit next to Charley, but I did. I had a couple of things to think about and if I'd stayed with Deborah I would have thought about only one of them.

Charley was half asleep. Raeburn seemed to be asleep. Vechi was reading. I leaned back and closed my eyes. And still I thought about only one thing. Deborah. Not thinking, really, feeling. I resented Pundra Doh's wife for crowding in on that feeling. And for the vague presentiment I had about Vechi. And Charley's eternally undisturbed equanimity.

Deborah! I wished we were anywhere but where we were. With this new thing to explore and understand, I wanted to be near her, alone. But everything had its price; I had been conditioned successfully enough to accept that.

There was Laapet, Madame Pundra. And what if her brother did not materialize when we reached Ul?

I opened my eyes and watched Charley. He was pouring a shot from his bottle. "Here, pal," he said, "have a medicinal."

I wondered if we would have to tell him about Laapet? Not yet. "Wait," I told myself reassuringly, "her brother will take the whole thing off your hands." But I wasn't sure. I had the uneasy feeling that something would prevent it.

I glanced at Deborah. She was lying on her back, staring at the dome of the _Starfish_. She didn't look like she was thinking about us, only.

Charley was tuned in on the same vibration band. He gave me the answer. "You know," he said quietly, "I've been thinking about Vechi. I don't like his being on the _Starfish_."

"Go fight the R.A.," I said sarcastically.

"I don't like other things, too," he went on, ignoring me. "Why hasn't one of the pilots come out for a smoke, yet? Or a drink--or for some bright chatter with us educated chaps?"

"Things too dull for you, pal?" I asked routinely. It hadn't penetrated, yet.

Charley had on his patient expression. "Listen, Brain. While you and Debby were having your big conference I went to the men's lounge to gargle my throat. It's a funny thing how cautious the R.A.'s getting; the door to the control room is locked. I tried it gently. If they didn't want to come out and talk to us--I thought I'd go talk to them."

My stomach froze into a hard knot. I looked at Charley and he said, "There's the barest possibility that Vechi is pulling a fast one. Figure that he wants a diranium sample. With a couple of pals driving this bus he could get into and out of Ul slick as anything."

"But we complicate things," I muttered hopefully.

"It's four to two if you don't count Debby for a muscle man. And with the element of surprise on their side, they think--what have they got to worry about?"

"Vechi wouldn't dare--not with the whole R.A. out there to protect the mines!"

"I dunno," Charley said. "He's real cool."

"Well, well," I said. I was thinking about the additional complication of Madame Pundra. "And if you aren't just off on a pipe night how do we find out for sure? And then what, Charley?"

"I don't know, Master Brain. You think about it. No man of action, I!"

"Why would the control room be locked?" I mused.

"I don't know, Brain."

"Do you suppose Vechi thinks we've caught on?"

"No. He's a Superior Type; to him we're just alcoholic writer chaps."

"I'm glad you're a student of human nature, Charley, old pal. But how do we act effectively without a weapon of some sort?"

"Now, it's real hilarious," Charley said with a broad smile, "but say I had a vision, or planned a stick-up on the First National Bank of Ul. I have a popgun in my gear."

Well. Old Charley. You never could tell.

"Where is it?"

"It has taken the bottle down two inches but I've managed to get it out of the gear-bag and into my workalls."

"A real efficient type, Charley, old pal." I looked about me wondering if we weren't just imagining everything. And if the Ul disaster weren't enough reason for this trip. "How about Deborah?"

"If we had a game of stud king," Charley said, fishing out a token, "and Debby joined us, we could have a lot of conversation between hands."

"Heads," I said clearly.

"Son of a space cook," he said loudly. "You deal."

I glanced at Vechi casually, as though satisfying myself that he didn't want to be disturbed. He was looking at us over his book. He smiled, I thought, in a superior way.

"Want to lose some money?" I called to Deborah.

"I've got some change," she said, sitting up.

And so we commenced to play stud king on a cleared-off space on the floor. Between the laughs we got in a lot of conversation.

* * * * *

We figured we had time. The trip to Ul took four hours and we were only half-way there. If Vechi was up to something it would probably involve a "forced" landing somewhere just outside of Ul, away from the main rocket fleet. After all, what he wanted was in Ul.

If the pilots and Raeburn were in on the deal with him--and they had to be--we were badly outnumbered. Our only chance was not in waiting but in somehow getting control of the _Starfish_ while it was still aloft. And of contacting the lead ship for help.

Deborah was scared. And I was glad she was scared. And I was glad she didn't turn up a single, bright idea for our salvation. Except that she would have to tell Madame Pundra about this development.

It was then that we told Charley about our stowaway. It was to his credit that his expression remained unchanged. And indicative of something that his only excitement was at the possibility of finally seeing a Martian woman.

It may have seemed very little to go on, our conviction that Vechi was masterminding a coup. But it's the little things that make you suspicious. The R.A. is made up of casual characters. They like to talk, gripe about no smoking in the control room, come back to sniff out a drink or a game of stud king, maybe an off-color story. There seems to be a kind of conspiracy to get the rockets to fly themselves while the pilots visit aft--or so it seems to the passengers.

You get to expect informalities from the R.A.; they're usual. And it's the kind of detail a slick, factual guy like Vechi could overlook, or think you might overlook, if he were planning something. The longer the pilots stayed away--the more certain we were.

We were also sure that if Vechi and Raeburn were in the pay of an Earth syndicate to get hold of diranium ore they could have slugged the pilots of the _Starfish_, put in their own crew and trailed along with the rescue fleet. We didn't represent much of a threat; they could dump us anyplace. The _Starfish_ was no beauty but she could make the trip back to Earth.

We did not want to think they were planning to do anything more serious than dump us. And Charley and I were determined that Vechi wasn't going to reduce us to a trio of dumb pawns. But I guess we couldn't help what happened, at that. There was another mighty powerful piece in this chess game we hadn't even thought about.

Deborah was hopeful almost to the end that we were just imagining the whole thing. "How can we be sure?" she wanted to know.

Then Charley had the inspiration. He remembered one of the pilots permanently assigned to the _Starfish_, Fats Berenson. The joke was that Fats was too big for the sleek speed-boats up ahead but better suited to this boxcar.

"If Fats were aboard," Charley said, looking over a new hand of stud king, "he would have been out here two hours ago and using every gimmick to stay out here. He's just naturally the laziest slob in the R.A. Besides, I owe him some money from an old bet. Knowing from the passenger list that I was aboard he would have come up from hell, itself, to collect."

"But we're still not sure," Deborah insisted.

"Tell you what," Charley said quietly, raking in a pot, "I'm going to find out who the pilots are. I'll use the gun on the lock--and keep the boys at the controls orderly after that. Then I'll try to contact the lead ship for help. If the pilots aren't old friends."

"The hero type," I muttered. But I was grateful he had the gun. "Okay, Charley. I'll keep Vechi occupied and Deborah can take off to the ladies' lounge for safety, and to tell Madame Pundra what we plan to do."

"You got it, Bright Boy," Charley grinned. "Debby leaves first and then I stroll out real casual. It doesn't matter if Vechi and Raeburn catch wise once I've contacted the lead ship. They won't dare pull anything because the _Electra_ could catch this tub with half its generators conked out."

"It's a comforting thought," I said. And then I looked at Deborah. "Go on," I told her, "get out of here and stay out of sight until I collect you. I've got my mark on you."

It caught Charley off balance. "Well, I'll be damned," he said. "Where was I when this happened?"

"Lushing it up," I said. I watched Deborah get up and leave the compartment. Vechi watched her, too. His chest heaved up as though he were sighing wearily; he turned a page in his book and looked at Raeburn. His assistant lay flat on his back. His wide mouth hung open slack, ugly and resonant with a snore. Vechi went back to his book.

Then, with some elaborate stretching, Charley stood up and I watched him leave, too. Vechi watched him go, as well. He glanced at me, pleasantly.

"The bum," I said conversationally, "he took me for ten fish in stud king!"

"That so?" Vechi smiled agreeably. He folded his book. And then he very calmly reached into the pocket of his work-all and took out a gun. He held it very steadily and it was aimed at me.

"You can't win at everything," he said. "Some days aren't lucky." He had a nice sense of the ironic.

Raeburn, beside him, snored peacefully. And I sat there numb and helpless.

"What in the hell is that for?" I asked and my throat was full of gravel.

Vechi smiled as if I should know and I thought I did. But I was never more mistaken.

* * * * *

Then Vechi did a strange thing. He prodded Raeburn with his foot. It took a lot of prodding to wake him. When Raeburn's eyes opened he was looking straight down the blast channels of Vechi's weapon. It was a hell of a way to wake up. His Adam's apple froze half way through a convulsion of shock.

"Get up," Vechi said gently, "and get over there with our friend in the press box."

Raeburn was a little slow in comprehending and from the way Vechi urged him with the toe of his boot you could tell nobody loved Raeburn.

It didn't figure. The timing was off. Why the switch on Raeburn? Vechi was going to need help getting what he wanted in Ul. If there was going to be a double-cross, why now? Before Raeburn had been useful? Or was Raeburn in on it at all?

"Now, look, Vechi," I blustered, "this is a pretty dumb joke. What's it all about?"

He smiled. "It's no joke."

Raeburn, who was now sitting beside me, stared at his boss in amazement. "You're crazy," he bleated. "You can't pull this thing off by yourself!"

Vechi ignored him. "I'm afraid, Mr. Lasker, I can't wait any longer. You and your friends might discover certain irregularities about this flight. If you haven't, already."

I had nothing to say.

He went on in quiet earnest, "I am about to put into action a plan of great personal importance to me and I must warn you against any opposition. I have no desire to injure you or your colleagues. But there must be no interference."

I listened to Vechi and I watched, fascinated. The man with the gun in his hands was a different personality. The superficial oiliness had washed off clean, revealing, surprisingly, a man I felt I could like. I was less and less sure of his objective. Raeburn was obviously thunderstruck by the turn of events.

Vechi's hard, tanned face was grim. He was a determined man. He got up lightly and his arm reached for a hand-grip on the side of the compartment. The gun covered us. "We are almost at Faleeng," he said to me. "There we part company."

I thought about that; I was agreeable. But I also thought about Charley and how he was making out, if at all. And about Deborah. And last, but not least, about Madame Pundra. Vechi was obviously planning to herd Deborah and Charley into the "press box" as they returned to the compartment.

"Why Faleeng?" I asked. "The diranium is at Ul."

He grinned in genuine amusement. "That is very true," he agreed. "But I am not interested in diranium."

Raeburn made a peculiar sound and Vechi looked at him with contempt. "Raeburn is, however. I'm afraid I'm going to be a great disappointment to him."

I began to feel something of Raeburn's incredulity. If Vechi wasn't going for diranium what in hell was he going for? I opened my mouth to say something like that when the door to the compartment slid back.

I jumped to my feet and would probably have tried something asinine if Vechi hadn't waved me back with his gun. "He's all right," he said.

Charley, our hero, was being carried in on the powerful shoulders of a Martian serf. The Martian, in an ill-fitting R.A. uniform, was one of the semi-slave groups, strong, brutish, and low on the Martian scale of evolution. He put Charley down very gently at Vechi's command.

* * * * *