The Second Mack Reynolds Megapack

by Mack Reynolds

  He put down the novel and stared unseeing at the wall opposite. He had been an operative with the Pacifists for more than three years now. He was, he realized, probably their senior hatchetman. An agent could hardly expect to survive so long. It was against averages.

  It was then that the screen of his telephone lit up.

  Senator Phil McGivern’s face glowered at him.

  Warren Casey started, stared.

  McGivern said, coldly, deliberately, “The building is surrounded, Casey. Surrender yourself. There are more than fifty security police barring any chance of escape.”

  The Pacifist’s mind snapped to attention. Was there anything he had to do? Was there anything in the apartment that might possibly betray the organization or any individual member of it? He wanted a few moments to think.

  He attempted to keep his voice even. “What do you want, McGivern?”

  “My son!” The politician was glaring his triumph.

  “I’m afraid Fredric is out of my hands,” Casey said. Was the senator lying about the number of police? Was there any possibility of escape?

  “Then whose hands is he in? You have him, Warren Casey, but we have you.”

  “He’s not here,” Casey said. There might still be a service he could perform. Some way of warning the organization of McGivern’s method of tracking him down. “How did you find me? How do you know my name?” McGivern snorted. “You’re a fool as well as a criminal. You sat in my office and spoke in the accent of your native city. I pinpointed that, immediately. You told me you’d been a bomber pilot and obviously had seen action, which meant you’d been in the last war. Then as a pseudonym you used the name Jakes. Did you know that persons taking pseudonyms almost always base them on some actuality? We checked in your home city, and, sure enough, there was actually a newspaperman named Jakes. We questioned him. Did he know a former bomber pilot, a veteran of the last war. Yes, he did. A certain Warren Casey. From there on the job was an easy one— criminal. Now, where is my son?”

  For a moment, Warren Casey felt weary compassion for the other. The senator had worked hard to find his boy, hard and brilliantly. “I’m sorry, McGivern, I really don’t know.” Casey threw his glass, destroying the telephone screen.

  He was on his feet, heading for the kitchen. He’d explored this escape route long ago when first acquiring the apartment.

  The dumbwaiter was sufficiently large to accommodate him. He wedged himself into it, slipped the rope through his fingers, quickly but without fumbling. He shot downward.

  In the basement, his key opened a locker. He reached in and seized the submachine pistol and two clips of cartridges. He stuffed one into a side pocket, slapped the other into the gun, threw off the safety. Already he was hurrying down the corridor toward the heating plant. He was counting on the fact that the security police had not had sufficient time to discover that this building shared its central heating and air-conditioning plant with the apartment house adjoining.

  Evidently, they hadn’t.

  A freight elevator shot him to the roof of the next building. From here, given luck, he could cross to a still further building and make his getaway.

  He emerged on the roof, shot a quick glance around.

  Fifty feet away, their backs to him, stood three security police agents. Two of them armed with automatic rifles, the other with a handgun, they were peering over the parapet, probably at the windows of his apartment.

  His weapon flashed to position, but then the long weariness overtook him. No more killing. Please. No more killing. He lowered the gun, turned and headed quietly in the opposite direction.

  A voice behind him yelled, “Hey! Stop! You—”

  He ran.

  The burst of fire caught Warren Casey as he attempted to vault to the next building. It ripped through him and the darkness fell immediately.

  Fifteen minutes later Senator Phil McGivern scowled down at the meaningless crumpled figure. “You couldn’t have captured him?” he said sourly.

  “No, sir,” the security sergeant defended himself. “It was a matter of shoot him or let him escape.”

  McGivern snorted his disgust.

  The sergeant said wonderingly, “Funny thing was, he could’ve finished off the three of us. We were the only ones on the roof here. He could’ve shot us and then got away.”

  One of the others said, “Probably didn’t have the guts.”

  “No,” McGivern growled. “He had plenty of guts.”

  EARTHLINGS GO HOME!

  AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

  This is purely for fun. For ten years I was travel editor for Rogue magazine. Each issue, I had at least one article that largely financed my globe-trotting. However, the editors decided to bring out an “all science fiction” issue and, since I was currently traipsing around North Africa, how could they possibly fit my piece in? All was solved when I mailed them this. It was later reprinted in Judith Merril’s eighth The Year’s Best SF.

  —Mack Reynolds

  * * * *

  Time was when a freewheeling bachelor could take off for Lhasa or Timbuktu and upon his return expect to have a conversation piece he could trade on for at least a few months. You know the scene; star attraction at the cocktail parties, bright young things hanging on your words, the other single males standing around looking bleak. You had it made.

  Now everybody’s been everywhere. Mention your trip to China and three guys yawn and say, yeah, wasn’t it awful when the air-conditioning went on the blink at the Peiping Hilton in August. A world traveler is about as unique as an automobile in downtown Manhattan.

  Which brings us to the point. You got to get out of the world, man. There’s still so few space travelers, it’s all but a monopoly. Go on, let’s see you, how many people can you name that’ve been to the moon, even? See what I mean? Suppose the next time you’re at a party and the conversation drags, you gaze contemptuously at the 99-to-l Martini you’re drinking and drop a nonchalant bit such as, “When I was on Mars, I got smashed on Canal Coolers. Now there’s a dry drink. They make it from woji and dehydrated water.”

  There’s this place and that place, in space, but if you’re this free-wheeling type we’re talking about, you’ll be choosing Marsport for your vacation, a combination sin city and bargain paradise that’d be hard to equal. Let’s start at the beginning.

  Spaceship is the only means of transport that can be recommended, and so far as cost is concerned it doesn’t make much difference—Pan-Planets Spacelines or Soviet Spaceways. You can’t afford either. And don’t jump to the conclusion that we’re recommending stowing away. The last such case we heard of, a youth hosteler named Elmer Hung hid himself in a nook too near the rocket tubes. He was eventually discovered when a ship’s officer noticed a bunch of Martian stevedores whomping up some barbecue sauce and became suspicious.

  No, the only way is to utilize this new system of Travel Now…let your grandchildren pay later. Which is sort of a combination of the government’s deficit spending now and letting posterity pick up the tab and the old airline system of Travel Now, Pay Later. The loan companies pick your grandchildren, rather than your children, working on the theory that you’re probably already so far in debt your kids won’t be able to pay it off.

  There’s not much to say about space travel. The faster you travel, the more boring it becomes. Stroll five miles and you’ll probably see a great deal, have an experience or so, meet somebody interesting, and the trip will take possibly two hours. Spend two hours driving along a highway in your car and you’ll cover up to two hundred miles, see damn little but the road, and have no experiences whatsoever, you hope, since about the only thing that could happen would be a flat tire or a wreck. Spend the same two hours in a jet aircraft and you’ll get halfway across the country and aside from a moment of take-off and one of landing, you’ll see nothing except possibly the magazine the stewardess gives you to kill time.

  So, okay, in a spaceship you have butterflies in the tummy durin
g countdown and blast-off, and then you sit around doing nothing and with nothing to see except space, of which there is a lot, until you get to your destination. So it’s boring.

  The boredom ends once you set down in Marsport. Gentlemen, let’s face reality. Things are different on Mars. If you think you’ve seen some strange items during your travels such as stand-up bathtubs in Japan, sexual mores in Scandinavia, food in England, politics in South America, forget about them. Till you’ve hit Marsport, you’ve seen nothing out of the way.

  First things first. You’ll want a pad. Unless you can sleep suspended by your knees, something like a bat, you’d better choose an Earth-side type hotel. We believe in adapting to local custom, but somehow Earthlings just don’t get the hang of Martian beds.

  If you’re on a shoestring, you might try the Marsport Young Men’s Christian, Hebrew, Moslem, Zen Buddhist and Reformed Agnostic Association. Without going into details, all Earth-side religions have combined their resources to open this hotel. It isn’t as confusing as you’d first think. The Moslems take over the chapel on Friday, the Hebrews on Saturday, the Christians on Sunday, the Buddhists on Tuesday and the agnostics go to hell in their own way, all week long.

  We’ll mention in passing here, because this, being a rundown on high life in Marsport, wouldn’t usually deal with religion at all, that Earth-side missionaries have a rough row to hoe on Mars, no matter what denomination. It’s not that the Martians aren’t religious. That is, they believe that Mars was created by a god, or gods, and that all things that live on Mars were also so created. But there the similarity ends to Earth-side religions. Instead of worshipping their gods, they sort of ignore them. They adopt a sort of hurt, reproachful attitude toward divinity. Kind of a why-did-you-have-to-do-this-to-us approach. They work on the theory that if the gods had to get onto this creating kick, they could have done it better.

  If your budget isn’t as tight as all that, you’ll probably do as well at the Accelerated Motel as any place. No, that isn’t a typesetter’s or proofreader’s mistake. It isn’t the Excelsior Hotel, but the Accelerated Motel, and if you’ll stick with us for a moment we’ll point out that in spite of the fact that you haven’t a car with you on Mars, the Accelerated might still be the best hostelry for you. It’s not always in town, of course, but you can usually time your activities so that you can pick it up on the way through.

  The fact of the matter is that the climate is so brutally hot in mid-day and so brutally cold at night that the owners of the Accelerated Motel met the situation by keeping on the move. In short, the establishment is motorized, and keeps in the twilight zone. Of course, this might not be practical on Earth what with stronger gravity and international boundaries, but, like we keep telling you, Mars is different.

  Happily, since the Accelerated is Earth-side owned, you’ll be able to use American exchange and there’ll be no problem there. However, this brings us to the Martian monetary system. They don’t have any.

  Earthling economists of every hue, including Marxists, are still in a condition of shock trying to make some sort of sense of the Martian means of exchange, but they don’t seem to be getting very far. Martian historians will admit that some thousands of years ago they did use money on Mars but that it didn’t work out so well. In fact, it caused a lot of trouble. It seems as though some people wanted to acquire unreasonably large amounts of the stuff and that led to all sorts of disagreeableness. So the Martians discontinued it.

  Anticipating some of your questions, and admitting that we, ourselves, are none too clear, we can only say that it seems as though from the earliest youth each Martian simply puts everything he ever buys on the cuff. When he’s eventually lived his life out and is laid to rest, the fiscal authorities settle it all up, deducting from the earnings of his lifetime everything that he spent.

  Yes, yes, we know. You’re saying, “Suppose his tab totals up to more than he earned?” And we can only say, repeating all over again that Mars is different, that in that case they wake him up and make him work out the difference. It seems that medicine is a science that is very advanced among the Martians.

  Happily, this money problem isn’t going to affect you much since you’ll be paying off to Earth-side concerns for your hotel, food, drinks and such.

  And anticipating, once again, a matter that you’ll undoubtedly bring up at this point, we can only say that in spite of what you now think, you will not want to eat the native food and will not want to drink the native drinks. True enough, a few of the Martian dishes are such that you can sample them as prepared in your Earth-side type hotel, and adapted to your Earthling palate.

  For instance, there’s the dish they call the Cold Tamale, undoubtedly because visually it somewhat resembles the famed Mexican food. However, instead of being well laced with red chili peppers, the Martian version has a sort of reverse pepper, which, instead of burning your mouth, cools it to the point where you spit icicles, a very disconcerting experience the first time you sample the dish.

  But it is not in food that you run into your greatest hazard in items Martian. Their drink can be even more startling, given Earthling tastes.

  High on the list of Martian potables is woji, which is, uh, let us say, expanded, rather than distilled, from a strange berry that contracts in the deserts of Mars. Note that we said contracts rather than grows. We won’t go into the biological aspects of Martian plant life at this point, but it is possibly this factor that leads to the strange effects of drinking woji.

  Briefly, when you take your first drink of the lapis lazuli colored stuff, it gives you one hell of a hangover, which only decreases slightly on your next drink. Your mouth feels like the proverbial bottom of a bird’s cage, your head is splitting, you feel like tossing your cookies, you don’t give a damn if school keeps or not. Why enumerate? You have one hell of a hangover, period. It helps to take another slug and then another, but only partially. Altogether, you might put away as much as a pint, before stumbling off to bed, feeling as lousy as you ever have in your life.

  The question you are now asking is, “Then why drink woji at all?”

  And the answer is, when you wake up in the morning you feel swell. The stuff contains an ingredient something like a reverse alcohol. You get the hangover first, and then feel fine the next morning. It takes getting used to.

  But woji is for peasants. It’s somewhat the equivalent of beer on Earth. The drink of the gods, given the Martian viewpoint, is nig, and the fact that it’s gin spelled backwards has no significance since nig is more like champagne than anything else.

  The truth of the matter is that you get high on nig. No, no, don’t misunderstand. We mean literally high. And in that lies the difficulty with the delicious stuff.

  You take your first glass of nig and a pleasant glow goes through you and you rise about two inches off the floor. It seems that one of nig’s ingredients has an antigravity effect that has to be experienced to be believed. You have a bit of trouble at first but soon get the hang of it and maintain equilibrium. Two drinks and you’re about two feet off the floor, but things are still fairly well under control. Three, and you’re about six feet high and have various difficulties reaching down to the bar for further refreshment. However, this is just as well because that’s the danger point. Thin air makes helicopters impractical on Mars and it can be tedious rescuing some two bottle man who has overindulged.

  Once organized, you’re going to want to do some sightseeing and if you’ve read the tourist literature, you’ll probably want to take a look at some of the famous Martian caverns which make the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky pale into insignificance. One thing, though, that the tourist pamphlets fail to mention, you’re going to have to watch out for dugg. Which is another one of these deals that’s hard to believe if you’ve never been off Earth before. It’s a rather strange substance, very bothersome to those who stay overlong in Martian caves and caverns. After an hour or so you start growing stalactites at a shockingly fast pace, from your nose
, cars, chin, fingers, and, if by strange chance you happen to be nude, other extremities.

  This being nude bit isn’t as unlikely as you might think since the climate, lack of humidity, and so forth is such that clothing isn’t the item on Mars that it is on Earth. In fact, the girls run about on their day by day duties in the equivalent of bikinis. This is balanced by the fact that when they go out onto the beach they get themselves all done up in what amounts to Mother Hubbards to protect themselves from the sun.

  The beaches are impressive on Mars. You’ve never seen such beaches. In fact, we should say, such beach. Because all Mars is a beach. The trouble is, there’s no water to go with it.

  Which brings us to one phenomenon you’re going to have to see before leaving Marsport. The great deposits, in the deepest depressions of what were once long eons past the oceans of Mars, of dehydrated water. Nothing like it is to be found on Earth. In fact, there’s been some discussion of importing the stuff to be used in agriculture in such spots as the Sahara and Gobi deserts. Dry water, as it’s sometimes called, would have various advantages. For one thing, it can be carried around very handily in burlap bags. It’s also been considered for washing animals, such as cats, which don’t like to get wet.

  There’s just one aspect of living it up on Mars that we haven’t dealt with thus far and approach with a certain trepidation. We speak now of Martian women. In America of recent years there has been a great relaxing of censorship. In fact, what with Henry Miller’s novels, the pocket books to be found on every magazine rack, not to speak of the delectable pinups which now have no difficulties in Uncle Sam’s mails, it’s just about a thing of the past. However, at this point we’re stymied. We simply can’t run the chance of losing this magazine’s mailing privileges by describing just how Martian girls differ from Earth-side girls and what it leads to...