by Don Wilcox
“Go ahead,” I said, “and I’ll write that statement for you while you’re gone.”
We had agreed that if Bill should get out alive, and I failed to get out, he’d have a better chance to put his story over at Washington if he held a signed statement—my words, my signature, my appeal to a nation that was being hoodwinked.
Was I being unnecessarily fatalistic?
Bill’s light footsteps faded. I took a slip of paper from my billfold and wrote, and my words fairly crackled—
I didn’t finish that note. A shadow crossed the basement window, then came back. The searchers were looking for clues. They were opening the window. I darted for the exit that Bill had taken.
I got halfway across the room, running past the structures at the center of the tower’s base. Someone was coming from the other direction. I thought of pretending I was a worker, checking the machinery, keeping my back turned. I hunched over—but there was a small door!
I opened it, walked in, and found myself inside a tube-shaped enclosure. The door closed on me automatically. I was completely enclosed in a plastic cylinder, just large enough for one man.
S-s-s-s-swish!
I was going up—up—up! It was the tower elevator and I was headed for the top!
CHAPTER XVI
In the Crow’s Nest
It was growing light-headed from the elevation when the tower bucket slowed to a stop and automatically opened.
I stepped out into the crow’s nest. It was a dizzy sensation. The circular room was all windows. The ceiling and floor were as transparent as the crystal walls. You got the sensation of being delicately balanced at the top of a giant pinpoint. The whole four-hundred foot tower was below me.
The one worker who occupied this dizzy little sky nest was dressed in a first-class worker’s uniform. He was sitting, half asleep, with his head propped from one elbow, and the small end of the telescope was pressing against his forehead. He didn’t turn to look at me. He glanced at his watch.
“It ain’t your shift for half an hour yet, Jake, or has my watch slipped?”
The only thing that had slipped was his gun. I reached for it and got it, and he turned around lazily to see what the joke was. Then he saw me and his sleepy eyes jumped. He turned slowly, scratching his left ear on the end of the telescope, and his stubbled face was a question mark.
“You need a shave, friend,” I said.
“You need to wash your face, brother . . . Ugh.” He was gathering anger slowly. “You don’t belong here. I’ve got an order to report things like this.”
He reached for the phone. I pressed his hand gently and gestured with his pistol.
“Let’s don’t,” I said. “Let’s just sit quietly. It’s a nice scene you’ve got up here.”
“I’ll bet you’re the one they’re lookin’ for. They called up ’bout midnight.”
“What are you supposed to do about it?”
“Keep watch on the rikits and call down if I see anything suspicious.”
“Good,” I said. “I’ll take over this shift.”
“You think so?” Stubble-chin glanced at the elevator. It was closing automatically. S-s-s-swish! Down the shaft!
“That’s Jake,” said Stubble-chin, giving me a wry smile. “He’s comin’ on early.”
“Get in that chair,” I ordered. “Turn it around . . . Now sit tight or I’ll blow your head off.”
I knew I was working against time. Stubble-chin didn’t resist. He took it easy—so easy that I was almost unnerved. I found enough electric cord to bind his wrists and ankles. I lashed him to a beam, for a good measure. All he said was, “Wait till Jake comes.”
I had just finished when the swish of the elevator sounded, and the automatic door slid open. I gripped the pistol and waited. The man who stepped out was—Bill Rambler!
“Don’t shoot, Mister,” he said with a wink. “I’m just a third-class worker . . . Well, well, looks like you’ve got the situation pretty well in hand.”
Stubble-chin glared out of the corner of his eye and muttered, “More dirty faces,” and that was about all we heard out of him for the next three hours.
Temporarily, at least, we had given the Menniker forces the slip. At last we could catch our breath. At last we’d get an eyeful of the troubled, wreckage-strewn canyons of Mars. What we were about to see was beyond my wildest guess. The flaming red of dawn had changed to yellow gold, and the whole Martian world was spread, map-like, before us.
Bill locked the elevator bucket so no one below would be able to get it. Barring a catastrophe, we were safe until hunger drove us down or explosions blew us up. Bill reminded me that I shouldn’t allow myself to grow too comfortable. He had planted, at the base of the tower, a small truckload of explosives. Anything could happen.
Stubble-chin heard and became eloquent. “You damned dirty-faces!”
CHAPTER XVII
A Bird’s-Eye View of Trouble
What was the streak of blue on the horizon? That was my first surprise as I took in the world from the top of the tower. Bill informed me that it was a harbor. I had never seen it on any of the maps of the Marshington Spaceport Region.
“McCune’s little secret,” said Bill. “That’s where the government should have planted its space base. Vedo’s tribe would have granted it. But the McCune gang meant to have it for themselves. Let the government build and jail in the rocky inland. Then Menniker and McCune would be fixed to take what they wanted.”
“Damned pigs!”
No, pigs wasn’t the term. Pigs weren’t given to such treacheries. In my mind’s eye the exposure of this scandal was already blowing the dome off the Capitol at Washington. Washington was a long way off, but if I ever got back, McCune and Romanoff could consider themselves lucky to be dead.
The sun climbed the sky, and the shadows over the canyons contracted to reveal more of what I wanted to see. Herds of wild rikits on distant mountainsides . . . Rikits and riders dotting the mountainsides within a few miles of us . . . Rikits crawling over perpendicular cliffs like snails over a garden wall . . . Rikits obeying commands, helping search the dark line of wreckage that must have been the Blue Palace. Other wrecks over the landscape—shells of broken ships.
Rikits were being used to help bury the dead. We quizzed Stubble-chin and got a few blunt answers. Ever since the crash, the Martians had been working with amazing teamwork, apparently, to rescue the living.
Through the telescope we spotted Vedo, tall and graceful, sitting sidesaddle on her mount, moving through the groups of Martian workers. When she left the scene she rode in the direction of the shadowed table-rock that was being used as an open-air hospital. It stood near a cavern opening which must have been a citadel of natives. Scores of the rescued were being cared for there, some of them walking about as if in a daze, others lying on blankets receiving treatment from Martian doctors and nurses.
I tried to spot Betty and Bobby, but at this distance it was impossible.
Around this gathering of a few hundred unfortunate earth folk, guards astride rikits kept watch. Otherwise there would have been danger that the wild, hungry rikits, who often ventured within fifty yards, would snap a few heads off. Occasionally one of them would slip through the guard, and a huddle of people would scatter in terror.
Near at hand, almost directly below, the guards and workers from the tower were continuing their search of neighboring hills and canyons, looking for me.
The three helicopters were at work and presently one of them moved down as if to land beside an outcropping of rock.
“They’re on the trail of a rikit,” Bill said. “I wonder if it’s Tan-Jack.”
A moment later the beast that had concealed itself among those rocks jumped out and struck down upon the helicopter. Something must have crashed. Three men leaped out and began shooting. The rikit drew them, and they went tumbling up hill until they bumped into a rock barrier. The rikit raced off unharmed, but the men spent the next hour trying to get the
ir helicopter off the ground, finally gave it up, and started for camp on foot.
We could see the trails that led from the base of our tower across to other towers by way of canyons. If the Blue Palace had been a cargo ship, trucks would have been busy gathering in the spoils.
In another direction we could see the little town of Marshington—American’s Martian hope—nestled in a cupshaped valley.
“They’re supposed to have dedicated a new building over there,” I mentioned.
“They probably postponed it. They were expecting to dedicate it when the tribe from the Seventh Point marched down to renew the treaty. This wreck has delayed everything. And you never know. It may have changed the tribe’s mind about renewing their favors. Sometimes I wonder . . .”
I wondered, too. Vedo was with them now. Vedo must have told them of Vorumuff’s death. She must have told them how near she came to being executed. No, it would not surprise me if the Seventh Point Martians should have a change of heart, and America’s chances on this planet would be lost before Bill and I ever got back to the halls of Congress with our inside story.
If we were to get away, Marshington would have to be our starting point. Mentally I envisaged the rikit ride over that wilderness of peaks. That, Bill said, was the worst wild rikit country of all.
Bill was looking down, absorbed in something that was happening not far from the base of the tower.
“Give me that hammer,” he said suddenly.
I reached for the tool box. He jerked his old cloth hat out of his pocket, sniffed at it, wrapped and tied the hammer in it. He pushed a panel of the curved window open. His arm swung three or four times, not like a baseball pitcher winding up, more like a boy weighing a stone in his hands before he tosses it into the water. He smelled the hat again, and all the time he was looking down.
“That’s Tan-Jack down there,” he said, breathing tensely. “Tan-Jack—and Jattleworth’s hiding in that little steel cube. I saw him go in. With a gun. He’s safe in there. The rikit can’t draw him—or bite him. He’s just waiting for Tan-Jack to show his head around that red rock. Here he comes—”
Bill tossed the weighted hat and it fell, spinning slowly. Down through four hundred feet of thin air and sunlight. For a moment I thought it was going to hit the rikit square on top of the head. No, it was falling to one side. There, it thumped the dry earth with a little puff of dust,
The rikit jerked back. He held his position back of the rock.
“He’s sniffing,” Bill said. “I can tell.”
“What does he smell?” I asked.
“Me,” said Bill.
Through the telescope I saw it. The beast turned his head upward and stood there, gazing curiously at the top of the tower.
Then the leather-jacketed figure of Jattleworth bounded out of the little cube, gun in hand, and he looked up.
“You’ve given us away, Bill,” I said. “That’s Jattleworth, and he knows there’s funny stuff going on up here.”
“There’s just one elevator, and we’ve got it,” said Bill. Then he added with a triumphant grin, “And there’s just one Tan-Jack, and we’ve still got him, too.”
“And there’s just one Jattleworth—” I broke off. Three Blue Palace guards could be seen, coming out of the tower to join Jattleworth. The rikit must have turned the magnetic power on, just then, for all four of them suddenly lost their footing and went tumbling like a pack of puppies. The next thing I saw was Tan-Jack racing off into deeper shadows, while Jattleworth and his compatriots picked themselves up and took an inventory of their broken bones.
CHAPTER XVIII
A Tower Full of “Ifs”
We fought the battle of the tower that day. If you’ve ever been stationed in an observation balloon while a war was gathering up around you, you’ll know what I mean. Well, not quite. Your job in the balloon was most likely that of reporting everything you observed. Our job, strangely, was just the opposite. We refrained from reporting.
The more we saw, the more we refrained. Before the end of this crucial day we were fairly bursting with secrets.
You might say that waiting was the hardest part of our tower siege. While it lasted only a day, we thought it might last enough days to starve us out. Bill and I hashed over all the possibilities a dozen times before the first day was half spent. We translated the possible starvation period from earth days to Martian days, and right away we came up against the problem of our prisoner. Should we feed him or let him starve?
This stumped us, and we began at the other end.
What we wanted first of all was to get back to Washington.
If we couldn’t have that, we’d settle for a chance to tell everything to Vedo, in the hope that she might carry our word to Washington eventually.
If we couldn’t tell her, we’d try to send her a message somehow.
This many ifs looked like a slip from victory to a gamble that might mean half a victory, or no victory at all.
If we failed to get a message through, then our big purpose of exploding this scandal for America was lost. And if we were doomed to such a defeat, it was certain that we were personally doomed.
That brought us to a very morbid if. If Menniker had us, it there was no escape, should we give ourselves up as prisoners and face his gunmen?
“He and Jattleworth are both renowned for their cruelty,” Bill reminded me. “On board the Blue Palace he might have been satisfied to do an execution with pistols. Here it wouldn’t be that simple. The least we could expect is to be tossed to the wild rikits.”
We talked it over lightly, as if the cold chills never touched our tough spines; but I was perspiring.
“It might only help a little,” Bill said, “but I say that if Menniker calls our number, the least we can do is blow up this signal tower and ourselves with it.”
“As a last resort, I suppose—”
“This tower equipment couldn’t be replaced overnight,” Bill reminded me. “It’s costly. It comes from America. If Menniker were forced to go back for more, they’d get onto him.”
“I want to see him behind bars,” I said. “It’s a poor substitute to blow ourselves to atoms, contenting ourselves that he’ll get his reward later. Besides, how do we know we could explode this tower?”
“Didn’t I tell you I planted some explosives—”
“A truckload, you said. Shall I take that literally?”
“It was a handtruck,” Bill grinned. “I was feeling a bit heroic over the job, getting them concealed in this elevator shaft—”
“They’ll have been discovered before this time.”
“No,” said Bill. “No, they’re still right where I hung them.”
“At the bottom of this elevator shaft?”
Bill shot a mischievous eye at me. “They’re near the top of the shaft now,” he said. “You see, I fastened them to the underside of the elevator bucket, just before I rode up.”
I groaned. Stubble-chin muttered something about damned dirty faces. Bill said he would have told me sooner, but he didn’t want to make me nervous.
I groped for other ways out. If we threw a few sticks of TNT down at the arched entrance and caused enough commotion with an explosion—or tossed a burning shirt down and started a good fire near one of the warehouses, we might draw enough attention to the outside that we could chance a descent on the inside.
“And get ourselves shot,” said Bill pessimistically. “They’d see through that in a minute. Especially after we pulled that trick with Tan-Jack.”
It was his theory that since Tan-Jack had reappeared this morning without the dummy tied to his back, they had evidently succeeded in shooting the thing off. Or if he had shaken it off, himself, they had found it.
“They know we’re both here, Senator, and they’ll smoke us out or starve us out.” Bill rested his head in his hands glumly, and I thought we were in for a bad time.
His elbows suddenly slipped off the shelf and his head jerked up. “Look, Senator! L
ook!”
“Rikits!” I gasped. Marching rikits! A hundred of them! A parade!”
“You mean an army!”
CHAPTER XIX
On the March
They were marching out of the cavern headquarters—the opening in the mountainside about six miles away, not far from the table rock that had served as a hospital for the rescued.
“It’s the march to Marshington.” This from the grumpy prisoner with the unshaven face. His remark was calculated to dampen our enthusiasm. Neither Bill nor I had ever seen the March of the Seventh Point natives, and our first thought was, Vedo’s coming over and engage Menniker in battle! We should have stuck to that thought, too. But wig let Stubble-chin knock it out of us. He said, “Send the word below.”
We laughed. No sale,
A little later the phone began to jangle, and we had to take it off the hook in self-defense. We could hear the voice of someone who was trying for Bill.
“This is Manley, a friend of Bill Rambler’s. Answer me, up there, will you.”
Bill shook his head and gestured to me to take it.
“Speak your piece,” I said.
“Send that elevator down,” the voice demanded. “Let Bill come down. I’ll see that he don’t get into a jam if he’ll come right down.”
I ignored the uproar. It grew worse. It threatened. They would come up after us if we didn’t descend.
“We’ll be down for dinner,” I said, “if you’ll promise to have pie and ice cream.”
“Put Brandon on.”
Brandon was evidently Stubble-chin.
“He’s busy,” I said. “In conference. He’s tied up for the afternoon.”
Then we could hear Jattleworth muttering. They wanted to know if anything could be seen from the tower, and they couldn’t figure out any way to make this report. They would have to press one of the helicopters into observation service—but all the copters were out searching.
