by Paul Preuss
On the videoplate Phobos was already sliding away; off in the far corner of the screen Mars Station emerged from the crowded field of stars–it being the reason Phobos Base was deserted, no longer of practical use. The station was a big bottle of air that rotated fast enough to provide substantial artificial gravity on its inner surface.
They watched in silence until Mars Station blazed as bright as the sun and the black moon had dwindled to a void in the star field. Sparta turned to Blake. “What we talked about before . . . I’ve thought about it some more. I want you to stay on Mars Station until I’ve completed the investigation.”
“Sorry. I won’t do it.”
“They know who we are. We don’t know who they are.”
“We know how they operate, anyway. I better than you.”
“I was trained for this job,” she said, her voice hardening.
“I believe my training matches yours,” he said quickly, “even if it has been a bit unorthodox.”
“Blake. . . .”
“I’ll prove it to you.”
“Prove it?”
“Right now, in the gym. Hand to hand.”
“What would that prove?”
“You said it yourself: we don’t know who they are. So you’ll have no more warning than I will. If I can beat you hand to hand, what’s the logic of penning me up?”
She hesitated only an instant. “I’ll meet you in the gym.”
Perhaps Blake had played into her hands. The side of her that loved him had its own motivation, for she wished him to survive even if she did not. The side of her that wanted him out of her life, that wanted all things human out of her life, could dispense with him easily. But as she knotted the black belt around the rough cotton of her gi, she knew that she would have to fight him handicapped.
Was he really playing into her hands then? Or was she playing into his?
They entered the ship’s tiny circular gym from opposite sides. Sparta was slight, muscular, her sandy blond hair falling straight to her jawbone, where it was chopped off in a practical cut that made no concession to fashion; the bangs above her thick brows were short enough to leave her dark blue eyes unscreened. Blake was a few centimeters taller, with broader shoulders and heavier muscles. His dark auburn hair was as straight and choppy as hers and his green eyes were as steady as hers; his Chinese-Irish face could have been unsettlingly pretty, but it was saved from perfection by a too-wide mouth and a sprinkle of freckles across his straight nose.
They bowed to each other, then straightened.
A heart’s beat . . . their knees flexed, their hands came up like blades, they began warily to close. Unlike most human fighters, who tend to circle, they came straight on like animals. In combat, neither favored their right or left; any such asymmetries they had failed to train out of themselves would be betrayed only in the extremity.
At two meters distance they reached an imaginary boundary, the edge of the lethal zone. Here each could still take in the other at a glance, from head to foot, from eye to hand. Here neither could reach the other without evident preparation.
But Blake was the one with something to prove; he would have to make the first move. It was quick, a leap and a high wide-legged kick that left him vulnerable. For a flicker of time her inhibition intervened–as he had calculated and hoped.
But his kick missed her jaw.
She would not be reticent again. So quickly was she on him when he landed that he barely escaped with a sideways roll. He regained his balance and shot a hard jab at her belly, but she pivoted and chopped at his neck, connecting only with air.
The battle was truly joined. The minutes stretched to two, then five, then. . . .
A shoulder roll across the rough polycanvas floor of the gym brought Sparta bounding to her feet in time to catch Blake’s counterattack; despite a feint to her midriff with his left fist she easily read his intention and brushed aside his right hand as it swung toward her nose, taking his wrist. As she pivoted to take his arm down and past, she indulged in a split-second’s reconsideration and realized that the move had been a setup. Here was the real assault. Just as the fingers of his left hand brushed the lapel of her gi, she let go and somersaulted backward, launching herself with a knee to his hip; his fingers closed on nothing.
Again they rolled away to opposite sides of the little gym. Again they bounced up, panting. Both were pouring sweat, nearing exhaustion. For ten minutes they’d been going at each other with all the strength and guile they could muster. He’d laid an offensive hand on her just once. She’d done little better. The ruddy patch on her cheekbone where he’d caught her with the hard edge of his palm was darkening to a bruise; his bruises, on his ribs and the outside of his left thigh, were invisible under his gi, but they would leave him limping when he cooled down.
Neither of them said a word, but no one seeing the red gleam in Sparta’s eye or the knotted muscles of Blake’s jaw could mistake this for friendly exercise.
It got abruptly unfriendlier when Blake pulled a knife.
In half a second he had hitched up his thick black belt and freed it from where it was strapped to the small of his back. Its diamond-filmed carbon-carbon blade was just long enough to be lethal; standard North Continental Treaty Alliance military issue, it was a useful tool for cutting or stabbing or, in a pinch, for throwing.
He moved toward her, the knife grip snug in his right palm, its leaf-shaped blade pointed at her wishbone.
“Aren’t you taking this . . . a little far?” she rasped.
“Give up?”
“Don’t make me hurt you,” she warned.
“Words. We’ve been even. Until now.”
Warily he circled, lunged in a feint, recovered before her darting hand could capture his wrist, lunged again and went inside her guard, found himself snared by her leg and had to snap roll out of it, found her diving for him. He faked a retreat and then rolled into her; she overshot.
The tip of the blade ripped the cotton of her gi at waist level. He too had his inhibitions.
Before he could get to his knees she was back on her feet and coming at him. He measured the kick aimed at his head and dodged it, but her bare heel connected with his wrist instead. The knife flew out of his numbed fingers, but he got his other hand on the back of her black belt and allowed her momentum to carry him onto her back as she sprawled. His right hand was useless, but his arm went around her neck and he pulled her chin back with the crook of his elbow.
Not soon enough. One of her legs and one of her arms had escaped his pin and she was twisted sideways under him. He felt the tip of his own knife against his kidney; her long jump had brought it into her hand.
For a moment they lay like that, frozen, two battling carnivores caught in the ice.
“You could have broken my neck,” she whispered.
“Just before I died, maybe,” he said. He slowly relaxed his grip and rolled away from her.
Sparta sat up. She said nothing, but flipped the knife endwise to catch the tip and handed it to him handle first.
“Okay, I didn’t beat you.” As he took the knife he expelled his breath sharply, ballooning his cheeks. “But you didn’t beat me, either. And nobody we’re likely to come up against could be as good as you.”
“You don’t think so?” She put her hands behind her neck and gripped it with knitted fingers, rolling her head to stretch out the kinks. “What if Khalid turns out to be our man after all? You said his training was the same as yours.”
“Up to a point.”
“Maybe beyond it. We don’t know who they are, Blake. . . .”
“Yes, yes. But I’ll hold you to your promise.” He gave her his hand and they helped each other stand. “I’ve proved I can defend myself.”
“At a constant one gee. Mars gravity is a third Earth’s.”
He ignored her sophistry; she didn’t need reminding that she’d never been to Mars either. “I didn’t come all this way to sit in a tourist hotel in Labyrinth City
.”
“You’re a civilian consultant, not a Space Board officer.”
“Then I’ll work the case on my own.” He slipped the knife into its scabbard and settled his belt over it. “With your cooperation or without it.”
“I could arrest you for interfering.”
“Forget what a sap that would make of you,” he said hotly, “since it was you that brought me along. Just think about how much time you’ll waste trying to find me after I disappear.”
Sparta said nothing. He had no idea how easy it would be for her to find him, no matter how cleverly he disguised himself, no matter what steps he took to cover his trail. She could follow the touch and smell of him, the warm tracks of him, anywhere he tried to run. That he had fought her to a draw impressed her, for she had fought as hard as was humanly possible. But she did not want him to know how far she was from simply human, or that she had not used against him the abilities that set her apart.
Not that she was stronger or better coordinated than he. Her muscles were smaller and her ordinary nerve impulses were no quicker than his, but this was compensated in the normal way of things by her smaller size and mass, her ability to move the parts of her body faster through space in simple obedience to the laws of physics. Weightlifters are not good gymnasts; sumo wrestlers are not good at karate. But between her and him it was an even match, more even than it might have been.
Things had been done to her brain, among other organs. The natural human brain had evolved to its species-specific state in grasslands and open forests. The ancestors of humans effortlessly performed simultaneous partial differential equations, continually matching and revising trajectories while running alongside fleeing zebras and wildebeests while pelting them with rocks, or swinging from branch to branch, plucking an occasional fruit along the way–and our relatives can still be observed doing it, in the great parks of Africa and the Amazon. We humans retain some of this ability, if only a shadow.
We are very good at throwing things, much better than our nearest relatives, the chimpanzees–good at hurling spears, shooting arrows, aiming guns, playing horseshoes, and so forth. We are almost as good at catching things. Perhaps the most extraordinary demonstration of the human brain’s capacity to compute and match trajectories occurred in the mid-20th century when an athlete named Mays, playing the traditional American game called baseball, positioned himself–while running as fast as he could–beneath a small white horsehide-covered sphere which, struck by an ashwood club, had been lofted into the air some hundreds of feet on an unpredictable parabola. Mays–still running, not turning around, and shortly before colliding with a wall marking the boundary of the playing field–caught the ball as it descended over his left shoulder into his glove.
Probably no natural human before Mays or since could have done that. But Sparta, if the need arose, could do the equivalent. The tiny dense knot of cells that nestled in her forebrain just a little to the side of where the Hindus place the eye of the soul was a processor that integrated trajectories and made many other kinds of calculations faster, far faster, than the brain itself. Had she made use of this knot of cells, had she switched it into her mental circuits, Sparta could have read every move Blake Redfield made before he had well started it; she could have ground his face into the mat ten seconds after their match had begun.
She had stayed human voluntarily and done her best. Which was as good as they naturally come. And Blake had done his best, which was equally good.
“Okay,” she said. “You can work on your own. If you promise to keep in touch.” She didn’t tell him he was right, that he was probably as formidable as anything the enemy could bring against him. And if they were armed, which was likely–well, he would be too.
The look on his face was peculiar. “I promised that already.”
“I know you, Blake,” she said.
He leaned toward her, and as his lips parted there was a softness about his eyes and mouth, an expression almost of longing. But then a ripple of uncertainty crossed his face. His mask hardened. When he spoke he said, “I wish I could say the same.”
Still sweating, they rode the cramped elevator to the command deck.
“All this is useless if anybody makes you,” she said.
“Makes me what?”
“Excuse the jargon. Recognizes you on Mars Station, I mean.”
“We’ve gone over this.”
“Equally useless if you don’t make it onto the regular shuttle run. I could commandeer a shuttle if I had to, but you’ve got to make the scheduled run or you’re out of the fight.”
“Give me credit for some brains.”
“I give you credit. I don’t want anything to go wrong.”
“Stop worrying about me.”
She watched him sidelong. “Before I met you, I didn’t worry about anybody but myself.”
“You worried about finding your parents,” he said bluntly.
“Yes.”
“And the others.”
“Yes, Blake, the others. The ones who tried to kill me and who probably killed them.”
“Because that’s why I’m here. . . .” He broke off. When his emotions got the better of him he sometimes forgot that he must always call her Ellen, if he named her at all. When he’d first met her as a child, and throughout the eight years of their growing up together, her name had been Linda. “That’s what all this is about.”
“No, it’s simpler than that. We’re here to solve two murders. We’re here to recover the Martian plaque. That’s all anyone needs to know.”
“I think your bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, blue-eyed Space Board commander knows more already. A lot more.”
She was saved a reply when the elevator door abruptly slid open. “Let’s talk to the captain.”
“Through the flush tubes,” said the captain. Her name was Walsh, and she was maybe thirty years old, this veteran cutter pilot–old enough to have gained the experience, young enough to have retained the synapses. “We put you in a bolus bag, flush you into the station’s holding tank; half an hour or so later, somebody fishes you out.”
Blake paled. “You want to flush me into a tank of liquid hydrogen?”
“Deuterium slush, technically speaking.”
“What keeps me from freezing? What do I breathe?”
“That’s all covered. These bolus bags are supposed to be pretty good,” said the captain. “Never had occasion to use one personally.”
“Is there some method a bit more traditional?” Sparta asked quietly.
Walsh shook her close-cropped head. “We know there’ll be spies. Every port crawls with ’em, freelance types mostly. We know some of the spies on Mars Station, and we know they’re onto what you call the traditional methods, Inspector–assuming you mean laundry bags, that kind of stuff.” She shrugged. “Told me before, we could have dumped him on Phobos, picked him off on the next orbit.”
“That’s standard?” Sparta demanded.
The captain grinned up at her. “I just thought of it this minute. Phobos looked pretty good on this approach. Might be worth a try, don’t you think?”
“You’re very resourceful, Captain,” she said.
Walsh relented. “I know it sounds scary, Mr. Redfield, but it works. I can’t guarantee the local busybodies aren’t onto it already, but at least you’re not going to die in there.”
Blake let his breath out slowly. “Thanks for the reassurance.”
“Make sure your bladder’s empty when you climb into the bag. Could be a while.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Mars Station dominated the sky, its thick blunt cylinder turning against the stars, its axis pointing straight down; from the approaching cutter’s angle the space station looked like a slowly spinning top, balanced on the sharp arc of the planet’s horizon.
Newer and more comfortable than L-5, the first of the giant space settlements which orbited the Earth, but older and simpler than Venus’s Port Hesperus, the crown jewel o
f colonies, Mars Station was a pragmatic place built from metal and glass that had been smelted from a captured asteroid, its design owing much to the Soviet engineers who had supervised its construction. The station was too close in the cutter’s videoplates for those on board to see anything but the glassy expanse of the cylinder’s starside end–its angled mirrors, its communications masts, its docking bays protruding from the unrotating axle like spokes from a nave.
A ring of ships floated “at anchor” in near space, for docking room was limited. But the Board of Space Control maintained its own high-security locks and had its own ways of moving passengers and cargo on and off its ships. The paid spies and idle watchers who continually lurked about Q sector clustered thicker whenever a Space Board ship arrived.
This time, after the docking tube had slammed shut over the cutter’s main airlock, the watchers saw only one passenger emerge, a slight blond woman in Space Board blues. Inspector Ellen Troy.
III
Blake spent two hours cuddled in fetal position inside an overheated black plastic bag with an oxygen mask clamped to his face. As he was beginning to feel the first nibblings of anxiety–do they remember I’m in here?–something punched the side of the bag; a teleoperator arm had gripped it and was drawing it slowly through the deuterium slush in which it was immersed.
Once through the tank’s locking valves, it took Blake several minutes to work himself free of the triply insulated bag. He was getting unseen help from outside. Finally he clambered sweating out of it, leaving it wobbling like a collapsed balloon in the microgravity. Blake found himself hovering inside the Q sector pumping station, surrounded by huge spherical tanks of deuterium and lithium, the precious fuels that powered the Space Board’s fusion-torch ships.
“You are Mr. Redfield,” announced a small, black-haired woman in Space Board uniform, who was studying him with evident distaste. “I am Inspector L. Sharansky.”
Blake nodded at Sharansky, trying to be polite as he glanced curiously at the raw steel walls that surrounded him. The cavernous chamber was festooned with thick garlands of pipe and cable. Clouds of white vapor rolled through the air, condensing from tanks and pipes that flowed with liquid hydrogen. Red and yellow warning lights made the clouds glow and turned the dripping steel room into an antechamber of hell.
