 An Incident on Route 12 by James H. Schmitz. Phil Garfield was 30 miles south of the little town of Redmond on Route 12 when he was startled by a series of sharp clanking noises. They came from under the Packers Hood. The car immediately began to lose speed. Garfield jammed down the accelerator, had a sense of sick helplessness at the complete lack of response from the motor. The Packard rolled on, getting rid of its momentum, and came to a stop. Phil Garfield swore shakily. He checked his watch, switched off the headlights, and climbed out into the dark road. A delay of even half an hour here might be disastrous. It was past midnight, and he had another 110 miles to cover to reach the small private airfield where Maj waited for him in the $30,000 in the suitcase on the Packard's front seat. If he didn't make it before daylight, he thought of the bank guard. The man had made a clumsy play at being a hero, and that had set the full woman who had run screaming into their line of fire. One dead, perhaps two. Garfield hadn't stopped a look at an evening paper. But he knew they were hunting for him. He glanced up and down the road. No other headlights in sight at the moment. No light from a building showing on the forested hills. He reached back into the car and brought out a suitcase, his gun, a big flashlight, and the box of shells which had been standing beside the suitcase. He broke the box open, shoved a handful of shells in the 38 into his coat pocket, then took the suitcase and flashlight over to the shoulder of the road and set them down. There was no point in groping about under the Packard's hood. When it came to mechanics, Phil Garfield was a moron and well aware of it. The car was useless to him now, except as bait. But as bait, it might be very useful. Should he leave it standing where it was? No, Garfield decided. To anybody driving past it would merely suggest a necking party or a drunk sleeping off his load before continuing home. He might have to wait an hour or more before somebody decided to stop. He didn't have the time. He reached in through the window, hauled the top of the steering wheel toward him, and put his weight against the rear window frame. The Packard began to move slowly backwards at a slant across the road. In a minute or two he had it in position, not blocking the road entirely, which would arouse immediate suspicion, but angled across it, lights out, empty, both front doors open and inviting a passerby's investigation. Garfield carried the suitcase and flashlight across the right hand shoulder of the road and moved up among the trees and undergrowth of the slope above the shoulder. Placing the suitcase between the bushes, he brought out the 38, clicked the safety off, and stood waiting. Some ten minutes later a set of headlights appeared speeding up Route 12 from the direction of Redmond. Phil Garfield went down on one knee before he came within range of the lights. Now he was completely concealed by the vegetation. The car slowed as it approached, breaking nearly to a stop sixty feet from the stalled Packard. There were several people inside it. Garfield heard voices, then a woman's loud laugh. The driver tapped his horn inquiringly twice. He moved the car slowly forward. As the headlights went past him, Garfield got to his feet among the bushes, took a step down towards the road, raising the gun. Then he caught the distant gleam of a second set of headlights approaching from Redmond. He swore under his breath and dropped back out of sight. The car below him reached the Packard, edge cautiously around it, rolled on with a sudden roar of acceleration. The second car stopped when still a hundred yards away. The Packard caught in the motionless glare of its lights. Garfield heard the steady purring of a powerful motor. For almost a minute nothing else happened. Then the car came gliding smoothly on. Stopped again no more than thirty feet to Garfield's left. He could see it now through the screening bushes, a big job, a long, low four-door sedan. The motor continued to purr. After a moment, a door on the far side of the car opened and slams shut. A man walked quickly out into the beam of the headlights and started towards the Packard. Phil Garfield rose from his crouching position. At the thirty-eight in his right hand, flashlight in his left. If the driver was alone, the thing was now cinched. But if there was somebody else in the car, somebody capable of fast decisive action, a slip in the next ten seconds might cost him the sedan, and quite probably his freedom in life. Garfield lined up the thirty-eight sights steadily on the center of the approaching man's head. He let his breath out slowly as the fellow came level with him in the road and squeezed off one shot. Instantly he went bounding down the slope to the road. The bullet had flung the man's sideways to the pavement. Garfield darted past him to the left, crossed the beam of the headlights, and was in darkness again on the far side of the road, snapping on his flashlight as he sprinted up to the car. The motor hummed quietly on. The flashlight showed the seats empty. Garfield dropped the light. Jerk both doors open and turned, gun pointing into the car's interior. Then he stood still for a moment, weak and almost dizzy with relief. There was no one inside. The sedan was his. The man he had shot through the head lay face down on the road, his hat flung a dozen feet away from him. Route 12 still stretched out in dark silence to east and west. There should be time enough to clean up the job before anyone else came along. Garfield brought the suitcase down and put it on the right front seat of the sedan. Then started back to get his victim off the road and out of sight. He scaled the man's head into the bushes, bent down, grasped the ankles and started to haul him towards the left side of the road where the ground dropped off sharply beyond the shoulder. The body made a high squealing sound and began to ride violently. Shocked, Garfield dropped the legs and hurriedly took the gun from his pocket moving back a step. The squealing noise rose in intensity as a wounded man quickly flopped over twice like a struggling fish, arms and legs sawing about with startling energy. Garfield clicked off the safety, pumped three shots into his victim's back. The grisly squeals ended abruptly. The body continued to jerk for another second or two, then lay still. Garfield shoved the gun back into his pocket. The unexpected interruption had unnerved him. His hands shook as he reached down again for the stranger's ankles. Then he jerked his hands back and straightened up, staring. From the side of the man's chest a few inches below the right arm, something like a black thick stick three feet long protruded now from the material of the coat. It shone gleaming wetly in the light from the car. Even in that first uncomprehending instant, something in its appearance brought a surge of sick disgust to Garfield's throat. The stick bent slowly halfway down its length, forming a sharp angle, and its tip opened into what could have been three blunt black claws which scrambled clumsily against the pavement. Very faintly, the squealing began again, and the body's back arched up as if another stick-like arm were pushing desperately against the ground beneath it. Garfield acted in a blur of horror. He emptied the 38 into the thing at his feet almost without realizing he was doing it. Then dropping the gun, he seized one of the ankles, ran backward into the shoulder of the road dragging the body behind him. In the darkness at the edge of the shoulder, he let go of it, stepped around to the other side, and with two frantically savage kicks sent the body plunging over the shoulder and down the steep slope beyond. He heard it crash through the bushes for some seconds, then stop. He turned and ran back to the sedan, scooping up his gun as he went past. He scrambled into the driver's seat and slammed the door shut behind him. His hand shook violently on the steering wheel as he pressed down the accelerator. The motor roared into life and the big car surged forward. He edged it past the packer, cursing a loud and horrified shock. Jammed down the accelerator and went flashing up Route 12, darkness racing beside and behind him. What had it been? Something that wore what seemed to be a man's body like a suit of clothes, moving the body as a man moves, driving a man's car. Roach armed, roach legged itself. Garfield drew a long, shuttering breath. Then, as he slowed for a curve, there was a spark of reddish light in the rearview mirror. He stared at the spark for an instant, break the car to a stop, roll down the window and look back. Far behind him along Route 12, a fire burned, approximately at the point where the packer had stalled out, where something had gone rolling off into the road into the bushes. Something, Garfield added mentally, that found fiery automatic destruction when death came to it, so that its secrets would remain unrevealed. But for him, the fire meant the end of a nightmare. He rolled the window up, took out a cigarette, lit it, and pressed the accelerator. In incredulous fright, he felt the nose of the car tilt upwards, headlights sweeping up from the road into the trees. Then the headlights winked out. Beyond the windshield, dark tree branches floated down towards him, the night sky beyond. He reached frantically for the door handle. A steel wrench clamped silently about each of his arms, drawing the man against his sides and mobilizing him there. Garfield gasped, looked up at the mirror and saw a pair of faintly gleaming red eyes watching him from the rear of the car. Two of the things, the second one stood behind him out of sight, holding him. They had been in what it seemed to be a trunk compartment, and they had come out. The eyes in the mirror vanished. A moist black roach arm reached over the back of the seat beside Garfield, picked up the cigarette he had dropped, extinguished it with rather horribly human motions, then took up Garfield's gun and drew it back out of sight. He expected a shot, but none came. One doesn't fire a bullet through the suit one intends to wear. It wasn't until that thought occurred to him that tough-filled Garfield began to scream. He was still screaming minutes later when, beyond the windshield, the spaceship floated into view among the stars. End of, An Incident on Route 12, by James H. Schmitz. Recording by James Christopher, JX Christopher at yahoo.com. The Man Who Hated Mars, by Gordon Randall Garrett. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by David Castle. To escape from Mars, all Clayton had to do was the impossible. Break out of a crack-proof, exile camp, get onto a ship that couldn't be boarded, smash through an impenetrable wall of steel. Perhaps he could do all these things, but he discovered that Mars did evil things to men, that he wasn't even Clayton anymore. He was only the man who hated Mars. I want you to put me in prison, the big hairy man said in a trembling voice. He was addressing his request to a thin woman sitting behind a desk that seemed much too big for her. The plaque on the desk said, Lieutenant Phoebe Harris, Terrain Rehabilitation Service. Lieutenant Harris glanced at the man before her for only a moment before she returned her eyes to the dossier on the desk, but long enough to verify the impression his voice had given. Ron Clayton was a big, ugly, cowardly, dangerous man. He said, well, damn it, say something. The lieutenant raised her eyes again. Just be patient until I've read this. Her voice and eyes were expressionless, but her hand moved beneath the desk. Clayton froze. She's yellow, he thought. She's turned on the trackers. He could see the pale greenish glow of their little eyes watching him all around the room. If he made any fast move, they would cut him down with a stun beam before he could get two feet. She thought he was gonna jump her, little rat. He thought somebody ought to slap her down. He watched her check through the heavy dossier in front of her. Finally, she looked up at him again. Clayton, your last conviction was for strong armed robbery. You were given a choice between prison on earth and freedom here on Mars. You picked Mars. He nodded slowly. He'd been broke and hungry at the time. A sneaky little rat named Johnson had built Clayton out of his fair share of the quarry payroll job. And Clayton had been forced to get the money somehow. He hadn't mustered the guy up too much. Besides, it was a sucker's own fault if he hadn't tried to yell. Lieutenant Harris went on. I'm afraid you can't back down now. But it isn't fair. The most that I've got on that framework would have been 10 years. I've been here 15 already. I'm sorry, Clayton. It can't be done. You're here, period. Forget about trying to get back. Earth doesn't want you. Her voice sounded choppy as though she was trying to keep it calm. Clayton broke into a whining rage. You can't do that. It isn't fair. I never did anything to you. I'll go and talk to the governor. He'll listen to reason. You'll see, shut up. The woman snapped harshly. I'm getting sick of it. I personally think you should have been locked up permanently. I think this whole idea of forced colonization is going to breed trouble for Earth someday. But it's about the only way you can get anybody to colonize this frozen hunk of mud. Just keep it in mind that I don't like it any better than you do. I didn't strongarm anybody to deserve this assignment. Now get out of here. She moved her hand threateningly towards the manual controls of the stun beam. Clayton retreated fast. The trackers ignored anyone walking away from the desk. They were set only to spot threatening movements towards it. Outside the rehabilitation service building, Clayton could feel the tears running down the inside of his face mask. He'd asked again and again, God only knew how many times in the past 15 years, always the same answer. No. When he'd heard that this new administrator was a woman, he'd hoped she might be easier to convince. She wasn't. If anything, she was harder than the others. The heat-sucking fragility of the thin Martian air whispered around him in the feeble breeze. He shivered a little and began walking toward the recreation center. There was a high, thin piping in the sky above him, which quickly became a scream in the thin air. Turned for a moment to watch the ship land, squinting his eyes to see the number on the hull. 52. Space transport ship 52. Probably bringing another load of ports suckers to freeze to death on Mars. That was the thing he hated about Mars. The cold. The everlasting, damned cold. And the oxidation bills. Take one every three hours or smother in the poor, thin air. The government could have put up domes. It could have put in building to building tunnels at least. It could have done a hell of a lot of things to make Mars a decent place for human beings. But no, the government had other ideas. A bunch of big shot scientific characters have come up with the idea nearly 23 years before. Clayton could remember the words on the sheet he'd been given when he was sentenced. Mankind is inherently an adaptable animal. If we are to colonize the planets of the solar system, we must meet the conditions on those planets as best we can. Financially, it is impracticable to change an entire planet from its original condition to one which will support human life as it exists on Terra. But man, since he is adaptable, can change himself, modify his structure slightly so that he can live on these planets with only a minimum of change in the environment. So they made you live outside and like it. So you froze and you choked and you suffered. Clayton hated Mars. He hated the thin air and the cold. More than anything, he hated the cold. Ron Clayton wanted to go home. The recreation building was just ahead. At least it would be warm inside. He pushed in through the outer and inner doors and he heard the burst of music from the jukebox. His stomach tightening up into a hard cramp. They were playing Heinlein's Green Hills of Earth. There was almost no other sound in the room, although it's full of people. There were plenty of colonists who claimed to like Mars, but even they were silent when that song was played. Clayton wanted to go over and smash the machine, make it stop reminding him. He clenched his teeth and his fists and his eyes and cursed mentally. When the hauntingly nostalgic last chorus faded away, he walked over to the machine and fed it full of enough coins to keep it going on something else until he left. But the bar he ordered a beer and used it to wash down another oxidation tablet. It wasn't good beer. It didn't even deserve the name. The atmospheric pressure was so low as to boil all the carbon dioxide out of it that the brewers never put it back in after fermentation. He was sorry for what he'd done, freely and truly sorry. If they'd only given him one more chance, he'd make good. Just one more chance, he'd work things out. He'd promised himself that both times they'd put him up before, but things had been different then. He hadn't really been given another chance. Popped with parole boards and all. Clayton closed his eyes and finished the beer. He ordered another. He'd worked in the mines for 15 years. It wasn't that he'd minded work, really, but the foreman had it in for him, always giving him a bad time, always picking out the lousy jobs for him. Like the time he'd crawled into a side boring in tunnel 12 for an app during lunch. The foreman had caught him. When he promised never to do it again, if the foreman wouldn't put it on a report, the guy said, yeah, sure. Hate to heard a good guy's record. Then he'd put Clayton on a report anyway, strictly a rat. Not that Clayton ran any chance of being fired. They never fired anybody, but they'd find him a day's pay, a whole day's pay. He tapped his glass on the bar and the barman came over with another beer. Clayton looked at it, then up at the barman, put a head on it. The bartender looked at him sourly. Got some soap suds here, Clayton. One of these days I'm gonna put him in your beer if you keep pulling that gag. That was the trouble with some guys. No sense of humor. Somebody came in the door and then somebody else came in behind him. So both inner and outer doors wrote him for an instant. A blast of icy breeze struck Clayton's back and he shivered. He started to say something, then changed his mind. The doors were already closed again and besides, one of the guys was bigger than he was. The iceness didn't seem to go away immediately. It was like the mine. Little old Mars was cold, clear down to her core. Or at least as far down as they'd drilled. The walls were frozen, seemed to radiate to chill that pulled the heat right out of your blood. Somebody was playing Green Hills again, damn them. Evidently, all of his own selections had run out earlier than he thought he would. Hell, there was nothing to do here. He might as well go home. Give me another beer, Mac. He'd go home as soon as he finished this one. He stood there with his eyes closed, listening to the music and hating Mars. A voice next to him said, I'll have a whiskey. The voice sounded as if the man had a bad cold and Clayton turned slowly to look at him. After all the sterilization they went through before they left Earth, nobody on Mars ever had a cold. So there was only one thing that would make a man's voice sound like that. Clayton was right. The fellow had an oxygen tube clamped firmly over his nose. He was wearing the uniform of the Space Transport Service. Just get in on the ship, Clayton asked conversationally. The man nodded and grinned. Yeah, four hours before we take off again. He poured down the whiskey. Sure a cold out. Clayton agreed, it's always cold. He watched endlessly as the spaceman ordered another whiskey. Clayton couldn't afford whiskey. He probably could have by this time if the mines had made him a foreman like they should have. Maybe he could talk the spaceman out of a couple of drinks. My name's Clayton, Ron Clayton. The spaceman took the offered hand. Mine's Parkinson, but everybody calls me Parks. Sure, Parks, can I buy you a beer? Parks shook his head. No, thanks, I started on whiskey. Here, let me buy you one. Well, thanks, don't mind if I do. They drank them in silence and Parks ordered two more. Being here alone, Parks asked. 15 years, 15 long, long years. Did you, I mean, Parks looked suddenly confused. Clayton glanced quickly to make sure the bartender was out of ear shot. Then he grinned. You mean, am I a convict? No, I came here because I wanted to, but he lowered his voice. We don't talk about it around here, you know? He gestured with one hand. I gestured that took in everyone else in the room. Parks glanced around quickly, moving only his eyes. Yeah, I see, he said softly. This your first trip, asked Clayton. First time to Mars, been on the lunar round a long time. Low pressure bother you much? Not much, we only keep it as six pounds in the ships. Half helium, half oxygen. Only thing that bothers me is the oxy here, or rather the oxy that is in here. He took a deep breath through his nose tube to emphasize his point. Clayton clamped his teeth together, making the muscles at the side of his jaw stand out. Parks didn't notice. You guys have to take those pills, don't you? Yeah. I had to take them once, got stranded on lunar. The cat I was in broke down 80-some miles from Aristotle's base, and I had to walk back with my oxy low. Well, I figured. Clayton listened to Parks' story with a great show of attention, but he had heard it before. This lost on moon stuff and its variations had been going the rands for 50 years. Every once in a while it actually did happen to someone, just often enough to keep the story going. This guy did have a couple of new twists, but not enough to make the story worthwhile. Boy, Clayton said when Parks had finished, you were lucky to come out of that alive. Parks nodded, well pleased with himself, and bought another round of drinks. Something like that happened to me a couple of years ago when Clayton began. I'm a supervisor on the third shift in the mines at Zanti, but at the time I was only a foreman. One day, a couple of guys went to the branch tunnel to, it was a very good story. Clayton had made it up himself, so he knew that Parks had never heard it before, and it was gory in just the right places with a nice effect at the end. So I had to hold up the rocks with my back while the rescue crew pulled the others out of the tunnel by crawling between my legs. Finally, they got some steel beams down there to take the load off, and I could let go. I was in hospital for a week, he finished. Parks was nodding vaguely. Clayton looked up at the clock above the bar and realized that they'd been talking for better than an hour. Parks was buying another round. Parks was a hell of a nice fellow. There was, Clayton found, only one trouble with Parks. He got to talking so loud that the bartender refused to serve either one of them anymore. The bartender said Clayton was getting loud too, but it was just because he had to talk loud to make Parks hear him. Clayton helped Parks put his mask and parker on, and they walked out into the cold night. Parks began to sing Green Hills. About halfway through, he stopped and turned to Clayton. I'm from Indiana. Clayton had already spotted him as an American by his accent. Indiana, that's nice, real nice. Yeah, you talk about Green Hills. We got Green Hills in Indiana. What time is it? Clayton told him. Geez, whole spaceship takes half an hour. I'd have one more drink first. Clayton realized he didn't like Parks, but maybe he'd buy a bottle. Sharky Johnson worked in fuel section, and he made a nice little sideline of stealing alcohol, cutting it, selling it. He thought it was really funny to call it Martian Gin. Clayton said, let's go over to Sharky's. Sharky will sell us a bottle. Okay, said Parks, we'll get a bottle. That's why we need a bottle. It was quite a walk to Shark's place. It was so cold that even Parks was beginning to sober up a little. He was laughing like hell when Clayton started to sing. We're going over to the sharks to buy a jug of gin for Parks. Hi-ho, hi-ho, hi-ho. One thing about a few drinks, you didn't get so cold. You didn't feel it too much anyway. The sharks still had his light on when they arrived. Clayton whispered to Parks, I'll go in. He knows me. He wouldn't sell it if you were around. You got eight credits. Sure, I got eight credits, just a minute. And I'll give you eight credits. He fished around for a minute inside his parker and pulled out his note case. His gloved fingers were a little clumsy, but he managed to get out five and three ones and hand them to Clayton. You wait here, Clayton said. He went in through the outer door and knocked on the inner one. He should have asked for 10 credits. Sharky only charged five and that would leave him three for himself. But he could have got 10, maybe more. When he came out with the bottle, Parks was sitting on a rock shivering. Yeezy said, it's cold out here. Let's get someplace where it's warm. Sure, I got the bottle, wanna drink? Parks took the bottle, opened it and took a good belt out of it. Whew, he breathed, pretty smooth. As Clayton drank, Parks said, hey, I better get back to the field. I know, we can go to the men's room and finish the bottle before the ship takes off. Isn't that a good idea? It's warm in there. They started back down the street toward the space field. Yeah, I'm from Indiana. Southern part down near Bloomington, Parks said. Give me the jug. Not Bloomington, Illinois, Bloomington, Indiana. We really got green hills down there. He drank and handed the bottle back to Clayton. Personally, I don't see why anybody stays on Mars. Here you're practically on a equator in the middle of the summer and it's colder than hell. Now, if you were smart, you'd go home where it's warm. Mars wasn't built for people to live on anyhow. I don't see how you stand it. That was when Clayton decided he really hated Parks. And when Parks said, why be dumb, friend? Why don't you go home? Clayton kicked him in the stomach hard. And that, and that! Clayton said as Parks doubled over. He said it again as he kicked him in the head and in the ribs. Parks was gasping as he ride on the ground, but he soon lay still. Then Clayton saw why. Parks' nose tube had come off when Clayton's foot struck his head. Parks was breathing heavily, but he wasn't getting any oxygen. That was when the big idea hit Ron Clayton. With a nosepiece on like that, you couldn't tell who a man was. He took another drink from the jug and then he began to take Parks clothes off. The uniform fit Clayton fine and so did the nose mask. He dumped his own clothing on top of Parks' nearly nude body, adjusted the little oxygen tank so that the gas would flow properly through the mask, took the first deep breath of good air he'd had in 15 years and walked towards the space field. He went into the men's room at the port building, took a drink and felt in the pocket of the uniform for Parks' identification. He found it and opened the booklet. It read, Parkinson Herbert J. Steward Second Class STS. Above it was a photo and a set of fingerprints. Clayton grinned, they'd never know it wasn't Parks getting on the ship. Parks was a steward too, a cook's helper. That was good. If he'd been a jet man or something like that, the crew might wonder why he wasn't on duty at takeoff. But a steward was different. Clayton sat for several minutes looking through the booklet and drinking from the bottle. He emptied it just before the warning sirens keened through the thin air. Clayton got up and went outside toward the ship. Wake up, hey you, wake up! Somebody was slapping his cheeks. Clayton opened his eyes and looked at the blurred face over his own. From a distance, another voice said, Who is it? The blurred face said, I don't know, he was asleep behind these cases. I think he's drunk. Clayton wasn't drunk. He was sick. His head felt like hell. Where the devil was he? Get up, bud, come on, get up! Clayton pulled himself up by holding to the man's arm. The effort made him dizzy, nauseated. The other man said, Take him down a sick bay, Casey. Get some Theumen in to him. Clayton didn't struggle as they led him down to the sick bay. He was trying to clear his head. Where was he? He must have been pretty drunk last night. He remembered meeting parks and getting thrown out by the bartender. Then what? Oh yeah, he'd gone to the sharks for a bottle. From there on it was mostly gone. He remembered a fight or something, but that was all that registered. The medic in the sick bay fired two shots from a hypo-gun into his arms. But Clayton ignored the slightest thing. Where am I? Real original. Here, take these. He handed Clayton a couple of capsules and gave him a glass of water to wash them down with. When the water hit his stomach, there was an immediate reaction. Oh Christ, the medic said. Get him up, somebody. Here, buddy, heave into this. It took them the better part of an hour to get Clayton awake enough to realize what was going on and where he was. Even then, he was plenty groggy. It was the first officer of the SDS-52 who finally got the story straight. As soon as Clayton was in condition, the medic and the quartermaster officer who had found him took him up to the first officer's compartment. I was checking through the stores this morning when I found this man. He was asleep, dead drunk behind the crates. He was drunk all right, supplied the medic. I found this in his pocket. He flipped a booklet to the first officer. The first was a young man, not older than 28 with tough-looking gray eyes. He looked over the booklet. Where did you get Parkinson's ID booklet and his uniform? Clayton looked down at his clothes in wonder. I don't know. You don't know? That's a hell of an answer. Well, I was drunk, Clayton said defensively. A man doesn't know what he's doing when he's drunk. He frowned in concentration. He knew he'd have to think up some story. I kind of remember we made a bet. I bet him I could get on the ship. Sure, yeah, I remember now. That's what happened. I bet him I could get on the ship and we traded clothes. Where is he now? My place, sleeping it off, I guess. Without his oxymask? Oh, I gave him oxidation pills for the mask. The first shook his head. It sounds like the kind of trick Parkinson would pull, all right, I'll have to write it up and turn you both into the authorities when we hit earth. Yied Clayton, what's your name? Cartwright, Sam Cartwright. Clayton said without batting an eye. Volunteer or convicted colonist? Volunteer. The first looked at him for a long moment, disbelief in his eyes. It didn't matter. Volunteer or convict, there was no place Clayton could go. From the officer's viewpoint, he was as safely imprisoned in the spaceship as he would be on Mars or a prison on earth. The first wrote in the log book and then said, well, we're one man short in the kitchen. You wanted to take Parkinson's place, brother, you got it without pay. He paused for a moment. You know, of course, he said judiciously, that you'll be shipped back to Mars immediately and you'll have to work out your passage both ways. It will be deducted from your pay. Clayton nodded. I know. I don't know what else will happen. If there's a conviction, you may lose your volunteer status on Mars and that may be fine, staying out of your pay too. Well, that's all Cartwright. You can report to Kisman in the kitchen. The first pressed a button on his desk and spoke into the intercom. Who was on duty at the airlock when the crew came aboard last night? Sent him up, I wanna talk to him. Then the quartermaster officer led Clayton out of the door and took him to the kitchen. The ship's driver tubes were pushing it along at a steady 500 centimeters per second squared, pushing us steadily closer to Earth with a little more than half a gravity of drive. There wasn't much for Clayton to do really. He helped to select the foods that went into the automatics and he cleared them out after each meal was cooked. Once every day, he had to partially dismantle them for a really thorough going over. And all the time he was thinking, Parkinson must be dead, he knew that. That meant the chamber. And even if he wasn't, they'd send Clayton back to Mars. Luckily, there was no way for either planet to communicate with the ship. It was hard enough to keep a beam trained on a planet without trying to hit such a comparatively small thing as a ship. But they would know about it on Earth by now. They would pick him up. The instant the ship landed and the best he could hope for was a return to Mars. Oh my God, he wouldn't go back to that frozen mud ball. He'd stay on Earth where it was warm and comfortable and the man could live where he was meant to live, where there was plenty of air to breathe and plenty of water to drink, where the beer tested like beer and not like slot. Earth, good green hills, the like of which exist nowhere else. Slowly, over the days, he evolved a plan. He watched and waited, checked each little detail to make sure nothing could go wrong. It couldn't go wrong. He didn't want to die and he didn't want to go back to Mars. Nobody on the ship liked him. They couldn't appreciate his position. He hadn't done anything to them, but they just didn't like him. He didn't know why he tried to get along with them. Well, if they didn't like him, the hell with him. Things worked out the way he figured. They'd be damn sorry. He was very clever about the whole plan. When turnover came, he pretended to get violently space sick. That gave him an opportunity to steal a bottle of chloral hydrate from the medics locker. And while he worked in the kitchen, he spent a great deal of time sharpening a big carving knife. Once, during his off time, he managed to disable one of the ship's two lifeboats. He was saving the other for himself. The ship was eight hours away from Earth and still decelerating when Clayton pulled his getaway. It was surprisingly easy. He was supposed to be asleep when he sneaked down to the drive compartment with the knife. He pushed open the door, looked in, and grinned like an ape. The engineer and the two jetmen were out cold from the chloral hydrate in the coffee from the kitchen. Moving rapidly, he went to the spares locker and began methodically to smash every replacement part for the drivers. Then he took three of the signal bombs from the emergency kit, set them for five minutes and placed them around the driver's circuits. He looked at the three sleeping men. What if they woke up before the bombs went off? He didn't want to kill them though. He wanted them to know what had happened and who had done it. He grinned and was away. He simply had to drag them outside and jam the door lock. He took the key from the engineer, inserted it, turned it, and snapped off the head, leaving the body of the key still in the lock. Nobody would unjam it in the next four minutes. Then he began to run up the stairwell toward the good lifeboat. He was panting and out of breath when he arrived, but no one had stopped him. No one had even seen him. He clambered into the lifeboat, made everything ready and waited. The signal bombs were not heavy charges. Their main purpose was to make a flare bright enough to be seen for thousands of miles in space. Fluorine and magnesium made plenty of light and heat. Quite suddenly, there was no gravity. He had felt nothing, but he knew that the bombs had exploded. He punched the launch switch on the control board of the lifeboat, and the little ship leaped out from the side of the greater one. Then he turned on the drive, set it at half a G, and watched the SDS-52 drop behind him. It was no longer decelerating so it would miss Earth and drift on into space. On the other hand, the life ship would come down very neatly within a few hundred miles of the spaceport in Utah, the destination of the SDS-52. Landing the life ship would be the only difficult part of the manoeuvre, but they were designed to be handled by beginners. Full instructions were printed on the simplified control board. Clayton stood at them for a while, then set the alarm to wake him in seven hours and dozed off to sleep. He dreamed of Indiana. It was full of nice green hills and leafy woods, and Parkinson was inviting him over to his mother's house for chicken and whisky, and all for free. Beneath the dream was the calm assurance that they would never catch him and send him back. When the SDS-52 failed to show up, they would think he had been lost with it. They would never look for him. When the alarm rang, Earth was a mottled glow blooming hugely beneath the ship. Clayton watched the dials on the board and began to follow the instructions on the landing sheet. He wasn't too good at it. The accelerometer climbed higher and higher, and he felt as though he could hardly move his hands to the proper switches. He was less than 15 feet off the ground when his hand slipped. The ship, out of control, shifted, spun, and toppled over on its side, smashing a great hole in the cabin. Clayton shook his head and tried to stand up in the rackage. He got to his hands and knees, dizzy but unhurt, and took a deep breath of the fresh air that was blowing in through the hole in the cabin. It felt just like home. Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Regional Headquarters, Cheyenne, Wyoming, 20th of January, 2102. 2, Space Transport Service Subject, Liveship 2, SDS-52. Attention, Mr. P. D. Latimer. Dear Paul, I have on hand the copies of your reports on the rescue of the men on the disabled SDS-52. It is fortunate that the lunar radar stations could compute their orbit. The detailed official report will follow, but briefly, this is what happened. The life ship landed, or rather crashed, several miles west of Cheyenne, as you know, but it was impossible to find the man who was piloting it until yesterday because of the weather. He has been identified as Ronald Watkins Clayton, exiled to Mars 15 years ago. Evidently, he didn't realize that 15 years of Martian gravity had so weakened his muscles that he could hardly walk under the pull of a full Earth-G. As it was, he could only crawl about 100 yards from the wrecked life ship before he collapsed. Well, I hope this clears up everything. I hope you're not getting the snowstorms up there like we've been getting them. John B. Remley, Captain, CBI. The End of the Man Who Hated Mars. Recorded by David Castle. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by David Castle. The Mightiest Man by Patrick Fahey. They caught up with him in Belgrade. The aliens had gone by then. Only a few shining metal huts in the Siberian tundra, giving mute evidence that they had been anything other than a nightmare. It had seemed exactly like that, a nightmare in which all of Earth stood helpless, unable to resist or flee, while the obscene shapes slithered and flopped over all her green fields and fair cities. Awakening had not brought the reassurance that it had all been a bad dream. That if it had happened in reality, the people of Earth would have been capable of dealing with the terrible menace. It had been real. And they had been no more capable of resisting the giant intelligences than a child of killing the ogre in his favorite fairy story. It was an ironic parallel, because that was what finally saved Earth for its own people, a fairy story. The old fable of the lion and the mouse. When the lion had exhausted his atomic armor and proud science against the invincible and immortal invaders of Earth, for they could not be killed by any means. The mouse attacked and vanquished them. The mouse, the lowest form of life, the fungoids, the air of Earth swarming with millions of their spores, attacked the monstrous bodies, grew and entwined within the gray convolutions that were their brain centers. And as the tiny thread routes probed and tightened, the aliens screamed soundlessly. The intelligences toppled and fell. And at last, that few among them who retained sanity gathered their lunatic brethren and fled as they had come. If he had known the effect the fungoids would have on them, he would have told them that too. He had told them everything else. When he had been snatched from a busy city street, a random specimen of humanity to be probed and investigated. They had chosen well. For the payment they offered him, he was willing to barter the whole human race. As far as it lay in his power, he did just that. He was not an educated man, though he was intelligent. It was child's play to them to strip his mind bare, but they had to know the intangibles too, the determined will of humanity to survive, the probabilities of the pattern of human behavior in a situation which humanity had never before faced. He told them all he could, gladly and willingly. He would have descended to any treachery for the vast glittering reward they tempted him with. It wasn't easy for the Yugoslavs to guard him. And anyway, their hearts weren't in the task. His treachery, the ultimate treason, the betrayal of the whole human race was commonly known. Inevitably, the mob got him and killed three policemen in the process. When they had sated their anger a little and the traitor had lost most of his clothes and the thumb of his right hand, they dragged him to the junction where the Danube meets the Sava and held him under the gray waters with long poles, as if he was some poisonous reptile. He lay supine on the bed of the river and smiled evilly while 100,000 people writhed in neural agony. 24 hours later, the neural plague had spread to Zagreb and into Albania as far as Tirana. When it crossed Legor in Italy, the Balkans held 20 million lunatics and the Danube was an artificial lake 100 miles wide. They had used a clean bomb so they were able to bring a loudspeaker van to its edge and boom at him to come out. He allowed them to do that for some inscrutable reason, perhaps to demonstrate that his powers were selective. Then it seemed he got tired of the farce and cruel fingers twined themselves into the nerve centers of the President of Italy and the Prime Minister of the Government of United Europe. He made them dance a horribly twisted paladar on the banks of the Danube for his perverted amusement. Then he released them and released the millions of gibbering, twitching idiots that inhabited Southern Europe. And he came out of the riverbed in which he had lain for 48 hours. He walked alone through the deserted streets of Belgrade until he came to the United Nations building. There he told a very brave lieutenant that he was willing to stand trial any place in the world they wished. For three days, nobody came to arrest him. He sat alone with the lieutenant in the people of the city of Belgrade and waited for his captors. They came then, timidly reassured by his non-violence. While he talked to them pleasantly, the citizens of London and Paris suddenly began to dance jerky and grotesque jigs on the pavements of their cities. In the same moment, the Chief Justice of the Court of the Nations at a cocktail party in Washington writhed in the exquisite pain of total muscle cramp. His august features twisted into a mask of abject fear. The trial itself was illegal farce. The prisoner promptly pleaded guilty to the charge of betraying mankind to an alien race, but he didn't allow them to question him. When one lawyer persisted in face of his pleasant refusals, he died suddenly in a cramped ball of screaming agony. A gray-faced Chief Justice inquired whether he wished to be sentenced and he answered yes. But not to death. They couldn't kill him, he explained. That was part of the reward the aliens had given him. The other part was that he could kill or immobilize anybody in the world or everybody from any distance. He sat back and smiled at the stricken courtroom. Then he lost his composure and his mouth twitched. He laughed uproariously, slapped his knees in ecstasy. It was plain that he was fond of a joke. An anonymous lawyer stood up and waited patiently for his merriment to subside. If this was true, he asked, why had not the aliens used this power? Why had they not simply killed off the inhabitants and taken over the vacant planet? The traitor gazed kindly at him and a court stenographer who had cautiously picked up a pencil returned agonizingly to her fetal position and that way died. The traitor looked at his fingers and shrugged. The thumb that had been snapped off in the mob's frenzy was more than half grown again. They needed slaves, he said simply. And at the end, while some of them were still sane, the traitor raised his eyebrows, giving him his full, courteous attention. The lawyer sat down abruptly, his question unfinished. The creature who had betrayed his own race smiled at him and permitted him to live. He even completed his question for him and answered it. Why did they not kill then? They had something else on their minds. Fungoids, he laughed rariously, had his macabre joke. And in their minds too. The lawyer's blue eyes gazed at him steadily and he stopped laughing. In the baited hush of the courtroom, he said softly, what a pity I am not an alien too. You could have the Fungoids destroy me. He laughed again helplessly, the tears running down his cheeks. The chief justice adjourned the court then and the prisoner sauntered to his comfortable quarters in front of his frightened guards. That night, in his own living room, the chief justice danced and agonized Vandango in front of his horror-stricken wife. And the anonymous lawyer sat in his apartment, staring at the blank wall. He was glad the aliens had not made the traitor telepathic too. He had found the chink in his armor. The neural paralysis, the murders by remote control, were acts of a conscious will. He had himself admitted that if his mind was destroyed, his powers would be destroyed with it. The aliens had not sought revenge because their minds were totally occupied with saving themselves. The stricken ones had simply lost the power. The knowledge was useless to him. There was no way they could attack his mind without his knowing it. Possibly they could steal away his consciousness by drugging or bludgeoning, but it would be racial suicide to attempt it. In the split moment of realization, he would kill every human being on earth. There would be nobody left to operate on his brain to make him a mindless, powerless idiot for the rest of time. For any period of time, he corrected himself. His brain would heal again. It was useless to think about it. There was nothing they could use against his invincibility. The only hope was to attack him unawares, and if that hope was a fraction less than a certainty, it could only mean final and absolute catastrophe. The lawyer looked at his watch. It was four in the morning. He went into the kitchenette and then shrugged himself into his coat. He walked through the silent streets past the city hospital where the Chief Justice lay in agony while the motor impulses from his nerve centers wrenched and twisted his body. He entered the foyer of the luxury hotel where the race betrayer was held prisoner and took the elevator to the sixth floor. Two sleepy guards jerked erect outside the unlocked door. He put his finger to his lips, and joining them to silence. And he entered the room and stood for a moment over the man who was invincible and immortal and human, human, and subject to the involuntary unconsciousness which nature demands from all men. He slept. The eyelids fluttered. The lawyer took the steel meat skewer from his pocket. He thrust it through a half-opened eye and rotated it, methodically reducing the soft brain to formless mush. After that, the trial proceeded normally. The prisoner stared vacantly in front of him and all his movements had to be directed, but he was alive and his thumb was full grown again. It was the lawyer that noticed this and pointed out the implications. The thumb had grown to full size in less than six weeks. They must regard that as their maximum period of immunity. They ruminated over it for another four days. The question was a tricky one. From a lignant immortality it was beyond human solution. It was not just a matter of dealing out punishment. The problem now was the protection of the race from sudden annihilation, an insolvable problem, but one that must be solved. They could only do their best. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a special feature. It was decided he should be guillotined once a month as long as he lived. The end of The Mightiest Man by Patrick Fahey, recording by David Castle, London.