Chapter 21

You can be holding high cards, practically unbeatable, in the final deal of a poker game and still not be sure of winning. You have to call your opponent’s hand before he gets the idea that just by drawing out a gun and shooting you dead he can gather up all the chips, and cash them in by threatening further violence. Assuming, of course, that he’s capable of that kind of violence and is in all respects the opposite of an honest gambler.

You can be even less sure of winning when it isn’t a game of cards you’re on the point of winning, but a duel to the death with a ruthless power combine and time is running out on you.

I had all the evidence I needed now to smash the Wendel Combine. But it had to be built up by legal experts, and stripped down as well, until the documentation had the sinewy, blockbusting persuasiveness of a champion’s punch.

It would have to stir popular fury on Earth on a very wide scale, be made so convincing that no one could possibly mistake it for a trumped-up shakedown in another grab for power. And that would take time--two or three weeks, at least.

And right at the moment Wendel was almost certainly out of the hospital and back in the Wendel plant, getting ready to close in on the skyport with his army of goons.

The problem that confronted me can be summarized in just one sentence. I had to get into my uniform, pin the silver bird into place and complete just two visits, or Wendel would dig my grave wide and deep.

Not just my own grave, of course--but when you fight to stay alive you remember all of the things you want to protect and stay alive for. There are men, I suppose, who are chiefly concerned with survival on a more primitive plane, but I think I can honestly say I’ve never been that kind of man.

My first visit was going to be to one hell of a live man--Joseph Sherwood. Sherwood had undisputed custody, by authority of the Board, of every nuclear weapon in the Colony with enough large-scale destructive potential to make open defiance of that authority an extremely risky undertaking.

I was now his superior in rank, but I had no intention of making changes in his command or questioning the wisdom of the decisions he was more than qualified to make. The measures he had taken to protect the Colony I regarded as absolutely correct and he knew far more about nuclear armaments than I did. There were limits to what those measures could accomplish, because a large-scale thermonuclear weapon can destroy thousands of innocent victims, and the Wendel Combine knew precisely how far it could go without bringing down the thunder.

All I had to do was convince Wendel that it had now gone too far and that the thunder was very close. Basically it would be quite a simple undertaking. I would simply have to walk into the Wendel plant and talk to him in a calm way, at the risk of being blown apart.

I was standing before a full-length mirror in a small, windowless room which the skyport officials had assured me wasn’t wired for sound. It sure had privacy. Not that I’d need it while I was putting on my uniform, because I’d be wearing it when I emerged and they would all see the silver bird. And Joan was the only woman in the building ... which made privacy a little absurd on more than one count.

It was just that--well, when you stand before a mirror and pin that kind of insignia on a quite ordinary, regulation-fit uniform it does something to the wearer which changes the way he looks in a quite startling way.

I guess I just didn’t want anyone to see me observing the change in a mirror and grin, which would have forced me to do something I just hadn’t time for--take a sock at him. I suppose there’s a little garden-variety vanity in me--show me a man who claims he hasn’t a trace of it in his nature and I’ll show you a first-class liar--but right at the moment I wouldn’t have been lying if I’d said that nothing could have been further from my mind than preening myself on the way I looked.

But it was just as well I had privacy, because I had to stand before the mirror for three full minutes to get accustomed to the change, and feel relaxed and casual about it.

I’d forgotten to tell Commander Littlefield I’d be needing a tractor, warmed up and ready to roll, and that the place to find it waiting for me would be right outside the gate. The one I’d left there with a dead man sitting in it didn’t have quite the trim, speedy look of three or four I’d noticed standing about the skyport and if he could get me a lighter one so much the better.

Joan was taking care of it for me. She came back just as I was turning from the mirror, with the silver bird gleaming on my right shoulder. She’d seen me wearing it before, of course, so she wasn’t startled. But the tall, stoop-shouldered man with graying temples who had followed her into the room had enough startlement in his eyes to have made her a present of half of it and still made the grade in that respect.

He kept staring at the silver bird in tight-lipped silence until I darted a questioning glance at Joan and he seemed to realize he was putting a strain on my patience.

“My name’s John Lynton,” he said, hesitantly. “Commander Littlefield told me you’ll be needing a tractor. I have one, and I’ll be glad to drive you, sir. I brought the Endicott fuel cylinder to the skyport, so I naturally feel pretty strongly about everything that’s happened. There’s just one thing I’d like to see happen to Wendel. But I guess I don’t have to spell it out for you, sir.”

I stared at him in amazement. I’d taken it for granted that the Colonist who had delivered the cylinder was no longer at the skyport, because no one had pointed him out to me, and I’d been under too much of a strain to question Littlefield about it.

“Well ... that takes care of one thing that puzzled me,” I said. “I couldn’t understand why you’d just deliver the cylinder and clear out. But people here seem to feel they’re privileged to do pretty much as they please at times. So it didn’t puzzle me too much.”

“I was in the Administration Building, talking to a sky ship officer, when you were in the shed, sir,” he explained. “But I saw you come into the projection room--”

“All right,” I said. “We haven’t time to discuss it and it’s not important anyway. I know how to drive a tractor, but I’m not an expert at it. If you’ve got your own tractor you’ll know what to do if it breaks down. That’s an advantage I’d be a fool to pass up. But if you’re going with me, you may as well know we’ll be in danger the instant we pass through the gate. The Wendel agents have orders to blast me down on sight.”

I shouldn’t have said that, for it made Joan bite down hard on her underlip and say in a kind of talking-to-herself whisper, “An armed escort would cut down the danger. Littlefield could--”

I shook my head. “We’d be certain to be stopped then and an open clash with Wendel agents in the streets of the Colony would wrap it up--but good. There’s no way of packaging it that would please Wendel more.”

The instant Lynton realized, just from the way I was looking at Joan, that I wanted to be alone with her he said: “I’d better check over the tractor once more. I’ll drive it through the gate, draw in to the side of the clear-away and keep a sharp eye on the incoming traffic--if any. I’ll keep the motor running, sir.”

The instant the door closed behind him Joan was in my arms. For the most part all we did was embrace without saying a word, which is one way of saying as much as you possibly can in the space of half a minute.

I was a little afraid that Joan would break down and burst into tears, which would have spoiled everything. I could see the tears trembling on the fringes of her eyelids, and decided right then and there that she was one hell of a precious woman. And when you’re parting with something very precious you can break your heart in two if you let yourself do too much thinking.

So I just kissed her very firmly on the mouth for the tenth time, swung about and walked out of that small, windowless room without looking back to see if she was still doing her best to keep the tears from flowing.

In the ambulance on the way to the hospital I’d seen more of the Colony than I could have covered on foot in half a day. Jogging through the streets again with Lynton doing the driving I could have taken in even more of it in a sight-seeing way. I could have--but I didn’t.

I saw no reason to make myself conspicuous, and somehow removing the insignia from my shoulder so soon after I’d pinned it on would have gone against the grain. And it wasn’t just my uniform or the silver bird which would have made me a sitting duck to a Wendel agent stationed anywhere along the way with my description dear and sharp in his mind. It was a safe bet we’d pass at least a dozen of the Combine’s goons, strutting about in their private police uniforms, so I took care to remain in a seated position in the back of the tractor, with my head well below sight-seeing level.

This time I didn’t look, wonder or black out at intervals. I kept a tight grip on my nerves and refused to even let myself think what an impasse I’d be facing if my talk with Arms Custodian Sherwood didn’t bring the kind of results I was counting on.

It’s hard to maintain just one rigid mental stance when you’re keeping a great many hard-to-control emotions bottled up in your mind with a clamped-down safety valve. But I didn’t have to maintain the stance for long, because twenty minutes after we left the skyport the tractor rumbled to a halt before a massive, fortress-like building which stood a considerable distance from the buildings on both sides of it and was protected in its isolation by steel walls, pacing guards and a well-guarded stockpile of thermonuclear weapons.

No Wendel agent would have risked blasting away at me within three miles of that stronghold--unless he was tired of living and didn’t want to see another Martian sunrise. It made me feel secure enough to stand up and descend from the tractor without making a production out of it, as if I was two-thirds convinced I’d be blown apart before I could advance twenty feet.

I neither hurried nor wasted time, just stood calmly by the tractor until I was satisfied no one who had seen us drive up--I was quite sure we were under long-range binocular scrutiny--would come striding out of the forest to question us at gunpoint. Then I nodded to Lynton, and walked straight toward the big gray building. I’d told him not to move from his seat until I came out, so there was no need to caution him further.

I can’t remember at exactly what point in my approach to the high-walled gate the silver bird became a thunder-bird, or exactly how each of the three guards looked when they first caught sight of it.

I was too startled just by the way the oldest of the three, who must have been a tow-headed twelve-year-old when the first wearer of the insignia walked the streets of the Colony, stared at me, snapped to attention and grounded the heavy weapon he’d been holding slantwise across his chest with a thud. The other two guards quickly followed suit. Quite possibly they had merely taken their cue from him and didn’t want to risk an official reprimand. But they certainly put on a convincing performance, as if what they feared most was a full-dress court martial. If I’d dropped down out of the sky in a golden chariot and was Apollo, maybe, or the Aztec Sun God, I couldn’t have been accorded more deference.

A moment later the high steel gate opened and shut with a clang and I was on the inside, with more guards on both sides of me. I’d paused a moment, of course, to explain to the elderly guard who had first saluted me, just why I was there and whom I wanted to see.

I had an escort of six guards as I walked to the end of the first-floor corridor, and ascended a short flight of stairs and they continued to escort all the way to the door of Sherwood’s office.

Some men can be jolted almost speechless by an unexpected visit and recover their composure so rapidly they seem to have retained it from the beginning. It was that way with Sherwood. He was a big man in his early forties, with close-cropped reddish hair and handsome features.

He was sparing of words, but everything he told me was in direct answer to my questions and a man who can confine himself to just giving you the information you need without wasting words is likely to be the kind of man you can depend on in an emergency.

His final answer was the clincher. It came at the end of a fifteen-minute conversation.

“We can do it if we’ve no other choice,” he said.

“All right,” I said. “I want you to tell Wendel exactly what you’ve just told me, on a two-way televisual hookup. I’ll be at the Wendel plant in fifteen minutes, and I’m sure I can persuade him to talk to you on the screen, right after I’ve laid it on the line for him.

“If,” I added “--and it’s a very big if--I can get in to see him without ending up dead. His goons have orders to blast me down on sight.”

He looked at me steadily for a moment, with a concerned tightening of his lips. Then he leaned back and some of the strain left his face.

“Have any of his goons ever seen you with that insignia on your shoulder?” he asked.

It was a good question and it confirmed the opinion I’d formed of him.

“No, they haven’t,” I said. “But it doesn’t alter the possibility I’ll be blasted down before I can get in to see Wendel. Remember--the Wendel Combine has taken the big gamble and is waging an undeclared, but all out war. This insignia makes me Target Number One. If I took it off before entering the plant his goons would probably recognize me anyway--too quickly for me to save myself by shouting at them and trying to make them see that Wendel would want them to withhold their fire. I may not have a chance to do any explaining, because they may recognize me just from the description that’s been furnished them.”

Sherwood nodded. “Yes ... it would be foolish to deny you won’t be exposing yourself to danger. And you’ll have to be wearing the insignia when you confront Wendel. But I’ve a feeling that Wendel’s goons will take you straight to him. I could be mistaken, of course. But somehow I can’t picture them firing pointblank at Target Number One without prior authorization. They’d be sticking out their necks with a vengeance, because their instructions to blast you on sight were issued before you pinned that bird on your shoulder.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said. “But goons are funny people.”

“I’ll be right here at my desk when the screen lights up,” he said. “Don’t worry too much. I’ll handle my end of it with very careful timing...”

Fifteen minutes later my tractor rumbled to a halt for the second time, directly in front of the Wendel plant.

Like the Endicott plant, it faced a big square and there were no pedestrians in sight on the side we parked on.

“This time I’m going with you,” Lynton said, very firmly.

So he was going with me! All right, it was an obligation I owed him, and I couldn’t pull rank on him, because he was a civilian and it wouldn’t have done the least bit of good. Moreover, he’d gotten over being dazzled by the silver bird, if it had ever really dazzled him, which I doubted. He was a too tough-fibered, independent, non-authority conscious kind of guy. You find them in every rugged, pioneering society--guys who will stand up in a public meeting and tell a governmental big shot that the speech he’s just delivered has a phony ring to it and he’d be well advised to try again.

I descended from the tractor a little more cautiously this time, keeping my eye on the ground-floor windows of the plant and wondering how long it would take me to cross from the car to the building’s wide main entrance and if the steel-mesh blinds on the windows might not be a cover-up for nuclear weapons pointed straight in our direction.

But actually, despite the uneasiness which we both felt, we crossed from the tractor to the plant without hurrying and with our shoulders held straight.

There were two guards in Wendel private police uniforms with nuclear hand-guns clamped to their hips standing just inside the entrance and the instant we came into view their hands darted to the holstered weapons and their eyes took on a steely glint.

Then--both guards did a swift double take. They didn’t stiffen to attention the way the guards at the gate of the nuclear fortress had done, but something happened to their faces which made them seem to be wearing frozen masks. Only their eyes remained alive, alert, the steely glint replaced by a look of stunned incredulity.

I spoke sharply, without giving them time to reach a decision on their own initiative which might have had tragic consequences, for you can never tell what desperate, completely unjustified measures a badly jolted man will take it into his head to resort to.

“I’m here to see Wendel,” I said. “Nobody else will do. I guess I don’t have to tell you that this is an order. You’d be very foolish not to unbar that gate, for I have the authority to take you into custody if you prevent me from entering the plant. You may be just guards, but that will not prevent the Colonization Board from imprisoning you on a treason charge.”

Their eyes never left the insignia while they were swinging open the big, iron-barred entrance gate for me. It was set well back from the street, with enough walled-in space in front of it to accommodate a dozen bloody corpses. I had an idea they would have tried to make use of it in that way, if I’d attempted to force my way past them with an armed escort and hadn’t been wearing the silver bird.