Chapter 7

Maya had never seen Nuwell in such a state of sustained rage.

He strode back and forth in the private dining room of the Syrtis Major Club, near the western edge of Mars City, slapping his fist into his hand. His face usually was engaging and boyish, the wave of his dark hair setting it off handsomely, but now it was flushed like that of a petulant child and the lock of hair hung down over his forehead. Maya, the only other person in the room, sat quietly and watched him pace.

“They had plenty of time and all the information they needed,” stormed Nuwell, “and yet they didn’t get a single one of the key men! Most of the rebels slipped out easily, right under their noses!”

Maya watched him detachedly. This was the man she had promised to marry, and, as she had once or twice before, she was undergoing pangs of doubt. After all, she had known Nuwell Eli only during the few months she had been on Mars.

She had fallen in love with him for his charm, his intelligence, his good-humored gentleness, but she did not like this display of temper. It was not a controlled anger, but had something of the irrational in it.

“Childress was captured,” she reminded him.

“Childress! A figurehead! He says he didn’t know about the rebel activities going on in the college, and he’s so stupid I may not be able to make a case against him.”

Maya recognized that this element, the success of his prosecution, was a very important factor to Nuwell.

“Are the twelve I identified the only ones captured?” asked Maya.

“Yes. Twelve captured, seven killed, and every one of them small fry. The leaders undoubtedly got away in that copter. We blockaded the airlocks fast, so most of the others are probably still in the city, but we don’t have any idea where to look for them.”

“I may be able to help in that, when I get back from my swing around the other cities,” said Maya.

“I don’t want you to go on that jaunt, Maya!” exclaimed Nuwell, swinging around to face her with fierce emphasis. “You said when you had found the headquarters, you’d resign the service and marry me. Now you want to go all over Mars looking for rebels!”

“Nuwell, I can identify almost all of those who were at the barber college,” Maya remonstrated. “They’ve picked up some men at the airlocks and others on the roads at several cities, and even Martian law won’t permit you to uproot those people and send them to Mars City just on suspicion. They can’t be sent here for me to identify: I’ll have to go there.”

“We can work out some charges to get them extradited to Mars City,” snapped Nuwell angrily. “I don’t want you to go, Maya. I want you to stay here and marry me, immediately.”

“Aren’t you being a little dictatorial, Nuwell?” she suggested coolly.

The warning implied in her remoteness seemed to trigger a polarized reaction in Nuwell. The furious dark eyes melted suddenly, the stubborn anger of the face altered on the instant to a sentimental, wistful smile of appeal.

“Don’t be angry, Maya,” he pleaded, half-ruefully, half-humorously. “It’s just that I love you so much. It’s just that I’m impatient for you to be my wife.”

Changeability is attributed to the feminine, but Maya was not able to shift her mood as facilely as her fiance.

“If I’m worth marrying, I’m worth waiting for a little longer,” she said, with an edge to her voice. She was angry at Nuwell for acting so like a spoiled child. “I’m going to see this job finished. I’m leaving for Solis Lacus on the jetliner tonight.”

“Solis Lacus!” he exclaimed in astonishment. “Why, Maya, that’s halfway around Mars!”

“That’s exactly why the rebels might be more likely to go there. In spite of the patrols, you know they haven’t picked up all of the rebels who escaped Mars City by groundcar. Any of them who headed for Solis Lacus will be arriving there within the next two or three days. Then I’ll make a swing around and spend as much time as necessary at each of the dome cities before coming back here.”

The angry, stubborn expression swept across Nuwell’s face again.

“Maya, I won’t--” he began.

But at that moment, their guests began arriving. As the judge of Mars City’s superior court and his wife entered the room, Nuwell cut himself off sharp and turned to greet them. His face cleared instantly, his lips curved into a delighted smile and he welcomed them with such natural, innocent charm that one would have thought he was incapable of frowning.

The presence of the guests seemed to intoxicate him with good-humor, and when he had to leave in the midst of the party to drive Maya to the airport he did not resume his argument. He merely kissed her good-bye tenderly before she boarded the plane and begged her with melting eyes to hurry back because he would be lonely every moment she was away.

So it was that Maya stretched in a reclining chair on the sundeck of the Chateau Nectaris the next afternoon and permitted herself to be disgusted with the entire planet Mars.

Maya’s small, perfect body was kept minimally modest by one of those scanty Martian sunsuits. A huge straw hat, woven of dried canal sage, hid her beautiful face.

A disappointing resort area for an Earthwoman, this Solis Lacus Lowland. No swimming, no boating, no skiing. No water and no snow. Just a vast expanse of salty ground, blanketed with gray-green canal sage and dotted with the plastic domes of the resort chateaus. Nothing to do but hike in a marsuit or sun oneself under a dome.

She had chosen the Chateau Nectaris because it was the largest of the resort spots, and therefore the most likely one to be chosen by men who sought to hide out for a while. She had contacted the managers of all the resort chateaus and all had agreed to let her know of the arrival of any new guests.

There had been three of them during the morning, two arriving by groundcar and one by copter, at three different chateaus. She had driven to each one and circumspectly inspected the new guest, but none had been anyone she recognized from the Childress Barber College.

In a way, she wished she had yielded to Nuwell’s importunities. There was much more of interest to do in Mars City. And Nuwell was charming and intelligent and rather dashing, and she did love him, and she did want to marry him. But...

But she was right in wanting to help identify those rebels who had been captured before she considered her task finished. And perhaps Nuwell had been right in his implied disagreement with her idea of coming first to Solis Lacus, so far from Mars City. Logically, would it not be harder to lose oneself in a fashionable resort area than in a good-sized city? But something within her had urged her to come here first. It was a hunch, and she intended to play it.

With a sigh, Maya pushed the hat off her face and stared with exotically slanted black eyes at the shining blur of the dome hundreds of feet above her. She sat up, hugging her knees with her arms.

A score of other guests were sunning themselves here also. At her movement, the unmarried men turned their eyes on her frankly; the married ones did so furtively, to be promptly yanked back to attention by their wives.

Maya’s onyx eyes surveyed this dullness aloofly, then lifted over the nearby parapet and across the sparse terrestrial lawn which would grow only under the dome. The far cliffs of the Thaumasia Foelix Desert loomed darkly, distorted through the dome’s sides.

The dome’s airlock opened to admit a groundcar. She watched it, interestedly, as it scurried like a huge, glassy bug along the curving road and disappeared under the parapet in front of the chateau. Mail from Mars City, perhaps, or supplies. Maybe even a new guest.

Something struck her, now that the groundcar was no longer in sight. It had been a little too far away to discern its details clearly, but there was something strange about the appearance of that groundcar. A glassy bug, but not entirely sleek and shiny. Rather like a bug that had come out second best in an argument with another bug.

Maya arose, purposefully. She stretched lithely, to the delight of the assembled viewers, and padded gracefully toward the chateau’s second-floor entrance, trailing the huge hat in one hand.

She walked lightly along the balcony over the lobby, toward her room. As she turned its corner, passing the grand stairway, she could see the chateau entrance and the registration desk.

The groundcar had brought a new guest. He was signing the registration book, a tall, broad-shouldered man in a marsuit, holding his marshelmet under his arm. Why would he be wearing a marsuit in a groundcar?

As she looked, he laid down the pen and turned. His face was darkly tanned, strong, handsome. His hair was black as midnight, his eyes startlingly pale in the dark face.