Trouble with Time

This is my only detective story: I was all the more gratified, therefore, when “Ellery Queen” used it in one of his collections.

The problem it deals with is not, perhaps, the most serious obstacle to the colonization of Mars. But it existsand there’s not a thing anyone can do about it.

Except to avoid buying real estate at “Meridian City.”

“We don’t have much crime on Mars,” said Detective Inspector Rawlings, a little sadly. “In fact, that’s the chief reason I’m going back to the Yard. If I stayed here much longer, I’d get completely out of practice.”

We were sitting in the main observation lounge of the Phobos Spaceport, looking out across the jagged, sun-drenched crags of the tiny moon. The ferry rocket that had brought us up from Mars had left ten minutes ago, and was now beginning the long fall back to the ocher-tinted globe hanging there against the stars. In half an hour we would be boarding the liner for Eartha world upon which most of the passengers had never set foot, but which they still called “home.”

“At the same time,” continued the Inspector, “now and then there’s a case that makes life interesting. You’re an art dealer, Mr. Maccar; I’m sure you heard about that spot of bother at Meridian City a couple of months ago.”

“I don’t think so,” replied the plump, olive-skinned little man I’d taken for just another returning tourist. Presumably the Inspector had already checked through the passenger

list; I wondered how much he knew about me, and tried to reassure myself that my conscience waswellreasonably clear. After all, everybody took something out through Martian Customs

“It’s been rather well hushed up,” said the Inspector, “but you can’t keep these things quiet for long. Anyway, a jewel thief from Earth tried to steal Meridian Museum’s greatest treasurethe Siren Goddess.”

“But that’s absurd!” I objected. “It’s priceless, of course  but it’s only a lump of sandstone. You couldn’t sell it to anyoneyou might just as well steal the Mona Lisa.”

The Inspector grinned, rather mirthlessly. “That’s happened once,” he said. “Maybe the motive was the same. There are collectors who would give a fortune for such an object, even if they could only look at it themselves. Don’t you agree, Mr. Maccar?”

“That’s perfectly true. In my business, you meet all sorts of crazy people.”

“Well, this chappiename’s Danny Weaverhad been well paid by one of them. And if it hadn’t been for a piece of fantastically bad luck, he might have brought it off.”

The Spaceport P.A. system apologized for a further slight delay owing to final fuel checks, and asked a number of passengers to report to Information. While we were waiting for the announcement to finish, I recalled what little I knew about the Siren Goddess. Though I’d never seen the original, like most other departing tourists I had a replica in my baggage. It bore the certificate of the Mars Bureau of Antiquities, guaranteeing that “this full-scale reproduction is an exact copy of the so-called Siren Goddess, discovered in the Mare Sirenium by the Third Expedition, A.D. 2012 (A.M. 23).”

It’s quite a tiny thing to have caused so much controversy. Only eight or nine inches highyou wouldn’t look at it twice if you saw it in a museum on Earth. The head of a young woman, with slightly oriental features, elongated earlobes, hair curled in tight ringlets close to the scalp, lips half parted in an expression of pleasure or surprisethat’s all. But it’s an

enigma so baffling that it’s inspired a hundred religious sects, and driven quite a few archaeologists round the bend. For a perfectly human head has no right whatsoever to be found on Mars, whose only intelligent inhabitants were crustaceans”educated lobsters,” as the newspapers are fond of calling them. The aboriginal Martians never came near to achieving space flight, and in any event their civilization died before men existed on Earth. No wonder the Goddess is the solar system’s number-one mystery; I don’t suppose we’ll find the answer in my lifetimeif we ever do.

“Danny’s plan was beautifully simple,” continued the Inspector. “You know how absolutely dead a Martian city gets on Sunday, when everything closes down and the colonists stay home to watch the TV from Earth. Danny was counting on this, when he checked into the hotel in Meridian West, late Friday afternoon. He’d have Saturday for reconnoitering the Museum, an undisturbed Sunday for the job itself, and on Monday morning he’d be just another tourist leaving town… .

“Early Saturday he strolled through the little park and crossed over into Meridian East, where the Museum stands. In case you don’t know, the city gets its name because it’s exactly on longitude one hundred and eighty degrees; there’s a big stone slab in the park with the prime meridian engraved on it, so that visitors can get themselves photographed standing in two hemispheres at once. Amazing what simple things amuse some people.

“Danny spent the day going over the Museum, exactly like any other tourist determined to get his money’s worth. But at closing time he didn’t leave; he’d holed up in one of the galleries not open to the public, where the Museum had been arranging a Late Canal Period reconstruction but had run out of money before the job could be finished. He stayed there until about midnight, just in case there were any enthusiastic researchers still in the building. Then he emerged and got to work.”

“Just a minute,” I interrupted. “What about the night watchman?”

The Inspector laughed.

“My dear chap! They don’t have such luxuries on Mars. There weren’t even any alarms, for who would bother to steal lumps of stone? True, the Goddess was sealed up neatly in a strong glass-and-metal cabinet, just in case some souvenir hunter took a fancy to her. But even if she were stolen, there was nowhere the thief could hide, and of course all outgoing traffic would be searched as soon as the statue was missed.”

That was true enough. I’d been thinking in terms of Earth, forgetting that every city on Mars is a closed little world of its own beneath the force-field that protects it from the freezing near-vacuum. Beyond those electronic shields is the utterly hostile emptiness of the Martian Outback, where a man will die in seconds without protection. That makes law enforcement very easy; no wonder there’s so little crime on Mars… .

“Danny had a beautiful set of tools, as specialized as a watchmaker’s. The main item was a microsaw no bigger than a soldering iron; it had a wafer-thin blade, driven at a million cycles a second by an ultrasonic power pack. It would go through glass or metal like butterand left a cut only about as thick as a hair. Which was very important for Danny, since he had to leave no traces of his handiwork.

“I suppose you’ve guessed how he intended to operate. He was going to cut through the base of the cabinet, and substitute one of those souvenir replicas for the real Goddess. It might be a couple of years before some inquisitive expert discovered the awful truth; long before then the original would have traveled back to Earth, perfectly disguised as a copy of itself, with a genuine certificate of authenticity. Pretty neat, eh?

“It must have been a weird business, working in that darkened gallery with all those million-year-old carvings and un-explainable artifacts around him. A museum on Earth is bad enough at night, but at least it’swellhuman. And Gallery

Three, which houses the Goddess, is particularly unsettling. It’s full of bas-reliefs showing quite incredible animals fighting each other; they look rather like giant beetles, and most paleontologists flatly deny that they could ever have existed. But imaginary or not, they belonged to this world, and they didn’t disturb Danny as much as the Goddess, staring at him across the ages and defying him to explain her presence here. She gave him the creeps. How do I know? He told me.

“Danny set to work on that cabinet as carefully as any diamond cutter preparing to cleave a gem. It took most of the night to slice out the trap door, and it was nearly dawn when he relaxed and put down the saw. There was still a lot of work to do, but the hardest part was over. Putting the replica into the case, checking its appearance against the photos he’d thoughtfully brought with him, and covering up his traces might take most of Sunday, but that didn’t worry him in the least. He had another twenty-four hours, and would positively welcome Monday’s first visitors so that he could mingle with them and make his inconspicuous exit.

“It was a perfectly horrible shock to his nervous system, therefore, when the main doors were noisily unbarred at eight-thirty and the museum staffall six of themstarted to open up for the day. Danny bolted for the emergency exit, leaving everything behindtools, Goddesses, the lot. He had another big surprise when he found himself in the street; it should have been completely deserted at this time of day, with everyone at home reading the Sunday papers. But here were the citizens of Meridian East, as large as life, heading for plant or office on what was obviously a normal working day.

“By the time poor Danny got back to his hotel, we were waiting for him. We couldn’t claim much credit for deducing that only a visitor from Earthand a very recent one at that could have overlooked Meridian City’s chief claim to fame. And I presume you know what that is.”

“Frankly, I don’t,” I answered. “You can’t see much of Mars in six weeks, and I never went east of the Syrtis Major.”

“Well, it’s absurdly simple, but we shouldn’t be too hard on Danny; even the locals occasionally fall into the same trap. It’s something that doesn’t bother us on Earth, where we’ve been able to dump the problem in the Pacific Ocean. But Mars, of course, is all dry land; and that means that somebody has to live with the International Date Line… .

“Danny, you see, had worked from Meridian West. It was Sunday over there all rightand it was still Sunday when we picked him up back at the hotel. But over in Meridian East, half a mile away, it was only Saturday. That little trip across the park had made all the difference; I told you it was rotten luck.”

There was a long moment of silent sympathy; then I asked, “What did he get?”

“Three years,” said Inspector Rawlings.

“That doesn’t seem very much.”

“Mars years; that makes it almost six of ours. And a whacking fine which, by an odd coincidence, came to just the refund value of his return ticket to Earth. He isn’t in jail, of course; Mars can’t afford that kind of nonproductive luxury. Danny has to work for a living, under discreet surveillance. I told you that the Meridian Museum couldn’t afford a night watchman. Well, it has one now. Guess who.”

“All passengers prepare to board in ten minutes! Please collect your hand baggage!” ordered the loud-speakers.

As we started to move toward the air lock, I couldn’t help asking one more question.

“What about the people who put Danny up to it? There must have been a lot of money behind him. Did you get them?”

“Not yet; they’d covered their tracks pretty thoroughly, and I believe Danny was telling the truth when he said he couldn’t give us any leads. Still, it’s not my case; as I told you, I’m going back to my old job at the Yard. But a policeman always keeps his eyes openlike an art dealer, eh, Mr. Maccar? Why, you look a bit green about the gills. Have one of my space-sickness tablets.”

“No, thank you,” answered Mr. Maccar, “I’m quite all right.”

His tone was distinctly unfriendly; the social temperature seemed to have dropped below zero in the last few minutes. I looked at Mr. Maccar, and I looked at the Inspector. And suddenly I realized that we were going to have a very interesting trip.

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