There was a thrumming in the sky.
"Fliers," Kirby said. "Two of them."
Shari picked up her bundle. "We can be away in yours before they reach here."
"No. They'd have us smack on their radarscopes, and I don't dare lead them—"
He did not finish what he was about to say. Instead he shoved the gun out of sight under his loose shirt and grabbed Shari's bundle. "Peel off that coverall," he said. "Quick."
There were cushions and bright silks on the couch. He hid the bundle among them and sprawled out on top of it, a man at ease, a man without a care in the world. Shari's ugly garment vanished also among the silks. By the time the fliers droned down to a landing outside she looked as she always did, a skirt-like wrapping of pale green girdled around her hips, her breasts bare after the Martian fashion, with a collar of hammered metal plaques above them.
"Fix us a drink," said Kirby.
She bent over a low table and said softly, "These men are from the Port, with your brother that is not of the blood but of the law."
"March," said Kirby, and his eyes narrowed. He moved on the cushions, feeling the hard comforting pressure of the gun against his flesh. Then he asked Shari, "Have you always had this . . . gift?" He tapped his forehead. "I mean, all these years you could read my mind, and I never knew it?"
He was glad that all his thoughts about her had been good ones.
She almost laughed at him. "I never used it—well, hardly ever, really—except to tell me when you were coming. A Martian man could guard his mind, but not you, so it would not have been fair. And I never told you of it because it might have made you uncomfortable."
Kirby shook his head in awe. "A telepath. I'll be damned. I knew Martians were supposed to have some unusual abilities, but I never dreamed—"
"Not all of us, Kirby, and the effort is too great to waste it on trivialities. Already my head aches." She put the tall glass in his hand and then she kissed him briefly, fiercely, and whispered, "Be careful! And now I'll let them in."
The knocking on the door had just begun. Shari opened it, and three men came in. Two of them were government agents assigned to Port Security, and Kirby reckoned that there must be two more outside, searching his own flier. The third man was his brother-in-law, Harry March. He was also Divisional Superintendent and Kirby's superior.
Kirby sat up. "I won't say welcome, Harry, because you're not." He looked at the government men, "What is this?"
March glanced slowly around the room, letting his gaze slide over Shari as though she were not there. He was a tall man. He had never been muscular, and though he was not fat there were paddings of soft flesh on his cheeks and belly. His features were narrow and pronounced, very like the features of Kirby's dead wife, and his attitude was as hers had been, one of deep disapproval of practically everything. He had never, since Kirby's remarriage, visited him at home.
Kirby asked, "What did you have to say that couldn't be said during working hours?"
Flatly, with only the faintest undertone of satisfaction, March said, "You're under arrest."
Kirby sprang up. "Listen, Harry, a citizen still has some rights under this fine benevolent government. You can't just walk in—"
One of the government men stepped forward, pulling a paper out of his pocket. "Warrant," he said. "You're charged with a long lot of words, but it boils down to theft of government property, corruption of government employees, and suspicion of sabotage. That enough for you?"
"I guess so," said Kirby, "except that Harry is crazy if he thinks he can pin it on me. Where's your evidence, Harry? You can't put me in prison just because you hate my guts." Kirby was astounded at the sound of his own voice, honest and angry and not the least bit frightened. Inside he was quaking, and cold as ice.
March said quietly, "I have what evidence I need. But the thefts are not the important part, Kirby. It's what you're doing with the things. There's no market for them, you can't sell them anywhere—there must be another reason. I have a good idea what it is, but I want you to tell me."
"You do," said Kirby, and smiled.
March's thin mouth grew thinner. "I know what you're up to, whether you tell me or not, and you know what the penalty is." He came forward a little. "I'm trying to help you, not for your sake but because you were my sister's husband, and I don't want her name involved in criminal proceedings. If you'll make a full confession now, with the names of all other persons connected with this business, I'll withdraw my charges against you. I'll even go so far as to say that you were acting for me."
Kirby glanced at the two government men. "And what would they say?"
"They'll go along with me."
The government men nodded. Kirby laughed. "That important, is it? Well, I'm sorry, Harry. This is the only chance you've ever had to be a hero, and I'm going to louse it up. I don't know anything. I don't even know what you're talking about."
The two men who had remained outside to search Kirby's flier came in. One of them shook his head and said, "Nothing in it." Kirby took a long drink from the glass he still held in his hand and put it down. "Harry," he said, "don't you think you're letting your dislike for me carry you just a little too far?" He nodded at the government men. "Wasting their time, on a personal feud."
"There's no feud," March said. "For your own good, Kirby, I'm asking you to talk."
"Oh, but there is a feud," said Kirby, moving a little to the right. "There always was, right from the first. You thought your sister was much too good for me. You know something, Harry? Your sister was a mess, and why I didn't see it in time I'll never know. She was selfish and hen-brained and trouble-making, and Mars has been a better place since she left it." Underneath his words his mind was signaling frantically to Shari. "Now! Now! Can you do something to distract them?" It seemed a lunatic thing to depend on telepathy, but it was all he had.
March was genuinely shocked. He stared at Kirby for a moment, and then his face began to darken. He said, "You have no right to speak that way." He looked at Shari. "Especially after—" He had to try twice to get the words out. "A native woman!"
"That'll be enough of that, Harry," Kirby said very quietly.
March turned to the government men. "He's going to be stubborn and we can't afford stubbornness now. Even a few hours of stalling on Kirby's part might be enough to let the ship take off without him."
Kirby's nerves contracted with a stabbing pain. It was no surprise to him that March had guessed the truth, but he hated to hear the bald flat mention of a thing that had been so well and lovingly hidden for so long. Shari said softly, in the ceremonial High Martian that few Earthmen understood, "It is only a guess. And now I am going to speak."
One of the government men got out a flat case with a syringe in it. "I figured we'd have to use this," he said laconically, and Kirby shivered. The truth-drugs developed since the days of scopolamine were very good. Too good. They worked.
Why the hell didn't Shari do something?
She did. She spoke suddenly and clearly in English, which she knew perfectly but almost never used. She spoke to March, and her eyes were fixed on his with that queer, fey look that seemed to strip his mind down naked. Kirby saw him trying to turn away from it, but he could not. It held him fascinated. And Shari said, "It is not because of your dead sister that you hate Kirby. You hate him because he is a man, and you are not."
A curious change came over March's face, slight at first, so slight that Kirby hardly noticed it. Sharf's clear relentless voice went on.
"You cannot understand love or friendship. You hate courage because you have none yourself. You are eaten up with hatred and poisoned with envy, but you are not even wicked. You are nothing."
March said, in a strange subdued voice, "Hold your tongue." And he added a Low Martian word that every Earthman knew if he knew no other.
Shari laughed. "The men you work with have a word for you, March. Shall I tell you what it is?"
She looked now at the government men, who became suddenly flushed and uneasy. One of them started to say something, and at the same time March gave back a step and turned, and another of the men snickered. March winced, drawing back his lips in the grimace of a child about to cry. Kirby could not bear to look at him. He had always had a healthy detestation for his brother-in-law, but this was abominable and he wished Shari had not done it.
Then the reason for her doing it came back to him, and he pulled the gun from underneath his shirt. No one noticed. They were all occupied with March and Shari.
"All right," he said. "Everybody stand still. Get your hands up."
Immediately he was the center of attention. For a second or two nobody did move. They were stricken with astonishment at the sight of a gun. They had never dreamed that he might be armed. Nobody was armed any more. It was unheard of. Even the government police carried only shockers that stunned but did not kill. Kirby was grateful to whatever male relative of Shari's it had been who buried this forbidden relic of the bad old days in the Martian city of Kahora.
"It shoots bullets," he said, so they should all understand. "It was built to be lethal, not polite, and my marksmanship is very rusty. I couldn't guarantee just to cripple you. Starting one by one from the left, will you move away from the door? Shari, close the shutters."
Uncertainly, looking at each other as men do who are momentarily at a loss and hoping for an example from somebody else, March and the government men began to move. Kirby heard the shutters bang, and then Shari came up beside him. The man with the drug case was still holding it in his upraised hand. Kirby said, "You. Let it drop."
Shari cried, "He'll throw it!"
Kirby ducked. The hard case flashed past his head. The man reached fast for the shocker that was holstered under his armpit. Kirby fired. The gun made a very loud noise. The man doubled up and sat down on the floor. Kirby saw movement among the others. He fired again, and missed, but the bullet whined close between two heads, and the movement stopped. March had turned an ashen gray. He leaned against the wall, not saying anything, waiting to be sick. Kirby did not feel so well himself. He kept glancing at the man who was rocking back and forth over his knees and sobbing.
"He is not dying," Shari said, answering his thought. "It is only that he does not care for pain. Keep them still while I bind them."
They were ready to be still now. Shari laughed. "They do not love the government enough to die for it. They are all thinking that they have done their best, and now it is up to others." Her hands worked swiftly. Suddenly she stopped. "Kirby, they are thinking that the R-ships will track you down and destroy you and all the others."
"Go ahead, tie them up." Kirby went and stuck the muzzle of the gun close to March's face. "Have the R-3's been alerted?"
"Yes. You can't escape them, Kirby. They'll find your ship, they'll smash it up, they'll smash you and all the others, and there won't be any mercy."
He was screaming like a woman. Kirby hit him across the mouth, not out of vengefulness but to stop the ugly noise. Shari said quietly, "He lies. It is done now, Kirby. Come."
She found her bundle and her coverall, bunching them together under her arm. Kirby went with her out the door, shutting it carefully behind them. The shots had not attracted any crowd. He had not thought they would. The Martians had a way of letting Earthmen handle their own troubles without interference.
Kirby walked fast toward the fliers. "What about the R-3's, Shari? Could you read his mind?"
"The authorities are waiting at the port. They thought there would be no trouble about handling you, but they knew that it might take a little time if the drugs had to be used. They know you're here, of course; March told them when he landed."
"Yeah. We have some leeway, then?"
"Until at the port they begin to wonder why no further report has been made." She put her hand to her head and pressed it, "I wish I were better at this. My brain is cracking open."
Kirby hesitated, looking at the three craft and scowling. Then he thrust Shari into his own and said, "I'll be back in a second. Maybe I can stall 'em a while longer."
His own communicator would not operate on the official UHF band, which was closed to civilians. He climbed into one of the other fliers and bent over the radio. Then he hesitated again, overcome by a prudent desire to let well enough alone. For precious seconds he stood there fingering the switch, trying to make up his mind. "Bull by the horns," he muttered at last. He was afraid of the R-3's. Any risk was worthwhile if it held them back a little longer. He began to search his pockets. "Damn it, I never have a handkerchief. Oh, well, this'll do." He hauled out his shirttail and wrapped it over his mouth. Then he opened the switch and spoke, pitching his voice a bit high. "Port Security. This is March, calling Port."
"Receiving you. What's going on?"
Kirby's voice cracked from sheer nervousness, giving an impression of excitement he could not have counterfeited. "Everything's fine. Kirby put up more resistance than we looked for, but he's under the drugs now and as soon as they take effect well have the whole story."
"Good. Any trouble with the woman? We don't want to get involved with the Martian authorities."
"No trouble," Kirby said. "I'm going back in the house now. I don't want to miss anything. We'll keep you posted."
"Right. Remember, we want the information as soon as you get it. We're ready to act the minute we have anything to go on."
Kirby mumbled something about patience and it wouldn't be long now. Port Security signed off. Kirby closed the switch, remembering some big stones that lay on the ground outside. He got one and went to work with it, in a violent hurry. When he was through both official communicators and both flight control panels were out of commission. If March and the others should get free it would not do them any immediate good.
Shari was waiting quietly. She said nothing while he lifted off and sent his flier rushing at full power along an oblique course that led out over the desert. She seemed very tired, and there were lines of pain around her mouth. Kirby leaned over and kissed her.
"You can rest now. You've saved us time."
She shook her head and sighed. "I'll have to. My mind is tired. Until I've slept it will be useless."
With more control over her nerves that Kirby could have mustered, she slid down in the padded seat and slept, almost at once. He looked at her. Since the decision had been hers, unsought and unsuggested, he was glad she had come. She was too much a part of him to be left behind now, and there was another reason, too. The whole venture had shifted abruptly into a sharper focus. He was savagely determined that it had to succeed, all the way, because nothing must happen to Shari.
The desert reeled away beneath them, mile on empty mile, with nothing to break its desolation but an occasional wandering dust-devil. The moons sank out of sight. Once Kirby saw in the distance the black line of a canal with a town beside it, pricked out with a scattering of torches. The Earthman's civilization did not reach this far into the heart of Mars. There was only timelessness and a long slow dying. The stars burned magnificently overhead in the thin dry air. Kirby studied them with a kind of intimacy. He was afraid, and yet he felt as he had not felt in years, not since he was a green kid stepping away from Earth for the first time, outbound for strange new worlds.
He pushed the flier to the limit of its speed, and it was fast, but there was not time enough given to him. He had still a long way to go when the Urgent signal shrilled from his communicator. A second or two later a man's harsh voice called out his own name, and added, "Acknowledge at once!"
Kirby did not acknowledge. There was nothing he wanted to say, and he was not going to oblige them with a carrier wave so they could fix his position. He waited.
"This is your last warning, Kirby. Your only chance is to obey instructions immediately. The R-3's have been sent out."