"I thank you, sir," said Packer. "I noticed that there was a moon and I was going for a stroll. You wouldn't join me, would you?"
"I have more important things to do, Packer, than strolling in the moonlight."
"I have no doubt of that," said Packer, bowing slightly. "You would, of course, an upright, honest businessman like you."
Hazlitt slammed the door as he went out.
Packer padded back to the bedroom, took up the tie again.
Hazlitt an honest man, he thought. And how many other honest men this night? And a year from now — how many honest men in the whole wide world just one year from now? How long before the entire Earth would be an honest Earth? With spores lurking in the cracks and floating in the air and running with the rivers, it might not take so long.
Maybe that was the reason Tony hadn't skinned him yet. Maybe Tony was getting honest, too. Too bad, thought Packer, gravely. Tony wouldn't be half as interesting if he should happen to turn honest.
And the Government? A Government that had come begging for the spores — begging to be honest, although to be completely fair one must admit the Government as yet did not know about the honesty.
That was a hot one, Packer told himself. An honest Government! And it would serve those stinkers right! He could see the looks upon their faces.
He gave up the business of the tie and sat down on the bed and shook for minutes with rumbling belly laughter.
At last he wiped the tears out of his eyes and finished with the tie.
Tomorrow morning, bright and early, he'd get in touch with Griffin and arrange the package deal for the stamp material. He'd act greedy and drive a hard bargain and then, in the end, pay a bit more than the price agreed upon for a long-term arrangement. An honest Government, he told himself, would be too honest to rescind such an agreement even if, in the light of its new honesty, it should realize the wrongness of it. For, happily, one of the tenets of honesty was to stay stuck with a bad bargain, no matter how arrived at.
He shucked into his jacket and went into the living room. He stopped at the desk and opened the drawer. Reaching in, he lifted the lid of the box of leaf. He took a pinch and had it halfway to his mouth when the thought struck him suddenly and he stood for a moment frozen while all the gears came together, meshing, and the pieces fell into a pattern and he knew, without even asking, why he was the only genuine dishonest man left on the entire Earth.
• I profetick and wach ahed for you!-
He put the leaf into his mouth and felt the comfort of it.
• Antidote-, he thought, and knew that he was right.
But how could Pug have known — how could he have foreseen the long, twisting tangle of many circumstances which must inevitably crystallize into this very moment?
• Leg. forst.?-
He closed the lid of the box and shut the drawer and turned toward the door.
The only dishonest man in the world, he thought. Immune to the honesty factor in the yellow spores because of the resistance built up within him by his long use of the leaf.
He had set a trap tonight to victimize Pickering and tomorrow he'd go out and fox the Government and there was no telling where he'd go from there. Hazlitt had said something about taking over the entire planet and the idea was not a bad one if he could only squeeze out the necessary time.
He chuckled at the thought of how all the honest suckers would stand innocently in line, unable to do a thing about it — all fair prey to the one dishonest man in the entire world. A wolf among the sheep!
He drew himself erect and pulled the white gloves on carefully. He flicked his walking stick. Then he thumped himself on the chest — just once — and let himself out into the hall. He did not bother to lock the door behind him.
In the lobby, as he stepped out of the elevator, he saw the Widow Foshay coming in the door. She turned and called back cheerfully to friends who had brought her home.
He lifted his hat to her with an olden courtesy that he thought he had forgotten.
She threw up her hands in mock surprise. "Mr. Packer," she cried, "what has come over you? Where do you think you're going at this time of night, when all honest people are abed?"
"Minerva," he told her gravely, "I was about to take a stroll. I wonder if you might come along with me?"
She hesitated for an instant, just long enough to give the desired small show of reluctance and indecision.
He whuffled out his moustache at her. "Besides," he said, "I am not an honest person."
He offered her his arm with distinguished gallantry.
Madness from Mars
Original copyright year: 1939
The "Hello Mars IV" was coming home, back from the outward reaches of space, the first ship ever to reach the Red Planet and return. Telescopes located in the Crater of Copernicus Observatory on the Moon had picked it up and flashed the word to Earth, giving its position. Hours later, Earth telescopes had found the tiny mote that flashed in the outer void.
Two years before, those same telescopes had watched the ship's outward voyage, far out until its silvery hull had dwindled into nothingness. From that day onward there had been no word or sign of "Hello Mars IV" — nothing until the lunar telescopes, picking up again that minute speck in space, advised Earth of its homecoming.
Communication with the ship by Earth had been impossible. On the Moon, powerful radio stations were capable of hurling ultra-short wave messages across the quarter million miles to Earth. But man as yet had found no means of communicating over fifty million miles of space. So "Hello Mars IV" had arrowed out into the silence, leaving the Moon and the Earth to speculate and wonder over its fate.
Now, with Mars once again swinging into conjunction, the ship was coming back — a tiny gnat of steel pushing itself along with twinkling blasts of flaming rocket-fuel. Heading Earthward out of that region of silent mystery, spurning space-miles beneath its steel-shod heels. Triumphant, with the red dust of Mars still clinging to its plates — a mote of light in the telescopic lenses.
Aboard it were five brave men — Thomas Delvaney, the expedition's leader; Jerry Cooper, the red-thatched navigator; Andy Smith, the world's ace cameraman, and two space-hands, Jimmy Watson and Elmer Paine, grim old veterans of the Earth-Moon run.
There had been three other "Hello Mars" ships — three other ships that had never come back — three other flights that had collided with a meteor a million miles out from the Moon. The second had flared briefly, deep in space, a red splash of flame in the telescopes through which the flight was watched — the fuel tanks had exploded. The third had simply disappeared. On and on it had gone, boring outward until lost from sight. That had been six years ago, but men still wondered what had happened.
Four years later — two years ago — the "Hello Mars IV" had taken off. Today it was returning, a gleaming thing far out in space, a shining symbol of man's conquest of the planets. It had reached Mars — and it was coming back. There would be others, now — and still others. Some would flare against the black and be lost forever. But others would win through, and man, blindly groping, always outward, to break his earthly bonds, at last would be on the pathway to the stars.
Jack Woods, «Express» reporter, lit a cigarette and asked:
"What do you figure they found out there, Doc?"
Dr. Stephen Gilmer, director of the Interplanetary Communications Research Commission, puffed clouds of smoke from his black cigar and answered irritably:
"How in blue hell would I know what they found? I hope they found something. This trip cost us a million bucks."
"But can't you give me some idea of what they might have found?" persisted Woods. "Some idea of what Mars is like. Any new ideas."