“Spain—sounds like a Martian name,” said the Venerian in a milder tone, looking down at Mitch.
Martians were not known for patience and long suffering . After another moment the tall one seemed to get tired of locking eyes and turned away.
The cold-eyed Earthman, whose face was somehow familiar to Mitch, was talking on the communicator, probably to the captain of the shuttle. “Drive on across the city, cross the Khosutu highway, and let down there.”
Karlsen, back inside, said: “Tell him to go no more than about ten kilometers an hour; they seem to want to see me.”
The statement was matter-of-fact; if people had made great efforts to see Johann Karlsen, it was only the courteous thing to greet them.
Mitch watched Karlsen’s face, and then the back of his head, and the strong arms lifted to wave, as the High Commander stepped out again onto the little balcony. The crowd’s roar doubled.
Is that all you feel, Karlsen, a wish to be courteous? Oh, no, my friend, you are acting. To be greeted with that thunder must do something vital to any man. It might exalt him; possibly it could disgust or frighten him, friendly as it was. You wear well your mask of courteous nobility, High Commander.
What was it like to be Johann Karlsen, come to save the world, when none of the really great and powerful ones seemed to care too much about it? With a bride of famed beauty to be yours when the battle had been won?
And what was brother Felipe doing today? Scheming, no doubt, to get economic power over yet another planet.
With another shift of the little mob inside the shuttle the tall Venerian moved from in front of Mitch, who could now see clearly out the port past Karlsen. Sea of faces, the old cliché, this was really it. How to write this . . . Mitch knew he would someday have to write it. If all men’s foolishness was not permanently ended by the coming battle with the unliving, the battle bounty should suffice to let a man write for some time.
Ahead now were the bone-colored towers of Ulan Bator, rising beyond their fringe of suburban slideways and sunfields; and a highway; and bright multicolored pennants, worn by the aircars swarming out from the city in glad welcome. Now police aircars were keeping pace protectively with the spaceship, though there seemed to be no possible danger from anything but excess enthusiasm.
Another, special, aircar approached. The police craft touched it briefly and gently, then drew back with deference. Mitch stretched his neck, and made out a Carmpan insignia on the car. It was probably their ambassador to Sol, in person. The space shuttle eased to a dead slow creeping.
Some said that the Carmpan looked like machines themselves, but they were the strong allies of Earth-descended men in the war against the enemies of all life. If the Carmpan bodies were slow and squarish, their minds were visionary; if they were curiously unable to use force against any enemy, their indirect help was of great value.
Something near silence came over the vast crowd as the ambassador reared himself up in his open car; from his head and body, ganglions of wire and fiber stretched to make a hundred connections with Carmpan animals and equipment around him.
The crowd recognized the meaning of the network; a great sigh went up. In the shuttle, men jostled one another trying for a better view. The cold-eyed Earth-man whispered rapidly into the communicator.
“Prophecy!” said a hoarse voice, near Mitch’s ear.
“—of Probability!” came the ambassador’s voice, suddenly amplified, seeming to pick up the thought in midphrase. The Carmpan Prophets of Probability were half mystics, half cold mathematicians. Karlsen’s aides must have decided, or known, that this prophecy was going to be a favorable, inspiring thing which the crowd should hear, and had ordered the ambassador’s voice picked up on a public address system.
“The hope, the living spark, to spread the flame of life!” The inhuman mouth chopped out the words, which still rose ringingly. The armlike appendages pointed straight to Karlsen, level on his balcony with the hovering aircar. “The dark metal thoughts are now of victory, the dead things make their plan to kill us all. But in this man before me now, there is life greater than any strength of metal. A power of life, to resonate—in all of us. I see, with Karlsen, victory—”
The strain on a Carmpan prophet in action was always immense, just as his accuracy was always high. Mitch had heard that the stresses involved were more topological than nervous or electrical. He had heard it, but like most Earth-descended, had never understood it.
“Victory,” the ambassador repeated. “Victory . . . and then . . . ”
Something changed in the non-Solarian face. The cold-eyed Earthman was perhaps expert in reading alien expressions, or was perhaps just taking no chances. He whispered another command, and the amplification was taken from the Carmpan voice. A roar of approval mounted up past shuttle and aircar, from the great throng who thought the prophecy complete. But the ambassador had not finished, though now only those a few meters in front of him, inside the shuttle, could hear his faltering voice.
“ . . . then death, destruction, failure.” The square body bent, but the alien eyes were still riveted on Karlsen. “He who wins everything . . . will die owning nothing . . . ”
The Carmpan bent down and his aircar moved away. In the lounge of the shuttle there was silence. The hurrahing outside sounded like mockery.
After long seconds, the High Commander turned in from the balcony and raised his voice: “Men, we who have heard the finish of the prophecy are few—but still we are many, to keep a secret. So I don’t ask for secrecy. But spread the word, too, that I have no faith in prophecies that are not of God. The Carmpan have never claimed to be infallible.”
The gloomy answer was unspoken, but almost telepathically loud among the group. Nine times out of ten, the Carmpan are right. There will be a victory, then death and failure.
But did the dark ending apply only to Johann Karlsen, or to the whole cause of the living? The men in the shuttle looked at one another, wondering and murmuring.
The shuttles found space to land, at the edge of Ulan Bator. Disembarking, the men found no chance for gloom, with a joyous crowd growing thicker by the moment around the ships. A lovely Earth girl came, wreathed in garlands, to throw a flowery loop around Mitchell Spain, and to kiss him. He was an ugly man, quite unused to such willing attentions.
Still, he noticed when the High Commander’s eye fell on him.
“You, Martian, come with me to the General Staff meeting. I want to show a representative group in there so they’ll know I’m not just my brother’s agent. I need one or two who were born in Sol’s light.”
“Yes, sir.” Was there no other reason why Karlsen had singled him out? They stood together in the crowd, two short men looking levelly at each other. One ugly and flower-bedecked, his arm still around a girl who stared with sudden awed recognition at the other man, who was magnetic in a way beyond handsomeness or ugliness. The ruler of a planet, perhaps to be the savior of all life.
“I like the way you keep people from standing on your toes in a crowd,” said Karlsen to Mitchell Spain. “Without raising your voice or uttering threats. What’s your name and rank?”
Military organization tended to be vague, in this war where everything that lived was on the same side. “Mitchell Spain, sir. No rank assigned, yet. I’ve been training with the marines. I was on Austeel when you offered a good battle bounty, so here I am.”
“Not to defend Mars?”
“I suppose, that too. But I might as well get paid for it.”