The circuit was in order. The door did not even tremble as he pulled at it. So much for that.
He sighed heavily, sat down upon the bed, and removed his boots, first one, then the other. He rubbed his ieet wearily, sighed again, then stiffened; stiffened so suddenly that he shot off the bed without really being aware of moving.
His stare was one of complete bewilderment. It couldn't be. It couldn't be! It would mean that William's foolish story was true. It would mean that Benson's ridiculous mournings about Martians might, after all, turn out to be____________________
No, he refused to believe that. It would be easier to believe that his lack-sleep mind was having a private joke.
Yet the dark of the room was alight with the cold blue-white brilliance that carried no glare with it. By it he could see the bed, the walls, the chair, the dresser, even his boots, standing where he had just placed them. And he could see the man creature with only a blaze of light where a head ought to be and no distinct feature elsewhere; rather a kind of smoke instead.
He felt the wall against his back. He had not been conscious of his retreat backward.
The object spoke, and the words were hollow and booming as though they carried an echo with them.
The object said, "I am the Space Ranger!"
Hennes drew himself up. First surprise over, he forced himself into calmness. In a steady voice he said, "What do you want?"
The Space Ranger did not move or speak, and Hennes found his eyes fastened upon the apparition.
The foreman waited, his chest pumping, and still the thing of smoke and light did not move. It might have been a robot geared to make the one statement of identity. For a moment Hennes wondered if that might be the case, and surrendered the thought as soon as it was born. He was standing next to the chest of drawers, and not all his wonder allowed him to forget that fact. Slowly his hand was moving.
In the light of the thing itself his motion was not invisible, but it paid no attention. Hennes's hand was resting lightly on the surface of the bureau in a pretense of innocent gesture. The robot, Martian, man, whatever it was, Hennes thought, would not know the secret of the bureau. It had hidden in the room, waiting, but it had not searched the room. Or if it had done so, it had been a most skillful job, since even now Hennes's flicking eye could note no single abnormal thing about the room; nothing misplaced; nothing where it should not be, except for the Space Ranger itself.
His fingers touched a little notch in the wood. It was a common mechanism and few farm managers on Mars lacked one. In a way it was old-fashioned, as old-fashioned as the imported wooden bureau itself, a tradition dating back to the lawless old days of the farming pioneers, but tradition dies hard. The little notch moved slightly under his fingernail and a panel in the side of the chest dropped outward. Hennes was ready for it, and the hand was a blur of motion toward the blaster which the moving panel had revealed.
He held the blaster now, aimed dead center, and in all that tune the creature had not moved. What passed for arms dangled emptily,
Hennes found confidence sweeping back. Robot, Martian, or man, the object could not withstand a blaster. It was a small weapon, and the projectile it hurled was almost contemptible in size. The old-fashioned "guns" of ancient days carried metal slugs that were rocks in comparison. But the small projectile of the blaster was far more deadly. Once set in motion, anything that stopped it tripped a tiny atomic trigger that converted a sub-microscopic fraction of its mass into energy, and in that conversion the object that stopped it, whether rock, metal, or human flesh, was consumed to the accompaniment of a tiny noise like the flick of a fingernail against rubber. Hennes said in a tone that borrowed menace from the blaster he held, "Who are you? What do you want?"
Once again the object spoke, and once again it said slowly, "I am the Space Ranger!"
Hennes's lips curved in cold ferocity as he fired.
The projectile left the muzzle, raced squarely at the object of smoke, reached it, and stopped. It stopped instantaneously, without touching the body that was still one quarter of an inch beyond its final penetration. Even the concussion of collision was not carried beyond the force-shield barrier which absorbed all the projectile's momentum, converting it into a flare of light.
That flare of light was never seen. It was drowned out in the intense blaze that was the blaster projectile exploding into energy as it stopped with no surrounding matter to shield the blast of light. It was as though a pin-sized sun existed in the room for a tiny fraction of a second.
Hennes, with a wild yell, threw his hands to his eyes as though to protect them against a physical blow. It was too late. Minutes later, when he dared open his eyelids, his aching, burning eyes could tell him nothing. Open or closed, he saw only red-studded blackness. He could not see the Space Ranger whirl into motion, pounce upon his boots, search their pockets with flying fingers, break the door's magnetic circuit, and slip out of the room seconds before the inevitable crowd of people with their confused cries of alarm had begun to gather.
Hennes's hand still covered his eyes when he heard them. He called, "Get the thing! Get him! He's hi the room. Tackle him, you Mars-forsaken, black-booted cowards."
"There's no one in the room," half-a-dozen voices called, and someone added, "Smells like a blaster, though."
A firmer, more authoritative voice said, "What's wrong, Hennes?" It was Dr. Silvers.
"Intruders," said Hennes, shaking in frustration and wrath. "Doesn't anyone see him? What's the
matter with all of you? Are you- " He couldn't
say the word. His blinking eyes were watering and blurred light was just beginning to make its way into them again. He couldn't say "blind."
Silvers asked, "Who was the intruder? Can you describe him?"
And Hennes could only shake his head helplessly. How could he explain? Could he tell them of a nightmare of smoke that could speak and against which a blaster bullet could only explode prematurely and without damage except to the man who sped it on its way?
Dr. James Silvers made his way back to his room in dull gloom. This disturbance that had routed him out of his room before he had completed preparation for bed, this aimless running about of men, the tongue-tied lack of explanation on the part of Hennes, all were to him nothing but a series of pinpricks. His eyes were fixed on tomorrow.
He had no faith in victory, no faith in the efficacy of any embargo. Let the food shipments stop. Let even a few on Earth find out why, or, worse still, invent their own theories therefor, and the results might be more frightful than any mass poisoning.
This young David Starr expressed confidence, but so far his actions inspired none in himself. His story of a Space Ranger was a poorly calculated one, fit only to arouse the suspicions of men such as Hennes and bringing him almost to his death. It was fortunate for the youngster that he, Silvers, had arrived at the proper time. Nor had he explained the reasons for such a story. He had merely expounded his plans for leaving the city and then secretly returning. Yet when Silvers had first received Starr's letter, brought by the little fellow, the one that called himself Big-man in tremendous defiance of the truth, he had quickly checked with Council headquarters on Earth. It had confirmed that David Starr was to be obeyed in all particulars.
Yet how could such a young man____________________
Dr. Silvers halted. That was strange! The door to his room, which he had left ajar in his haste, was still ajar, but no light shone out into the hall. Yet he had not put it out before leaving. He could remember its glow behind him as he had hastened down the hall toward the stairs.
Had someone put it out for him on some strange impulse toward economy? It seemed hardly likely.