He stopped, because Miller was laughing softly. His mind and voice said, "Good heavens, man, I can tell you that right now. They were all spotted after your description came through several years ago. They're always under observation; they're all married men and – " His voice trailed off.
Sardonically, Cross said, "Go on!"
Miller went on, reluctantly. "There are twenty-seven men, all together, who resemble you in very great detail, a surprisingly high average." "Go on!"
"One of them," said Miller disconsolately, "is married to a woman whose head was badly injured in a spaceship accident last week. They're building up her brain and bone again, but – "
"But that will take a few weeks," Cross finished for him. "The man's name is Barton Corliss. He's located at the Cimmerium spaceship factory and, like yourself, goes into the city Cimmerium every fourth day."
"There ought to be an enforceable law," Miller said glumly, "against people who can read minds. Fortunately, the Porgrave receivers will spot you," he finished more cheerfully.
"Eh?" Cross spoke sharply. He had already noticed about mind reading in Millers mind, but it had not seemed applicable. And there had been other, more important things to follow up.
Coolly, Miller said, and his thoughts verified every word of it: "The Porgrave broadcaster broadcasts thoughts, and the Porgrave receiver receives them. In Cimmerium, there's one located every few feet; they're in all the buildings, houses, everywhere. They're our protection against snake spies. One indiscreet thought, and finish!"
Cross was silent. At last he said, "One more question, and I want your mind to give off a lot of thoughts on this. I want detail."
"Yes?"
"How imminent is the attack on Earth?"
"It has been decided," Miller replied precisely, "that in view of the failure to destroy you and obtain your secret, control of Earth has become essential, the purpose being to forestall any future danger from anybody. To this end vast reserves of spaceships are being turned out; the fleet is mobilizing at key points, but the date of attack, though probably decided on, has not yet been announced."
"What have they planned to do with human beings?"
"To hell with human beings!" Miller said coolly. "When our own existence is involved, we can't worry about them."
The darkness all around seemed deeper, the chill of the night beginning to penetrate even his heated clothes. Instant by instant, Cross' mind grew harder as he examined the implications of Miller's words. War! In a bleak voice, he said:
"Only with the help of the true slans can that attack be stopped. I must find them – somewhere – and I've exhausted most of the possibilities. I am now going to the most likely remaining place."
The morning dragged. The sun gleamed like a festering sore in the blue-black vastness of the sky. And the sharp, black shadows that it cast on the land grew narrow, and then began to lengthen again as Mars turned an unfriendly afternoon face to the insistent light.
From where Cross' ship crouched in the great chalk cliff, the horizon was a thing of blurred ridges against the shadowed sky. But even from his two-thousand-foot height, the nearness of the horizon was markedly noticeable. Twilight threatened, and then at last his patient vigil was rewarded. The small, red-striped, torpedo-shaped object drifted up from the horizon, fire pouring from its rear. The rays of the sinking sun glinted on its dull, metallic skin. It darted far to the left of where Cross waited in his machine that, like some beast of prey, lay entunneled in the swelling breast of the white cliff.
About three miles, Cross estimated carefully. The actual bulk of the intervening distance would make no difference to the motor that lay silent in the engine room in the back of the ship, ready to give forth its noiseless, stupendous power.
Three hundred miles, and that superb motor would vibrate on without strain, without missing a single beat – except that such titanic force could not be unleashed where its strength might touch ground, and tear a swath out of this already tortured land.
Three miles, four, five – he made swift adjustments. Then the force of the magnetors flashed across the miles and, simultaneously, the idea he had developed during his long trip from Earth took life from a special engine. Radio waves, so similar to the vibrations of energy he was using that only an extremely sensitive instrument could have detected the difference, sprayed forth from a robot motor that he had set up five hundred miles away. For those brief minutes, the whole planet sighed with energy waves. Out there somewhere tendrilless slans must already be plotting the center of that interfering wave. Meantime, his small use of power should go unnoticed. Swiftly, yet gently, the magnetors did their work. The faraway, still receding ship slowed as if it had run into resistance. It slowed – and then was drawn inexorably back toward the chalk cliff.
Effortlessly, using the radio waves as a screen for further use of power, Cross withdrew his own ship into the cliff's bulging belly, widening the natural tunnel with a spray of dissolving energy. Then, like a spider with a fly, he pulled the smaller machine into the lair after him.
In a moment a door opened, and a man appeared. He leaped lightly to the tunnel floor, and stood for a moment peering against the glare of the searchlight of the other ship. With easy confidence, he walked closer. His eyes caught the gleam of the crystal in the dank wall of the cave. He glanced at it casually, then the very abnormality of a thing that could distract his attention at such a moment penetrated to his consciousness. As he plucked it out of the wall, Cross' paralyzing ray sent him sprawling.
Instantly, Cross clicked off all power. A switch closed; and the distant robot atomic-wave broadcaster dissolved in the fire of its own energy.
As for the man, all Cross wanted from him this time was a full-length photograph, a record of his voice, and hypnotic control. It took only twenty minutes before Corliss was flying off again toward Cimmerium, inwardly raging against his enslavement, outwardly unable to do anything about it.
There could be no hurrying of what Cross knew he must do before he could dare enter Cimmerium. Everything had to be anticipated, an almost unlimited amount of detail painstakingly worked out. Every fourth day – his holiday – Corliss called at the cave, coming and going, and as the urgent weeks passed, his mind was drained of memory, of detail. Finally, Cross was ready, and the next, the seventh holiday, his plans came to life. One Barton Corliss remained in the cave, deep in hypnotic sleep; the other one climbed into the small, red-striped craft and sped toward the city of Cimmerium.
It was twenty minutes later that the battleship flashed down from the sky, and loomed up beside him, a vast mass of streamlined metal ship.
"Corliss," said a man's clipped voice in the ship's radio, "in the course of normal observation of all slans resembling the snake, Jommy Cross, we waited for you at this point, and find that you are approximately five minutes overdue.
"You will accordingly proceed to Cimmerram under escort, where you will be taken before the military commission for examination. That is all."
Chapter Seventeen
Catastrophe came as simply as that. An accident not altogether unexpectable, but bitterly disappointing nonetheless. Six times before, Barton Corliss had been as much as twenty minutes overdue; and it had gone undetected. Now, five minutes of equally unavoidable delay – and the long arm of chance had struck at the hope of a world.
Gloomily, Cross stared into the visiplates. Below him was rock. Rock seamed and gnarled and unutterably deserted. No longer were the ravines like small arroyos. They slashed in all directions like a wild beast at bay. Vast valleys snarled into life; gorges sheered off into unplumbable depths, and then leaped up ferociously in ugly snags of mountain. This trackless waste was his way out, if ever he desired to escape, for no captured ship, however large and formidable, could hope to run the gauntlet that the tendrilless slans could throw up between himself and his own indestructible machine.