The Director allowed himself a look of surprise.
“Haven’t you figured it out yet, Doane? Since we must replace Kellem anyhow, we have decided to grant the Equality League’s request. We are picking a man for the post that the League is certain to approve because he is the president of it I mean you, Mr. Doane.”
“Me? Me? But I’ve never been on Mars!”
“In eighteen days,” said the Director, “you will no longer be able to make that statement. That is, unless you refuse the appointment.”
Jaffa Doane stood up and there was corrosive anger in his voice. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You want me to turn it down, so you can tell the news services what a lot of hot air the president of the Equality League really is. Well, I can recognize a shoddy little political trick when I see one. You hand me a political hot potato, throw me in on a job that your fat-cats have finally messed up to the point where there are riots and investigations. If things go wrong. I’m the goat that shuts up the Equality League.
If things go right, your administration gets the credit.”
“I take it you refuse,” said the Director.
“No, sir! I don’t refuse! It’s a cheap trick and I’ll make you wish you’d never thought of it. I accept!”
He looked over his shoulder at the Martian who had become, in the space of a heartbeat, one of his charges.
Jaffa Doane couldn’t help wincing a little they did look so much like ragged corpses!
But he said, “Come along, Ne Mieek. We’re going to your home.”
For more than a million members of the Equality League, Jaffa Doane was a severe and shining leader; his words were trumpet calls and his surging drive for justice was a bright flame. One or two of the members, however, took a more personal view of their president, among them a young lady whose name was Ruth-Ann Wharton. On the books, she was listed as Mr. Doane’s personal secretary, but it had been several months now since she had first begun to contemplate a promotion for herself.
It had occurred to her that the eighteen-day flight to Mars on the shuttle rocket might provide the time and leisure for Jaffa Doane to notice just what a pearl he had as a secretary. But it had been a disappointing voyage; Doane had kept to his stateroom most of the way.
A hatful of hours out of Marsport, Ruth-Ann was banging on her boss’s stateroom door. “Jaffa,” she called plaintively, and not for the first time, “Ne Mieek and another Martian are waiting for you. Please hurry.”
Doane’s low, controlled voice said, “I’ll be there in a moment, Miss Wharton.”
She scowled at the door. “Ill give you exactly one minute.” But she didn’t give him that much. She ham-mered again. “Jaffa, they’re waiting.”
Pause. Then the calm, relaxed voice. “Yes, of course.
One moment.”
Ruth-Ann stamped her foot. “Oh, darn you!” she said and did what she had wanted to do in the first place. She turned the knob and walked in. “They’ve been waiting half an hour and Ne Mieek says it’s very important.”
The room was in semi-darkness, lit only by the light from the corridor outside. From the rumpled heap of bedclothing, Jaffa Doane’s voice said placidly, “I’m aware of that, Miss Wharton.”
Her hands found the light switch. The bedclothing erupted and Jaffa Doane sat up, leaning on an elbow, blinking at her.
“What?” he croaked blearily. “Say, haven’t I asked you to call me only from the outside?”
“You have,” she said hotly, flinging back the ray-screen on the port. The tempered glass was treated to filter out most of the glare, but the direct sunlight lit up the little room like a movie set.
“Get up,” she ordered. “If you’re not outside and fully dressed in five minutes, I’m coming back and I’ll dress you myself. Anyway, Jaffa, it looks as if it really is important.
Ne Mieek is sighing and talking about your duty to your job. And the other Martianwell, it’s hard to tell, every-thing considered, but he looks sick.”
“Sick?” Jaffa Doane yawned and scratched. “Sick how?”
Ruth-Ann shook her head. “Come on out and see for yourself.”
Looking hazily at his face in the mirror of the tiny washroom as he shaved, Jaffa Doane decided that Ruth-Ann, after all, was right. He did have a tendency to be not difficult, exactly, not grumpy or nasty, but a little hard to wake up in the mornings. And besides, this was an important day. He was about to meet his charges. He wiped off the depilatory and stubble and stood erect, eyes burning into his own reflection in the mirror.
The sound of his stateroom door made him jump. “I’m coming right out!” he yelled.
In the room that had been fitted out as his office for the duration of the trip and which he had hardly set foot in Ne Mieek and Ruth-Ann were waiting. With them was another Martian and, looking at him, Jaffa Doane knew what the girl had meant when she said there was something wrong. A strapping young adult Martian, with a life expectancy of hundreds of years, somewhat resembles a wilting fungus; but this one looked rotten.
“Good morning, Ne Mieek,” Jaffa Doane said courteously. “What can I do for you?”
The Martian’s wheezy voice was somewhat easier to understand in the spaceship’s half-and-half atmosphere pressure an even eight pounds to the square inch, composition largely helium than it had been when he was laboring to force his voice into the dense Earth air. “Indeed you can, honored sir. Gadian Pluur has the sickness and wishes Your Honor to cure him in the way that is known.”
Jaffa Doane’s eyebrows went up. “Cure him? You mean you want me to call a doctor?”
“Ah, no,” whispered the Martian. “Your Honor will cure him yourself, surely.”
Ruth-Ann was signaling. “You don’t know what he wants, do you?” she said in a low tone.
“Good heavens, no.”
She nodded smugly. “He wants you to touch this other one. That’s all, just touch him.”
“Touch him?” Doane stared at the Martian. “Ne Mieek, are you out of your mind?”
“Not so,” the Martian whispered indignantly, the mad face working. “It is our custom, as is known. The Administrator Kellem and the Admiral Rosenman who was his assistant have always healed those ill of the sickness.”
“Barbarous,” marveled Jaffa Doane, forgetting to be angry. “And you, an intelligent man an intelligent Martian like you, you believe in this?”
“There is nothing to believe or disbelieve,” sighed Ne Mieek, his tentacles agitated, the pale eyes desolate. “It is our custom since the first of your honored administrators came.”
Doane shook his head wonderingly.
“Touch him,” Ruth-Ann advised.
“But”
“Go ahead, touch him!”
Doane frowned. “Miss Wharton, this is a matter of principle. I am responsible not only to the Trusteeship Director, but to the League, and I certainly couldn’t Justify”
“Touch him!” The girl’s face was set.
Doane was about to reply, but the ship gave a gentle course-correcting lurch and everyone in the little room staggered slightly everyone but the sick Martian, Gadian Pluur, who staggered halfway across the room and brushed against Doane’s fingers.
Jaffa Doane jerked back his hand. It had been a curious sensation, almost like an electric shock, but not localized he could feel a tiny tingle up his backbone and at the base of his skull.
“Thanks to Your Honor,” whispered Ne Mieek.
And the two Martians slipped slowly out, leaving Jaffa Doane staring frustratedly after them.
“But I have a speech all ready,” Doane objected reasonably. “It's not just a lot of glowing promises and empty words, but facts. It tells how I am going to put a stop to” he hesitated over the word “the indiscretions of the previous Administrators.”
Admiral Rosenman said cheerfully, “Fine.” He was a chunky man with a big head of curly white hair. And he wore the severe uniform as though he had been born with it on. “But you can’t get out of the Conjunction Offering.”
“That’s nothing short of murder! And my speech”
“It’s merely an execution, Mr. Doane. The Martian has had his trial and he has been convicted. It’s up to you.”