“But I’m not a hangman!”
“You’re the Earth Administrator on Mars and one of your duties is carrying out the decisions of the Martian courts.”
Doane glowered. “What’s he convicted of?” he demanded suspiciously.
“What’s the difference? Under the Martian laws, it’s a crime punishable by death. They call it bad thinking.”
“Bad thinking.” Doane shook his head and walked over to the window of the Ad-Building office that was now his.
The orange sandscape, dotted with smoke-trees, hurt his eyes; it was the Martian idea of a formal park, in the heart of the little city of Marsport, and it was a great honor to have one’s office looking out over it. Or so the Martians thought.
They also thought it was an honor to be the executioner in what seemed to have some of the aspects of a ritual murder.
“I can’t even see the conjunction of the moons,” Doane said peevishly.
“The Martians can. Both moons are perfectly visible to them.”
“And this Conjunction Offering is traditional? What did they do back forty or fifty years ago, before the first Earthmen got here?”
Admiral Rosenman shrugged and glanced at the clock.
“You ought to be getting ready,” he said. “Am I dismissed?”
“You’re dismissed,” Doane said ungraciously and frowned at the Admiral’s back as he left, using the weaving, flat-footed Mars walk that Doane had not yet mastered.
He sat down at his desk, carefully allowing for the light gravitation and misjudged it, as he had six times before, and bumped his shin against the desk, as he had six times before.
Ruth-Ann Wharton said sympathetically, “It takes a little getting used to. Do you want me to come to the Conjunction Offering with you?”
“No!”
“There’s no need to take my skin off.”
He said stiffly, “I am sorry, Miss Wharton. Perhaps I’m a little upset.”
“I understand, Jaffa.”
“It didn’t seem like this back on Earth,” he said morosely, staring out at the smoke-trees. “You haven’t heard the worst of it. Miss Wharton. Not only do I have to slit some poor devil’s throat this evening not only am I expected to perform the laying on of hands like somebody from the Dark Ages but look at this!” He turned to his desk and picked up a thick sheaf of papers. “Duties for the Earth Administrator me! The most ridiculous mass of superstitious nonsense I ever saw. If this is the way Kellem kept the Martians down, I can understand why there were riots at the General Mercantile base.”
“At Niobe? But those were Earthmen involved in the brawl, Jaffa, not Martians.”
“How do you know?” he asked pugnaciously. “Because Kellem’s publicity men said so? All we know for sure is that there was trouble. There’s bound to be trouble when you try to keep an intelligent, civilized race like Ne Mieek’s down with barbarous tricks like these.”
He glanced at the list and flinched. “Well, there’s an end to it,” he said grimly. “Kellem’s gone and I’m here now. I’ll be at the Conjunction Ceremony tonight, all right, and I’ll start things rolling right then and there.
You’ll see! I’m telling you, Miss Wharton, Mars is going to what’s the matter?” he demanded irritably. “You look like you’ve got a question.”
The girl nodded emphatically. “I have. Why do you call me Miss Wharton instead of Ruth-Ann?”
The Conjunction Offering was to take place in what the Martians had named the Park of Sparse Beauty.
“It’s sparse enough,” Jaffa Doane said from the rostrum, watching the Martians gather before him. “But is it beautiful enough?”
Admiral Rosenman asked sourly, “Are you ready for the ceremony?”
“Oh, quite ready,” said Jaffa Doane. He started to hum to himself with a satisfied air, but you do not hum with oxygen plugs in your nostrils. He coughed and choked, and looked at the Admiral suspiciously. But the Admiral wasn’t laughing.
The Admiral didn’t think he had very much to laugh about. He had been on duty on Mars for seven years, surviving five Administrators, only one of whom had completed his three-year term. He had formed certain conclusions about the Martians and one of them was that they weren’t too likely to get along well with the likes of Jaffa Doane …
It was dark and the Martians carried torches not flaming brands, for flames do not thrive in Mars’ thin atmosphere, but glowing balls of punk from the little bushes that grew wild in the wide reaches between settlements. The scene was hardly brightly illuminated. Martian eyes were not human eyes, though, and to them, Doane realized, it might have been bright as day.
He looked fruitlessly at the spot in the sky where the two moons were supposed to be in conjunction with a particular star. One moon was visible, the other not. The star might or might not be visible with all the stars in the Martian sky, one more or less made very little difference. But to the Martians, of course, with their very much more acute vision, both moons were as visible as Luna from Earth and each star of the tens of thousands was an individual in its own right.
Jaffa Doane sighed. It was hard remembering all the differences between Martians and Earthmen and trying to remember, at the same time, the diamond-clear principles of the Equality League, which said that the differences were as nothing… .
There was no sound of trumpets, no burst of prompted applause from the idly drifting audience, but all of a sudden the ceremony seemed to have begun. Ne Mieek appeared on the high platform where the Earth party was standing.
“In three of your minutes and eleven seconds, as is known to Your Honor,” he said, “the conjunction will occur. This is he who is to die.” He stepped aside to reveal another Martian, who gestured courteously with his tentacles.
“This is Fnihi Bel.”
The condemned Martian said politely, “It is an honor to meet Your Honor. I am most sorry for the circumstances.”
Doane looked embarrassedly at Ruth-Ann and the Admiral. He had had no lessons in how Jack Ketch greeted his clients; there was no precedent in his experience with the Equality League to guide him in the proper conduct of the maul-man meeting the steer at the top of the slippery chute.
But the Martian was tactful. He said, “Since I shall not have the power afterward, let me now thank Your Honor for the greatest of favors.”
“For killing you?” Doane blurted, scandalized. He made a face expressing his mood about the enforced subjection of the Martians; it was wasted on the Martians who expressed their feelings with formalized gestures of the tentacles, but not on Admiral Rosenman, who licked his lips and started to speak.
But not soon enough. “Fnihi Bel,” Doane said com-passionately, “under the authority vested in me as Administrator, I grant a stay of execution pending review of your case. You shall not die tonight.”
Admiral Rosenman swore and looked helplessly at Ruth-Ann. “If the crazy idiot had only talked it over first! No, not him! He made up his mind ten years before he ever saw a Martian and nothing’s going to change it, especially facts!”
“What facts?” asked Ruth-Ann hotly. “You never told him anything.”
“It’s all in the files.”
“Which he hasn’t had a chance to look at. Honestly, Admiral, you’re unreasonable.” Ruth-Ann looked fret-fully out the window. It was nearly daybreak; the sharp Martian dawn had popped into light over the horizon minutes before. “Do you suppose he’s all right?”
The Admiral growled and flipped the switch on the intercom. “Any word?”
The uniformed man whose face appeared in the screen said, “Not yet, sir. The Administrator was seen about an hour ago near the Shacks. A detail has gone to search the area, but they haven’t reported in yet.”
“All right,” the Admiral grumbled, clicking off.
“What are the Shacks?” Ruth-Ann wanted to know.
“Abandoned part of town. The Martians gave it up years ago. Nobody lives there now. Unpleasant place.
Serves him right, the”