Clem looked at the girl steadily and her eyes met his in wonder. “Lucy, my dear, you are a very dangerous person,” he said at last. “And the unique thing about it is that you don’t realize it! Let me think! I must get this lot into bright focus before I dare approach the Master.…”
On the other side of the world, Leslie Hurst, ambassador for the West, had been summoned to an audience with Lan Ilof, the President of the Eastern Council.
President Ilof was not alone in his office. In the heavy chairs close beside his big desk sat the grim-faced General Zoam and General Niol. They sat eyeing Ambassador Hurst as he came in.
“Do sit down, Ambassador.” The President moved a hand and smiled cordially. “How are you?”
“I can hardly imagine, Mister President, that you sent for me to enquire after my welfare,” Hurst answered. “May I ask that you state your business?”
“It hardly needs a statement, Mister Hurst. More, shall we say, a reiteration? I wish to point out that you have been most dilatory in regard to answering our claim for a half share in the planet Mars.”
“Kindly accept my apologies,” Hurst replied. “It is not that I have been dilatory: I have simply had no statement to make. The Master of our Western peoples has made it perfectly clear, I think, that he will have no part in interplanetary blackmail.”
“How dare you insult the President in that fashion?” demanded General Niol, springing up. “The least the Master of the West can do is make a courteous reply to a demand. He has not even done that!”
“He will hardly consider it necessary when I have conveyed his answer,” Hurst retorted. “Since, gentlemen, we seem to have at last arrived at the point where we are putting our cards on the table, let me state now, unequivocally that the Master of the West will not entertain your claim regarding Mars. Not only is such a claim utterly without foundation, but you do not even produce convincing evidence to support it. Certainly one cannot regard photographs and other supposed records as proof.”
“You have been given an ultimatum,” General Zoam snapped. It should be either accepted or rejected in the normal diplomatic fashion.”
“Ultimatum?” Hurst looked surprised. “When?”
“Now! Surely you of the West are not so dense that you cannot recognize an ultimatum when you get it? In more direct terms, Ambassador Hurst, we either have the Master of the West’s recognition of our legal rights concerning Mars, or else we shall act by force and take what belongs to us. Is that sufficiently plain?”
“You mean war,” Hurst said quietly.
“Exactly,” General Niol retorted. “We suspected from the very start that it would come to it finally — and now it almost has. It is up to the Master of the West whether or not the fuse is lighted.”
Hurst’s eyes shifted to President Ilof. He was sitting in silence, musing. He looked up as Hurst asked a direct question.
“Are you in agreement with war to solve the problem, Mister President? Or do you believe, as I do, that such a step could only end in appalling carnage with nothing achieved by either side?”
“We have nothing to fear,” the President answered, and it was more than obvious he was doing his utmost to avoid offending the Generals on either side of him. “Our armaments are powerful and our cause just. We have no intention of being ruled any longer by the dictates of the West.”
“Even though we are all the essentially the same people? Centuries of intermarriage has eliminated all the racial tensions of the old millennium and brought peace to the Earth. Do you really want to return to that barbaric period in our history? I can’t believe it.”
The President was silent, apparently trying to think of a suitable answer. Then General Niol answered for him. “The sooner you understand, Mister Hurst, that there is no sentiment in the satisfying of legal and rightful claims, the better! We are determined to take half of Mars, either by agreement or by force. Kindly transmit that information to the Master of the West.”
“I would be wasting my time. He has already given his answer — and it is that he will not yield a fraction of Martian territory to you or anybody else.”
The two men of war looked at the President, and he made no attempt to disguise the troubled look upon his face.
“I am sorry, Mister Hurst, deeply sorry, that things have come to this,” he said seriously. “Up to now our relationship has been most cordial, but, as you will appreciate, in matters of interplanetary or international politics, there can be no personal feeling. I personally am deeply sorry to have to ask you to close down your Embassy Office within twenty-four hours and return to your own hemisphere.”
“You mean break off relations?” Hurst asked. “That is the overture to war, Mister President.”
“I am aware of it. You will be given time to arrive home safely. After that force of arms alone can decide the issue.”
Hurst rose, looked at the two grimly satisfied Generals, and then went on his way. The moment he arrived in his headquarters in another section of the Eastern capital city he contacted the Master on the private waveband that was immune from ‘tapping’.
“Master?” he enquired, as the Master’s voice answered. “I am afraid the worst has happened. War is more or less inevitable with the East, and in a very short time. Maybe a week — possibly less. I have been ordered to close down my Embassy office and return to the West in twenty-four hours. Before complete calamity befalls have you any fresh instructions? Any concessions you wish to make?”
“I never make concessions, Ambassador Hurst, and I never reverse my decisions. You will return to here as ordered, and I will handle the situation. Immediate steps will be taken for us to stand by our defenses.”
“Very well, sir,” Hurst answered, sighing to himself, and with that he switched off. Then he turned his attention to collecting his documents and informing his staff of what was intended.
CHAPTER FIVE: VANISHING CARGO
Commander Brian Neil intently watched the directional compass needle and then frowned to himself. Finally he checked it with a subsidiary compass and frowned all the more. There was no doubt about it: the two compasses were completely at variance. One — the normal one — pointed vaguely to the east, whereas it should have pointed directly to the north magnetic pole and acted thereby as a course-finder. The subsidiary one did point in that direction and was behaving according to plan.
“What do you make of this, Mister Swanton?” Neil asked his chief navigator finally.
Swanton came over from surveying the oceanic charts and gave the compass his expert scrutiny. “Main compass broken down, sir,” he replied finally. “Fortunately the subsidiary one seems to be working normally.”
“That compass,” Commander Neil said, “is one of the best products Enzon and Balro have ever turned out, and worth a fortune. Better dismantle it and see what’s wrong. If the subsidiary one goes wrong too we’ll be in a mess.”
“Very good, sir.”
Navigator Swanton went to work with practiced hands, removing the compass from its heavy casement. Meanwhile Commander Neil took over the task of steering the vessel across the wastes of the Atlantic Ocean.
As he gazed out on the deeps, or consulted the multitude of instruments by which he guided the vessel through treacherous cross-currents, Neil smiled to himself, his mind jumping for a moment to the store-room where there reposed crates of electrical machinery and silkworms. He wondered how the Controller of Exports had ever conceived the idea that such a cargo might be stolen or tampered with. It was absurd! Out here in the middle of the ocean no pirate could attack without being seen long before he arrived; and the crew of the vessel was a good one, every man as honest as the sunlight.