Hank stared at the little man for a minute. Then he said, “His hair is blond. You might even say white-blond.”
—4—
Robert Benedict knew before he had been awake two minutes that something was wrong.
He lay on the bed, his blond hair tousled, staring through the oval window at the fast reddening sky, catching the odd whisperings outside the door that always greeted him. His small Rigellian attendants would, as always, be hovering outside the chamber, waiting for some sign from him that he wanted to rise and eat. He smiled to himself. If only they would just bang on the door, but no. Their infuriating sense of propriety would never permit any open move to waken him, yet they knew just as well as he did that their whispering and giggling outside the door would waken him as quickly and effectively as someone rushing in and screaming “Fire!” Today there seemed to be more quiet commotion out there than he could ever remember.
He sat up, stretched, breathed deeply of the carefully prepared air that flooded the chamber from the circulator near the door. From outside the window came the faint sounds of gathering business in this incredibly beautiful and busy city on this incredibly beautiful planet, seventh from the sun called Rigel, with its small, kindly, immensely polite and propriety-bound people. The Rigellians looked for all the world like green furry monkeys, yet more than once their intelligence and insight had given Robert cause to stop and think. Now he reviewed his agenda for the day ahead, wondering what might be upsetting his little green friends. There had been no commotion when he went to sleep twelve hours before.
Item: Contact Sharnan at the Philadelphia Hoffman Center at the earliest possible moment and start working with her again. Most important. That lead had been so bright and promising to begin with, only to have the promise fade out as that old familiar fog of fear started building up in her mind. Robert was certain that somehow, in some way, Sharnan had the answer to the problem of communicating with the Thresholders, the final answer, yet every time he tried to move closer, she blocked him because of her fear.
Item: Check with Hank at Ironstone, first thing. He shouldn’t have ignored Hank’s call even this long. He was sure it was about that oil company deal, and Robert was positive there was the threat of overload there, as well as the danger of some serious economic and sociological problems that would undoubtedly turn up if it were carried out. Problems which would have to wait until the communication problem was solved, of course, but couldn’t be ignored in the meantime.
Item: Check again on the whereabouts of one Jonathan Tarbox, Earthman. The uneasiness in Robert’s mind suddenly crystallized. Something wrong there, very wrong indeed. The tie-in with Interplanetary Oil and all the rest. Tarbox was on Earth now—correction—on Mars, and if that was what Hank’s call had been about—
Robert scrambled out of bed and started groping for his clothes. Almost instantly the door opened and the soft, fluid syllables of his small Rigellian attendant floated up to him:
“May I serve, good sir?”
Robert looked down at the tiny creature which had hopped up to perch on the bed post.
“Trouble, my friend?” he asked.
“Trouble? Oh, no, good sir, but another message came from Dr. Merry, marked ‘very urgent.’ We waited only for you to waken.”
“I know.” Robert groaned to himself. If they could only have called him! But he responded to the creature with the proper formula of oblique compliments and effusive thanks. “No, no breakfast, thanks. I’m going to have to go immediately.”
The little green creature blinked his sad eyes at Robert with an expression of infinite reproach. “So soon? But the good sir said his stay would be long this time.”
Robert smiled down at the creature, touched the soft green fur behind its ears. “I know,”
he said quietly. “I would like nothing better, but I can’t. Of course, I’ll be back.”
The Rigellian watched him somberly. “You’re going to the Otherworld.”
“For a while. There’s trouble.” Robert smiled again as confusion crossed the little elfin face. “I know, you don’t understand. No trouble for you, little one, just for me.” He strapped his trousers around his waist. “Better go now,” he added. “You know it bothers you, the way I go.”
The little creature hopped down from the bed and scurried to the door. “Take care, good sir.”
Robert stared about the room for a moment, undecided. He wanted most of all to see Sharnan first, but there was no choice now. Urgent from Hank meant really urgent, so Ironstone it was.
Filled with apprehension, he made a curious half-turn and vanished from the room on Rigel VII. A brief instant later he appeared on the platform of the Threshold station in Ironstone, Mars.
—5—
To Hank Merry it was always a shock to see Robert these days. He looked so very young, virtually unchanged since they had first met at the Telcom Laboratories in New Jersey those five long years ago. The time had aged Hank, bringing touches of gray to his hair and tired lines around his eyes; but Robert Benedict had spent a large part of this time in the Threshold universe, and there was something about time there—something neither Hank nor Robert understood—that seemed to retard aging. Hours, days or weeks spent across the Threshold seemed like only a few seconds elapsed time on Earth, and Robert, for all his twenty-two years, still looked exactly like a seventeen-year-old high school senior.
Now Merry greeted him with obvious relief. “Friend, you had me worried. I couldn’t stir you up anywhere, and I was beginning to wonder.”
“I know,” Robert said, “It was mostly my fault. I’ve been bushed, the last few days, and then you had Rigellian protocol to deal with, too. There are certain things those imps just will not do, and waking me up with a message is one of them.”
Robert looked out the window at the busy streets and ramps of Ironstone. The sun, fainter than on Earth, but without the eerie red coloring of the Rigellian sun, seemed to emphasize the lights and darks here. Ironstone was a city of black shadows and brilliant, crystalline highlights.
“The place is booming, I see,” he remarked. “That one over there—apartment house?—wasn’t there two weeks ago. And the dome has been extended.”
“You can do wonders with pre-fabs,” Merry admitted. “And lots of people object to the commuting. Of course, a lot of them move back in a few months. Let’s face it, Mars isn’t much more varied than the Gobi Desert. Once you’ve seen a sandstorm or two from inside the dome, and gotten used to our two little moons, the novelty wears off. But even a few months, with steady turnover, is good.” He sat down at his desk, the desk he hadn’t left for almost twenty hours now, and sighed. “Unfortunately, some other things aren’t so good.”
“I know,” Robert said, sprawling in a chair across from Hank’s desk. “That Saturn business, for instance. I still don’t know what happened to those men, and I can’t seem to find out. Except that something obviously did, because they’ve never shown up anywhere.”
“No progress on communicating with the Other Side?” Hank said.
Robert hesitated, thinking of Sharnan. “No progress to report, let’s put it that way. I thought I had a real live lead, for a while, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Well, I’ve run into some snarlups, too,” Hank said. “Bad ones. One of them has red hair and smokes smelly cigars and I almost had to sedate him forcibly to get him out of this office a few hours ago.”