When the ship was close enough, the radio directed her gyros to rotate her, very, very gently, until her pickup antenna was pointing directly at the field. Then her jets were cut in, a mere whisper of thrust. She was nearly above the spaceport, her path tangential to the moon’s curvature. After a moment Yamagata slapped the keys hard, and the rockets blasted furiously, a visible red streak up in the sky. He cut them again, checked his data, and gave a milder blast.
«Okay,» he grunted. «Let’s bring her in.»
Her velocity relative to Phobos’s orbit and rotation was now zero, and she was falling. Yamagata slewed her around till the jets were pointing vertically down. Then he sat back and mopped his face while Ramanowitz took over; the job was too nerve-stretching for one man to perform in its entirety. Ramanowitz sweated the awkward mass to within a few yards of the cradle. Steinmann finished the task, easing her into the berth like an egg into a cup. He cut the jets and there was silence.
«Whew! Chuck, how about a drink?» Yamagata held out unsteady fingers and regarded them with an impersonal stare.
Hollyday smiled and fetched a bottle. It went happily around. Gregg declined. His eyes were locked to the field, where a technician was checking for radioactivity. The verdict was clean, and he saw his constables come soaring over the concrete, to surround the great ship with guns. One of them went up, opened the manhatch, and slipped inside.
It seemed a very long while before he emerged. Then he came running. Gregg cursed and thumbed the tower’s radio board. «Hey, there! Ybarra! What’s the matter?»
The helmet set shuddered a reply: «Señor… Señor Inspector… the crown jewels are gone.»
Sabaeus is, of course, a purely human name for the old city nestled in the Martian tropics, at the juncture of the «canals», Phison and Euphrates. Terrestrial mouths simply cannot form the syllables of High Chlannach, though rough approximations are possible. Nor did humans ever build a town exclusively of towers broader at the top than the base, or inhabit one for twenty thousand years. If they had, though, they would have encouraged an eager tourist influx; but Martians prefer more dignified ways of making a dollar, even if their parsimonious fame has long replaced that of Scotchmen. The result is that though interplanetary trade is brisk and Phobos a treaty port, a human is still a rare sight in Sabaeus.
Hurrying down the avenues between the stone mushrooms, Gregg felt conspicuous. He was glad the airsuit muffled him. Not that the grave Martians stared; they varkled, which is worse.
The Street of Those Who Prepare Nourishment in Ovens is a quiet one, given over to handicrafters, philosophers, and residential apartments. You won’t see a courtship dance or a parade of the Lesser Halberdiers on it: nothing more exciting than a continuous four-day argument on the relativistic nature of the null class or an occasional gunfight. The latter are due to the planet’s most renowned private detective, who nests here.
Gregg always found it eerie to be on Mars, under the cold deep-blue sky and the shrunken sun, among noises muffled by the thin oxygen-deficient air. But for Syaloch he had a good deal of affection, and when he had gone up the ladder and shaken the rattle outside the second-floor apartment and had been admitted, it was like escaping from nightmare.
«Ah, Krech!» The investigator laid down the stringed instrument on which he had been playing and towered gauntly over his visitor. «An unexbectet ble-assure to see hyou. Come in, my tear chab, to come in.» He was proud of his English—but simple misspellings will not convey the whistling, clicking Martian accent. Gregg had long ago fallen into the habit of translating it into a human pronunciation as he listened.
The Inspector felt a cautious way into the high, narrow room. The glowsnakes which illuminated it after dark were coiled asleep on the stone floor, in a litter of papers, specimens, and weapons; rusty sand covered the sills of the Gothic windows. Syaloch was not neat except in his own person. In one corner was a small chemical laboratory. The rest of the walls were taken up with shelves, the criminological literature of three planets—Martian books, Terrestrial micros, Venusian talking stones. At one place, patriotically, the glyphs representing the reigning Nestmother had been punched out with bullets. An Earthling could not sit on the trapezelike native furniture, but Syaloch had courteously provided chairs and tubs as well; his clientèle was also triplanetary. Gregg found a scarred Duncan Phyfe and lowered himself, breathing heavily into his oxygen tubes.
«I take it you are here on official but confidential business.» Syaloch got out a big-bowled pipe. Martians have happily adopted tobacco, though in their atmosphere it must include potassium permanganate. Gregg was thankful he didn’t have to breathe the blue fog.
He started. «How the hell do you know that?»
«Elementary, my dear fellow. Your manner is most agitated, and I know nothing but a crisis in your profession would cause that in a good stolid bachelor. Yet you come to me rather than the Homeostatic Corps… so it must be a delicate affair.»
Gregg laughed wryly. He himself could not read any Martian’s expression—what corresponds to a smile or a snarl on a totally nonhuman face? But this overgrown stork—
No. To compare the species of different planets is merely to betray the limitations of language. Syaloch was a seven-foot biped of vaguely storklike appearance. But the lean, crested, red-beaked head at the end of the sinuous neck was too large, the yellow eyes too deep; the white feathers were more like a penguin’s than a flying bird’s, save at the blue-plumed tail; instead of wings there were skinny red arms ending in four-fingered hands. And the overall posture was too erect for a bird.
Gregg jerked back to awareness. God in Heaven! The city lay gray and quiet; the sun was slipping westward over the farmlands of Sinus Sabaeus and the desert of the Aeria; he could just make out the rumble of a treadmill cart passing beneath the windows—and he sat here with a story which could blow the Solar System apart!
His hands, gloved against the chill, twisted together. «Yes, it’s confidential, all right. If you can solve this case, you can just about name your own fee.» The gleam in Syaloch’s eyes made him regret that, but he stumbled on: «One thing, though. Just how do you feel about us Earthlings?»
«I have no prejudices. It is the brain that counts, not whether it is covered by feathers or hair or bony plates.»
«No, I realize that. But some Martians resent us. We do disrupt an old way of life—we can’t help it, if we’re to trade with you—»
«K’teh. The trade is on the whole beneficial. Your fuel and machinery—and tobacco, yesss—for our kantz and snull. Also, we were getting too… stale. And of course space travel has added a whole new dimension to criminology. Yes, I favor Earth.»
«Then you’ll help us? And keep quiet about something which could provoke your planetary federation into kicking us off Phobos?»
The third eyelids closed, making the long-beaked face a mask. «I make no promises yet, Gregg.»
«Well… damn it, all right, I’ll have to take the chance.» The policeman swallowed hard. «You know about your crown jewels, of course.»
«They were lent to Earth for exhibit and scientific study.»
«After years of negotiation. There’s no more priceless relic on all Mars—and you were an old civilization when we were hunting mammoths. All right. They’ve been stolen.»
Syaloch opened his eyes, but his only other movement was to nod.
«They were put on a robot ship at Earth Station. They were gone when that ship reached Phobos. We’ve damn near ripped the boat apart trying find them—we did take the other cargo to pieces, bit by bit—and they aren’t there!»