“It is. What would you want there?”
Archman flashed the Viceroy’s pass. “This is all the explanation you should need.”
They stepped aside and allowed him through. The corridor was long and winding and lit by the bright glow of levon-tubes. There was no sign of the Mercurian or the girl up ahead.
That was all right, Archman thought. He had no particular interest in them, so long as he were inside the Palace itself. And his ruse had worked, evidently; here he was, with a pass to the throne room.
Trotting, he rounded a bend in the corridor and halted suddenly. Three Martians blocked his way, forming a solid bar across the tunnel.
“Stay right there, Earthman.”
“I’ve got a pass from Dorvis Graal,” he snapped impatiently. “Let me go.” He smelled the foul musk of the Martians as they clustered around him.
“Hand over the pass,” ordered the foremost of the trio.
Suspiciously Archman gave him the slip. The Martian read it, nodded complacently, and ripped the pass into a dozen pieces, which he scattered in the air.
“Hey! You can’t do that! Dorvis Graal—”
“Dorvis Graal himself has just phoned me to revoke your pass,” the Martian informed him. “You’re to be held for questioning as a possible assassin.”
Grimly Archman saw what had happened. His 97.003% rating had fooled him into thinking he was some sort of superman. Naturally, the Viceroy had been suspicious of the strange-faced, over-eager Earthman with the wild story, and had ordered his pickup. Possibly the Mercurian and the girl were safely within, or else they had been picked up too. It didn’t make any difference. The wily Viceroy was cautiously taking no chances in the affair.
Almost instantly Archman’s zam-gun was in his hand, and a second later the Martian’s tusked face was a blossoming nightmare, features disappearing in a crackle of atomized dust. The man sagged to the floor. Archman turned to the other two, but they had moved already. A club descended on his arm with stunning force and the zam-gun dropped from his numbed fingers. He struck out with his fist, feeling a stiff jolt of pain run through him as he connected.
“Dorvis Graal said not to kill him,” said one of the Martians.
Archman whirled, trying to keep eyes on both of them at once, but it was impossible. As one rocked back from the force of the Earthman’s blow, the other drew near. Archman felt hot breath behind him, turned—
And a copperwood club cracked soundly against the side of his head. He fought desperately for consciousness, realizing too late that he had blundered terribly. Then the club hit him again and a searing tide of pain swept up around him, blotting out tunnel and Martians and everything.
Hendrin confronted the shivering Elissa. She stood before a mirror clad only in a single sheer garment Darrien had given her.
“Come with me,” he whispered. “Now, before Darrien comes back!”
“Where will you take me?”
“Away from here. I’ll hide you in the dungeons until it’s safe to get you out. Now that I’ve been paid, I don’t feel any need to give you to Darrien—and the tyrant’s mistress will pay me double to get you out.”
She smiled acidly. “I see. I suppose I’ll then be subject to your tender mercies again—until the next time you decide to sell me. Sorry, but I’m not going. I’ll take my chances here. Darrien probably takes good care of his women.”
“Meryola will kill you!”
“Possibly. But how long could I live with you outside? No, I’ll stay here, now that you’ve sold me.”
Hendrin cursed and pulled her to him. He hit her once, carefully, on the chin. She shuddered and went sprawling backward; he caught her—she was surprisingly light—and tossed her over his shoulder. Footsteps were audible at the door.
He glanced around, found a rear exit, and slipped through. A staircase beckoned. The Mercurian, bearing his unconscious burden, ran.
Through a dim haze of pain Lon Archman heard voices. Someone was saying, in a Martian’s guttural tones, “Put this one in a cell, will you?”
Another voice, with a Plutonian’s liquid accents, said, “Strange the dungeons should be so busy at this hour. But a few moments ago a Mercurian brought an Earthgirl here to be kept safe—a would-be assassin, I’m told.”
“As is this one. Here, lock him up. Dorvis Graal will be here to interrogate him later, and I suppose there’ll be the usual consequences.”
“That means two executions tomorrow,” said the Plutonian gleefully.
“Two?”
“Yes. The Lady Meryola sent me instructions just before you came that the Earthgirl is to die in the morning, without fail. Now the Earthman comes.” The jailer chuckled. “I think I’ll put ’em in the same cell. Let ’em enjoy their last night alive!”
Archman dizzily felt himself being thrown roughly into a cold room, heard a door clang shut behind him. He opened one eye painfully. Someone was sobbing elsewhere in the cell.
He looked. It was the Earthgirl, the one the Mercurian had been with. She lay in a crumpled, pathetic little heap in the far corner of the cell, sobbing. After a moment she looked up.
“It’s you—the Earthman!”
He nodded. “We’ve met before.”
A spasm of sobbing shook her.
“Ease up,” Archman said soothingly, despite the pain that flashed up and down his own battered body. “Stop crying!”
“Stop crying? Why? Why, when they’re going to kill us both tomorrow?”
II
Synopsis of what has gone before:
LON ARCHMAN of Universal Intelligence has been sent to Mars on the difficult task of assassinating DARRIEN, the shrewd madman who threatens Earth. Darrien had established an empire on Venus, destroyed five years earlier by Earth spaceships—but Darrien had fled to Mars and built an empire of even greater strength. It is Archman’s job to find Darrien and kill him—a job complicated by the fact that Darrien is known to utilize several orthysynthetic duplicate robots indistinguishable from himself.
At the same time, HENDRIN, a blue Mercurian in the pay of Krodrang, Overlord of Mercury, has arrived on Mars for similar reasons: to kill Darrien and transfer his secret weapons to Mercury. When Archman first encounters the Mercurian, Hendrin is with a captive Earthgirl, ELISSA HALL, whom he has purchased from a pair of drunken Venusian soldiers. Hendrin means to sell the girl to Darrien and thus gain access to the palace. Archman decides to follow Hendrin.
The Mercurian persuades DORVIS GRAAL, Darrien’s viceroy, to give him a pass to Darrien. Archman, using the device of accusing Hendrin of being an assassin, likewise gets past the Viceroy—but this time Dorvis Graal has doubts, and orders pickup of both Hendrin and Archman for questioning.
Archman is caught in the tunnel that leads to Darrien’s palace. Hendrin and Elissa get through and the Mercurian shows the girl to Darrien, who is immediately taken by her beauty and buys her.
However, MERYOLA, Darrien’s mistress, is jealous of the newcomer. She bribes Hendrin to spirit Elissa away from Darrien and hide her in the dungeons of the palace.
Archman and Elissa, who had met briefly before, now meet again—in the same cell. And all signs point to their executions the follow-ing morning.
In the darkness of the cell, Archman eyed the shadow-etched figure of the girl uneasily. He was twenty-three; he had spent six years in Universal Intelligence, including his training period. That made him capable of handling tusked Martians and finny Plutonians with ease, but a sobbing Earthgirl? There were no rules in the book for that.