"Dr. Gita," Adjani began, "we are grateful that-"
"Please, I am only Gita among you learned men. And the pleasure is mine. When your message came last night I was very much excited to hear of your visit and of course I will help in any way I can. Your father has been my dear friend all these many years, Adjani. I remember our school days fondly.
"Now." He spread his short hands on his round thigh, "What brings you to Calcutta and to my humble home?"
"I think I will let Spence tell you his story first, and then 1 will explain."
Gita turned inquisitive black eyes upon his guest and nodded, settling himself with a sigh onto the wide bed. This piece of furniture took up fully a third of the room. Spence realized that the whole family probably slept in that bed.
"What I am about to tell you may sound a bit-well, incredible, but I assure you it is true. Every word. And I ask that what I say will never be repeated outside this room," Spence began nervously. "May I have your promise on that?"
Gita touched his forehead and nodded with an oriental bow of submission. Spence could see the excitement mirrored in the black eyes, though his listener's face had lost all expression.
Taking a deep breath Spence began his tale. He told once again of his dreams, of his wandering lost into the deadly sandstorm on Mars and his discovery of the tunnels leading ultimately to the city of Tso. He told of his thirst and hunger-this made his listener squirm-and of the nightmarish illness. He described the oblong box and his manipulation of the controls, the strange sounds and sights that came from it, and lastly his meeting with Kyr, the Martian, and all the wonderful things he had seen and heard.
When Spence finished, an hour had elapsed like the blink of an eye. Gita sat as one in a trance, spellbound by the magic of his story.
"Truly fantastic," Gita said at last, breaking the fragile silence which had enveloped the room. "I have never heard anything like it. Incredible." He turned to Adjani. "You said I would be amazed, but that is not the half of it. I am astonished beyond words."
After another long silence in which Gita sat staring at Spence and nodding, muttering under his breath, he leaned forward and said, "Now, then. That is but half a tale, remarkable though it is. You did not travel halfway around the world to tell me that. What is it you require of me?"
2
… NO SOONER HAD SPENCE and Adjani stepped out onto the lawn than a knock sounded at the door. Thinking it was the nurse, Ari had gone to tell her that her mother was a little tired and would not be coming down to lunch just yet.
As she opened the door she turned back into the room saying, "You take a little rest, Mother. I'll be back in a moment."
The next thing she knew she was jerked through the doorway. An arm shot around her neck and a hand covered her mouth-so quickly she did not even have time to scream.
"Don't struggle! Don't make a sound!" a voice whispered harshly in her ear. "We are going to walk down the hall. If you try to escape you will be hurt." With that she was dragged away.
Another figure pushed past them and she recognized the man's pinched features and rounded shoulders as belonging to Spence's assistant, Tickler.
When they reached the end of the corridor they paused and turned to Tickler, who was still standing in the doorway to her mother's room. Some signal must have passed between the two men because Tickler reached into his pocket and took out something which he tossed into the room. He then closed the door and came running up the hall toward them.
Ari was shoved out a side entrance marked with a red Emergency Exit Only sign. As the door swung open she heard a woman scream-it might have been her mother; it seemed to come from that end of the hall.
Then she was hustled into the back seat of a late-model triwheel which sped off with the man she now recognized as Kurt Millen behind the wheel. She yelled and scratched at the windows, end then at Tickler sitting beside her in the cramped backseat.
"You can scream all you want to, it really won't do you any good," said Tickler. "No one can hear you now. You might as well save your strength; we have a long trip ahead of us."
Ari's eyes were blue fire. She threw herself forward over the seat and tried to jerk the steering wheel from the driver. T8 lurched to one side and skidded in the white gravel of the drive, Kurt swore and cuffed her with the back of his hand. "Keep her back there! She'll kill us all!
Tickler pulled her back into her seat and brought out a taser. Ari looked at the gun and slumped back. "That's better," d Tickler. "I assure you I will use this if there is another outburst." "I demand to know where you are taking me!"
"We're taking you somewhere, where you can talk to your father, Miss Zanderson. He's very worried about you."
"Worried about me! Why? What have you been telling him?" "Nothing all that serious, but you know how parents can get. I wouldn't trouble myself over it."
"They'll find me. Spence and Adjani will know what happened. They'll find me."
"Oh, we hope so, Miss Zanderson. We hope they do indeed." …
THE SKY GLOWED RED WITH a gray, angry look, threatening rain before nightfall. A chill, shadowy dusk crept across the landcape as the car silently slid off the old highway and up a long, narrow gravel drive lined with towering elm trees, black in the failing light.
The angry sky and dark branches mirrored Ari's mood. She seethed in a silent black rage. Someone was going to know how she felt, and soon!
The car had passed up the regional headquarters of GM, as well as every other opportunity of stopping within the city. Instead, the driver had headed out on the expressway toward the country and, hours later, they were creeping up the road to an aging country house.
The house, pale in the yellow beams of the car's headlights, swung into view as the vehicle rounded a bend and pulled into a wide driveway. A falling-down barn loomed nearby, the darkening sky showing through the spaces between its loose boards as through the ribs of a skeleton. A light shone in a single window of the two-story frame house, glowing behind a stained and tattered shade.
On the whole the scene which met Ari's eyes was best described as dismal. But after riding in the car for the several long hours of their trip she was glad to get out, no matter how bleak the surroundings. She was careful not to let the relief she felt at out onto the crunchy gravel of the drive show in her face stepping She wanted to maintain a hard, angry appearance. or actions.,,,is plan, however, was abandoned as soon as she set foot in the house.
"Daddy!" The next instant she was in his arms an he was hugging her as if she had been rescued from the sea after forty days in a lifeboat.
"Oh, Ari! You're all right! I was so worried about you."
She stepped back out of his embrace. "Just what did you think had happened to me? And what are we doing here?"
Her questions went unanswered, for at that moment a large white ovoid object came gliding into the room. It was a pneumochair, and in it sat a sharp-eyed skeleton of a man, grimacing at them with a malicious twist of his thin lips.
"So, the wandering maiden has arrived. I trust you had a pleasant trip, Ariadne. Yes?"
"You!" she shouted, hands on hips in a show of defiance. She turned quickly to her father, who was wearing a sickly expression. "Daddy, who is this man?"
"Ari, please calm yourself." Her father placed a hand on her shoulder.
"I demand to know what is going on here!"
"You're safe now, that's all that matters, dear."
"Safe! I was safe before those two kidnapped me!" She threw an accusing finger at Tickler and Millen.