After due consideration he phoned Secretary Jansen and announced, “I’m finished with the job. Every debt of Michael’s has been paid and I’ve arranged for the disposition of his personal belongings.”
“Glad to hear that. We’re pleased you could make the trip, and I hope you enjoyed your stay on Marathon.”
“Certainly,” Martlett replied. “A wonderful planet. But my work on Earth awaits me. How soon can I have accommodations on the outward journey?”
“You’re in luck—a ship leaves for Earth at midnight.
You can show up any time, as late as eleven, to be deserialized and placed on board.”
“I’ll be there,” Martlett said.
He broke the contact, feeling an abiding sense of guilt. So I’m a cad, he thought. So what? I didn’t ask them to fall in love with me. They aren’t in love with me, anyway. Just with Michael’s image.
He was half finished with the task of packing his meager belongings when the phone chime sounded. Activating the controls, he was dismayed to see the blonde tresses of Joanne Hastings in three dimensions and natural color.
“Peter—I hear you’re leaving!”
“Where did you get that idea?”
“Don’t try to pretend it isn’t so! I—I have my sources of information. Peter, darling, why are you going?”
“I told you,” he said, trying with only moderate success to put a flinty edge on his voice. “I’m an Earthman, not a colonist. I’m going home.”
“Then I’ll go with you! Darling, wait for me! Take me to Earth—I’ll be your slave! I’m leaving now. I’ll be at your villa in half an hour. Don’t refuse me, Peter. I can’t bear to lose you.”
Martlett goggled and tried to reply, but before words would come out she had blanked the screen. He stared blearily at the sleek surface of the dead screen a moment, stunned. Coming here? In half an hour? But—
The phone chimed again.
With numbed fingers he activated it and watched the features of Sondra Bullard come swirling out of the electronic haze. She had heard he was leaving, she told him, and she implored him to change his mind. “Don’t go,” she begged him. “Stay right where you are. I’m on my way now. I have to see you again in person. I’ll be there in half an hour. I love you, Peter.”
“Half an hour? Aiee! Sondra—”
Too late. The screen was dead again.
Martlett remained quite still, sorting out the rush of thoughts that rippled through his chilled mind. They had both heard that he was leaving; that meant that most likely both, anticipating another runout a la Michael, had arranged with some underling of the secretary to be notified the moment he announced his intention to depart.
And they were on their way here to persuade him to change his mind. Joanne would be here in half an hour. Sondra would be here in half an hour. That meant—
He knew what that meant. They would both be here in half an hour. They were traveling on a collision orbit. And when they got together, critical mass would be reached rapidly.
Well, he thought in desperation, there was a clear path to safety still. All he had to do was report to the deserializing office now, and have them tuck him away in the Henderson Field until the midnight departure time. So far as it would matter to him, the elapsed time would be the | same—hardly any at all—and he would be safely out of the reach of those grasping altar-eager females.
Martlett smiled. Yes, he thought. That’s what I’ll do!
He ordered the butler to get the jetcar ready for an immediate trip downtown. And in the meanwhile, he thought, there still is time for a drink. Something to calm my nerves. I paid two thousand units to settle Michael’s liquor bills; I might as well enjoy some of it.
There was a liquor cabinet and dial bar at the opposite end of the living room. Martlett half skipped to it j and quickly punched out an order for a double bourbon. Nothing happened; and then he recalled he had ordered the bar fixtures disconnected that morning.
Shrugging, he tugged open the paneled door of the liquor cabinet and groped inside for one of the bottles. It was dim and dusty in there; he fumbled for a handhold, finally catching something—
He pulled.
What came out was not a bottle. He had been grasping a lever attached to a square black enamel box, and now box and lever both came out of the cabinet suddenly. He let go of the lever and jumped back. The box had popped open. “Damn,” an oddly familiar voice said. “So soon?”
The box expanded abruptly. Martlett edged further back, and in the same moment a man stepped out of the box, stretching as if he had been crouching on his knees a long while and at last was standing up. He was tall—about Martlett’s own height. He had unruly brown hair and a roguish smile, and a fine network of laugh wrinkles around his eyes.
He might almost have been Martlett’s twin. He was, in point of fact, his younger brother.
He chuckled amiably and said, “Well, Peter—you’re the last person I expected to see at this moment!”
Martlett backed up feebly. “Michael! You’re—alive?”
“Extremely, dear brother. Would you mind telling me what year this is?”
Weakly, Martlett said, “2209. April 20th.”
“Ha! The little vixens! Not even two months, and they’ve forgotten me already! Pfoo, it’s dusty in here! What are you doing on Marathon, old man?”
In a chilly voice Martlett said, “After you were pronounced legally dead I was called here to serve as executor of your estate, Michael. I paid out some fourteen thousand units you owed. And now to find you’re still alive! What—how—”
“I dare say you think it’s ungrateful of me to come back to life, eh?” Michael smiled cozily. “Well, it was good of you to take care of the debts, Peter. This job did cost me a penny or two, and I’m afraid I rather neglected the tradesmen the while.”
“What job? What are you talking about?”
“Why, the private Deserializer I had built, of course!”
Martlett put his hands to his head. He felt close to madness; the sudden arrival of his brother, the importuning of those girls, the fourteen thousand units, all seemed to swirl wildly around him. In a dark voice he said, “Will you explain yourself, Michael?”
“Certainly. There were these girls, you see—Joanne was the blonde, and Sondra the brunette.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Lovely, weren’t they? Anyhow, with my usual carelessness I contrived to get myself engaged to both of them. It was an awkward situation; they both vowed to follow me to the ends of the universe, et cetera, the usual stuff. Damned tenacious lasses, both.”
“I know that too,” Martlett said.
“Do you, now? Well, to make the matter short,” said Michael, “I found it expedient to disappear. I hired a person to arrange things for me, at a fee. He caused it to seem as if I had vanished in some awful way en route to Thermopylae or some such place in this system, when actually I hadn’t even made the trip! I was deserialized and locked away in my own liquor closet, y’see, in cold storage, not conscious of the passage of time. There was a timer on the thing which would release me in five objective years—but you surely must know all about this?”
“On the contrary. It’s quite new to me.”
“But the arrangement was that my fellow would keep an eye on those two girls, and if they both got married before the five years were up he’d come around to let me out of the deserializer field right away. And since you’ve released me, then obviously—”
“No,” Martlett said. “I pulled you out of the closet by accident. I thought you were dead.”