“That’s a lot of maybes,” Cragg said.
“How can you fight a vegetation that grows all over the planet?” Lieutenant McDonald burst out. “There must be billions of plants. They grow faster than you can watch them.”
“Maybe we might,” Dane told him. “There is one more thing. It puzzled me, so I thought I was all wrong. This morning we got messages at 0700 hours. How could the lichens send them? With the sun up only thirty or forty minutes they would still be frozen. I was sure I had everything all thought out last night. I even wrote it down. Then when the messages came in so early, they upset the whole idea. Until I thought of something else. That was the one that scared me, but maybe it also gives us a chance to get away.”
He went over to the globe of Mars in the corner and set it spinning on its axis. “There are vast lichen forests all around the globe. The sun is always shining on them. Somewhere it will be daytime and they will be awake and fully alive. The early messages simply came from lichens where it was already later than ten o’clock in the morning.”
“The colonies linked together,” McDonald said.
Dane said, “Maybe. It’s the only answer that explains the early messages.”
McDonald said, “Jesus! I say again how do we fight something like that! If we could destroy the plants around here, the rest would simply grow more. There wouldn’t be any way to kill them all off!”
“Unless we find a way to break their hold on the drive, we haven’t got a chance,” Dane said.
Colonel Cragg was studying the wall charts of the planet. “There are several million square miles of them. Impossible to blast them all.”
Dane said, “I wasn’t thinking that, but of course it’s a possibility. What I was thinking was that if we could only apply enough force to the Martian colonies to shock them severely, their attention might be relaxed or diverted enough to cause them to lose control of our drive. Then we could take off before they recovered.”
“You got that one figured out too?” Cragg wanted to know.
“Maybe this might work,” Dane went on. “We know they’re sensitive to our radar transmissions, because they can get the messages we send. What if we transmitted a series of high-energy waves? We might be able to upset their mental processes temporarily. Maybe an overpowering transmission from us might have the same effect on the lichen brains through their receiving organs, whatever they are, as tremendously loud noises do on man. Maybe we can shell-shock them. Or maybe it might jam their mental currents and weaken their field of force against our drive. Assuming Vining is right.”
“You told anybody about this?” Cragg demanded.
Dane said, “Not yet.”
“We’ll try it out,” Cragg said abruptly. “Get Major Beloit and Lieutenant Yudin in on this,” he ordered McDonald. “I want all the power we can put into the big peripheral antenna. I want all radar equipment—all the spare stuff—assembled and power line laid in and everything ready to blast out the granddaddy of all jamming in an hour. Whatever you do, I don’t want any testing to get into the antenna. When you’re ready, let me know.”
He nodded at Dane. “If your Mr. Martians can be jammed, maybe like you think, we’ll give them one hell of a shock.”
He grabbed at the hand wheel of his chair and rolled around at McDonald again. “Tell Major Beloit that the drive is to be ready to try another take-off in the next hour. I don’t want any disassembly or adjustments that make it inoperative. Not unless I personally approve them.”
McDonald said, “Yessir.”
“Sergeant Peeney,” Cragg plowed on, “I want our primary scientists in the mess hall right away. I want an opinion out of our head think gents before we start something.”
“What’s the matter, you think they might retaliate?” Dane asked him. He hadn’t thought of that. But how could they? If it worked.
Cragg looked surprised. “I always expect retaliation when I attack. If I’m attacked I try to devise a successful counterattack. Why should I expect less of my enemy? Even if he is a Martian and I don’t know one damn thing about him.”
29
CRAGG PUT down his headset. He nodded at Dane. “All set.”
The minute hand stood at seven minutes before 1100 hours. Dane looked at Major Noel. He was watching Cragg with the intensity Dane had seen on the faces of the roulette players at Golden Beach. The memory of the Gulf Coast smote him, lazing under the cumulous puffs, bright white and high over the sand splashed with girl colors. A new life, he resolved. If we make it okay. A new girl and the rest of the long Gulf summer to look for pleasure. Maybe an hour or two a day to write up the journal and cull out his photographs. Maybe most days to forget Mars as anything but a stained speck in the south-east evening sky. It was impossible to think that the beach would never come for him again.
Cragg was giving Lieutenant McDonald his orders. Pour out the shock waves for ten minutes. Then they would try the take-off.
He turned to Noel. “You will go to fire control and remain there for emergency, all guns and weapons ready. Report when you’re ready at your station.” He snapped his chair around smartly. “Sergeant Peeney, sound the alert. Take-off will be at 1110 hours. All personnel will now remain secure at their stations.”
All at once Dane felt that now or never was the time to say his piece.
“Can you wait just one minute?” he said quickly. “There’s one more thing I ought to tell you and Noel both, while we’re all here together. I’ve got positive proof that Dr. Pembroke couldn’t have knifed Colonel Cragg. Absolute airtight proof.”
Noel swung back. “Yeah. That I’d like to hear. It’d have to be good and airtight.”
Cragg said, “We’ll get on with our present business, gentle-men, if you don’t mind. Time enough later for that.”
“We don’t know what’s going to happen here in the next few minutes,” Dane said. “I’ve got it all written down and sealed in that envelope I told you about. It’s among my papers addressed to Major Noel, to be delivered to him if anything happens to me. It ought to be told first, before we take any more chances. So more than one will know about it.”
“Noel?” Cragg said. “Why Noel?”
Dane said, “Because if I’m right, you’re certainly still on somebody’s list. And I know without any doubt I’m right.”
“You’ve got a lot of envelopes around, haven’t you, son?”
“It’s pretty simple, after it occurred to me,” Dane said. “I should have thought of it a long time ago.”
Cragg moved impatiently. “Skip the preliminaries. Let’s get right down to it.”
“It’s just this,” Dane said. “The assumption has been made all along that Dr. Pembroke left the infirmary when the nurse went to mess from 1730 to 1800.”
“That’s the only time the door was unguarded,” Noel said.
“There had to be at least one other time, and a later one at that, Dane told them. “Because Dr. Pembroke was still in his bed at about 1830. Here’s how I know. We started receiving the first Martian signals that night about 1815. Almost immediately I called Captain Spear and asked him to check to see if anyone was outside the Far Venture. A few minutes later Captain Spear reported everybody present and accounted for. If Dr. Pembroke hadn’t been in bed where he was supposed to be, Spear would have found it out.”
Cragg said, “Sergeant, check the log.”
Peeney flipped the pages, selected one, and ran his finger down the margin. “Yes, sir,” he reported. “It’s here. Just before the entry about the first signals coming in.”
“Read it.”
“Yes, sir.” Peeney frowned at the page and cleared his throat. “‘Checked all personnel for presence inside the spacecraft,’” he read. “‘Requested by Dr. Dane. Dr. Dane reported reason to believe one or more personnel outside contrary to order of the commander. Head count completed at 1831. All present.’”