Corriston hit him three times. The first blow doubled him up, the second dropped him to his knees; the third flattened him out on the sand.
Corriston stepped back and surveyed the crowd. Their response now was overwhelmingly favorable.
It wasn’t a complete victory. There were still doubters, still arguments going on, still a hatred for Ramsey that overflowed and made a mockery of the few voices raised in his defense.
And Corriston was glad that not too many voices were raised in Ramsey’s defense. He had not come to plead Ramsey’s cause, and he wanted all of the colonists to know that. He only asked that a truce be declared, an end to the fierce, immediate hatreds, while a scoundrel was attacked by men who had been lied to, cheated and betrayed. He moved still further forward into the crowd, prepared to fight again if he had to, prepared to back up his arguments with the simple, primitive and direct use of his fists.
He swayed suddenly and realized that he was at the end of his endurance, and now would in all probability make a complete fool of himself. He would commit the unforgivable folly of issuing a challenge that he couldn’t back up.
He shook his head violently, trying to clear it, but his dizziness increased. The landscape about him began to pinwheel and he saw the streets of the colony through a wavering yellow mist. The store fronts danced, the rusting and discarded machinery on a side street began to move and come to life, to clatter and waltz about.
A woman moving toward him seemed to grow in height, her oxygen mask widening out, overspreading her face. For a moment she seemed like an impossible ballet figure in a danse macabre, pivoting about on her toes as a caterpillar tractor came rushing toward her through the thin air of Mars.
Then two colonists were supporting him, holding him tightly by the elbows, refusing to let him collapse. It was outrageous, because he wanted to collapse. He wanted to sink down, to let sleep wash over him, to forget all of his troubles in merciful oblivion.
But the two colonists were very stubborn. They refused to let him collapse. He only wanted to go to sleep, to forget all of his troubles, but the two colonists were like doctors in a hospital, very stem, very patient, and seemingly determined to keep him on his feet.
Somehow they must have failed. They must have failed because when he became fully conscious again he was lying between cool white sheets, and a woman in a white nurse’s uniform was bending over him. By straining his eyes he could see two men who looked like doctors standing just beyond her.
The two men appeared to be discussing him, but when he struggled to a sitting position and stared hard at them they came toward him with reassuring smiles, and one of them said: “Take it easy, now. You’re going to be all right”.
“I... I must have passed out”, he stammered. “I was ready to pass out before I started talking. Is this a hospital? I guess it is. I should have come here immediately. Forty hours in the desert and I arrive half-delirious and make a fool of myself”.
“Take it easy”, one of the doctors said. “You didn’t make a fool of yourself. Quite the contrary”.
Oh, brother, he thought. They’re lying to me to spare me, or something. “I have a vague recollection of not being able to stand, of talking my head off and then collapsing and making a complete fool of myself, of accomplishing nothing at all. I swung hard at two or three people. I knocked one man down, flat on his back. But that was a crazy thing to do. It’s no way to win the confidence or respect of anyone”.
“Look”, one of the doctors said, taking firm hold of his shoulder and shaking him gently. “Don’t go reproaching yourself. You’ve got nine-tenths of the colony behind you”. “You mean” —
“Sure, you convinced almost everyone. And that was a miracle in itself, considering how close to collapse you were. You were running a high fever. You were dehydrated. Your skin was as dry as a parched lichen. Yet you stood there and convinced them. That’s the gospel truth”.
“They’ve chosen you as their leader”, the second doctor said. “They’re going after Henley before it’s too late. They feel exactly as you do about Ramsey’s daughter. Not about Ramsey perhaps — but about the kidnapping of a helpless girl. None of them have any liking for Henley now”.
18
CORRISTON walked out into the central square and stood there. For a moment no one said a word. One of the doctors was there with him. He’d had a sandwich and coffee before leaving the hosiptal and his nerves felt steady and his Voice was pitched low.
“I don’t know a single one of these men, Dr. Tomlinson”, he said. “I spent a week in the colony four years ago, but I just don’t see anyone I recognize. I’m afraid you’ll have to introduce me around”.
It took a full hour to really get acquainted, to plan what had to be done, to check over the tractors, the ammunition supplies, the equipment of each and every man.
They had to cross eighty-seven miles of desert to a heavily guarded cave and then move on perhaps to Ramsey’s fortress. They had to be prepared for any eventuality.
The morale was good. Corriston could tense the grim determination in every man, the faith in their mission, the anger. It cheered him.
He walked around between the tractors, listening to stray bits of talk, getting better acquainted with everyone as the minutes sped by.
He took out his watch and looked at it and decided that time was running short.
Give each and every man twenty minutes, he thought. Then we get rolling. Thirty caterpillar tractors and two hundred and ten men. And in the ship are two men holed up — possibly three now — with all the portable fighting equipment of a two thousand ton spaceship at their disposal. And if Henley has returned” —
Suddenly Corriston found himself sweating in the silence, despite the cold, despite the hoar frost that was beginning to collect on the rim of his oxygen mask. There was a split second of shouting from one of the tractors and then it started up, with a coughing and spitting that drowned out the human voices.
All along the wide, rust-red street other tractors came to life. In the thin air of Mars, in the pale sky, a single blue cloud hung suspended.
It was wispy thin, incredibly thin, a hollow mockery of a cloud. But the scene below would have been less remarkable had the sky remained cloudless, for then Mars would have seemed completely unlike Earth and the human drama less compelling.
There was something tremendous in the forward march of the tractors, in the clatter and the rising dust, the shouts of the men at the controls and the women who ran swiftfooted along the sand to urge them to greater fortitude. The women knew that endurance would be needed, for twenty-first century weapons of warfare could destroy a hundred tractors and spatter the desert with blood before retaliation could become complete and justice be fully satisfied.
So the women did not weep or lament. They ran parallel with the tractors, urging their men onward, stifling their own inner fears in the greatness of the moment.
Corriston waited for the last tractor to come abreast of him before he leapt aboard it. There was the smell of acrid grease in the air, a smell of burning. The mechanical parts set up a dull rumbling, and as Corriston swung himself aboard, a voice said: “I’m Stanley Gregor. If I had any sense I wouldn’t take part in this. I came to Mars with the second expedition. I’m sixty-two years old but somehow today I feel young. There’s no longer any doubt in my mind that Henley is a scoundrel. Why we trusted him I don’t know. I’m here to do my part in rectifying an error”. “Sure”, Corriston said, settling down at the side of a big, awkward-looking man with red hair. “Sure, I understand. Take it easy. We’re all in this together”.
“We’ve got eighty-seven miles of desert to cross. It’s going to be tough. Have you seen the fortress Ramsey built to protect himself?”.