He stared at her moodily and drained his glass. “No matter. I’ll think of it. I promise you that.”
The girl laughed softly, then sobered. “Meanwhile,” she said, “we ‘ave some more important business ‘ere.” And she nodded toward the great crystal pane that opened on the thronged boulevards of Heliopolis.
Gull followed the direction of her glance and saw at once what she meant. A demonstration was in progress. A hundred straggling, shouting marchers were carrying placards with as many harsh and doctrinaire slogans:
Let the Space People Save You!
We Are Property
Why Is the Air Force Covering
Up Sightings?
Gull said abruptly, “Let’s take a look.”
The girl rose without answering and together they walked out to the terrace. The shouts of the demonstrators smote them like a fist. Gull could barely distinguish the cadenced words in the roar of sound: “Make … Mars . . . the tomb of Skepticism,” over and over in time to their march until it changed to “Welcome UFOs now! Welcome UFOs now!”
“They take it seriously,” he murmured. Alessandra did not answer; he glanced at her, then followed the direction of her gaze. A man in stained coveralls, eyes fixed on them, was pushing his way in their direction through the crowd. He was tall, and not young. His face was lined with the ineradicable burn of a life spent on the Martian desert.
Gull stroked his goatee to hide a thrill of excitement that tingled through him. This could be it: The break he was looking for.
The man stopped just below them, looking up. “Hey, you!” he bawled. “You Gull?”
Gull shouted carefully. “That’s my name, yes.”
“Well, where the devil you been? We been waiting for you!” cried the man in irritable tones. He reached up, clutched at a carved projection on the face of the terrace, raised himself and swung to face the crowd. “Hey, everybody!” he shouted. “Meet the fella that thinks UFOs are phony! This way! You! Look here!”
Heads were beginning to turn. The ragged line of marchers slowed, Gull whispered to the girl, whose presence he could feel shivering beside him: “Careful! I don’t know what he’s going to do. If it looks like trouble —run!”
But he could not hear her answer, if she made one, for the man was turning back to him again. In the diminished sound of the street his raucous yell sounded clearly: “All right, Gull! You think our supranormal powers’re all a lotta crud, see what you think of this!” And he made a snatching motion at what, as far as Gull could see, was empty air; caught something, squeezed it in his fist; turned towards Gull and threw it.
There was nothing in the man’s hand.
But that nothing spun toward Gull like a pinwheeling comet, huge and bright and deadly; it hummed and sang shrilly of hate and destruction; it rocketed up toward him like an onrushing engine of destruction. And something in it snapped his will. He stood frozen, impotent to move.
Vaguely he felt a stir of motion beside him. Hazily he knew that the girl was thrusting at him, shouting at him, hurling him aside. Too late! The hurtling doom came up and struck him—just a corner brushing against his head as he fell—but enough; worlds crashed; hell-bombs roared in his skull; he dropped, away and away, endlessly down into… into… he could not see, could not guess what it was; but it was filled with terror and pain and doom.
But then he was awake again, and the girl was weeping over him; he could feel her teardrops splashing on his face.
Gull coughed, gasped, clutched at his pounding skull and pushed himself erect. “What—What—”
“Oh, thank ‘Eaven! I was afraid ‘Arry ‘ad killed you!”
“Apparently not,” he said dizzily; and then, “Harry who? How do you know who that fellow was?”
“What does it matter?” she cried. Bright tears hung unshed in her eyes.
“Well, it kind of matters to me,” said Gull doubtfully, looking around. They were no longer on the terrace. Somehow she had lugged him back into the greater security of the cocktail lounge. A waiter was hanging over them, whirring in a worried key.
“Harry Rosencranz!” he cried suddenly. The girl nodded. “Sure! And he knew I was coming. Well, that tears it. My cover’s blown for sure.” He glared at the waiter and said, “Don’t just stand there. Bring us a drink.” The thing went away, warbling unhappily to itself. It had not been programmed for this sort of thing.
Indeed Gull needed a drink. The reality of supra-normal powers was a phenomenon of a totally different kind than the contemplation of them at a distance. The tapes about Reik and his partner had been interesting; the reality was terrifying.
He seized the glass as soon as offered and drained it; and then he turned to Alessandra. “You’ve got some explaining to do,” he said.
The tears were very near the surface now.
She waited.
“How did you know it was Rosencranz?” he demanded. “And the torpedoing—you knew about that.
And don’t think I’ve forgotten that we’ve met before…somewhere… don’t worry, I’ll think of where it was.”
She inclined her head, hiding her face.
“You’re working for someone, aren’t you?” Her silence was answer enough. “A nice girl like you! How’d you get into this?” He shook his head, mystified.
“Ah, Meesta Gull,” she said brokenly, “it’s the old, old story. My ‘usband—dead. My little ones—’ungry. And what could I do? And now they ‘ave me in their power.”
“Who?”
“The Black ‘Ats, Meesta Gull. Yes, it is true. I am in the employ of your enemy.”
“But damn it, girl! I mean, you said you loved me!”
“I do! Truly! Oh,’owl do!”
“Now, wait a minute. You can’t love me and work for them,” objected Gull.
“l can too! I do!”
“Prove it.”
She flared, “Appily! ‘Ow? “
Gull signaled for another drink. He smiled at the girl quite fondly. “It’s very simple,” he said. “Just take me to your leader.”
VII
It took a bit of doing, but the girl did it. She returned from a series of cryptic telephone conversations and looked at Gull with great fearful eyes. “I ‘ave arranged it,” she said somberly. “You will be allowed in. But to get out again—”
Gull laughed and patted her hand. He was not worried.
Still, he admitted to himself a little later, things could get a bit difficult. Security precautions for the Black Hats were in no way less stringent than those of Gull’s own headquarters in Marsport. He allowed himself to be seated in a reclining chair while a gnomelike old dentist drilled a totally unneeded filling into a previously healthy tooth; and when he rose, the exit through which he left the office brought him to a long, dark tunnel underground.
The girl was waiting there silently to conduct him to his destination. She placed a finger across her lips and led him away. “Wait a minute,” Gull whispered fiercely, looking about. For there were interesting things here. Off the corridor were smaller chambers and secondary tunnels filled with all sorts of objects shadowy and objects small. Gull wanted very much to get a look at them. Those tiny disjointed doll-shapes! what were they? And the great gleaming disk section beyond?
But the girl was pleading, and Gull allowed himself to be led away.