Synthetic Men Read online

  Lolan stiffened, his hand dropping to the sadon pistol. The weapon was halfway out of its holster when a new voice intruded obsequiously. "Commander—I wouldn't do that!"

  II

  It was scrawny little Captain Irak who had spoken. An apologetic smile bracketed his lips and he was shaking his head slowly. Lolan knew a warm rush of gratitude toward him. Ugly as he was, he was intelligent and less sadistic than many of the officers. He said little—which made the Sub-Commander suspect he knew much.

  Arzt grunted, puzzled, "You wouldn't—? Why not, you grinning, ugly little ape?"

  Irak kept on smiling blandly. "Look outside," he advised.

  Arzt did, but still kept his hold on the old man. There were a score of shabby Venusians peering in from the dark street like wolves around a fire on the high Martian steppes. They fell back under the impact of so many eyes.

  Irak closed the door. "Kill Atarkus tonight and by morning we'll have a first-class revolution on our hands," he said. "These people worship Atarkus and his daughter. If he is to die, it must be otherwise ... secretly, perhaps, in the dungeons where no one will ever learn."

  Arzt's hands fell to his side. "There's wisdom in what you say," he begrudged. "Especially ... the last part. But if I find the proof I need of their guilt tonight, there'll be no waiting. We can try, and execute them, publicly. Search the woman, Lolan. I'll search this ancient blasphemer myself."

  Lolan hesitantly fell to the task. "I'm sorry!" he whispered. She gave no sign that she had heard, no indication that it meant any more or less to her that he must perform the job than anyone else; nor had Lolan ever known if she returned his feelings. Their meetings had been few, when they had come to Arzt's court-martial occasionally to plead for their countrymen on some matter. With his pulses racing, he searched her gown thoroughly and found no suspicious articles. He was red-faced and perspiring when Arzt barked:

  "Then that devil's got it! Search Lugo, men!"

  That order was the cue for the lanky Venusian to hurl himself from the arms of his captors. "The sewer!" Lolan gasped. Lugo was heading for the black-mouthed hole to hurl himself into the underground river two hundred feet below ... himself and anything he carried!

  The young Martian did not stop to reason that Ars Lugo might be carrying the evidence that would send Mora and her father to their deaths. He acted purely by instinct, flinging himself upon the revolutionary and dragging him to the floor. But Lugo was up again, like a released spring. Lolan crawled frantically after him. He grabbed a heel, brought the Venusian spinning about while he lurched to his feet. A jabbing fist sent him reeling back. In the next moment Ars Lugo was diving feet first down the hole!

  Lolan's muscles had been leaned to spring-steel tautness in rigorous Martian military exercises. It was only that whiplash power of them that enabled him to grasp one of Ars Lugo's hands as he vaulted the low rim. In a flash he knew his error. The Venusian's weight was hauling him across the smooth floor and into the pit of death!

  There was a moment of un-thinking panic, of hearing the distant roar of tumbling black water and the savage grunts of the man dangling below him. Someone grabbed his feet and his headlong plunge was arrested. Arzt was shouting: "Hold him! Don't let him get away with that paper!"

  Lolan fought the burning numbness of his forearm. Ars Lugo had ripped off a belt-buckle and was slashing at his knuckles with it. The men above kept shouting encouragement while they fought for leverage. Every sinew in the Martian's body stood out in ridges and knots. Sweat bathed his flesh, and he knew that moisture was causing Lugo to slip still further. "Hurry!" he groaned. "I can't—"

  With startling abruptness he was flying out of the hole, while Ars Lugo, with strips of skin under his fingernails that he had ripped from Lolan's hand, went spinning down into black nothingness. Pain had beaten determination. Ars Lugo had won—death!

  Horror held the officers around the hole like statues, staring down. It was during that interval that Lolan felt a hard, slippery object in his hand. He opened it to see the bracelet Ars Lugo had worn, which he had somehow torn loose. A curious, heavy ornament of iridite crystals and onyx, and on the inside of it strange scratchings, like—

  Like a map! Some impulse caused Lolan's fingers to clamp on the bracelet. Arzt was staring.

  "And there goes our chance for a quick disposal of these other two," he grunted sourly. "If you could have ... well, it's done now." Briskly he gave an order. "Take them home. But remember this, Venusians—your consorting with revolutionaries has marked you for death! At any day, any hour, I may have you seized and brought back."

  Atarkus paused scornfully on the threshold. Mora had already gone, her head high and eyes straight ahead. "We don't frighten easily," the old ruler flung back. "When you live in hell as we do, one more pit of damnation merely serves to bore us. May you boil in your own lard, Martian pig!"

  Arzt swore at him and half-drew his pistol. Sneering, then, he relaxed and turned to fix Lolan with a burning glance. "Your failure tonight intrigues me," he offered suggestively. "You never seemed to be hindered by pain to that extent before."

  Lolan showed him his bleeding fingers, from which great drops of blood were falling. "It was the shock," he murmured. "You don't think I let him escape on purpose—!"

  "I hardly imagine you could be so foolish. At any rate, you'll be given a chance to redeem yourself. Sometime in the next three or four days I want those two killed, very quietly and—very thoroughly. The honor is to be yours."

  Lolan's shocked eyes flashed to a pair of burning, amused ones. Arzt's broad lips were smiling fixedly. The young officer tried to mask his horror. "Let someone else do it," he countered. "Killing women is out of my line."

  "Killing that woman, you mean!" the Commander pounced on him. "I've known what was in your mind all these months. I hoped you'd see the foolishness of it. You're too good a man to lose inside the execution chamber. What's the matter with you, Lolan? Are you deceiving yourself that these damned Venusian dogs are good enough for a Martian officer?"

  Hatred swept Lolan suddenly like a flame. With difficulty he held his voice to a flat, deadly hiss. "Good enough! Too good, if you ask me! I'm sick of driving sick men into mines reeking of sulphur fumes, to dig iridite for us to decorate our uniforms with. Tired of seeing them live like animals, in filthy shacks ready to fall in on them or in tenements crawling with vermin. If cracking a bloody whip is what being a Martian officer means, I'm ashamed of being one. I'd change my Sub-Commander's rank here for that of a private back on Mars!"

  Arzt's face grew hot and red with a dark suffusion of blood. "The only transfer I'll give you is to Rock Island, on the Fluorine Sea," he grated. "Would that suit you better?"

  Lolan's spine crawled. Rock Island was a tiny hump of land in the middle of a sea perpetually blanketed in fogs—fogs laden with deadly fluorine. But someone had to keep the light on that island to guide incoming space-ships. The keepers usually lasted about six weeks. "In other words, I stay here or I die!" he stated flatly.

  "Exactly. So let's hear the last of this. If you complain again I'll take it as treason. Remember my orders: In four days I want to see their bodies in the dead-house. If I don't—it will be yours I'll see there!"

  Lolan's first chance to examine the bracelet was in the solitude of his room an hour later. He drew all the shades, while a feeling of tension built stiflingly within him. Under the soft glow of a lamp he studied it.

  Plainly he traced the outlines of all the buildings in the rambling system of barracks that sprawled over the hill. Rooms had been marked in by someone who knew the set-up. The Martian received a stiff jolt at seeing his room, and Arzt's, marked with X's. Marked for death, he knew!

  Lolan's fist closed on the bauble. He let his glance go to the curtained window, seeming to see through and beyond it. A tumult of jarring thoughts rang harsh discordance in his mind. But clear and sharp sounded one note, that his hands must slay Mora and her father or he himself would die. No night-long brai
n-wracking was needed for him to know that he preferred death to carrying out Arzt's orders. But perhaps ... there was another way!

  Lolan stood rigid, letting the idea revolve in his mind. Abruptly, he swung from the window, jamming the bracelet onto his own wrist. He left his room silently, and through the dim corridors he found his way to the commissionary. His private keys unlocked the dark vaults. Carefully shutting the door, he switched on the lights.

  Piles of goods were everywhere, looming in long rows before him and filling great bins. The Martian's nerves set up a raw tingling as he found a box and hurried to a bin. Five nervous minutes passed, with Lolan piling preserved foods of all kinds into the box. As a last item, he buried a pair of sadon pistols in the mass of foodstuffs.

  Grim resolution was in the hard set of his jaw when he switched off the lights, re-locked the place, and left by a back entrance. He was able to reach a pursuit ship in the hangar and load his stuff in without being observed. Panic struck at him, then ... a sentry's running feet sounded outside!

  Lolan sprang to the door. He eased through it, to be speared by the man's torch. Casually, he nodded to him.

  "Oh! Sorry, sir, I didn't realize it was an officer," the sentry apologized. "Taking your ship out this late?"

  Lolan said crisply, "Official business down below. Go back to your post. I can manage it alone."

  The sentry clicked his heels, saluted, and departed. Lolan's knees shook a little. He rolled the battered pursuit ship out and hurriedly entered it. Hope that the guard didn't realize he wasn't taking his private ship tonight kept him glancing around at the dim form of the sentry. On that fact hinged his life.

  Then he was slamming the accelerator on full. The ship screamed upward, borne aloft on the green mushroom of flame. Almost immediately he had crossed the city and gained the plains beyond. In a broken expanse of rock and sand just outside the lower quarter, he set the craft down gently.

  No one saw him enter the city. He threaded the tortuous alleys of the squalid section with his heart hammering in his ears. At last he was stopping across from a large, five-story building. It was a ponderous, gabled affair full of reminiscences of former glory—elaborate cornices crumbling away, great, metal doors green with age, once white walls now streaked with black and gray. In carved Venusian characters, a plaque over the door lamented: "Hall of Justice."

  Lolan was thinking of that sad commentary as he ascended to the top floor. Justice—when the man who once ruled this entire planet now lived on crusts in a tiny room in the tower!

  It was Princess Mora whose hand opened the door at his knock. In the dim light of the room, her face showed sad and accusing. "What?" she asked bitterly. "Haven't you done with persecuting us for one night?"

  Atarkus looked up from a table where he had been poring over old Venusian books, a pair of spectacles perched on his beak-nose. "Well, speak!" he shrilled finally. "What miserable errand brings you here?"

  Lolan's face was hard. He kept his glance on Mora's widening eyes as he took off Ars Lugo's bracelet and extended it to her. "Ars Lugo died trying to hide this," he growled. "I thought you might like to save it. But as a favor—would you mind taking the black cross off my quarters?"

  III

  Atarkus was on his feet, shaking. Mora let the Martian place the bracelet in her hand before she gasped: "You—you knew! And didn't tell! Why?"

  Lolan lowered himself into a chair. He sighed despondently: "I don't know. If I'd valued my own life I'd have turned it over to Arzt. But I've had my fill of watching you Venusians tortured."

  The girl's eyes glowed. She said softly: "That was your only reason?"

  Lolan's heart thumped. His face flamed, and he tried to hide his embarrassment by springing to his feet and pacing to a window. "It's reason enough," he muttered. He swung suddenly to face them across the room. "But that isn't why I came here tonight. It's something more important than that. You've got to leave Areeba immediately!"

  Atarkus' face folded into grim lines. "You mean Arzt has decreed our death?"

  "That's it. You might have expected something like this for being seen with men like Ars Lugo."

  Mora looked up into the officer's face. "I can't understand you, Lolan. You're supposed to be second in command of the race that oppresses us. Yet you risked death to hide that bracelet, and undoubtedly you've taken the same risk to come here."

  "Don't try to understand me. Simply do as I say. Arzt has appointed me to execute you within four days. I—I can't do it, that's all. So I'm going to try to dodge the issue by letting you escape. Beyond the city there's a pursuit ship loaded with food and a pair of pistols. With that outfit you can make it to Lyna or some other settlement where you won't be known. But you've got to do it tonight!"

  Atarkus snorted. "Leave our people when they need us most? Never!"

  Lolan's eyes narrowed. "When they need us most," the ex-emperor had said. Why were they needed especially now—because of a coming revolution? He drove the question from his mind. "Don't quibble!" he snapped. "I can't promise you more than a few hours' leeway. You've got to leave within the hour."

  "It's no use," Mora smiled wearily. "Our people look up to us for the answer to every problem that arises. What would they think of us if we ran out now?"

  "What good will you be to them dead?" Lolan argued desperately. "Arzt means to have you out of the way once and for all. You're dangerous and he knows it. Get your things together and let's go!" The flush of repressed fear colored the flat angles of his jaws. His mind was a whirlpool of hope and regret—regret at losing Mora forever, though he could never own her; a deep soul-sickness at the idea of sending a force-charge into her lovely body....

  But Mora was shaking her head and Atarkus had smashed his fist on the table. "Arzt can't scare us!" the aged monarch scorned. "They say we Venusians are weak, that we don't know how to fight. Some day soon the butcher will learn differently." His eyes grew softer. He laid his bony hand on Lolan's hard forearm. "I know your position, young man. You have taken a liking to us for some reason—I think I know what it is—and the thought of killing us disturbs you. Perhaps you won't have to perform that duty—"

  Suspicion and wonder blended into the creases of Lolan's forehead. "Then you won't go?" he breathed.

  "We can't," Mora told him. "But you have our gratitude for all you've done."

  Lolan straightened. He tried to keep his voice clipped and emotionless. "You are foolish—and brave. Good night!"

  When he reached the boulder-hidden rocket ship it was still safely masked in its hiding place. The fog had torn apart for a few hours, and through the ragged holes in it he could see stars blinking solemnly down at him. The young Martian's heart leaped at the thought of leaving for one of those far-off worlds; no one would miss him before morning and he could stock up on supplies and leave right away. But a leaden despondency kept that idea from gaining much headway. Gloomily he climbed into the ship.

  It was when his fingers had sent the rocket car tearing up into the low clouds that Arzt's voice, just behind him, made his blood turn to water and his lips go dry.

  "You're heading the right way, Sub-Commander. Over the hill to the Sulphur Holes. Tonight's warning was my last."

  In the gleaming black disk of one of the space-ports Lolan could see Arzt's reflection, then, looming squat and dangerous three feet in back of him. He had quietly removed Lolan's pistol and held it on the back of his head.

  "Planning a trip, were you?" the taunting voice went on. "I found quite a store of food here. The only trip you'll be making now is into the bottom dungeon of the Holes. By the gods, Lolan, you're a fool!"

  "Am I? It might as well be now as four days from now. You know I couldn't kill them."

  "I knew this: That if you couldn't, you weren't fit to be a Martian officer. Now I'll have to do the job myself. Because you're going to die tomorrow!"

  Silence piled up between them. Too soon the gaping slash on the planet's surface known as the Sulphur Holes was pivoti
ng beneath them as they circled to a landing. Here, where subterranean forces had carved a series of natural dungeons and rock-bound gases still seeped through the holes in a stifling mist, the least fortunate of Arzt's prisoners were imprisoned.

  Burly guards came running up to take charge of Lolan. Arzt stood back with fists on hips. "Take him to the bottom level," his guttural command came. "Watch him closely. The devil's been conspiring with Venusians for a revolution!"

  He watched coldly while they jostled his former chief officer into the little rock house that housed the elevator. He stood there stolidly until a deep-pitched sigh emanated from the structure, denoting that one more soul had been carried down ... to hell. A fierce grin twisted his lax features. He was so engrossed in his own thoughts that he did not hear the closing of the storage-hatch on the pursuit ship they had come in, nor did he see the spidery form that slid from it to the shelter of some rocks. Deeply and sadistically satisfied, Commander Arzt turned and departed.

  For the first ten minutes after his captors had left him, Lolan sat on the edge of a hard, filthy cot with his head buried in his hands. The cell was low-ceilinged, with eroded sandstone walls studded with sharp metal crystals. Through the barred door drifted stringy tendrils of gas—sulphur smoke, belching up from the planet's bowels. From nearby cells came horrible moans, a ragged scream, the rattling of a door as some hapless prisoner shook it and shouted for food. The soft plod-plod of someone pacing the floor like a caged beast reached the Martian's ears.

  Lolan's lungs seemed filled with acid. He coughed until tears streamed from his eyes. Finally he fell back in despair on the cot. But even in his desperate physical pain he was far more conscious of acute despair over the failure of his plans to save Mora and Atarkus. He felt that no torture could be worse than imagining what devilish end Arzt would find for them.