knew the curves of the old, worn iron hoops and the settings of the nine-sided thought crystals.
To think that I might wear it once again in the presence of the People…to hear the hill-shaking shout of the haiyaa…to lead again the war horde against the Hated Ones…and perhaps this time, to lead it to victory! If I said yes.
So I said yes.
* * * *
While the Doctor settled his bill and checked out and Bolgov collected their luggage and got it into the freight shaft, the girl and I took the lift to the roof. Thank God for the age of automation: the lift was self-operationed and the only attendant on the parking roof was a camera eye. The girl blocked its view of me as we emerged into the open.
The sky was plum-purple by this time: dull, opaque, and dusty, like the bloom of a grape. We walked swiftly down the ranks of parked cars, not speaking to each other. The air was thick with the smell of sunbaked tar and lubricating oil, hot metal and rubber. Over all was the stink of Venice itself, a vast cacophony of stenches, wherein the odors of rotting garbage, stagnant water, and floating sewage dominated.
The first stars were out. They shone dully and looked neither convincing nor real. They were more like tarnished asterisks of foil pinned to the purple curtains of the creche play or the dusty decorations on the domed ceiling of a run-down dance hall. Under this imitation sky we crossed the rooftop and found the Doctor’s Lanzetti. Within a minute or two I was safely tucked away in the back seat, out of range of observation, with the rear windows opaqued. The luggage went thumping into the rear, and in a bit my companions climbed in, sealing the doors. The Doctor tuned in on Traffic Central, climbed steeply, and merged with the pattern. He chose a sideline which meandered across the country at five thousand feet in the general direction of Naples, but once the traffic had thinned out, he edged into a local level and unobtrusively followed a northerly route for a while, until he hit the turnoff for Strato 104. From then on we could relax, but he was careful to keep the car well within the speed and altitude limit. It would not have been wise to attract any attention from the traffic monitors, who spot-checked their radar from time to time.
We climbed at a leisurely rate until we were well over Europe. I switched on my seat scope and watched Switzerland go past beneath us and then Germany. You could see the lights of Munich and Frankfurt even from this height, but New Berlin was lost in a haze of pollution. Something very much like tears stung my eyes, and I glared them back stubbornly. This would probably be the last time in my life I would see the country of my birth. I had not gone home even in my years of wandering, for after my trial it had been subtly conveyed to me that Germany would not welcome me even as a tourist. I grinned wryly, remembering: a Berliner had held the coordinator’s chair of the Associated Nations the year of my Martian crusade or rebellion or whatever it was. The fact that I, the archtraitor, shared the same homeland had been the ruin of his political ambitions—had, in fact, set his own party back to a very secondary place in the elections. My homeland nursed old grudges for a long time; if I had gone home, there would have been an unfortunate “accident.”
The Doc chose the most commonly traveled tourist lane to the Moon but turned off into a side route a couple of hours later, as we neared our goal. I was dozing and missed it, but he followed the route around to the dark side, and very near the far terminator we decelerated with a bumb-bump that woke me. I shifted the seat scope to see the old Icarus, a black mass blotting out the stars, invisible except for its orbit lights. There was no mistaking the lumpy profile of an Icarus, with its control blister just forward of the center line, lending it a resemblance to a hunchbacked dolphin. We matched orbits; the cargo hold opened, and we berthed in the nearest of the twin cradles, broke seal when the doors were tight again, and climbed stiffly out.
The Doc was affability itself, now that a lot of the danger was over.
“Now, my young friend, we all have our several duties except for yourself, so permit me to escort you to your cabin and forgive me if I leave you there to your own devices. Have you dined?” I told him that I had not; I had not been aware of my emptiness until his remark reminded me. “Very well! You will find an autochef in your room and please make yourself at home. It will be some time before we break orbit—about an hour before Earthrise—so if you retire before then, please remember to strap yourself in your bunk. We will all have breakfast together in the morning, so until then…”
The cabin was smaller than was comfortable, but at least it had its own fresher cubicle, and the autochef produced a pretty good steak and surprised me with its Argentine coffee. I packed away my few effects in the wall cabinet, wondering what I was going to do for a change of clothes. But my host had anticipated this, and I found clean linen in my size and a couple of pairs of the zippered one-piece overalls spacemen call airsuit liners. I bathed, dined, and turned in, strapping the safety harness down, and turned off the lights. An hour before we edged around the Moon beyond the daylight terminator, I would be on my way to Mars.
It was hard for me to believe it was all coming true. I drifted into sleep, thinking about it, and my last coherent thought was a nagging twinge of guilt. For I knew that, despite what the Doctor thought, Ilionis was only a fairy tale. There was no lost Treasure City, and there was no lost treasure. This I knew beyond all doubt or question…I, who knew more of Mars and of its people than any other man of my world could ever know. This truth I could keep to myself for a while, but eventually it would come out, when we reached the site and found nothing there but eroded gullies full of gritty sand.
And when we got that far, I would be in very serious trouble.
3. Planetfall
There is no experience in life duller and more tedious than a space trip, particularly one of any real duration. By comparison, a strato flight from anywhere to anywhere is diverting, because at least you have clouds and a landscape below to look at; and an old-fashioned ocean voyage must have been heavenly, back in the days when they still used surface vessels.
But in space there simply is nothing at all to look at, which is why spacecraft are made without portholes or windows. Nothing lies beyond the hull fabric save dead black vacuum. There are lots of stars, but they all look alike and after your first glimpse of the “star-gemmed immensitudes” (as the poet calls them), you have seen everything there is. There is no variety in duplicating the experience.
The only parts of a space trip that afford the traveler anything at all in the way of scenic effects are departure and arrival. Generally, both are conducted in the vicinity of one moon or another, so you have the moonscape to look at and the more interesting planetscape beyond. But between the beginning and the end of your trip, there is nothing at all but dreary shipboard routine and absolute tedium. The drone and vibration of the drive itself are pleasurable in a way, but you only have them during acceleration and deceleration, and in between there is empty silence, punctuated by the whishing of the air ducts and the intermittent chime of the Meteor Proximity Alarm. God, you even begin to hunger for the minor excitement of the MPA after a while!
A Luna-Mars flight is tedium carried to the nth degree, especially when you make crossover in anything less luxurious than a Prometheus-class liner. The spacelines know how to cope with the boredom and provide everything from stereo views of Aristarchus at Earthrise, the Rings during a four-moon crossing, and other scenic spectaculars, to indoor sports, organized games, amateur theatricals, and a library of taped drama and variety shows.
Our four-man expedition, of course, had none of these diversions. We didn’t even talk much among ourselves, although the Doctor made a heroic try at maintaining Old World geniality during dinner and strove to win a reputation as a brilliant conversationalist. The girl, Ilsa, had nothing to say to me, and as for my friend Konstantin, he had nothing to say to anybody.
But all spacecraft keep a library by Mandate law, if only to prevent people from going crazy
