The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dateline, by Richard Wilson

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Title: Dateline

Subtitle: Mars

Author: Richard Wilson

Release Date: December 18, 2020 [EBook #64073]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ***

Dateline: MARS

By RICHARD WILSON

It was the story behind the biggest story

on Mars—how Fate had grimly reckoned with

the Rockhead Rastol—but Scott Warren of

Galactic News couldn't write it ... yet.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Planet Stories May 1951.

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Scott Warren snapped off the vision screen and sat down in front of his typewriter. Through the glass side of the building he could see the lights of the celebrations whose sounds he had just silenced. He lighted a cigarette and started to type out the final edition of Today on Mars for transmission by Interradio to the New York bureau of the Galactic News Service. He started the news roundup:

"IOPA, MARS—(GN)—Events on Mars were at a snailspace today, the midpoint of the traditional three-day Landing Day holiday...."

Scott rolled the paper up in the carriage of his typewriter and jagged a line through what he had written. Four "days" in the same sentence might get past the night desk, but the New York bureau chief would send him a memo about it in the morning.

He started again.

"... Landing Day celebrations on Mars are at their midpoint tonight, with both Earth people and natives...."

He x'ed out "natives" and substituted "Martians," remembering the memo he'd got about that.

"... both Earth people and Martians forgetting their political and physical differences to take part in planetwide carnivals. Business houses, government offices and stores have been closed down since Friday, and Pleasure is king. The two great cities on Mars—Iopa and Senalla—are ablaze with light, from their desert outskirts to the quarter-mile-high government buildings that mark the center of each. Parades, speeches...."

Scott snubbed out his cigarette, shoved his chair away from the desk. He looked out over Iopa toward the government building, spotted in searchlight rays from all sides of the city. It was bad enough writing this stuff—bad enough grinding out a routine night lead, to be later dictated to Interradio for transmission across space to Earth, simply because the news schedule demanded two daily Mars roundups—

But it wasn't even the truth.

The truth was that both Earth people and Martians were observing Landing Day with the usual fuss—but that it was all a big masquerade. The oldtime distrust of Terrestrials that had come with the first spaceship was still there. It had never been completely wiped out. The only ones being taken in were the people back home, who knew nothing about Mars except what they were told by people like Scott Warren, and who usually saw it only as a red pinpoint in the sky, if the weather happened to be right.

When he got to thinking this way, Scott Warren felt more like a propagandist for World Government than a newsman—the chief of the Mars bureau of Galactic News. He wished he could tell them the truth, a truth not dictated by Policy. Some day he'd write a book. That was what all newsmen said, wasn't it? The truth would have gone something like this:

"The distrust Martians have for Earth people—yes, that includes you, dear friends of the reading, listening and viewing audience—wasn't completely wiped out even when World Government corrected its first monumental blunder. Oh, yes, W.G. has made blunders, and the first was a whooperdoo, ladies, gentlemen and prodigies, a whooperdoo of the first order, a dilly whose details still are skirted when we talk about it, because they're very, very embarrassing.

"The first spaceship, you see, dealt naturally enough with those who had seemed to be the rulers of Mars, if not the duly elected representatives of the pee-pul. And so did the Earth emissaries who followed. These Martians in the welcoming party were a crafty race, stockily built with oversized heads like granite, hard-bargaining and double-crossing. Rockheads, we called them, and still do, underestimating them.

"As our politicians point out with pride, there has been no colonization of Mars—as such. Not even despite the cries of the imperialists back home. And there has been no war, you will remember, although for a while it was touch and go.

"Among the first to come from Earth were the World Government commissions. C.E.A.—exploration and assessment. C.E.D.—economic development. C.I.I.—industrial integration. C.H.W. came later—health and welfare. And so did C.I.E.—information and education.

"It all worked very smoothly. Mars, you remember, was the goal of space-flight for half a century, ever since the pioneer hop to the icy rock of the moon; and the planning commission had it all set up, in advance, from Martian Relations right down to War Planning (top secret in the "if necessary" category).

"But Earth muffed it, and good. The Rockheads of Mars who met the spaceship, and whose delegations worked with the Earth emissaries, were intelligent people, true—but they were the fascists of Mars. What World Government didn't know, and couldn't have known, was that there had been a military revolution on the red planet a short ten years before the first spaceship landed, and that in that revolution the democratic government of the planet was overthrown and its leaders killed or banished!"

Scott Warren took an imaginary sip of water and paced up and down his imaginary lecture platform. He pointed a finger at his imaginary classroom.

The big shots of W.G. had found out about it, of course. It didn't take them too long. Only about two years went by before they were convinced of what had happened, and they had had suspicion of it long before. But it took W.G. twenty years to do anything about it. Twenty years, mind you, when the average lifespan of a Martian is forty.

Of course there were reasons. Good, sound, diplomatic reasons. In the first place, it would have been embarrassing to act sooner. There had been such hoopla and ballyhoo during the first negotiations with the Rockheads, so many grandiose statements and telepix of interplanetary amity, that to have confessed then would have been diplomatic suicide—or so they thought. So the fiction had been maintained. Not only maintained, but magnified and distorted.

So bad did the distortion become that the people back home had almost no inkling of the difficulties in negotiation, of the many concessions Earth had to make to Mars' totalitarian rulers. They didn't know how many insults the Earth envoys had to swallow, or of the innumerable conferences that ended in deadlock because of the Rockheads' impossible demands—demands made to impress their own subject people with their might—or of the W.G. investigators who were imprisoned because they had stumbled across some particularly noisome secret of the corrupt Martian government.

Scott was getting quite wound up. He was pointing a finger again when the door opened. His finger paralyzed in midair.

The thing that entered was taller than he. The entire upper half of it was a face. An idiotically-grinning, white-toothed face. Its eyes were outlined in black and its lips were an oversized red. A caricature of a woman's face, with a great mass of blonde hair coiled fantastically above.

"What the hell," said Scott.

The figure bent forward, and the huge mask came off.

"Hello, Scott," a girl said.

"My Terrestrial aunt," said Scott. "Ylia."

She was a Martian, the daughter of one of the subcommissioners of her government. Ylia wasn't pretty by any Earth standard. She had the big head of her race, the stocky body and the flat face. But she was esteemed by the Martians as attractive, as far as looks count on that planet.

"Why the mask?" asked Scott. "I didn't think you went in for all this brothers-together nonsense."

"Everybody's masked tonight," she said, meaning all the women. "I had to see you, and I thought I'd attract less attention if I wore one, too."

Scott knew what the masks represented. They were brought out every Landing Day and worn in the streets for the traditional celebrations. The masks were all of women—Earth women. Few Earth women had come to Mars, but Earth's advertising had come as soon as the planet was opened to trade. And with the ads had come the art which hadn't changed in centuries. A pretty face, it was reasoned—if there was any reasoning—ought to sell as much soap or cigarettes on Mars as it had on Earth. Hence the masks, representing Earth's greatest contribution thus far to the culture of its neighboring planet—advertising and the female face.

"What's up, Ylia?" Scott asked.

"We're having a meeting, sort of, and Father would like you to come, if you can."

"Why sure," he said. "When is it?"

"Anytime you get there. You see, you're sort of part of it."

"Will there be anything I can use in the roundup?" Scott asked. "There's nothing in it so far except color stuff on Landing Day. It has to go off in a few hours."

"You're the newsman," Ylia said. "Why not come and see?"

"Good enough," he said.

"There's something Father would like you to bring with you."

"I don't usually carry a gun," said Scott, "but I guess I could scrounge one up if I had to."

"Nothing like that. I think you have what he needs right in your files. The Green Arrow affair. You do have it, don't you?"

"Of course. We have copies of all the stories on it that Galactic sent out. I can dig them up in a couple of minutes."

"No," said Ylia. "Not that part of it. What we want is the information you didn't send out."

"Oh?" said Scott.

The Green Arrow was the name the news services had given a guerrilla leader who'd spearheaded the resistance movement against the Rockheads before World Government had got around to any definite action. The name came from a chalk symbol he had left behind him after each raid or foray. Around the Green Arrow had rallied a handful of partisans who had not been content with W.G.'s slow and not-so-sure methods of deposing the Rockhead regime. They were men of ideals and, more than that, of action. Somewhere in the desert below Syrtis had been the Arrow's headquarters. All the punitive expeditions of the Rockheads had failed to find him. No one had known who he was. On the rare occasions that an Arrow man was captured, no amount of torture could get a single secret from him.

The damage the Green Arrow did to the Rockheads was negligible in its overall effect. But he had been more than a night raider—he'd been a symbol to the people in the Rockhead yoke that someone was actively on their side. There was a tremendous lift in spirit each time the Arrow hit a Rockhead target, and for days thereafter people in the community where he had struck—and in others, too—were more cocky and less cooperative than the Rockheads thought they had a right to be. The Arrow's raids sparked slow-down movements and some sabotage and evoked Rockhead reprisals, against guilty and innocent alike. Some of the reprisals were cruel—so cruel that they would have deterred a less determined man—but the Green Arrow was not to be swayed. He remained—even after he was captured and executed—a symbol of liberty in a land which had not tasted such a blessing for years.

Galactic News had covered the Green Arrow story from start to finish. G.N. gave it the full treatment, despite threats from the Rockheads and the denial to it of certain newsgathering facilities. More than that, Scott Warren got permission from G.N.'s New York headquarters to send a man out to interview the Arrow. The reporter got through where all the anti-partisan forces of the Rockheads had failed, and interviewed the Arrow in his desert headquarters. That interview was the journalistic beat of the year—and was highly embarrassing to the Rockheads. Shortly thereafter the reporter was arrested by the Rockhead secret police, and it took all the influence of World Government to have him released. The name of that reporter was George Mercer. He was now covering the Martian parliament for Galactic News.

There had been more in Mercer's story than had been made public, however. Before Galactic broke the story, it went with it to W.G. A high diplomatic official there, in the interests of security, asked G.N. to withhold one fact, and Galactic agreed. As things turned out it was nothing W.G. hadn't known; but something in the nature of a politico-military secret. It was the name of the Green Arrow.

Scott Warren knew what the name was, but it meant nothing to him. He got Mercer's original story out of the files—it had once been kept in a safe—and put it in an inside pocket.

"This used to be classified material," he said to the girl. "It's not any more. I don't know why you want it."

Ylia smiled. "Are you ready to go?"

He nodded. She put the grotesque mask on again and the two of them left the building.

Ylia's father was Kring, a sub-commissioner of commerce in the government of President Murain. (The news services had begun the custom of transliterating Martian names into pronounceable English, the W.G. language, and W.G. itself later adopted it.) Murain was a symbol of World Government's diplomatic triumph, as Earth chose to regard it. For two decades the dirty political game of collaboration with the Rockheads had been played—although it was on such a high level that diplomacy was considered the proper word. It ended, finally, with free elections—the first since the military coup.

The elections were the result of W.G.'s long psychological siege against the Rockheads. The men from Earth played on the vanity of the complacent dictators until they believed they could be the people's choice voluntarily. It was a masterpiece, Scott had to admit—but a masterpiece of striped-pants double-cross. On the one hand the Earthmen pumped up the egos of the Rockheads, and on the other they smuggled the democratic leaders—those who still lived—out of their desert Siberias and let them talk to the people in thousands of small indoor gatherings.

The people anywhere—whether it's in Iopa or Middletown—are smart if they have the facts. These people went to the polls and booted the Rockheads out. It was close, and there was some violence when W.G. watchers arrested repeaters from the Rockheads' machine, but the dictatorship went down in a relatively peaceful manner. The democratic coup evoked a singing story from Scott Warren, who was then newly-assigned to the post of Mars bureau chief. The story won him a journalistic prize.

The election also provoked a counter-revolution by the Rockheads, which had to be put down by World Government's police troops. That was another story, and it won Scott a rest leave on Earth—which he cut short to get back to the news beat which he found, strangely, he had an unaccountable hankering for.

And so democratic government returned to Mars and everything was dandy—for a while.

Scott and Ylia pushed their way through the celebrating crowds. The big, grinning masks of Earth women were moving chaotically, idiotically, all around them. Spotlights which were partly heat-lamps played over the throng in their many colors, coloring and warming the night scene. Musicians in outlandish costumes circulated in groups of three or four, their reedy tunes conflicting and yet mingling in a pleasing semi-harmony.

Most of the crowds were Martians, but here and there a party of Earth people was taking part in the gaiety. In the warm glow of one big spotlight, an Earthman was dancing with a Martian girl, her mask and his fantastic steps parodying a popular Terrestrial ballroom team.

Suddenly there was an intrusion into this scene of celebration. From a side street into the main square which Scott and Ylia were now going through there came a knot of people. They came on slowly, about a dozen of them, their steady progress in contrast to the aimless, carefree motions of the rest. Their faces were serious, and the group held both Martians and Earthmen. They were young-old faces, young in age but old in their apparent contempt for the scene all round them. The group remained close together, not costumed, and when a reveler pulled at the sleeve of one in invitation to join a chain dance, he was pushed away brusquely, almost angrily. When the group reached a well-lighted position near the center of the square, its members formed themselves into a tight circle. They pulled signs from beneath their tunics and thrust them up, then began moving in a shuffling lockstep, chanting discordantly. They were pickets—serious, almost fanatic young men of two planets, bound together in their cause. Their signs read: "Down with the Earth Imperialists," "Democracy, Not Mockery," "What are you Celebrating—Colonization?" and so on.

They chanted the same things, out of unison, so that their voices created a nerve-tingling atmosphere of unrest. They shouted defiantly, yet not looking anywhere but at the neck of the man directly ahead in the revolving picket line. "Reds Picket Landing Day Fete," Scott said to himself, thinking in headline terms.

There was tension now among the celebrants in this part of the square. This was not a time for problems, or for thinking about them, and those who had gathered to have fun were being robbed of their spree.

Abruptly a Martian stepped up and in a quick motion wrested a sign from one of the pickets. He ripped it up and danced on the pieces. The picket whose sign had been snatched made no protest, aside from a look of surprise and a frown. He stayed in ranks, and the circle continued to go round.

Cheers went up and other revelers pressed forward. The marchers tightened their ranks and took firmer grips on their signs. The Martian who had snatched the first was now conferring with others. He motioned to a group of silently-standing musicians, and they took up a tune. The music was rousing and patriotic, and some costumed Martians went into a wild snake dance. With apparent good humor, but with telling effect, they drove into the circle of pickets and split them into two groups. In the scramble, several more signs were trampled underfoot. More revelers joined the attack and the pickets were split again, until they were widely separated and all their signs were gone. Their unity lost, they disappeared in the crowd.

The musicians switched to a gayer tune and there were cheers and laughter. The Martian who had grabbed down the first sign was hoisted into the air, where he bowed his over sized head, grinning.

The interruption of the fun was ended, and without violence. Scott and Ylia moved on.

But Scott knew the picketing had been only one manifestation of a smoldering problem. There was truth in those signs, and the people knew it. They just hadn't wanted to be reminded of it now. And, besides, most of them didn't want their thinking done for them by the left-wingers, who proclaimed the right of the people but too often in history had aborted the very rights they spoke of so feelingly.

The limited democracy the people now enjoyed had been hard-won. It was not perfect, they knew, and they suspected that there was corruption here and there, either in their own government or in W.G. But the Martian people had had a bellyful of violence. The force used by the Rockheads, just lately overthrown in a peaceful election, was fresh in their minds, and they were willing to go along for a while with President Murain—at least to give him a chance.

They trusted Murain. He was one of them. But Scott was aware that Murain himself was too trusting. The Martian president was a grateful man, and his gratitude had made him less suspicious than a politician should be.

Where the Rockheads had driven hard bargains with Earth, Murain's representatives drove none at all. They trusted their deliverers—the men of W.G.—to do the right thing. And the Earthmen, some of them, were doing the right thing—but for themselves.

Where the Martian democratic government had once lost to the fascists through force, it was now losing to friends who were rooking it, in a perfectly legitimate, businesslike way. The Commission on Exploration and Assessment had now become known off the record as A. & E.—assessment and exploitation. The business and industries which should have made the Martians prosper—which should have given them the schools and housing they had been robbed of by the Rockheads—these had their profits skimmed off and sent to Earth. The Martians had their freedom now, true, but they couldn't eat it or build with it.

Ylia pulled at Scott's sleeve. They turned down a side street and, at an old stone house that seemed as ancient as Mars itself, she led him through an archway and into a court. She knocked at a door, and, when it opened, took off her ridiculous mask and entered, beckoning Scott to follow.

They entered a room that was low and wide, furnished with a mixture of Earth and Mars styles, including some of those chairs which are geared to Martian dimensions—oversized headrest and, between closely-spaced arms, a seat that a plump Terrestrial either had to squeeze into, or avoid.

Of the three people in the room, Scott recognized two: Kring, Ylia's father, and Toby Black, a W.G. investigator whose real job was known to only a few and who posed as a sales manager for a construction firm. The guise enabled him to be places where the presence of a W.G. representative would be unwelcome. Here, possibly. The other Martian in the room looked familiar, but Scott couldn't place him.

Scott shook hands with Kring and let himself be introduced to Toby, although they'd had many a drink together in the Press Club bar and in less respectable places.

"And this is Mr. Rastol," Kring said of the familiar-looking Martian.

Then Scott remembered. Two days ago President Murain had decided on a man to fill the job of commerce minister in the Martian government, a post vacated through the death of a cabinet member. Murain had offered the job to Rastol. Scott had no idea what had prompted the offer. He felt sure that Murain hadn't acted of his own free choice; pressure must have been brought on him. Apparently it was a concession he felt it necessary to make—a sort of horse trade with some powerful leader in Parliament to get an administration bill through. All Scott knew, now that he remembered, was that Rastol was a Rockhead. Not an overt one, true. There was no blood on his hands, as far as anyone could prove. But Rastol had been a power in the totalitarian government lately voted out. Possibly Murain could find no one else for the job. Rastol had ability, of course, but he also had a tinge, if not a definite odor.

He had been brought to trial, under a W.G. indictment, but had been acquitted of complicity in any of the really unsavory doings of the Rockhead regime. Some had said it was lack of evidence, but newsmen covering the trial had a strong suspicion that several prosecution witnesses had been given bank accounts. And Rastol went free.

And now Murain was offering him the big commerce job—one that held the purse strings of a fair share of the Martian budget. The post would give Rastol the power to spend, to let contracts, to make loans and parcel out a tremendous amount of business. That money could go to help the economy of Mars back on its feet, or it could be pork-barreled into the coffers of firms whose ties with the Rockheads had been only nominally broken.

Rastol's acceptance of the job, not yet forthcoming, and his confirmation in it by Parliament, would be a kick in the teeth to Martian democracy. The reason for this off-in-the-corner Landing Day soiree became a little clearer—although Scott still was unable to figure out why he'd been invited.

Scott shook the hand Rastol extended and said something noncommittal. Most Martians looked almost alike to Earth's eyes, except for their sex differences, but Rastol was distinctive. He was corpulent, a thing most Martians were not, and he was hairless, which also was unusual. His skin was whiter than that of most of his planetmen, and he had no neck to speak of. If Scott had been a caricaturist, he'd have drawn Rastol as an egg.

Ylia had left the room. She came back now with a tray, and served drinks. Scott took one of the small pottery cups and told himself he mustn't drink more than two of them. They contained a syrupy blue liquid with the kick of a rocket-exhaust.

Kring raised his cup. "To the Republic," he said. They all sipped their drinks.

"I've asked you here," Kring said, "for a purpose. I should not have chosen Landing Day if it had not been important. Some of you have very generously broken other engagements or left your work—" he bowed to Scott—"to be here."

Rastol spoke in a low, resonant voice. "It is an honor to be asked to your home, Mr. Kring."

The "mister" was something Earthmen had brought. Mars, before the Rockheads set up their semi-feudal system, had had no such term of address.

Kring bowed again. "I am especially happy that you were able to come, Mr. Rastol, because what I have to say should be of particular interest to you." He turned to Toby Black. "You, Mr. Black, are interested in construction, of course, and Mr. Warren's news service has an interest in something similar—reconstruction. So we are well met."

Scott didn't know what this preamble was leading to, but he wished Kring would get on with it. He did.

"Mr. Warren," Kring went on, "may also have a news story of some value. You see, before Mr. Rastol leaves this room tonight, he will have announced that he cannot accept the post of minister of commerce in the Murain government."

Rastol didn't move, except for a narrowing of his eyes. Then he said, carefully: "Indeed?"

Kring smiled a little. "Yes," he said. "I think Mr. Rastol will find that his private affairs are of such a demanding nature that he will be forced regretfully to decline the honor tendered by President Murain."

Rastol said evenly: "I hesitate to differ with my gracious host, but it would seem to me that an individual might be considered to know his own affairs better than another."

"I am sure," said Kring, "that no one knows your affairs better than you, Mr. Rastol."

Scott looked at Toby Black, who had leaned forward in his chair as if trying to see the significance of it all. Scott knew that Toby knew as much about Rastol as anyone, and probably more. Toby was one of half a dozen men who were permitted to ride the private elevator to the private office of the director-general of World Government.

Rastol looked at a timepiece on the wall and rose from his chair. "I am afraid I must say good night. I had hoped to be better company, but I have just remembered an appointment."

"Please sit down, Mr. Rastol," said Kring. "We have much more to discuss."

Rastol moved toward the door. Ylia stepped in front of it. She had a Q-gun in her hand.

"I am quite proud of my daughter's marksmanship," said Kring. "She is the equal of any soldier at hitting a target. At short range she never misses by so much as a hair."

Rastol sat down.

He sipped his drink and appeared to relax. "Be good enough to tell me," he said, "why you think I would be so lacking in a sense of public duty as to reject an assignment to which my government has called me."

"The answer is simple," said Kring. "The Murain government is not your government. Your allegiance is to the totalitarian movement."

"I think the public record will show the falsehood of that statement," said Rastol. "The trial to which I was so cruelly subjected proved just the opposite. You will recall that the verdict was one of acquittal."

"Only," said Kring, "because some witnesses were bribed—and others were murdered."

Rastol smiled thinly. "Your proof?"

Kring smiled also. "Of that? None, I admit. But we have proof of other things—things without value in a court of law, perhaps, but which may persuade you to retire to private life, for your tranquillity of mind."

"Produce them," said Rastol.

He was a cool one, Scott had to admit. Then the newsman realized that Kring was looking at him.

"Mr. Warren," he said, "if you will be so kind." And he held out his hand.

Scott gave him the papers he had brought from the office. He had no idea what bearing they had on the situation now being unfolded.

Kring broke the seal on the envelope and opened it. He looked through the news reports—those which had been used and those which hadn't. Finally he found what he was looking for.

"You have heard of the Green Arrow," Kring asked Rastol.

"Of course. A bandit and outlaw who achieved some notoriety. What of him?"

"You may not have heard," said Kring, "that his real name became known. To myself and some others who cared to ask, after it was no longer a guarded secret. His name was Acton...."

Kring looked closely at Rastol. The big Martian gave no flicker of recognition.

"A not uncommon name," said Rastol.

"Acton was the name of your son, was it not?"

There was silence in the room. Kring's eyes looked steadily into Rastol's. Ylia stood at the door, her gun no longer pointing at the guest, but down at her side. Toby Black was stopped with a cigarette halfway to his lips.

Scott raised a hand to brush away what he thought might be an insect on the back of his neck. There was nothing there; it was part of the tension.

Kring spoke again. "Was not Acton the name of your son, and did he not fight against you and the things you stood for?"

Rastol's eyes went from one to another in the room. He made no other movement. Even his breathing was not apparent. At length he said:

"Yes, Acton was my son."

Kring's breath came hard, as if he had been holding it.

Then Rastol added: "But what of that? Really, gentlemen, this is a most ridiculous performance. To bring me to this house, to threaten me with weapons and with words and to produce mysterious papers with the flourish of a wandering mystic—this is childish. I must ask you to excuse me. I have an important letter to write President Murain."

"What will the letter say?"

"It will say that I accept humbly, yet with pride that I have been chosen, the position of minister of commerce in the government to which I owe allegiance and wish to serve to the best of my poor ability."

"Allegiance!" Kring spat the word. "You speak of allegiance, who have never known it to anything decent and honorable. You blaspheme the memory of your son's great deeds when you use the word."

"Neither my son nor any creature that crawls on the ground has any bearing on my decision. Your threats and blackmail are unworthy of you, Mr. Kring. And if you persist in this farce, or seek to use your information publicly, I shall be forced to make a noisy and patriotic speech which will look incongruous in my biography but which will have the stupid public applauding from the galleries. I shall say that as an older man I believed in gradual change and that no man was happier than I when Mars became a republic under the aegis of World Government. I shall say, if I am forced to, that of course I had publicly deplored the activities of the man called the Green Arrow, but that I was in good company, for did not Mr. Murain—then not yet President Murain of the Republic-to-be—also plead for peaceful methods of achieving freedom, and urge his followers to shun violence? And if someone is so unfeeling as to mention that Acton was my son, could not my impatience with his activities have been in reality a father's fears for the life of the boy he had loved from the cradle? Oh, I shall make them weep, Mr. Kring, and your petty plan will come to nothing. Furthermore, I shall demand your resignation as a sub-commissioner of commerce, and I have little doubt that I shall receive it."

"You are an excellent man with a speech," said Kring. "That I admit. But there is more which you pretend not to know."

"Is there?"

"Much more. You may or may not choose to recall—Druro."

Rastol chose to say nothing. Druro had been one of the blackest marks against the Rockhead regime. It was the name of an infamous concentration camp, in which thousands of prisoners had died of malnutrition and overwork and thousands more had been put to death because of their political views.

"I can tell you something about Druro," said Toby Black. "I was there as a guest of your government—the Rockhead government is the one I'm talking about, Rastol, not the one you claim you're suddenly so fond of."

Toby put out his cigarette and leaned forward. His thin face got hard.

"Kring is a gentleman even when he's dealing with a louse, Rastol, but I'm no diplomat. I'm just a hardheaded old trader from Earth, and maybe some people think my language is crude. But I say what I think, and I don't like you and your kind. Usually I don't mix in politics—my business is construction. I started when I was a young squirt and built things with my hands, and they got calloused. Now I sit in a fine office and scoot around in a fine air-car, and other men do the dirty work. But that's honest work. The dirty work I can't stomach is your kind, Rastol, and since I've got the chance to undo some of it, or maybe prevent some more of it, I asked Kring to let me speak my piece."

Scott could easily have been persuaded, if he hadn't known better, that World Government Investigator Toby Black was just that rockribbed businessman-with-a-conscience that he was pretending to be.

Toby went on: "The reason I saw Druro the way mighty few people saw it was that somebody slipped up. Druro was also a factory town and there was room there for a new plant. God knows you had enough slave labor to make it damned profitable. So I was invited by your Rockheads to look over parts of the town so my company could make a bid on building the plant they wanted. But I saw more than you fascists intended, Rastol. I'm an old country boy and I get up early. One day I got up earlier than those gorillas who were supposed to tag around with me to keep my nose clean. And my nose got good and dirty, Rastol. The stench of Druro is still in it. I got out and talked to the people in town, and the people had plenty to tell me about that camp just over the hill. Some of the people I spoke to had been inside it, and they knew what they were talking about."

"An interesting anecdote, Mr. Black," Rastol interrupted, "but I must confess that I see no relevance."

Toby lighted a cigarette and spat out the smoke. "The relevance is coming right up. I heard a lot of different things about Druro from a lot of different people, but one of the things I heard over and over again was the same. It was the name of the man whose signature sent those thousands to their death. I don't have to tell you, Rastol, what that name was. You sign your letters with it every day."

"You can prove nothing," snapped Rastol, his composure jolted for the first time. "It would be your word against mine, and why should anyone believe you?"

"That's true," said Toby. "There's no proof. After I heard of your acquittal I got good and mad about it, and I made a special trip to see if I could find some of those people I'd talked to back then—to get affidavits, if they wouldn't testify in person, to get new evidence. But you and your Rockheads did a good job, all right. You practically wiped out Druro. There wasn't a soul left who would testify against you or any other fascist."

"You see? You have no proof."

"No," said Kring, "no proof that would be good in court. But everyone in this room now is convinced of your guilt. That must be a terrible burden on your conscience. If I were you I should welcome this opportunity to make some slight amend. I appeal to you, Mr. Rastol, to decline the post of commerce minister."

Rastol laughed. "You appeal! You beg! This is the weakness of your system. You yourselves are so weak that your government cannot be strong. I know now that the threats against me tonight all were psychological. Even that Q-gun in your daughter's hands. You would not shoot me. It is against your principles. Fortunately I have no principles, and after I have become commerce minister there will be others like me in the cabinet. And then it will not be long before Mars again has the kind of government a planet like this needs. Now I am going—and if any of you decides to remember any of this in public I shall deny it. And then who do you think will be believed?

"Stand aside, young lady. I am leaving."

Rastol got up from his chair.

This wasn't Scott's show, but he spoke up anyway. It looked as if everything else had failed.

He said: "I have quite a story here, Rastol. I haven't been taking notes, but they say I have a stenographic ear."

Rastol whirled on him. "Use it, and I'll sue you and Galactic News Service for libel and everything else in the statutes. I'll deny everything and produce two witnesses for every one of yours. You're not dealing with an amateur, young man. And now I say good night, you fools."

Kring moved to stand beside his daughter. "There is yet more," he said. "We had hoped to spare you this, although I know now that our concern for your feelings was misguided."

"There is no more," said Rastol. "You have bluffed and you have lost." He whipped his hand through the air. "Stand aside. I am going."

"Stay," said a new voice.

Rastol turned slowly. At the end of the room opposite the door some hangings had parted. Through them from another room had come a tall, cloaked Martian, a young man. Rastol looked at him under a wrinkled forehead.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Hello, Father," said Acton.

Rastol peered across the room. His face seemed to come apart. It went slack, seemed to turn gray.

"You're dead!" cried Rastol. "This is a trick! A disguise! Turn up the lights!"

Acton stepped forward to within a foot of the older man. "Look well," he said. "Is it a disguise?"

"But you're dead. I know you're dead. I—"

"Yes, Father. I should be." Acton's eyes were steady, but without hate. They looked hurt and pitying. "I was at Druro, and you signed the order for my execution yourself. It was carried out, you thought, and the last witness against you was stilled. You thought."

The young man threw back his cloak. He had no left arm. "They took me for dead. The Q-rays burned away my arm and I fell with the others. I was buried among the corpses. But my friends found me later. There wasn't much life in me, but they nourished it, and I am here."

"No!" screamed Rastol. "It's not true! It's a lie!"

"No!" screamed Rastol. "It's not true ... it's a lie!"

He wavered away from his son's gaze and half fell into a chair.

"You deny it," said Acton. "Come, we'll tell the people. They will decide. We'll go to the great square and ask them whom they believe—Rastol or the Green Arrow."

"No," said Rastol. "No ... no."

Back in the Galactic News Service bureau, Scott Warren came to the last paragraph of Today on Mars. He had written his quota of words about Landing Day and the speeches and parades and carnival. He had a story bigger than any of this, of course, but he couldn't use it. Toby Black asked him not to; not yet.

Rastol had declined Acton's challenge to go before the people. There in Kring's house, under the hard eyes of his son, Rastol had written a letter to President Murain and signed it.

The rest would come later. It took time to get the legal wheels in motion, to prepare a genocide case; but although World Government moved slowly sometimes, it did move. In two months or three or six, Rastol would be indicted and tried, and this time there would be no doubt of the verdict. In the meantime....

Scott wrote: "Elsewhere on Mars, these things happened: Fire broke out in Senalla, driving fifty persons from their homes. No one was injured, but damage to the apartment house block was extensive.... A collision between two air-cars sent three persons to the hospital in Iopa with critical injuries.... A sandstorm blowing across the desert 100 miles northeast of Iopa has cut communications with the town of Ramor.... And Rastol decided against accepting the post of commerce minister, which had been offered to him by President Murain. Rastol said he was honored by the offer, but that the pressure of private affairs made it impossible for him to accept."

Scott Warren typed "30" at the end of his copy and sent it off to Interradio for transmission to Earth. He resigned himself to the possibility that the night desk in the New York bureau would cut out his last paragraph to save space.

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Table of Contents

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dateline, by Richard Wilson

Dateline: MARS

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