“We antisocials stick together here. Kind of an underground cult, you know. And we figured it all out how we could rescue you and get you to Mars—just as a gag you know, a little excitement. That act in the Federal Building was just like an old two-dimensional movie I saw the other night at the museum. Late twentieth century I think, called, ‘Hounds of the Void.’ Got the book, too.”

“But how do we get to Mars?” insisted Ward desperately. “Was that in the movie, too?”

“Precisely,” said Red. He motioned, and Ward was stumbling and mumbling away after the red-headed taxidriver.

In the dim narrow sleeping cube, lit by a single ancient acho-lyte bulb, two men lay breathing feebly on the littered floor. “They’ll be out for at least forty-eight hours,” bragged Red. “I gave ’em both triple shots of parasthetic.”

“So wha—” began Ward; then, as he looked closer, he cried, “Good Lord! It’s Professor Limerick!”

Red laughed in a thin, mirthless way that sent a little tremor up Ward’s spine. “That’s right, Doc. Professor Limerick and his laboratory assistant. Educated morons who skip blithely down the perpetually dim halls of learning. They’re scheduled to leave on the Sol, blasting for Marsport at 2400. You know what for?”

“No,” whispered Ward faintly. “What for?”

“To study the indigenous spores of the canal peculiar to the eastern polar banks of—and I don’t know what else. Fiddlers while Rome burns. Who gives a damn about indigenous spores when the Mo-Sanshon is—?”

“You seem rather vehement, Red, for a person who only pretends to believe in the Mo-Sanshon, just for a thrill.”

Red relaxed, his obvious manic nervous system soothed slightly by the paraette smoke he inhaled in great drags. “Anyway, Doc, there’s our passports and number one priorities to Mars. We’ve got two hours to get your equipment aboard. It’s here in the city, ain’t it?”

Ward nodded. “In a locked vault. But I didn’t think anyone else knew about it but myself. If the Mo-Sanshon had—”

Red interrupted, “Wait here a minute, Doc,” and disappeared into the reeking alleyway. He was back almost at once with a quick-moving, sprightly little man with a pink face and long white hair. He carried a plastic oblong box in one hand.

“This is Alsar Alingmore,” said 

 Prev. P 6/24 next