Then he shoved a pad under my nose.
"MARTIANS TAKING OVER!!! EARTH IN DEADLY PERIL!!!" he had written.
Little slimy bugs with ice-cold, prickly feet marched up and down my spine. Every man has his private, personal phobia, something that throws him into an irrational panic, and mine has always been lunatics. Ever since I can remember I've had a morbid fear of mental disorders, which is why the Malignant Inertia Complex had had me so thoroughly frightened. And now I knew the supersonics had driven Mike space-batty.
I didn't for a moment believe what he had written. I'd been to Mars before, seen Marties in their home environment, slow-moving and lethargic, entirely without initiative, completely unwarlike.
"DISCOVERED PLOT VIA HUSTIC," Mike scribbled.
The bugs on my spine quit parading and started running. I grabbed the pad.
"IMPOSSIBLE," I wrote. "HUSTIC NOT WORKING. NO GOOD. DISCONNECTED."
Mike dived across the cabin in the light gravity, hauled himself up neatly on a handgrip and raised the cover of the selector unit. Then he thumbed his nose at me.
Bill and I took a good look. That stubborn, crazy Irishman had made a new bar to replace the one I'd hidden and cut down an empty food can as a tube shield.
"GOT TO TURN BACK, WARN EARTH," Mike wrote. "THE CULTURAL—"