Mars is My Destination

by Frank Belknap Long

You can be holding high cards, practically unbeatable, in the final deal of a poker game and still not be sure of winning. You have to call your opponent's hand before he gets the idea that just by drawing out a gun and shooting you dead he can gather up all the chips, and cash them in by threatening further violence. Assuming, of course, that he's capable of that kind of violence and is in all respects the opposite of an honest gambler.

You can be even less sure of winning when it isn't a game of cards you're on the point of winning, but a duel to the death with a ruthless power combine and time is running out on you.

I had all the evidence I needed now to smash the Wendel Combine. But it had to be built up by legal experts, and stripped down as well, until the documentation had the sinewy, blockbusting persuasiveness of a champion's punch.

It would have to stir popular fury on Earth on a very wide scale, be made so convincing that no one could possibly mistake it for a trumped-up shakedown in another grab for power. And that would take time—two or three weeks, at least.

And right at the moment Wendel was almost certainly out of the hospital and back in the Wendel plant, getting ready to close in on the skyport with his army of goons.

The problem that confronted me can be summarized in just one sentence. I had to get into my uniform, pin the silver bird into place and complete just two visits, or Wendel would dig my grave wide and deep.

Not just my own grave, of course—but when you fight to stay alive you remember all of the things you want to protect and stay alive for. There are men, I suppose, who are chiefly concerned with survival on a more primitive plane, but I think I can honestly say I've never been that kind of man.

My first visit was going to be to one hell of a live man—Joseph Sherwood. Sherwood had undisputed custody, by authority of the Board, of every nuclear weapon in the Colony with enough large-scale destructive potential to make open defiance of that authority an extremely risky undertaking.

I was now his superior in rank, but I had no intention of making changes in his command or questioning the wisdom of the decisions he was more than qualified to make. The measures he had taken to protect the Colony I regarded as absolutely correct and he knew far more about nuclear armaments than I did. There were limits to what those measures could accomplish, because a large-scale thermonuclear weapon can destroy thousands of innocent victims, and the Wendel Combine knew precisely how far it could go without bringing down the thunder.

All I had to do was convince Wendel that it had now gone too far and that the thunder was very close. Basically it would be quite a simple undertaking. I would simply have to walk into the Wendel plant and talk to him in a calm way, at the risk of being blown apart.