Mars is My Destination

by Frank Belknap Long

From just how great a distance I had no way of knowing. But I didn't think he'd be staying around, near enough for me to get my hands on him. Killers who made use of such gadgets usually kept their distance, and were very cautious.

But at least I knew now that I had a dangerous enemy, someone who wanted me dead. And there was nothing pleasant about that.

The human mind is a very strange instrument and it's hard to predict just how profoundly you'll be upset by an occurrence that's difficult to dismiss with a shrug.

You can either turn morbid and brood about it, or rise superior to it and pigeon-hole it, at least for the moment. By a kind of miracle I was able to pigeon-hole it, to keep it from standing in the way of what I'd made up my mind to do before I'd heard the rustling in the foliage directly overhead.

I walked back and forth for a moment, resting most of my weight on my right leg, to make sure I could keep using it without limping and when I was satisfied a long walk wouldn't be in the least painful I left the embankment with a feeling of relief and took the first turn on my left. I was pretty sure it would take me no more than twenty minutes to get back to the spaceport.

I knew that what I'd made up my mind to do wasn't going to be easy. I had to find out exactly how important a job the Colonization Board had mapped out for me on Mars. She'd called me "Mr. Important Man" because—you don't get a clearance stamped the way mine was unless there's a big undertaking in store for you which has to be handled in just the right way. The walk gave me a chance to think about it. My leg didn't trouble me at all and I was very grateful for that.... I stood for a moment just outside the spaceport's railed-off, electronically-protected launching platforms, staring up at the three-hundred-foot passenger rockets gleaming with a dull metallic luster in the moonlight, their nose-cones pointing skyward.

The New Chicago Spaceport has and always will attract sightseers, because there's no other rocket launching site on Earth that can compare with it. It's not only the largest and the most elaborately equipped. It was built to last. Fifty years from now, in 2070, say, it was a safe bet the big Mars rockets would be taking off at four-hour intervals night and day. Now they took off only twice a month and there were fifty million people in the United States alone who would have given up comfort, leisure, a well-paying job and every joy they'd ever experienced or could hope to experience on Earth to be on one of those big sky ships.

As far back as I can remember I'd hated to force a showdown with people who trusted me and believed in me. And that went double for the Martian Colonization Board, whose members were doing everything possible to keep me informed. Secrecy sometimes has to be imposed, and if you try to crack an information clamp-down prematurely you deserve to be slapped down.

But now I had no choice. I had to find out if my trip could be postponed, if I could wait one more week—a month, even—to get Joan to see things my way. And that meant I had to find out just how big a job they had lined up for me.

I had no trouble getting in to see him. There was a guard at the main entrance of the Administration Building, and when I identified myself and the massive, double-doors swung inward I had to go through it a second time, and six more times in all before I reached his private office on the twentieth floor. But you couldn't call it trouble, because all I had to do was take out my wallet and display the pale blue card that was only an incitement to violence in certain quarters.