Mars is My Destination

by Frank Belknap Long

All right, that took care of him. He would live to turn vicious again. But it didn't take care of me. I was still in the worst kind of danger, and sounding off might be the unwisest thing I could do. But what chance would I have otherwise? Someone would have to know or I'd likely as not take all of the wrong risks.

I had to fight off the weakness that was coming back and be ready for anything—even a set-to with another Wendel agent or a half-dozen of them. But I had to have an ally, someone who knew the hospital as well as I knew the lines of my palm. I had to be briefed in advance, or I'd have no way of knowing how good my chances were.

How long could I stay on my feet, despite the weakness, if I decided on a desperate gamble and attempted to get out of the hospital alive? Did any of the doctors have enough authority to oppose Wendel, if I told them who I was and they believed me. Or did Wendel have so much power here they'd have to actually see the silver bird to take risks on my behalf which would bring the entire staff an exceptional courage citation from the Board—if I lived to set the record straight.

And where was the silver bird and my secret-code identification papers? Not on my person. All of my clothes had been removed and I was wearing just a one-piece, in-patient garment with no pockets in it. It stood to reason they'd gone through my clothes before attaching a tag to them and filing them away, on the off-chance I might live to reclaim them. In an emergency case they'd have displayed that much curiosity, at least. It would have been no more than a routine procedure.

Unless—Commander Littlefield had warned them not to tamper with my clothes and to return them to him immediately. No, no—that was crazy. The chances were he'd removed the silver bird and the identification papers from my inner breast pocket before they'd bundled me into the ambulance and they were now safely in his possession. Or perhaps Joan had them. It was all pure guesswork, but I was fairly certain of one thing. They hadn't found the silver bird or Glacial Stare would never have been permitted—

Hell ... why not face it. I couldn't even be completely sure of that. If Wendel was all-powerful here the doctors' hands would be tied, no matter how much they knew about me. I'd have to be in robust health and on my feet, with the silver bird gleaming on my shoulder, to overcome that kind of power.

Actually, I didn't think Commander Littlefield had told them anything. It was the kind of secret he'd guard with his life, unless he'd had reason to suspect that Wendel would send an agent to kill me before I had a chance to tell him whether or not I thought the danger was great enough to justify abandoning all secrecy ... immediately and as a simple safety precaution. He'd respect my wishes in the matter, and could certainly be excused for not having had the foresight to take maximum precautions on his own initiative. It could very easily be argued that he should have done so ... that he had blundered badly. But I refused to condemn him for keeping the secrecy obligation so firmly in mind that he'd failed to realize precisely how fast and ruthlessly Wendel could move. And even if I'd been ringed about with security precautions Wendel might have succeeded in convincing the hospital staff that the silver bird was a lead counterfeit and Littlefield an anti-Colony conspirator.

A lot of suspicion hovered over the heads of the big sky ship commanders, anyway—a sinister, shadowy aura woven of lies and slander that accompanied them everywhere and greatly curtailed their authority when they attempted to intervene in the affairs of the Colony.

All that passed through my mind as I stood staring down at Glacial Stare and helped me come to a decision. If I lived to get out of the hospital I'd be on my own with a vengeance. But Littlefield was still my best bet I'd be completely alone in totally unfamiliar surroundings, facing a challenge such as no man had ever faced before and survived to tell about it.

I'd have to make my way through the Colony on foot, a stranger in a world I'd had no time to adjust to and get back to the sky ship somehow—even if it meant talking my way into the good graces of criminals and hiding in dark alleys and learning new ways of thinking and acting the hard way—but fast—and resorting to every dodge in the book to keep one jump ahead of the Wendel agents.