"Oh?" said Scott.
The Green Arrow was the name the news services had given a guerrilla leader who'd spearheaded the resistance movement against the Rockheads before World Government had got around to any definite action. The name came from a chalk symbol he had left behind him after each raid or foray. Around the Green Arrow had rallied a handful of partisans who had not been content with W.G.'s slow and not-so-sure methods of deposing the Rockhead regime. They were men of ideals and, more than that, of action. Somewhere in the desert below Syrtis had been the Arrow's headquarters. All the punitive expeditions of the Rockheads had failed to find him. No one had known who he was. On the rare occasions that an Arrow man was captured, no amount of torture could get a single secret from him.
The damage the Green Arrow did to the Rockheads was negligible in its overall effect. But he had been more than a night raider—he'd been a symbol to the people in the Rockhead yoke that someone was actively on their side. There was a tremendous lift in spirit each time the Arrow hit a Rockhead target, and for days thereafter people in the community where he had struck—and in others, too—were more cocky and less cooperative than the Rockheads thought they had a right to be. The Arrow's raids sparked slow-down movements and some sabotage and evoked Rockhead reprisals, against guilty and innocent alike. Some of the reprisals were cruel—so cruel that they would have deterred a less determined man—but the Green Arrow was not to be swayed. He remained—even after he was captured and executed—a symbol of liberty in a land which had not tasted such a blessing for years.
Galactic News had covered the Green Arrow story from start to finish. G.N. gave it the full treatment, despite threats from the Rockheads and the denial to it of certain newsgathering facilities. More than that, Scott Warren got permission from G.N.'s New York headquarters to send a man out to interview the Arrow. The reporter got through where all the anti-partisan forces of the Rockheads had failed, and interviewed the Arrow in his desert headquarters. That interview was the journalistic beat of the year—and was highly embarrassing to the Rockheads. Shortly thereafter the reporter was arrested by the Rockhead secret police, and it took all the influence of World Government to have him released. The name of that reporter was George Mercer. He was now covering the Martian parliament for Galactic News.
There had been more in Mercer's story than had been made public, however. Before Galactic broke the story, it went with it to W.G. A high diplomatic official there, in the interests of security, asked G.N. to withhold one fact, and Galactic agreed. As things turned out it was nothing W.G. hadn't known; but something in the nature of a politico-military secret. It was the name of the Green Arrow.
Scott Warren knew what the name was, but it meant nothing to him. He got Mercer's original story out of the files—it had once been kept in a safe—and put it in an inside pocket.
"This used to be classified material," he said to the girl. "It's not any more. I don't know why you want it."
Ylia smiled. "Are you ready to go?"