"Military arrests do not require the filing of charges," the officer explained stiffly. "Come out of there now, Mr. Hemingway."
"I demand to see the terrestrial consul," Sime said, getting out.
"How about my fare?" asked the taxi-driver.
Sime put his hand into his pocket, where he kept a roll of interplanetary script; but the officer restrained him.
"Never mind now," he said ironically. "You are a guest of the government." Then to the driver he added:
"Get on, now! Get on! File your claim at the divisional office."
The driver departed, outwardly meek before the power of the military, and Sime was hustled into an official car. He had little hope that his demand to see the terrestrial consul would be complied with, and this opinion was verified when the car rose into the air and sped over the waters of the canal to South Tarog. It did not pause when it came over the military camps there—the massive ordnance depots in which were stored new and improved killing tools that had long been idle in that irksome interplanetary peace.
They flew on, over the desert, until the Gray Mountains loomed on the horizon. On, over the tumbled rocks, interspersed with the strange red thorny vegetation common in the Martian desert.
Far below them, in a ravine, a cylindrical building was now visible, and toward this the car began to drop. It landed on a level space before the structure. A sliding gate opened, and the car wheeled into a sort of courtyard, protected from the cold of night by an arching roof of glass.
Sime was hustled out and led into an office located on the lower floor of the fortification, or whatever the structure was.