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Mars is My Destination

<h2>4</h2> There was only one small window in Trilling's office. But I could see that the sky outside was still bright with stars, and the glimmer of the ceiling lamp made the metal surface above us seem to fall away and dissolve into a much wider expanse of star-studded space. The ceiling-mirrored image of the lamp itself looked like the Sun, blazing in noonday brightness directly overhead and out beyond were galaxies and super-galaxies strung like beads on a wire across the great curve of the universe. It was just an illusion, of course. You could see the same thing in the light-mirroring depths of a glass of wine, if you stared hard enough. But for an instant it seemed to bring bigness, vastness right into the room with us. I was conscious of the silence again, lengthening, hanging heavy between us, as if we'd each said too much, or possibly ... not quite enough. Then Trilling bent and removed something else from his desk. I couldn't see what it was until he set it down directly in front of me, because it was much smaller than the midget tape recorder and his hand covered it. A flat metal box, wafer-thin, doesn't provide much scope for speculation, and I was pretty sure that the object inside was a tiny metal precision instrument or a watch or a medal even before he said: "This should make Joan change her mind, Ralph!" and snapped the box open. The insignia caught and held the light, a two-inch silver hawk with its wings outspread. The white lining of the box made it stand out, as if it were flying through fleecy clouds high in the sky, and symboling in its flight far more than just the elevation of one man to the highest command post the Martian Colonization Board had the authority to bestow. The significance of that finely-wrought, seldom-worn silver bird was not lost on me. In the maze of a hundred legends, a hundred witness-confirmed stories of triumph and disappointment, of heroic progress and tragic back-tracking, it had remained an important link between Earthside expectations and what was actually taking place on Mars. Only one man could wear it at any one time, and only four men had worn it since the establishment of the colony. All four were dead now, their gravestones a white gleaming on the red desert sand a few miles north of the colony. "Well, Ralph?" Trilling said. I tried hard to maintain my composure, to say just the right thing, because I'd lived long enough to know there are depths beyond depths to some emotions that can't be put into words. Attempt to talk the way you feel, and you're sure to sound a little ridiculous. I was only certain of one thing. No man could wear that insignia and not feel, resting upon his shoulders, a responsibility so tremendous that whatever pride he might take in it would have to be tempered by humility—if he wanted to go on wearing it for long. Trilling seemed aware of what was passing through my mind, for he made it easy for me. He simply smiled, snapped the box shut with a briskness that was almost casual, and handed it to me. "You've got real massive military prestige now, Ralph," he said. "Right at the moment the Board would be gravely concerned if you wore that insignia in public. But there's nothing to prevent you from wearing it in the privacy of your own home. Later on the Board may decide you can accomplish more by coming right out and letting the colonists know there's a lion in the streets who intends to do more than just roar. A safe, protective kind of lion—dangerous only to over-ambitious men with destructive ideas." I started to reply but he waved me to silence. "Hold on, Ralph—let me finish. You won't be wearing that insignia in public straight off. But I hope you'll have enough good sense to make the best possible use of it to overcome the first really big obstacle in your path." He nodded. "It will be a kind of blackmail, in a way—morally reprehensible. You'll be taking advantage of something it isn't in a woman's nature to resist. But you have no choice. You've got to go to Mars and if you went alone you'd be about as useful to us as a celibate kangaroo, all packaged and ready to be sent on a journey to the taxidermist." He seemed to realize it wouldn't have to be quite that drastic, for he grimaced wryly. "All right, all right. You could go out and find another woman and I probably could talk the Board into being the opposite of stuffy about it. But I happen to know what kind of man you are, and how you feel about Joan. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure she's the only woman in the world for you." There was nothing I could say to that. I had the insignia in my inner breast pocket, and I knew that there were few obstacles it couldn't blast away on Earth or on Mars, if I kept remembering what it symbolized with Joan at my side. I went out into the cool night again, past that long tremendous building with just one of its floors ablaze, past the big sky ships looming like sentinel ghosts on their launching pads, past winking lights and speeding cars and pedestrians walking slowly and something inside of me made me feel I'd undergone a kind of sea change, and could face whatever the future might hold without grabbing for a life-line that didn't exist. It was a good way to feel. A man had to sink or swim without having a life-line thrown to him—if he hoped to live long enough to change things around in an important way on Mars. He had to keep his head and breast the raging currents with the sturdiest kind of overhand strokes, or be drawn down into the undertow and battered senseless against the rocks that lined the shoreline. The change must have shown a little on the surface, in the set of my jaw or just the way I was walking, because no less than three pedestrians turned to stare at me as I went striding past them on my way to the New Chicago Underground. I was almost at the northern entrance of the big, tree-lined square directly opposite the Administration Building when it hit me—the memory-recall, the swift emergence from its cubby-hole deep in my mind of the narrow brush I'd had with Death and hadn't even discussed with Trilling. It had been a mistake not to discuss it, because it concerned the Board as much as it did me. Someone who knew about the insignia—or had made a shrewd guess as to just how big a job was awaiting me on Mars—had wanted me dead. The attempt on my life took on a much larger, more crucial dimension when viewed in that light. There were three hundred million people in the United States, and if I'd been just a private citizen, with no more than my own safety at stake, I could have lost myself in that immense ocean of humanity for a week or a month and gained a brief respite. There are plenty of ways you can protect yourself against a surprise attempt on your life, if you have the time to take safety precautions. When there's a would-be assassin at large who is dead set on measuring you for a coffin you have to work the problem out carefully, with a minimum of risk. It takes skill and psychological insight, but it can be done. You've just got to remember that an assassin is never quite normal. Even when a socio-political motivation is the governing passion of his life you're one jump ahead of him the instant you've figured out exactly how his mind works. In fact, one of those safety precautions could have been protecting me as I crossed the square, if I hadn't let my stubborn pride stand in the way. Why hadn't I asked Trilling to provide me with armed protection? Two alert bodyguards, trailing me on the street and down into the Underground and standing watch outside my apartment all night long—and staying fifty paces behind me until the Mars' rocket zero-count ended and the big sky ship took off with a roar ... would have given the Board the kind of reassurance they had a right to expect. I started to turn back, then changed my mind abruptly. I'd taken just as great a risk by walking from the lakeside to the skyport right after the attack, hadn't I? And I'd be in the Underground in another three or four minutes, with people around me and— All right. It was an out-of-focus rationalization and nothing more—an attempt to find an excuse for not turning back. But when I do something reckless for complicated reasons, when I've forged ahead despite my better judgment, I'm usually just impulsive enough to carry the folly-ball all the way across the goal line. It was the thing I'd have to guard most against on Mars, that damnable twisted pride and impulsiveness, that taking of too much for granted when I started to do something I knew was unwise, but had an overpowering urge to carry out anyway. Every weaving shadow beneath the double row of trees that towered on both sides of me could have cloaked a crouching figure adjusting another small mechanical killer to the deadliest possible angle of flight. But I had another reason for not wanting to go back. Trilling might fall in with the armed guard idea but I doubted it like hell. I could picture him saying instead: "Ralph, even an armed car can be blown up. You're staying under lock and key all night ... right here in the Administration Building." I could even picture him saying much the same thing to Joan, her image bright enough on his office tele-screen to be visible from where I'd be standing: "He's not coming home tonight, Joan. We're sending an armored car to pick you up in the morning. Wait, hold on—I'll let you talk to him!" And I could almost hear her replying: "Don't bother to send the car. I'm not going with him. Please don't think too harshly of me, please try to understand. I just can't—" I started down the long boulevard on the far side of the square, still walking rapidly and feeling suddenly confident I'd been justified in not turning back. I could see the entrance to the Underground glimmering in the darkness a hundred feet ahead of me and there were people all around me walking in both directions. I wasn't even troubled by the feeling that everyone gets at times—that something terrible and unexpected can happen right in the midst of a crowd, if only because the presence of many people exposes you to a dangerously wide range of unpredictable human emotions. For the barest instant, when I crossed the narrow strip of pavement directly in front of the kiosk, fear tugged at my nerves and I felt myself growing tense. But I became calm again the moment I looked around and saw that the only pedestrian within thirty feet of me was a hurrying girl with a portfolio under her arm. When she saw how intently I was staring at her she frowned and a look of annoyance came into her eyes. Oh, for God's sake, I told myself, get rid of this nagging uncertainty, and stop behaving like a fool. If he intended to try again tonight I'd know by now. He's missed a dozen very good chances, so something must be making him super-cautious, if he hasn't keeled over just from the strain of watching me refuse to die. Killing's never easy, even for a professional. It must be a little like being cut open, watching your own blood pouring out of you, because all violence inflicts a two-way trauma ... severe enough at times to make even a mad slayer fling down his gun before going on a rampage of indiscriminate slaughter. There were arguments I could have used to wrap it up even tighter—such as the way he'd be trapped and blasted down almost instantly if he launched another attack on me so close to the spaceport's three interlocking, hyper-sensitive security alert systems. But I didn't even pause to weigh them, because right up to that minute I'd done very well, and the fear which had come upon me had been as brief as an autumnal flurry of wind when you're coming around a tall building at breakneck speed. <hr class="tb" /> I let the girl dart past me, taking my time, and in another five seconds was descending into the big, brightly lighted cavern that was New Chicago's intercity pride. As every school kid knows, the New Chicago Underground is six years old, and is the largest, smoothest-running transportation system in the world. It cost seven billion dollars to build and has almost as many tracks and suburban off-shoots as station guards. It interlocks, spirals outward in a half dozen directions and circles back upon itself. In a way, it's like the serpent you see in bas-reliefs dating back three thousand years, in Babylonian and Pre-Dynastic Egyptian tombs, for instance, or on totem poles in the Northwest ... a serpent that's continually swallowing its own tail. It's the oldest archeological art-form on Earth and is supposed to symbolize Eternal Life. But to some people at least the New Chicago Underground symbolizes something far more gloomy. If you're not careful to board just the right train you can get lost in its tomblike, spiraling immensity and feel as helpless as a wandering ghost or an experimental laboratory animal caught up in a blind maze. You can be carried fifty miles in the wrong direction and look out through the windows of a train traveling at half the speed of sound, and see a country landscape or the wide sweep of Lake Michigan five minutes after you've settled down in a comfortable chair and become absorbed in the news of the day on micro-film. You'll stare out and the section of the city where your home is located just won't be sweeping past. You'll have to get off at the next station, perhaps twenty or thirty miles further on, ride back, and board another train. It's seldom quite as frustrating as that, but only because most of the riders have been conditioned to keep their wits about them through a nightmare kind of trial-and-error apprenticeship. You've got to stay alert until you've boarded a train with just the right combination of numerals on its destination plate. It isn't hard to do, unless you're carrying a tiny silver hawk in a wafer-thin case, and your destination may be changed without warning and with unbelievable infamy by someone capable of great evil who would much prefer not to have you board a train at all. I could almost picture him weaving in and out between the platform crowds—faceless so far, but quite possibly glassy-eyed with little waltzing death-heads in the depth of his pupils. An unknown human cipher intent on my destruction, refusing to be discouraged by the failure of a small mechanical killer to do the job for him. If I'd had a strong reason to believe I actually was being followed, if he'd come right out into the open and I could have caught a glimpse of him, however brief, I'd have felt a subconscious relief that would have kept me on guard and confident. It would have given me an edge that not even the fact that I had no gun could have taken away from me. It's the unknown and unpredictable that's unnerving, the realization that invisible eyes may be scrutinizing you from a distance and the brain behind them deciding that it would be a great mistake to let a failure of nerve or concern for the consequences interfere with what had to be done. He wouldn't be wanting me to wear that insignia ever—on Earth or on Mars—and just knowing that made me almost miss my train as it came rushing toward me. The train was so crowded I had to stand, but I had no complaint on that score. In a seat, with people jamming the aisle in front of me, I'd have been wedged in even more securely. In a standing position I could edge forward and back and keep an eye on the passengers who were holding fast to the horizontal support rail on both sides of me. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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