Fern bowed again. "I now perform my last official duty, which is to inform you that your father wrote you a letter which was to be given to you only if your luck turned for the worse. My instructions were to place that letter under the pillow in Room 223 in the Wilburhampton, if your luck ever really turned sour. I placed the letter under the pillow an hour ago.
"And I will now, as an humble and loyal corporate servant, ask you for one small favor," said Fern. "If the letter seems to cast the vaguest light on what life might be about, I would appreciate your telephoning me at home."
Ransom K. Fern saluted by touching the shaft of his cane to his Homburg hat. "Good-by, Mr. Magnum Opus, Jr. Good-by."
The Wilburhampton Hotel was a frumpish, three-story Tudor structure across the street from the Magnum Opus Building, standing in relation to that building like an unmade bed at the feet of the Archangel Gabriel. Pine slats were tacked to the stucco exterior of the hotel, simulating half-timbered construction. The backbone of the roof had been broken intentionally, simulating great age. The eaves were plump and low, tucked under, simulated thatch. The windows were tiny, with diamond-shaped panes.
The hotel's small cocktail lounge was known as the Hear Ye Room.
In the Hear Ye Room were three people--a bartender and two customers. The two customers were a thin woman and a fat man--both seemingly old. Nobody in the Wilburhampton had ever seen them before, but it already seemed as though they had been sitting in the Hear Ye Room for years. Their protective coloration was perfect, for they looked half-timbered and broken-backed and thatched and little-windowed, too.
They claimed to be pensioned-off teachers from the same high school in the Middle West. The fat man introduced himself as George M. Helmholtz, a former bandmaster. The thin woman introduced herself as Roberta Wiley, a former teacher of algebra.
They had obviously discovered the consolations of alcohol and cynicism late in life. They never ordered the same drink twice, were avid to know what was in this bottle and what was in that one--to know what a golden dawn punch was, and a Helen Twelvetrees, and a plui d'or, and a merry widow fizz.
The bartender knew they weren't alcoholics. He was familiar with the type, and loved the type: they were simply two Saturday Evening Post characters at the end of the road.
When they weren't asking questions about the different things to drink, they were indistinguishable from millions of other American barflies on the first day of the New Age of Space. They sat solidly on their barstools, staring straight ahead at the ranks of bottles. Their lips moved constantly--experimenting dismayingly with irrelevant grins and grimaces and sneers.
Evangelist Bobby Denton's image of Earth as God's space ship was an apt one--particularly with reference to barflies. Helmholtz and Miss Wiley were behaving like pilot and co-pilot of an enormously pointless voyage through space that was expected to take forever. It was easy to believe that they had begun the voyage nattily, flushed with youth and technical training, and that the bottles before them were the instruments they had been watching for years and years and years.
It was easy to believe that each day had found the space boy and the space girl microscopically more slovenly than the day before, until now, when they were the shame of the Pan-Galactic Space Service.
Two buttons on Helmholtz's fly were open. There was shaving cream in his left ear. His socks did not match.
Miss Wiley was a crazy-looking little old lady with a lantern jaw. She wore a frizzy black wig that looked as though it had been nailed to a farmer's barn door for years.
"I see where the President has ordered a whole brand-new Age of Space to begin, to see if that won't help the unemployment picture some," said the bartender.
"Uh, huh," said Helmholtz and Miss Wiley simultaneously.
Only an observant and suspicious person would have noticed a false note in the behavior of the two: Helmholtz and Miss Wiley were too interested in time. For people who had nothing much to do and nowhere much to go, they were extraordinarily interested in their watches--Miss Wiley in her mannish wrist watch, Mr. Helmholtz in his gold pocket watch.
The truth of the matter was that Helmholtz and Miss Wiley weren't retired school teachers at all. They were both males, both masters of disguise. They were crack agents for the Army of Mars, the eyes and ears for a Martian press gang that hovered in a flying saucer two hundred miles overhead.
Malachi Constant didn't know it, but they were waiting for him.
Helmholtz and Wiley did not accost Malachi Constant when he crossed the street to the Wilburhampton. They gave no sign that he mattered to them. They let him cross the lobby and board the elevator without giving him a glance.
They did, however, glance at their watches again--and an observant and suspicious person would have noticed that Miss Wiley pressed a button on her watch, starting a stopwatch hand on its twitching rounds.
Helmholtz and Miss Wiley were not about to use violence on Malachi Constant. They had never used violence on anyone, and had still recruited fourteen thousand persons for Mars.
Their usual technique was to dress like civil engineers and offer not-quite-bright men and women nine dollars an hour, tax free, plus food and shelter and transportation, to work on a secret Government project in a remote part of the world for three years. It was a joke between Helmholtz and Miss Wiley that they had never specified what government was organizing the project, and that no recruit had ever thought to ask.
Ninety-nine per cent of the recruits were given amnesia upon arriving on Mars. Their memories were cleaned out by mental-health experts, and Martian surgeons installed radio antennas in their skulls in order that the recruits might be radio-controlled.
And then the recruits were given new names in the most haphazard fashion, and were assigned to the factories, the construction gangs, the administrative staff, or to the Army of Mars.
The few recruits who were not treated in this way were those who demonstrated ardently that they would serve Mars heroically without being doctored at all. Those lucky few were welcomed into the secret circle of those in command.
Secret agents Helmholtz and Wiley belonged to this circle. They were in full possession of their memories, and they were not radio-controlled. They adored their work, just as they were.
"What's that there Slivovitz like?" Helmholtz asked the bartender, squinting at a dusty bottle on the bottom row. He had just finished a sloe gin rickey.
"I didn't even know we had it," said the bartender. He put the bottle on the bar, tilting it away from himself so he could read the label. "Prune brandy," he said.
"Believe I'll try that next," said Helmholtz.
Ever since the death of Noel Constant, Room 223 in the Wilburhampton had been left empty--as a memorial.
Malachi Constant now let himself into Room 223. He had not been in the room since the death of his father. He closed the door behind him, and found the letter under the pillow.
Nothing in the room had been changed but the linen. The picture of Malachi as a little boy on the beach was still the only picture on the wall.
The letter said:
Dear Son: Something big and bad has happened to you or you wouldn't be reading this letter. I am writing this letter to tell you to calm down about the bad things and kind of look around and see if something good or something important anyway happened on account of we got so rich and then lost the boodle again. What I want you to try and find out is, is there anything special going on or is it all just as crazy as it looked to me?
If I wasn't a very good father or a very good anything that was because I was as good as dead for a long time before I died. Nobody loved me and I wasn't very good at anything and I couldn't find any hobbies I liked and I was sick and tired of selling pots and pans and watching television so I was as good as dead and I was too far gone to ever come back.
That is when I started the business with the Bible and you know what happened after that. It looked as though somebody or something wanted me to own the whole pl
anet even though I was as good as dead. I kept my eyes open for some kind of signal that would tell me what it was all about but there wasn't any signal. I just went on getting richer and richer.
And then your mother sent me that picture of you on the beach and the way you looked at me out of that picture made me think maybe you were what all the big money buildup was for. I decided I would die without ever seeing any sense to it and maybe you would be the one who would all of a sudden see everything clear as a bell. I tell you even a half-dead man hates to be alive and not be able to see any sense to it.
The reason I told Ransom K. Fern to give you this letter only if your luck turned bad is that nobody thinks or notices anything as long as his luck is good. Why should he?
So have a look around for me, boy. And if you go broke and somebody comes along with a crazy proposition my advice is to take it. You might just learn something when you're in a mood to learn something.
The only thing I ever learned was that some people are lucky and other people aren't and not even a graduate of the Harvard Business School can say why.
Yours truly--your Pa
There was a knock on the door of Room 223.
The door opened before Constant could reply to the knock.
Helmholtz and Miss Wiley let themselves in. They entered at precisely the right instant, having been advised by their superiors as to when, to the second, Malachi Constant would finish the letter. They had been told, too, precisely what to say to him.
Miss Wiley removed her wig, revealing herself to be a scrawny man, and Helmholtz composed his features to reveal that he was fearless and used to command.
"Mr. Constant," said Helmholtz, "I am here to inform you that the planet Mars is not only populated, but populated by a large and efficient and military and industrial society. It has been recruited from Earth, with the recruits being transferred to Mars by flying saucer. We are now prepared to offer you a direct lieutenant-colonelcy in the Army of Mars.
"Your situation on Earth is hopeless. Your wife is a beast. Moreover, our intelligence informs us that here on Earth you will not only be made penniless by civil suits, but that you will be imprisoned for criminal negligence as well.
"In addition to a pay scale and privileges well above those accorded lieutenant-colonels in Earthling armies, we can offer you immunity from all Earthling legal harassment, and an opportunity to see a new and interesting planet, and an opportunity to think about your native planet from a fresh and beautifully detached viewpoint."
"If you accept the commission," said Miss Wiley, "raise your left hand and repeat after me--"
On the following day, Malachi Constant's helicopter was found empty in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The footprints of a man led away from it for a distance of forty feet, then stopped.
It was as though Malachi Constant had walked forty feet, and had then dissolved into thin air.
On the following Tuesday, the space ship known as The Whale was rechristened The Rumfoord and was readied for firing.
Beatrice Rumfoord smugly watched the ceremonies on a television set two thousand miles away. She was still in Newport. The Rumfoord was going to be fired in exactly one minute. If destiny was going to get Beatrice Rumfoord on board, it was going to have to do it in one hell of a hurry.
Beatrice was feeling marvelous. She had proved so many good things. She had proved that she was mistress of her own fate, could say no whenever she pleased--and make it stick. She had proved that her husband's omniscient bullying was all a bluff--that he wasn't much better at forecasts than the United States Weather Bureau.
She had, moreover, worked out a plan that would enable her to live in modest comfort for the rest of her days, and would, at the same time, give her husband the treatment he deserved. The next time he materialized, he would find the estate teeming with gawkers. Beatrice was going to charge them five dollars a head to come in through the Alice-in-Wonderland door.
This was no pipe dream. She had discussed it with two supposed representatives of the mortgage-holders on the estate--and they were enthusiastic.
They were with her now, watching the preparations for the firing of The Rumfoord on television. The television set was in the same room with the huge painting of Beatrice as an immaculate little girl in white, with a white pony all her own. Beatrice smiled up at the painting. The little girl had yet to get the least bit soiled.
The television announcer now began the last minute's countdown for the firing of The Rumfoord.
During the countdown, Beatrice's mood was birdlike. She could not sit still and she could not keep quiet. Her restlessness was a result of happiness, not of suspense. It was a matter of indifference to her whether The Rumfoord was a fizzle or not.
Her two visitors, on the other hand, seemed to take the firing very seriously--seemed to be praying for the success of the shot. They were a man and a woman, a Mr. George M. Helmholtz and his secretary, a Miss Roberta Wiley. Miss Wiley was a funny-looking little old thing, but very alert and witty.
The rocket went up with a roar.
It was a flawless shot.
Helmholtz sat back and heaved a manly sigh of relief. Then he smiled and beat his thick thighs exuberantly. "By glory--" he said, "I'm proud to be an American--and proud to be living in the time I do."
"Would you like something to drink?" said Beatrice.
"Thank you very much--" said Helmholtz, "but I daren't mix business with pleasure."
"Isn't the business all over?" said Beatrice. "Haven't we discussed everything?"
"Well--Miss Wiley and I had hoped to take an inventory of the larger buildings on the grounds," said Helmholtz, "but I'm afraid it's gotten quite dark. Are there floodlights?"
Beatrice shook her head. "Sorry," she said.
"Perhaps you have a powerful flashlight?" said Helmholtz.
"I can probably get you a flashlight," said Beatrice, "but I don't think it's really necessary for you to go out there. I can tell you what all the buildings are." She rang for the butler, told him to bring a flashlight. "There's the tennis house, the greenhouse, the gardener's cottage, what used to be the gate house, the carriage house, the guest house, the tool shed, the bath house, the kennel, and the old water tower."
"Which one is the new one?" said Helmholtz.
"The new one?" said Beatrice.
The butler returned with a flashlight, which Beatrice gave to Helmholtz.
"The metal one," said Miss Wiley.
"Metal?" said Beatrice puzzled. "There aren't any metal buildings. Maybe some of the weathered shingles have kind of a silvery look." She frowned. "Did somebody tell you there was a metal building here?"
"We saw it when we came in," said Helmholtz.
"Right by the path--in the undergrowth near the fountain," said Miss Wiley.
"I can't imagine," said Beatrice.
"Could we go out and have a look?" said Helmholtz.
"Yes--of course," said Beatrice, rising.
The party of three crossed the zodiac on the foyer floor, moved into the balmy dark.
The flashlight beam danced before them.
"Really--" said Beatrice, "I'm as curious to find out what it is as you are."
"It looks like kind of a prefabricated thing made out of aluminum," said Miss Wiley.
"It looks like a mushroom-shaped water tank or something," said Helmholtz, "only it is squatting right on the ground."
"Really?" said Beatrice.
"You know what I said it was, don't you?" said Miss Wiley.
"No--" said Beatrice, "what did you say it was?"
"I have to whisper," said Miss Wiley playfully, "or somebody will want to lock me up in the crazy house." She put her hand to her mouth, directing her loud whisper to Beatrice. "Flying saucer," she said.
chapter four
TENT RENTALS
Rented a tent, a tent, a tent;
Rented a tent, a tent, a tent.
Rented a tent!
Rented a tent!
R
ented a, rented a tent.
--SNARE DRUM ON MARS
The men had marched to the parade ground to the sound of a snare drum. The snare drum had this to say to them:
Rented a tent, a tent, a tent;
Rented a tent, a tent, a tent.
Rented a tent!
Rented a tent!
Rented a, rented a tent.
They were an infantry division of ten thousand men, formed in a hollow square on a natural parade ground of solid iron one mile thick. The soldiers stood at attention on orange rust. They shivered rigidly, being as much like iron as they could be--both officers and men. Their uniforms were a rough-textured, frosty green--the color of lichens.
The army had come to attention in utter silence. No audible or visible signal had been given. They had come to attention as a man, as though through a stupendous coincidence.
The third man in the second squad of the first platoon of the second company of the third battalion of the second regiment of the First Martian Assault Infantry Division was a private who had been broken from lieutenant-colonel three years before. He had been on Mars for eight years.
When a man in a modern army is broken from field grade to private, it is likely that he will be old for a private, and that his comrades in arms, once they get used to the fact that he isn't an officer any more, will, out of respect for his failing legs, eyes, and wind, call him something like Pops, or Gramps, or Unk.
The third man in the second squad of the first platoon of the second company in the third battalion of the second regiment of the First Martian Assault Infantry Division was called Unk. Unk was forty years old. Unk was a well-made man--a light heavyweight, dark-skinned, with poet's lips, with soft brown eyes in the shaded caves of a Cro-Magnon brow ridge. Incipient baldness had isolated a dramatic scalplock.
An illustrative anecdote about Unk:
One time, when Unk's platoon was taking a shower, Henry Brackman, Unk's platoon sergeant, asked a sergeant from another regiment to pick out the best soldier in the platoon. The visiting sergeant, without any hesitation, picked Unk, because Unk was a compact, nicely muscled, intelligent man among boys.