The Best of Margaret St. Clair

IDRIS’ PIG

“Do you have to talk so much, gesell?” Bill begged hollowly from his bunk. His face, which had turned pale at the Cyniscus’ take-off two days before, was by now the pale curded green of a piece of bosula cheese, and his eyes were sunk. “It sounds as if you were trying to keep yourself from thinking about Darleen. I don’t want to be ungrateful, but all that talk makes me feel worse.”

George shook his head. “Before you can get over your attack of kenoalgia,” he said remorselessly, “you’ll have to realize what’s causing it. There’s nothing wrong with you physically, but being in open space for the first time in your life is giving your ego the worst beating it’s ever had. The first spacemen, who weren’t trained psychologists, couldn’t believe that so much nausea and prostration could have mental causes. They attributed it to a marasmic action of cosmic rays on nervous tissue, and the first two expeditions to land on Luna mutinied rather than go through ‘space scurvy’ getting home again.” He cleared his throat.

“Kenoalgia’s a new disease,” he went on, “because it’s a response to a new situation for the human organism, being out of Earth’s gravitational field. Psychologically, it’s a combination of repressed fear of falling, anxiety about bodily integrity, and the rejection response. The cure—say, do you smell something funny in here?”

Bill opened one eye and looked at him. “Uh-uh,” he said.

“Something sort of fishy and rank? No? Well, as I was saying, the cure—”

“Get out,” Bill said wanly, “Please get out. Go away and brood about Darleen. I don’t care if you are my cousin and the Cyniscus’ psychological officer, when you talk it makes me feel worse.”

Looking hurt, George began to unwind his long legs from the rungs of his chair. “You’re sure you don’t notice that smell?” he asked solicitously. “It might be adding to your nausea.”

“Don’t smell a thing,” Bill replied firmly. “You’re imagining it. Oh, by the way, could you turn the projector on before you go? No. 9, Blue Disks, is my favorite. It seems to help my giddiness.”

“Sure.” George made the adjustments. A galaxy of blue and purple disks appeared on the wall opposite Bill’s bunk. Motionless themselves, they blinked on and off in a succession of patterns that might, George conceded, be soothing to kenoalgia dizziness. “Anything else I can do for you?” he asked, lingering.

“Call the medical officer.”

“No sense in that. Kenoalgia is purely—”

“Psychological. I know. Get out.”

When the door had closed, Bill, looking very sick and very, very resolute, got out of his bunk. He tottered over to the little brown box which stood on top of his Travelpak, and gave an anxious sniff. An expression of consternation came over his face. He sniffed again. Then he got a deodorant spray out of his bureauette and went over the box with meticulous care, stopping only when his sense of smell told him all was sweet once more. Gaunt and shaking in his long chicory-colored sleeping tunic, he crawled back at last into bed.

In the ship’s lounge, Mr. Farnsworth was talking to George. George had long ago divided all passengers into three groups: those who snooted you because you were one of the hired help; those who stood you drinks because you were, after all, one of the officers; and those who kept leading the conversation around to psychoanalysis, hoping you’d do a little free work on them. Mr. Farnsworth belonged to the second group.

“Too bad I’m transshipping at Marsport,” the older man said expansively as the barman brought their drinks. “This is a big time of year for the Martians. I hate to miss the festivals.”

“Oh, is it?” George replied vaguely. He had accepted Farnsworth’s offer of a drink merely because he hadn’t known how to refuse it. What he really wanted was to get down to his cabin and (not think about Darleen—certainly not) and look up an article in the Journal of Psychosomatokgy on new treatments for space scurvy. He was a little worried about Bill.

“Yes. You know how the Martians are—a time for everything, and lots of festivals. Well, this is the time when they make business arrangements for all next year. Treaties, too, affairs of state, that sort of thing. And it winds up with a big celebration with pretty girls, perfume carts, soma fountains in the iters, all the fancy stuff you can think of. As I say, I hate to miss it, but I’m going starside. Transshipping in a sealed tube so I won’t have to go through the octroi.” He drank from his glass. “Have another drink.”

“No, thank you, I—”

“Oh, a little more phlomis won’t hurt you. Here, barman, two more of the same…”

Several drinks later Farnsworth said, “Say, Baker, could you do me a favor?”

“Well I—” George started. Phlomis had a little dulled his innate caution, but he was still wary.

“Oh, it’s nothing.” Farnsworth drew a lucite disk from his pocket. “This is for a man that works at the Topaz Rhyoorg, just on the edge of the spaceport. You may know him—his name’s Louey Varth. His sister Myrtle asked me to give this to him when I was on Mars, and like a gowk I promised, forgetting I wouldn’t be off ship. It’s a picture of her little girl.”

George inspected the three-dimensional image of the spindly blonde child which was imbedded in the clear material. “Well, I suppose—”

The ship’s announcing system began to blare excitedly. “George Baker report at once in cabin 1 IB. George Baker report at once in cabin 1 IB. On the double!”

Eleven-B was Bill’s cabin. George sprang to his feet, shoving the lucite disk absently into his pocket. “Got to go,” he said. Mr. Farnsworth looked after him.

It did not need the medical officer’s pursed lips to tell George that Bill was worse. Bill’s pupils were dilated, his breathing shallow and rough. Crusts had formed on his lip. George felt a st ab of guilt, mixed with surprise.

“The steward called me,” the medical officer explained rather severely. “The patient’s condition frightened him. In my opinion, he should be hospitalized—with your consent, of course. I’ve given a him a sedative.” The medical officer, Daniel, was a stiff little man with a great respect for professional etiquette. He changed his tunic three times daily when the Cyniscus was in space, and flirted warily with the lady passengers. He and George had always disliked each other.

“He had the classical syndrome for kenoalgia,” George murmured defensively.

“Kenoalgia, certainly,” Daniel snapped. “But he’s also suffering from food poisoning of the gamma type.”

“Want to talk to George,” Bill panted, looking up anxiously. “Got to talk to George. Get out, doc. Got to talk to George.” His forehead was wet.

Daniel took Bill’s circulatory reading and frowned. “Five minutes,” he warned. “No more.” His stiff blue back expressing disapproval of George’s mistaken diagnosis, he went out.

“Listen, George,” Bill croaked weakly when the door had closed, “you got to deliver the pig.”

“Pig?” George answered incredulously. “Now, now, don’t worry. You’ll be all right.”

“I’m not delirious,” Bill answered with a flare of spirit. “Just damn ed sick. The pig’s over there, in that little brown box.

“I’m working on a private courier service—‘speed and secrecy guaranteed’—between Terra and the planets, and that pig is what I have to deliver on this trip. If I don’t deliver it, I’ll be black listed. You’ve got to deliver it for me.”

Still incredulous but obedient to Bill’s pointing finger, George got the box and opened it. He was greeted by a fishy smell and a feeble oink. Inside, a small blue animal some twenty centimeters long, regarded him comatosely.

“It’s some kind of cult object,” Bill explained. “One of those Martian cults.” He stopped to retch. “You spray it with deodorant to keep it from smelling. But you don’t have to feed it or anything.”

“But—”

“Listen, if you deliver it you can have half my bonus, and then you can marry Darleen. You said she’d marry you if only you had more in the bank. You won’t get into any trouble with the pig. It’s not like it was valuable.”

Daniel knocked on the door. “Two minutes more,” he said warningly.

“You’re to give it to a man with a black camellia in his buttonhole you’ll meet at the north edge of the spaceport at 23 on Thursday, Martian time.” Bill’s words were coming more and more slowly: the sedative Daniel had given him seemed to be taking effect. “He’s the cult’s representative. You… go… up to him… and… and say, ‘Perfumed Mars, planet of perfumes,’ and he’ll… he’ll…”

Bill’s eyelids fluttered and sank. George shook him gently without result. He was out like a light.

Daniel opened the door. “Ah, I see he’s quiet now,” he said, coming in. “I trust you agree he should be put in the hospital.”

“Oh, certainly,” George replied. He had picked up the pig’s carrying case and was holding it under one arm as he tried to think. “I quite agree with you.”

Daniel relaxed a little. He called two stewards. Bill was loaded on a stretcher and carried out into the hall. As the stretcher rounded the door post one of the stewards stumbled and Bill got a jar that made the teeth click audibly in his head. His eyes opened. He was looking straight at George. “Pig,” he said insistently, “pig.” He groaned and then lapsed into unconsciousness again.

He’d have to deliver the pig now, George thought. Bill’s last words had been like the injunction of a dying man, impossible to disobey. Besides, they were cousins, Bill’s job depended on it, and there was the not inconsiderable matter of the bonus and Darleen. Professionally speaking, George had noticed a lack of euphoria in himself lately. It must be caused by his frustrated feeling for the girl.

All the same it was a mess. Mars was less than 42 hours away, and Bill might be unconscious until after they landed. In that case, George would have to deliver the pig (at 23, to a man wearing a black camellia) without knowing the countersign. He hated messy things. It was a good thing the pig wasn’t valuable.

He rooted around in Bill’s baggage until he found the deodorant spray and then carried it and the pig to his own cabin. As he opened the door the polka-dotted purple zygodactyl he had bought the last time they touched at Venus opened one eye and stared evilly at him. “You’ll be sorry!” it croaked. “You’ll be sorry!” It was the only thing George had ever been able to teach the bird to say; it had been funny at first, but George was beginning to be tired of it. “You’ll be sorry,” the zygodactyl went on, working itself up into a verbal frenzy, “you’ll be sorry, you’ll be sorry, you’ll be sorry!”

George threw a book at it to make it shut up. Then he pulled out his bunk to its fullest extent, sat down on it, and looked at the pig.

His first impression, that it was alive, seemed to be correct. When he punched it with his finger it made a weak noise, and even moved its mouth at him. But it was a sluggish, low-grade kind of life. The pig appeared to be basically a collection of fatty tissue surrounded with a pale blue skin. Considering its size it might have been an attractive, appealing little animal, but it wasn’t. It had no personality.

It was beginning to smell. George gave it a good spraying and bent to put it in his foot locker. He hesitated. Bill had said it wasn’t valuable, but there was something funny about Bill’s food poisoning, when you considered it. Nobody else on the ship had been affected. You never could tell with religious things.

The cabin was poor in hiding places. In the end George loosened one of the plastitiles of the ceiling with a multi-tool and shoved the pig up in the space behind. It would get plenty of air there, at any rate. He anchored the tile in place again with a sliver of preemex.

He had other patients to see to. He couldn’t spend all day on Bill’s pig. He took one last look at the ceiling and then went out. As he closed the door the zygodactyl croaked, “You’ll be sorry!” at him.

In the forty-one and a third hours before the Cyniscus put in at Marsport, George’s cabin was searched twice without the pig’s, apparently, being discovered. George made attempt after attempt to see Bill, but his cousin was always receiving sedation. It was not until the ship was almost in Mars’ atmosphere that he was admitted to the hospital ward.

Bill, looking extremely wan, was lying on one pillow with a refrigerator pack on the back of his head. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi. You look terrible. Say, what’s the countersign?”

Bill frowned. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I’ve tried and tried to think, but somehow I can’t remember.”

“Mental block, caused by anxiety,” George barked professionally. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get it out of you in no time under deep hypnosis.”

The red-headed nurse who had been hovering in the background came up. “You’ll have to go if you excite him,” she said warningly.

Bill waved her aside with one thin hand. “It doesn’t matter, though,” he said. “Give the pig to the man with the black camellia. It’s not valuable.”

“My cabin’s been searched twice.”

“You’re imagining it. Martian cults aren’t important, the way religion is on Earth. You know how Martians are—extremely sane, realistic, unimaginative. Only a little lunatic fringe is interested in their cults. Nobody’s trying to get the pig away from you.” Bill had majored in Martian subjects at the University.

“Well, if it’s so unimportant, why did they send it from Terra with a private courier?”

“Save time, I guess. You know how many complaints there’ve been about the slowness of the regular mail. I don’t think the cult has more than six members all told. But don’t you worry about it. You deliver the pig.”

The nurse came up and took Bill’s circulatory reading. She pursed her lips. “You’ll have to go,” she said to George.

The north side of the spaceport was near the drainage pits. As George approached it through the flickering shadows of the Martian night there seemed to be echoes everywhere. He felt tense and keyed up. Of course Bill was right, and nobody was trying to get the pig. On the other hand, he had always found his cousin’s judgment brash and overconfident. He shifted the pig’s carrying case under his arm, a movement which added a taint of fish to the perfumed Martian breeze, and swallowed. His throat was dry.

The man with the black camellia was waiting about fifty meters further on, in the shadow of one of the triple cranes. George went up to him, his footfalls echoing slowly on the rhodium-colored pave. He cleared his throat. “Perfumed Mars, planet of perfumes,” he said.

“Huh?” the man said after a minute. He was a big man, of a typically somatotonic build, and he put a world of interrogation into the sound.

“Perfumed Mars, planet of perfumes,” George repeated, beginning to grow warm around the ears.

“Run along, sonny,” the man said indulgently. He turned his head to one side for a leisurely expectoration. George saw, in the skipping light of Phobos, that what he had thought was a black camellia was, in fact, one of the half-animal Dryland epiphytes which Martian geeksters liked to wear. “Run along,” the somatotonic type repeated. “You got the wrong tzintz. Do I look like I’d be interested in sightseeing tours?”

His face hot, George beat a retreat. Of all the fool things to have to go up and say to a stranger! “Perfumed Ma rs, planet—” Bah! As far as he was concerned, Mars and the pig both stank.

A good deal farther on he encountered the second man. He was a small, dark tzintz (Martian for “bozo”) with a thin little goatee. George circled around him warily, making sure that he was really wearing a camellia and that it really was black, before he spoke.

“Perfumed Mars, planet of perfumes,” he said. “Rubbledyrubbledryrubbledlyrube,” the stranger said, his head bent.

George paused. A suspicion was stirring in his mind. What the man had answered might have been Old Martian, of course, but surely the countersign would have been in Terrese, like the sign itself. And anyhow, it hadn’t sounded like a language at all, just mumbling.

“Perfumed Mars, planet of perfumes,” he said for the fourth time that night.

“Rubbledlvrube,” the thin dark tzintz answered, more briefly. He stuck out his hand.

George drew back. There was a fishy odor about this. It smelled as bad as the pig. “No you don’t,” he snapped. I—”

The next thing he knew he was lying at the bottom of one of the drainage pits, a lump as big as a rhea egg on his head. From above someone was speaking to him.

“Be reasonable!” the voice said scoldingly. “How do you expect me to pull you up if you won’t cooperate? Do be reasonable!”

Something brushed George lightly on the face. He sat up, rubbing the lump on his head and trying not to groan.

“That’s better,” the voice said encouragingly. “Now you’re being reasonable. The next time I cast for you with the shari, take hold of the mesh and pull yourself up.”

Once more there came a light touch on George’s face. He looked up. A girl was leaning over the edge of the drainage pit, trailing her shari at him.

The shari is an invariable part of the costume of Martian women of every class. A long, strong, slender net, as richly ornamented as the means of its owner will allow, it is used to carry parcels, tie up the hair, transport young children, and as an emergency brassiere. A Martian woman would feel naked without it and, by Terrestrial standards, she very nearly would be. This was the first time George had ever been asked to climb up one. As it trailed over his face again he hooked his fingers in it and pulled himself upright.

“That’s fine!” the girl cried. Even in the poor light he could see that she was a good-looking girl—though not, of course, as pretty as Darleen. Darleen was like a picture, never a hair out of place. “You hold on, and I’ll tie it around the winch.”

Still holding the shari she got lightly to her feet and whirled off into the darkness. “Hook your fingers and toes in the mesh!” she called back. George obeyed. After a moment the shari began to move slowly upward. Obviously the girl had tied its end to a hand winch and was pulling him up. He only hoped the shari wouldn’t break.

He stepped out on the level just as the mesh of the shari gave an ominous creak. He was still disentangling himself from it when the girl came back. She was panting a little and her dark red hair was disarranged. “Tore my shari some,” she observed ruefully, taking the net from George. She smoothed her hair with a skillful hand, settled the shari around her head so that it fell in a glinting golden cascade over her nape, and drew the shari’s end through her girdle in front to form a garment which, if not exactly modest, was adequate.

Her toilet completed, she looked scrutinizingly at George. “My, he certainly hit you hard,” she said. “Did he get away with the pig?”

George winced. The pig was something he didn’t want to be reminded of. And anyhow, what did this girl know about it? “What pig?” he asked warily.

“Oh, be reasonable. You know very well what I mean. Idris’ pig. You should have taken better care of it.”

“Um.”

“Well, you should. Say, what’s your name?”

“George.”

“Well, mine’s Blixa. I was supposed to pick up the pig.”

This was a little too much. “You’re not wearing a black camellia,” George pointed out rather acidly. “And you’re certainly not a man.”

“No, of course not.” Blixa agreed, looking down at her slim round body with some complacency. “But there was a last minute change in our plans. The regular messenger couldn’t come. They sent me instead. Try me. I know the countersign.”

“Perfumed Mars, planet of perfumes,” George said unwillingly.

“Perfumes that take captive or set free the heart,” Blixa said briskly. “See. I know it. I was supposed to get the pig.”

George looked at her thoughtfully. His head was aching so much that clear thought was difficult. And besides, the scent that Blixa wore (Martian women were always drenched in it) disturbed and oddly troubled him. All the same, in the depths of his mind an alarm signal was going off. Blixa might be telling the truth, but there was about her, as palpably as her heady perfume, a positive aura of unreliability. He wouldn’t have trusted her as far as he could throw a rhyoorg with one hand.

“Um,” he said. They had been walking along slowly as they talked, and by now had come, through the scented Martian shadows, to the top of a little rise. Marsport at night, a glittering twinkling incredible pageant, lay spread out in front of them.

“Well, I was,” Blixa said impatiently. “But only Pharol knows where the pig is now.”

“Out there somewhere, I guess,” George said, indicating the ten thousand dancing lights.

“No doubt,” Blixa replied. “But it’s too important to dismiss like that. Do you want to help me try to get it back?”

George hesitated. He had an overpowering hunch that a man who was associated with Blixa was heading for trouble. “You’ll be sorry!” the zygodactyl had croaked at him. On the other hand, Bill’s job depended on making safe delivery of the pig, and he had always been fond of Bill in an unsentimental masculine way. There was the matter of the bonus which would, he was almost sure, provide the final argument in persuading Darleen to marry him. And besides, some reliable person ought to keep an eye on this girl.

“All right,” he said. “Nobody can steal my pig and get away with it.”

“Fine!” Blixa exclaimed. “Then we’ll go hunt a good clairvoyant to locate it for us.”

“Clairvoyant?” George echoed incredulously. The idea was so foreign to the notion he had formed of Blixa’s character he could not believe he had heard her aright.

“Certainly. How else are we to find the pig? I never can see why you Earth people admit that telepathy and clairvoyance and other sorts of ESP exist, and yet refuse to consult experts in them. It’s not reasonable.”

They were coming now to populous streets. Blixa’s long graceful stride (not as feminine, though, as Darleen’s shorter one) made walking with her agreeable. Ahead of them a laughing girl dashed out of a doorway, her white thighs flashing under her blue shari, and ran down the street. A young man ran after her, his sandals going slap slap slap. A perfume cart, rumbling past, drenched them both, and as the driver came abreast of George he raised the nozzle and showered him with the fragrant drops. Somebody was throwing aveen petals from a rooftop; somebody else was playing on a double anzidar. The music, thin and high and a little sad, floated out excitingly on the warm air. Against his better judgment, George found that he was rather enjoying himself.

“Will we be able to find a clairvoyant at this time of night?” he asked. Blixa’s idea seemed far-fetched to him, but he had to admit there was a certain logic in what she had said.

“Oh, I think so. This is the Anagetalia, you see, and if anybody goes to bed, it isn’t at night.” She pointed down to the cross-iter, where a soma fountain was. Twenty or thirty people were clustered around it. A girl had plunged her arms up to the wrist in the gushing fluid; others were drinking from their cupped hands. Six or eight couples were moving expertly, if a little unsteadily, in the stamping, challenging maze of a Dryland dance. “Turn this way.”

“Urn.” George and the girl were moving into a poorer quarter now. The buildings, though they still had the typical air of Martian elegance (composed, George thought, of broadleaved trees and good architecture) stood closer to each other and were made of poorer materials. He decided to put one of the questions that were in his mind. “Listen, Blixa, how did you know I had the pig?”

Blixa’s green eyes (hazel?—no, green ) laughed at him. “If you had smelled yourself before the perfume cart went by, you wouldn’t need to ask,” she said. “I don’t think there’s anything in the system that smells quite like Idris’ pig… Here we are. There are several clairvoyants here.”

They knocked on three doors before they found anyone in. The woman who finally answered them had a haggard, rather handsome face, long dark hair, and deep-set, burning eyes. She too had been celebrating the Anagetalia, for there was a long rent in her gauzy mauve tunic and a wreath of aveen flowers sat crookedly on her head. She staggered a little as she showed George and Blixa into her consulting room.

Blixa put the case to her in the long-winded hypothetical Martian manner (“If it should happen that one found a certain object”), and the sibyl listened attentively. When Blixa had finished, the woman drew a deep breath. Though her face remained impassive, George felt that she was startled, almost alarmed, by what she had heard. She put a quick question to Blixa in Old Martian, and the girl nodded. Once more the woman drew a sharp breath.

She lay down on the long low couch set diagonally in the corner. From a recess she got out fetters of shining metal and slipped them over her hands. She gave one of the balls which terminated the chains to Blixa to hold, the other to George. Then she closed her eyes.

For a long time there was silence in the room. Outside in the street people laughed, sang, played on double and single anzidars. Doors slammed. Once someone screamed. The woman on the couch gave no sign.

George moved restlessly. Blixa quieted him with a severe glance. At last the clairvoyant spoke. “A man,” she said, “a man with a shaved head. He has it. The two crowns.” She writhed, opened her eyes. After a moment she sat up and yawned.

“Did I say anything?” she asked.

“Shaved head. Two crowns,” Blixa answered briefly.

The woman’s eyes grew round. After Blixa had paid her she went with them to the door and stood watching them as they went down the street.

“What did she mean?” George asked. Blixa was walking briskly along, headed apparently north.

“She told us who had the pig.”

“So I gathered. But who?”

“The Plutonian ambassador.”

“What!” The exclamation was jarred out of George; his idea of the present possessors of the pig had gone no higher than geeksters, or, perhaps, the agents of some rival cult. “Why?” he asked more calmly.

“This is the Anagetalia,” Blixa replied. She looked down at the folds of her gold-spangled shari, frowned, and rearranged them so that they left a good deal more of her person exposed. “This is the time of year when we negotiate treaties and handle affairs of state. Mars is a poor planet. If one should happen to have possession of a certain small blue animal it might, perhaps, be of advantage to him.”

“But— Look here, I was told that there weren’t more than six members altogether of the cult of the pig.”

“The person who told you that was wrong. There are eight.”

“Well, then, if the cult has so few members, how could having the pig be of advantage to anyone?”

There was a protracted silence. At last Blixa spoke. “It is because of the nature of my people,” she said.

“Go on.” They had been walking north all this time.

George, whose feet were beginning to hurt, wondered briefly why Blixa did not call an abrotanon car. He decided that it was because all the drivers would be celebrating the Anagetalia too. “Go on,” he repeated.

“We Martians are not like you,” Blixa said slowly. “We Martians say always that we are more reasonable than Terrestrials, and so we are.” For a moment pride shone in Blixa’s voice. “We are far more reasonable. Sometimes we find it difficult to understand you at all, you do such childish and foolish things.

“But there is one thing about which we Martians are not reasonable in the least. It is as if all the foolishness and illogic and unreason and childishness of our natures, which in you Terrestrials is mixed in with everything you do, were concentrated in one place with us. We are not reasonable about our cults.

“They are not like your religions which enjoin, I have heard, ethical duties on their followers. We Martians”—again the note of pride in Blixa’s voice—“do not need religion to tell us, for example, of the brotherhood of man. We are logical, except about our cults.

“They have but few professed members. Your friend was right about that. But everybody on Mars knows about them and, very quietly, believes in them. Even if they are illogical. Pluto was originally a Martian colony, and the ambassador knows how our minds work. That is why it would be of great advantage to someone to have the pig.”

They had reached a stately quarter now. Nobly-framed buildings stood among big trees so crowded with blossoms that they were arboreal bouquets. Vines twisted among their branches and dropped long starry racemes of flowers to the ground. The air was rich with the scent of them. “I don’t know just how we’re going to get the pig back from him,” Blixa said thoughtfully. “But we’ll have to try.”

George slowed down and looked at her. “Why us?” he demanded practically. “If the pig means as much to Martian life as you say, it’s clearly a matter for the government.”

“Government?” Blixa echoed. She looked almost shocked. “Certainly not. Government is a logical activity. If I went to an official with this, he would laugh at me, and if I persisted there would be punishment. You don’t understand. I should be making him ashamed.”

Logical… reasonable… George felt dizzy with the words. His head still hurt where he had been hit. On the other hand, Blixa did seem to know what she was talking about, and for the first time that evening she impressed him as being sincere.

“O.K.,” he said.

A few steps farther on Blixa indicated a large building with a broad flat roof. “This is the embassy,” she said in a low voice. “I imagine they still have it, because it’s so hard to get about in Marsport during the festival. Probably they’ll try to get it to a Plutonian ship when people are off the streets. Once it’s aboard, there won’t be anything we can do.”

They walked past the embassy slowly, George making a deliberate effort to look casual and unconcerned. The street was still crowded with revellers. When he and Blixa reached the corner they turned and came back again. From an upper window of the embassy, very faint through the scent of the flowers, a trace of a familiar smell came to George. He would never have noticed it if he had not been expecting it, and even then he could not be sure. He looked enquiringly at Blixa, and she gave him a tiny nod.

Before he realized what she was doing, Blixa led him over to the soma font. “We’ll have to drink and act like the others,” she said in a low voice. “We’d be conspicuous, just hanging about.” She slipped lithely through the crowd, George following her. From the double-spouted fountain she caught soma between her hands and held them up for George to drink. As he awkwardly sipped at the liquid, his lips, unavoidably, brushed the soft flesh of her palms.

Laughing at his clumsiness, Blixa helped herself from the founta in and then held up her hands again for him to drink. It was good soma, though not especially strong; George could feel it warming him, relaxing his tension, washing away his headaches and his fatigue. “Let’s have some more,” he said.

Blixa had turned back to the fountain for more soma when a tall blond Drylander who was standing beside her ran his hands possessively over her shoulders and whirled her off in the first steps of a complicated dance.

George began to frown. It was, of course, none of his business whom Blixa saw fit to dance with, but they were here on business. She ought to remember it. And besides, he could have danced himself if she had taken the trouble to show him how. When a little dark girl came up to him and said challengingly, “Dance with me, Earthman!” he accepted with alacrity.

“Is this one of the DruDehar dances?” he asked after they had moved a few steps. The DruDehar dances (Old Martian for “Golden Garden”) were known all over the system as the Mating Cycle.

“Yes, they all are,” the girl replied. “You Earthmen aren’t very good at dancing, are you? Too stiff. When I come forward, you come forward too. Don’t pull away from me! There, that’s better. Much better. You’re doing fine.”

The dance ended with a wild swoop of anzidar strings. Smiling at him, the small dark girl stood on tiptoe and threw her arms around his neck. She kissed him several times, affectionately if muzzily. “For an Earthman,” she said, “you’re rather nice, I think.” George was not altogether sorry when her grinning escort whirled the little dark girl away in another dance.

The crowd began to grow thin. Couples disappeared into doorways, around corners, under the shadows of trees. Blixa, flushed and smiling and redolent of perfume, came up and she and George drank more soma together. In a surprisingly short time there was no one left in the street but themselves and a man with wrinkled limbs and thin gray hair who snored happily as he lay upon the pave.

Blixa linked her fingers with George’s and led him into the shadow of the basalt statue of Chou Kleor. Chou Kleor was the greatest of the poets of Mars. His works, perhaps, were not much read nowadays, but every Martian schoolchild knew him as the writer who first spoke of “scented Mars”. His statue was a monumental thing, and the shadow it cast was correspondingly large.

“We’ll wait here,” Blixa breathed. “If they happen to be watching from the embassy, they’ll think we couldn’t be paying any attention to them.” She sat down on the turf and drew George down by her side.

“Have you any plan for getting the pig?” he asked softly.

“Yes. I imagine they’ll just send one man with it, because the fewer people who know about a thing like this, the better it is. When he comes out I’ll walk toward him and pretend to stumble. He’ll come toward me and start to help me up. And then you hit him—hit him hard—and get the pig away from him.”

It sounded O.K. George nodded. It occurred to him that he was going to a great deal of trouble to get his half of Bill’s bonus and marry Darken. If anything went wrong, he’d be in a nasty mess. He hoped Darleen would appreciate it. But Darken—funny, he’d never thought of it before—Darken wasn’t what you’d call a very appreciative girl.

The city was utterly quiet now. Blixa yawned and in the most natural manner in the world rested her head for a moment against George’s chest. He was still trying to decide whether he ought, in simple politeness, to put his arm around her, when she sat up alertly again. “I might go to sleep that way,” she explained.

The sky was growing lighter; it would not be long until the first signs of day. George bit back a yawn, and then another one. Suddenly he leaned forward, transfixed. The embassy door was opening.

Blixa had leaped to her feet. As the door opened wider and a small dark man (the tzintz, George thought with a thrill of recognition, the tzintz who had knocked him out at the drainage pits) slipped out of it, she started across the pavement to him.

She was wobbling a little, in a skillful simulation of drunkenness, and crooning softly as if to herself.

As she came abreast of the tzintz she stumbled and pitched forward on one knee. It was so well done that George watching, was afraid she had really hurt herself. She tried to get up, grimaced. “My knee,” she said plaintively, “my knee.”

The tzintz hesitated. He was carrying in one hand a case that could be nothing but the pig’s. Then he made up his mind. He walked toward Blixa, put his hand under her armpit, and began solicitously helping her to her feet.

George pounded up to him, his long legs putting out a very creditable burst of speed. He hit the tzintz on the point of the chin. He gave the pig’s carrying case a mighty tug.

It was then that the flaw in Blixa’s plan became apparent. The pig was chained to the tzintz’s wrist.

The three began whirling about in an impromptu saraband. Blixa, popping up, was tugging at the tail of the tzintz’s tunic. George, on the other end, was pulling for all he was worth on the carrying case. And the tzintz, in the middle, was uttering shrill cries.

This state of affairs could not continue. Window irises in the embassy opened. I leads popped out. People began yelling at each other. Even the inebriated old man who had been sleeping on the pave was sitting up and looking around him bewilderedly.

Blixa abandoned her enterprise suddenly. Yelling “Run!” at George, she let go her hold on the tzintz so abruptly that George almost fell over backward. She shouted “Run!” once more in warning and then whirled around and darted off into the darkness of a side street.

George decided to follow her advice. He dropped the carrying case. He turned. He ran straight into the arms of two big Plutonians.

And after that, of course, it was only a matter of minutes until the police carts came.

It was hot in the jail. George had a black eye, two loose front teeth, and a fair hangover from the soma he had drunk.

The jailer (George was the only prisoner at the moment) was morose and intractable. George surmised correctly that the man resented his incarceration because it meant that the jailer wouldn’t get enough sleep to let him celebrate the Anagetalia adequately.

Every time the jailer brought him food or came to see how-he was doing, George asked to see a lawyer or somebody from the Terrestrial embassy. The jailer only grunted and went away again. It occurred to George that for a Terrestrial to assault a Plutonian on Martian soil might constitute an interplanetary incident. Perhaps he was being held without bail.

The day passed slowly. George spent most of it pacing around his cell or sitting on his bunk and cursing Blixa mentally. Blast the girl; it was all her fault. From the moment he had seen her she had ordered him around, pushed him from one situation into the next, told him what to do. And this was the result. The Cyniscus was taking off for Terra day after tomorrow; if he wasn’t there, he’d be blacklisted for the rest of his life. It was the kind of a mess he’d spent his existence up till now trying to avoid. Blast the girl. Maybe it wasn’t entirely her fault. Blast her anyhow. If he ever saw her again, he’d give her a piece of his mind.

By the middle of the second day in clink George was down to his last fingernail. Late in the afternoon the jailer came to his cell and grunted that he had a visitor. Visions of liberty began to float through George’s mind. He followed the man eagerly.

It was Blixa. After his first surprise George advanced to the grating with fire in his eye. He was going to tell her what he thought of her.

Blixa beat him to it. “Listen, gesell,” she said in a cold voice, “why didn’t you tell me you were pushing the groot?” Her level eyebrows had drawn together, and even her green shari looked indignant.

“Groot?” George repeated. He didn’t know the word.

“Groot, meema, alaphronein,” the girl answered impatiently. “I’d never have bothered with you if I’d known what kind of man you were.”

George knew what alaphronein was. It would have been hard to find anyone on the Three Plane ts who did not. It was a highly dangerous drug, with a rotting effect on the nervous system, which reduced its victims to scabrous husks. It originated on Venus, was sent to Earth to be processed, and Mars was the center of its illicit distribution. The Martian government had been making an all-out effort to repress the traffic in it.

“I’m not pushing it,” George said weakly. The accusation was so big it was difficult to deny.

“They found nearly a hundred grams of it on you.”

“They couldn’t have.”

“They did, though. It was inside the image in a lucite disk you were carrying.”

A great light dawned on George. Farnsworth! He had forgotten all about him. Hastily he told Blixa how he had got the disk and what he had been supposed to do with it.

As she listened the girl’s face cleared, “My, I’m glad to hear that,” she said when he had finished. “I couldn’t bear to think I’d been mistaken in you like that. It wasn’t reasonable.

“It’s a mess, though. Farnsworth must be in open space by now, and it’s hard to get people off a ship. Anyhow, it’s just your word against his. And the government hates the alaphronein traffic so much I wouldn’t be surprised if they hung you up by your thumbs or burned you alive in Ares Square. You have no idea the trouble I had getting in to see you.”

“I’m darned glad you came,” George said sincerely. He had forgotten all about how angry he was at her.

Blixa beamed for an instant and then grew sober again. “It’s still a mess,” she said ruefully. “They never give bail in drug cases. You’ll have to escape.”

Out of the corner of his eye George saw that the jailer, who had been hovering discreetly in the background, was coming closer to them. He gave Blixa a warning wink.

The girl raised her chin infinitesimally to show she had understood. “Do you know how much I’ve cried, thinking about you?” she went on, leaning forward intimately. Her voice was a tone or two higher than it usually was. “Why, my pillow’s been sopping wet. My shari was all wet too. I know it wasn’t reasonable to cry so much, like one of Vulcan’s weeping dolls, but I couldn’t help it. I cried and cried, until everything was all wet.”

What the devil—? George felt a tickling sensation in his wrist. He looked down and perceived that Blixa, in a series of tiny mo vements, was passing something no thicker than a hair through the grating to him. It was too small to set off the matter-detector built into the grating, being very nearly invisible. George clamped it against his hand with his thumb and began winding it around his wrist. A shade of relief passed over Blixa’s face.

“Do you ever think about me, George?” she asked, leaning forward again. She was still speaking in that rather unnatural voice.

“You bet I do.” George answered heartily. He was bewildered, but still game.

Blixa sighed. “I think about you so much at night,” she said. “One always feels so alone at night, doesn’t one? It’s not so bad during the day, but at night one feels so alone.”

The jailer came up. “Time to leave, lalania,” he said courteou sly. (“Lalania”—Old Martian for “perfumedness”—was politely used in addressing ladies.) Blixa got up to go. “I don’t know when they’ll let me see you again,” she said. “Soon, I hope.” She blew him a kiss, smiled and was gone.

George was taken back to his cell. He spent the rest of the day in concentrated thought.

By one o’clock that night he was ready to try his escape. He had constructed a reasonably realistic dummy in his bunk. It would, he thought, fool the night jailer when he made his infrequent rounds.

Much reflection had convinced George that the key words in what Blixa had said to him were “wet,” “Vulcan’s workshop,” “one” and “at night.” Also, she had said that she hoped to see him soon. One o’clock, therefore, was the time, and water the means.

He had, consequently, put the long hair she had passed him through the grating into his drinking cup to soak. Incredibly, amazingly, as it took up water it had shortened and grown thick. It turned eventually into a largish egg, glossy pink, with a knob at the larger end. The surface had a most peculiar feel, something between plastic and living flesh, and it was faintly warm to the touch. The transformation was so surprising that George saw why Blixa had prepared him for it by the reference to Vulcan’s workshop.

Vulcan’s workshop, in Martian folklore, was an artificial planetoid at the far end of our galaxy on which an immortal artificer lived. Half divinity, half scientist, he was supposed to spend his days in the creation of objects of incredible workmanship. Martians called him master of life and half-life, and they ascribed any particular subtle and cunning device to him. Once or twice before George had run across things whose construction he had been hard put to understand; but this was the first time he had seriously wondered whether the legends might be right.

His cell was windowless, with walls of translucent brick. A little nervously, for he was not quite sure what it would do, George held the broad end of the egg against the lower cour se of brick and pressed the knob. Nothing happened. He bit his lip. Then, in a burst of sheer inspiration, he twisted the knob.

The egg quivered in his left hand. He held it steady. After a moment it began to bite into the brick. Dust showered down and lay in a glittering trail on the floor. Quietly and steadily the egg continued to eat, growing a little thicker. It reminded George of some blindly hungering animal.

In less than half an hour he had cut a circle in the outer wall large enough for him to get through. He reduced the egg to quiescence by twisting its knob in the other direction. Carefully he pulled the cut-out section of translucent brick into his cell and leaned it against the wall. Then he slid into the opening.

His cell was only on the second floor, and Martian gravity was less than Earth’s. George hesitated all the same, deliberately relaxing his muscles, before he let go. It would be the height of irony to break an ankle at this stage. He landed with a thump that took the breath out of him. Blixa detached herself from the shadows and glided up while he was still checking over his anatomy.

“Pharol be praised,” she said in a low voice, “you did get the idea. I was afraid you might not. No broken bones?”

“I’m O.K.”

“Hurry, then. I gassed the guard, but pretty soon he’ll come to.” Blixa set off at what was almost a run through the shadows. George hurried after her.

“Hadn’t we better take an abrotanon car?” he asked when he had caught up.

Blixa shook her dark red curls. “We’re safer on foot. As soon as they miss you, the alarm will go out, and they’ll alert all the cars. Wait a minute, though.”

She steered him under a light, untied the end of her shari, and with the cosmetics it contained began deftly making up his face. His black eye was hidden, his cheek bones heightened. She drew a frown between his eyes and added lines around his mouth. With tiny bits of plastic she even changed the set of his ears.

“That’s better,” she said, “but—” She rolled up his sleeves, unbuttoned his tunic, tied up its hanging tail. “And don’t walk so straight. Slump, sort of. No, not like that. Relax more. Pretend you’re drunk.—Say, have you got the egg?”

George handed it to her. She tied it up tightly in her shari. “It’ll go down as it dries out,” she explained. “I wouldn’t want to lose it. It’s a handy sort of thing.”

The streets were so quiet and dark that George asked whether the Anagetalia was over and learned from Blixa that it had ended at twenty-four that night. “Everybody’s at home,” she said, “getting caught up on his sleep. Say, where are you going? Not that way!” They had come to Ares Avenue and George had turned to the left, thinking they were going to the spaceport. She tugged at his sleeve. “The embassy’s to the right. What do you think I got you out of jail for? We’ve got to get the pig. You promised you’d help me get the pig.”

“Oh,” George said. It was all he could think of to say. Somehow he had forgotten all about that blasted, blasted pig.

Blixa looked at him slantingly and laughed. “I’d have got you out anyhow, George,” she said. “You know I would. But the pig was the reason I had to hurry so much. I don’t know how much longer it will be at the embassy. And it means a lot to Mars.”

“Oh,” George said again. Without his being aware of it, his face relaxed. “You know,” he said after a pause, while they walked steadily along, “I have a feeling that somebody’s following us.”

Blixa nodded. “So do I,” she confessed. “But I think it must be nerves. I keep looking around, and I never see anyone. Besides, who could it be? The police wouldn’t follow us, they’d just arrest you. And nobody else would be following us.”

The embassy was quiet, with no light showing in any of the window irises. The building itself, however, was subtly different from the way George remembered it, and he had to study it for a moment before he could be sure what the difference was. That faint uncertainty in the building’s outline, those dim slanting golden lines, like a much attenuated aurora australis—what did they mean? “They’ve put a force field around it!” he announced suddenly.

Blixa nodded. “They installed it yesterday afternoon,” she said.

“Well, then, we might as well go home. Down to the ship, I mean. We certainly can’t get through a force field, pig or no Pig-“

“Who said anything about getting through a force field?” Blixa demanded. “Do be reasonable! Of course we can’t. But there are other ways of handling it. Think! Where are the projectors? I mean, where’s the field coming from?”

“Around the edge of the roof,” George replied after a moment.

“That’s right, the top of the building’s clear.” They had come to the statue of Chou Kleor. Blixa, standing first on one foot and then on the other, took off her sandals and tied them to her belt. “You’d better take off your shoes too,” she said softly. “They might slip on the stone.”

George eyed her speculatively. She had already taken hold of the statue and was pulling herself up by the folds of its basalt cloak. He removed his shoes and followed her.

They stood at last on the statue’s burly shoulder, not more than half a meter below the level of the embassy roof. The roof itself, however, was an uncomfortable distance away. “How are we going to get over there?” George asked, studying the gap.

Blixa shook her head. The climb had winded her, and for the moment all she could do was to hold on to Chou Kleor’s basalt ear and pant.

“Bolt anti,” she whispered as her breath began to come back. “Not much good, but best I could do. Government’s cracked down on all anti sales since the geeksters began using them.” She fumbled with the end of her shari and produced a flat, blunt object like an old-fashioned air automatic. She handed it to George.

He examined it distrustfully. He had always considered the bolt anti-grav the most unreliable of anti-gravitic devices. The anti-gravs in commercial use (most strictly supervised, since geeksters and raubsters had discovered their value in mass levitation of stolen goods) were perfectly safe. But the bolt anti-grav worked on a different principle. Its “doughnut” discharge produced what non-material physicists called a reversed stasis of the object which it hit. The object in consequence became weightless. The difficulty was that there was no practical way of estim a ting in advance when the stasis would return to normal and the object acquire weight again. And, since stasis reversal was potentially harmful to living tissue, all bolt antis had built-in governors preventing their discharge too frequently. Too dangerous for a children’s toy, too ineffective for genuine use, the bolt anti was the perfect example of ingrown gadgetry.

“How are you planning to use it?” George asked.

“I’m going to jump over to the roof,” Blixa said, “Just as I jump I want you to doughnut me with the bolt. I don’t weigh much anyhow, and I’m sure the stasis will stay twisted for that long. After I get on the roof there’s a trap door and steps leading down. The pig is in a room on the second level; I ought to be able to smell it. They’ve got it guarded with a cerberus.”

“How do you know all this?” George asked a little absently. His mind was still on the bolt anti.

“Oh… news gets around.” Blixa’s manner was vague. She leaned out from Chou Kleor’s shoulder and braced herself. “Now when I say, ‘Shoot,’ I want you to doughnut me.”

George looked from Blixa to the bolt anti and back again. She didn’t weigh much, it was true. But… He had a sudden mental picture of her jumping and falling short as the stasis untwisted again. A simple fall would be bad enough, but if she struck against the force field… “I won’t do it,” he said determinedly.

“Won’t do what? Doughnut me?”

“That’s right. It’s too dangerous.”

“No, it isn’t. Anyhow, I’ve got to get the pig.”

“Give me the egg.” Silently Blixa handed him the end of her shari and let him disentangle the object. “I’m going to try the jump,” George went on. “Do you think you can doughnut me?”

“Of course. But it’s a silly idea.”

“Why? I’ve more muscle than you, and I’m used to greater gee, being from Earth. The main thing, though, is that I’ve had training in free jumps. If you’ve never jumped free, you can’t imagine what it’s like.” George did not think it necessary to add that his training consisted of three jumps made one Sunday afternoon at a pastime park.

Blixa frowned but capitulated. “All right,” she said. “Pharol grant it’s reasonable.” She adjusted the bolt’s safety switch. “Now?” she asked.

George arranged his feet carefully. “Now!” he said.

The doughnut hit him amidships just as he jumped. It spread over him in a kind of shudder, a sensation like an intense interior tickling, not painful, but highly disagreeable. Then he was soaring over the roof in a long, long arc, so long that he had time to wonder whether he had miscalculated and was going right over it. At the last moment he slanted down, touched, bounced (“equal and opposite reaction”), and then came down solidly and for good as the stasis reversed itself. He was darned glad he hadn’t let Blixa try the jump.

He trotted back to the side where Blixa was. He motioned to her to throw the bolt anti, and after a moment it came spinning over to him. Blixa had her faults, but she certainly was quick on the uptake.

He found the trap door and opened it. The last he saw of Blixa, she was leaning forward anxiously from Chou Kleor’s shoulder, her hands pressed to her breast. He waved to her reassuringly, and then started down.

The stair was extremely steep and quite dark. George stole down it with his feet turned sideways. At the bottom he found he was in a tiny windowless room with many shelves, probably a janitor’s closet. Sprayers, dusters, grinders and sweepers cluttered the walls. George groped about until he found the door, and slipped out into the hall.

It was very nearly as dark as the closet had been. The only light came from the fluor strips in the cornice. George tiptoed along, listening to snores (this level seemed to be used for sleeping), sniffing from time to time and looking for the stairs. Martian buildings, even public ones, rarely had levitators or even lifts. The lesser gee made stairclimbing less onerous than on Terra, and Martians of both sexes insisted it wasn’t reasonable to avoid exercise. Stairs were good for the legs. George, thinking of Blixa, and the little dark girl he had danced with at the Anagetalia, grinned. This momentary inattention was no doubt the reason why he whanged into the tabouret.

It was a spindly thing, loaded with tinkly, janglv, clinky objects, and George’s collision with it produced a whole series of high-pitched crashes. Things bounced and rolled. The noise of frangible objects breaking seemed to spread out into the darkness like circular ripples in a pond. George, pressed against the wall, thought everyone in the embassy must be awake.

There was a stir in one of the rooms. A man’s voice, thick with sleep, said rumbingly, “What was that?” After a moment a woman’s fuzzy contralto answered, “Just the weetareete, dear. Go on back to sleep.” Somebody turned over in bed. There was a tense silence—and then a gradual resumption of the noises of sleep.

Blessing the unknown woman, George detoured cautiously about the tabouret. The flank and back of his tunic were wet with sweat.

He found the stair, a broad low flight with a resilient surface, in the next moment. On the fifth tread a current of air brought an all too familiar odor to his nose. It was mixed with a more agreeable smell which was probably deodorant. Fortunately for George, the embassy people had underestimated the amount of deodorant needed to keep the pig inodorous.

By sniffing door after door on the second level, George located the room with the pig. It was closed with one of the usual simple-minded Martian locks, but somebody had slipped a lucidux alarm disk over it. Tampering with the lock was going to be difficult.

George put his ear to the door panel and listened. Almost immediately he caught the gurgle and slither of a moving cerberus. He jerked his head back from the panel and swallowed. There were not many things he was really afraid of, but a cerberus was certainly one of them. He would almost rather have faced a cage full of cobras. Having the flesh sucked from one’s bones by a cerberus’ corrosive membranes was such a nasty way to pass out of the viewing plate.

Luckily the window irises in the hall were open and some light was coming in. George studied the door. He couldn’t get in through the lock; how about taking off the hinges? No, the screw-heads had been soldered in. It looked as if he’d have to make an opening high up in the panel, higher than the cerberus could extrude, and figure on jumping over it. Brrrrr.

He got out the egg. It was a little longer and thinner than it had been, but it went dutifully to work on the panel when he turned its switch. In all too short a time there was a hole in the door big enough for him to get through.

George hesitated. Moist fetid air (the cerberus was a life-form from the deep Venusian swamps) was coming through the opening. Beneath the hole he could hear the humping noise the creature made as it tried to climb up for him. Then he jumped.

He landed well beyond the animal. The pig’s carrying case was sitting on a table, surrounded by charged wires. One good grab, George decided, and the pig would be his again. The trouble was that the cerberus, in its uncanny, ameboid way, moved extremely fast. Before he could make the three steps to the table and pick up the pig, it would be glued to him.

George could feel his brain whizzing like a mechanical astrogator and star positioner. The cerberus had put out a pseudopod and was now about two centimeters distant from the toe of his boot. With no waste motion at all, George pulled out the bolt anti and doughnutted it.

The result surpassed his expectations. The cerberus shot up in the air and hung there, rotating wildly, in a meter-thick, dull gray ball. Since it had nothing more substantial than air to push against, it was unable to move in any direction. The harder it tried, the more furiously it spun.

George dashed to the table and snatched up the pig. He got a shock from the wiring that almost made him drop the carrying case, but he hung on doggedly. He rushed back to the door, dodging around the still-suspended cerberus, and began struggling through the hole he had made.

He had got his torso and his right leg through when, the stasis reversing itself, the cerberus dropped to the floor with a mighty plop. George felt a cold sweat of apprehension break out on him. Almost immediately there was a stab of burning pain in the ankle of his left leg.

George held on to the door so hard he thought his fingers must be denting the panel, and kicked. He kicked for all he was worth. The sensation in his ankle, which was like that of a burn being held over a flame, was getting worse: George kicked like a maddened zebrule, his eyes bulging out and his heart knocking against his ribs.

On the fourth or fifth of his desperate lunges the cerberus came loose. It sailed across the room and landed against the far wall with a thud. And George shot out of the hole in the door like a cork out of a champagne bottle. He landed on the small dark tzintz, who had been on his way to get himself a snack out of the coolerator. And from then on things got rather mixed up.

George later had a dim recollection of banging the tzintz on the skull with the pig’s carrying case, while the pig gave a feeble oink. More vividly in his mind was the gratifying period when he held the tzintz by the ears and whanged his head repeatedly against the hard, unyielding floor. “Steal my pig, will you,” George had muttered grimly, “You little musteline! I’ll teach you to steal my pig!” Thump, thump! Thump! “Ouch!” said the tzintz. “Oink, oink,” went the pig. Thump, thump, thump!

George enjoyed this period immensely, and was sorry when it came to an end. But all things must pass. He left the semi-conscious tzintz recumbent on the floor, his head propped against the dado, and fled down the stair in three long leaps. Behind him the embassy was buzzing like an overturned skep of bees. George estimated that he had about three seconds before they started shooting at him with stun guns. He halted for a flash by the front door to depress a switch that he hoped shut the force field off. If it didn’t, he was going to die a hero’s death. Then he shot out into the night.

Blixa was waiting for him: she always seemed to be waiting for him to escape from something or other. “Get it?” she demanded excitedly.

Too winded to reply, George waved the pig at her. The long roll of a stun gun trilled wickedly past his ear. Blixa winced and then pulled him into a crouch. “This way,” she said, “hurry! And keep bent!” Doubled over, they pounded off into the darkness, headed, as far as George could judge, for the Grand Canal.

There were shouts behind them, and a salvo of stun gun shots. One of them came so close that it grazed Blixa’s shoulder and set her to rubbing it to restore the circulation. There was, however, no concerted pursuit.

“Afraid to chase us,” Blixa panted as they jogged along.

“Martian citizen— interplanetary incident. And after all, it’s our pig.

“Let’s slow down. By now we’re fairly safe—nobody after us except the police.”

George slowed obligingly. He looked at her. Blixa was panting hard, and drops of perspiration sparkled on her round sides. How different she was from Darleen! Darleen’s grooming was always so perfect he couldn’t imagine how she’d look excited and warm. It was rather becoming to Blixa, he thought.

“Did you get hurt in the embassy?” Blixa asked. “You’re walking with quite a limp.”

“It’s nothing,” George replied modestly, recalling his thoughts. “The cerberus got after my ankle a bit.”

“Oh, my!” Frowning, Blixa made him stop and roll up his trouser leg. She drew in her breath at the sight of the raw, bloody blotch the cerberus’ digestive juices had left. Deftly she plastered the wound with unguent from a tiny jar and slapped a bandijeon on it. “There,” she said, “that’ll do until a doctor can look at it. Say, do you still feel like somebody’s following us?”

George considered. They had reached the Grand Canal by now and were walking out slowly on one of its foot bridges. There was no noise anywhere except the quiet lapping of the dark, slow-flowing water. The streets were utterly empty. Marsport’s gigantic heart had almost ceased to beat. It was the quietest hour of the twenty-four, the one time when the whole city slept.

“A little,” he replied. “But I don’t see anyone. It must be nervous imagination. We’ve had a good deal tonight to put us on edge.”

“I suppose so,” Blixa answered. “Pharol, but it’s quiet!” She rested her elbows on the parapet and leaned over, looking down at the black water. “Give me the pig.”

George handed the case to her. She opened it, saw that the pig was intact, and shut the case again. Then she dropped it deliberately into the water of the canal.

For a second George stood and stared at her. Then he jumped in after the pig.

There was a second almost simultaneous splash. Blixa had jumped in beside him. “You let that pig alone!” she said furiously. George grabbed at the case which, bobbing from the disturbance of the water, was beginning to move slowly downstream. Blixa slapped at his hands. “You let it alone!” she repeated. “What business is it of yours? It’s my pig.”

“I—”

“Well, it is. Let it alone.” The case was moving gradually out of reach. George eyed it wistfully, and then turned to Blixa. He had always known she was unreliable, but he had never thought it would reach this pitch.

“What’s the idea?” he said.

“About two kilos down the canal,” Blixa said, “there’s an island. Some friends of mine are waiting there, watching for the pig. When it comes past they’ll wade out and get it. And then they’ll make soup out of it. Pharol grant it won’t disagree with them.”

Blixa turned and began walking upstream, toward the flight of stairs that was built into the canal wall. The water was not much more than waist deep. Utterly befogged, George followed her.

She climbed the steps with George in the rear. She had a graceful, swaying walk, and in her thin, drenched shari she looked nuder than nude. George found it hard to keep his mind on her hocus-pocus with the pig. Nonetheless, he came to a decision.

“Listen, Blixa,” he said when they were standing on dry land aga in beside a warehouse, “don’t you think you owe me an explanation? You Martians talk a lot about reasonableness. Do you think it’s reasonable to treat me like this?”

Blixa looked at him steadily. After a moment she nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “I’ll explain it.” Yet she hesitated and lowered her eyes as if she found it hard to begin.

“I’m a Martian patriot, George,” she said at last. “You Earth people don’t understand how Martians feel about Mars.” Blixa was speaking slowly; and, for the first time since George had known her, she made on him an impression of deep and complete sincerity. “Because we don’t drink toasts to our planet or sing songs about its green hills, because we never brag about how fine it is, you think we have no love for it. Some times, I know, you laugh at us because Mars is so poor and there is so much you have without thinking on your planet that we can never have. I have heard that your planet was far richer once, that before it came under a planet council much was wasted and washed away. That may be, but even so, Earth in our eyes is rich—rich!—and Mars—” Blixa threw out her hands in a gesture of resignation. “Well! We Martians do not wear our hearts upon our sleeves; and if Mars is poor, it may be we love out planet only the more dearly because of that.

“Once before I told you a little about the pig. Most Martians learn about its worship—its service—while they are children, and grow up without ever thinking about it again. That is a bad thing, for if they thought about it, it would disgust and sicken them. The worship of the pig—the worship of the pig—”

Blixa paused and clenched her hand. “I can’t talk about it,” she confessed, as if the confession were somehow disgraceful. “It makes me ashamed. Every thirty-one days, for example, we—no, I can’t tell you. It is unreasonable, but I can’t. The pig’s worship, George, is like something invented by a feeble-minded child. A nasty, nasty child with a feeble mind. A child who catches flies and swallows them. It makes me ashamed.

“Four of us— two inside the cult and two outside—decided to try to stop the service of the pig. The pig had been sent to Terra as a part of the ritual of the Great Year. When we heard it was coming back, it seemed like a good time. The cult messenger was detained on the island, and I was sent to get the pig in his stead. But the Plutonians got there first.

“Now the pig is on its way to the island. It should get there about dawn. When it does, there will be a ritual meal, with Daror partaking on behalf of the actual members of the cult, and Rhidion and Gleer on behalf of all the people of Mars. And that will be the end of the pig.”

There was a short pause. George was trying to assimilate what he had heard. “They—will there be trouble about your having killed the pig?” he asked at last.

Blixa shrugged. “Possibly. On the other hand, many of our cults have as their central feature a ritual meal in which the cult object is eaten, symbolically, by its worshipers. It isn’t far from that to actually eating the object’s flesh. Gleer is a publicist who specializes in word-of-mouth rumors. He plans to circulate accounts of the meal which present it as a pious act, a necessary sacrifice for Mars’ prosperity. People will hiss us for a while, but—who knows?—we might end up as heroes of a sort.”

“I should think so,” George said. He was feeling somewhat impressed.

Blixa laughed. “The really heroic part,” she confided, “will be eating that awful pig. I do wish it weren’t necessary. It isn’t really alive, you know—I’m sure it came from Vulcan’s workshop originally—and only Pharol knows what it will taste like. I hope it won’t poison them.

“Our work, of course, will only be beginning when the pig’s out of the way. It’s too bad there aren’t more of us. We’ll try to replace the pig’s service with something better—a Pharol cult, perhaps, or something from Earth. Something that is—well!—not too unworthy of Mars.”

Blixa’s voice died away. George, regarding her faintly-smiling profile, felt that he was seeing her for the first time.

“In the canal?” a high voice said from around the corner of the warehouse.

“N-n-n-n-no.” It was not stuttering, but a vibrato caused by an incessant trembling of the tongue and lips. “N-no-t u-un-t-til w-w-e ha-a-ve s-o-me f-f-un wi-th t-t-them.”

George’s heart gave a lunge. He’d heard a voice like that once before, when one of the Cyniscus’ passengers had turned out to be a glassy-eyed homicidal maniac. He whirled around.

The men who held the sliver guns looked more like badly-stuffed, half-rotting burlap bags than human beings. The hands on the guns were black with scabs and scaling flesh; they looked like burned and blistered rubber gloves. The hands alone would have identified the men to half the inhabitants of the Martian planet as last-stage alaphronein addicts.

“You see,” the one who could still talk normally said, “you birded Louey a bout the groot. Poor Louey! He’s got very little groot left. And you birded us. Can’t have that. Louey sent us to correct you. Have some fun.”

“T-t-the la-ad-y,” the shorter addict said. “En-j-joy using the g-gu-un. O-on h-er.” He coughed, and spat something thick and blackish on the pavement.

George felt an apprehension that physically sickened him. The dart from a sliver gun is instantly fatal to human beings in a few spots; but over most of the body area, puncture with it produces a horrible tetany. In the agonized tonic spasm victims not infrequently snap their spines or fracture their own jaws. He and Blixa would wind up dead in the canal; but before that, Louey’s men (Louey must be the person to whom Farnsworth had told George to deliver the alaphronein) would enjoy themselves. Would enjoy themselves with their sliver guns. And Blixa’s smooth, soft skin…

George pushed the nausea and the fear deep down inside himself and got ready to jump.

Blixa touched him lightly on the arm. “Wait,” she breathed. She stepped forward, pulling the shari from her head.

“Careful!” the taller addict warned, waving his gun. He was wearing a hard, bright, happy grin.

“Ando djar,” Blixa said. She raised one hand and swept the red curls back from her forehead.

“D-d-dai?” the shorter addict asked.

“Andor,” Blixa replied. George, peering at her obliquely, saw that on her forehead shone, in pale blue fire, the interwined symbols of the full and crescent moon.

There was a moment of intolerable tension. George realized that he was so keyed up that the smallest unexpected noise would have sent him charging into the two sliver guns. Then the taller of Louey’s emissaries put down his hand. “Par don, lalania,” he said to Blixa. “—Come along, Mnint.”

“B-b-u-ut L-l-lou-ey s-sa—”

“Bird Louey! He’s got hardly any groot. Let’s go have fun with him.” A glance of understanding passed between the two. Then they slouched away.

Blixa leaned back against the wall of the warehouse. She was looking quite white. “Pharol,” she said weakly, “but I was afraid! I hope I never have to do that again.”

George put out an arm to steady her. He was feeling a little shaky himself. “What did you tell them?” he ask ed after a moment.

“Why, that I—here comes an abrotanon car! We’d better hide!”

She whirled about, but the driver of the car had already seen them. The car circled, returned, and hovered. Its passenger peered intently down at them through the lucitra ns bubble that formed the underside of the car. Then the port opened, the stair shot out, and the passenger hopped down.

“Is that you, George?” he said. “I thought I recognized the top of your head. Yes, it is. Where the devil have you been? They let me out of the hospital last night, and I’ve been looking for you ever since. I’ve been worried sick. Did you deliver the Pig?”

George looked at his cousin Bill for a moment before answering. “Not exacdy,” he said at last.

“Not exactly? What do you mean by that?”

George indicated Blixa, who was standing beside him. “This lady took charge of it,” he answered.

Bill regarded Blixa dubiously for a moment. Then his face cleared. “Why, that’s perfectly all right,” he said happily. “She’s the Idris of the cult—I recognize the marks on her forehead. Legally, she can sign anything. Why didn’t you tell me you knew her? It would have saved a lot of trouble.”

George said nothing. Bill produced a receipt book from an inner tunic pocket and extended it and a brush toward Blixa. “If you don’t mind signing here, lalania,” he murmured. “An acknowledgement of the delivery of the pig…”

“Not at all.” Blixa took the brush from him and drew her name quickly in the proper place. She handed the book back to him.

Bill examined the receipt carefully before he thrust the book back in his pocket. He gave a satisfied nod. “That’s fine,” he said, “just fine. Thanks a lot for helping out, George. Don’t forget, I’ll give you half my bonus when it comes. You’ve really earned it by delivering the pig. And then you can marry Darleen.”

He slapped George on the shoulder, nodded with more formal politeness to Blixa, and hopped into the abrotanon car. It drove away.

There was a silence. Bill’s last words, “marry Darleen,” seemed to be floating in the air. Blixa looked at George and George, alternately, looked at her and then down at the ground. What was the matter with him? Why wasn’t he happy, now that he could marry Darleen?

“Who’s Darleen?” Blixa asked at last in a colorless voice.

“I… Girl I know on Earth,” George mumbled.

There was an even longer silence. It was still quiet beside the canal, but all around came the thousand noises of a great city waking to life. The polar mail went arching through the sky with a long scream of rockets. George kept looking down at the ground.

“Was that why you helped me get the pig?” Blixa said finally. Her voice was even more impersonal than it had been. “So you could have enough money to marry this Darleen?”

“…I… I… guess so.”

“Are you quite sure?” Blixa asked. Her voice was as toneless as ever, but something in it made George look up quickly. Blixa’s eyes were still fixed on him, but she had begun to smile. “Are you quite sure?” she said again.

Something in the words ran down George’s spine like a drizzle of melted honey. It reached the base of his vertebral column and stayed there, circling in a warm, sweet flood. For a moment he looked at Blixa unbelievingly. Th en he advanced on her with the determination of a male rhyoorg in spring.

Blixa gave a slight scream. “Be reasonable!” she said. “Ooooh, oooh! Not here, George! It’s too public! Be reasonable!”