Robert Silverberg - Cosmic Kill

Lon Archman waited tensely for the Martian to come nearer: Around him, the ancient world’s hell-winds whined piercingly. Archman shivered involuntarily and squeezed tighter on the butt of the zam-gun.

One shot. He had one shot left. And if the Martian were to fire before he did—

The wind picked up the red sand and tossed it at him as he crouched behind the twisted gabron-weed. The Martian advanced steadily, its heavy body swung forward in a low crouch. It was still out of range of the zam-gun. Archman didn’t dare fire yet, not with only one charge left.

A gust of devilish wind blew more sand in the Earthman’s face. He spat and dug at his eyes. A little undercurrent of fear beat in the back of his mind. He shoved the emotion away. Fear and Lon Archman didn’t mix.

But where the blazes was that Martian?

Ah—there. Stooping now behind the clump of gabron-weed. Inching forward on his belly toward Archman now. Archman could almost see the hill-creature’s tusks glinting in the dim light. His finger wavered on the zam-gun’s trigger. Again a gust of wind tossed sand in his eyes.

That was the Martian’s big advantage, he thought. The Martian had a transparent eyelid that kept the damned sand out; Archman was blinded by the stinging red stuff more often than not.

Well, I’ve got an advantage too. I’m an agent of Universal Intelligence, and that’s just a dumb Martian hillman out there trying to kill me.

A torrent of sand swept down over them again. Archman fumbled on the desert floor for a moment and grabbed a heavy lichen-encrusted rock. He heaved it as far as he could—forty feet, in Mars’ low grav. It kicked up a cloud of sand.

The Martian squealed in triumph and fired. Archman grinned, cupped his hands, threw his voice forty feet. The rock seemed to scream in mortal agony, ending in a choking gasp of death.

The Martian rose confidently from his hiding-place to survey the smoking remains of Archman. The Earthman waited until the Martian’s tusked head and shoulders were visible, then jammed down on the zam-gun’s firing stud.

It was his last shot—but his aim was good. The Martian gasped as the force-beam hit him, and slowly toppled to his native soil, his massive body burned to a hard black crust. Archman kept the beam on him until it flickered out, then thrust the now-useless zam-gun in his beltsash and stood up.

He had won.

He took three steps forward on the crunching sand—and suddenly bleak Mars dissolved and he was back in the secret offices of Universal Intelligence, on Earth. He heard the wry voice of Blake Wentworth, Chief of Intelligence, saying, “The next time you fight on Mars, Archman, it’ll be for keeps.”

The shock of transition numbed Archman for a second, but he bounced out of his freeze lightning-fast. Eyeing Wentworth he said, “You mean I passed your test?”

The Intelligence Chief toyed with his double chin, scowled, referred to the sheet of paper he held in his hand. “You did. You passed this test. But that doesn’t mean you would have survived the same situation on Mars.”

“How so?”

“After killing the Martian you rose without looking behind you. How did you know there wasn’t another Martian back there waiting to pot you the second you stood up?”

“Well, I—” Archman reddened, realizing he had no excuse. He had committed an inexcusable blunder. “I didn’t know, Chief. I fouled up. I guess you’ll have to look for someone else for the job of killing Darrien.”

He started to leave the office.

“Like hell I will,” Wentworth snapped. “You’re the man I want!”

“But—”

“You went through the series of test conflicts with 97.003 percent of success. The next best man in Intelligence scored 89.62. That’s not good enough. We figured 95% would be the kind of score a man would need in order to get to Mars, find Darrien, and kill him. You exceeded that mark by better than two percent. As for your blunder at the end—well, it doesn’t change things. It simply means you may not come back alive after the conclusion of your mission. But we don’t worry about that in Intelligence. Do we, Archman?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Let’s get out of this testing lab, then, and into my office. I want to fill you in on the details of the job before I let you go.”

Wentworth led the way to an inner office and dropped down behind a desk specially contoured to admit his vast bulk. He mopped away sweat and stared levelly at the waiting Archman.

“How much do you know about Darrien, Lon?”

“That he’s an Earthman who hates Earth. That he’s one of the System’s most brilliant men—and its most brilliant criminal as well. He tried to overthrow the government twice, and the public screamed for his execution—but instead the High Council sent him to the penal colony on Venusia, in deference to his extraordinary mind.”

“Yes,” wheezed Wentworth. “The most disastrous move so far this century. I did my best to have that reptile executed, but the Council ignored me. So they sent him to Venusia—and in that cesspool he gathered a network of criminals around him and established his empire. An Empire we succeeded in destroying thanks to the heroic work of Tanton.”

Archman nodded solemnly. Everyone in Intelligence knew of Tanton, the semi-legendary blue Mercurian who had given his life to destroy Darrien’s vile empire. “But Darrien escaped, sir. Even as Space Fleet Three was bombarding Venusia, he and his closest henchmen got away on gravplates and escaped to Mars.”

“Yes,” said Wentworth, “To Mars. Where in the past five years he’s proceeded to establish a new empire twice as deadly and vicious as the one on Venus. We know he’s gathering strength for an attack on Earth—for an attack on the planet that cast him out, on the planet he hates more than anything in the cosmos.”

“Why don’t we just send a fleet up there and blast him out the way we did the last time?” Archman asked.

“Three reasons. One is the Clanton Space Mine, the umbrella of force-rays that surrounds his den on Mars and makes it invulnerable to attack—”

“But Davison has worked out a nullifier to the Clanton Mine, sir! That’s no reason—”

“Two,” continued Wentworth inexorably, “Even though we can break down his barrier, our hands are tied. We can’t come down to the level of worms, Archman. Darrien hasn’t done anything— yet. We know he’s going to attack Earth with all he’s got, any day or week or month now—as soon as he’s ready. But until he does so, we’re helpless against him. Earth doesn’t fight preventive wars. We’d have a black eye with the whole galaxy if we declared war on Darrien after all our high-toned declarations.

“And Three, Intelligence doesn’t like to make the same mistake a second time. We bombed Darrien once, and he got away. This time, we’re going to make sure we get him.”

“By sending me, you mean?”

“Yes. Your job is to infiltrate into Darrien’s city, find him, and kill him. It won’t be easy. We know Darrien has several doubles, orthysynthetic duplicate robots. You’ll have to watch out for those. You won’t got two chances to kill the real Darrien.”

“I understand, sir.”

“And one other thing—this whole expedition of yours is strictly unofficial and illegal.”

“Sir?”

“You heard me. You won’t be on Mars as a representative of Universal Intelligence. You’re there on your own, as Lon Archman, Killer. Your job is to get Darrien without implicating Earth. Knock him off and the whole empire collapses. But you’re on your own, Archman. And you probably won’t come back.”