dition of advanced senility. We can't say how he lost his fingers nor how they healed so quickly. We only know this," his voice dropped to a whisper, "that he is very near death of old age...."
Norman's eyes were damp. Throug
orman's hell or high water smile was as much a part of him as his long legs. He filled their glasses as the orchestra started moaning Martian Moon, dropped the capsules into the bubbly green wine in Johnny's glass. "Here's
laces to hide something that size even in any ordinary modern house; you don't need secret panels and extensive cellars in order to mt-door garden, down the passage beside the house, over the next garden wall, across a dew-wet lawn, through the hedge, and into the tangle of shruas quite enough to think about. His mother: would she really be safe where she was? Mrs. Cooper wouldn't tell, would she? Even if Will didn't turn up as he'd said he would? Because he couldn't, now that he'd killed someone.
And Moxie. Who'd feed Moxie? Would Moxie worry about where they were? Would she try to follow them?
It was getting lighter by the minute. It was light enough already to check through the thinged, and they went around and around putting things back on the shelves, but this time they had to be extra careful because the enemies were tracking them down by means of her credit card numbers, which they knew because they had her purse…
And Will got more and more frightened himself. He realized how clever his mother had been to make this real danger into a game so that he wouldn't be alarmed, and how, now that he knew the truth, he had to pretend not to be frightened, so as to reassure her.
So the little boy pretended it was a game still, so she
underclothes, and t
s in the tote bag: his mother's purse, the latest letter from the lawyer, the road map of southern England, chocolate bars, toothpaste, spare socks and pants. And the green leather writing case.
Everything was there. Everything was going according to plan, really.
Except that he'd killed someone.
Will had first realized his mother was different from other people, and that he had to look after her, when he was seven. They were in a supermarket, and they were playing a game: they were allowed to put an item in the cart only when no one was looking. It was Will's job to look all around and whisper "Now," and she would snatch a tin or a packet from the shelf and put it silently into the cart. When things were in there they were safe, because they became invisible.
It was a good game, and it went on for a long time, because this was a Saturday morning and the shop was full, but they were good at it and worked well together. They trusted each other. Will loved his mother very much and often told her so, and she told him the same.
So when they reached the checkout Will was excited and happy because they'd nearly won. And when his mother couldn't find her purse, that was part of the game too, even when she said the enemies must have stolen it; but Will was getting tired by this time, and hungry too, and Mummy wasn't so happy anymore. She was really frighten
hen he worked systematically through the rest of the rooms upstairs, even his own
ake something hard to find. Will searc
r he'd had contact with any foreign embassies. Will heard his mother getting more and more distressed, and finally he ran into the room and told them to go.
He looked so fierce that neither of the men laughed, though he was so young. They could easily have knocked him down, or held him off the floor with one hand, but he was fearless, and his anger was hot and deadly.
So they left. Naturally, this episode strengthened Will's conviction: his father was in trouble somewhere, and only he could help. His games weren't childish anymore, and he didn't play so openly. It was coming true, and he had to be worthy of it.
And not long afterward the men came back, insisting that Will's mother had something to tell them. They came when Will was at school, and one of them kept her talking downstairs while the other searched the bedrooms. She didn't realize what they were doing. But Will came home early and found them, and once again he blazed at them, and once again they left.
They seemed to know that he wouldn't go to the police, for fear of losing his mother to the authorities, and they got more and more persistent. Finally they broke into the house when Will had gone to fetch his mother home from the park. It was getting worse for her now, and she believed that she had to touch every separate slat in every separate bench beside the pond. Will would help her, to get it done quicker. When they got home that day they saw the back of the men's car disappearing out of the close, and he got inside to find that they'd been through the house and searched most of the drawers and cupboards.
He knew what they were after. The green leather case was his mother's most precious possession; he would never dream of looking through it, and he didn't even know where she kept it. But he knew it contained letters, and he knew she read them sometimes, and cried, and it was then that she talked about his father. So Will supposed that this was what the men were after, and knew he had to do something about it.
He decided first to find somewhere safe for his mother to stay. He thought and thought, but he had no friends to ask, and the neig
hed his mother's bedroom first, ashamed to be looking through the drawers where she kept her
First, he knew where the case was. And second, he knew that the men were downstairs, opening the kitchen door.
He lifted Moxie out of the way and softly hushed her sleepy protest. Then he swung his legs over the side of the bed and put on his shoes, straining every nerve to hear the sounds from downstairs. They were very quiet sounds: a chair being lifted and replaced, a short whisper, the creak of a floorboard.
Moving more silently than the men were, he left his bedroom and tiptoed to the spare room at the top of the stairs. It wasn't quite pitch-dark, and in the ghostly gray predawn light he could see the old treadle sewing machine. He'd been through the room thoroughly only hours before, but he'd forgotten the compartment at the side of the sewing machine, where all the patterns and bobbins were kept.
He felt for it delicately, listening all the while. The men were moving about downstairs, and Will could see a dim flicker of light that might have been a flashlight at the edge of the door.
Then he found the catch of the compartment and clicked it open, and there, just as he'd known it would be, was the leather writing case.
And now what could he do? He crouched in the dimness, heart pounding, listening hard.
The two men were in the hall downstairs. He heard one of them say quietly, "Come on. I can hear the milkman down the road."
"It's not here, though," said the other voice. "We'll have to look upstairs."
"Go on, then. Don't hang about."
Will braced himself as he heard the quiet creak of the top step. The man was making no noise at all, but he couldn't help the creak if he wasn't expecting it. Then there was a pause. A very thin beam of flashlight swept along the floor outside. Will saw it through the crack.
Then the door began to move. Will waited till the man was framed in the open doorway, and then exploded up out of the dark and crashed into the intruder's belly.
But neither of them saw the cat.
As the man had reached the top step, Moxie had come silently out of the bedroom and stood with raised tail just behind the man's legs, ready to rub herself against them. The man, who was trained and fit and hard, could have dealt with Will, but the cat was in the way, and as the man tried to move back, he tripped over her. With a sharp gasp he fell backward down the stairs and crashed his head brutally against the hall table.
Will heard a hideous crack, and didn't stop to wonder about it. Clutching the writing case, he swung himself down the banister, leaping over the man's body that lay twitching and crumpled at the foot of the flight, seized the tattered tote bag from the table, and was out of the front door and away before the other man could do more than come out of the living room and stare.
Even in his fear and haste Will wondered why the other man didn't shout after him, or chase him. They'd be after him soon, though, with their cars and their cell phones. The only thing to do was run.
He saw the milkman turning into the close, the lights of his electric cart pallid in the dawn glimmer that was already filling the sky. Will jumped over the fence into the nex
. Moxie came to see what he was doing and sat and cleaned herself nearby, for company.
But he didn't find it.
By that time it was dark, and he was hungry. He made himself baked beans on toast and sat at the kitchen table wondering about the best order to look through the downstairs rooms.
As he was finishing his meal, the phone rang.
He sat absolutely still, his heart thumping. He counted: twenty-six rings, and then it stopped. He put his plate in the sink and started to search again.
Four hours later he still hadn't found the green leather case. It was half past one, and he was exhausted. He lay on his bed fully clothed and fell asleep at once, his dreams tense and crowded, his mother's unhappy, frightened face always there just out of reach.
And almost at once, it seemed (though he'd been asleep for nearly three hours), he woke up knowing two things simultaneously.
to the T
you what—I don't believe the bloomi
ull glare of daylight, the signs of suffering on his face were plainly apparent.
"Syd, you are ill?" exclaimed Rex, forgetting about what he had been saying. "You ought to be at home at once."
"Never mind about me, Reggie. Tell me what you were just telling Scott."
"I didn't think it was any harm. A good many people in Marley know it now. I was telling him about-- about Mr. Tyler's will."
"What about it?" Sydney's eyes were looking steadily, unsmilingly down into his brother's as he put the question.
Rex was really frightened now. He had never seen Sydney look just like this before.
"I told him about leaving his money to us on account of what Roy had done," he faltered. "I didn't--"
Sydney's eyes closed; he started to reel backwards and would have fallen had not Scott sprung forward and caught him.
"Help me ease him down in the chair, Rex," he called out.
Scarcely knowing what he was doing, Reginald took hold of his brother's other arm and between them the two boys got him down gently into a chair that stood near the window.
"He isn't dead, is he?"
Rex's voice was hardly more than a whisper as he put the awful question. Sydney certainly looked almost like a corpse, with his pallid face and his head hanging itself lifelessly over on one side.
It was a trying situation for the two boys. Neither of them had had the slightest experience with cases of this sort. It was so late in the afternoon that the offices around them were all empty.
"No, he is not dead, I'm sure of that," Scott replied, who, as the senior of Rex by some eleven months, felt that it was natural for the other to seem to rely upon him. "We ought to have a doctor at once, though."
"But we can't leave him that way while I go for one. Besides, I don't know where to go."
"Neither do I. Our doctor is clear at the other end of town and besides he's down at Atlantic City by this time anyway."
"It's awful, isn't it? Oh, what shall we do, Scott?"
"We might ring for an ambulance. That's the quickest way."
"Oh, we don't want to have him taken to the hospital. Come, help me get him out of that chair. It's horrible to see his head hang over like that."
"But where can we put him? There's no lounge about, is there?"
"I never did. Does yours come in paroxysms or is it a steady pain?"
The burglar sat down on the foot of the bed and rested his gun on his crossed knee.
"It jumps," said he. "It strikes me when I ain't looking for it. I had to give up second-story work because I got stuck sometimes half-way up. Tell
n' doctors know what is good for it."
"Same here. I've spent a thousand dollars without getting any relief. Yours swell any?"
"Of mornings. And when it's goin' to rain—great Christopher!"
"Me, too," said the citizen. "I can tell when a streak of humidity the size of a table-cloth starts from Florida on its way to New York. And if I pass a theatre where there's an 'East Lynne' matinee going on, the moisture starts my left arm jumping like a toothache."
"It's undiluted—hades!" said the burglar.
"You're dead right," said the citizen.
The burglar looked down at his pistol and thrust it into his pocket with an awkward attempt at ease.
"Say, old man," he said, constrainedly, "ever try opodeldoc?"
"Slop!" said the citizen angrily. "Might as well rub on restaurant butter."
"Sure," concurred the burglar. "It's a salve suitable for little Minnie when the kitty scratches her finger. I'll tell you what! We're up against it. I only find one thing that eases her up. Hey? Little old sanitary, ameliorating, lest-we-forget Booze. Say—this job's off—'scuse me—get on your clothes and let's go out and have some. 'Scuse the liberty, but—ouch! There she goes again!"
he patrol's going to be laying for me off Mercury," he laughed. "Well, I'd like a little excitement."
Norman dropped the wax paper on the floor and hid the capsules in his big palm. Johnny was right—they would've had a lot more fun if they'd never bumped into that dead comet off Neptune. But how were they to know that cold hunk of drift metal would turn out to be solid platinum? That was three years ago and now their income was a number like the circumference of Jupiter in feet. To him it was a devil of a responsibility. To Johnny it was just plain boring.
But he couldn't let Johnny get himself killed running away from a full dress suit. "Okay," he said, faking resignation. "You win." Roughly handsome, N
wenty-First Century Ponce de Leon," he smiled, raising his glass.
Johnny reached across the table and picked up the bottle. "Here's to the boredom of a million dollars," he said and drank the toast straight from the bottle. He wiped his chin, grinning. "You ought to know you can't catch me on a Martian mickey. They stop the bubbles."
As Norman stared at the suddenly lifeless wine in Johnny's glass, he realized there was only one thing left to do. He knew a couple of boys who were pretty handy with a blackjack and he knew an old hunting lodge in the Adirondacks where they could lock Johnny up for a week.
The next morning as Norman was packing his bags, one of his "boys" appeared at the door. His eyes were black and swollen. Embarrassed, he held out an envelope. Norman tore it open.
"You'll find your other playmate locked in my bathroom. I'll bring you a jug full of the Fountain of Youth." The note was written in Johnny's careless scrawl! Norman flicked the ampliphone button in the little table beside his bed.
"Interstellar Spaceport!" he ordered the invisible telemike as he pulled a handful of bills from his pocket and shoved them at the battered gentleman in the door. "Thanks for trying, Spike. Go kick Johnny's bathroom door down. Joe's locked up in there—"
"Spaceport," the wall speaker said.
"John Gordon," Norman asked, waving Spike out, "has he been there?"
"Mr. Gordon took off half an hour ago, sir," said the ampliphone. "For Mercury."
"Thanks...." As Norman clicked off the receiver, premonition crept over him like a shadow. His hand moved to the receiver again—to call for a ship and follow Johnny. Then the ampliphone buzzed under his hand.
It was the Senator. He was waiting at the capital.
ite hair. His voice was a high-pitched quaver. "My hands... my hands...."
Norman sprang to the bed, knelt beside the ancient creature. "Johnny! It's me! Rick! Tell me what happened!"
But the old man stared at him blankly, then looked back down at his hands again.
How long have you had it?" inquired the citizen.
"Four years. I guess that ain't all. Once you've got it, it's you for a rheumatic life—that's my judgment."
"Ever try rattlesnake oil?" asked the citizen, interestedly.
"Gallons," said the burglar. "
h the window the afternoon sun lined the old man's sunken cheeks with deep shadows, gleamed on his thin, white hair. His voice was a high-pitched quaver. "My hands... my hands...."
If all the snakes I've used the oil of was strung out in a row they'd reach eight times as far as Saturn, and the rattles could be heard at Valparaiso, Indiana, and back."
"Some use Chiselum's Pills," remarked the citizen.
"Fudge!" said the burglar. "Took 'em five months. No good. I had some relief the year I tried Finkelham's Extract, Balm of Gilead poultices and Potts's Pain Pulverizer; but I think it was the buckeye I carried in my pocket what done the trick."
"Is yours worse in the morning or at night?" asked the citizen.
"Night," said the burglar; "just when I'm busiest. Say, take down that arm of yours—I guess you won't—Say! did you ever try Blickerstaff's Blood Builder?"
"I never did. Does yours come in paroxysms or is it a steady pain?"
The burglar sat down on the foot of the bed and rested his gun on his crossed knee.
"It jumps," said he. "It strikes me when I ain't looking for it. I had to give up second-story work because I got stuck sometimes half-way up. Tell you what—I don't believe the bloomin' doctors know what is good for it."
"Same here. I've spent a thousand dollars without getting any relief. Yours swell any?"
"Of mornings. And when it's goin' to rain—great Christopher!"
"Me, too," said the citizen. "I can tell when a streak of humidity the size of a table-cloth starts from Florida on its way to New Yor
As he started throwing shirts into his bag, Norman knew it was against his better judgment. But after all, Johnny could take care of himself. Spike's hamburger face proved that.
Norman sprang to the bed, knelt beside the ancient creature. "Johnny! It's me! Rick! Tell me what happened!"
But the old man stared at him blankly, then looked back down at his hands again.
How long have you had it?" inquired the citizen.
"Four years. I guess that ain't all. Once you've got it, it's you for a rheumatic life—that's my judgment."
"Ever try rattlesnake oil?" asked the citizen, interestedly.
"Gallons," said the burglar. "If all the snakes I've used the oil of was strung out in a row they'd reach eight times as far as Saturn, and the rattles could be heard at Valparaiso, Indiana, and back."
"Some use Chiselum's Pills," remarked the citizen.
"Fudge!" said the burglar. "Took 'em five months. No good. I had some relief the year I tried Finkelham's Extract, Balm of Gilead poultices and Potts's Pain Pulverizer; but I think it was the buckeye I carried in my pocket what done the trick."
"Is yours worse in the morning or at night?" asked the citizen.
"Night," said the burglar; "just when I'm busiest. Say, take down that arm of yours—I guess you won't—Say! did you ever try Blickerstaff's Blood Builder?"
"I never did. Does yours come in paroxysms or is it a steady pain?"
The burglar sat down on the foot of the bed and rested his gun on his crossed knee.
"It jumps," said he. "It strikes me when I ain't looking for it. I had to give up second-story work because I got stuck sometimes half-way up. Tell you what—I don't believe the bloomin' doctors know what is good for it."
"Same here. I've spent a thousand dollars without getting any relief. Yours swell any?"
"Of mornings. And when it's goin' to rain—great Christopher!"
"Me, too," said the citizen. "I can tell when a streak of humidity the size of a table-cloth starts from Florida on its way to New York. And if I pass a theatre where there's an 'East Lynne' matinee going on, the moisture starts my left arm jumping like a toothache."
"It's undiluted—hades!" said the burglar.
"You're dead right," said the citizen.
The burglar looked down at his pistol and thrust it into his pocket with an awkward attempt at ease.
"Say, old man," he said, constrainedly, "ever try opodeldoc?"
"Slop!" said the citizen angrily. "Might as well rub on restaurant butter."
"Sure," concurred the burglar. "It's a salve suitable for little Minnie when the kitty scratches her finger. I'll tell you what! We're up against it. I only find one thing that eases her up. Hey? Little old sanitary, ameliorating, lest-we-forget Booze. Say—this job's off—'scuse me—get on your clothes and let's go out and have some. 'Scuse the liberty, but—ouch! There she goes again!"
Norman got to his feet slowly. "Okay, Johnny," he said through tight lips. "But I'll find out what happened to you. And I think I know where to start."
Twenty minutes later, however, the pudgy Gorig Sade, Ambassador from Mercury, could offer little information. He leaned back in his gilded chair and raised his hand toward the sunset at the window. His right hand was artificial, an electric member in flesh-like plastic. "Behind that Sun," he said, a slight smile on his thick lips, "lies a planet without a human footprint. Within the Mercurian Zone of Protection, Vulcan is closely guarded by the Mercurian Zone Patrol. Vulcan is a death trap—too close in the Sun's gravitational field. We cannot answer to the safety of those who slip past the patrol and enter the whirlpool."
Norman smiled, as a fighter smiles at his opponent when he comes out at the bell. "That's enough of that line, Sade. When did your patrol last see John Gordon? They were waiting for him off Mercury. You've had your paid killers after him ever since he refused to sell out to you. Now his gravitational counteractive turns up missing. It would have meant a lot to Mercury—or to you, rather, since your rotten politics owns the place."
Sade got to his feet like a disturbed bull. "Get out!" His electric hand hummed as he raised it toward the door. "I shall see the Secretary of State about your insult!"
Norman's left hand shot out like a striking snake, clutched the Ambassador's collar and dragged him out of his chair.
"Okay, Sade," he smiled, "but there's one thing maybe you don't know. Johnny built two ships, a smaller one before he equipped the cruiser he left in. I'm taking that ship to try to reach Vulcan. Johnny's spectroscope proved a lot about this Fountain of Youth business and now it's the only chance to save his life. Anyway, I'll find out what happened to him, and if you had anything to do with it, I'm going to tear your yellow throat out."
He slammed the sputtering Ambassador back into his chair, and left the office. Now Sade would forget the Secretary of State and order his patrol to be waiting for him. A burst of flame in desolate space and who would know.
Ten minutes outside the Mercurian Zone of Protection, Norman welcomed the misty glow as live nebulae engulfed the transparent dome surrounding him. It brightened the monotonous blue light in the pilot room and erased his lonely reflection in the foot-thick thermo-glass that darkened the white-hot glare of space ahead.
Traveling near Mercury was like walking a tight rope. A few degrees off course and the delicate balance between worlds would totter—jerk him
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