Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 (128 page)

"But
Dahno
would
recognize
you,
too,"
Toni
pointed
out.

"Of
course
he
will,"
Henry
said.
"But
he
won't
think
of
me
as
an assassin;
my
presence
will
be
reassuring
to
him,
which
will
facilitate your
discussions."

"That's
a
very
good
point,
Uncle,"
Bleys
said.

"Do
we
know
where
we
should
be
set
up,
on
Mars?"
Henry asked.
"We
can't
bring
enough
people
to
have
you
covered
on
an entire
planet."

"You
won't
need
to,"
Bleys
said.
"Dahno
won't
be
willing
to
go far
from
his
ship,
so
we
can
concentrate
on
areas
in
the
close
vicinity
of
landing
pads."

"To
cut
down
on
the
risk
of
an
ambush,"
Toni
said,
"he'll
want
a place
with
a
lot
of
people
around."

"How
many
Soldiers
can
you
spare
for
this
duty,
Uncle?"
Bleys asked.

"I'll
want
to
leave
some
covering
you,"
Henry
said.
"Probably under
Carl's
command.
I
think
I
can
do
that
comfortably
and
still bring
about
sixty
to
Mars."

"All
right,"
Bleys
said.
"That
would
allow
you
to
spread
your
people
out
and
get
them
in
place
in
anywhere
from
six
to
ten
ports— shall
we
pick
the
eleven
largest
pads
and
then
eliminate
the
largest one,
simply
because
it's
too
obvious?"

"That
widens
the
chance
that
Dahno
will
pick
a
place
we
already have
people
in,"
Toni
said.

"And
one
he'll
have
people
in,
too,"
Bleys
said.

CHAPTER
41

Centuries
after
it
had
become
the
first
planet
to
undergo
a
ter
raforming
process,
Mars
was
still
not
a
place
most
people
found comfortable.
The
planet's
small
size
and
distance
from
its
star meant
it
would
always
remain
colder
and
darker
than
any
of
the worlds
that
had
been
terraformed
under
other
stars.
The
dreariness of
the
cold
darkness
was
emphasized,
for
Martians,
by
the
sight,
in their
night
sky,
of
the
light
that
was
their
nearest
neighbor
and
the place
for
which
their
bodies
were
best
suited,
Old
Earth.

It
was
Bleys'
first
trip
to
this
planet;
and
now
he
sat
at
his
desk
in
Favored of God's
lounge,
watching
a
wide-angle
view
of
the
Martian twilight
as
it
crept
across
the
pad
just
outside
Mirage.
He
had
never had
any
reason
to
make
the
tedious
trip
to
this
out-of-the-way planet—more
inaccessible
than
ever,
right
now,
since
Mars
was
on the
opposite
side
of
its
star
from
Old
Earth.

Most
of
humankind
felt
much
the
same
way.

Mars
had
loomed
large
in
human
imaginations
in
the
days
when travel
there
was
impossible;
its
light
was
bright
in
the
only
night
sky mankind
had.
That
time
had
vanished
the
day
Mars
became
a
place no
longer
out
of
reach.

Bleys
had
read
samples
of
some
of
the
speculations
people
had written
about
Mars
during
that
long
pre-space
flight
time.
It
was
no surprise
that
most
of
them
had
been
wildly
implausible;
what
surprised
him
was
the
amazing
variety
of
dreams
human
imaginations had
been
able
to
craft
out
of
virtually
nothing—he
continued
to
find himself
disappointed
at
the
human
ability
to
ignore
facts
in
favor
of something,
anything,
that
could
make
one
feel
good.

He
had
also
been
surprised
the
first
time
he
ran
across
a
reference
to
Mars
as
the
"Red
Planet."
The
rocks
and
dust
that
lent
the
planet
that
descriptive
name
were
now
largely
out
of
sight,
the
dust bound
by
ground
cover
and
the
rocks
nestling
under
scraggly
variform
evergreen
bushes
and
trees.

Still,
as
he
looked
across
the
landing
pad
he
could
see
occasional eddies
of
orange
dust,
that
had
somehow
escaped
the
clutches
of the
binding
vegetation,
swirling
in
the
cold
wind
of
dusk.

A
portion
of
the
front
facade
of
the
port
that
serviced
Mirage
protruded
into
the
left
edge
of
his
screen;
he
could
have
panned
the view
to
take
in
more
of
those
buildings,
but
he
had
no
desire
to
do so.
He
preferred
to
watch
the
open
space
where
Dahno's
ship
would soon
be
landing.

That
ship
had
been
waiting
in
Mars
orbit
when
Favored
arrived, something
Bleys
had
insisted
on,
and
once
the
brothers
made
contact
they
had
negotiated
their
way
to
an
agreement
to
land
on
this small
pad
and
find
a
way
to
have
their
discussion—a
negotiation Bleys
suspected
succeeded
only
because
both
sides
had
people
already
in
place.

Henry,
who
had
been
waiting
in
Barsoom
for
the
decision
on where
the
meeting
would
take
place,
made
it
to
Mirage
before
Favored
touched
down.
Calling
from
the
port,
he
had
strongly
suggested Bleys
leave
the
ship
immediately
and
move
into
the
spaceport
buildings,
or
even
into
the
town.
Dahno,
Henry
pointed
out,
arriving
last and
coming
down
from
space,
would
have
an
easy
shot
at
destroying
Favored of God
from
above,
if
he
so
chose—no
one
was
going
to
assume
that
Dahno's
ship
was
unarmed.

"How
could
he
do
something
like
that
and
hope
to
get
away
with it?"
Bleys
replied.
"This
is
Old
Earth's
space,
and
he
couldn't
hope to
go
back
to
that
planet
without
it
being
known,
well
before
he
got there,
what
he
had
done."

"There
are
ways,"
Toni
said;
speaking
for
the
first
time
since their
arrival
on
the
surface;
she
had
been
somber
throughout
the trip,
but
Bleys
had
no
idea
what
had
brought
that
mood
on.

On
the
screen,
Henry
nodded.
"He
could
be
sending
some
third ship
down,"
he
suggested.
"He
couldn't
be
blamed
for
what
happens down
here
if
he's
still
in
orbit
at
the
time."

"That
might
explain
why
he's
taken
so
long
to
follow
us
down," Toni
added.