The Man Who Hated Mars Page 3

saw why. Parks' nose tube had come off when Clayton's footstruck his head.

  Parks was breathing heavily, but he wasn't getting any oxygen.

  That was when the Big Idea hit Ron Clayton. With a nosepiece on likethat, you couldn't tell who a man was. He took another drink from thejug and then began to take Parks' clothes off.

  The uniform fit Clayton fine, and so did the nose mask. He dumped hisown clothing on top of Parks' nearly nude body, adjusted the littleoxygen tank so that the gas would flow properly through the mask, tookthe first deep breath of good air he'd had in fifteen years, and walkedtoward the spacefield.

  * * * * *

  He went into the men's room at the Port Building, took a drink, and feltin the pockets of the uniform for Parks' identification. He found it andopened the booklet. It read:

  PARKINSON, HERBERT J. Steward 2nd Class, STS

  Above it was a photo, and a set of fingerprints.

  Clayton grinned. They'd never know it wasn't Parks getting on the ship.

  Parks was a steward, too. A cook's helper. That was good. If he'd been ajetman or something like that, the crew might wonder why he wasn't onduty at takeoff. But a steward was different.

  Clayton sat for several minutes, looking through the booklet anddrinking from the bottle. He emptied it just before the warning sirenskeened through the thin air.

  Clayton got up and went outside toward the ship.

  "Wake up! Hey, you! Wake up!"

  Somebody was slapping his cheeks. Clayton opened his eyes and looked atthe blurred face over his own.

  From a distance, another voice said: "Who is it?"

  The blurred face said: "I don't know. He was asleep behind these cases.I think he's drunk."

  Clayton wasn't drunk--he was sick. His head felt like hell. Where thedevil was he?

  "Get up, bud. Come on, get up!"

  Clayton pulled himself up by holding to the man's arm. The effort madehim dizzy and nauseated.

  The other man said: "Take him down to sick bay, Casey. Get some thiamininto him."

  Clayton didn't struggle as they led him down to the sick bay. He wastrying to clear his head. Where was he? He must have been pretty drunklast night.

  He remembered meeting Parks. And getting thrown out by the bartender.Then what?

  Oh, yeah. He'd gone to the Shark's for a bottle. From there on, it wasmostly gone. He remembered a fight or something, but that was all thatregistered.

  The medic in the sick bay fired two shots from a hypo-gun into botharms, but Clayton ignored the slight sting.

  "Where am I?"

  "Real original. Here, take these." He handed Clayton a couple ofcapsules, and gave him a glass of water to wash them down with.

  When the water hit his stomach, there was an immediate reaction.

  "Oh, Christ!" the medic said. "Get a mop, somebody. Here, bud; heaveinto this." He put a basin on the table in front of Clayton.

  It took them the better part of an hour to get Clayton awake enough torealize what was going on and where he was. Even then, he was plentygroggy.

  * * * * *

  It was the First Officer of the STS-52 who finally got the storystraight. As soon as Clayton was in condition, the medic and thequartermaster officer who had found him took him up to the FirstOfficer's compartment.

  "I was checking through the stores this morning when I found this man.He was asleep, dead drunk, behind the crates."

  "He was drunk, all right," supplied the medic. "I found this in hispocket." He flipped a booklet to the First Officer.

  The First was a young man, not older than twenty-eight withtough-looking gray eyes. He looked over the booklet.

  "Where did you get Parkinson's ID booklet? And his uniform?"

  Clayton looked down at his clothes in wonder. "I don't know."

  "You _don't know_? That's a hell of an answer."

  "Well, I was drunk," Clayton said defensively. "A man doesn't know whathe's doing when he's drunk." He frowned in concentration. He knew he'dhave to think up some story.

  "I kind of remember we made a bet. I bet him I could get on the ship.Sure--I remember, now. That's what happened; I bet him I could get onthe ship and we traded clothes."

  "Where is he now?"

  "At my place, sleeping it off, I guess."

  "Without his oxy-mask?"

  "Oh, I gave him my oxidation pills for the mask."

  The First shook his head. "That sounds like the kind of trick Parkinsonwould pull, all right. I'll have to write it up and turn you both in tothe authorities when we hit Earth." He eyed Clayton. "What's your name?"

  "Cartwright. Sam Cartwright," Clayton said without batting an eye.

  "Volunteer or convicted colonist?"

  "Volunteer."

  The First looked at him for a long moment, disbelief in his eyes.

  It didn't matter. Volunteer or convict, there was no place Clayton couldgo. From the officer's viewpoint, he was as safely imprisoned in thespaceship as he would be on Mars or a prison on Earth.

  * * * * *

  The First wrote in the log book, and then said: "Well, we're one manshort in the kitchen. You wanted to take Parkinson's place; brother,you've got it--without pay." He paused for a moment.

  "You know, of course," he said judiciously, "that you'll be shipped backto Mars immediately. And you'll have to work out your passage bothways--it will be deducted from your pay."

  Clayton nodded. "I know."

  "I don't know what else will happen. If there's a conviction, you maylose your volunteer status on Mars. And there may be fines taken out ofyour pay, too.

  "Well, that's all, Cartwright. You can report to Kissman in thekitchen."

  The First pressed a button on his desk and spoke into the intercom. "Whowas on duty at the airlock when the crew came aboard last night? Sendhim up. I want to talk to him."

  Then the quartermaster officer led Clayton out the door and took him tothe kitchen.

  The ship's driver tubes were pushing it along at a steady five hundredcentimeters per second squared acceleration, pushing her steadily closerto Earth with a little more than half a gravity of drive.

  * * * * *

  There wasn't much for Clayton to do, really. He helped to select thefoods that went into the automatics, and he cleaned them out after eachmeal was cooked. Once every day, he had to partially dismantle them fora really thorough going-over.

  And all the time, he was thinking.

  Parkinson must be dead; he knew that. That meant the Chamber. And evenif he wasn't, they'd send Clayton back to Mars. Luckily, there was noway for either planet to communicate with the ship; it was hard enoughto keep a beam trained on a planet without trying to hit such acomparatively small thing as a ship.

  But they would know about it on Earth by now. They would pick him up theinstant the ship landed. And the best he could hope for was a return toMars.

  No, by God! He wouldn't go back to that frozen mud-ball! He'd stay onEarth, where it was warm and comfortable and a man could live where hewas meant to live. Where there was plenty of air to breathe and plentyof water to drink. Where the beer tasted like beer and not like slop.Earth. Good green hills, the like of which exists nowhere else.

  Slowly, over the days, he evolved a plan. He watched and waited andchecked each little detail to make sure nothing would go wrong. It_couldn't_ go wrong. He didn't want to die, and he didn't want to goback to Mars.

  Nobody on the ship liked him; they couldn't appreciate his position. Hehadn't done anything to them, but they just didn't like him. He didn'tknow why; he'd _tried_ to get along with them. Well, if they didn't likehim, the hell with them.

  If things worked out the way he figured, they'd be damned sorry.

  He was very clever about the whole plan. When turn-over came, hepretended to get violently spacesick. That gave him an opportunity tosteal
a bottle of chloral hydrate from the medic's locker.

  And, while he worked in the kitchen, he spent a great deal of timesharpening a big carving knife.

  Once, during his off time, he managed to disable one of the ship's twolifeboats. He was saving the other for himself.

  The ship was eight hours out from Earth and still decelerating whenClayton pulled his getaway.

  * * * * *

  It was surprisingly easy. He was supposed to be asleep when he sneakeddown to the drive compartment with the knife. He pushed open the door,looked in, and grinned like an ape.

  The Engineer and the two jetmen were out cold from the chloral hydratein the coffee from the