New Lamps by Robert Moore Williams (best beach reads txt) 📖

Ronson said. It was difficult to follow her thinking. She seemed to say a lot, or nothing, all with the same words, the only difference being the voice tone she used. If she chose, she had all the gifts of a man in concealing her true feelings and real opinions.

Her voice was calm, her face expressionless. "The grapevine in Mars Port said the Earth's top-flight bio-physicist was coming here, that old Les Ro was thought to have something that human scientists were all hotted up about, and that you were coming here to investigate, and to chisel Les Ro out of a piece of it, if he would stand still for such treatment."

Ronson blinked at her. She had delivered a bombshell and she had done it as if she thought what she said was of no importance: "I'm not trying to chisel Les Ro or anybody out of anything." His calm matched her aplomb.

"That's not the way the grapevine had it."

"I don't care how the grapevine had it. I know my own motives and my purpose in coming here." An edge crept into his voice as he realized one possible result of what she was saying.

"That may be true. But do the Martians know them?"

Ronson was silent, his thinking perturbed.

"So I hired Sam and came here," Jennie Ware continued. "If Les Ro was big enough to attract you, he was also big enough to provide me with copy for my next book."

"So you could find copy for a damned book, you risked my neck!" Ronson said, his voice hot.

"I didn't risk it a tenth as much as you're doing, by yelling at the top of your lungs where half of Mars can hear you. Anyhow, I saved your clothes and maybe your hide out in front a while ago. Doesn't that count for something?"

"Sorry," Ronson said abruptly. "I lost my temper."

"I'd like to make one point," Crick said. "We've got a mighty hot collection of thieves, crooks, and killers present in this joint."

Jennie Ware and Jim Ronson stared at him.

Crick gestured toward the Martian with the two guards. "That's Tal Bock. He belongs in the upper lentz country, where he is the leader of a gang of killers and thieves. The one over there soaking his hands in smoke is Kus Dorken. He's not any better than Tal Bock."

"What are they doing here?" the girl asked.

"I don't know," Crick answered. "Unless maybe they've been listening in on the grapevine too."

For a moment, it looked as if Jennie Ware was about to cry. She seemed, suddenly, to become a small girl who had done something wrong and was very sorry for it and was trying to find some way to express her sorrow. Her hand came across the table again, touched Ronson's hand hesitantly.

"I'm sorry, Jim, if I got you into trouble. But I knew your reputation. If you were coming here, something big was here. I—I wanted to be in on it. I guess all my life I've wanted to be in on something big. If I actually got you into trouble, Sam and I are here to help you get out of it. Isn't that right, Sam?"

"Right, Jennie." A growl sounded in the tall adventurer's voice. "Thanks, both of you," Ronson said. He was deeply touched. In spite of the shell of bravado that she wore, and her sudden spurting anger, he liked this girl. She might have the reputation of an uninhibited vixen, but somewhere inside of her was a small girl looking out from awed and wondering eyes at the vastness of the world.

"Watch it!" Crick's whisper was shrill and sharp. His eyes were focused on the ceiling.

All the sounds of the place, the rattle of glasses, the sharp giggling of soliciting women, the deep voices of the Martian males, had gone into sudden and complete silence. Like Crick, they were looking upward. Ronson followed their gaze to the ceiling. Jennie Ware gave a quick cry. Glass tinkled and broke as she dropped her drink.

Jim Ronson did not hear the sound. His entire attention was focused on what was happening on the ceiling.

The dive itself had been cut into the side of the cliff. The solid rock of the ceiling had not been disguised or masked.

At first glance, Ronson thought his eyes were deceiving him. The solid stone itself seemed to be in motion. A sort of melting, shifting flow seemed to be taking place as if the molecules and perhaps even the atoms themselves were dissolving.

"That's atomic disintegration, or atomic shifting, under control!" Sam Crick gasped.

"It's a mirage," Jennie Ware whispered. "It must be."

"If it's a mirage, everybody in the place is seeing it," Ronson said.

There was not a sound in the huge room. The waiters had come to attention like trained soldiers. The females had abruptly lost all interest in what they were doing. Out of the corner of his eyes, Ronson saw one female make a sudden darting movement across the room. One foot touched the circle on the floor as she ran. She took two more steps and fell, sagging downward as if every muscle in her body had suddenly refused to function. She lay on the floor without moving. Not a head was turned toward her, not a Martian moved to help her. In her action Ronson saw one reason why the Martians avoided the circle on the floor. Something was definitely wrong with that circle. Looking at the roof, he saw the reason.

The flowing, shifting movement there had formed into a circle the same size as the circle on the floor and directly above it. Little flickers of light, like the discharge of high frequency currents, were flowing between the two circles. Swiftly the flickers of light became an opaque cylinder of misty flame extending from the ceiling to the floor.

From the opaque cylinder of light, a Martian stepped.

Without quite knowing how he knew it, Ronson knew that this was Les Ro's Messenger.

The Messenger was old, perhaps as old as the granite mountain above them, if the network of fine wrinkles on his face were an accurate indication of his age. With age, calmness and serenity had come to this Martian. His eyes gave the impression that they had seen everything. What they had not seen, the brain behind them had imagined. Peace was in the eyes and on the face, the deep peace that many human saints had sought and had found.

"I like him," Jennie Ware whispered.

The Messenger carried himself with a sureness that was full of meaning. He glanced around the room. His eyes settled on the three humans at the table. A sort of a glow appeared on his face, lighting it as if with a halo. He moved toward them, stopped and stood looking down at them. For a moment, his face was blank, and even his eyes seemed to be withdrawn.

"ESP!" Crick whispered. "Guard your thinking."

The eyes flicked toward Crick, then came to Ronson. The human felt a touch that was feather-light appear in his brain. It seemed to run like lightning through the nerve cells. Then it was withdrawn. The smile came back to the face of the Messenger.

"Les Ro has waited a long time for one like you, my son. He will see you." The voice was deep and pleasant. Somewhere in it were tones that were bell pure.

Ronson rose to his feet.

"Watch it!" Crick whispered. "This may not be on the up and up."

"I came here to see Les Ro." Ronson answered. "I'm not going to back out now. Which way do I go?" The last was spoken to the Messenger.

The Martian bowed. The wave of his hand indicated the cylinder of misty radiance flowing from the ceiling to the floor. "Just step into the light, my son."

"Jim!" Jennie's voice had a frantic plea in it.

"May my friends go with me?" Ronson said.

The Messenger shook his head. His face said he was very sorry but that the answer was no. "I have no instructions for them. Only you, my son. Les Ro has waited very long for someone like you."

Ronson did not know whether he was pleased or not. But he knew he was greatly excited. If the rumors had been right, if the grapevine had reported correctly, something was here in the heart of the Martian mountain that had never existed before in the solar system—and perhaps not in the universe. He stepped boldly into the opaque radiance.

To Jennie Ware and Sam Crick it looked as if he had stepped out of existence.

To Jim Ronson, when he stepped into the light, it seemed to him that millions of tiny hands instantly grasped him. They lifted him upward. It seemed as if they changed directions, but he could not be sure of that. The motion stopped. He felt a firm substance under his feet. The tiny hands released him, the opaque light fell away from him. He was standing in the center of a circle in a room cut out of solid stone, a room that had no exit and no entrance except the one under his feet, the solid stone floor through which the microscopic hands had lifted him.

Panic came up in him then and his hand dived for the gun in his coat pocket. It came away empty. The gun had been removed without his knowledge on the transit upward. Examination revealed that every bit of metal had been removed from his pockets. Only his wrist watch had been left and that apparently because the metal strap around his wrist had resisted removal. Automatically he pushed the button on the side of the watch. On the dial the tiny green light glowed. Neither the light that had lifted him upward nor this room contained lethal radiations. The sight of the green light made him feel better. But not much. Sweat appeared on his skin as he waited. Inside his chest, he felt his heart begin to speed up its beating.

Light danced in the wall. The stone seemed to dissolve. The Messenger came through. The wrinkles on the fine face glowed like ivory at the sight of Ronson.

"I hope you will forgive me for keeping you waiting. Other—ah—tasks demanded my attention at the moment."

"It's quite all right. Finding myself here unexpectedly was a little hard on my nerves but the chance to see Les Ro will be worth the shock to my nervous system. I assume this is the way." Ronson moved toward the light dancing on the wall, then stopped as he saw the Martian was not following. "What's wrong?"

The smile was gone from the face of the Messenger. "One must prove himself worthy of seeing Les Ro."

"Eh?" A little touch of fear came up in the human. "Worthy?"

"Also, it would be well to tell me why you want to see Les Ro. I will carry your request to him."

"But you said Les Ro wanted to see me, that he had waited a long time for someone like me. Though how he knows anything about me—" Ronson's voice went into uneasy silence. Had the grapevine reported his coming here? Or had Crick's whisper about extra-sensory perception in operation had some basis in fact?

"I said Les Ro waited a long time for someone like you." For a moment hope showed on the wrinkled face. "But not necessarily for you. You have certain qualities that Les Ro seeks, but until you have proved that you have other qualities as well—" Sadness replaced the hope. "Tell me what you seek here?"

Ronson felt rebellion come up in him. Then he remembered that on Mars the only law protecting humans was what they could make and enforce for themselves. "Rumors have reached us on Earth of Les Ro's great accomplishments. It is our hope that we can share our knowledge, pool our discoveries. It is our belief that great advances can come from this sharing—for both humans and Martians."

Ronson spoke quietly. Only the tone of his voice expressed the very deep and very real feeling he was putting into words. Yet in the quietly spoken words his dream was expressed—and the dream of every real scientist in the history of Earth—of progress, of forward motion, of leaving behind them a world a little better than the one they had known. Once this dream had been only for humans. Now it included Martians too, and every other race within the solar system.

The Messenger smiled at the words. But under the smile was concern.

"Do you mean that you humans still face problems that you cannot solve? But you have made tremendous scientific advances, much greater than we of Mars have made. Space flight is only one illustration—"

"Unfortunately, many of our scientific advances have brought more problems than they have solved." Grimness crept into Ronson's voice "Before atomic energy was released, it was prophesied that the release of