“It’s playing possum!” Langford said.
Langford advanced as he spoke and raised his foot. The instant he started to bring his heel down the metal insect shivered convulsively, lifted its huge eyes and stared up at him.
Then an incredible thing happened. There was no need for him to crush the insect; methodically and with cold deliberation it began to dismember itself, tearing off its wings with its own sharp claws, and ripping its abdomen to shreds. After a moment, it lay still.
Langford turned and stared soberly at Gurney. “If we wanted to warn them we could send them a little mechanical man, complete in every detail armed with miniature weapons. They’ve simply sent us a replica of themselves, a model in miniature. It’s so unbelievably complex that we could learn nothing by subjecting it to mechanical tests. But we don’t have to know what makes it tick.
“They’ve warned us that they can multiply by fission, so rapidly that they could overrun the Earth in a few hours; they’ve also warned us that if they find themselves facing impossible odds, they won’t hesitate to destroy themselves.”
Commander Gurney had returned to his desk and stood facing Langford, his face as grim as death. “I quite agree,” he said. “That was—an ugly warning. Langford, letting that ship get away was worse than treasonable. Your twenty minutes are up!”
He was reaching for the communication disk on the far side of his desk when Langford reached inside his uniform for the second time. When the big man withdrew his hand he was clasping an automatic pistol.
Gurney took a swift step backward, his eyes widening in alarm. “So the guards forgot to search you!”
“I’m afraid they did, sir!” Langford said, quietly. “Sit down. I’m going to ask a small favor. A port clearance permit, signed and sealed by you; if you give me your word you won’t move until I’ve cleared the port I won’t tie you up.”
Gurney sat down and stared at the young space officer in scornful mockery. “Suppose I refuse to promise anything. Would you blast me down in cold blood?”
Langford hesitated. His jaw tightened and a candid defiance came into his stare. “No!” he said.
“Then if you’re not prepared to murder me you haven’t got what it takes to exact a promise!” Gurney said.
Langford shook his head. “That’s sheer sophistry,” he pointed out. “I’ve just laid my cards on the table. If you take advantage of my good faith you’ll be hitting below the belt. You see, sir, there’s something I’ve got to do; if I fail I’ll come back and give myself up.”
For a moment not a muscle of Gurney’s face moved. Then he shrugged and glanced at his wrist watch. “I’ll sit perfectly still for exactly fifteen minutes, Langford,” he said. “That should give you sufficient time to clear the port.”
His eyes narrowed to steely slits. “But heaven help you when I move!”
“Fair enough!” Langford said.
Ten minutes later the Patrol captain was climbing into a small jet plane at the edge of the spaceport. Far to the east the skyline of Mars City rose above the horizon like a glittering copper penny swimming in a nebulous haze. A penny flipped in desperation that had miraculously come heads.
Part of the wonder he felt was due to his knowledge that he would soon be flying straight through the penny toward a tall white building he would have braved the sun to scale.
II
A grave-faced physician met Langford at the end of the corridor and beckoned him into a small white-walled room. The physician was not talkative; he didn’t need to be. The girl who sat under the bright lamps with her eyes swathed in bandages told Langford all he cared to know.
Her lips were smiling and she held out her arms as her husband came into the room. Langford went up to her, and kissed her tenderly on the cheek, his big, awkward hands caressing her hair that lay in a tumbled dark mass on her shoulders.
She had tried to keep back the tears, but they came now, so that her body quivered with the intensity of her emotion. “I’m going to see, darling!” she whispered; “I know I’m going to see again. I wouldn’t let them remove the bandages until you came.”
“Sure you are!” Langford said, gruffly. “And you’ll have better sight than ever before! Both kinds of sight, just as you had before!”
“I was afraid you might be hurt, darling!” Joan Langford whispered, running her forefinger down his wet cheek as she held his head close. “I used the other sight that makes me so different, and terrifies people much more than it should!”
“You should not have done that!” Langford said, scowling; “I was in no real danger!”
“You were being hunted like a criminal!”
She turned her head toward Dr. Crendon as she spoke. The physician looked away, feeling her gaze on him through the bandages.
“The law of compensation, child,” he said, gently. “Mutants are clairvoyant; their vision is piercingly sharp where vision matters most. When nature confers a priceless gift she sometimes withdraws a lesser one; no one knows why, not even the biologists.” He smiled, “There I go, personifying the impersonal again. Perhaps ordinary sight will someday be vestigial in all of us.”
Langford glanced up. The physician was pressing his finger to his lips and gesturing toward the door. Langford got quickly to his feet. A chill wind seemed to blow into the room, driving all the warmth from his mind.
Just outside the door Dr. Crendon turned and spoke in a cautious whisper. “I haven’t given up hope!” he said. “But the chances are not too good, we don’t know why, but mutants have defective vision from birth even when their eyes are normal.”
Langford nodded, “I know that, doctor!”
The physician’s voice became gentler. “We know so little about mutants. Fifty thousand of them in the world, perhaps—born too early or too late! An
