She nodded and he led her into the living room. Without speaking she got out the wire recorder and handed it to him. His eyebrows went up when he saw that she was returning not just a spool but the whole works but he made no comment. Instead he handed her a copy of the afternoon Post.

“Seen the paper?” he said in a natural voice. “You might like to glance at it while I wash up.”

“Thanks.” As she took it he pointed to a column; he then left, taking with him the recorder. Jill saw that the column was Ben’s own syndicated outlet:

the CROW’S NEST

by Ben Caxton

Everyone knows that jails and hospitals have one thing in common: they both can be very hard to get out of. In some ways a prisoner is less cut off than a patient; a prisoner can send for his lawyer, can demand a Fair Witness, he can invoke habeas corpus and require the jailor to show cause in open court.

But it takes only a simple NO VISITORS sign, ordered by one of the medicine men of our peculiar tribe, to consign a hospital patient to oblivion more thoroughly than ever was the Man in the Iron Mask.

To be sure, the patient’s next of kin cannot be kept out by this device—but the Man from Mars seems to have no next of kin. The crew of the ill-fated Envoy had few ties on Earth; if the Man in the Iron Mask—pardon me; I mean the “Man from Mars”—has any relative who is guarding his interests, a few thousand inquisitive reporters (such as your present scrivener) have been unable to verify it.

Who speaks for the Man from Mars? Who ordered an armed guard placed around him? What is his dread disease that no one may catch a glimpse of him, nor ask him a question? I address you, Mr. Secretary General; the explanation about “physical weakness” and “gee-fatigue” won’t wash; if that were the answer, a ninety-pound nurse would do as well as an armed guard.

Could this disease be financial in nature? Or (let’s say it softly) is it political?



There was more, all in the same vein; Jill could see that Ben was deliberately baiting the administration, trying to force them to bring Smith out into the open. What that would accomplish she did not know, her own horizon not encompassing high politics and high finance. She felt, rather than knew, that Caxton was taking serious risk in challenging the established authorities, but she had no notion of the size of the danger, nor of what form it might take.

She thumbed through the rest of the paper. It was well loaded with follow-up stories on the return of the Champion, with pictures of Secretary General Douglas pinning medals on the crew, interviews with Captain van Tromp and other members of his brave company, pictures of Martians and Martian cities. There was very little about Smith, merely a medical bulletin that he was improving slowly but satisfactorily from the effects of his trip.

Ben came out and dropped some sheets of onion skin in her lap. “Here’s another newspaper you might like to see,” he remarked and left again.

Jill soon saw that the other “newspaper” was a transcription of what her first wire had picked up. As typed out, it was marked “First Voice,” “Second Voice,” and so on, but Ben had gone back and written in names wherever he had been able to make attributions later. He had written across the top: “All voices, identified or not, are masculine.”

Most of the items were of no interest. They simply showed that Smith had been fed, or washed, or massaged, and that each morning and afternoon he had been required to get up and exercise under the supervision of a voice identified as “Doctor Nelson” and a second voice marked “second doctor.” Jill decided that this must be Dr. Thaddeus.

But one longish passage had nothing to do with the physical care of the patient. Jill read it and reread it:

Doctor Nelson: How are you feeling, boy? Are you strong enough to talk for a while?

Smith: Yes.

Doctor Nelson: A man wants to talk to you.

Smith: (pause) Who? (Caxton had written in: All of Smith’s speeches are preceded by long pauses, some longer than others.)

Nelson: This man is our great (untranscribable guttural word—Martian?). He is our oldest Old One. Will you talk with him?

Smith: (very long pause) I am great happy. The Old One will talk and I will listen and grow.

Nelson: No, no! He wants to ask you questions.

Smith: I cannot teach an Old One.

Nelson: The Old One wishes it. Will you let him ask you questions?

Smith: Yes.

(Background noises, short delay.)

Nelson: This way, sir. Uh, I have Doctor Mahmoud standing by, ready to translate for you.

Jill read “New Voice.” Caxton had scratched this out and had written in: “Secretary General Douglas!!!”

Secretary General:

I won’t need him. You say Smith understands English.