1899- Journey to Mars

“Yes, Master.”

Morts, Dizang thought. I am on a village in space surrounded by insane clones.

[ 42 ]

“I don’t like the smell of this place,” Pat Garrett said. His hands were bound behind him. He’d had about enough of this treatment.

Each of the men that held them and pushed them roughly along—even poor Avi—resembled each other, even down to the crazed look in their eyes.

“Do each of you have surgical skills?” Ekka asked the one that had her by an arm, leading her along.

“Of course not,” the Conklin said.

“How many are you?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Nobody knows.”

“Quiet back there,” the lead Conklin snapped. “No talking.”

“What do we call you?” Avi whispered.

The Conklin holding him replied, “We’re called ‘morts.’ The vampires are ‘corts.’”

“That fits,” Edgar Burroughs stated.

At the front of the line, Billy asked his mort, “Are each of you cold-blooded murderers?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think about it.” He grinned.

“When?” Billy asked.

“Just now, when I saw a hundred of my brothers shot to hell. I wanted to find something and start cutting them up, then I thought how nice it would be to cut you people up and compare all the parts. Then I had this really strange...uh...desire.”

“To do what?” Pat Garrett asked.

“To...label those parts.”

“You’re Jonathan Conklin, all right,” Billy replied.

“You knew him?” the mort asked. “You knew our great father?”

“Unfortunately. And let me tell you, he wasn’t all that great.”

[ 43 ]

After dropping the Argent into the landing bay of the space station, the Kraken backed away and waited for the hatch to close. Once they were in stationary position with regard to the space station, the two corts turned to him.

“What?” Solomon Grundy shouted. It was no use. There was nothing but vacuum on the bridge of the Kraken, and the corts couldn’t hear him. They shook their heads, shrugged and turned their attention back to their consoles. Maybe they were goading him. Grundy was unsure as to how they would receive any coherent message from the station in the emptiness of the ether.

Grundy wanted badly to get off the ship and t

o get out of his space suit. His oxygen tank, thankfully, was not yet depleted. There would be an instruction from Dizang, surely, telling them which hangar was available for them, and then there would be repairs. Endless repairs. The forward screen would need to be replaced. Several of the tentacles were useless and would need to be completely dismantled, parts fabricated and then reassembled. He foresaw weeks on end on the space station—weeks of bad food, of morts and the insufferable Chinaman. It would be enough to drive any man stark raving mad. But he would weather it, somehow, and he would inspect the drive of the Argent. He would discover the secret that the governments of Earth were looking for, and he would sell it to the highest bidder.

Grundy was sitting there, looking forward and wondering whether he should leave the bridge and go fetch an extra oxygen bottle, when the Tesla robot appeared in the empty space where the viewscreen had once been.

The Tesla began flashing a light at him and the corts. The light was terribly bright, but Grundy recognized a pattern to the flashes. It was Morse Code. The flashes repeated.

The two corts turned back to Grundy and waited for him to give them an order of some kind. Grundy held up a hand to them, signaling, “Wait.”