1899- Journey to Mars

Dakota smiled at the man. The fellow got up quickly and lurched after him.

“Come back here! You’re not authorized!”

The boy led the strange man on a chase through the Argent. Once he got him back around the stateroom ring and into the dining hall, he stopped, drew the JPM pistol from his pants and was ready when the man came to a halt.

“What do you think you’re going to do with that, kiddo?” the man asked.

“I’m going to shoot you dead, is what I’m going to do. But I’ll give you a chance to surrender. You can lay down on the floor there and I’ll tie up your hands with some dish towels.”

The man laughed.

“I think instead that I’ll take one of these knives in these place settings over here and start carving until I can make an artistic structure on the center of this table with all your internal organs.”

The man smiled and his hand went to the steel ornate bureau nearby where there was a tray of silver.

“No you don’t,” Dakota gestured with the gun.

“Yes, I do.” The man snatched a knife from the rack and held it before him, waving it slowly about.

“No,” Dakota said. “You don’t.” His adam’s apple swelled in his throat and there was a flutter in his chest. He took a step back, even as the man stepped forward.

The man nodded. “Uh huh.”

“Uh uh.” Dakota shook head.

Dakota saw it in his eyes—the insanity. He was a rabid dog. There was no real thinking going on inside him, there was only murder and mayhem and dark madness.

The man jumped forward and Dakota fired. A hole four-inches wide opened up in the man’s chest, and he could see the doorway into the dining room through it behind him.

He dropped the knife, slowly peered downward at his chest.

“Maybe not,” he said, and fell dead at Dakota’s feet.

[ 45 ]

The crew of the Argent rode upward on what appeared to be an express elevator. The space was cramped. A number of Jonathan Conklin clones pressed against them. Each one of the Argent crew members was manacled.

The elevator came to a stop, and they were led into a dark chamber at the top of the pagoda-like space station.

“Why and how,” Billy Gostman stated as he entered the chamber of Dizang, “are we being held by twenty or more Jonathan Conklins?”

“They are clones.” The man was of Oriental descent. His high, untrimmed eyebrows arched, and while his face appeared to be aged, his hair was long and black and his beard was much like a long, thin, jutting dagger. His mustache stuck out on either side of his face and was apparently waxed into position. He sat cross-legged on a cushion on a dais with the black of the ether to his back. Beside him burned a candle.

“Who the hell are you?” Billy asked.

“I am Dizang. I was named after the ruler of the ten hells of Chinese antiquity.”

“That probably fits.” John Carter said. “You are familiar to me.”

“Many know my name. Those who do, call me Fu Manchu.”

Carter said. “I was once contracted to find you and put an end to you by a certain English gentleman.”

“You failed,” Fu Manchu said.

Billy said, “You talk like somebody from New York.”

“Ahh. Billy the Kid. The lawless gunfighter. Well, you are mostly correct. While I am Chinese—through and through, I assure you—I was educated in the West.”