Mars is my Destination

Mars is my Destination

Ralph Graham, narrator and incoming holder of a special Martian Colonization Board clearance, witnesses a bar killing at the New Chicago spaceport on the eve of his departure for Mars, where a blond giant guns down a man who had boasted of his own Mars clearance. Amid the ensuing chaos, an unnamed blonde woman warns Graham to hide his own pale-blue clearance card and helps him escape the bar before the mob or police can question him. Over drinks at the Blue Mandarin restaurant overlooking Lake Michigan, she tells him her father was one of the first Martian colonists and died there of an undiscovered virus; Graham, still reeling from a bitter quarrel with his wife Joan, who has refused to accompany him to Mars, is strongly tempted by the woman but ultimately refuses to reveal his mission and leaves her, still not knowing her name. Walking back toward the spaceport, Graham is attacked by a small mechanical killer-device that drops from the trees and wraps around his leg; he destroys it and realizes someone wants him dead. He proceeds to the Administration Building to see Jonathan Trilling (publicly listed as "Brown"), a senior Colonization Board official, hoping to learn if his assignment can be delayed so Joan can be persuaded to come. Trilling instead reveals the gravity of Graham's mission: Mars is being torn apart by a destructive rivalry between two monopolies, Wendel Atomics and Endicott Fuel, whose manipulation of fuel prices and speculative "wildcatting" is impoverishing and radicalizing the colonists, fueling a "Big Lie" that the Colonization Board is conspiring against them. Trilling presents Graham with a silver hawk insignia, the mark of the colony's highest command post, worn by only four men before him, all now dead, and urges him to use it to persuade Joan. Crossing the city afterward, Graham narrowly escapes a knife attack from an unseen woman in a crowded Underground train, during which the friendly stranger beside him is fatally stabbed in Graham's place. He returns home to find that Joan, contrary to her earlier refusal, has packed for Mars after all. Aboard the rocket, Graham and Joan become acquainted with fellow passengers, including engineer Clifton Maddox and Helen Melton, and Graham reflects on the ship's cybernetic robot-computers. A strange screeching leads him to the Chart Room, where he discovers Helen Barclay—the woman from the bar—struggling with a crewman who is trying to injure her with maniacal rage; Graham beats the man back, and in the struggle the man is accidentally killed by one of the robot giants. Commander Littlefield questions Helen and learns she stowed away inside a replacement cybernetic robot to reach Mars, where her brother is dying of radioactive poisoning in a Wendel Atomics laboratory; the dead crewman is found to be carrying identification as a Wendel Atomics secret police agent, though his motive for attacking her remains unexplained. Soon after, a saboteur is spotted crawling along the ship's outer airframe intending to destroy it; Littlefield has him destroyed using the "Project Needles" system of orbital filaments, and wonders aloud to Graham whether the attack was aimed at Helen or at Graham himself. Upon landing on Mars, as Graham and Joan descend the spiral landing ramp, Graham is struck in the back by a poisoned dart fired from above and collapses, gravely injured. He is rushed to a Martian hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness, and overhears Joan speaking with a doctor about the colony's violence, and later a nurse, "Susan," and a Dr. Crawford discussing his recovery; he is cared for by a day nurse, Miss Cherubin, who resembles Joan. The narrative then shifts to colonist John Lynton and his wife Grace and their four children, illustrating the human cost of the Wendel–Endicott feud: Lynton has brought home speculative Endicott fuel cylinders to protect his claim, and that night an intruder is spotted near the storage shed. Fearing the cylinders have been sabotaged to explode, Lynton drives them himself toward the spaceport to spare the more densely populated colony, leaving his family in anguished uncertainty. Back in the hospital, Graham wakes to find a hostile Wendel Atomics agent, "Glacial Stare," at his bedside, questioning him about the events aboard the rocket and threatening him with "Big-Image interrogation," a brutal brainwashing technique using giant-screen illusion to destroy a captive's mind. Weak but desperate, Graham attacks the man first, beating him unconscious against the hospital wall, then realizes he is still trapped, unarmed, and without his identifying insignia, uncertain whether more Wendel agents are near. The text breaks off here, mid-sentence, before the outcome of this confrontation or the resolution of the Wendel–Endicott conflict is revealed.

By Frank Belknap Long · First published 1950 · Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure, Thriller · 21 chapters · 86,390 words

First lines

MARS. Earth's first colony in Space. Men killed for the coveted ticket that allowed them to go there. And, once there, the killing went on.

MARS. Ralph Graham's goal since boyhood -- and he was Mars-bound with authority that put the whole planet in his pocket -- if he could live long enough to assert it!

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Mars is my Destination is listed on Textopian as a novel by Frank Belknap Long, dated 1950 CE.

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science fiction · Mars · space exploration · adventure · alien life · future · technology · interplanetary travel · humanity · colonization · extraterrestrial · survival

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More by Frank Belknap Long