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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30438 ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    _Daylight sometimes hides secrets that darkness will reveal--the
+    Martian's glowing eyes, for instance. But darkness has other
+    dangers...._
+
+
+THE EYES HAVE IT
+
+By James McKimmey, Jr.
+
+Illustrated by Paul Orban
+
+
+Joseph Heidel looked slowly around the dinner table at the five men,
+hiding his examination by a thin screen of smoke from his cigar. He was
+a large man with thick blond-gray hair cut close to his head. In three
+more months he would be fifty-two, but his face and body had the vital
+look of a man fifteen years younger. He was the President of the
+Superior Council, and he had been in that post--the highest post on the
+occupied planet of Mars--four of the six years he had lived here. As his
+eyes flicked from one face to another his fingers unconsciously tapped
+the table, making a sound like a miniature drum roll.
+
+One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Five top officials, selected, tested,
+screened on Earth to form the nucleus of governmental rule on Mars.
+
+Heidel's bright narrow eyes flicked, his fingers drummed. Which one? Who
+was the imposter, the ringer? Who was the Martian?
+
+Sadler's dry voice cut through the silence: "This is not just an
+ordinary meeting then, Mr. President?"
+
+Heidel's cigar came up and was clamped between his teeth. He stared into
+Sadler's eyes. "No, Sadler, it isn't. This is a very special meeting."
+He grinned around the cigar. "This is where we take the clothes off the
+sheep and find the wolf."
+
+Heidel watched the five faces. Sadler, Meehan, Locke, Forbes, Clarke.
+One of them. Which one?
+
+"I'm a little thick tonight," said Harry Locke. "I didn't follow what
+you meant."
+
+"No, no, of course not," Heidel said, still grinning. "I'll explain it."
+He could feel himself alive at that moment, every nerve singing, every
+muscle toned. His brain was quick and his tongue rolled the words out
+smoothly. This was the kind of situation Heidel handled best. A tense,
+dramatic situation, full of atmosphere and suspense.
+
+"Here it is," Heidel continued, "simply and briefly." He touched the
+cigar against an ash tray, watching with slitted shining eyes while the
+ashes spilled away from the glowing tip. He bent forward suddenly. "We
+have an imposter among us, gentlemen. A spy."
+
+He waited, holding himself tense against the table, letting the sting of
+his words have their effect. Then he leaned back, carefully. "And
+tonight I am going to expose this imposter. Right here, at this table."
+He searched the faces again, looking for a tell-tale twitch of a muscle,
+a movement of a hand, a shading in the look of an eye.
+
+There were only Sadler, Meehan, Locke, Forbes, Clarke, looking like
+themselves, quizzical, polite, respecting.
+
+"One of us, you say," Clarke said noncommittally, his phrase neither a
+question nor a positive statement.
+
+"That is true," said Heidel.
+
+"Bit of a situation at that," said Forbes, letting a faint smile touch
+his lips.
+
+"Understatement, Forbes," Heidel said. "Understatement."
+
+"Didn't mean to sound capricious," Forbes said, his smile gone.
+
+"Of course not," Heidel said.
+
+Edward Clarke cleared his throat. "May I ask, sir, how this was
+discovered and how it was narrowed down to the Superior Council?"
+
+"Surely," Heidel said crisply. "No need to go into the troubles we've
+been having. You know all about that. But how these troubles originated
+is the important thing. Do you remember the missionary affair?"
+
+"When we were going to convert the Eastern industrial section?"
+
+"That's right," Heidel said, remembering. "Horrible massacre."
+
+"Bloody," agreed John Meehan.
+
+"Sixty-seven missionaries lost," Heidel said.
+
+"I remember the Martian note of apology," Forbes said. "'We have
+worshipped our own God for two-hundred thousand years. We would prefer
+to continue. Thank you.' Blinking nerve, eh?"
+
+"Neither here nor there," Heidel said abruptly. "The point is that no
+one _knew_ those sixty-seven men were missionaries except myself and you
+five men."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Heidel watched the faces in front of him. "One case," he said. "Here's
+another. Do you recall when we outlawed the free selection system?"
+
+"Another bloody one," said Sadler.
+
+"Forty-eight victims in that case," Heidel said. "Forty-eight honorable
+colonists, sanctioned by us to legally marry any couple on the planet,
+and sent out over the country to abolish the horrible free-love
+situation."
+
+"Forty-eight justices of the peace dead as pickerels," Forbes said.
+
+"Do you happen to remember _that_ note of apology?" Heidel asked, a
+slight edge in his voice. He examined Forbes' eyes.
+
+"Matter of fact, yes," said Forbes, returning Heidel's stare steadily.
+"'You love your way, we'll love ours.' Terribly caustic, what?"
+
+"Terribly," said Heidel. "Although that too is neither here nor there.
+The point again, no one except the six of us right here knew what those
+forty-eight men were sent out to do."
+
+Heidel straightened in his chair. The slow grating voice of Forbes had
+taken some of the sharpness out of the situation. He wanted to hold
+their attention minutely, so that when he was ready, the dramatics of
+his action would be tense and telling.
+
+"There is no use," he said, "in going into the details of the other
+incidents. You remember them. When we tried to install a free press, the
+Sensible Art galleries, I-Am-A-Martian Day, wrestling, and all the
+rest."
+
+"I remember the wrestling business awfully well," said Forbes. "Martians
+drove a wrestler through the street in a yellow jetmobile. Had flowers
+around his neck and a crown on his head. He was dead, of course.
+Stuffed, I think...."
+
+"All right," snapped Heidel. "Each one of our efforts to offer these
+people a chance to benefit from our culture was snapped off at the bud.
+And only a leak in the Superior Council could have caused it. It is a
+simple matter of deduction. There is one of us, here tonight, who is
+responsible. And I am going to expose him." Heidel's voice was a low
+vibrant sound that echoed in the large dining room.
+
+The five men waited. Forbes, his long arms crossed. Sadler, his eyes on
+his fingernails. Meehan, blinking placidly. Clarke, twirling his thumbs.
+Locke, examining his cigarette.
+
+"Kessit!" Heidel called.
+
+A gray-haired man in a black butler's coat appeared.
+
+"We'll have our wine now," Heidel said. There was a slight quirk in his
+mouth, so that his teeth showed between his lips. The butler moved
+methodically from place to place, pouring wine from a silver decanter.
+
+"Now then, Kessit," Heidel said, when the butler had finished, "would
+you be kind enough to fetch me that little pistol from the mantel over
+there?" He smiled outwardly this time. The situation was right again; he
+was handling things, inch by inch, without interruption.
+
+He took the gun from the old man's hands. "One thing more, Kessit. Would
+you please light the candles on the table and turn out the rest of the
+lights in the room. I've always been a romanticist," Heidel said,
+smiling around the table. "Candlelight with my wine."
+
+"Oh, excellent," said Locke soberly.
+
+"Quite," said Forbes.
+
+Heidel nodded and waited while the butler lit the candles and snapped
+off the overhead lights. The yellow flames wavered on the table as the
+door closed gently behind the butler.
+
+"Now, then," Heidel said, feeling the tingling in his nerves. "This,
+gentlemen, is a replica of an antique of the twentieth century. A
+working replica, I might add. It was called a P-38, if my memory serves
+me." He held the pistol up so that the candlelight reflected against the
+glistening black handle and the blue barrel.
+
+There was a polite murmur as the five men stretched forward to look at
+the gun in Heidel's hands.
+
+"Crude," Sadler said.
+
+"But devilish-looking," Forbes added.
+
+"My hobby," Heidel said. "I would like to add that not only do I collect
+these small arms, but I am very adept at using them. Something I will
+demonstrate to you very shortly," he added, grinning.
+
+"Say now," nodded Meehan.
+
+"That should be jolly," Forbes said, laughing courteously.
+
+"I believe it will at that," Heidel said. "Now if you will notice,
+gentlemen," he said touching the clip ejector of the pistol and watching
+the black magazine slip out into his other hand. "I have but five
+cartridges in the clip. Just five. You see?"
+
+They all bent forward, blinking.
+
+"Good," said Heidel, shoving the clip back into the grip of the gun. He
+couldn't keep his lips from curling in his excitement, but his hands
+were as steady as though his nerves had turned to ice.
+
+The five men leaned back in their chairs.
+
+"Now then, Meehan," he said to the man at the opposite end of the table.
+"Would you mind moving over to your left, so that the end of the table
+is clear?"
+
+"Oh?" said Meehan. "Yes, of course." He grinned at the others, and there
+was a ripple of amusement as Meehan slid his chair to the left.
+
+"Yes," said Heidel. "All pretty foolish-looking, perhaps. But it won't
+be in a few minutes when I discover the bastard of a Martian who's in
+this group, I'll tell you that!" His voice rose and rang in the room,
+and he brought the glistening pistol down with a crack against the
+table.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was dead silence and Heidel found his smile again. "All right, now
+I'll explain a bit further. Before Dr. Kingly, the head of our
+laboratory, died a few days ago, he made a very peculiar discovery. As
+you know, there has been no evidence to indicate that the Martian is any
+different, physically, from the Earthman. Not until Dr. Kingly made his
+discovery, that is."
+
+Heidel looked from face to face. "This is how it happened," he went on.
+"Dr. Kingly ..."
+
+He paused and glanced about in false surprise. "I beg your pardon,
+gentlemen. We might as well be enjoying our wine. Excellent port. Very
+old, I believe. Shall we?" he asked, raising his glass.
+
+Five other glasses shimmered in the candlelight.
+
+"Let us, ah, toast success to the unveiling of the rotten Martian who
+sits among us, shall we?" Heidel's smile glinted and he drank a quarter
+of his glass.
+
+The five glasses tipped and were returned to the table. Again there was
+silence as the men waited.
+
+"To get back," Heidel said, listening with excitement to his own voice.
+"Dr. Kingly, in the process of an autopsy on a derelict Martian, made a
+rather startling discovery ..."
+
+"I beg your pardon," Forbes said. "Did you say autopsy?"
+
+"Yes," said Heidel. "We've done this frequently. Not according to base
+orders, you understand." He winked. "But a little infraction now and
+then is necessary."
+
+"I see," said Forbes. "I just didn't know about that."
+
+"No, you didn't, did you?" said Heidel, looking at Forbes closely. "At
+any rate, Dr. Kingly had developed in his work a preserving solution
+which he used in such instances, thereby prolonging the time for
+examination of the cadaver, without experiencing deterioration of the
+tissues. This solution was merely injected into the blood stream,
+and ..."
+
+"Sorry again, sir," Forbes said. "But you said blood stream?"
+
+"Yes," Heidel nodded. "This had to be done before the cadaver was a
+cadaver, you see?"
+
+"I think so, yes," said Forbes, leaning back again. "Murdered the
+bastard for an autopsy, what?"
+
+Heidel's fingers closed around the pistol. "I don't like that, Forbes."
+
+"Terribly sorry, sir."
+
+"To get on," Heidel said finally, his voice a cutting sound. "Dr. Kingly
+had injected his solution and then ... Well, at any rate, when he
+returned to his laboratory, it was night. His laboratory was black as
+pitch--I'm trying to paint the picture for you, gentlemen--and the
+cadaver was stretched out on a table, you see. And before Dr. Kingly
+switched on the lights, he saw the eyes of this dead Martian glowing in
+the dark like a pair of hot coals."
+
+"Weird," said Sadler, unblinking.
+
+"Ghostly," said Clarke.
+
+"The important thing," Heidel said curtly, "is that Dr. Kingly
+discovered the difference, then, between the Martian and the Earthman.
+The difference is the eyes. The solution, you see, had reacted
+chemically to the membranes of the eyeballs, so that as it happened
+they lit up like electric lights. I won't go into what Dr. Kingly found
+further, when he dissected the eyeballs. Let it suffice to say, the
+Martian eyeball is a physical element entirely different from our
+own--at least from those of five of us, I should say."
+
+His grin gleamed. He was working this precisely and carefully, and it
+was effective. "Now, however," he continued, "it is this _sixth_ man who
+is at issue right now. The fly in the soup, shall we say. And in just a
+few seconds I am going to exterminate that fly."
+
+He picked up the pistol from the table. "As I told you, gentlemen, I am
+quite versatile with this weapon. I am a dead shot, in other words. And
+I am going to demonstrate it to you." He glanced from face to face.
+
+"You will notice that since Mr. Meehan has moved, I have a clear field
+across the table. I don't believe a little lead in the woodwork will mar
+the room too much, would you say, Forbes?"
+
+Forbes sat very still. "No, I shouldn't think so, sir."
+
+"Good. Because I am going to snuff out each of the four candles in the
+center of this table by shooting the wick away. You follow me,
+gentlemen? Locke? Meehan? Sadler?"
+
+Heads nodded.
+
+"Then perhaps you are already ahead of me. When the last candle is
+extinguished, we will have darkness, you see. And then I think we'll
+find our Martian rat. Because, as a matter of fact," Heidel lolled his
+words, "I have taken the privilege of adding to the wine we have been
+drinking Dr. Kingly's preserving solution. Non-tasteful, non-harmful.
+Except, that is, to one man in this room."
+
+Heidel motioned his gun. "And God rest the bastard's soul, because if
+you will remember, I have five bullets in the chamber of this pistol.
+Four for the candles and one for the brain of the sonofabitch whose eyes
+light up when the last candle goes out."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a steady deadly silence while the flames of the candles licked
+at the still air.
+
+"I think, however," Heidel said, savoring the moment, "that we should
+have one final toast before we proceed." He lifted his glass. "May the
+receiver of the fifth bullet go straight to hell. I phrase that
+literally, gentlemen," he said, laughing. "Drink up!"
+
+The glasses were drained and placed again on the table.
+
+"Watch carefully," Heidel said and lifted the pistol. He aimed at the
+first candle. The trigger was taut against his finger, the explosion
+loud in the room.
+
+"One," said Heidel.
+
+He aimed again. The explosion.
+
+"Two," he said. "Rather good, eh?"
+
+"Oh, yes," Sadler said.
+
+"Quite," said Forbes.
+
+"Again," said Heidel. A third shot echoed.
+
+"Now," he said, pointing the muzzle at the last candle. "I would say
+this is it, wouldn't you, gentlemen? And as soon as this one goes, I'm
+afraid one of us is going to find a bullet right between his goddam
+sparkling eyes. Are you ready?"
+
+He squinted one eye and looked down the sights. He squeezed the trigger,
+the room echoed and there was blackness. Heidel held his pistol poised
+over the table.
+
+Silence.
+
+"Well," said Forbes finally. "There you have it. Surprise, what?"
+
+Heidel balanced the pistol, feeling his palm go suddenly moist against
+the black grip, and he looked around at the five pairs of glowing eyes.
+
+"Bit of a shock, I should imagine," Forbes said. "Discovering all of us,
+as it were."
+
+Heidel licked his lips. "How? _How_ could you do this?"
+
+Forbes remained motionless. "Simple as one, you know. Put men on rockets
+going back to Earth in place of returning colonists. Study. Observe.
+Learn. Shift a record here and there. Forge, change pictures, all that
+sort of thing. Poor contact between here and Earth, you know. Not too
+difficult."
+
+"I'll get one of you," Heidel said, still balancing his pistol tightly.
+
+"Well, possibly," Forbes said. "But no more than one. You have three
+guns pointed at you. We can see you perfectly, you know, as though it
+were broad daylight. One shiver of that pistol, and you're dead."
+
+"Why have you done this?" Heidel said suddenly. "_Why?_ Everything that
+was done was for the Martian. We tried to give you freedom and culture,
+the benefit of our knowledge...."
+
+"We didn't like your wrestlers," Forbes said.
+
+Heidel's nostrils twitched, and suddenly he swung the pistol. There was
+a crashing explosion and then silence.
+
+"Good," said Forbes. "I don't think he got the last one fired."
+
+"You're all right then?" asked Meehan, putting his gun on the table.
+
+"Oh, quite! Rather dramatic altogether, eh?"
+
+"Nerve tingling," Locke agreed.
+
+Forbes turned in his chair and called, "Oh, Kessit!"
+
+The butler opened the door to the darkened room, hesitated, and reached
+for the light switch.
+
+"No, no," Forbes said, smiling. "Never mind that. Come over here, will
+you please?"
+
+The butler crossed the room slowly.
+
+"It's all right," Forbes said. "The president will notice nothing
+whatever, Kessit. Would you mind pouring us all another glass of wine?
+I'm frightfully crazy about that port, eh?"
+
+There was a murmur of agreeing voices. The butler lifted the silver
+decanter and filled glasses, moving easily and surely in the darkness.
+
+"Cheers," said Forbes.
+
+"Cheers," said the others, over the clink of glasses.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    This etext was produced from _If Worlds of Science Fiction_ November
+    1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+    copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
+    typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eyes Have It, by James McKimmey
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30438 ***