Marooned on Mars

CHAPTER 15 The Martians

It could only be one of two things. Chuck decided. He was sitting in the mess hall with the rest of the crew. But no one was doing much talking. There was no need for early sleep, now; they would have plenty of time in which to repair the ship, if it could be repaired. They might be short on supplies after a while, but there’d be more than time enough.

He turned everything over again, breaking all the elements down and recombining them, but the answer still came out to the two possibilities. It had to be one of them.

He got up, nodding to the others, and moved out toward the air lock where his suit was. The helmet was hanging there, with the little radio inside it. He studied it for a

second and then moved on to the tool storage section, now half-bare. All he needed was a small screwdriver, and a metal tube, and a new set of oxygen tanks.

When he came back to the suit, he had all of them. The screwdriver helped him to pull the radio set out and toss it aside. The metal pipe slid down one of the little tubes that led to the helmet. And the oxygen tanks replaced the blower he had been using. He studied the outfit for a few minutes. Something was missing.

In the tool supply room he located a fine wire and a small flashlight. Then he began working on the suit again. This time the little plastic tube came out completely, and the wire went down it on the inside. A dab of cement held it in place. He put the plastic tube down, soldered insulated wire to the metal one and led it out to the battery. Soldered connections soon led through the battery to the bulb which fitted snugly inside the helmet, and from the bulb to the wire attached to the plastic tube. Finally, he reinserted the metal into the plastic tube and squeezed it. The little bulb lighted and he nodded in satisfaction.

He climbed into his suit, snapped the helmet down and picked up the electric torch. The air lock closed behind him.

For a moment, he moved along the hull of the ship and the little torch sparkled in the darkness, spitting against the metal. Again he moved on, apparently paying no attention to anything except the tiny holes he seemed to feel in the hull.

This time he wasn’t bored and he knew he wasn’t going to become sleepy. It might have been the radio. It didn’t seem possible, but there might be some way to heterodyne the signal—shift it to one of a different type that would blank out the brain, which was itself partly electronic in behavior. He couldn’t remember a clear case of anyone passing out with the radio off. Sokolsky had slept, but it had been a natural sleep, until he used the radio while waiting; they had gotten him then.

But he didn’t think so. That was just an added precaution.

An hour slipped by. He moved closer to the tip of the Ship, waiting. He knew it was shock that was holding him up. He knew by now that he was as excited as he had ever been. But while the shock lasted, his feelings were deadened, and he meant to take advantage of it. He was beginning to see that others also had feelings, and that they could be shocked. It didn’t matter, if you used whatever you had when it was needed.

The light in his helmet blinked, and then went on steadily. Something was pressing against the tube which carried air up from the tanks to his helmet. So that was the trick. He didn’t dare to turn, but he was picturing something that could lie buried in the sand, to slip up and pinch the air hose gently; the men on watch would be bored, tired from overwork, and ready to pass out easily enough;

when the air supply dropped down slowly, they’d hardly notice it; or if it was a blower suit, it wouldn’t be hard to slip something slowly over the opening of the blower.

He let the little electric welding torch drop slowly, cutting it off. He shook his head as if feeling drowsy. Then he was down on his face in the sand, and there was a chirping, something like a cricket. Other rustlings reached through his helmet—the creatures were coming out of hiding, chirping to each other.

But he didn’t dare look until the rustlings faded a little. Nor could he wait too long. He had the little metal tube to thank for being conscious, but it couldn’t help him any longer.

He took a deep breath, raising the oxygen level in his suit a trifle, and jumped to his feet. The big light on his helmet shot out.

The timing had been right. They were ahead of him, just nearing the top of the little dune. He doubled his Earth-muscled, Moon-trained legs under him and set out as hard as his legs would carry him. They were traveling like deer through a forest, but his locomotion was that of a kangaroo on an open plain.

Part of his mind studied them. They were about half the size of a full-grown man, and even more human in their body shape than he had expected, though they were slimmer than any man could ever be. The arms and legs were shaped and jointed like those of a man, and the neck rose from the shoulders in the same way, though it was longer. There were no signs of ears or of long hair on the head. Instead, the whole body was covered with a golden-brown fur that must have been two inches, long, judging from the way it fluttered in the thin air. Their lungs were large—but not abnormally so. He watched more carefully, and saw that it was the rate of their breathing that accounted for their ability to survive here. Their chests must be heaving a better than two hundred inflations a minute, as against thirty for a man.

There could no longer be any doubts as to their destination. For the first time, they were caught in the act and they were fleeing for what they hoped was safety;’ straight toward the old ruins.

He put on a touch more speed which brought him closer to them. Now one threw a wild look back over its shoulder. The face had no nose—apparently the mouth served for everything. The forehead curved back sharply, but not without a good height. And the eyes were as he remembered them—three times the diameter of human eyes, and perfectly round, set as wide apart as the head would allow.

Now the houses were closer and they began spreading out. He kept his attention on the one with the torch. The weight would slow it, and it would certainly want to bring its treasure to the community hive, or however it lived. The creature was squeaking furiously now, as if it felt all rules of life would be violated if such a big, heavy creature could outrun it.

He was within feet of it when it flashed down what had apparently been the main street. He was within inches when it suddenly darted sideways into the house he remembered as having the elaborate mosaic on the floor. He lost it for a second as he overshot the entrance. But it was furiously busy, pressing in some order on the branches of the tree-thing.

The center of the mosaic suddenly lifted, and the creature darted downward.

He leaped forward before the entrance could close and caught it, wrenching upward with all his force. It gave easily; there was no snapping of hinges, as he had thought He stood holding it, wishing that he’d known enough to leave the radio in his helmet. With that, he could have had the others from the ship here; and a few men should be able to handle hundreds of these delicate creatures, at least when protected by space suits.

He searched for something with which he could leave a sign for anyone who might have missed him in the ship. But even his pouch had been stripped away while he had played unconscious. It was up to him. Or, wait…

It seemed like sheer foolishness, but he had to leave some sign. With a quick wrench of his hand, he tore the light from his helmet and threw it down, pointing at the swinging lid that gave entrance. If anyone came from the ship, they’d be sure to see the burning light.

He still had the little bulb inside his helmet where it had served to warn him that the creature had attacked and how the attack was made. It was a new battery, he hoped. At best, the bulb was a dim thing, and there was no reflector for it. It was also located so that too much of its light spread out in the helmet and against his eyes. But it was better than nothing.

The lid dropped down at once, when he let himself over the rim. It banged gently against his helmet, with no particular force, but a quiet insistence. It was thin, but he remembered that it had withstood them walking over it without a trace of weakness.

He hesitated before letting it drop completely. Then he released his grasp, and it settled smoothly into place. When he pushed up against it, it lifted easily.

Apparently he would be able to get out. He hadn’t felt at all sure of it.

Now he was in pitch darkness, and he could imagine hundreds of them grouped around him to bring him down. His hand reached awkwardly to the air-tube, and he pinched it gently. The little bulb flashed on. He blinked, trying to keep it from shining directly in his eyes. By sticking his chin out as far as he could, he could just cover it.

It gave a dim light that reached only a few feet clearly, but he could see that he was in a shaft that led downward by means of five-foot steps—probably ideal for such a lithe race on a light world. He dropped over the second one, and took a third, putting him fifteen feet under the ground. There he came to an inclined ramp that led gently downward into greater depths.

He tried to listen for sounds, pressing his helmet against the hard-packed walls, but there was nothing except a confused whisper that could have been anything. The walls looked like clay, though he had seen no clay on Mars, except for the porcelain fragment.

He wasn’t worried about trapdoors, or any of the other things that are supposed to be perils to the underground explorer. These creatures obviously had no major enemies, and their economy must have been both too simple and too meager to afford war among themselves. At any rate, they hadn’t known he was coming. He walked ahead confidently, keeping his right hand on the wall; most of the time he let the bulb remain off to save the little battery.

He came to a right turn. When he switched the bulb on, he saw that the little tunnel forked, one section turning slightly to the left, the other to the right. He chose the left, since it seemed to remain under the city while the other would have led outside.

Far ahead, light flickered, dimmer, than his own. He wouldn’t have seen it, if it hadn’t been for the fact he was in darkness at the time. It was gone almost at once, but it encouraged him to believe that he was on the right track.

One thing worried him—none of the others that had fled from him had come down the passage. They should have followed the first—or come in behind him.

He glanced at his wrist watch. It would be time for the others to be going to their hammocks. Probably Lew would notice that he was gone. It wouldn’t bother him for a while—but Lew had been sleeping poorly lately. In another hour at the most, they’d look for his suit, and realize he was gone.

Would they know where to look? He thought it over, and decided they would have to—he’d talked about the city to them, he’d started to head for it when he found that the welder was missing; and they would realize that he had a legitimate grudge against the Martians he believed to be there. Sokolsky would guess, if none of the others did. The light would be burning long after that—and it wouldn’t take them long to break down the entrance, once they knew where to look.

He should have marked his passage. Then he looked down and grinned. He had marked it. The heavy space boots with their cleats were leaving an unmistakable mark that only a blind man could have missed.

He came to another side trail. Now he was less sure about the direction to take. But the light he had seen had been farther ahead, he was sure.

He walked on, counting his steps now, as he tried to estimate where he was. He must be beyond the limits of the ruined city now.

He was also deeper than he had expected to be. The incline was just beginning to level off. But that was all to the good. It meant he was finally coming to the real living quarters of the creatures. It would take caution then—though he doubted that they could hurt him in the suit.

He tried listening again. By now he should have come to something that would show he was on the right track. The creatures must have had trouble with the oxygen tanks for the welding equipment they had stolen. They should have left signs on the floor—but he hadn’t seen any.

Again, a light flashed briefly ahead, a bright, hot light. He blinked his eyes, and started forward at a run, but it disappeared almost immediately.

He stumbled over something, and went head-over-heels. For a second, fear clutched at him, until he tried the little light and found that it still worked. He looked back. On the floor lay a can of corned beef, half the paper torn off. It had been partly crushed with something, but no opening had been made.

They must have wondered about that. Or maybe the spies had managed to find out that humans put such things in their mouths. He kicked it aside, surer that he was on the right trail. .

But the constant groping through darkness was beginning to get on his nerves. Maybe he should have let the creature get away and gone back to the ship for help. What difference would it have made, as long as he knew how to find the entrance?

He could still go back, of course, but a streak of stubbornness refused to let him, now that he was so near.

Again, light flickered ahead, nearer this time. It was a dull red glow now.

The light was beginning to puzzle him. The air here wasn’t really any heavier than that on the surface, and no flame could burn in that low a level of oxygen. The creatures must have some form of chemical light, such as the glow of a firefly—but it would hardly be as bright as the one glimpse had shown.

It came again, as he was thinking of it—the dull, red glow again. And something moved in front of it, apparently carrying whatever gave off the light across an intersecting branch of the tunnel. These underground caverns must widen out eventually, but he wasn’t as concerned with that as with finding any of the inhabitants. The light offered a clue there.

He let out a shout, forgetting that it was nearly useless here, and went down the tunnel at a rapid rate, holding the switch closed to keep from stumbling over anything.

There was a startled chirping ahead of him, and one of the ululating shrieks which had given him the whim-whams before. This time he knew what was producing it, and it was bearable.

The light ahead was hard to see with his own bulb glowing, but he saw it as he turned the corner, darting around another corner. He leaped after it this time, disregarding the dangers that might lie on the floor of the tunnel. If he stumbled, he would have to stumble; if he was lucky, he’d find out what was going on.

Now he hit another straight stretch, with the creature closer, and a pale, red radiance barely visible before it. He leaped forward, trying to avoid bumping against the seven-foot ceiling. The creature shrieked briefly, and dropped the source of light. It darted into a dark side trail and seemed to vanish.

Chuck bent over for the light source and halted.

In the light of this small bulb, his own helmet lamp stood out against the blackness of the floor! Its filament was barely glowing now, indicating a short-circuit of some kind. But it was his, without any question. The dent in the top identified it without any possibility of a mistake.

The crew of the Eros would have a hard time finding him now!