David Starr Space Ranger

11. The Storm

A deeper, slower voice now took form in David's mind. It said gravely, "I greet you, creature. It is a good name____________________ has just given you."

The feminine voice said, "I make way for you

By the loss of a faint touch upon Ms mind David became unmistakably aware that the owner of the feminine voice was no longer in mental contact. He turned warily, laboring once more under the illusion that there was direction to these voices and finding his untried mind still attempting to interpret in the old inadequate ways something with which it had never before come in contact. The voice came from no direction, of course. It was within his mind.

The creature of the deep voice gauged the difficulty. It said, "You are disturbed by the failure of your sense equipment to detect me and I do not wish you to be disturbed. I could adopt the outward physical appearance of a creature such as yourself but that would be a poor and undignified imposture. Will this suffice?"

David Starr watched the glimmer appear in the air before him. It was a soft streak of blue-green light about seven feet high and a foot wide.

He said calmly, "That is quite sufficient."

The deep voice said, "Good! And now let me explain who I am. I am the Administrator of____________________ ____________________. The report of the capture of a live specimen of the new surface life came to me as a matter of course. I will examine your mind."

The office of the new being had been a jumble of sound, and nothing more, to David, but he had caught the unmistakable sense of dignity and responsibility that accompanied it. Nevertheless he said firmly, "I would much prefer that you remained outside my mind."

"Your modesty," said the deep voice, "is quite understandable and praiseworthy. I should explain that my inspection would be confined most carefully to the outer fringes only. I would avoid very scrupulously any intrusion on your inner privacy."

David tensed his muscles uselessly. For long minutes there was nothing. Even the illusive feathery touch upon his mind, that had been present when the owner of the feminine voice had probed it, was absent from this new and more experienced inspection. And yet David was aware, without knowing how he could possibly be aware, of the compartments of his mind being delicately opened, then closed, without pain or disturbance.

The deep voice said, "I thank you. You will be released very shortly and returned to the surface."

David said defiantly, "What have you found in my mind?"

"Enough to pity your fellows. We of the Inner Life were once like yourselves so we have some comprehension of it. Your people are out of balance with the universe. You have a questioning mind that seeks to understand what it dimly senses, without possessing the truer, deeper senses that alone can reveal reality to you. In your futile seeking after the shadows that encompass you, you drive through space to the outer most limits of the Galaxy. It is as I have said;____________________ – has named you well. You are a race of Space Rangers indeed.

"Yet of what use is your ranging? The true victory is within. To understand the material universe, you must first become divorced from it as we are. We have turned away from the stars and toward ourselves. We have retreated to the caverns of our one world and abandoned our bodies. With us there is no longer death, except when a mind would rest; or birth, except when a mind gone to rest must be replaced."

David said, "Yet you are not all-sufficient to yourselves. Some of you suffer from curiosity. The being who spoke to me before wished to know of Earth."

"____________________ is recently born. Her days are not equal to a hundred revolutions of the planet about the sun.

Her control of thought patterns is imperfect. We who are mature can easily conceive all the various designs into which your Earth history could have been woven.

Few of them would be comprehensible to yourself, and not in an infinity of years could we have exhausted the thoughts possible in the consideration of your one world, and each thought would have been as fascinating and stimulating as the one thought which happens to represent reality. In time ____________________ – will learn that this is so."

"Yet you yourself take the trouble to examine my mind."

"In order that I may make certain of that which I previously merely suspected. Your race has the capacity for growth. Under the best circumstances a million revolutions of our planet-a moment in the life of the Galaxy-may see it achieve the Inner Life. That would be good. My race would have a companion in eternity and companionship would benefit us mutually."

You say we may achieve it," said David cautiously.

"Your species have certain tendencies my people never had. From your mind I can see easily that there are tendencies against the welfare of the whole."

"If you speak of such things as crime and war, then see in my mind that the vast majority of humans fights the anti-social tendencies and that though our progress against them is slow, it is certain."

"I see that. I see more. I see that you yourself are eager for the welfare of the whole. You have a strong and healthy mind, the essence of which I would not be sorry to see made into one of ours. I would like to help you in your strivings."

"How?" demanded David.

"Your mind is full of suspicion again. Relieve your tension. My help would not be through personal interference in the activities of your people, I assure you. Such interference would be incomprehensible to yourselves and undignified for myself. Let me suggest instead the two inadequacies which you are most aware of in yourself.

"First, since you are composed of unstable ingredients, you are a creature of no permanence. Not only will you decompose and dissolve in a few revolutions of the planet, but if before then you are subjected to any of a thousand different stresses, you will die. Secondly, you feel that you can work best in secrecy, yet not long ago a fellow creature recognized your true identity although you had pretended to a different identity altogether. Is what I have said true?"

David said, "It is true. But what can you do about it?"

The deep voice said, "It is already done and in your hand."

And there was a soft-textured something in David Starr's hand. His fingers almost let it drop before they realized they were holding it. It was a nearly weightless strip of- Well, of what?

The deep voice answered the unspoken thought placidly. "It is neither gauze, nor fiber, nor plastic, nor metal. It is not matter at all as your mind under stands matter. It is ____________________. Put it over your eyes."

David did as he was told, and it sprang from his hands as though it had a primitive life of its own, folding softly and warmly against every fold of structure of his forehead, eyes, and nose; yet it did not prevent him from breathing or from blinking his eyes.

"What has been accomplished?" he asked.

Before the words were out of his mouth there was a mirror before him, manufactured out of energy as silently and quickly as thought itself. In it he could see himself but dimly. His farmboy costume, from hip boots to wide lapels, appeared out of focus through a shadowy mist that changed continuously, as though it were a thin smoke that drifted yet never vanished. From his upper lip to the top of his head all was lost in a shimmer of light that blazed without blinding and through which nothing could be seen. As he stared, the mirror vanished, returning to the store of energy from which it had been momentarily withdrawn.

David asked wonderingly, "Is that how I would appear to others?"

"Yes, if those others had only the sensory equipment you yourself have."

"Yet I can see perfectly. That means that light rays enter the shield. Why may they not leave then and reveal my face?"

"They do leave, as you say, but they are changed In the passage and reveal only what you see in the mirror. To explain that properly, I must use concepts lacking in your mind's understanding."

"And the rest?" David's hands moved slowly over the smoke that encircled him. He felt nothing.

The deep voice again answered the voiceless thought. "You feel nothing. Yet what appears to you as smoke is a barrier which is resistant to short-wave radiation and impassable to material objects of larger than molecular size."

"You mean it is a personal force-shield?"

"That is a crude description, yes."

David said, "Great Galaxy, it's impossible! It has been definitely proven that no force-field small enough to protect a man from radiation and from material inertia can be generated by any machine capable of being carried by a man."

"And so it is to any science of which your fellows are capable of evolving. But the mask you wear is not a power source. It is instead a storage device of energy which, for instance, can be derived from a few moments' exposure to a sun radiating as strongly as ours is from the distance of this planet. It is, further, a mechanism for releasing that energy at mental demand. Since your own mind is incapable of controlling the power, it has been adjusted to the characteristics of your mind and will operate automatically as needed. Remove the mask now."

David lifted his hand to his eyes and, again responsive to his will, the mask fell away and was only a strip of gauze in his hand.

The deep voice spoke for a last time. "And now you must leave us, Space Ranger."

And as gently as can be imagined, consciousness left David Starr.

Nor was there any transition in his return to consciousness. It came back in its entirety. There wasn't even a moment's uncertainty as to his whereabouts; none of the "Where am I?" attitude.

He knew with surety that he was standing on his good two legs upon the surface of Mars; that he was wearing the nosepiece again and breathing through it; that behind him was the exact place at the lip of the fissure where he had thrust the rope ladder's anchor for the beginning of the descent; that to his left, half-hidden among the rocks, was the scooter which Bigman had left behind.

He even knew the exact manner in which he had been returned to the surface. It was not memory; it was information deliberately inserted in his mind, probably as a final device to impress him with the power of the Martians over matter-energy fntercon-versions. They had dissolved a runnel to the surface for him. They had lifted him against gravity at almost rocket speed, turning the solid rock to energy before him and congealing the energy to rock once more behind him, until he was standing on the planet's outer skin once more.

There were even words in his mind that he had never consciously heard. They were in the feminine voice of the caverns, and the words were simply these: "Have no fear, Space Ranger!"

He stepped forward and was aware that the warm, Earth-like surroundings that had been prepared for him in the cavern below no longer existed. He felt the cold the more for the contrast and the wind was stronger than any he had felt yet on Mars. The sun was low in the east as it had been when he first descended the fissure. Was that the previous dawn? He had no way of judging the passage of time during his unconscious intervals, but he felt certain Ms descent had not been more than two dawns before anyway.

There was a difference to the sky. It seemed bluer and the sun was redder. David frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then shrugged. He was becoming accustomed to the Martian landscape, that was all. It was beginning to seem more familiar and, through habit, he was interpreting it in the old Earthly patterns.

Meanwhile it would be better to begin the return to the farm dome immediately. The scooter was by no means so quick as a sand-car nor as comfortable. The less time spent on it the better.

He took approximate sightings among the rock formations and felt like an old hand because of it. The farmboys found their way across what seemed trackless desert by just this method. They would sight along a rock that "looked like a watermelon on a hat," proceed in that direction until level with one that "looked like a spaceship with two off-center jets" and head between it and a farther rock that "looked like a box with its top stove in." It was a crude method but it required no instruments other than a retentive memory and a picturesque imagination, and the farmboys had those in plenty.

David was following the route Bigman had recommended for speediest return with the least chance of going wrong among the less spectacular formations. The scooter jounced along, leaping crazily when it struck ridges and kicking up the dust when it turned, David rode with it, digging his heels firmly into the sockets provided for them and holding a metal steering leash tightly in each hand. He made no effort to cut his speed. Even if the vehicle turned over, there would be little chance for much harm to himself under Martian gravity.

It was another consideration that stopped him: the queer taste in his mouth and the itch along the side of his jawbone and down the line of his backbone. There was a faint grittiness in his mouth, and he looked back with distaste at the plume of dust that jetted out behind him like rocket exhaust. Strange that it should work its way forward and around him to fill his mouth as it did.

Forward and around! Great Galaxy! The thought that came to him at that moment clamped a cold, stifling hand upon his heart and throat.

He slowed the scooter and headed for a rocky ridge where it could stir up no dust. There he stopped it and waited for the air to grow clear. But it didn't. His tongue worked about, tasting the inside of his mouth and shrinking from the increasing roughness that came of fine grit. He looked at the redder sun and bluer sky with new understanding. It was the general dust in the air that was scattering more light, taking the blue from the sun and adding it to the sky in general. His lips were growing dry and the itching was spreading.

There was no longer doubt about it, and with a grim intensity of purpose he flung himself upon his scooter and dashed at top speed across the rocks, gravel, and dust.

Dust!

Dust!

Even on Earth men knew Intimately of, the Martian dust storm, which resembled only in sound the sandstorm of the Earthly deserts. It was the deadliest storm known to the inhabited Solar System. No man, caught as David Starr was now, without a sand-car as protection, miles from the nearest shelter, had ever, in all the history of Mars, survived a dust storm. Men had rolled in death throes within fifty feet of a dome, unable to make the distance while observers within neither dared nor could sally to the rescue without a sand-car.

David Starr knew that only minutes separated him from the same agonizing death. Already the dust was creeping remorselessly between his nosepiece and the skin of his face. He could feel it in his watering, blinking eyes.