Dusty Zebra : And Other Stories

CHAPTER I

“I would give my left eye to have a chance at studying the bones of Kell-Rabin,” I said.

Kenneth Smith grunted.

“You would give more than your left eye,” he grumbled. “Yes, you would give a damn sight more than your left eye, whether you want to or not.”

Ice tinkled in his glass as he drank and then twirled the goblet in his hand.

We were sitting on the terrace of the Terrestrial Club and far in the distance, on the Mount of Athelum, we could see the lights of the Temple of Saldebar, where reposed the famous bones that were worshipped by the entire Martian nation. In the shallow valley at our feet flowed the multi-colored lights of Dantan, the great Martian city, second to the largest on the planet and first in importance in interplanetary trade.

Several miles to the north the huge, revolving beacons of the space port, one of the largest in the universe, flashed, cutting great swaths in the murky night, great pencils of light that could be seen hundreds of miles above the face of the planet, a lamp set in the window to guide home the navigators of icy space.

It was a beautiful and breathtaking scene, but I was not properly impressed. There were others on the terrace, talking and smoking, drinking and enjoying the pure beauty of the scene stretched out before them. Try as hard as I might, however, to keep from doing so, my eyes would stray from the lighted city and the lights of the port to the faint glimmer that came like a feeble candle beam from the Temple of Saldebar, set on the top of the highest, and one of the few remaining mountains of the Red Planet.

I was thinking dangerous thoughts. I knew they were dangerous. It is always dangerous for an outlander to become too interested in the sacred things of an alien race.

“Yes,” continued my friend slowly, “you would give more than a left eye. If you went monkeying around up there you would probably lose both of your eyes, one at a time in the most painful manner possible. Probably they’d put salt in where your eyes had been. Probably you’d lose your tongue too and they’d probably carve you up considerable and try a little fire and some acid. By the time they got ready to kill you, which they would do artistically, you’d be glad for death.”

“I gather,” I retorted, “that it would be dangerous to try for a look at Kell-Rabin’s skeleton, then.”

“Dangerous! Say, it would be plain suicide. You don’t know these Martians as I do. You have studied them and pried into their history, but I have been high-balling around from space port to space port for a dozen years or more and I have come to know them differently. A fine people to trade with and as courteous and polite as you would want, but they have tabus and Kell-Rabin is their biggest. You know that as well as I. They’re a funny people to look at. It takes some time to get acquainted with them, but they aren’t a bad lot. Get their dander up, though, and look out! Why, it isn’t safe to speak the name of Kell-Rabin. I, for one, wouldn’t think of uttering it where a Martian could hear me.”

“We’ll grant all that,” I replied, “but will you stop to consider for an instant what it would mean to me, who have spent my life studying the Martian race, to know what sort of a man or thing this Kell-Rabin may have been. One glimpse of those bones might serve to settle once for all the origin of the present Martian race; it might serve to determine whether or not the race descended along practically the same lines as we of the Earth; it might even open new angles of thought to the entire situation.”

“And,” grumbled Ken, “have you ever stopped to consider that the bones of Kell-Rabin are to the Martians what a bit of wood from the true cross would be to a Christian or a hair from the beard of the Prophet would mean to a Moslem? Did you ever consider that every man with a drop of Martian blood in his veins would fight to the death to protect the relic against foreign hands?”

“You’re too serious about it,” I told him, “I know how much chance I’ll ever have of seeing them.”

“Well,” replied my friend, “someday I may knock off for a while and try my hand at rifling the tomb.”

“If you do,” I said, “let me know. I’ll be anxious to have a look.”

He laughed and rose to his feet. I heard his footsteps go ringing across the floor of the terrace.

I sat in my chair and gazed out at the feeble gleam of the Martian temple, set there on its mountain, towering above the weird landscape of the fourth planet. I thought upon the temple and the bones of Kell-Rabin.

In the mighty temple of Saldebar, the revered skeleton has lain for ages, from time that had long since been forgotten. Through all of recorded Martian history, a history many thousands of years older than that of the Earth, the bones had lain there, guarded by the priests and worshipped by an entire planet. In the mass of legend and religion that had become attached to the Most Holy Relic, the true identity of Kell-Rabin had been lost. The only persons who might have any idea of what that mythical thing had been were the priests and perhaps even they did not know.

“Quit thinking about it,” I told myself fiercely, but I could not.

Exactly three weeks later I was served with deportation papers because I had attempted, in a perfectly legitimate manner through the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, to obtain permission to study the Temple of Saldebar under the supervision of the Priestly Council.

I had shown, the deportation papers stated, “an unusual and disconcerting curiosity in the Martian religion.” The papers also specifically stated that I was not to return to Mars under the pain of death.

It was a terrible blow to me. For years I had worked on Mars. I was recognized as one of the greatest living authorities on modern Martian civilization and in the course of my work, I had gathered a great deal of information concerning the ancient history of the planet.

I had Martian friends in high offices, but I found they were no longer my friends when I attempted to approach them, hoping they might intercede with a word in my favor. All but one absolutely refused to see me and that one openly insulted me, with a dirty smirk on his face as he did it, almost as if he was glad misfortune had fallen my way.

The Earth ambassador shook his head when I talked with him.

“There’s nothing I can do for you, Mr. Ashby,” he said. “I regret deeply my inability. You know the Martians, however. No one should know them better than you. You have committed a mistake. To them it was the greatest breach of faith possible. There is nothing I can do.”

As I stood upon the deck of the liner, whirling rapidly away from the planet I had devoted my life to, I silently, and unconsciously, shook a fist at its receding bulk.

“Someday—sometime—,” I muttered, but that was merely to soothe my tortured pride. I never really meant to do anything.

I saw the familiar, sun-tanned face of Kenneth Smith in the visor of the visaphone.

“Well,” he said, “I have them!”

“Have what, Ken?” I asked.

“I have,” he said slowly, “the bones of Kell-Rabin!”

My heart seemed to rise up in my throat and choke me. My face must have gone the shade of cold ashes and my mouth was suddenly so dust-dry that I could not speak.

A great fear, mingled with an equally great elation, rose in me and seemed to overwhelm me. I stared, open mouthed, gasping, into the visor. My hand trembled and I think that my entire body shook like a leaf in a gale.

“You look as if you had seen a ghost,” jeered Ken on the other end of the connection.

I gulped and attempted to speak. At last I succeeded. My voice was hardly more than a whisper.

“I have,” I said, “I have seen the ghosts of legions of Martians rising from their graves in protest.”

“Let them rise,” snarled the man in the visor, “we have the damned bones, haven’t we. We’ll make them squeal plenty to get them back.”

There was a hardness, a grimness, a death-head quality in his voice that had never been there before.

“Why, what is the matter, Ken?” I asked, “Where have you been?”

“I have been in the Grondas Desert in Mars,” he said. “Prospecting. Found a deposit of pitchblende that was simply lousy with radium. It would have made me one of the richest men in the universe.”

“Why, that’s good news …”

“It isn’t good news,” replied Ken and the hardness was in his voice again. “The Martian government took it from me and I only got out by the skin of my teeth. Some damn clause or other in an old treaty about foreigners not being allowed any radium rights on the planet.”

“That’s too bad,” I comforted.

“Too bad,” he grinned like a foul monster of the pit. “It is not too bad. The Martians will pay ten times what that pitchblende deposit was worth to get these blessed bones back. The laugh is on the other horse now. In the meantime come over and have a look. I am staying at the Washington. The box is still shut. I thought you would enjoy opening it.”

I snapped off the connection and clutched at the edge of the desk. I was alternately hot and cold. This meant … what did it mean? Kenneth Smith had robbed the Martian nation of the thing that was most highly prized on the entire planet. Not only Kenneth Smith but myself. Not for a moment did I doubt but our short talk on the terrace of the Terrestrial Club three years before had prompted my friend’s mad theft. My words had suggested to him the supreme revenge which he had taken on the crooked little men of Mars, our neighbors in space and our friends by treaty.

I felt little remorse. Given the chance I would probably have done the same thing, not merely because of my desire to inspect those famous bones, but for much the same reason as had prompted Ken. My summary dismissal from Mars and the closing of its hospitality to me forever had been a great blow to my pride and the hurt still rankled deeply. The Martians had played rotten tricks on both myself and my friend. I did not think of any possible wrong that we may have done the Martians. In fact, from that angle of it, I felt a satisfaction that became keener every moment. This, in a way, was my revenge as much as Ken’s.

I felt, however, an inexplicable terror, a dreadful foreboding. The fountain-head of the Martian religion had been profaned and I could imagine what would be the fate of those who had stolen the Holy Remains, if captured by the Martians. That they immediately had discovered the theft and were even now on the trail, I did not doubt. I shivered in sheer physical horror at thinking of the sinister little crooked folks seeking me out.

They would demand that the Terrestrial authorities deliver us to their courts as a last resort, but only as a last resort. The Martians are a proud people and would not readily disclose a tale that would make them the laughing stock of the universe. It was with the priests of Mars themselves that my friend and I would be concerned.

I laughed and jerked open a drawer in the desk. My hand reached in and closed about something that was metallic and cold. I drew it out and slipped it into one of my pockets. There might be need of a weapon and the little electro-gun that hurled living thunderbolts was the most effective weapon the worlds had developed. Not even the Martians, for all their centuries of a wonderful mechanical civilization, had anything that would compare with it. The gun was an Earth secret and only Earthmen carried it.

I rose to my feet and laughed again, the bitter laugh of a conqueror who knows that his victory is empty, that he may, before the next dawn, face a firing squad. It was a great victory, a supreme insult to the Martians. Neither my friend nor I had any cause to love the people of the ruddy planet and both of us had ample for which to hate them. It had been foolish of Ken to steal the bones of Kell-Rabin, but it had been a master stroke…if one did not count the consequences.

I let myself out and rode to the ground floor. From there I took an aero-taxi straight to the Washington.

Ken let me in and bolted the door behind me. Then we grasped hands and stood for a long time looking into one another’s eyes.

“You shouldn’t have done it, Ken,” I said.

“Don’t worry so much about it,” he replied, “I would have done it anyhow. I just remembered what you had said, how anxious you were to see those bones. I would have thought of it, anyhow, for after that radium affair, I sat down and tried hard to think of how I could best humiliate the whole nation that had palmed that sort of deal off on me. Only, if it hadn’t been for you, I would have dropped the cursed box out in space somewhere. If they could find it out there, say, half way between Earth and Mars, I wouldn’t have begrudged it to them. As it is, I have brought it here. You can study those damned bones to your heart’s content.”

He turned to lead the way to an inner room of the suite.

“It was the rottenest thing imaginable,” he was telling me. “They let me find that deposit and then took it away from me. Confiscated it…threatened me with death if I made a fuss about it. Said they were letting me off easy, because there is a ten-year imprisonment clause in that old treaty to deal with any foreigner who does not immediately report such a discovery to the proper officials. They knew I was working on it all the time and never a word did they say.”

He halted and wheeled to face me.

“For two years I worked there in that blazing hell of a desert. I went hungry and thirsty part of the time and went through the sieges of desert fever. I fought heat and red dust, poisonous reptiles and insects, loneliness and near-insanity. I lost three fingers on my left hand when I poisoned them on some sort of a damn desert weed. I found it, tons upon tons of it. I have no idea how many and fairly rotten with radium. One cargo alone would have put me at the top of the world.

“All I would have had to do was snap my fingers and the solar system would bow its knee. I worked, went through two years of Martian desert; I lost my youth, three fingers, and two years of living…for what? For what, I ask you? So that some bloated Martian official might glut his hideous belly, so that he might weigh down some simpering female with precious stones, and give great gifts to the priests who guarded the skeleton of a thing that should have been dust long ago!”

His face was livid with rage. The man was insane! This was not the Ken Smith I had last seen only a few years before. It was another man, a man crazed by the horrible heat and the ghastly loneliness of the red reaches of Mars, a man embittered beyond human endurance by the scurvy injustice of an alien people who never had and never could understand the people of the Earth.

He jerked his arm above his head and pointed at the ceiling, and through the ceiling, out into the blind darkness of space where among the swarms of celestial lights a red star glowed.

“When they find out,” he shouted, “they’ll fear! Damn them, their stinking little souls will shrivel up inside of them. They will know the blasted hope and the terror that I have known. They are a religious people and I have taken their religion! I, the man they ruined, have taken the thing that is most precious to them. Someday, if they don’t find out, I’ll let them know, let them know that I rattled the musty bones of Kell-Rabin in their holy box and laughed at the sound they made!”

There was no doubt of it. The man was mad, a raving lunatic.

“And if they want them badly, as badly as I think they do,” he said in a whisper, “perhaps I’ll return them…at ten times the worth of my radium mine. I’ll bankrupt them. I’ll make them grub in their dirty soil for the next hundred years to pay the price I’ll ask. And always they will know that a man of the Earth has rattled the bones of Kell-Rabin! That will hurt!”

“Man,” I shouted at him, “are you entirely insane? They know now, they must know. Why, the box is gone. Even now they must be searching throughout the whole solar system for it.”

“They do not know,” replied my friend, “I took steps. I knew I would have no chance, even in my own ship, to make a getaway if they found out at once. There is another box, exactly like the one that holds the bones of Kell-Rabin, in the Temple of Saldebar, but it is an empty box…a box that I made and put there. I secreted myself in the temple and took photographs with an electrocamera and with those photos as my guide, I worked for weeks to make another box just like it, except for one thing. On one corner of that other box there is carved a message, a message to the priests of Mars, and when one of them finds that message, they will know that the bones of Kell-Rabin are gone.”

A sonorous voice filled the room.

“We have found the message, Kenneth Smith,” it said, “and we are here to take the Holy Relic and you.”

We whirled about and there, standing just within the room, was a priest of Mars, dressed in all his picturesque habiliments. In his hand he held a vicious little heat weapon.

Looking beyond him I saw that the lock of the door had been melted away. Funny how a man will notice a little thing like that even in the most exciting moments.

The priest was slow with his gun. I believe that, even with my gun in my pocket, I could have beaten him to it. Priests are not supposed to be compelled to use a gun.

I knew, as I faced him, that quick death from his weapon was preferable to capture, and my hand went to my pocket. It was not more than half way out when a thunderous crash split the air.

Kenneth Smith held his gun in his hand. It was as if it had been there all the time. He was fast with his weapon, too fast for the Martian priest.

The priest was crumpled on the floor, a charred mass of flesh. The odor of burned hair and skin mingled with the sharp tang of ionized air.

There was a scurry in the other room and through the doorway we saw another priest bounding toward the hall. We fired simultaneously and the figure collapsed in mid-air to lie smoking on the floor.

“That’s frying them!” I gasped, the words jerked out of my mouth by the suddenness of the events.

“We have to get out of here,” snapped Ken. “Quick, up to the roof. It’s only two stories up. I have a small flier there.”

CHAPTER II Fugitives

Dropping his gun in his pocket, he raced into the adjoining room. While I stood, stunned and hardly knowing where to go, he re-appeared and under his arm was tucked a box about three feet in length.

He grasped me by the arm and we hurdled the two smoking bodies to gain the corridor. Doors were opening and heads were popping out of the rooms. Below us we heard the hurried tramp of feet and one of the elevator dials showed that a cage was rapidly ascending.

We bounded for the stairs and clattered upward. As we gained the roof an excited horde of people burst from the elevator on the floor below us. One man got in our way as we raced across the roof to the little red plane that belonged to Ken. I bowled him over with a straight left and we hurried on.

We scrambled into the plane and Ken stepped on the starter. The motors whined and the machine stirred. Toward us raced a number of people. Two of them, a few feet in advance of the others, reached the plane and threw themselves upon it in a vain attempt to retard its progress. As we gathered speed they rolled off and the machine zoomed up.

We broke every traffic rule that was ever written as we spun crazily off the landing field at the top of the hotel and hurtled into the upper levels. Irate taxi-pilots shouted at us and more than one man at the controls of passenger planes and freighters must have held their breath as we zigzagged past them at a speed that was prohibited in these crowded levels above the city. Twice traffic planes speeded after us and each time we eluded them. No pilot other than Kenneth Smith, space rover extraordinary, could have sent that little red ship on its mad flight and come out with a whole skin.

In half an hour we had cleared the city and were flying over the country. We knew that the murder of the Martian priests had been discovered and that the description of our plane, and possibly a description of our persons, was being broadcast the length and breadth of the land. Every police ship would on an outlook for us.

Night, however, was coming on and it was on this fact that we relied for a clean getaway. A half hour before darkness fell, when twilight was creeping over the lower valleys of the earth, we sighted a golden circle on the wing of a ship far behind us, upon which we had turned our ’scope and knew that the police were on our trail. Before the other ship could gain on us appreciably, darkness cloaked us and, flying without lights, we tore madly on.

An hour later the moon slipped above the horizon and by its light we saw that we had reached the Rocky Mountains and were flying over their jagged ranges.

We held a council of war. A wide search was being conducted for us. The killing of the two priests, on the face of it, must have appeared to be one of the most heinous crimes imaginable, one that was of interplanetary importance, and no stone would be left unturned to apprehend us. The red plane was easily recognizable. There was only one thing to do; abandon the ship before we were sighted.

A moment later two figures, one clutching a wood and metal box, plunged down out of the speeding ship, dropped sickeningly for a moment and then gently floated as the valves of the parachutes were turned on. A red plane, throttle wide open, stick lashed back, and with no occupants plunged on its mad course. Two months later I learned that the wreck had been found the next morning some hundred miles from where we had leaped into space.

It was a wild and desolate place where we had chosen to drop out of the plane. Easily we guided ourselves to earth and closed the parachute valves as our feet touched ground. There was the strong, aromatic scent of pine in the air and a strong breeze sighed dismally through the tree-tops. Rocks rolled under my feet as I moved.

We found a dense thicket of a low growing evergreen shrub and hiding ourselves in it, fell into a troubled sleep, waking when the slanting rays of the sun reached between the needles and touched our faces.

Several times that morning, as we tried to decide what to do, I was tempted to pry loose the cover and view the contents of the box which was reputed to contain the bones of the famous Kell-Rabin. I was afraid to do so, however. I feared that, upon being exposed to the air, the precious bones would disintegrate into dust. The box, when it was opened, must be in a laboratory, where proper preservatives and apparatus would be directly at hand. Opening the box there, in that wild mountainous region, was too much of a gamble. I decided to wait.

Hunger at last drove us forth and we were fortunate enough to bring down a small buck with a reduced charged from Ken’s electro-gun. We had no salt, but ate the meat, charred over the fire, like ravenous wolves. We found berries and ate them.

For weeks we staggered through the mountains, lugging our precious box. Neither of us would have thought of discarding it, for to Ken it meant revenge and a fabulous fortune in ransom and to me it meant a chance to probe deeper into the mysteries of the Martian race and a revenge, which I desired only a little less than my half-mad friend. So, although it galled our shoulders and was a dead weight that made our hard way even harder, we clung tenaciously to it.

We grew beards and I developed a tan that was only a shade lighter than Ken had acquired on the parched deserts of Mars. Pounds of superfluous flesh fell from us and our faces became thinner. I doubt if anyone other than close acquaintances would have known us.

So at last we came to a lonely little town set in the hills and while Ken mounted guard over the box at its outskirts, I entered the town. There I purchased a shabby old-fashioned trunk from the hardware and furniture dealer and appropriate clothes from the one clothing store the place boasted.

That evening, when the east bound plane soared down out of the sky it found two mountaineers, bewhiskered and ragged, who were silent, as all strong men of the open spaces are supposed to be, but who made it known they had struck it “rich” and were going to the cities for a spree. Their only baggage consisted of one trunk of ancient vintage.

In Chicago we purchased a strong box and in it placed the box containing the Martian bones. Half an hour later the strong box was placed in a safety deposit vault in the First Lunar bank and duplicate keys were delivered to Ken and myself. We did not deem it wise to have the box in our possession until the police had dropped their search for us. Reasoning that we would hardly be expected to return so shortly to the city from which we had escaped, we decided to remain there.

The day we placed the box in the vault, we checked out of the hotel. We next visited a certain man who lived in one of the least fashionable parts of the city. We left behind us a sum of money, but walked away entirely different men. We were no longer Kenneth Smith and Robert Ashby whom the world had known nor were we the bearded mountaineers who had boarded the east bound flier with a single trunk as baggage. Our features were a work of art. There were little plates, which could be removed instantly, but which caused no discomfort, in our nostrils and in our cheeks. Our hair was cut differently and trained to lie just so, under the persuasion of an intricate machine. It was a simple disguise and an effective one. During the next few weeks I met friends of mine face to face on the street and there was not even the faintest gleam of recognition in their eyes.

We established residence in a modest little residential district and bided our time. When the murder of the two Martian priests had blown over, we would act.

And then one day Ken did not return to our lodgings. I waited for him for hours, then started a systematic and careful search. A week brought no results. He had not been arrested, his body had not been found, he was in no hospital, he had not taken any plane.

I was forced to face the apparent facts. The Martians had captured my friend!

A death sentence awaited me the moment I set foot on Martian soil. I had been absolutely forbidden to visit the planet again.

But I did return. I held my breath as I was passed through the customs office. Would my disguise, which had been so effective on Earth, continue to serve me on Mars? The examination, however, was perfunctory, and I was passed. I had declared myself a business man on a pleasure trip, one of the innumerable swarm of tourists who each year shake off the shackles of a prosaic Earth to enjoy the weird offerings of the alien planet.

I stood once more on the soil of the Red Planet. Once more I was face to face with the nation before which Ken Smith and myself had thrown the gauge of battle. My business was a grim one, a mission of rescue, perhaps of revenge. My destination was the Temple of Saldebar.

My friend had told me much of the temple. Hour after hour we had talked of it. Printed indelibly upon my mind was the route which my friend had twice followed when he had filched the bones of Kell-Rabin. Carefully I laid my plans which were, necessarily, a duplication of the same plans which Ken had made and carried out successfully. For the second time in the history of the planet an alien was planning to enter the Holy of Holies by the same route that the first had followed.

The Mount of Athelum was shrouded in darkness. Two hours before the sun had slipped over the rim of the planet and it would be another hour before Deimos, the larger moon of Mars, would rise.

I shivered in the cold wind that roared up from the desert below and wrapped my black cloak tighter about me. In their holsters at my belt were two electro-guns and in my hand, attached to my wrist by a leather thong was a stick with a weighted end, an ugly and a silent weapon. In my jacket pocket rested a small flash and a package of concentrated food wafers. I did not know for how long I would have to lurk in the great dark temple which reared its massive walls before me, before I found he whom I sought or was at last convinced he was not there.

It was past the usual hour for worship and still I waited. I had no desire to enter the place when it swarmed with pilgrims and worshippers. I preferred to wait until there was no longer any doubt that the temple was occupied only by the priests. It was also necessary that I strike at the hour when guards were changed, for once a clubbed guard was discovered a general search would be started and I would have to go into hiding and hope for the best. That I could get in the building without clubbing one or more of the guards, I knew, was an impossibility.

Like a great glittering jewel set in the black pool of the night, I could see the lights of Dantan in the distance and I chucked with a fiendish glee when I tried to imagine what an uproar the city would be in if the populace of Mars and of the Earth knew of the theft of the holy bones and the sacrilege of the temple. The matter of the theft had been kept a secret. The Martian government and the priestly clan did not relish publicity on a thing of that sort.

Someday, perhaps, as the one final act of revenge, I would broadcast the news to the ends of the solar system. I would set every land, from the little mining settlements on Mercury to the last trading outposts in the frozen fastnesses of Pluto on ear with the news. The Martian and his religion would become the laughing stock of the universe. Perhaps, then, too late, the high officials and the priests would wish that they had dealt more leniently with myself and my friend. It was something good to think about as I squatted in the darkness outside the temple, waiting my time to strike. Perhaps I was a bit insane. Probably I still am.

A ringing voice cried out in the darkness and a light flashed briefly in a niche in the temple wall. Another voice answered. There was a ceremonial clash of swords, which the priests carried while on guard as emblems of their post.

Guards were being changed. From far down the temple wall came another challenge and another reply, followed by the clash of steel. It was all ceremony and custom. The setting of the guard, like the carrying of the sword, was a survival from dim, forgotten days.

On this night, however, I thought grimly, there would be need of guards.

Softly I moved forward to gain the denser shadow of the wall and with my left hand touching the rough stones, crept slowly along it edge. Several times I stopped to stare and listen, straining my eyeballs and ears. My presence, I was convinced, was unsuspected, but I was taking no chances. A Martian temple of any sort, and especially the Temple of Saldebar, is a dangerous place for an Earthman.

My clutching fingers, feeling along the wall slightly above and before my head, found a break in the stone and I knew that I had reached the postern gate which I had selected for my entrance to the temple.

Holding my breath for fear that the guard on duty there might hear it, I peered cautiously around the edge of the niche in which the gate was set. Like a graven image, upright, holding the ritualistic position of a Martian temple guard, the fellow stood there directly in front of the gate. The point of the massive sword rested on the stone flagging at his feet and both hands gripped the hilt.

I gathered myself together, gripped the edge of the wall tightly with my fingers to aid in directing my leap, took a firmer grip on the end of the lead-weighted club, and sprang.

The guard never lifted the point of the sword from the ground. I doubt if he recognized me as an Earthman at all. As I loomed in front of him, my club, which had whirled through an arc as I leaped, descended viciously on his skull. I caught his falling body with my left arm and my right hand closed in an iron grip over his mouth to strangle any sound that he might make. Easily I laid him on the flagging and moved to the door. With my hand on the heavy latch I stopped a moment to consider donning the clothes of the dead guard, but decided not to do so. His robes would hinder my movements and my greater size would betray me as quickly as my earthly dress.

The hinges of the door creaked slightly as I let myself in, but the slight sound must have gone unheeded, for nothing happened, although I waited for long minutes, poised to flee upon the slightest indication of any disturbance.

The corridor into which the door led was pitch black and when I closed the door behind me I was seized for a moment with that indescribable terror that descends upon one when facing danger in darkness. For a split second I wanted to use my flash, but I knew, even as I wanted to do it, that even the faintest glimmer of light might betray me and foil my plans.

From my talks with Ken, who had twice passed this way to rob the temple of its precious relic, I was fairly well acquainted with the route which I was to take to gain the great hall in the center of the temple. I knew that the corridor in which I stood ran straight ahead for a matter of two hundred paces and then veered sharply, almost at a right angle, to the left.

I was to follow the corridor until I gained another, which was more extensively used and which was lighted. There was little danger, I knew, to be expected in the dark corridor. It was after I had gained the second corridor that I would have to exercise the utmost caution. With my hand trailing along the wall of the corridor, I moved forward, tiptoeing so that the sound of my footsteps would be deadened.

I came to the turn in the corridor and saw a faint light in the distance where it entered the second corridor. Cautiously I moved forward, keeping sharp watch on all sides.

CHAPTER III The Man Without a Body

Near to the floor on the left wall my eyes made out a small patch of light and I stopped stock still to study it and try to determine its origin. I was unable to do so until I slithered across from the right wall, which I was hugging, to the left side and then I saw that the patch of light came from a small oblong chink in the right wall. Apparently the wall separated the corridor from another room and a chunk of stone had fallen from it.

Straining my ears, I heard a mumble of voices. Martian voices, apparently coming from the room from which the light streamed through the hole in the wall.

Determined to find what was transpiring in the room, I slid forward along the wall.

Only a matter of half a dozen feet from the hole, I was suddenly arrested in my tracks. My foot was lifted to take another step forward and I did not lower it. I was like a pointer who has suddenly run afoul of a bird. I believe that my ears actually moved forward a little, as I tried to catch again the words which I had heard.

Then, distinctly and as if the speaker were almost at my elbow, came other words, spoken in English and in a voice that I knew…the voice of the man I sought, Ken Smith!

“No, damn you. You’ll rot in Hell before I tell you. I rattled them in their filthy box. Rattled them and laughed when I heard them rattle. I rattled them, do you understand, blast your filthy souls. They’re only bones, musty, rotten bones, like the bones of my body over there will be in a few weeks and like your bones will be when you die…”

The voice had risen, shriller and shriller, to suddenly break in a terrible scream of pain that brought cold perspiration out of every pore in my body.

The screaming ended and I heard the rumble of a Martian voice.

“Kenneth Smith, you will tell us where the holy skeleton of Kell-Rabin is. Not until then will we give you a merciful release. Remember, we could leave you here, with the current turned on, high…higher than it was just now, and forget about you for years. Perhaps then you would tell us. You are immortal, you will never die. Could you endure an eternity of torture?”

Again I heard the voice of my friend, high and shrill.

“I will tell you where the bones are…I will tell you.”

I could almost see the breathless suspense of those who were on the other side of the wall.

“…I will tell you where the bones of Kell-Rabin are—when your stinking planet has dissolved into bloody dust and floats among the stars.”

The rumble of Martian voices boomed out like the angry beat of a drum. The screaming began again, rising until it seemed that it would burst the ear-drums.

With a leap I was at the hole in the wall and my fingers hooked themselves on the edge of a great block. With all my strength I tore at it and felt it give beneath my hands. Frantically I tugged and it came free. Madly I battered at other blocks, pulling them out, fighting madly to clear a space large enough to admit my body.

All the time the horrible agonized screaming beat upon my brain and urged me to greater effort. The screaming, too, drowned out the sound of crunching masonry and falling blocks of stone.

A last block came free and I leaped through the gap. Even as I leaped, my hands sought the holsters and before my feet hit the floor I had both electro-guns out.

It was a strange tableau that confronted me. On a table to one side of the room lay a naked human body, with the skull split open, the face gone, and the neck horribly mangled. On another table, about which were grouped five Martian priests, stood a small machine, attached by two wires to a transparent cylinder about three feet in height.

It was the cylinder, however, that held my eye and struck terror deep into my soul. It was filled with some sort of milky liquid and in the liquid floated a naked, pulsating human brain. Just below the brain hung a face, the face of Ken Smith! His features were distorted in pain, from the cylinder rose the shrill screams of torture. Below the face trailed a portion of the spinal cord and what were apparently the voice organs.

I was mad with terror and anguish at the scene before me. In two leaps I was at the table where the cylinder sat, had swept away the astonished priest who stood in my way, and flipped up the switch of the tiny mechanism beside the cylinder. Abruptly the transparency of the cylinder faded and the screaming was cut short. As I swung away from the table to face the priests, who were swiftly recovering from their astonishment at my appearance, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, that the cylinder had assumed a solid shape, a dull-grey, metallic shade.

The priests surged forward, but as I jabbed the two guns forward, they fell back, murmuring.

“One word out of you,” I hissed scarcely above a whisper, “and I’ll fry you where you stand.”

They understood. They had no arms and they knew the reputation of the electro-guns. They knew, too, that a Terrestrial, discovered in a Martian temple, would be desperate and that he would not hesitate to kill and kill ruthlessly.

I racked my brain. I was in a quandary. If I killed the priests and made a break, I might be able to win my way out of the temple. I had found my friend, however, and I could not leave him behind. When I went, the cylinder and the little machine that operated it, must go also. I could not leave Ken Smith, or what was left of Ken Smith, to suffer indescribable torture at the hands of these fiends. If the worst came to pass, I would train one of the guns on the cylinder and deliberately blast what I had seen in its milky contents out of existence. It would be better that way than leaving it there in the hands of the Martians.

My glance fell on the mutilated body that lay on the second table. It was, I knew, the body of Ken Smith. He had said something about “my body over there.” The beastly men of Mars had stolen his brain and placed it in a cylinder! They had said something about him being immortal.

The crooked little men before me had assumed the stoical expression that characterized the Martian race. All of them were draped in the robes of high office. I smiled grimly and they flinched at my smile. I had thought of what a rare bag of birds I had flushed. Their lives lay in a balance, lay at the end of my two gun-finger tips and they knew it.

“Show me how this mechanism works,” I ordered the foremost one in a guarded whisper.

The priest hesitated, but I made a peremptory motion with one of the guns and he stepped quickly forward.

“One wrong move,” I warned him grimly, “and every one of you sizzle. I am here and I am leaving soon, with this cylinder. Maybe I’ll let you live, maybe I won’t.”

The expressions on their faces never changed. They had courage, you have to say that much for them.

“What do you wish to know of the machine?” asked the Martian who had stepped forward.

“I want to talk to the man in the cylinder,” I said. “I don’t want to torture him, you understand. I want to talk to him.”

The priest reached out a hand toward the machine, but I waved him back.

“No,” I said. “You tell me what to do. If you direct me falsely…”

I did not finish my threat. He beat me to it. He licked his thin lips and nodded his head.

I laid one of my guns on the table, where I could snatch it up at a second’s notice, and reached out my hand to the machine.

“You must turn that red indicator back of the green reading,” said the Martian. “Back of that the brain in the cylinder has full exercise of its faculties and experiences no ill effects. Above that mark torture begins. The machine is very simple…”

“Yes,” I said, “it must be. But I am not interested in the machine. I want to talk to my friend. Now what do I do.”

“All that is necessary is to close the switch you opened.”

My fingers closed over the switch and pushed it home. My back was to the cylinder and I could not see what transpired, but no scream came and I knew that the priest must have informed me correctly.

“You there, Ken?” I asked.

“Right here, Bob,” came the well-remembered voice.

“Listen closely, Ken,” I said. “We haven’t got much time. Something may happen any moment. Have you any suggestions for getting out of here.”

“The way out through the corridor is clear?” asked the voice of my friend.

“So far as I know. The guard is dead.”

“Then roast the priests and on your way out give me a shot. Promise, though, to finish the priests first. After what they did to me … You understand. Eye for eye. Blast their brains, rob them of this eternal life they’ve given me. And be sure I’m done before you leave.”

“No, Ken,” I said, “I’m taking you.”

“You’re crazy, Bob.”

“I may be crazy,” I retorted, half angrily, “but either both of us go out of here or neither of us go.”

“But, Bob …”

“We haven’t time to argue. You know the ropes better than I do. Any suggestions?”

“Alright, then. Shut me off. Disconnect the cylinder from the machine and stick the machine in your pocket. You will need it … or rather, I will. It is run on a connection with any electric current. Disconnect it from the temple wiring. Wipe out the priests and stick me under your arm. That’s all. If we get out, we get out. If we don’t, crack me up before you wash out.”

“That’s talking,” I cheered him. “What these animals have done to you doesn’t make any difference. We’re still pals.”

“Sure, we’re pals. Only you’ll have to do all the fighting from now on.”

My fingers were on the switch.

“Just a second, Bob. I’ve thought of something. Think you can carry two of these tanks?”

“How heavy are they?”

“I don’t know. Not so heavy, though.”

The priests were moving uneasily and I shouted a sharp command at them.

“If you can do it,” droned the voice of my friend, “run into that room just across from you. You can see the door. There’s racks of tanks in there. Brains of dead priests, you know. Take one of them. He may be a great help.”

“Okeh,” my hand started to lift the switch.

“Don’t forget the priests. Damn them, give them …”

The voice snapped short as I pulled the switch free.

A latch clicked behind me and I swung about. In the doorway which opened from the second corridor stood another priest. Amazement was written all over his features. He was opening his mouth to scream a warning when I got him.

The blast had scarcely left the muzzle of the gun, when I twisted back on my heel and not a moment too soon. All five of the priests were rushing me. The muzzle of the gun was not more than a few inches from the breast of the foremost one when I depressed the trigger. The priest was bathed for a second in a lurid blue flame that lapped over him from head to foot; for an instant he wavered in front of me, shriveled and blackened and then fell, his charred body breaking into pieces as it fell. The gun crackled and roared and I imagine that the noise could be heard even in the farthest corners of the temple. The electro-gun is not a silent weapon.

Two of the priests died only a few feet from me and the third almost touched my throat with his skinny, twisted hands before I could stick the gun into his stomach and give him everything it had. He simply evaporated in a flash of electrical energy that almost knocked me off my feet.

Staggering from the shock, I caught sight of the last of the priestly quintet rushing for the open door. My finger caught on the regulator and pushed it far over as I fired. It was unintentional, but it was lucky for me that it happened. Set at full charge, the gun hurled a living thunderbolt across the room that snuffed the fleeing priest out of existence and blasted the entire opposite wall of the room into the outer corridor. Other masonry, falling with resounding crashes, completely blocked the passage.

The room reeked with the charnel odor of burned flesh and the sickening stench of burning ozone. My ears were dulled by the thunder of the electro-gun in that vaulted room and my senses were reeling from the effects of the electrical charges set off at close quarters. With deafening crashes the masonry was still falling in the outer passage. I heard faint cries from some other quarter of the building and knew that the priests of Mars were aroused and racing toward this section of the temple.

Stumbling to the table I wrenched loose the connections from the machine and thrust it in my pocket. I lifted the cylinder and was surprised to find it so light.

Then I remembered. I was to take another cylinder. Had I the time? My friend had a good reason for wanting me to get one of the other cylinders. I was confident of being able to fight my way through.

I resolved to try it. Setting the cylinder back on the table, I ran toward the door which Ken had indicated. Halfway to it I jerked out one of the guns. There was no need of fumbling with a lock now. Every second counted. Training the gun on the lock as I ran, I pressed the trigger. The heavy charge blasted away a section of the door and, running at full tilt, I struck it, driving it open. I sprawled into a room that was so large it at first bewildered me. In huge racks that left only alleyways between them, were piled cylinder on cylinder, identically like the one in which the brain of Ken Smith reposed.

I clutched at the one nearest at hand, hauled it from its resting place and fled back into the other room.

I could hear the enraged babble of the priests as they worked frantically to clear the corridor which my shot had blocked. There was no one in sight.

With a cry of triumph, I swept up the cylinder which contained all that was left of my friend, and raced for the breach I had made between the room and the dark corridor.

Once in it, I ran swiftly until I believed myself to be near the sharp turn. Throwing caution to the winds, I brought out my flash and cut the darkness with a swath of light. Behind me I heard a shrill yell and a flame pistol spat, but the distance was too great and the livid tongue of fire that it flung out fell far short.

With fear riding my shoulders, I tore on. The pistol continued to spit. At the sharp turn in the corridor, I halted and pocketed my flash, hauling forth one of my guns. Quickly I stepped out from behind the projecting wall and as quickly stepped back. In that swift second of action I had swept the corridor behind me clean with an electric charge that incinerated all in its path.

Like a drunken man, I staggered out of the door into the cold night. I almost stumbled over the body of the dead guard, but righted myself and fled on. Behind me rose a babble of fear and anger as the enraged and terrified priests sought, too late, to cut off my escape.

The darkness soon swallowed me and a half hour later I was in a swift plane, which I had securely hidden the day before, headed for the wildernesses deep in the Arantian Desert. In the seat beside me were lashed two cylinders, identical in shape and size, but one held the brain of an Earthman and the other the brain of a Martian.

CHAPTER IV In the Desert

“It’s no use, Ken,” I said. “We’ve tried every way. It was just our luck that I had to pick a Martian who died years before the Terrestrials came to Mars. Even at that, he may know as much about it as any of the present day priests. He has coughed up splendidly, especially when I threatened to smash his cylinder with a hammer. These Martians seem to love their eternal life in the cylinders. That made him turn himself inside out. But all that he knows is how a brain is put into the cylinder. He claims that it is impossible to take one out and put it back into a body again.”

I sat beside the cylinder in which floated the brain and face of Kenneth Smith.

“Yes, Bob,” came the voice of my friend out of the cylinder, the lips in the face moving ever so slightly, “it looks as if I am here for the rest of my life, which our Martian friend assures us is for eternity, once you get inside one of these things. Funny how they can do a thing like that. Some sort of a chemical that keeps the brain alive. I suppose Tarsus-Egbo has told you what it is.”

“Yes, he has. Was a bit reluctant about it, but I shoved the indicator up and let him howl for exactly fifteen minutes by the chronometer. When I shut it off, he was ready to tell me everything he knew about the composition of the stuff.”

“What do you plan to do now, Bob?”

“That’s a hard question, Ken. I’d like to try to take you back to Earth with me again, but that is almost an impossibility, at least for a few years. The Martians are going through every outgoing ship with a fine toothed comb. Probably I could slip out myself—but a man caught with one of these tanks! Boy, it would be just too bad! If we could get back to Earth we could go right on living as usual. Both of us are hunted men on Mars, for the desecration of the temple and on Earth for killing the two Martian priests, but we could manage somehow. I’m sticking by you, though, no matter what happens.”

“Stout chap,” said Ken. “If I ever get to be too much of a burden, just hit the tank a crack and go about your way.”

“You know I’ll never do that, Ken. We’re pals, aren’t we. If the Martians had stuck me instead of you into a tank, you would have acted just as I am acting now. I’d be a poor friend if I quit you now.”

Silence reigned as we sat there, looking out over the red wilderness of sand and thorns that stretched for mile on interminable mile all about us.

“If something happens,” I assured him, “well, something, you know. If a Martian ship would show up or if … well, you understand … I promise to hit you a clip. I will make sure you won’t fall into their hands again.”

“That’s it,” said Ken, “Just say ‘So long, fellow, I hate to do this, but it’s the best way’ and swing the hammer. Be sure to swing it hard enough. This stuff may be tough, hard to break, you know.”

The sun was sinking low in the sky and a chill was creeping over the crimson desert. I stirred and slowly rose.

“I guess I’d better get a bite to eat. I’ll be back right away.”

“Take your time,” said Ken, “I enjoy this scene. Leave me turned on. You might shift me a little bit toward the west. I like to watch the sun go down.”

“All right, old fellow.”

I patted the cylinder and shifted it slightly so that my friend could watch the setting of the sun.

We had been in hiding for weeks. No place on Mars could have been more suitable as a hide-out than this mighty desert, a desert of red sand, peopled only by wicked thorn shrubs and poisonous insects and reptiles.

We had been hopeful at first of obtaining useful information from the brain of the Martian I had stolen from the temple. Particularly I had wanted to find if there was a way of removing Ken’s brain from the cylinder and replacing it again in a human body. If there had been, the matter of finding a man willing to give his body and a surgeon to perform the operation would not have been too hard a task. Apparently, however, there was no way of doing it. Once the brain was in a cylinder it was there to stay…forever. Solemnly the Martian had assured me that the milky chemical in which the brain floated contained enough concentrated foodstuffs to nourish the brain and its few attached parts almost indefinitely. When the cylinder was not attached to the machine the brain was in a state of suspended animation and took none of the nourishment.

I had suggested that I could go back to the temple again and attempt to select a cylinder which contained the brain of a priest who had died only a few years before, hoping that, since Tarsus-Egbo had died, there may have been some advancement in the science of the cult and that a way now might be known of performing the operation.

Ken had absolutely forbidden this. He had pointed out the danger. The temple was sure to be under unusually heavy guard as a result of our former adventures under its roof and I would have only one chance in a hundred of getting out if, in fact, I could even get in. He had also pointed out that there was no reason to believe the priests would know any way of replacing a brain in a body. To be placed in the cylinder seemed the highest ambition of the Martian priests. It meant eternal life, the thing most highly prized by them. Why, then, Ken asked, should they attempt to find a way of replacing a brain in a body when life in the cylinder seemed to be the greatly preferred type of existence? Sadly, I felt that I had to agree with him.

I think, too, that Ken did not wish to be parted from me. He felt keenly his helplessness. He depended entirely upon me. He feared that, left alone, he might be recaptured by the Martians. I shuddered to think of what might happen to him if such a thing occurred.

It was uncanny at first, talking to my friend’s brain inside the cylinder, but, realizing that we must accept the situation, we had maintained our friendship on its old standards. Ken joked about his helplessness, while I chose to ignore that he was anything other than the old Kenneth Smith whom I had once known in a human body.

I had eaten and was just lighting up for an after-meal smoke, when my friend hailed me. I hurried to the side of the cylinder.

“What is it, Ken?”

“Take a look over there, Bob. Straight ahead of me, the only way I can look. I’ve been trying to figure out if I see something or not. I would swear that I could, a white speck of some sort. Just between those two hills where the sun is setting.”

I strained my eyes, but could see nothing. I told him so.

“Something funny about that,” commented Ken, “I am certain that I see something. Looks like a building of some sort. It may be that my senses have been sharpened by being put into this tank. They’re all I’ve got left to use and they may be developing. I’ve been watching that thing for a long time and I am convinced it’s not my imagination.”

“But what would a building be doing out here in the middle of the desert, a good 500 miles from any habitation?”

“I don’t know,” said Ken. “This is an old planet. There’s lots of strange things on it. Get out Tarsus-Egbo and hook him up. He may have developed even better eyesight than I have. If my theory is right, it should be a great deal better. He’s been tanked up longer than I have.”

I walked to the ship and brought forth the second cylinder.

“I won’t have you disconnected for long,” I told Ken, “Just long enough to look up the Martian and see if he can tell me anything.”

“Hook us up together, just wire him up to the same terminals I’m hooked up to. I have been thinking about it. I am certain, from what I know of the machine, that two or even more cylinders could be hooked up at the one time.”

“You really think so? I don’t want something to go wrong.”

“I am certain of it. About all I can do, in the shape I’m in, is to think and I believe I have it all figured out. I’d like to talk to Tarsus-Egbo. It would be a marvelous sensation talking to another pickled brain.”

“Well … if you are sure …”

“Go ahead, Bob. Nothing will happen.”

Securing two short wires, I quickly connected the Martian’s cylinder, holding my breath. At the least sign of anything wrong I was prepared to rip the wires away, but nothing did happen. The second cylinder glowed softly and took on its milky transparency.

The Martian blinked his eyes, as if awakening from a deep slumber.

“Kor,” I greeted him solemnly in Martian.

He replied as solemnly.

I shifted the cylinder so that the Martian faced my friend.

Rapidly Ken spoke to him and the Martian replied gravely.

“Shift my cylinder so that I may see. My eyes are good. Strange man, your theory is correct. Being placed in the cylinder does sharpen one’s senses. I am certain I can see it, if there is anything there.”

I shifted the cylinder and Ken, speaking softly, directed Tarsus-Egbo’s gaze.

“I also see it,” said the Martian, “It is a pyramid, one of the many which existed here on these deserts in my day, but which, before my death had been largely destroyed by my people.”

“Why destroyed by your people?” asked Ken.

“For two reasons,” replied the Martian. “They are structures that were built by an ancient people who subscribed to a blasphemous religion and who used the pyramids as temples. It was only just that they should be destroyed. Those who destroyed them also found a great reward, for the pyramids invariably conceal great riches. Piety and hope of gain spurred my people on to their destruction. The sight of this one maddens me. I had thought that, by now, all would have been destroyed. It is an insult to Kell-Rabin, an insult to all of Mars that it should stand there. It is the filthy manifestation of a loathsome cult that once held sway over our beautiful land.”

I thought that I heard a faint chuckle come from Ken’s cylinder, but I was not sure, for he spoke immediately.

“What would you say, Tarsus-Egbo, if my friend destroyed that pyramid over there? Would he be able to do it? Do you think he would find great riches there?”

“It would be a great service to Mars if he did so,” said the Martian. “I would thank him and the high priest would thank him. Perhaps we would even accord him the honor of being placed in one of the cylinders when he dies, even as you have been accorded that honor. I would forgive him the wrong that he had done me in his insane quest for knowledge and would thank him if he destroyed the pyramid.”

“But,” replied Ken, “my friend does not care for your thanks nor for the thanks of the high priest. In fact,” I was sure of the chuckle this time, “he would not even care to meet the high priest. I even doubt if he would care to be placed in a cylinder. He is interested only in the great riches which he might find in the pyramid.”

“If that is all he wishes,” rumbled Tarsus-Egbo, “he will find them there. Riches that will make his brain swim. Jewels that are like fire and jewels that are like ice and others that are blue as the outer reaches of the sky. There too, he will find …”

“Wait,” droned Ken, “Do you realize that you are in the power of my friend. Do you know that he might be very angry if he did not find riches such as you have described in the pyramid? Do you know that he might be so enraged that he would break your cylinder and destroy your immortality? My friend is quick to anger and it is best not to play upon his temper.”

“He will find riches, great riches, in the pyramid,” insisted the Martian, terror-stricken.

“But how do you know that some of your own people have not taken them? Just because the pyramid is there, does not necessarily mean that the riches must also be there.”

“They are there,” insisted the Martian, “If my people had found the place, it would not be standing now.”

“I guess that’s about all he can tell us, Bob,” said Ken and I unhooked the Martian’s cylinder.

“This is a new one to me,” I told my friend, “I studied the Martians a great deal before they kicked me out, but this is the first time I ever heard about these incredibly ancient people.”

“It was natural that you wouldn’t hear about it,” Ken pointed out. “It was something closely connected with their religion and you will have to admit that you can’t find out much about this religion of Mars. What we have found out has been against their will and we have paid heavily for it.”

“This puts a different face on the whole matter,” I said.

Ken did not reply for a moment, then he spoke.

“I get you. With riches such as Tarsus-Egbo described, one can get anything one may happen to want. Those riches, Bob, if we can get them, will mean a lot to us. It will mean that we can continue to play our old hand against Mars. It will mean that, after all, we may not have to relinquish our revenge. It may mean that you can, at last, with safety, study the bones of Kell-Rabin. It is worth a try.”

“Yes, worth a try,” I said, “and we are going to make that try tonight. We can fly over there in a few minutes.”

“That’s talking now. Wish that I had a couple of hands to help you. Too bad. Two can do more than one. About all I can do is sit to one side and keep up the conversation.”

“That’s all right, old man,” I consoled him, “Now I will have to unhook you. I’ll connect the machine to the generator inside the plane and hook you up again so that you won’t miss the trip over there.”

“Don’t go to so much trouble,” protested Ken, “I am trouble enough as it …”

“Shut up, you,” I rejoined, and pulled the switch, effectively silencing him.

I had worked for an hour with what few tools I had at hand to open the sealed door of the great pyramid, which towered blackly up into the cold night of the Martian desert. Above me rolled the two moons of the planet and thousands of stars pricked out on the blue-black sky. The night desert wind sang weirdly around the corners of the pyramid. The atomic engine of the plane whined softly, operating the light generator to which I had hooked the machine which motivated the cylinder that contained the brain of Ken Smith.

“I think I am moving a big one now,” I told the cylinder, and the voice of my friend came distinctly to me, cheering me on.

The huge stone moved ever so slightly and I threw all my weight against the steel bar which I was using. It moved just a bit more and again I heaved. Bit by bit I worked it out, until I was certain that a few more heaves would pry it away.

“I have it almost out now,” I told Ken, “and I am going to move you out of the way a bit. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“It would be hard luck to get cracked up now, just when we are on the verge of a great discovery,” he chuckled.

“The Martian may have been lying,” I told him.

“He wasn’t,” protested Ken. “He was telling the truth. That crack about you busting him up if he lied would have made him change his story in a hurry. Funny how those fellows set so much store on long life. If something doesn’t happen to me before, I am going to hire somebody to tap me over the head when I get to be about two hundred years old.”

Laughingly, I picked up the cylinder and moved it several feet away, then went back to my task. Several more heaves brought the block of stone away and it fell, burying itself deep into the sand. The second stone was less trouble to pry away and after that the third and fourth one came still more easily. At last I had a hole large enough to pass through into the interior of the structure.

With my flashlight trained before me, I clambered through and dropped softly to the floor, which was paved with huge slabs of stone similar to those of which the pyramid was built.

The circle of light which I flashed before me revealed a huge block of stone, apparently an altar, set in the middle of the room. It was not the altar, however, that drew my attention. Piled in a heap before the altar were five great chests. The treasure chests!

My heart leaped up into my throat and I ran forward. Seizing one of the chests, I attempted to lift the lid, but found that I was unable to do so. Grasping it under my arm, I staggered to the door, for the chest was heavy, and heaving the chest outside, leaped after it.

With my bar, I attacked the lid and with a rending of metal and the splintering of breaking wood, it came away. Living fire seemed to leap from it to strike me in the face and I threw up my arms across my eyes and stepped back.

CHAPTER V The Last Defiance

There before me lay the treasure of the ancient people of Mars! Treasure that had lain for centuries under the sacred walls of the ghostly pyramid!

Tarsus-Egbo had spoken true! Here was a planet’s ransom! Here was wealth undreamed of! Here lay jewels that flashed in the soft light of the two moons and seemed to glow and move and writhe like animate things.

Ken was shrieking at me.

“It’s the treasure, Bob! It’s the treasure! We are rich men, rich men! Trillionaires! Now we can carry on. Now we can thrust the bones of Kell-Rabin down the throat of the Martian nation! Now we can make them pay, pay, pay…pay, damn then, for my radium, and for my body, and for all the hell that they have made us pass through! We have them, we have them…right by the bloody throat!”

The sight of the gleaming jewels had awakened the old hatred, the old desire for revenge. They represented power, power to strike back at Mars. Almost had we forgotten our plans of revenge…but always, now I realized, they had lurked in the back of our brains, awaiting release, the release which the jewels had given them. I seemed to see the jewels through a red haze of weird emotion. Ken was right! With them we had Mars by the throat, we could stuff the musty bones of Kell-Rabin down the throats of the high officials and the priests!

Insane? Of course, we were insane. I think we had always been; I, since my deportation from Mars and Ken since the confiscation of his radium deposits.

“Yes, it’s the treasure, Ken,” I choked. “It is the treasure and there are four other chests just like this one inside the pyramid!”

I ran forward and thrust my hands deep into the box. I brought them away with a handful of stones that glimmered and glinted and flashed blue and red and green and white fire. Some rolled away and lay sparkling and shining in the sands.

“Look, Ken,” I screamed. “Look at them. Why, damn it, man, with these we can buy out the entire planet. We can buy Mars and blow it to hell if we want to.”

I threw a handful on the sand in front of him and raced back to the pyramid. One after the other I threw out the boxes and with the bar ripped away their lids. They were filled to overflowing with jewels some not much larger than peas, others the size of my fist. Offerings, perhaps, made to some ancient god; offerings made by a people who were wind blown dust millennia ago.

“Are you sure that is all?” asked Ken.

“Isn’t that enough?” I asked.

“More than enough,” agreed my friend, “but if there are more, we want them.”

Once again I crawled back into the pyramid room. Slowly I explored it, from one end to the other and came at last to the rear of the great stone altar. Hardly thinking of what I was doing, I lifted a booted foot and kicked at the altar. I half remembered wondering if it was a solid block or if it was hollow.

As my foot struck the altar, it moved. What appeared to be pivoted stone set in the back of the block, swung aside and out of the aperture toppled a long, narrow box. I leaped aside out of its way and it struck the stone floor with a crash, splitting wide open.

I screamed and fell back, still holding my light directed on the broken box. Out of it rolled something that was round and white and as it rolled I saw that it was a human skull.

Shaking like a leaf, I moved nearer to the broken box and with my foot swept away the splintered wood. My light revealed a human skeleton, the skeleton of a Terrestrial! Still horrified, I stooped down and examined the bones. They were in a poor state of preservation, but easily identified as the bones of an Earthman, not of a Martian. Rising, I walked to where the skull lay, picked it up and examined the teeth. There were thirty-two. Thirty-two teeth, and the most any Martian could boast were twenty-four. The skull was crumbling away even as I held it. It must have been inconceivably old.

I ran from the pyramid. The skeleton of a Terrestrial in an ancient Martian pyramid, which had been closed, which had not been viewed by mortal eyes, for thousands upon thousands of years! What did it mean? What awful secret lay back of it? Terrestrials had landed on Mars in the first space car only a few hundred years before. Yet, I had found an ancient skeleton … My mind whirled and my senses reeled at the astounding possibilities which the thing suggested.

Terrestrials, then, had visited Mars before! Other civilizations than our own had risen to great heights, only to fall into nothingness. Could it have been men of Atlantis, or men of Mu, or men of a nation that was forgotten before those other two arose?

Other Earthly races had visited Mars…but why had I found the skeleton of one in a pyramid associated with an ancient religion, ancient even to the aged planet of Mars? Could it have been possible … could Terrestrials have been regarded as gods? Could the proud races of Mars … could the proud religion … ?

I stumbled out of the pyramid and tilting my head back, roared in laughter at the two moons which swung above the dead reaches of the desert.

Many things have happened in the past five years, and as I think of it, I remember that it was just five years ago today that Ken Smith and myself, with the jewels and the cylinder which contained Tarsus-Egbo, the Martian, secretly left Mars on the ship of a space captain who was willing to take a few risks for a double handful of jewels. We reached Earth safely, the captain landing us in a remote section of the Rocky Mountain district.

For a year we remained in hiding and discussed our plans. At last, satisfied that both the Earth and Mars had lost all trace of us, I securely hid the jewels, except for a pocketful, with the two cylinders in a cave and journeyed to the outside.

This time there was no need for a disguise. As I look in the glass now I can scarcely believe that I am only slightly over forty. My hair is snow white and my face is the face of an old man, lined with deep wrinkles and scarred with care.

In Chicago I experienced some trouble in retrieving the box which contained the bones of Kell-Rabin from its place in the safety deposit vault, but the papers I presented were all in good order and there was no reason for raising too great an objection, so it was finally handed over to me.

There was much to do and I set about doing it. I realized that my time might be short, so I wasted none of it. There were draftsmen, electricians, radio experts, laborers, orders for steel and other materials, all to be attended to, and I attended to them. It cost money, but the jewels that we possessed represented a colossal fortune and cost meant nothing if it purchased haste and efficient workmanship.

A month ago, I dismissed the last workman whom I had employed to build the huge broadcasting station ten miles from where I sit and write this. It is the most powerful station in the universe, greater even than those mighty stations on Jupiter. It is the pride of the Earth. I am hailed far and wide all over the planet as one of Earth’s greatest benefactors. With that station a message may be flung to the farthest limits of the universe, out to where icy Pluto swings in the outer void and where the sun is no more than a star among many stars.

If only the Earth suspected what would be the first message that is to be hurled out from that station, it would be destroyed immediately by governmental orders. If only Mars suspected, a fleet of warships would leave the surface of that planet within the next few hours, bound for Earth.

The Earth will call me a traitor to the solar system, Mars will list my name on the blackest sheet of the most infamous book, my own people will believe me crazy. I am crazy, crazy with suffering, crazy with a mad desire to humble a cruel and haughty nation. There is a method in my insanity, a terrible, cold, calculating method. And the world does not suspect. The Martians, who have praised my philanthropic work, do not suspect.

Crazy, you say, insane, a raving maniac. How, I ask you, have I come to be insane? Would not any man lose his mind if he sat day after day, face to face with the brain of a friend encased in a metal cylinder? Remembering other days, when this thing in the cylinder walked on two legs, laughed and joked, enjoyed a good smoke …

I must hasten, however. There is little time left.

For the past four years I have lived in dread, dread that someone would recognize me, that I would be unveiled as the murderer of the Martian priests in the Chicago hotel or as the man who had blasphemed the Martian religion and profaned the Temple of Saldebar.

I have kept to myself. I have gained the reputation of being shy, modest, retiring. I have not allowed myself to be photographed, I have granted no interviews. I have remained the Great Enigma and become the better known and gained more publicity because of it.

It was not that I cared for myself, for life is no longer valuable to me. It was fear that I would be discovered before the hour had struck, before I had completed all my plans. Now the hour is near and if I live a few more hours the world will never find me.

Only a few hours now. My plans are well laid, all arrangements are made. The broadcasting station is completed. Here in the cragged hills of North American’s greatest mountains, there is a great vault, carved from the everlasting rock. Tonight Dr. John E. Barston, the world’s greatest surgeon, will perform an important operation in that vault. When he leaves, he will take with him a chest half filled with jewels, all that is left of the great Martian treasure. He will take them with him as the price of silence. The men who built the vault are silenced, too, on the criminal colonies on Mercury. It took several handfuls of the jewels to do that.

At last revenge is in my grasp. In a few hours Mars will be the butt of the entire universe. In a few hours the Martian religion will be a joke.

The Martians, who excluded me from their planet, who stole my friend’s radium deposits and then stole his body, the Martians, who made Kenneth Smith and me outcasts of the solar system, shall feel the point of our wrath. I am striking at them where it will hurt most. I am taking from them their proud religion, I am tumbling their card house down about the ears of their beastly priests. I am stealing their faith as they stole the body of Kenneth Smith.

Good old Ken! We were pals ten years ago and we are still pals. He has played a wonderful game. He has pretended that it didn’t matter. It has been hard for him, as it has been hard for me. He has depended on me so much. It is I who have turned him on and off, who have shifted his cylinder so that he may rest his eyes on a different scene. With the passing of the years his senses and his brain have grown stronger. His reasoning power has increased until he thinks in almost pure logic. His one passion is revenge, revenge on the Martian race, and I am giving that to him.

I have here an electrical transcription of my own voice. In a short time, I shall turn on the power to its fullest in the great station and shall set before the microphone a machine to transcribe the metal cylinder that lies before me, to repeat the transcription over and over again so that all may hear, may hear my voice in a declaration that will seal the doom of the Martian religion. I shall lock the doors of the station and before they batter them down every living soul in the universe will know my story. Every person will know how the bones of Kell-Rabin were filched from the Temple of Saldebar, how the Martian race has worshipped almost six years before an empty box. They will know of the skeleton that I found in the pyramid in the Arantian desert and of the religious frenzy that has driven the Martians to destroy every one of these pyramids they can find.

They will know, too, the truth about Kell-Rabin, whose bones were worshipped for uncounted centuries as the Holy Relics and the Revered Remains. They will know that the bones of Kell-Rabin are the bones of a Terrestrial, of a human being who must have lived on Earth millions of years before Mu rose out of the sea. They will know that a Terrestrial was worshipped as a god by the Martian race and that his bones were religiously placed in a box to be worshipped long after he had died…and from the fact that the bones in the old pyramid and the bones of Kell-Rabin were both Terrestrial skeletons they may draw their own conclusions.

The Martians, what of them? When my words flash out to the mining stations of Mercury and the trading outposts of Pluto, where, then, will be the proud religion of Mars? Crumpled, dissolved, gone! Gone, as are Ken Smith’s radium deposits and his body. My words will rob them of the thing they have held dear, all their teachings will be for nothing, all their creeds will be empty words whistling in the wind.

A Martian has worshipped a Terrestrial! The Martian race, believing they have worshipped a god too great to give attention to the lesser races, will know that they have worshipped, not a god at all, but a man from Earth, one of the despised, money-grabbing, business-like men of the third planet.

When that is done I shall hurry to keep my last earthly appointment. The appointment will be with Dr. Barston in the vault that is chiseled from the living stone. Weeks ago I placed in his hands complete directions, given me by Tarsus-Egbo, for the process of transferring a human brain to one of the cylinders. One of the cylinders, especially constructed under directions and specifications also given me by the Martian, now rests in the vault.

There, in the vault, I shall lie down on an operating table and Dr. Barston will take my brain from its cavity and place it in the cylinder and when he leaves, with a jewel chest under his arm, there will be three cylinders, all standing in a row…waiting for what?

He will close the door of stone behind him and the automatic bolts will shoot home. The three of us, Kenneth Smith, Tarsus-Egbo, and myself, will remain behind, awaiting our fate.

Perhaps, in millions of years, men wonderfully advanced in science, will find us and mayhaps they will know how to release us from the cylinders and give us bodies again. Perhaps men will never come and we will remain forever in the deep sleep of seeming death. Perhaps we will never be aroused from that sleep, perhaps no one will ever attach the machine to our cylinders. If anyone of intelligence gains entrance to our vault, he will find there, imprinted on metal pages, definite information which should be easy for him to follow.

Life holds no more for me. I might as well be dead. It is Ken’s idea, however, and I am going through with it. It was my suggestion that I destroy his cylinder and kill myself when vengeance was accomplished, but he suggested this other way, and it may be the better way.

Only a few minutes remain. I must soon start for the broadcasting station. Then I must hurry to keep my appointment with Dr. Barston.

My last thought shall be, I know, whether or not I will ever live again, or if, when I go under the anaesthetic, my days are ended. It matters little either way. My vengeance will then have been complete.

When the knife cuts into my skull, all the universe will be listening to my final words, and the name of Kell-Rabin will be bandied about in laughter from world to world.

There was no duplicate record, but strangest of all, Bob Humphrey was not in the building, and he is strangely missing. The mystery has now deepened, as for sixteen hours no word has been had from Humphrey. It is certain that if he had been near the scene, he would have been able, in person, to make his announced broadcast or supply another record. The fire was not so extensive, and the main radio generating plant was not damaged excepting the studio, and the station could have gone on the air within three hours after the fire. Yet, there is no word from Humphrey. His station staff hint that he bid them good-bye in the afternoon telling them that “they might have to get new positions after tomorrow.” Foul play is feared.