The Science-Fantasy Megapack: 25 Classic Tales from Fantasy Adventures

THE MARTIAN ENIGMA, by John Glasby

After two days in orbit, the third expeditionary ship to Mars landed gently on the rust-red surface within half a kilometre of the designated position. Outside, there was a dust storm in the distance but Clive Bradwell, the pilot, estimated it was too far away to pose any danger to them.

Two earlier expeditions to the Red Planet had both landed in this region and had reported finding something strange situated close to the large mound, which they could now clearly see on the rectangular visiplate.

Vic Cranton, the astronomer, stood facing the viewer, a worried frown on his lean features. Beside him, Anne Kirby, the biophysicist and Helen Wainwright, an eminent geologist, made up the rest of the crew.

“What do you make of it, Vic?” Bradwell asked. “Anything there to explain why those two ships failed to return to Earth?”

The astronomer shook his head. “Nothing. To be quite honest, this is precisely what I expected. You’re absolutely certain this is the location they gave in their initial reports?”

“No doubt about it. The coordinates agree exactly.”

“Just what did those two missions report?” Anne asked. “Remind me.”

“Simply that an important find had been made,” Clive replied. “Neither team went into any detail. And as far as we know, they took off successfully on their return to Earth.”

“So whatever happened to them, it must have occurred after they’d left the planet.”

“That’s the presumptive conclusion back on Earth.” Clive walked over to the lockers, which housed the protective suits. “But there’s something here which seems highly peculiar to me. Two spacecraft malfunctioning on the return journey. That makes no sense.”

Vic glanced away from the visiplate, rubbing his chin. “Before we go down onto the surface, does anyone have any suggestions as to what might have happened?”

It was Anne who answered him. “Either we accept that something went wrong with both ships or — or whatever they found here was the cause of their disappearance.”

“Then I suggest we check out what’s down there but proceed with caution,” Helen put in. “We’ll certainly discover nothing just standing here.”

Fifteen minutes later, they had suited up and were standing on the Martian surface. The large dust cloud had disappeared into the far distance.

Beneath their feet, the ochre soil was dotted with rocks and boulders of every shape and size. Bradwell pointed a gloved hand. Over the communicator, he said, “That long escarpment yonder in where they claimed they found something out of the ordinary.”

In the lower gravity, they made their way cautiously towards it. It loomed about a hundred feet above the flatness of the surrounding sand and Bradwell estimated it to be at least six kilometres in length.

He scanned it meticulously through the transparent vizor. Outwardly, it appeared no different from the hundreds of other similar formations they had scanned from orbit.

The pale sunlight, slanting obliquely across the surface made it glow a dull crimson.

“Nothing here but solid rock,” Helen said, examining it closely. “Somehow, I doubt if—”

She broke off sharply as Anne’s voice sounded excitedly over their communicators.

“There’s something here but I don’t believe what I’m seeing.”

Clive glanced round quickly. She was standing some distance away, staring down at the base of the escarpment immediately in front of her.

Feet sloughing off the reddish sand, they joined her.

There was a dark, irregular opening in the rock and, even though the aperture was deeply shadowed, they could clearly make out the steps leading down into absolute darkness.

For a moment, they stared at each other in stunned silence. Then Clive said harshly, “So there was once intelligent life on Mars. But these steps must be millions of years old and whoever, or whatever, made them must have died out along with any vegetation there may have been, almost as long ago.”

“I wouldn’t be too dogmatic about that,” Anne said tensely.

Vic forced casualness into his tone. “Surely you’re not suggesting that—”

“All I’m saying is that we shouldn’t forget those two other missions. Either they found something here — or something found them.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, broken by the astronomer. “Then I think you and Clive should remain here while Helen and I investigate.”

When the pilot made to protest, he added, “You have to stay, Clive. You’re the only one who can take the ship back to Earth if anything does happen.”

“Then watch your step, both of you,” Cranton said, his face twisted into a worried frown. “We’re dealing with the unknown here. There’s no telling what might be down there.”

Nodding, Vic took the large torch that the pilot held out to him, switched it on, and shone the powerful beam down into the blackness. The steps seemed to descend as far as the torchlight could penetrate. He also noticed their peculiar delineations as if they had been designed for feet totally unlike those of humans.

With Helen following close behind him, he lowered himself down, one hand trailing along the wall. Faceted crystals along the walls reflected the light back at him out of thousands of winking eyes.

Just what is this? he wondered. Some incredibly alien artefact encrusted within the rock, or some long-dead Martian burial place like the pyramids? It seemed certain that several million years of geological time lay stratified within these crystal rocks.

Helen’s voice crackled over the communicator in his helmet. “Can you see any end to these steps? We must be more than a hundred feet below the surface already.”

“Nothing yet,” he answered. “They just seem to—” He broke off sharply. “What is it?”

“There’s something down there. I can’t quite make out what it is.”

Carefully, they eased themselves down for a further thirty feet. In front of them stood a huge door inlaid with the cryptic symbols of some alien language.

“So what do we do now?” Helen asked. “Personally, I can see no way of opening this. Yet, somehow, I have the feeling those others who cam here were describing something more important and unusual than this.”

“Meaning that, somehow, they opened it and saw what’s on the other side?”

“Exactly.”

Vic pondered that for a moment, then thrust the torch into her hands.

“Hold this for me.”

While Helen shone the light over the door, Vic reached out and ran his fingers over the strange symbols. By now, he was convinced those two earlier teams had found the means of opening it. Yet at first, he could see nothing.

Then he thought he noticed something. “Move around to the side and shine the light obliquely across it,” he said tautly.

A moment later, he knew he had not been mistaken. All of the symbols, with but one exception, were engraved upon the surface. One, however, close to the left-hand side, was embossed, throwing its shadow across the surface.

Acting on impulse, he stretched out his hand and placed it on that particular motif, pressing hard. There was a faint click and an instant later, the door slid downward into the rock.

Warily, Vic stepped forward and stared around him in amazement. The chamber was huge and here there was no need of the torch. A bright greenish radiance illuminated everything as far as the eye could see.

At the far end on a low dais, stood a vast, carved figure. The outline was not even remotely human — a teratological nightmare. Shuddering, Helen turned her head away.

“What is this place?” Her voice quavered a little in spite of the tight rein she forced on her emotions.

“Evidently a temple of some kind. I suppose, like us, they had gods and this must apparently represent one of them. Ugly looking thing, isn’t it?”

Hovering more than thirty feet above them, the statue dominated the entire end of the chamber. From what Vic could see, it had been carved, or molded, from a single block of the crystalline rock.

“Have you found anything yet?” Clive’s voice, slightly distorted, sounded in their ears. “Is it safe to come down?”

“There doesn’t seem to be any danger. Offhand, I’d say this place has been deserted for several million years.” Vic called back. “Come on down but you’re not going to believe what you see.”

Less than ten minutes later, Clive and Anne entered toe chamber, bewilderment written all over their faces.

“We reckon this must be some kind of temple,” Helen told them. “And that monstrosity would have been one of their deities.”

“Incredible.” Anne shook her head in disbelief.

“I suggest we begin photographing everything,” Clive said briskly. “No one on Earth is going to believe this. An advanced civilization on Mars which must have become extinct millions of years ago, possibly due to some drastic change in the weather pattern.”

“We do know there was once an abundance of water on Mars from the characteristics of many of the channels. Now it seemed to be mainly locked in the polar caps.”

He turned to Anne. “Do you have any ideas about this long-dead race?”

Anne shrugged. “Judging from what we have here, I’d say they attained an extremely high level of technological and scientific achievement.”

“Equal to our own?”

Pursing her lips, she turned that question over in her mind. Finally, she said, “It’s impossible to make an accurate assessment based merely on what we’re seeing here. There’s clearly too much for us to examine everything in detail. I would be surprised if they reached the nuclear level like ourselves.”

“Why do you say that?” Vic asked.

“I’d say their scientific evolution moved parallel to ours. If they were conversant with nuclear power, they would surely have reached the point where they were capable of space flight. They’d have left Mars for another planet before the catastrophe, whatever it was, overtook them. Earth would have been the most suitable planet but there’s absolutely no evidence they ever landed there in the past.”

“They could have gone out to the stars,” Clive suggested. He looked to Vic for confirmation but the astronomer shook his head.

“That’s highly unlikely. Not with the Earth orbiting next door to them.”

“So you believe they just sat here and let the catastrophe happen without doing anything about it?” Clive said.

“So it would seem unless we find anything to the contrary. Let’s examine this place as thoroughly as we can before jumping to any conclusions.”

Almost automatically, Anne moved away with Clive towards the end of the chamber furthest from the massive idol. Glancing at Helen, Vic gestured towards the dais. At first sight, it seemed devoid of anything but the statue. Craning his neck, he stared up at it, feeling a sense of awe at the tremendous time period that must have elapsed since it had first been made.

Inwardly, he was beginning to feel he was wrong in his belief that the race which had left this mute testimony to their existence all that time ago had simply accepted their fate, going to their doom without a whimper. There had to be something more to it than that.

Helen’s voice jerked his thoughts back to the present. She had somehow worked her way around to the back of the statue. Here there was a space perhaps three yards side between the idol and the rear wall.

“I thought this was as far as the chamber extended into the rock,” she said tensely. “But it isn’t.”

She drew him towards a narrow section that appeared to be of a slightly different texture to the rest. “All of this—” she waved an arm to embrace the huge wall, “—is made of the same crystalline rock as the escarpment. But this is definitely metal.”

Stepping forward a couple of paces, Vic examined the area minutely, then nodded. “You’re right. There is another door here but quite clearly it wasn’t meant to be as easy to find as the other.”

Scarcely were the words out of his mouth than a brilliant beam of light speared out from the base of the statue, falling upon the door in front of them. A second later, it slid open.

Helen stared at it in obvious surprise, but Vic said calmly, “Evidently there’s some mechanism here that senses the presence of living organisms.”

His companion turned her head quickly to glance in all directions.

Her voice shook slightly as she muttered, “I have the strange feeling that this place isn’t as devoid of life as we think.”

All of this had passed unnoticed by the other two crew members, being hidden behind the massive bulk of the statue, but their urgent call soon brought them running.

Clive took in the situation at once. “Clearly this second chamber was concealed in this way because it contains something important,” he said, going forward.

The rest followed him into total darkness. Here, there was no light and that from the larger chamber penetrated only a little way beyond the door.

Vic switched on the torch again and swept the beam around the room. Although smaller than the main chamber, it was still sufficiently large for the torchlight to make little impression on the far wall.

Scrutinizing the room closely, Vic said, “This looks like some kind of laboratory. But why here, adjoining the temple?”

“Possibly, in their culture, science and religion were just two aspects of the same thing,” Anne said. “Just like alchemy and religion in the Middle Ages on Earth.”

“Could be, I suppose.” Vic agreed. He was still puzzled but made no further comment.

Taking the lead, he began a slow circuit of the room. Nearest the door, on a low shelf, were several scrolls made of a material resembling plastic on which were inscribed numerous symbols.

“Evidently a Martian language,” Helen observed. “But with nothing to which we can compare it, I’d say it’ll be utterly impossible for anyone to decipher it. There’s no chance of finding a Rosetta Stone here to help us.”

Clive gave a nod. “Notice how each symbol is hooked onto the straight lines above the rows. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“We’ll take one of them back with us,” Helen said. “It might give the cryptologists back home something to get their teeth into.”

Deeper into the chamber, they came upon an array of intricate machines, some extending almost the entire length of the room. Clive threw a questioning glance at Vic. “Any idea what these might be?”

The astronomer examined them minutely in the torchlight. “Sticking my neck out, I’d say they’re some form of particle accelerators which would mean they did know about nuclear physics. Yet that doesn’t fit in with them never discovering space travel. Unless—”

“Go on,” Anne urged.

“Well, you see, we on Earth had one big advantage when it came to going out into space. We had the Moon. Only around a quarter of a million miles away — a very short distance on an interplanetary scale. And big enough for space stations to be built, its lower gravity providing an excellent launch site for planetary exploration.

“Mars has only two very small satellites — Deimos and Phobos — neither anywhere as ideal as the Moon. A very low gravity, of course, but little more than large rocks.”

“So what were they doing with nuclear energy all those millions of years ago?” Clive spoke to no one in particular. “If they were such an advanced race, why have we found no ruins of their cities? After all, the Martian surface has been completely scanned over the last few decades and nothing has shown up.”

“Would you really expect anything?” Helen asked. As the geologist, she considered this her particular field. “If this site is at least two million years old, a lot can happen in that time. Violent winds and sandstorms occur over almost the entire surface. If there are any ruins left, you’d have to dig pretty deep to uncover them.”

By now they were approaching the far end of the room. Here there was more scientific equipment, all of which had been designed for purposes at whose nature they could not even guess.

It was Anne who drew their attention to a small triangular shelf which stood only a few inches above the floor.

“Look at this,” she exclaimed.

Clive shone the torchlight directly onto it. A thin layer of reddish dust covered it and on it were five strange objects unlike anything they had yet seen. All were identical, made out of crystal. A faint tracery of weaving light blurred the interior slightly and in the center hovered a weirdly pulsing sphere.

As far as they could determine there was nothing holding up the tiny globe suspended there. But even more intriguing were the two oval spaces in the dust indicating that two of these objects had recently been removed.

Anne reached out a hand towards the nearest. “Do you think we should take one of these back with us?”

“No!” Clive spoke more sharply than he had intended.

“Why not? I’m sure the nuclear physicists would be delighted to get their hands on one of these. It could advance our knowledge by centuries. Obviously the other two teams never managed to get one back.”

“Which is precisely why we must exercise caution. Either it was pure coincidence what happened to those other ships on the way back to Earth — or these were the cause of it.”

His words fell into an uneasy silence.

Finally, Anne persisted, “I still think we can’t afford to miss this opportunity to find out exactly what these are. We’re scientists and whatever they are, they’ve obviously been here for millions of years.”

She fumbled in her belt and unhooked the small radiation counter. Pushing it forward, she placed it close to the objects. There was no reading at all.

“Evidently they’re not radioactive.”

“Very well,” Clive nodded. “We’ll take one back with us.” Giving Vic a quick glance, he added, “But we exercise caution with it.”

The next five days were spent examining everything in the two chambers. Most of the machines were incomprehensible to them. Only one further piece of evidence was found which they could understand without any ambiguity. Engraved on a metal plate attached to one of the machines were several lines of Martian characters.

Underneath them were three odd symbols. The first two were identical consisting of a large sphere with a smaller one some distance from it. The third was merely a fuzzy patch.

After studying it for a few moments, Vic said, “There’s no doubt what that’s intended to represent since it’s in a universal language. It’s the equation for hydrogen fusion. The first two are hydrogen atoms, a proton orbited by an electron.”

“And that third symbol?” Helen asked. “It doesn’t seem to represent anything.”

“Certainly it does. It depicts the energy released by the reaction. Just think of it, a race possibly far in advance of our own that disappeared completely. Somehow, I doubt if there’s anything here which will tell us what happened and where they went.”

The take-off from Mars was uneventful. Acceleration tore at them as they lifted clear of the rust-red surface. Below them, the enigmatic escarpment receded swiftly as the planet dropped away into the void.

As on the two previous occasions, Clive had transmitted his report to Earth control telling that they had completed their mission successfully and had blasted off from Mars. Once they reached their maximum velocity, the artificial gravity on board matched that of Earth. After the lover gravity of Mars it took them a little while to acclimatize to it.

Now there was little for them to do but keep a close check on the life-support systems and examine the photographs they had taken inside the chambers. The alien artefact they had brought with them was securely stored in the hold. Both Anne and Helen were of the opinion that it was a highly advanced source of energy, possibly one utilizing cold hydrogen fusion.

Vic, however, was more dubious. He couldn’t shake off the feeling it was not only the reason why the Martians had apparently died out in a very short period of time, but also the reason those other two ships had failed to return to Earth. Yet, no matter how hard he tried, he was unable to put forward any plausible link between these events.

Three days out from Mars, he knew he had to check the ancient relic more closely. Mentioning his intention to the others, Helen and Anne were noncommittal but Clive was dead against it.

“We should leave it where it is until the experts back home take a look at it,” he insisted.

“I don’t agree. If it was the cause of the loss of those two ships the more we know about it, the better. If it is a weapon left by the Martians, we’d have known about it by now.”

Clive could see a number of flaws in the astronomer’s argument but it was obvious that both Helen and Anne were in agreement with Vic. “Very well so long as you all realize we’re dealing with an alien culture and science.”

Down in the hold, the lights came on automatically as they entered. It was not a really big space and apart from holding their food and water supplies, it was virtually empty.

The Martian artefact stood on a small shelf held securely in place by magnetic rods. Looking down at it in the harsh actinic light, Vic felt his eyes twist slightly out of focus as he tried to follow the hypnotically spiraling film of the faint gossamer-like sheen covering the inner surface.

Straightening, he said, “You know what that film is. It’s a plasma, highly ionized atoms held there by an intense electrical and magnetic field.”

“And that odd-looking globe of light in the middle?” Anne asked. “Any idea what that might be?”

The astronomer shook his head. “No idea at all.” He bent closer. “There’s also a small protrusion on the base here.” He touched it with his finger to indicate its position.

The next second, the tiny globe split into three, each glowing spark of light spinning away from the center, whirling about each other in a frenzy of seemingly chaotic motion. At the same moment, the ship gave a sudden violent lurch, throwing them all off balance.

“What the hell—?” Clive gasped. Somehow, he managed to steady himself.

Within a split second, the ship had righted itself and everything returned to normal. “Possibly the detectors picked up some object in our path and took avoiding action,” Clive said finally when nothing else happened. “But I’d better check the instruments.”

A thorough check revealed nothing abnormal. Everything was functioning perfectly.

Five days later, they were approaching Earth, now a vast crescent in the blackness. The retro-rockets came on, lowering them gently to the surface close to the terminator.

Opening the airlock, they stepped out. The sun was just rising and there, not more than half a mile away, stood the gleaming shapes of the other two ships.

Clive stared at them in utter amazement and opened his mouth to say something, but Anne cut in sharply, a rising note of alarm and puzzlement in her voice.

“Where is everything?”

All around them lay a wide, sandy stretch of uneven ground. In the distance, tall, fernlike trees waved huge branches in the faint dawn light.

“Something’s wrong,” Helen muttered in an awed whisper. “This can’t be Earth.”

“But it is,” Vic said with an odd catch in his voice. “Dear God, I see it all now. That thing we brought back with us. The Martians never conquered space as we have. They had no need to. You see, they conquered time instead.”

Helen shook her head numbly. “You’re not making sense, Vic.”

“Don’t you see? When Mars began dying and they were faced with that catastrophe, they transported everything several million years into the past when it was a younger, flourishing world.

“When I inadvertently activated that time machine, it did the same. That lurch we felt was a time shift. We’re back on Earth all right, there’s no mistake about that. But this is the Earth of several million years in the past!”