“Where are the Martians?” Jimmy demanded.
“I don’t know, Jimmy,” declared Scott. “Damned if I do.”
He had envisioned the first Earthmen reaching Mars as receiving thunderous ovation, a mighty welcome from the Martians. But there weren’t any Martians. Nothing stirred except the shining bugs and the lilies that nodded in a thin, cold breeze.
There was no sound, no movement. Like a quiet summer afternoon back on Earth, with a veil of quietness drawn over the flaming desert and the shimmering building.
He took another step, walking toward the great building. The sand grated protestingly beneath his boot-heels.
Slowly he approached the building, alert, watching, ready for some evidence that he and Jimmy had been seen. But no sign came. The bugs droned overhead, the lilies nodded sleepily. That was all.
Scott looked at the thermometer strapped to the wrist of his oxygen suit. The needle registered 10 above, Centigrade. Warm enough, but the suits were necessary, for the air was far too thin for human consumption.
Deep shadow lay at the base of the building and as he neared it, Scott made out something that gleamed whitely in the shadow. Something that struck a chord of remembrance in his brain, something he had seen back on Earth.
As he hurried forward he saw it was a cross. A white cross thrust into the sand.
With a cry he broke into a run.
Before the cross he dropped to his knees and read the crudely carved inscription on the wood. Just two words. The name of a man, carven with a jack-knife:
HARRY DECKER
Harry Decker! Scott felt his brain swimming crazily.
Harry Decker here! Harry Decker under the red sand of Mars! But that couldn’t be. Harry Decker’s name couldn’t be here. It was back on Earth, graven on that scroll of bronze. Graven there directly beneath the name of Hugh Nixon.
He staggered to his feet and stood swaying for a moment.
From somewhere far away he heard a shout and swinging around, ran toward the corner of the building.
Rounding it, he stopped in amazement.
There, in the shelter of the building, lay a rusted space ship and running across the sand toward him was a space-suited figure, a figure that yelled as it ran and carried a bag over its shoulder, the bag bouncing at every leap.
“Hugh!” yelled Scott.
And the grotesque figure bellowed back.
“Scott, you old devil! I knew you’d do it! I knew it was you the minute I heard the rocket blasts!”
“It’s nice and warm here now,” said Hugh, “but you’d ought to spend a winter here. An Arctic blizzard is a gentle breeze compared with the Martian pole in winter time. You don’t see the Sun for almost ten months and the mercury goes down to 100 below, Centigrade. Hoar frost piles up three and four feet thick and a man can’t stir out of the ship.”
He gestured at the bag.
“I was getting ready for another winter. Just like a squirrel. My supplies got low before this spring and I had to find something to store up against another season. I found a half dozen different kinds of bulbs and roots and some berries. I’ve been gathering them all summer, storing them away.”
“But the Martians?” protested Scott. “Wouldn’t the Martians help you?”
His brother looked at him curiously.
“The Martians?” he asked.
“Yes, the Martians.”
“Scott,” Hugh said, “I haven’t found the Martians.”
Scott stared at him. “Let’s get this straight now. You mean you don’t know who the Martians are?”
Hugh nodded. “That’s exactly it. I tried to find them hard enough. I did all sorts of screwy things to contact that intelligence which talked with the Earth and sent the rockets full of seed, but I’ve gotten exactly nowhere. I’ve finally given up.”
“Those bugs,” suggested Scott. “The shining bugs.”
Hugh shook his head. “No soap. I got the same idea and managed to bat down a couple of them. But they’re mechanical. That’s all. Just machines. Operated by radium.
“It almost drove me nuts at first. Those bugs flying around and the building standing there and the Martian lilies all around, but no signs of any intelligence. I tried to get into the building but there aren’t any doors or windows. Just little holes the bugs fly in and out of.
“I couldn’t understand a thing. Nothing seemed right. No purpose to any of it. No apparent reason. Only one thing I could understand. Over on the other side of the building I found the cradle that is used to shoot the rockets to Earth. I’ve watched that done.”
“But what happened?” asked Scott. “Why didn’t you come back? What happened to the ship?”
“We had no fuel,” said Hugh.
Scott nodded his head.
“A meteor in space.”
“Not that,” Hugh told him. “Harry simply turned the petcocks, let our gasoline run into the sand.”
“Good Lord! Was he crazy?”
“That’s exactly what he was,” Hugh declared. “Batty as a bedbug. Touch of space madness. I felt sorry for him. He cowered like a mad animal, beaten by the sense of loneliness and space. He was afraid of shadows. He got so he didn’t act like a man. I was glad for him when he died.”
“But even a crazy man would want to get back to Earth!” protested Scott.
“It wasn’t Harry,” Hugh explained. “It was the Martians, I am sure. Whatever or wherever they are, they probably have intelligences greater than ours. It would be no feat for them, perhaps, to gain control of the brain of a demented man. They might not be able to dominate us, but a man whose thought processes were all tangled up by space madness would be an easy mark for them. They could make him do and think whatever they wanted him to think or do. It wasn’t Harry who opened those petcocks, Scott. It was the Martians.”
He leaned against the pitted side of the ship and stared up at the massive building.
“I was plenty sore at him when I caught him at it,” he said. “I gave him one hell of a beating. I’ve always been sorry for that.”
“What finally happened to him?” asked Scott.
“He ran out of the airlock without his suit,” Hugh explained. “It took me half an hour to run him down and bring him back. He took pneumonia. You have to be careful here. Exposure to the Martian atmosphere plays hell with a man’s lung tissues. You can breathe it all right … might even be able to live in it for a few hours, but it’s deadly just the same.”
“Well, it’s all over now,” declared Scott. “We’ll get my ship squared around and we’ll blast off for Earth. We made it here and we can make it back. And you’ll be the first man who ever set his foot on Mars.”
Hugh grinned. “That will be something, won’t it, Scott? But somehow I’m not satisfied. I haven’t accomplished a thing. I haven’t even found the Martians. I know they’re here. An intelligence that’s at least capable of thinking along parallel lines with us although its thought processes may not be parallel with ours.”
“We’ll talk it over later,” said Scott. “After we get a cup of coffee into you. I bet you haven’t had one in weeks.”
“Weeks,” jeered Hugh. “Man, it’s been ten months.”
“Okay, then,” said Scott. “Let’s round up Jimmy. He must be around here somewhere. I don’t like to let him get out of my sight too much.”
The silence of the dreaming red deserts was shattered by a smashing report that drummed with a mighty clap against the sky above. A gush of red flame spouted over the domed top of the mighty building and metal shards hammered spitefully against the sides, setting up a metallic undertone to the ear-shattering explosion.
Sick with dread, Scott plunged to the corner of the building and felt the sick dread deepen.
Where his space ship had lain a mighty hole was blasted in the sand. The ship was
gone. No part of it was left. It had been torn into tiny fragments and hurled across the desert. Wisps of smoke crept slowly from the pit in the sand, twisting in the air currents that still swirled from the blast.
Scott knew what had happened. There was no need to guess. Only one thing could have happened. The liquid oxygen had united with the gasoline, making an explosive that was sheer death itself. A single tremor, a thrown stone, a vibration … anything would set it off.
Across the space between himself and the ship came the tattered figure of a man. A man whose clothes were torn. A man covered with blood, weaving, head down, feet dragging.
“Jimmy!” yelled Scott.
He sprinted forward but before he could reach his side, Jimmy had collapsed.
Kneeling beside him, Scott lifted the man’s head.
The eyes rolled open and the lips twitched. Slow, tortured words oozed out.
“I’m sorry … Scott. I don’t know why …”
The eyes closed but opened again, a faint flutter, and more words bubbled from the bloody lips.
“I wonder why I did it!”
Scott looked up and saw his brother standing in front of him.
Hugh nodded. “The Martians again, Scott. They could use Jimmy’s mind. They could get hold of him. That blasted brain of his …”
Scott looked down at the man in his arms. The head had fallen back, the eyes were staring, blood was dripping on the sand.
“Hugh,” he whispered, “Jimmy’s dead.”
Hugh stared across the sand at the little glimmer of white in the shadow of the building.
“We’ll make another cross,” he said.
IV
The Martians hadn’t wanted them to come. That much, at least, was clear. But having gotten here, the Martians had no intention of letting them return to Earth again. They didn’t want them to carry back the word that it was possible to navigate across space to the outer planet.
Maybe the Martians were committed to a policy of isolation. Maybe there was a “Hands Off” sign set up on Mars. Maybe a “No trespassing” sign.
But if that had been the case, why had the Martians answered the radio calls from Earth. Why had they co-operated with Dr. Alexander in working out the code that made communication possible? And why did they continue sending messages and rockets to the Earth? Why didn’t they sever the diplomatic relationship entirely, retire into their isolation?
If they didn’t want Earthmen to come to Mars why hadn’t they trained guns on the two ships as they came down to the scarlet sand, wiped them out without compunction? Why did they resort to the expedient of forcing Earthmen to bring about their own destruction? And why, now that Harry Decker and Jimmy Baldwin were dead, didn’t the Martians wipe out the remaining two of the unwanted race?
Perhaps the Martians were merely efficient, not vindictive. Maybe they realized that the remaining two Earthmen constituted no menace? And maybe, on the other hand, the Martians had no weapons. Perhaps they never had a need for weapons. It might be they had never had to fight for self preservation.
And above and beyond all … what and where were the Martians? In that huge building? Invisible? In caverns beneath the surface? At some point far away?
Maybe … perhaps … why? Speculation and wonderment.
But there was no answer. Not even the slightest hint. Just the building shimmering in the unsetting Sun, the metallic bugs buzzing in the air, the lilies nodding in the breeze that blew across the desert.
Scott Nixon reached the rim of the plateau and lowered the bag of roots from his shoulder, resting and waiting for Hugh to toil up the remaining few yards of the slope.
Before him, slightly over four miles across the plain, loomed the Martian building. Squatting at its base was the battered, pitted space ship. There was too much ozone in the atmosphere here for the steel in the ship to stand up. Before many years had passed it would fall to pieces, would rust away. But that made little difference, for by that time they probably wouldn’t need it. By that time another ship would have arrived or they would be dead.
Scott grinned grimly. A hard way to look at things. But the only way. One had to be realistic here. Hard-headed planning was the only thing that would carry them through. The food supply was short and while they’d probably be able to gather enough for the coming winter, there was always the possibility that the next season would find them short.
But there was hope to cling to. Always hope. Hope that the summer would bring another ship winging out of space … that this time, armed by past experience, they could prevent its destruction.
Hugh came up with Scott, slid the bag of roots to the ground and sat upon it.
He nodded at the building across the desert.
“That’s the nerve center of the whole business,” he declared. “If we could get into it …” His voice trailed away.
“But we can’t,” Scott reminded him. “We’ve tried and we can’t. There are no doors. No openings. Just those little holes the bugs fly in and out of.”
“There’s a door somewhere,” said Hugh. “A hidden door. The bugs use it to bring out machines to do the work when they shoot a rocket out for Earth. I’ve seen the machines. Screwy looking things. Work units pure and simple but so efficient you’d swear they possessed intelligence. I’ve tried to find the door but I never could and the bugs always waited until I wasn’t around before they moved the machines in or out of the building.”
He chuckled, scrubbing his bearded face with a horny hand.
“That rocket business saved my life,” he said. “If the power lead running out of the building to the cradle hadn’t been there I’d been sunk. But there it was, full of good, old electricity. So I just tapped the thing and that gave me plenty of power … power for heat, for electrolysis, for atmospheric condensation.”
Scott sank down heavily on his sack.
“It’s enough to drive a man nuts,” he declared. “We can reach out and touch the building with our hand. Just a few feet away from the explanation of all this screwiness. Inside that building we’d find things we’d be able to use. Machines, tools …”
Hugh hummed under his breath.
“Maybe,” he said, “maybe not. Maybe we couldn’t recognize the machines, fathom the tools. Mechanical and technical development here probably wasn’t any more parallel to ours than intelligence development.”
“There’s the rocket cradle,” retorted Scott. “Same principle as we use on Earth. And they must have a radio in there. And a telescope. We’d be able to figure them out. Might even be able to send Doc Alexander a message.”
“Yeah,” agreed Hugh, “I thought of that, too. But we can’t get in the building and that settles it.”
“The bugs get under my skin,” Scott complained. “Always buzzing around. Always busy. But busy at what? Like a bunch of hornets.”
“They’re the straw bosses of the outfit,” declared Hugh. “Carrying out the orders of the Martians. The Martians’ hands and eyes, you might say.”
He dug at the sand with the toe of his space boot.
“Another swarm of them took off just before we started out on this trip,” he said. “While you were in the ship. I watched them until they disappeared. Straight up and out until you couldn’t see them. Just like they were taking off for space.”
He kicked savagely at the sand.
“I sure as hell would like to know where they go,” he said.
“There’ve been quite a few of them leaving lately,” said Scott. “As if the building were a hive and they were new swarms of bees. Maybe they’re going out to start new living centers. Maybe they’re going to build more buildings …”
He stopped and stared straight ahead of him, his eyes unseeing. Going out to start new living centers! Going out to build new buildings! Shining metallic buildings!
Like a cold wind from
the past it came to him, a picture of that last night on Earth. He head the whining wind on Mt. Kenya once again, the blaring of the radio from the machine shop door, the voice of the newscaster.
“Austin Gordon … Congo Valley … strange metallic city … inhabited by strange metallic insects!”
The memory shook him from head to foot, left him cold and shivery with his knowledge.
“Hugh!” he croaked. “Hugh, I know what it’s all about!”
His brother stared at him: “Take it easy, kid. Don’t let it get you. Stick with me, kid. We’re going to make it all right.”
“But, Hugh,” Scott yelled, “there’s nothing wrong with me. Don’t you see, I know the answer to all this Martian business now. The lilies are the Martians! Those bugs are migrating to Earth. They’re machines. Don’t you see … they could cross space and the lilies would be there to direct them.”
He jumped to his feet.
“They’re already building cities in the Congo!” he yelled. “Lord knows how many other places. They’re taking over the Earth! The Martians are invading the Earth, but Earth doesn’t know it!”
“Hold on,” Hugh yelled back at him. “How could flowers build cities?”
“They can’t,” said Scott breathlessly. “But the bugs can. Back on Earth they are wondering why the Martians don’t use their rockets to come to Earth. And that’s exactly what the Martians are doing. Those rockets full of seeds aren’t tokens at all. They’re colonization parties!”
“Wait a minute. Slow down,” Hugh pleaded. “Tell me this. If the lilies are the Martians and they sent seeds to Earth twelve years ago, why hadn’t they sent them before?”
“Because before that it would have been useless,” Scott told him. “They had to have someone to open the rockets and plant the seeds for them. We did that. They tricked us into it.
“They may have sent rockets of seeds before but if they did, nothing came of it. For the seeds would have been useless if they weren’t taken from the rocket. The rocket probably would have weathered away in time, releasing the seeds but by that time the seeds would have lost their germinating power.”