11
The Xanthe Desert stretched red and barren on all sides of the ploddingcouple, the sands unbroken by the form of plant or stone or any livingthing, all the way to the tight horizon of Mars. Above them, the small,glittering sun slid down the copper-hued sky slowly toward the west.
It was remarkable, thought Maya, how smooth and flat the desert lookedfrom the air, and how rough and rolling it was when one had to walkacross the packed sand. They had been walking for hours and, despite thegentle gravity of Mars, she was getting very tired.
"It's farther than I thought," said Nuwell, his voice distorted by themarshelmet speaker. "Distances on the chart are deceptive. We may notreach Ultra Vires by night."
Maya did not answer. Again, as she had many weeks before, she was in thegrip of a sensation that this desert through which they walked was onlya surface thing, a shimmering mask to the reality which lay behind it.That reality seemed very deep, very significant, and she felt that shewas on the verge of comprehending it, but could not quite grasp it.
She was a little irritated at Nuwell for speaking when he did. If hisvoice had not interrupted her probing emotions, she felt, she might havebroken through to that reality she sensed.
"Nuwell," she said, giving it up, "I'm going to have to rest a while. Ifwe don't make it by night, we don't make it. There's always tomorrow,and I'm tired."
Reluctantly, he consented, and they sat down together on the sand.Nuwell pulled a chart out of his marsuit pocket and began to study it.Maya lay back, clasped her hands behind her helmet and closed her eyes,gratefully feeling the tired muscles relax and the perspiration thatbathed her begin to dissolve in the gentle circulation of the marsuit'stemperature-control system.
"Maya!" exclaimed Nuwell suddenly. "Look! We're going to be rescued!"
She sat up and looked in the direction of his pointing finger. On thehorizon to the northeast was a cloud of dust, too placid and stationaryto be a sandstorm.
They stood up, and Nuwell spoke hastily into his helmet radio on theconventional emergency band.
"Attention, groundcar! Attention, groundcar! We're afoot and in trouble.We're afoot, due southwest from your position. Help, please. Attention,groundcar!"
There was no radio reply in the ensuing silence. But all at once it wasas though a deep and alien voice spoke within the depths of Maya's mind:
"_We see you._"
Startled, she looked curiously at Nuwell. But he evidently had not hadthe same experience. He was chattering into the radio frantically again.
"They're evidently not tuned in on the emergency band, Nuwell," she saidto him. "But they're coming almost directly toward us. They're bound tosee us soon, if they haven't already."
"That's true," said Nuwell, and added sourly: "But they ought to betuned in. It's required by law."
The dustcloud moved closer slowly, too slowly for a groundcar. They wereable to discern a dark nucleus below and in front of it. Then Nuwellsaid:
"In the name of space! It isn't a groundcar, Maya. It's a band ofMartians! Let's get out of here!"
He started to walk on swiftly, but Maya stood her ground.
"Don't be silly," she said. "Martians won't hurt us. I was raised amongthem."
Nuwell stopped and returned reluctantly to her side.
"They may not hurt us, but why wait for them?" he demanded, and therewas a touch of hysterical fright to his tone. "Let's go on, Maya!"
"We may very well have gotten off course in trying to go straight toUltra Vires," replied Maya logically. "That may be why we've not sightedit yet. The Martians will know where it is, and meeting them may preventus from getting lost in the desert."
Nuwell subsided, but she could see from the expression on his face thathe was in a blue funk. This puzzled her. She could not understand whyanyone would be afraid of Martians. They were huge, and ugly, and alien,but they were not inimical to humans.
When the Martians came near enough, Maya waved her arms at them andstarted off to meet them, Nuwell following her at a little distance. TheMartians changed course slightly and came toward them.
Maya called childhood memories to her aid. She turned her helmet speakerto its maximum volume, and spoke to them in their own language, in thedeepest tones possible to her.
"Children of the past, we seek that place in the desert which is called'Ultra Vires' by humans," she said. "Can you show us the direction inwhich we must travel?"
The Martians gathered around her, towering over her. There were four ofthem. Their huge chests moved slowly, mixing oxygen from their greathumps with the surrounding air. Their thin arms hung limp at theirsides, and their big ears were pricked forward toward her. Their huge,dark eyes seemed to look through her and beyond her.
"The sun moves toward this place, but there are no humans there now,"boomed one of the Martians. "Nothing lives there now except smallanimals in the walls and corridors."
"This we know," answered Maya. "We wish to go there that we maycommunicate with other humans and have them come and get us."
She wanted to say that the supplies of oxygen in their marsuit tankswere inadequate to take them anywhere other than Ultra Vires, but shedid not know how to say this properly in the Martian language.
But, to her astonishment, the Martian answered as though she had saidit.
"If the breathing chemicals which you carry are at such a depletedstage, you cannot chance going astray," said the creature. "Rather thantell you the direction of this place, we shall accompany you there."
Throughout this conversation, Nuwell had been standing at Maya's side,his face bearing an expression of mingled curiosity, irritation and awe.Maya turned to him.
"The Martians say they will go with us to Ultra Vires, so we won't getlost," she told him.
"No!" he exclaimed vehemently. "Tell them we don't want them along. Tellthem just to show us the way, and we'll go alone."
"Don't be ridiculous," replied Maya coldly, and indicated to the Martianthat they were ready to accompany the group.
They moved off together toward the west, the four Martians and the twohumans. Maya, feeling somewhat relieved that now they had expert help inreaching their goal, attempted to talk to Nuwell, but he refused toanswer except in monosyllables. He was angry that she had agreed for theMartians to accompany them, and obviously was still very nervous attheir presence.
So she talked instead with the Martian who had acted as spokesman forthe group. Its name, she learned, was Qril.
"The place to which you go lies under an evil atmosphere," said Qril."The human who abode there many years attempted to do things wrongly."
"We were there in the season before this one," answered Maya. "This wasjust before that human left."
"I already had read this in you," said Qril. "I also read in you that,as a child, you lived among us who are children of the past. Therefore,perhaps you knew before I spoke that an evil atmosphere remains at thisplace and has not yet been washed away by time."
"No, I was not taught such matters as a child," answered Maya. "But tellme, it is true that this man tried to do evil things, by humanstandards, but were Goat Hennessey's genetic experiments also evil byMartian standards?"
"You do not read what I have said quite correctly," replied Qril. "Theevil atmosphere is left by the man, because what he did was evil by hisown standards. I said only that he attempted to do things wrongly."
"What do you mean?" asked Maya.
"To explain to you, I must speak to you about things about which youalready know partially," answered Qril. "Before you were born, the humanyou call Goat was one of a group of humans who sought ways to makehumans independent of the spaceships which bring materials from Earth toMars and create small islands of terrestrial conditions in the midst ofthe Martian environment. When they met the natural resistance of thosehumans who gain material advantage through operation of the spaceships,they came into the desert to be free to work.
"Seeking to get far from the men who resisted their work, this group
ofhumans went to that area which you know as the Icaria Desert. Some of uswho are children of the past live at that place sometimes, and thesehumans sought our help, knowing that we possess many remnants of theknowledge that our forefathers had.
"But we had difficulty helping them. They were attempting to follow twocourses simultaneously, and both of them were wrong."
"I know something of those two courses," said Maya. "Some of them weretrying to develop human extrasensory powers so that materials could beteleported from Earth, and the others were trying to change the humanbody physiologically so that humans could live under Martian conditions.But you say they were both wrong?"
"In each way that they followed, they sought to make humans partly likeus, the children of the past," said Qril. "We have the power tocommunicate with our minds over a distance, and some of us are able totransport things with our minds over a distance. We do not need yourrich terrestrial air, because we take oxygen directly from the soil andstore it in our bodies for combustion purposes.
"But humans and the children of the past are different forms of life,and they cannot be made so much alike. It is possible for humans todevelop mental powers similar to ours, but this course would leave themdependent upon importing materials from Earth, even though this would beby mind transmission instead of by spaceship. The other course theyfollowed could not succeed, because the human body cannot be altered sothat it is able to take oxygen from the soil and store it for lateruse."
"But you're wrong!" exclaimed Maya. "Goat Hennessey had succeeded indeveloping some humans who could live without oxygen in the air for atime. His experiments were imperfect, it's true, but they were able todo that."
"The imperfect humans that the human called Goat had developed were notwhat he thought," replied Qril. "We tried to help the humans to find theright course, but they could not understand us well. We tried to showthem, by charts and example, that the proper way to adapt a human toMartian conditions was a different way.
"Because Earth is nearer the Sun, humans have a possibility that we donot have. What we tried to show these humans was a method whereby theycould change the embryonic physiology so that the adult human would beable to use the energy of solar radiations directly, instead ofdepending on the energy of combustion of those chemicals you call oxygenand carbon. This makes the body independent of both air and food, andhas the advantage also of giving a far superior regenerative power tothe bodily tissues.
"The human, Goat, for reasons that are not known, stole some of ourcharts and two of the pregnant female humans, and continued his work atthis place to which we are going. But he thought he was still attemptingto change the physiology so that oxygen could be stored, and thereforehis experiments went wrongly."
"But he had your charts," objected Maya. "Even though he was not makingthe alterations he thought he was, how could he go wrong if he followedthe charts?"
"The charts showed the changes to be made in the embryonic cells, butthey could not show the method whereby the changes are made," repliedQril. "The human, Goat, attempted to make these changes by mechanical,surgical methods but these are too crude to be successful. The method weutilize to make such changes, which is the only right method, is tofocus the mental forces upon the embryo. I believe you would call itpsychokinesis."
Maya was vastly excited at this revelation.
"Then Goat's oldest experiments, the ones he called Brute and Adam, wereactually the ones on whom you children of the past had performed theembryonic changes!" she exclaimed. "They must have been the sons of thepregnant women he kidnapped. That's why they were more successful thanthe others!"
"That is true," said Qril. "We had completed the change on only one ofthe two, therefore only that one would develop into an adult who couldlive in complete independence of air and food, if necessary. The otherone would never be able to do it for more than a short period withoutreturning to terrestrial conditions."
The party now came over a long low ridge, and the mass of Ultra Viresrose from the desert ahead of them. The sun was near setting, and theblack walls of the stronghold huddled sullenly under its crimson rays.
The Martians left them here, and Nuwell and Maya went on alone towardtheir goal. Nuwell expelled an audible sigh of relief.
"I'm glad we're free of those monsters," he said. "I don't understandhow you could carry on a conversation with such creatures, Maya. Itsounded like a series of animal grunts and cries to me. I caught anoccasional word, like 'oxygen' and 'psychokinesis.' What were youtalking about?"
"He was telling me about Goat Hennessey's experiments, and how theydiffered from the rebels' experiments before Goat came to Ultra Vires,"answered Maya.
"That kind of talk serves no good purpose," said Nuwell irritably. "Therebel movement has been broken now, and there's no point in thinkingabout the illegal things they tried to do."
They came down the slope and approached the southern airlock of UltraVires. The airlock was still sealed. Nuwell activated it, and they wentthrough it into the big building.
It was dark inside. Nuwell fumbled around a wall and found a lightswitch. He pressed it, but nothing happened.
"The electrical system isn't operating," he said. "We'll have to use ourmarsuit torches."
He switched on his flashlight. It cast a long beam down the dustycorridor. Far ahead of them, a small animal scurried across the faintlight and vanished into the darkness.
Nuwell checked his atmosphere dial.
"The oxygen in here is all right," he said. "The air has beenmaintained, anyhow. We can take off our helmets."
They took off the marshelmets and walked down the corridor. They checkedeach side door, looking for the communications room, but found onlyempty chambers or abandoned rooms in which books, papers and brokenfurniture were scattered in complete disorganization.
It took them nearly an hour to find the communications room. And therethey met disappointment.
Ultra Vires' radio transmitter and receiver had been dismantled. Therewas nothing there but a jumble of broken tubes, discarded parts and barewire ends dangling from the walls. Nothing but an overturned table andtwo bent metal chairs.
"That settles that," said Nuwell, more philosophically then Maya wouldhave expected. "Our only hope is to find a groundcar."
That necessitated another search, but at last they found the motor pool.And there were three groundcars, all in various stages of breakdown ordismantlement.
"It looks like we'll have to walk, Nuwell," said Maya.
Nuwell shook his head.
"I checked the chart carefully," he said. "The oxygen supply of amarsuit won't take us either back to the Canfell Farm or to Ophir, evenwith extra tanks. We're just going to have to cannibalize two of thesemachines and repair us a groundcar."
"But, Nuwell, how long will that take?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "It looks like it may be quite a job. Iexpect it will take two or three weeks, but that's the only way we'regoing to get out of here."
He looked at her speculatively.
"It's a shame we aren't already married," he said. "This would provideus with a honeymoon, of a sort, out here by ourselves in the desert."
"Well, we aren't," she said flatly. "And we won't be until we get backto Mars City."
"That's true," he said. "Well, the only thing we can do for tonight isto have supper and find the rooms that Goat assigned us when we werehere before. I hope he left some beds intact in those, or some of theother rooms. If not, we may have some uncomfortable nights ahead of us."