VII
Frank Nelsen meant the journey to be vagabond escape, an interlude of tohell with it relief from the grind, and from the increasingly uncertainmainstream of the things he knew best.
He rode with a long train of bubbs and great sheaves of smelted metalrods--tungsten, osmium, uranium 238. The sheaves had their ownpropelling ionic motors. He lazed like a tramp. He talked withasteroid-hoppers who meant to spend some time on Earth. Several hadbecome almost rich. Most had strong, quiet faces that showed bothdistance- and home-hunger. A few had broken, and the angry sensitivitywas visible.
Nelsen treated himself well. He was relieved of the duty of eternalvigilance by men whose job it was. So, for a while, his purpose wasalmost successful.
But the memory--or ghost--of Mitch Storey was never quite out of hismind. And, as a tiny, at first telescopic crescent with a rusty lightenlarged with lessened distance ahead, the ugly enigma of present-dayMars dug deeper into his brain.
Every twenty-four hours and thirty-eight minutes--the length of theMartian day--whenever the blue-green wedge of Syrtis Major appeared inthe crescent, he beamed the Survey Station, which was still maintainedfor the increase of knowledge, and as a safeguard for incautiousadventurers who will tackle any dangerous mystery or obstacle. Hisobject was to talk to Nance Codiss.
"I thought perhaps you and your group had gotten restless and hadstarted out for the Belt already," he laughed during their firstconversation.
"Oh, no--a lab technician like me is far too busy here, for one thing,"she assured him, her happy tone bridging the distance. "We came this farwith a well-armed freight caravan, in good passenger quarters. If wewent on, I suppose it would be the same... Anyway, for years you didn'tworry much about me. Why now, Frank?"
"A mystery," he teased in return. "Or perhaps because I considered Earthsafe--instinctively."
But he was right in the first place. It _was_ a mystery--something to dowith the startling news that she was on the way, that closer friendshipwas pending. The impulse to go meet her had been his first, almostthoughtless impulse.
He was still glad that she wasn't out between Mars and the Belt, wheredisaster had once hit him hard. But now he wondered if the SurveyStation was any better for anybody, even though it was reputed to bequite secure.
The caravan he rode approached his destination no closer than tenmillion miles. Taking cautious note of radar data which indicated thatspace all around was safely empty, he cast off in his Archer with asmall, new, professional-type bubb packed across his hips. Inside hishelmet he lighted a cigarette--quite an unusual luxury.
It took a long time to reach Phobos. They gave him shots there--newpreventative medicine that was partially effective against the virusesof Mars. Descent in the winged rocket was rough. But then he was glidingwith a sibilant whistle through a natural atmosphere, again. Withinminutes he was at the Station--low, dusty domes, many of them deserted,now, at the edge of the airfield, a lazily-spinning wind gauge,tractors, auto-jeeps, several helicopters.
He stepped down with his gear. Mars was all around him: A fewground-clinging growths nearby--harmless, locally evolved vegetation.Distant, coppery cliffs reflecting the setting sun. Ancient excavationsnotched them. Dun desert to the east, with little plumes of dustblowing. Through his Archer--a necessary garment here not only becausethe atmosphere was only one-tenth as dense as Earth-air and poor inoxygen, but because of the microscopic dangers it bore--Nelsen couldhear the faint sough of the wind.
The thirty-eight percent of terrestrial gravity actually seemed strongto him now, and made him awkward, as he turned and looked west. Perhapstwo miles off, past a barbed-wire fence and what must be an old tractortrail of the hopeful days of colonization, he saw the blue-green edge ofSyrtis Major, the greatest of the thickets, with here and there ajutting spur of it projecting toward him along a gully. Nelsen's hidetingled. But his first glimpse was handicapped by distance. He saw onlyan expanse of low shagginess that might have been scrub growths of anykind.
Dug into the salt-bearing ground at intervals, he knew, were the fireweapons ready to throw oxygen and synthetic napalm--jellied gasoline.Never yet had they been discharged, along this defense line. But youcould never be sure just what might be necessary here.
A man of about thirty had approached. "I meet the new arrivals," hesaid. "If you'll come along with me, Mr. Nelsen..."
He was dark, and medium large, and he had a genial way. He looked like ahopper--an asteroid-miner--the tough, level-headed kind that adjusts tospace and keeps his balance.
"Name's Ed Huth," he continued, as they walked to the reception dome."Canadian. Good, international crowd here--however long you mean tostay. Most interesting frontier in the solar system, too. Probablyyou've heard most of the rules and advice. But here's a paper. Refreshyour memory by reading it over as soon as you can. There is one thingwhich I am required to show everybody who comes here. Inside this peekbox. You are instructed to take a good look."
Huth's geniality had vanished.
The metal box was a yard high, and twice as long and wide. It stood,like a memorial, before the reception dome entrance. A light shonebeyond the glass-covered slot, as Nelsen bent to peer.
He had seen horror before now. He had seen a pink mist dissolve in thesunshine as a man in armor out in the Belt was hit by an explosivemissile, his blood spraying and boiling. Besides, he had read up on thethickets of Mars, watched motion pictures, heard Gimp Hines' stories ofhis brief visit here. So, at first, he could be almost casual about whathe saw in the peek box. There were many ghastly ways for a man to die.
Even the thicket plant in the box seemed dead, though Nelsen knew thatplant successors to the original Martians had the rugged power ofrevival. This one showed the usual paper-dry whorls or leaves, and theusual barrel-body, perhaps common to arid country growths, everywhere.Scattered over the barrel, between the spines, were glintingspecks--vegetable, light-sensitive cells developed into actual visualorgans. The plant had the usual tympanic pods of its kind--a band ofmuscle-like tissue stretched across a hollow interior--by which it couldmake buzzing sounds. Nelsen knew that, like any Earthly green plant, itproduced oxygen, but that, instead of releasing it, it stored the gas inspongy compartments within its horny shell, using it to support ananimal-like tissue combustion to keep its vitals from freezing duringthe bitterly frigid nights.
Nelsen also knew that deeper within the thing was a network of whitishpulp, expanded at intervals to form little knobs. Sectioned, under amicroscope, they would look like fibred masses of animal or human nerveand brain cells, except that, chemically, they were starch and celluloserather than protein.
Worst to see was the rigid clutch of monster's tactile organs, whichgrew from the barrel's crown. It was like a powerful man struggling touproot a rock, or a bear or an octopus crushing an enemy. It wasdark-hole drama, like something from another galaxy. Like some horriblyeffective piece of sculpture, the tableau in the box preserved the lastgasp of an incautious youth in armor.
The tendrils of the thicket plant were furred with erect spines of ashiny, russet color. They were so fine that they looked almost soft. ButNelsen was aware that they were sharper than the hypodermic needles theyresembled--in another approach to science. Now, Nelsen felt the tinglingrevulsion and hatred.
"Of course you know that you don't have to get caught like that poorbloke did," Huth said dryly. "Just not to disinfect the outside of yourArcher well enough and then leave it near you, indoors, is sufficient.I was here before there was any trouble. When it came, it was ashambles..."
Huth eyed Nelsen for a moment, then continued on another tack."Biology... Given the whole universe to experiment in, I suppose you cannever know what it will come up with--or what is possible. Thesedevils--you get to hate them in your sleep. If their flesh--or theirmethods--were something like ours, as was the case with the originalMartians or the people of the Asteroid Planet, it wouldn't seem so bad.Still, they make you wonder: What would you do, if, in your own way, youcoul
d think and observe, but were rooted to the ground; if you weredenied the animal ability of rapid motion, if you didn't have hands withwhich to fashion tools or build apparatus, if fire was something youcould scarcely use?..."
Nelsen smiled. "I _am_ wondering," he said. "I promise to do a lot moreof it as soon as I get squared away. I could inflate my bubb, and sleepin the yard in it, if I had to. Then, as usual, off the Earth, you'llexpect me to earn my breathing air and keep, after a couple of days,whether I can pay instead or not. That's fine with me, of course.There's another matter which I'd like to discuss, but that can belater."
"No sleeping out," Huth laughed. "That's just where people get careless.There are plenty of quarters available since the retreat of settlersalmost emptied this world of terrestrial intrusion--except for us hereand the die-hard desert rats, and the new, screwball adventurers... Bythe way, if it ever becomes important, the deserts are safe--at leastfrom what you just saw--as you probably know..."
Nelsen passed through an airlock, where live steam and a specialsilicone oil accomplished the all-important disinfection of his Archer,his bubb, and the outside of his small, sealed baggage roll. Armor andbubb he left racked with rows of others.
It wasn't till he got into the reception dome lounge that he saw NanceCodiss. She didn't rush at him. Reserve had dropped over them both againas if in reconsideration of a contact made important too suddenly. Heclasped her fingers, then just stood looking at her. Lately, they hadexchanged a few pictures.
"Your photographs don't lie, Nance," he said at last.
"Yours do, Frank," she answered with complete poise. "You look a lotless grim and tired."
"Wait," he told her. "I'll be right back..."
He went with Ed Huth to ditch his roll in his sleeping cubicle, getcleaned up and change his clothes.
She _was_ beautiful, she had grave moods, she was wearing his fabulousbracelet--if only not to offend him. But when he returned, he met two ofthe girls who had come out to Mars with her--a nurse and another labtechnician. They were the bubbly type, full of bravado and giggles fortheir strange, new surroundings. For a moment he felt far too old attwenty-four for Nance's twenty. He wondered regretfully if her beinghere was no more than part of his excuse for getting away from the Beltand from the sense of ultimate human disaster building up.
But much of his feeling of separation from her disappeared as they satalone in the lounge, talking--first about Jarviston, then about here.Nance had available information about the thickets pretty well down pat.
"You can't keep those plants alive here at the Station, Frank," she saidquietly. "They make study difficult by dying. It's as if they knew thatthey couldn't win here. So they retreat--to keep their secrets. But Dr.Pacetti, our head of Medical Research, says that we can never know thatthey won't find a way to attack us directly. That's what the waitingnapalm line is for. I don't think he is exaggerating."
"Why do you say that?" Nelsen asked.
He was encouraging her, of course. But he wasn't being patronizing.Frost tingled in his nerves. He wanted to know her version.
"I'll show you the little museum we have," she replied, her eyeswidening slightly. "This is probably old hat to you--but it's weird--itgives you the creeps..."
He followed her along a covered causeway to another dome. In a gallerythere, a series of dry specimens were set up, inside sealed boxes madeof clear plastic.
The first display was centered around a tapered brass tube--perhaps oneof the barrels of an antique pair of fieldglasses. Wrapping it was aspiny brown tendril from which grew two sucker-like organs, shaped likeacorn tops. One was firmly attached to the metal. The other had beenpulled free, its original position on the barrel marked by a circulararea of corrosion. The face of the detached sucker was also shown--ahoneycomb structure of waxy vegetable tissue, detailed with thousands oftiny ducts and hairlike feelers.
"Some settler dropped the piece of brass out on a trail in SyrtisMajor," Nance explained. "Later, it was found like this. Brass issomething that people have almost stopped using. So, it was new to_them_. They wouldn't have been interested in magnesium, aluminum, orstainless steel anymore. The suckers aren't a usual part of them either.But the suckers grow--for a special purpose, Dr. Pacetti believes. Atest--perhaps an analysis. They exude an acid, to dissolve a little ofthe metal. It's like a human chemist working. Only, perhaps,better--more directly--with specialized feelers and sensing organs."
Nance's quiet voice had a slight, awed quaver at the end.
Frank Nelsen nodded. He had examined printed pictures and data beforethis. But here the impact was far more real and immediate; the impact ofstrange minds with an approach of their own was more emphatic.
"What else?" he urged.
They stood before another sealed case containing a horny, oval pod, cutopen. It had closed around a lump of greenish stone.
"Malachite," Nance breathed. "One kind of copper ore. _They_ reduced it,extracted some of the pure metal. See all the little reddish specksshining? It is pretty well established that the process is somethinglike electroplating. There's a dissolving acid--then a weak electriccurrent--from a kind of battery... Oh, nobody should laugh, Frank--Dr.Pacetti keeps pointing out that there are electric eels on Earth, withspecialized muscle-tissue that acts as an electric cell... But this issomewhat different. Don't ask me exactly how it functions--I only heardour orientation lecture, while we toured this museum. But see thosesmall compartments in the thick shells of the pod--with the membranesseparating them? All of them contained fluids--some acid, othersalkaline. Mixed in with the cellulose of the membranes, you can see bothsilvery and reddish specks--as if _they_ had to incorporate both aconductor and a difference of metals to get a current. At least, thatwas what was suggested in the lecture..."
Frank Nelsen and Nance Codiss moved on from display case to displaycase, each of which showed another kind of pod cut in half. Theinteriors were all different and all complicated... Membranes with afaint, metallic sheen--laminated or separated by narrow air spaces as ina capacitor, for instance... Balls of massed fibre, glinting... Curious,spiral formations of waxy tissue...
"They use electricity as a minor kind of defense," Nance went on, hertone still low with suppressed excitement that was close to dread. "Weknow that some of them can give you a shock--if you're fool enough toget so close that you can touch them. And they do emit radio impulses oncertain wavelengths. Signals--communication...? As for the rest, perhapsyou'd better do your own guessing, Frank. But the difference between usand them seems to be that we _make_ our apparatus. They _grow_ them,_build_ them--with their own living tissue cells--in a way that must beunder their constant, precise control. I suppose they even work from acarefully thought-out design--a kind of cryptic blueprint... Go alongwith the idea--or not--as you choose. But our experts suspect that muchof what we have here represents research apparatus--physical, chemical,electrical. That _they_ may get closer to understanding the ultimatestructure of matter than we can, because their equipment is part ofthemselves, in which they can develop senses that we don't possess...Well, I'll skip any more of that. Because the best--or the worst--isstill coming. Right here, Frank..."
The case showed several small, urn-like growths, sectioned like theother specimens.
Frank Nelsen grinned slightly. "All right--let me tell it," he said."Because this is something I really paid attention to! Like you imply,their equipment is alive. So they work best with life--viruses, germs,vegetable-allergy substances. These are their inventing, developing andbrewing bottles--for the numerous strains of Syrtis Fever virus. Theliving molecule chains split off from the inner tissue walls of thebottles, and grow and multiply in the free fluid. At least, that's how Iread it."
"And that is where my lab job begins, Frank," she told him. "Helpingdevelop anti-virus shots--testing them on bits of human tissue, growingin a culture bath. An even partially effective anti-virus isn't foundeasily. And when it is, another virus strain will soon appear, and thedoctors have to start over...
Oh, the need isn't as great, any more, aswhen the Great Rush away from Mars was on. There are only half a dozenreally sick people in the hospital now. Late comers and snoopers who gotcareless or curious. You've got to remember that the virus blows off thethickets like invisible vapor. There's one guy from Idaho--Jimmy--JamesScanlon. Come along. I'll show you, Frank..."
He lay behind plastic glass, in a small cubicle. A red rash, with thepattern of frostwork on a Minnesota windowpane in January, was acrosshis lean, handsome face. Maybe he was twenty--Nance's age. His bloodshoteyes stared at terrors that no one else could see.
Nance called softly through the thin infection barrier. "Jimmy!"
He moaned a little. "Francy..."
"High fever, Frank," Nance whispered. "Typical Syrtis. He wants to behome--with his girl. I guess you know that nostalgia--yearning terriblyfor old, familiar surroundings--is a major symptom. It's like a commandfrom _them_--to get out of Mars. The red rash is something extra hepicked up. An allergy... Oh, we think he'll survive. Half of them nowdo. He's big and strong. Right now, even the nurses don't go in there,except in costumes that are as infection-tight as armor. Later on, whenthe fever dwindles to chronic intermittence, it will no longer becontagious. Even so, the new laws on Earth won't let him return therefor a year. I don't know whether such laws are fair or not. We've got ahundred here, who were sick, and are now stranded and waiting, workingat small jobs. Others have gone to the Belt--which seems terrible forsomeone not quite well. I hope that Jimmy bears up all right--he's sucha kid... Let's get out of here..."
Her expression was gently maternal. Or maybe it was something more?
Back in the lounge, she asked, "What will you do here, Frank?"
"Whatever it is, there is one thing I want to include," he answered. "Iwant to try to find out just what happened to Mitch Storey."
"Natch. I remember him. So I looked the incident up. He disappeared,deep in Syrtis Major, over three years ago. He had carried a sicksettler in--on foot. He always seemed lucky or careful, or smart. Afterhe got lost, his wife--a nurse from here whose name had been SelmaWashington--went looking for him. She never was found either."
"Oh?" Nelsen said in mild startlement.
"Yes... Talk to Ed Huth. There still are helicopter patrols--watchingfor signs of a long list of missing people, and keeping tabs on latecomers who might turn out to be screwballs. You look as though you mightbe Ed's type for that kind of work... I'll have to go, now, Frank. Dutyin half an hour..."
Huth was grinning at him a little later. "This department doesn't likemen who have a vanished friend, Nelsen," he said. "It makes theirapproach too heroically personal. On the other hand, some of our ladsseem underzealous, nowadays... If you can live up to your successfulrecord in the Belt, maybe you're the right balance. Let's try you."
For a week, about all Nelsen did was ride along with Huth in the heli.At intervals, he'd call, "Mitch... Mitch Storey...!" into hishelmet-phone. But, of course, that was no use.
He couldn't say that he didn't see Mars--from a safe altitude of twothousand feet: The vast, empty deserts where, fairly safe from thepresent dominant form of Martian life, a few adventurers andarcheologists still rummaged among the rust heaps of climate control andother machines, and among the blasted debris of glazed ceramiccities--still faintly tainted with radioactivity--where the originalinhabitants had died. The straight ribbons of thicket growths, crossingeven the deserts, carrying in their joined, hollow roots the irrigationwater of the otherwise mythical "canals." The huge south polar cap ofhoarfrost melting, blackening the soil with brief moisture, while thefrost line retreated toward the highlands. Syrtis, itself, where thetrails, once burned out with oxygen and gasoline-jelly to permit thepassage of vehicles, had again become completely overgrown--who couldhope to stamp out that devilishly hardy vegetation, propagating by meansof millions of windblown spores, with mere fire? The broken-down trainsof tractors and trailers, now almost hidden. The stellene garden domesthat had flattened. Here were the relics left by people who had soughtto spread out to safety, to find old goals of freedom from fear.
Several times in Syrtis, Huth and Nelsen descended, using a barrenhillock or an isolated spot of desert as a landing area. That was whenNelsen first heard the buzzing of the growths.
Twice, working warily with machetes, and holding their flame weaponsready, they chopped armored mummies from enwrapping tendrils, whilelittle eye cells glinted at them balefully, and other tendrils bentslowly toward them. They searched out the space-fitness cards, whichbore old dates, and addresses of next of kin.
In a few more days, Nelsen was flying the 'copter. Then he was out onhis own, watching, searching. For a couple of weeks he hangared the heliat once, after each patrol, and Nance always was there to meet him as hedid so.
Inevitably the evening came when he said, "We could fly out again,Nance. For an hour or two. It doesn't break any rules."
Those evening rides, high over Syrtis Major, toward the setting sun,became an every other day custom, harmless in itself. A carefully keptnuclear-battery motor didn't conk; the vehicle could almost fly withoutguidance. It was good to look down at the blue-green shagginess,below... Familiarity bred, not contempt, but a decline of dread to thepoint where it became a pleasant thrill--an overtone to the process offalling in love. Otherwise, perhaps they led each other on, intoincaution. Out in the lonely fastnesses of Mars they seemed to find thesort of peace and separation from danger on the hectic Earth that thesettlers had sought here.
"We always pass over that same hill," Nance said during one of theirflights. "It must have been a beautiful little island in the ancientocean, when there was that much water. Now it belongs to us, Frank."
"It's barren--we could land," Nelsen suggested quickly.
They visited the hill a dozen times safely, breaking no printed rule.But maybe they shouldn't have come so often to that same place. In lifethere is always a risk--which is food for a fierce soul. Frank Nelsenand Nance Codiss were fierce souls.
They'd stand by the heli and look out over Syrtis, their gloved fingersentwined. If they couldn't kiss, here, through their helmets, that wasmerely comic pathos--another thing to laugh and be happy over.
"Our wind-blown hill," Nance chuckled on that last evening. "Lookingdown over a culture, a history--maybe arguments, lawsuits, jokes,parties; gossip too, for all we know--disguised as a huge briar patchthat makes funny noises."
"Shut up--I love you," Nelsen gruffed.
"Shut up yourself--it's you I love," she answered.
The little sun was half sunk behind the Horizon. The 'copter was only ahundred feet away, along the hillcrest. That was when it happened. Twodull, plopping sounds came almost together.
If a thinking animal can use the pressure of a confined gas to propelsmall missiles, is there any reason why other intelligences can't do thesame? From two bottle-like pods the clusters of darts--or long, sharpthorns--were shot. Only a few of them struck their targets. Fewer,still, found puncturable areas and struck through silicone rubber andfine steelwire cloth into flesh. Penetration was not deep, but deepenough.
Nance screamed. Nelsen wasn't at all sure that he didn't scream himselfas the first anguish dizzied and half blinded him.
From the start it was really too late. Nelsen was as hardy anddetermined as any. He tried to get Nance to the 'copter. Less thanhalfway, she crumpled. With a savage effort of will he managed to dragher a few yards, before his legs refused to obey him, or support him.
His blood carried a virus to his brain about as quickly as it would havecarried a cobra's venom. _They_ probably could have made suchprotein-poisons, too; but they had never used them against men, no doubtbecause something that could spread and infect others was better.
For a while, as the black, starshot night closed in, Nelsen knew, orremembered, nothing at all--unless the mental distortions were toohorrible. Then he seemed to be in a pit of stinking, viscous fluid,alive with stringy unknowns that were boring into him... Unreachable inanother u
niverse was a town called Jarviston. He yelled till his windwas gone.
He had a half-lucid moment in which he knew it was night, and understoodthat he had a raging fever. He was still clinging to Nance, who clung tohim. So instinct still worked. He saw that they had blundered--its blackbulk was visible against the stars. Phobos hadn't risen; Deimos, thefarther moon, was too small to furnish appreciable light.
Something touched him from behind, and he recoiled, pushing Nance back.He yanked the machete from his belt, and struck blindly... Oh,_no!_--you didn't get caught like this--not usually, he told himself.Not in their actual grip! They were too slow--you could always dodge! Itwas only when you were near something not properly disinfected that yougot Syrtis Fever, which was the worst that could happen--wasn't it...?
He heard an excited rhythm in the buzzing. Now he remembered hisshoulder-lamp, fumbled to switch it on, failed, and stumbled a few stepswith Nance toward the hill. Something caught his feet--then hers. Tryingto get her free, he dropped his machete...
Huth's voice spoke in his helmet-phone. "We hear you, Nelsen! Holdout... We'll be there in forty minutes..."
Yeah--forty minutes.
"It's--it's silly to be so scared, Frankie..." he heard Nance stammeralmost apologetically. Dear Nance...
Screaming, he kicked out again and again with his heavy boots, and gotboth her and himself loose.
It wasn't any good. A shape loomed near them. A thing that must havesprung from _them_--someway. A huge, zombie form--the ugliest part ofthis night of anguish and distortion. But he was sure that it was real.
The thing struck him in the stomach. Then there was a biting pain in hisshoulder...
There wasn't any more, just then. But this wasn't quite the end, either.The jangled impressions were like split threads of consciousness,misery-wracked and tenuous. They were widely separated. His brain seemedto crack into a million needle-pointed shards, that made no sense exceptto indicate the passage of time. A month? A century...?
It seemed that he was always struggling impossibly to get himself andNance somewhere--out of hot, noisesome holes of suffocation, acrossdeserts, up endless walls, and past buzzing sounds that were mixedincongruously with strange harmonica music that seemed to express alltime and space... He could never succeed though the need was desperate.But sometimes there was a coolness answering his thirst, or rubbed intohis burning skin, and he would seem to sleep... Often, voices told himthings, but he always forgot...
It wasn't true that he came out of the hot fog suddenly, but it seemedthat he did. He was sitting in dappled sunshine in an ordinary lawnchair of tubular magnesium with a back and bottom of gaudy fabric. Abovehim was a narrow, sealed roof of stellene. The stone walls showed thebeady fossils of prehistoric Mars. More than probably, these chambershad been cut in the living rock, by the ancients.
Reclining in another lawn chair beside his was Nance, her eyes closed,her face thin and pale. He was frightened--until he remembered,somehow, that she was nearly as well as he was. Beyond her was adoorway, leading into what seemed a small, modern kitchen. There was apassage to a small, neat garden, where Earthly vegetables and flowersgrew. It was ceiled with stellene; its walls were solid rock. Looking upthrough the transparent roof above him, he saw how a thin mesh of fuzzytendrils and whorls masked this strange Shangri-la.
Nelsen closed his eyes, and thought back. Now he remembered most of whathe had been told. "Mitch!" he called quietly, so as not to awaken Nance."Hey, Mitch...! Selma...!"
Mitch Storey was there in a moment--dressed in dungarees and work shirtlike he used to be, but taller, even leaner, and unsmiling.
Nelsen got up. "Thanks, Mitch," he said.
Their voices stayed low and intense.
"For nothing, Frank. I'm damned glad to see you, but you still shouldn'thave come nosing. 'Cause--I told you why. Looking for you, Huth burnedout more than five square miles. And if folks get too smart and toocurious, it won't be any good for what's here..."
Nelsen felt angry and exasperated. But he had a haunting thought about alanky colored kid in Jarviston, Minnesota. A guy with a dream--orperhaps a prescient glimpse of his own future.
"What's a pal supposed to do?" he growled. "For a helluva long timeyou've answered nobody--though everyone in the Bunch must have triedbeaming you."
"Sure, Frank... Blame, from me, would be way out of line. I heard youguys lots of times. But it was best to get lost--maybe help keep thethickets like they are for as long as possible... A while back, I beganpicking up your voice in my phones again. I figured you were heading fortrouble when you kept coming with your girl to that same hill. So I wasaround, like I told you before... Sorry I had to hit you and give youthe needle, but you were nuts--gone with Syrtis. Getting you back here,without Huth spotting the old heli I picked up once at a desertedsettlers' camp was real tough going. I had to land, hide it and wait,four or five times. And you were both plenty sick. But there are a fewmedical gimmicks I learned from the thickets--better than those at theStation."
"You've done all right for yourself here, haven't you, Mitch?" Nelsenremarked with a dash of mockery. "All the modern conveniences--in themiddle of the forbidden wilds of Syrtis Major."
"Sure, Frank--'cause maybe I'm selfish. Though it's just stuff thesettlers left behind. Anyway, it wasn't so good at the start. I wascareful, but I got the fever, too. Light. Then I fell--broke my leg--outthere. I thought sure I was finished when they got hold of me. But Ijust lay there, playing on my mouth organ--an old hymn--inside myhelmet. Maybe it was the music--they must have felt the radio impulsesof my tooting before. Or else they knew, somehow, that I was on theirside--that I figured they were too important just to disappear and thatI meant to do anything I could, short of killing, to keep them allright... Nope, I wouldn't say that they were so friendly, but they mighthave thought I'd be useful--a guinea-pig to study and otherwise. For allI know, examining my body may have helped them improve their weapons...Anyhow--you won't believe this--'cause it's sort of fantastic--but youknow they work best with living tissue. They fixed that leg, bound ittight with tendrils, went through the steel cloth of my Archer withhollow thorns. The bone knit almost completely in four days. And thefever broke. Then they let me go. Selma was already out looking for me.When I found her, she had the fever, too. But I guess we're immune now."
Storey's quiet voice died away.
"What are you going to do, Mitch? Just stay here for good?"
"What else--if I can? This is better than anything I remember. Peaceful,too. If they study me, I study them--not like a real scientist--but byjust having them close around. I even got to know some of their buzzingtalk. Maybe I'll have to be their ambassador to human folks, sometime.They _are_ from the planets of the stars, Frank. Sirius, I think. Toughlittle spores can be ejected from one atmosphere, and drift in space formillions of years... They arrived after the first Martians were extinct.Now that you're here, Frank, I wish you'd stay. But that's no good.Somebody lost always makes people poke around."
Nelsen might have argued a few points. But for one thing, he felt tootired. "I'll buy it all, your way, Mitch," he said. "I hope Nance and Ican get out of here in a couple more days. Maybe I shouldn't have runout on the Belt. Can't run--thoughts follow you. But now--dammit--I wantto go home!"
"That's regular, Frank. 'Cause you've got Syrtis. Chronic,now--intermittent. But it'll fade. Same with your girl. Meanwhile, theywon't let you go Earthside, but you'll be okay. I'll fly you out, closeenough to the Station to get back, any morning before daylight, that youpick... Only, you won't tell, will you, Frank?"
"No--I promise--if you think secrecy makes any difference.Otherwise--thanks for everything... By the way--do you ever listen inon outside news?"
"Enough. Still quiet... And a fella named Miguel Ramos--withnerve-controlled clamps for hands--got a new, special bubb and took offfor Pluto."
"No! Damn fool... Almost as loony as you are, Mitch."
"Less... Wake up, Nance. Dinner... Chicken--raised right here..."
That same afternoon, Frank Nelsen and Nance Codiss sat in the garden."If I blur, just hold me tight, Frankie," she said. "Everything is stilltoo strange to quite get a grip on--yet... But I'm _not_ going home,Frank--not even when it is allowed. I set out--I'm sticking--I'm notturning tail. It's what people have got to do--in space more thanever..."
Even when the seizure of fever came, and the sweat gathered on her lips,and her eyes went wild, she gritted her teeth and just clung to him. Shehad spunk--admirable, if perhaps destructive. "Love yuh," Frank keptsaying. "Love yuh, Sweetie..."
Two days later, before the frigid dawn, they saw the last of MitchStorey and his slender, beautiful wife with her challenging brown eyes.
"Be careful that you do right for Mitch and--these _folks_," she warnedalmost commandingly as the old heli landed in the desert a few milesfrom the Station. "What would you do--if outsiders came blundering intoyour world by the hundreds, making trails, killing you with fire? Atfirst, _they_ didn't even fight back."
The question was ancient but valid. In spite of his experiences, Nelsenagreed with the logic and the justice. "We'll make up a story, Selma,"he said solemnly.
Mitch looked anxious. "Human people will find a way, won't they, Frank?"he asked. "To win, to come to Mars and live, I mean--to changeeverything. Sure--some will be sympathetic. But when there's practicalpressure--need--danger--economics...?"
"I don't know, Mitch," Nelsen answered in the same tone as before. "Yourthickets do have a pretty good defense."
But in his heart he suspected that fierce human persistence couldn't bestopped--_as long as there were humans left_. Mitch and his star folkcouldn't withdraw from the mainstream of competition--inherent inlife--that was spreading again across the solar system. They could onlystand their ground, take their fearful chances, be part of it.
One of the last things Mitch said, was, "Got any cigarettes, Frank?Selma likes one, once in a while."
"Sure. Three packs here inside my Archer. Mighty small hospitality gift,Mitch..."
After the 'copter drifted away, it seemed that a curtain drew overNelsen's mind, blurring the whole memory. It was as though _they_ hadplanned that. It was almost as though Mitch, and Selma, as he had justseen them, were just another mind-fantasy of the Heebie-Jeebie Planet,created by its present masters.
"Should we believe it?" Nance whispered.
"My cigarettes are gone," Frank told her.
At the Survey Station they got weary looks from Ed Huth. "I guess Ipicked a wrong man, Nelsen," he said.
"It looks as though you did, Ed," Frank replied. "I'm really sorry."
They got worse hell from a little doctor from Italy, whose name wasPadetti. They were asked a lot of questions. They fibbed some, but notentirely.
"We sort of blanked out, Doctor," Nance told him. "I suppose we spentmost of our time in the desert, living in our Archers. There were theusual distorted hallucinations of Syrtis Fever. A new strain, Isuspect... Four months gone? Oh, no...!"
She must have had a time evading his questions for the next month, whileshe worked, again, in the lab. Maybe he did divine half of the truth, atlast. Maybe he even was sympathetic toward the thickets that he wastrying to defeat.
Nelsen wasn't allowed to touch another helicopter. During that month,between brief but violent seizures of the fever, he was employed as amaintenance mechanic.
Then the news came. There had been an emergency call from Pallastown.Rescue units were to be organized, and rocketed out in high-velocityU.N.S.F. and U.S.S.F bubbs. There had been sabotage, violence. The Townwas three-quarters gone, above the surface. Planned attack or--almostworse--merely the senseless result of space-poisoned men kicking off thelid in a spree of hell-raising humor and fun?
Nelsen was bitter. But he also felt the primitive excitement--almost aneagerness. That was the savage paradox in life.
"You still have the dregs of Syrtis Fever," a recruiting physician toldhim. "But you know the Belt. That makes a big difference... Allright--you're going..."
Nance Codiss didn't have that experience. Her lab background wasn'tenough. So she was stuck, on Mars.
Nelsen had been pestering her to marry him. Now, in a corner of thecrowded lounge, he tried again.
She shook her head. "You'd still have to leave me, Frank," she told him."Because that's the way strong people _have_ to be--when there'strouble to be met. Let's wait. Let's know a little better where we'reat--please, darling. I'll be all right. Contact me when you can..."
Her tone was low and tender and unsteady. He hugged her close.
Soon, he was aboard a GO-rocket, shooting up to Phobos to join theassembling rescue team. He wondered if this was the beginning of theend...