a long metal bench directly opposite the airlock: three compasses, each
weighing perhaps twenty ounces; a cathode ray compass; a non-magnetic
compass and a sun compass. The sun compass would perhaps prove the most
valuable until darkness fell. The sun, shining down with brilliance
from the clear Martian sky, could throw a directional kind of shadow,
enabling a man on foot to take fairly accurate bearings without the use
of sighting and viewing instruments.
To the compasses on the bench he added five map coordinates and a
Lambert conformal projection chart.
Food concentrates came next: four shining aluminum cubes, four inches
by four inches, which would go into the knapsack on his back. Then a
canteen, already filled with sterilized water from the ship's central
water supply system.
Next, he took from the locker the right kind of clothing: a tubeflex
inner suit with a warm lining and a heavy outer suit equipped with heat
lamps.
Oxygen masks next--oxy-respirators, to be exact. One to attach to the
face and one to hold in reserve as a spare. They covered only a third
of the face, but that third had everything to do with a man's staying
alive and vigorous in the thin air of Mars. When night fell, and the
cold descended, oxy-respirators were not enough. Then you had to pull
down the entire front of your helmet and stagger on with your sight
impaired, for in a cold that was almost beyond endurance, helmets had a
way of clouding over from time to time.
The clouding over of the vision plate was not too important. It could
be constantly wiped clean. But if his brain started "clouding over"
too....
He dismissed the possibility from his mind. He was clothed now, fully
clothed, and ready to depart.
He started moving toward the airlock, feeling and looking like a giant
beetle of the tropics, feeling awkward, cumbersome and insecure. His
boots were weighted, and the bulge of the oxygen tank on his shoulder
made him look almost hunchbacked in the cold light glimmer that turned
the bulkhead into a mirroring surface as he advanced.
He manipulated the airlock and it opened with a slow, steady droning
and then he was passing through it, still moving awkwardly....
At last! He was out on the Martian desert in bright sunlight, staring
up at the clear blue sky.
The first few miles were not difficult at all. He walked away from
the ship with his shoulders held straight, the cumbersome feeling
dissipated by the lightness of his stride in the incredibly light
gravity.
The air pressure about him was less than seventy millimeters of
mercury. The thought sprouted in his mind that he was the god Mercury
striding along with winged shoes, and for the first five miles his
weighted boots did seem to develop wings.
Then the temperature began slowly to drop. The sun sank lower. Its
brightness diminished, and his cheeks began to tingle with the cold.
There was a slight wind blowing over the desert, raising dust flurries
on the summits of the tallest dunes, causing the gray patches of crust
lichen, which were scattered widely over the plain, to change color as
their threadlike surfaces were ruffled by the breeze.
Far in the distance he could see a "canal," one of those strange
blue-green declivities in the terrain which looked from the air like an
actual waterway, and had deceived--or bewildered--three generations of
men.
Despite the increasing cold, Corriston did not moderate his stride.
He let his thoughts dwell on the most imaginative of the canal
speculations. It had been proven completely false, but its originality
fascinated him. Long ago, the theory held, there had been volcanic
activity on Mars. Great faults or fissures had opened up in the
planet's crust, and when the coming of spring thawed the polar ice
caps, curtains of fog swirled equatorward, filling those natural
crevices with swirling rivers of mist.
Corriston stopped walking for a moment, shifting the weight of his
equipment slightly, easing a too heavy drag on his right shoulder. He
made sure that the thin flexible tube which connected his oxygen mask
with the small tank on his back was securely clipped into place at both
ends, tested the harness buckle which supported supplies which were as
necessary to him as breathing, and took a turn up and down the sand,
stamping, shaking himself, to make absolutely certain that nothing
vital had been jarred loose.
Then he was under way again, moving along at a steady pace over the
rust-red desert, the ship now lost to view far behind him, his mind
leaping ahead to the very great dangers which he was determined to face
and overcome so long as one slender thread of hope remained.
16
It might have been almost any sleepy little town on Earth, picked at
random from a train window--a dust bowl town with a prairie name:
Hawk's Valley, Buzzard's Gulch, and the like. It might have been, but
it wasn't.
The buildings were thinner, of more precarious construction, and each
had been built to house three or more families. They were at unusual
angles on sloping ledges where the soil was firm enough to resist
overnight erosion from winds of hurricane force, and in many places
their prefabricated metal foundations were pierced and supported by
shafts of solid rock.
Without modern technology at its most advanced, the town could never
have been built. Yet in the streets of the town there was a village
rudeness of construction which no pioneering effort could quite efface:
a wide main street that gleamed red in the sunlight on which three
caterpillar tractors stood stalled, their guard rails caked with
yellow mud; a pool of stagnant black water with a wooden plank thrown
haphazardly across it; a discarded fuel container upended against a
half-rusted away metal cable, and the remnants of an hydraulic actuator
overgrown with hardy lichens that had colored it yellow and ash gray.
And here and there, projecting from the tumbled sand, were spiny
cactus-like growths.
Yet it was not too small a town. Its inhabitants numbered eight
thousand, two-thirds of them men. There were ninety-seven children. It
was not too small a town, and now, in each of the houses, a new day was
beginning.
At least thirty men and a few women had collected about the
haggard-eyed desert straggler. Every one of them hung on his words.
Every one of these people had been ruined by Ramsey's rapacious
greed. Their past accomplishments were destroyed; their futures were
non-existent. They lived in a terrorized state, from hand-to-mouth,
indifferent now to any more wrongdoing that could be visited upon them.
The fires of their hatred for Ramsey gave them the basic energy to go
on existing.
Out of grinding desperation they had turned to Henley, had given him
a free hand, even when most, in their heart-of-hearts, knew he was a
scoundrel. The fact was that he was the only man among them not so
cowed as to be actively enraged against Ramsey. He promised that the
mines would be given back to the people. And, having nothing, they
believed everything.
They came from everywhere in the colony, and from every trade and
profession. Who was this man? And was he friend or foe?
The crowd grew slowly. Despite the shouts and the sudden stir of
excitement which had greeted the speaker on his arrival, there was
no headlong rush to surround him. The colonists emerged from their
lodgings and converged calmly upon the square, some having the look
of tradesfolk concerned with a possible interruption of business, and
others seemingly intent only on what the stranger might have to say.
It was unusually warm for so early an hour, the temperature well up
in the mid-forties, and there was no need for the heat-generating
inner garments, only for oxygen masks and heavy outdoor clothing and
the careful avoidance of too much muscular exertion in the absence of
weighted shoes.
This is madness, Corriston told himself. I am in no condition to
convince these people, to make them understand. I should have rested
first. Three hours' sleep would have helped. I should have asked for
food.
Corriston felt suddenly tongue-tied. Words were failing him when he
needed them most. His speech became halting and confused. He had been
talking for twenty minutes--twenty minutes at least--but suddenly he
was quite sure that he hadn't succeeded in convincing anyone that he
was speaking only the simple truth.
He looked at the faces before him a little more intently and saw what
he had not noticed before: everyone was waiting for him to go on;
everyone seemed to be hanging on his words.
Had he misjudged them after all? Or had he misjudged his own capacity
to be persuasive, to talk with conviction when his very life hung in
the balance?
There could be no doubt on that score. His life did hang in the
balance. They'd make short shift of him if they thought he was on
Ramsey's side.
"It isn't Ramsey I'm concerned about," he heard himself saying. "I'm
pleading with you to face up to the truth about yourselves. You trusted
Henley because you were desperate. You couldn't put your trust in a
weak or indecisive man. You needed a tool with a cutting edge. That I
can understand. But you picked the wrong man. Henley doesn't want to
see justice done. He doesn't want to help you at all. He wants to help
himself at your expense, to help himself in a vicious, brutal way."
"That's a lie," someone in the crowd said. "Henley's a good man."
Corriston freed himself from his dust-caked coat. He shrugged it off
and let it drop to the sand. Then he straightened his oxygen mask and
went on: "It's not a lie. It's the simple truth."
He wondered why he had shrugged off his warmest garment. It was cold,
he was shivering, and it had been a ridiculous thing to do. Had he
intended it as a challenge? In a crazy, confused, subconscious way, was
he offering to fight anyone who disagreed with him.
He suddenly realized that he was a little drunk. Not on alcohol, but on
a slight excess of oxygen. He fingered the gauge on his mask, cutting
down the tank inflow, cursing himself for his delay in doing so.
Had he convinced anyone? He looked at the faces about him and was
astonished by their impassivity. Few of the men or women before him
seemed either angry or disturbed. They just seemed to be quietly
listening.
Suddenly he realized that he was completely in error. They were
convinced, persuaded, almost completely on his side. Their silence was
in itself revealing, just as the hush which precedes an avalanche can
be convincing, or the stillness which precedes a storm at sea.
They were waiting for him to go on.
He talked for thirty more minutes and then there was a long silence,
punctuated only by the harsh breathing of a few men who seemed to
disagree.
17
Corriston knew that the few who disagreed were prepared to make
trouble, but he was not prepared for the violence which ensued.
Fights broke out in the crowd, singly and in groups. The colonists with
strong convictions took issue with the few who disagreed. And the few
who disagreed had strong convictions, too.
Two men about the same in height were suddenly down on the ground
raining fisticuffs at each other.
"Damn you, Reeves, I'll break your jaw. From the first minute I saw
Henley I knew he was a scoundrel."
"Yeah, and who else but a scoundrel could hold his own with a rat like
Ramsey. We can call the turn on him if he goes too far."
There was an explosion of cursing and Corriston could see five more men
fighting, moving backwards as they exchanged blows toward the periphery
of the crowd.
There was nothing he could do to stop the fighting. He was close to
exhaustion, hardly able to stand. He desperately needed food and
rest--a long rest flat on his back.
Suddenly he realized that he had victory within his grasp. Most things
worthwhile in life called for a decisive effort of will. He decided
suddenly that he couldn't just let the fighting go on. He had to take
a firm stand himself, had to convince everyone that he was prepared to
fight for his convictions.
He moved forward into the crowd. He grabbed one doubter by the
shoulder, held fast to him for an instant, and then sent his fist
crashing into the astonished man's jaw.
The doubter folded in complete silence. Corriston stepped back from
him and said in a voice loud enough to carry to the rim of the crowd:
"I don't care how many of you I have to take on. Every word I've said
is the truth. If you can only settle it by killing me, you may as well
start trying."
There was a silence then. Even the sound of the breeze rustling the
garments of the colonists, stirring little flurries of sand along the
main street, seemed to become muted. Far off between the houses a clock
struck the time. It seemed very loud in the stillness.
It amazed Corriston a little, even in his exhausted state, how
determinedly a challenge like that could be accepted at face value.
He was quite sure that he had won a victory; that nine-tenths of the
colonists were on his side. But everyone remained silent, everyone drew
back in tight-lipped silence while the issue was put to the test.
A tall man with a lean, lantern-jawed face approached Corriston and
said: "I'm going to tell you exactly what I think. Henley isn't an easy
man to understand. He keeps his thoughts to himself and he may have
had his own special reasons for pulling the wool over your eyes. He's
looking out for our best interests; I'm sure of that. But what good
would it do me to knock you down to prove it?"
"No good at all," Corriston said. "But try knocking me down if you want
to."
"I'm not going to try," the lantern-jawed man said. "I think you're
lying. That's all I have to say."
Corriston watched him disappear in the crowd and shook his head. He
felt like a man with a fly swatter in his hand. He had won a victory
and yet if he failed to swat a few flies no one would believe that he
was telling the truth.
Finally he got his chance. A thickset, dark-browed man with a
trouble-seeking aspect came up and hurled insults at him in a markedly
offensive way.
Corriston hit him three times. The first blow doubled him up, the
second dropped him to his knees; the third flattened him out on the
sand.
Corriston stepped back and surveyed the crowd. Their response now was
overwhelmingly favorable.
It wasn't a complete victory. There were still doubters, still
arguments going on, still a hatred for Ramsey that overflowed and made
a mockery of the few voices raised in his defense.
And Corriston was glad that not too many voices were raised in Ramsey's
defense. He had not come to plead Ramsey's cause, and he wanted all of
the colonists to know that. He only asked that a truce be declared, an
end to the fierce, immediate hatreds, while a scoundrel was attacked by
men who had been lied to, cheated and betrayed. He moved still further
forward into the crowd, prepared to fight again if he had to, prepared
to back up his arguments with the simple, primitive and direct use of
his fists.
He swayed suddenly and realized that he was at the end of his
endurance, and now would in all probability make a complete fool of
himself. He would commit the unforgivable folly of issuing a challenge
that he couldn't back up.
He shook his head violently, trying to clear it, but his dizziness
increased. The landscape about him began to pinwheel and he saw the
streets of the colony through a wavering yellow mist. The store fronts
danced, the rusting and discarded machinery on a side street began to
move and come to life, to clatter and waltz about.
A woman moving toward him seemed to grow in height, her oxygen mask
widening out, overspreading her face. For a moment she seemed like an
impossible ballet figure in a _danse macabre_, pivoting about on her
toes as a caterpillar tractor came rushing toward her through the thin
air of Mars.
Then two colonists were supporting him, holding him tightly by the
elbows, refusing to let him collapse. It was outrageous, because he
_wanted_ to collapse. He wanted to sink down, to let sleep wash over
him, to forget all of his troubles in merciful oblivion.
But the two colonists were very stubborn. They refused to let him
collapse. He only wanted to go to sleep, to forget all of his troubles,
but the two colonists were like doctors in a hospital, very stern, very
patient, and seemingly determined to keep him on his feet.
Somehow they must have failed. They must have failed because when
he became fully conscious again he was lying between cool white
sheets, and a woman in a white nurse's uniform was bending over him.
By straining his eyes he could see two men who looked like doctors
standing just beyond her.
The two men appeared to be discussing him, but when he struggled to
a sitting position and stared hard at them they came toward him with
reassuring smiles, and one of them said: "Take it easy, now. You're
going to be all right."
"I ... I must have passed out," he stammered. "I was ready to pass out
before I started talking. Is this a hospital? I guess it is. I should
have come here immediately. Forty hours in the desert and I arrive
half-delirious and make a fool of myself."
"Take it easy," one of the doctors said. "You didn't make a fool of
yourself. Quite the contrary."
Oh, brother, he thought. They're lying to me to spare me, or something.
"I have a vague recollection of not being able to stand, of talking my
head off and then collapsing and making a complete fool of myself, of
accomplishing nothing at all. I swung hard at two or three people. I
knocked one man down, flat on his back. But that was a crazy thing to
do. It's no way to win the confidence or respect of anyone."
"Look," one of the doctors said, taking firm hold of his shoulder
and shaking him gently. "Don't go reproaching yourself. You've got
nine-tenths of the colony behind you."
"You mean--"
"Sure, you convinced almost everyone. And that was a miracle in itself,
considering how close to collapse you were. You were running a high
fever. You were dehydrated. Your skin was as dry as a parched lichen.
Yet you stood there and convinced them. That's the gospel truth."
"They've chosen you as their leader," the second doctor said. "They're
going after Henley before it's too late. They feel exactly as you
do about Ramsey's daughter. Not about Ramsey perhaps--but about the
kidnapping of a helpless girl. None of them have any liking for Henley
now."
18
Corriston walked out into the central square and stood there. For a
moment no one said a word. One of the doctors was there with him. He'd
had a sandwich and coffee before leaving the hospital and his nerves
felt steady and his voice was pitched low.
"I don't know a single one of these men, Dr. Tomlinson," he said. "I
spent a week in the colony four years ago, but I just don't see anyone
I recognize. I'm afraid you'll have to introduce me around."
It took a full hour to really get acquainted, to plan what had to
be done, to check over the tractors, the ammunition supplies, the
equipment of each and every man.
They had to cross eighty-seven miles of desert to a heavily guarded
cave and then move on perhaps to Ramsey's fortress. They had to be
prepared for any eventuality.
The morale was good. Corriston could sense the grim determination in
every man, the faith in their mission, the anger. It cheered him.
He walked around between the tractors, listening to stray bits of talk,
getting better acquainted with everyone as the minutes sped by.
He took out his watch and looked at it and decided that time was
running short.
Give each and every man twenty minutes, he thought. Then we get
rolling. Thirty caterpillar tractors and two hundred and ten men. And
in the ship are two men holed up--possibly three now--with all the
portable fighting equipment of a two thousand ton spaceship at their
disposal. And if Henley has returned--
Suddenly Corriston found himself sweating in the silence, despite the
cold, despite the hoar frost that was beginning to collect on the rim
of his oxygen mask. There was a split second of shouting from one of
the tractors and then it started up, with a coughing and spitting that
drowned out the human voices.
All along the wide, rust-red street other tractors came to life. In the
thin air of Mars, in the pale sky, a single blue cloud hung suspended.
It was wispy thin, incredibly thin, a hollow mockery of a cloud. But
the scene below would have been less remarkable had the sky remained
cloudless, for then Mars would have seemed completely unlike Earth and
the human drama less compelling.
There was something tremendous in the forward march of the tractors,
in the clatter and the rising dust, the shouts of the men at the
controls and the women who ran swift-footed along the sand to urge them
to greater fortitude. The women knew that endurance would be needed,
for twenty-first century weapons of warfare could destroy a hundred
tractors and spatter the desert with blood before retaliation could
become complete and justice be fully satisfied.
So the women did not weep or lament. They ran parallel with the
tractors, urging their men onward, stifling their own inner fears in
the greatness of the moment.
Corriston waited for the last tractor to come abreast of him before
he leapt aboard it. There was the smell of acrid grease in the air,
a smell of burning. The mechanical parts set up a dull rumbling, and
as Corriston swung himself aboard, a voice said: "I'm Stanley Gregor.
If I had any sense I wouldn't take part in this. I came to Mars with
the second expedition. I'm sixty-two years old but somehow today I
feel young. There's no longer any doubt in my mind that Henley is a
scoundrel. Why we trusted him I don't know. I'm here to do my part in
rectifying an error."
"Sure," Corriston said, settling down at the side of a big,
awkward-looking man with red hair. "Sure, I understand. Take it easy.
We're all in this together."
"We've got eighty-seven miles of desert to cross. It's going to be
tough. Have you seen the fortress Ramsey built to protect himself?"
"No," Corriston said.
"There are twenty-five square miles of fortified
defenses--photoelectric eye installations. They spot you when you're
a half-mile away. Try to storm those installations even with a dozen
armed tractors, and you'll be pulverized into dust. Try to storm them
on foot with the most formidable of energy weapons, and you'll be
electrocuted. You'll hang suspended on barbed wire. Think that over,
Lieutenant."
"I've thought it over," Corriston said. "We won't have to storm the
fortress unless they've taken Ramsey's daughter there, or if Ramsey
himself is in danger. And if he is in danger, he'll welcome our help.
We're going to the ship first and there are only two men on the ship."
"But they've got plenty of ammunition, haven't they? They've got the
ship's military installations. Anyway you slice it, it's a dangerous
gamble."
"I never thought it was anything else," Corriston said.
19
Corriston woke up to the hum of human voices, the soft whisper of the
wind, the gentle stirring of sand. He awoke to coldness and brightness,
to sunlight that dazzled him with its brightness.
Corriston remembered then. Not everything at once, but just the first
thing. There were no guideposts. That was always the first thing to
remember when you woke up from a brief, twenty-minute sleep on Mars.
In islands scoured by trade winds and bright with blown sea spray a man
does not talk of traveling east or west, and even familiar streets are
no longer given names or marked by intersections. A man talks instead
of walking into the wind, of setting his course by the north star,
of moving straight into the teeth of the gale or huddling for shelter
beneath a high chalk cliff where all directions converge in a hollow
drumming that has neither beginning nor end. It was that way on Mars.
It would always be that way, it could never change.
Just lie very still and listen, listen to the voices of men who are
risking their lives to help you. Listen and be grateful; listen and be
proud.
All at once Corriston realized that an amazing discussion was going on.
They were discussing an eleven-year-old boy who had done an absolutely
crazy thing. He had followed his father into the desert by concealing
himself in one of the tractors, behind a liquid-fuel cylinder, and was
now a member of the 210 man rescue team.
"Mars is no place for a kid. Dr. Drever ought to be ashamed of himself.
If a man has children--well, Mars is simply no place for children."