"You certainly would if you were lost on this desert."
"Let's rest a bit, John, and see what the manual has to say."
"Fine! We can lean our backs against this rock."
"We'd better get on the sunny side of it."
They walked around the rock, and slid down to the hard sand. Faint
twists of sand curled around the sides of the rock but they were
sheltered from the wind, and out of sight of the entrance, as if in a
world of their own.
She rested her head on his shoulder contentedly as he turned the
old, crudely typeset pages of the manual. There were pen and ink
illustrations of strange beasts, but no chapters on inhabitants.
"We're the only people here--" said Hilda, in an awed tone.
"Regular Adam and Eve picnic, with clothes on."
"I'd hate to be without clothes on this desert. No garden here."
"That's right. No place for a nudist colony on Mars."
She sat up suddenly, looking past the rock at a distant shadow. Her
face grew pale, and she whispered fearfully, "Look, John! There's
something moving over by those rocks."
He leaped to his feet. "Yes--and it's a Mars Coyote. I noticed a
picture on page three. Harmless, I guess, but we'd better get back.
It's close. We should have been watching."
* * * * *
They rose hastily and walked around the boulder, back toward the
entrance. Hilda started and stifled a scream as they left the shelter.
John drew his clumsy gas gun and stepped in front of her. Before them,
on the red stretch of sand toward the entrance, were hundreds of the
reddish-gray, smooth haired animals, with pointed noses and wickedly
gleaming eyes.
These moved back silently as the two humans approached, but only a
little way.
"The book says they're cowardly," she gasped, "but there are so many!"
"Too damned many--I wonder if I ought to shoot one, to keep the others
away."
The red-gray circle bent away from them slowly, as they walked steadily
across the weirdly shadowed sand toward the gleaming metal door, so far
ahead. The animals massed thickly before them, and were finally crowded
up against the cliff and its door. They slid out sidewise but tumbled
into each other. One made a dash forward, but John dropped it with the
little gas pellet that broke against its hide, with a sinking yellow
cloud of gas. There was also an injection of paralysis fluid from the
plastic point of the pellet. The little gun made no noise as it was
operated by a spring. John levered another pellet into the firing tube.
After the yellow gas had blown away in the strong wind, the red-gray
bodies crept toward their fallen comrade and suddenly rushed in, with
a horrible clicking of teeth and fierce, silent ripping of flesh.
"Oh--" cried Hilda--"and it's still alive. They're eating it alive!"
"Not much difference," grunted John as he aimed and fired rapidly at
three more. Then he led her around the circle of rolling, crowding
bodies. One coyote at the edge of the circle howled dismally. There
were still a dozen or more between them and the door.
* * * * *
John tried a new trick. He shot one of the beasts and ran quickly
forward with his radilight in the cliff's shadow, frightening the
others back. Then, while Hilda held her gun ready, he quickly scooped
up the fallen coyote by its bushy tail and whirled it round his head
to heave it far out over the milling mass of hungry bodies. Each hairy
carcass felt unbelievably light to him, and he could cast them thirty
feet away. When most of the coyotes were facing the living food away
from the door John dragged her toward the great copper portal, shooting
as they ran.
The lighter gravity had made the work fairly easy, but even so, he was
sweating and his hands trembled as he seized the last one and tossed it
into the air. Hilda was fumbling with the door.
"Let me do it!" he gasped, "I remember--"
[Illustration: _The shot exploded in a burst of light._]
Just then a shadow fell over them, and they were so startled as to look
up from the door and step back. About fifty feet in the air hovered a
small, almost spherical air boat, with no visible means of suspension
or power. A port slid open on its under side and a square black muzzle
pointed at them. Hilda seized John's arm in terror, as they felt
themselves lifted by invisible force from the ground, above the great
pack of startled coyotes. John noticed that the beasts were looking up
and many of them yelping as they ran into the rubble of rocks beyond
the cliff. There wasn't time to see how many fled, for he and Hilda
were quickly sucked up into the open port by invisible tractor rays,
the metal hull clanged shut, and they were thrown roughly on a hard
floor. John had a blurred vision of a circle of white, long-bearded
faces, on slender bodied old men, before a gleaming mirror-like
reflector dazzled him and he felt his hold on reality slipping. He
struggled to his feet and reached for one of the old men, managing to
seize a tangled silky beard before he fell forward into darkness.
* * * * *
They came to consciousness lying on soft low mattresses in a room
softly illuminated with blue light. The air was slightly overwarm and
humid but comfortable. They were dressed in skin fitting, silvery
garments, partly transparent with skirts of blue, velvety cloth. Their
hair was wrapped in transparent turbans.
Hilda recovered enough to blush uncomfortably and curl back on the
couch. "I feel as if--I were wrapped in cellophane," she faltered.
"You're swell," gulped John gallantly, "an improvement in fact. I
suppose they had to fumigate our own clothes or something. This
superheated air suggests that our captors are old and delicate."
"The cellophane idea makes me wonder if we're wrapped up like rolls, or
something, from the baker for--dinner."
"Meaning cannibalism? This kind of a room was never made by primitives,
Honey."
"That's right--It's like a dream place." She rose up on her elbow again
to look around.
There were no windows. It was utterly bare of ornament. John walked
slowly around the circle of their walls. The only door opened to a tiny
bath cubicle. Blue light, reflected upward from the juncture of floor
and wall, cast no shadow, indicating its perfect diffusion. He paused
with an exclamation.
"What is it, John?"
"Here's some kind of a control button, with symbols carved over it.
Their language perhaps. I wonder what it's for."
"Better leave it alone--I'd sort of like to catch up with myself--"
But, at that moment, the button clicked in of its own accord--and
one side of the wall glowed with rose colored light. A large screen
showed an old man half reclining on a purple couch, dressed in a white,
silver trimmed robe. He was smiling at them as he turned away from some
recording device into which he spoke. His face was incredibly old,
and wrinkled in a fine network of lines. His skin, strangely, seemed
of some soft, young texture. The bones of his cheeks were prominent,
and his hands were delicately pink white. He moved gracefully, and in
leisurely fashion, from the couch to a small black box at the side of
the room, and pressed a button. On a small screen in the old man's
room, visible on their own wall, began to flash words in red script.
"Say! That's in German," cried John. "I don't read German, but I know
the script."
"And that looks like Chinese--"
"Ah--that's better--"
In red square blocked letters on the little screen were the words in
English, "WE MEAN YOU NO HARM."
The old man observed their excitement, and stopped the flow of the
screen so that the message steadied. Then, under that sentence,
appeared another "BE PATIENT WE MUST FINISH TRANSCRIBING YOUR LANGUAGE.
IT WILL TAKE A FEW MORE TIME. EAT--SLEEP--REST."
The screen on their room faded out. The old man's face was gone. And
through a slit near the floor of their room slid a tray of food, moved
by some invisible force on small rollers, over toward the mattress
where Hilda was still sitting.
"Oh Boy--food! And could I use some--"
"Wait until you're properly served, Mister."
She spread out the pale yellow cloth on the floor and arranged the food
in orderly fashion. It was moulded into various patterns and colors,
and was firm enough to eat with their fingers, which was fortunate as
there were no eating utensils. They both ate hungrily and were nearly
finished when soft music came into the air from some invisible source.
It was hauntingly mingled in composition, but all vaguely familiar,
drifting from the limited scale of the Orient to waltzes and furious
Russian symphonies. The hill billy band that finally played seemed
oddly out of harmony and yet aroused a nostalgia for home in their
hearts.
"I feel like a nap--" said Hilda, yawning.
"So do I--wonder if there was a drug--in--that--milk."
It seemed only a moment to John that he had been sleeping, but his
muscles were rested, his weariness was gone, and he felt invigorated.
He looked for his watch, but it was not there. In fact there were no
pockets. Then he remembered!
Hilda was splashing around in the bath cubicle, and singing.
"Hello, Sleepy!" she said, emerging and adjusting a strap in the
strange silvery clothing.
"So--it wasn't a dream--"
"No, and hurry up with your bath. Your head is tousled. Maybe they'll
feed us again. I don't want to eat opposite that mop."
"Yes, dear--" he said, attempting scorn, but only achieving a new
tenderness.
She looked down, and instinctively dropped her crippled arm behind
her back. The glove was no longer fresh, but stained from the
desert, though wrinkled where she had tried to launder it. Under the
transparency of her sleeve the ugly stump of her arm revealed itself
discordantly. With a forced gaiety, she crossed the room and pretended
to hunt for their breakfast. But it didn't come.
"Maybe they don't know our eating habits," remarked John glumly, as he
plastered his unruly locks with his hands. "Wish I had a comb."
* * * * *
At last the slide opened in the wall and a tray came in, but on it,
instead of food, was a book. Hilda seized it eagerly, crying, "It's
a lexicon. See, here are the English words, and the signs for their
language. The ink still smells fresh. They must have just printed it."
"What's the sign for ham and eggs?"
"Maybe we'd better try just 'food'--can't be too particular."
"What'll we write with?"
"Here's a kind of pencil, but no lead on it."
"Look, Hilda, there's a new white spot on the wall. Let me have that
pencil thing." A blue line followed his tracing, and it glowed with a
faint edging of fire.
"Some kind of a transfer current I suppose. Well, here goes--Let me see
that food character."
"Here it is--just a round circle, with three dots at the side."
"Fine, Sister, here's hoping the dots mean eggs and that you get one of
them."
"Pig!"
There were no eggs, but the little round cakes, appearing a moment
later, proved delicious. A warm liquid in the crystal cups was almost a
substitute for coffee. In fact, it proved much more stimulating.
After breakfast, John boldly pressed the visi-screen control. This
time, instead of one old man, they faced a group of them around a green
table, covered with lexicons, other books, and charts.
They recognized the spokesman who stepped forward into a close up
perspective and began the conversation. "I hope you will forgive our
seeming--" he paused. "Aloofness," supplied one of the other men, after
hastily examining a lexicon. "That's right, our aloofness, but we are
products of an artificial world. Your primitive contagion would be
dangerous for us.
"I am also sorry," he went on, "that the conversation must be one
direction until you learn more of our language, and we can pronounce
more finely and hear. We have had difficulty even in assembling visual
information about you. There was a collection of Earth photographs
which we have magnified so that we could read your street signs.
And the first expedition left a few scraps of paper. We had never
considered it worth learning your way of speech before."
He paused, as if this part of the address had been memorized. Then he
continued slowly, with hesitations and stumbling pronunciation. "We are
trying to vocalize your words from those we have heard you speak--but
our ears are poor--I mean inadequate." The other old men rustled charts
and books and nodded at his correction. The address went on with more
pauses and confirmations. Occasionally John had to write "repeat"
on the wall chart. The Martians spoke with a strange sibilant hiss,
and accents followed a different system, changing even common words
enough to make it difficult to understand. In general, this was their
explanation....
"Our scientists discovered your world several thousands years ago,
but as it was a more primitive one, progressing slowly, they could
not see any advantage in making contact. The one danger to us here,
a lack of water, could not be remedied by travel to the Blue Planet.
Instead, our wise ones devoted themselves to developing an underground
civilization, free from the extremes of temperature on our planet.
Atomic energy had given us all the heat and power we needed, and in a
short time we were able to devote our energies to aesthetics, as soon
as the physical necessities were satisfied."
"Each year the flooding polar caps supply us with natural vegetation
along the water channels and in the marshes. These plants are harvested
and chemically treated for efficiency of use. When the last moisture
fails, the remnant of our people must migrate, but that will not be for
several of our generations. It may surprise you to know that each of
us is over two hundred years old, that is of your years. Our younger
men spend fifty years in attaining an education, under very sheltered
conditions. We do not wish to disturb them by curiosity about you--at
least not for the present. Our women live a very specialized existence,
as the birth rate is low, and it takes nearly all of their energy to
protect young life and to keep our population from diminishing too
rapidly."
* * * * *
John thumbed feverishly through the little book until he found the word
for "space ship" then another for "Earth--" He puzzled for other words
and wrote, "many years--last--not see--" It was incoherent but these
old men had an uncanny way of guessing context of meaning.
"You mean, why did previous expeditions not find us? We took care
of that, since we knew, long before they started, that they were
coming. Much of the life on your world is transmitted to us by devices
your mind have not yet dreamed. When the ships came we covered--no,
camouflaged--our entrances. We were not discovered. You two have been
brought here for a medical reason--"