They whirled toward the wall screen. Old Senegar faced them from his
purple couch, leaning wearily on an elbow--"It was quite a bit of
trouble, but interesting."
John fumbled through his lexicon and found the word for "how?" and
scribbled it on the white wall plate.
"We thought you would want to know--Sit down, it will take a few
minutes. I will try to be elementary in my discussion."
They squatted in a half circle on the floor, all except Jake--who
refused to sit, and teetered around feeling the muscles of his new
legs, jumping, stretching, rocking on his toes, but listening all the
while.
"To us, it is relatively simple," went on the old man. "First we
stimulate the bone cells to grow down a plastic hollow tube. This is
done by depositing a calcium compound in the tube and focusing a ray
of complex force upon it. Of course, the tube is made to order in
relationship to measurements of the patient's other bones. Artificial
veins and arteries are introduced. We do not bother with all the tiny
capillaries. They will grow in later. Synthetic cell tissue is moulded
into the shape of muscles and stimulated with pinealin, which we have
at last isolated. Strangely, one of the most difficult techniques is
that of skin grafting. We grow skin on a hairless type of laboratory
animal and patch it on with grafting glue. The healing is hastened
by a special ultra violet and electrodynamic apparatus. Of course,
the artificial arteries are connected when installed. Their wall
composition allows blood to flow out into the cell tissue in about two
days. With the arteries is laid down a series of main nerve sheaths.
We do not try to restore all the original sensitivity, because the
procedure is too complex. We find that a clumsy subsidiary nervous
tentacle is developed, under high pressure electric nerve currents
introduced briefly through the central nervous system before the lower
frequency body current is allowed its own way. His legs will never be
quite as effective as the original pair but do well enough, and only a
doctor could detect the difference."
* * * * *
Hilda stepped forward and wrote on the white square the words she
had been finding in her lexicon. "Your kindness is almost beyond
our understanding. I knew you were good people. We wish we could do
something in return."
Senegar rolled his spare body off the couch and his high voice was
almost senile in his excitement--"You can, my dear--you can!"
"Anything--we will do anything," she answered.
"It will be rather unpleasant for you at first."
"What do you want?" added John standing at Hilda's side.
"Sit down, sit down! I will tell you."
The group of Earth people relaxed but with upturned faces, held
fascinated by the old one's earnestness. John's hands were clasped
tightly around his knees. Doctor Smithson kept hitching his lean frame
forward. The old man's voice was low as he went on.
"This is the trouble, my children, your people are a menace to us.
All this ugliness would be bad enough, but the danger of infection
is terrible. Our wise ones are fragile beings. We restore the flesh
when there is injury or sickness, but we always lose a little of the
original vitality. We cannot be killed, but we slowly wear out and must
be protected. Our young ones are too few to risk contact with you. Thus
we are forced to the logical conclusion that the Earth colony of sick
ones must be destroyed and the next ship discouraged from returning."
"No!--No, that's inhuman!" gasped Mary.
"Nothing will happen to you five--We wish to retain you for medical and
breeding purposes. But the others must go. Come, now, why should you
care about them? You admitted they are all strangers to you. Think of
the joy of living several hundred years."
"But those sick ones--they are human!" cried Hilda to John, weeping.
"They must find some other way--How could they do such a thing, when
they have just shown us such kindness?"
"Self protection, my dear," murmured the old man, reading her face and
catching some of the words. "Self preservation and security for the
qualitatively higher civilization of Mars. Let men from the Blue Planet
continue to settle here, and in a hundred years we will be extinct. The
Universe needs our wisdom. Those primitives must die, as you would kill
your pet animals in a famine, or send sons to fight in one of your mad
wars."
"You can have your--I mean my legs back," growled Jake, "gimme my pegs
again." His pantomime may have been understood. Senegar smiled, faintly.
"Think it over carefully. Do not let your simple emotions confuse you.
I will see you again tomorrow. We need your help."
The screen faded slowly into a blur, and in a moment they were alone in
the plain, blue lighted room--five human beings, terror stricken in a
place of comfort.
"My head aches," grunted Jake, "that machine they used on me first left
a sore spot."
"What kind of a machine was it?"
"I dunno--some kind of a thing. They kept asking me questions and wrote
down the answers even before I spoke--That was funny! And sometimes
when I lied to them--about some of the things I did, on shore leave and
so on, they laughed. It was almost like they partly read my mind."
"Perhaps they did," remarked Doctor Smithson, who had been very quiet
during all the excitement. His eyes gleamed with an almost impersonal
interest. "Our psychoanalysis is very clumsy. I have always wished
there were some kind of mechanical means of intuitively reaching to the
under experiences of the subconscious." Suddenly he got to his feet
from the low mattress bed where he had been sitting alone since the
stunning proposal. He began to pace the floor, clasping and unclasping
his thin arms. "I wonder--" He seemed to have forgotten their presence,
"I wonder if they can stimulate brain tissue with pinealin. I'll wager
half of those mental cases back underground could be cured by these men
in a week! If I could only persuade them to talk to me."
"Look who's here," remarked Jake quietly, as if nothing in this strange
room could surprise him.
A slight young man, with brown hair and keen blue eyes, stood in a
flowing white robe marked by silver trimmings and a red diagonal stripe
running from his shoulder to the floor. There was no sign of a door
where he had entered.
"I heard what you said, Doctor Smithson, or at least part of it," he
remarked quietly in a soft musical voice. "I am Zingar. Some of us
younger ones think the old men are too fearful--I wish I could go back
to Earth with you and assist your struggling medical men."
John paged through the book hurriedly, hunting for words.
"Just a moment," interrupted the young stranger. He stepped to the wall
and tapped a code sign. At his feet a slit opened and a dark gray,
complicated machine slid into the room.
"That's one of them things they hitched to my head," said Jake
excitedly.
* * * * *
Zingar drew out a cord from the gray machine, with a small black disk
at the end, and laid it against the side of John's head, where it
remained as if glued.
"Now think what you wish to say, and I will know the essence of your
meaning," remarked Zingar. "It will not convey words or technical
matter but blurred pictures of experience. I will ask questions to
guide your memory. And if you will think aloud it may help as I already
have memorized much of your spoken language."
John tried to think coherently, but, under his conscious sentences
when he spoke aloud was a flickering jumble of excitement, ideas for
escape, thoughts of Hilda as he looked at her, memories of their recent
conversations with Senegar.
"Relax, young man," ordered the Martian youth, "I find it difficult to
receive. This device only registers your subvocal thoughts. Your mind
is like a kaleidoscope at present. Try not to think of the young lady."
Hilda drew in her breath quickly and blushed.
John's face was red from his neck to his hair. "Young man, yourself,"
he blurted, "how old do you think I am?"
"Young in comparison to me. I am seventy five. Now think of what your
hospital was like back on earth."
John steadied his mind and visualized the events of their last day on
Earth.
"There--that's better," said Zingar quietly. "If this could have
registered technical matter the old ones wouldn't have to bother to
learn your language." He shifted the black disk to Doctor Smithson's
bony forehead.
"If you believe we should be helped, why not let us escape--even go
with us," urged John.
"I have thought of it," he replied calmly.
Mary came up to him quickly--"Oh, please do. I know you are good--I
_love_ those sick people back there underground. There are a few who
think only of their sickness but most of them are really much finer
than selfish normal people. Their handicaps have made them strong and
kind. They can even laugh at pain."
Zingar abruptly removed the disk from Doctor Smithson, to the latter's
disgust, and placed it gently on Mary's golden waves. "Please
repeat--remember we cannot understand your words very clearly, but we
can receive your picture thoughts. I heard part of what you said."
Mary repeated her plea, but she also blushed, as if the sudden
nakedness of her secret mind before him was embarrassing. He smiled
appreciatively and they withdrew to one of the low mattresses and sat
together for an hour or more, apart from the others. They seemed to
forget the present world entirely, but Zingar's questions were too low
for John to hear, and he was still curious at the story back of Mary's
quiet sadness. Hilda thought, why they can get as much acquainted in an
hour as we do ordinarily in years. I never have really known what John
thought about my hand.... Both of them glanced at Mary occasionally and
it seemed, after a long time, that some of the strain passed from her
face and a strange quiet happiness flowed over it. Finally they arose
and came to the center of the room, where their companions were still
talking excitedly.
"I will do it--tonight," said Zingar with dignity. "I will go with you,
and be one of you--even back to the Earth. But first I must prepare and
I want to bring my twin sister with me. We are inseparable."
He walked to the blank wall of the room and again tapped rhythmically
on it until a low doorway opened. He stooped and disappeared. John
immediately tried to repeat the tapping combination, but the wall
remained as solid as if it were stone.
In the quiet room there was little sense of time. Food came in to them
automatically after an hour or so. They were too excited to think of
sleep.
At last the wall opening appeared again and Zingar returned, leading a
beautiful, brown-haired girl by the hand. She was tall and dressed in
pale blue transparencies, with a tight purple girdle, and a gleaming
silver star surmounted her soft hair like a coronet.
John stared. In all his many and easy adventures with women he had
never seen anyone like her. There was a fragility to her body yet the
glow of health. Her eyes were luminous, of a warm green shade, and
they seemed to hold strange secrets. Her body was identical with an
Earth woman's except that the fingers were smoothly longer and the high
forehead was slightly more prominent. He felt some hypnotic influence
flow from her into his mind, and involuntarily stepped forward, then
stopped, suddenly remembering his companion. He had not thrilled like
this since he was seventeen.
Across the room, Hilda clasped the wrinkled glove on her artificial
hand, until the fingers of her right hand were white, but she smiled
and talked to Doctor Smithson as if she had not noticed.
"We will go now," said Zingar, taking command of the little party. "In
the hallway are insulated suits for protection against our midnight
cold. The ship will be warm, but we must step from the desert to your
underground entrance. I do not think we will be hindered. The Old Ones
sleep soundly." It was almost miraculous that his accent and hesitation
disappeared so rapidly, perhaps because he was still relatively young
and adaptable.
* * * * *
Their small round ship flared over the blackened planet; its rays, that
had been invisible in the daylight, were now gleaming silent jets on
the dimly starlit desert. Dr. Smithson, Jake, and Hilda sat together at
the rear of their cabin compartment. John and Zingar's lovely sister
stared into the night ahead. He had not touched her yet, but he felt
drawn to her with a strange compulsion, partly spiritual. Her name was
Molaee.
Mary and Zingar were now frankly in love, and sat with arms around each
other, quietly content, as if they had never been strangers. The Mind
Sounder was attached to her gleaming hair by its smooth round disk and
she seemed to be pouring her whole life into Zingar's eager mind. All
maidenly reserve had vanished. None of his questions embarrassed her.
That's a good thing, thought John, noticing them. Mary will keep him
with us, and he will make her come to life.
They had flashed on through the night for about half an hour when Jake
yelled, "They're after us!"
Like tiny streaming rockets a fleet of the little ships danced over the
horizon in pursuit, still so distant as to seem but fireflies.
"Don't be alarmed," said Zingar, leaving Mary and staring behind
them, somberly, "they will slowly overtake us but we will make the
underground city in time. They have no weapons, for our civilization
had no need for them. It will take time to invent and manufacture the
means of destruction."
In half an hour, their ship slid slowly to the ground as Zingar deftly
manipulated the controls. They donned the opaque and clumsy insulation
garments, fastened helmets above them, and ran across the frozen sand
toward the great copper door, dull in the starlight. John fumbled
at the hand lock, but finally got it open, just as the first of the
pursuing ships began its perpendicular descent from the higher air. The
second metal door slid noisily into place before the lifting rays could
touch them, and Hilda snapped on her radilight flash to guide the party
down the sandy tunnel toward the colony.
In another half hour they were sitting in council, with Major Mattson,
Hemingway, the old chemist, Dr. Henderson and other officials.
Dr. Henderson paid little attention to his recovered companions but
questioned Zingar rapidly. The Mind Sounder and an occasional written
question, or reference to a lexicon, kept the interview going smoothly.
Finally Zingar stood and addressed the entire group.
"My people are ruthless and unemotional, but they are not equipped
for war. I think this will be their plan of attack. They will set
their machinery to work, producing the war weapons of several of
the primitive planets, but that will take time, perhaps six months.
Meanwhile they will try strategy, and perhaps drive the Mars beasts at
us with their ship flares at night."
"What's them Martian beasts like?" grunted Jake. "That's maybe
something I could fight."
"Oh, they're horrible!" murmured Mary. "Here, look at the pictures in
this manual."
The old marine's weatherbeaten face paled a bit, but his voice was
steady, as he said, "Well, anyway, they can't get through them copper
doors."
"No, but my people will batter those down," said Zingar in a low tone.
"Then we must prepare for defense," cried Dr. Henderson, "if they can
break down the front door we must barricade every passageway and fight
them back foot by foot. What is the substance of your ship's hull?"
"It is a very dense metal, unknown to you. None of your rays will
penetrate it except the atom cannon."
"And we only have one old cannon, with hardly any of the power
jackets--" groaned Dr. Henderson, desperately.
"We will save that for the last attack," said Zingar, calmly. "The
disintegrators will hold the beasts back for a long time, but there are
thousands of them. How many of the half-hour disintegrator charges do
you have?"
"Not very many--The Earth Council was limited in its budget. Perhaps
they would last one day of continuous firing."