_A Startling Novelet by_ ROBERT MOORE WILLIAMS
_So they came to the Holy City of Sudal, primed
for loot and murder! Larkin, the old Terran trader,
warned them. But there was no convincing these
space-scarred Pizarros that the simple, dream-bound
Martians were not quite as defenseless as they seemed._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
To stay alive five years on Mars, you have to have a nose for trouble.
You have to be able to smell it before it happens, to catch the
oderiferous tang of it in the dry wind blowing across the red deserts,
to sense it in the shifting shadows of the sunset. Otherwise you may
not stay alive on Mars for five months let alone five years. Or for
five days, if you happen to be in the wrong place.
Boyd Larkin had lived seven years on Mars, in the wrongest of all wrong
places on the red planet, the city of Sudal. No other earth trader ever
even ventured here. In view of the peculiarity of the Martian customs,
few traders found it wise to attempt to operate on Mars at all.
The City of Sudal was noted for several reasons. In a way, it was the
holy city of Mars. Here also were to be found a few lingering relics
of the vast scientific achievement this race had once known and had
forgotten in the hard struggle for life across the centuries. Here
also was a ruler by the name of Malovar, who, within the framework of
Martian law and custom, was an utter despot. The reputation of Malovar
alone was sufficient to keep most traders away from Sudal.
This, in itself, was enough to bring Boyd Larkin here.
He stood in the door of this store--it had once been the wing of a
temple--just before the hour of sunset. A vague uneasiness was in him,
a presentiment of trouble. His eyes went over the city, searching for
the stimulus that had aroused the feeling in him. The peaked roofs of
the buildings of the city glinted peacefully in the rays of the setting
sun. Peaked roofs here on this world of no-rain always struck him as
odd but he knew these roofs were relics of the far-gone centuries when
rain had fallen plentifully on Mars.
Beyond the city lay the desert with its fretwork of canals and its
pathetic patches of green growth, pathetic because where once grain had
grown as far as the eye could reach now only a few patches were under
cultivation. It was not the failure of the soil or of the water that
made the desert bare. This soil would still grow lush vegetation. But
the grains, though lush, would be worthless, incapable of supporting
life. The minerals had been virtually exhausted from the top-soil of
Mars.
Without minerals, the grain did not support life.
The breeze that came in from the red deserts was soft and peaceful,
with no trace of danger in it, no howl of a devil dog from the desert's
brim, no chirrrr of a winged horde of locusts coming to devour the
crops.
Where, then, was the source of his feeling of danger?
Had Malovar begun to doubt him? Was the Martian ruler considering what
action he might take at the next time of the testing? At the thought,
a slight shudder passed over the tall trader as if the desert wind had
suddenly become tinged with a trace of bitter chill. No, that could
hardly be the source of the trouble he sensed. He was no telepath, he
could not read Martian minds, nor they his.
What then was the source of the trouble that he sensed?
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