The moon shadows were too black to permit them to study Klev's chart
during the night. Klev slept, with the patience and resignation only
age can bring. Once or twice Sue nodded in Nick's arms, but he remained
fully awake, thinking.
In the first light of dawn Martian and Earthman studied the diagram
together, but it was already hot when Nick turned his back on the
original and reproduced it in another patch of sand. Klev checked it
and nodded approval.
"Let's go," Nick said, starting to rise.
Klev restrained him and fumbled in the torn folds of his clothing
to produce a glowing sphere the size of a marble. It seemed to be a
portable form of the glow-plates with which he was familiar.
"Thanks," he said. "Take it easy until we get back--I hope."
The Martian understood the sense though not the actual words.
Then he and Susan dashed across the small expanse of sun-baked rock and
squeezed into the passage.
For a while they followed the tunnel through which they had been
ejected, but shortly encountered a branching passage they recognized
from Klev's map. It spiraled down, narrower and steeper than the main
tunnel, and soon it too branched. Once more they took the steeper
route. The air grew stagnant but cool.
Most of the way they were forced to stoop or crawl, and three times
they encountered sections so constricted that they had to stretch out
flat and inch tortuously along. Little by little the air grew humid.
At last they came to an almost level passage where they could walk
erect, rounded a turn, and their greenish light no longer was reflected
by enclosing walls.
"Nick," Sue whispered. Her voice reverberated hollowly, dying away in
distant echoes that seemed incredibly loud. Nick paused with hand on
knife to see if they had been overheard.
Finally they tiptoed out along a sloping shelf of rock, out into the
great cavern. And then the light shielded in Nick's hand gleamed on a
sheet of black, still water. At once both were on their knees, scooping
up the precious liquid in their hands, drinking their fill.
Satisfied, Nick placed his lips to her ear. "Where are the _voras_?" he
breathed.
She pointed to the water.
* * * * *
Together they piled their clothing on the ledge, hooding the light with
Nick's shirt so that only a faint glimmer showed. Then they waded out
into the chill, unfathomable blackness of the underground lake, holding
hands to steady each other. Nick's scalp was tingling and with every
step he half expected his bare feet to encounter something soft and
_alive_.
The water deepened rapidly and soon they had to swim. Nick had never
had the opportunity to become an expert, so although he tried to be
quiet his arms made small splashing sounds as he raised and lowered
them, sounds that echoed sibilantly throughout the gigantic chamber.
Sue swam close, invisible in the darkness, and he flinched momentarily
as a current of water from her hand felt like something living brushing
his side. She grasped his hands, pulling his arms through the motions
of a breast stroke that would not require lifting them above the
surface. He touched her to show he understood.
After that they swam more quietly, keeping together by the faint sounds
of each other's breathing and an occasional touch of hands.
Every few minutes they stopped and floated motionless, listening and
feeling with every fiber of their bodies.
Sue felt it first, a tiny, almost unnoticeable pulsation in the black
water. She touched Nick's wrist, indicating a direction, and swam a few
more strokes. The pulsation grew stronger. Nick felt it too, and only
an effort of will kept him from threshing away as tingles of terror
oozed along his spine. He felt very naked and helpless and vulnerable
as he floated.
Again Sue swam a few strokes and stopped. For a full minute she lay
quietly, allowing her breathing to ease. Then there was a faint splash
as she dived, and it seemed to Nick as though hours passed while he
waited alone in the darkness.
"Psst!" he hissed softly at the sound of her head breaking surface.
She rested a while, dived again, and when she came up this time the
pulsations were appreciably stronger.
Something below turned and moved uneasily, questioningly, disturbed in
its long slumber by their presence.
A third time Susan dived. Nick waited, counting seconds. She did not
come up. He waited. And still she did not come up. Panic began to grip
him.
He floundered into a clumsy dive and swam downward through the inky
fluid. His ears hummed and his chest began to burn, but his groping
hands encountered nothing. At last he fought his way dizzily to the
surface.
She was just calling him the second time as his head broke water and he
gulped a lungful of air.
"Nick!" The word was roaring from the rocks as she heard his splash and
indrawn breath.
"I touched it, Nick! I had to go deep," she panted as she swam toward
him. "I think it got my thoughts, just what you told me."
Deep in the black lake something huge and unguessably powerful heaved
and stirred, creating wavelets that raced toward shore and filled the
cavern with insane, reechoing laughter as they broke against the rocks.
Racing now, without any attempt at silence, Nick and Susan swam toward
the reassuring green pinpoint of light that marked the shelving ledge.
The waves were rising, lapping almost to their clothing, as they waded
ashore. Without pausing to dry themselves they dressed and dashed up
the tunnel.
Halfway to the surface they paused to rest, sitting on the cold,
curving floor.
"What was it like?" Nick asked.
In the greenish light he could see her shudder.
"I--I really don't know," she confessed. "It was huge and it had no
real shape, but some parts were hard and some weren't."
"Will it do what we want?"
"I--I think so. It was so _different_ that I couldn't understand all
its reactions."
It was night when they edged out through the narrow opening, but Klev
was awake and watching. His jaw dropped in astonishment as Sue told of
their journey, of how she had actually touched the water-_vora_.
"Martians can't swim, Nick," she explained.
"How soon?" he wanted to know.
"An hour or two," she said after conferring with Klev. "But he's not
sure. This has never happened before in all the history of Mars."
After a while Nick crept up to the rim of the rocky bowl, shivering as
the cold, sand-laden wind whipped his exposed face. Both moons were
below the horizon, leaving the desert in darkness relieved only by the
stars and the lights of Central Camp.
Phobos rose rapidly in the west, throwing long, distorted shadows over
the red sands. And as the shadows grew shorter Nick thought he detected
something. He rested his eyes and looked again. Yes, it was there, a
darker, glimmering patch in a low spot a mile or so to the east.
"Sue," he called excitedly. "It's starting."
Quickly she was beside him, looking where he pointed.
The patch of wet sand and standing water had grown to several hundred
yards across when the orange flare of one of the night patrols flashed
up from Central Camp. From several miles away the pilot sighted the
unusual patch in the desert and swung to investigate.
"Duck!" Nick warned as a flare blossomed into a circle of blinding
whiteness.
* * * * *
Three times the rocket dived and circled the growing lake, and when it
left as the last flare died it returned to the field at full throttle.
Nick could imagine the pilot's almost incoherent radio reports. Water
on Mars! A lake in the desert!
The number of lights in Central Camp doubled while they watched. A
gate in the barrier opened and three huge half-tracks roared out with
searchlights glaring. They reached the pond, and even from the distance
of their hiding place Susan and Nick could see the tiny figures of men
as they rushed to the shore, touching the water, kneeling to dip their
arms in it, even raising it to their lips.
The green star of Earth rose over the horizon, and then the thing for
which Nick had been hoping actually happened.
All the lights of Central Camp went dim as power connections were
changed. And then the flare of the great subatomic space beacon began
to wink a message, the great beacon that depleted the power resources
of the camp so badly that it was to be used only for messages of
extreme urgency. But this was urgent indeed. Water on Mars! An hour,
two, the coded news flamed into space.
Nick and Susan crept down the slope, bone-chilled from their windswept
watch, to tell the injured Martian what had happened.
"If that doesn't bring a special ship out, then nothing will," Nick
exulted.
At dawn a procession of armored cars began to flow between the camp and
the lake, and just before noon several hastily improvised tank trucks
appeared, loaded and returned. No patrol rockets went out, for it
seemed the entire schedule of the camp had been disrupted.
Shortly after noon the lake ceased growing and began to dwindle. Slowly
at first, then with increasing rapidity the water vanished into the
sand. There was confusion in Central Camp and at the shores of the pool.
By midafternoon it was gone, leaving only an expanse of mud that dried
and cracked under the glaring sun.
Klev twittered anxiously at this latest development.
"He says the Martians have discovered what we did, and set the _vora_
to pumping the water away again," Susan translated.
"No matter. The ship is on the way by now."
As evening approached Nick wedged a large boulder firmly into the mouth
of the tunnel, placed his back against it and announced his intention
of sleeping there.
"At least we'll know if they come after us," he said.
Klev nodded approval.
But the Martians made no attempt at reprisal for the humans'
interference, as they were too busy preparing their attack on the camp.
Next morning truckloads of drilling equipment rolled out from camp, and
soon a dozen rigs were boring through the sand and underlying rock.
Floodlights were erected and the drilling went on day and night.
But the space beacon did not flame again with the news that the water
had vanished. Power was too precious.
Nick counted the days as he doled out the water from the canteens
they had refilled in the underground lake. His concentrated emergency
rations, shared with Susan and Klev, gave out at last. The Martian did
not drink, but finally the last trickle of water went down Susan's
throat and the period of torture began.
Nick slept during the torrid days now, panting and itching and
thirst-tormented beneath an overhanging rock, and through the nights
lay on the edge of the bowl watching the sky. They did not talk much,
for the effort hurt their parched throats.
It seemed a vision born of wishful thinking when at last the
distinctive fan-shaped trail of a spaceship showed against the stars,
dim at first but steadily growing brighter. And then it was in the
upper atmosphere, the scream of the braking jets rising and falling as
the pilot jockeyed the throttles. Down it came in a flaming arc, to
land amid the beckoning lights of Central Camp.
"What do we do now?" Susan asked.
"Steal it."
"But how?"
Nick shook his head wearily. "Wait for the Martians to attack. Then try
to break through."
"But the barrier? We'll be killed too, just like the Martians."
He looked at her sharply.
"I'm going with you, of course."
V
With full daylight three half-tracks moved out from beside the grounded
spacer to the site of the drilling operations. They paused while a
group of men got out to inspect the dry holes and the line of stakes
that had been placed to indicate the margins of the vanished lake. Then
the cars moved on, scouting the surrounding desert.
The three wheeled together and headed straight for the outcropping,
while Nick and Susan crouched low to keep their heads below the
skyline. They came on and on until Nick began to have an uneasy
suspicion they had been spotted, but at last they turned aside.
"Nick!" Susan's voice was vibrant with hatred. "That man in the turret
of the center car is Gerald Harmon himself!"
Nick shielded his eyes and tried to study the tiny figure in the
plastic dome, but the distance was too great to distinguish details. He
cursed fluently and wished for any sort of power weapon, understanding
now why the spaceship had seemed larger and sleeker than the usual
freighters. The overlord of the Martian Exploitation Company had come
to investigate in person, bringing his own personal cruiser.
Nick tried to rest, falling at last into an uneasy sleep disturbed by
dreams of rippling streams and drenching rainstorms. He slept until the
rays of the sinking sun crept under the ledge to bring him back to the
realization of his arid, deadly surroundings.
But somewhere amid his dreams an idea had been born.
"You can handle a spacer, can't you?" he asked.
"Certainly. You don't think Dad handled the _Trailblazer_ alone?"
"Good. There may be a chance for you then. I don't like that blue-faced
Merlo at all, but we have to play along with him. And this thing is
bigger than any of us as individuals."
"You've seen how the camp is built in a hollow to protect it from the
wind?"
"Yes, but--"
"They never thought of floods."
Susan's eyes gleamed as she sensed his idea.
"You mean if the Martians made their water-_voras_--?"
"A dozen _voras_ and a dozen water caves. The barrier would short out
and the Martians could get in. There'd be hell's very own confusion and
no lights. You might make it."
"And you?"
"Merlo is a blue-faced, pigheaded, tradition-bound fool, and no
general. He'd just beat his men's lives out against the charged barrier
without thinking of the only weapon he has that's worth a damn. I'm
going down and tell him, right now. The attack is tomorrow night."
Susan's grey eyes searched his face.
"Aren't you a bit confused?" she asked mildly.
"How?" He was annoyed at her implied criticism.
"You are a fighter. I'm not. I speak Martian. You don't."
"They'd kill you, Sue! I can't let--"
"Then tell me, in Martian, just what you'd say to Merlo!"
"But--"
She threw his own words back at him. "This thing is bigger than any one
of us. I'm going."
Reluctantly he agreed that her words made sense.
"All right," he sighed. "Tell Klev."
The Martian broke into twittering, remonstrating speech as Susan
explained, pointing at himself. Slowly and painfully he climbed to his
feet and took a few uncertain steps. But then his injured leg collapsed
and he crawled ignominiously back.
"That leaves it to me," Susan declared. "Roll that boulder out of the
way."
The old Martian, shamed by his own weakness, sat with shoulders slumped
and face hidden in his hands as Susan prepared to leave.
She came to Nick and in an unexpected move threw her arms around
him and pulled his face down. For a moment he held her close, their
sun-parched, cracked lips clinging together.
"It could have been so lovely," she whispered as she broke away.
She was crying openly as she squeezed into the tunnel. Nick's
fingernails dug into his palms as he stared after her, but there was
nothing he could do.
The day was long, and without Susan beside him the night was even
colder than the others. Once he woke and found his arms reaching out
as though to touch her. But the following day, the last lonely day of
waiting, was the worst and longest. Once he tested the point of his
knife against his thumb. If the plan worked at all, he resolved, he
would look for Merlo in the camp even before going after the spaceship.
At least there would be revenge.
From time to time Klev looked up from where he lay in the blinding
sunlight. There was sympathy on his greenish, distorted face, and
although Earthman and Martian had no common language he seemed to
understand the depth of Nick's feelings. And Nick in turn pitied this
aged Martian who was dying an exile from his own race.
As the shadows lengthened Nick made his few preparations. Strips of
cloth from his jacket made a harness to hold the nosepiece of the
tiny oxygen bottle, still half full, against his face. No matter what
happened he wouldn't need the jacket again. A piece of empty ration tin
formed a clip that would hold the button valve open.
* * * * *
Darkness came and Nick rose. Klev chirped softly and extended his hand
Earth fashion. Nick took it briefly, then turned away and clambered
down from the outcropping into the desert.
The lights of Central Camp guided him as he set out. Deliberately he
held a slow pace that would not tire him unduly, but his heart was
pounding. This was the pay-off.
Everything was normal as Nick drew near. Groups of men moved about
under the floodlights. The revolving searchlights atop the guard towers
swept remorselessly around the circle of the barrier, occasionally
striking the two half-tracks that held secondary patrol inside the
charged fence. The ports of the big spaceship squatting on the
launching grounds were dark, its polished hull reflecting the unwinking
stars.
He was still a quarter mile from the barrier when the first excited
yell reached him on the wind. One of the floodlights winked out. Nick
quickened his stride as the noise from the camp increased. The lights
showed a darkening patch that stretched from the launching grounds into
the barracks area.
The barrier sparked as though some living creature had come into
contact with it, and an alert sentry scoured that area with machine gun
lead. Again the barrier sparked, hot blue and green stars shooting up
in a great fountain.
And then Nick could see the water itself. He ran on toward the
northwest border where the terrain was lowest, trying to keep his mind
on the desperate business ahead. His spirits lifted slightly as he
realized that Susan had reached Merlo. But what had happened to her
then? She had still defied the Council.
His feet struck wet sand, then shallow, murky water while he was still
a hundred yards from the barrier. He waded on as the water deepened.
Only a few scattered lights still gleamed as he stopped to adjust his
improvised diving mask. Evidently the water was reaching the central
power plant, but flares arched upward at irregular intervals to shatter
the night. During the intervals of brightness Nick froze to immobility.
The gunners in the guard towers were firing at shadows. But no
explosive bullets, for which Nick was especially glad as a stream of
lead whipped the water nearby. There was a standing order forbidding
the use of explosive shells where they might damage the barrier wires.
So far the firing was desultory, bursts coming only when the barrier
sparked as the water deepened. Evidently the commander still considered
the flood merely a freak of nature.
All at once there was no more ground beneath his feet. Nick began to
swim.
A yell of alarm that changed to a shriek of agony cut the air, coming
from the southern border of camp. Another. The firing grew suddenly
intense, lines of red and yellow tracer whipping out from the towers.
A flare exploded overhead to disclose a shadow like a giant bat that
swooped heavily across the barrier and fell upon a Mec just inside. The
man's automatic rifle roared a futile, unaimed burst as he died. The
Martians themselves Nick could not see.
Dazzled by the intermittent glare, he almost swam into the barrier
without seeing it. Only the barrier itself saved him as the rising
water engulfed another wire and the lethal current popped and sparked.
With a heave of his shoulders he swung aside and glanced up. Ten or
twelve feet of the fence's thirty foot height still projected above the
surface.
He floated, tightening his mask until the nosepiece dug into his face.
Then he pushed the clip down over the valve, and as the life-giving gas
hissed out closed his eyes and let himself sink into the silt-filled,
inky water.
Bubbles spurted around the edge of the mask and roared upward past his
ears, but he found that by inhaling slowly he could breathe. His feet
touched bottom and his legs sank in almost to the knees. The fine,
dusty sand of Mars that had lain arid for so many centuries had changed
to clinging, sticky mud. He pulled himself free and swam forward
anxiously along the bottom.
One outstretched hand found the barrier. He felt the prick of the
hooked, knife-edged barbs as they sank through the cloth with which
he had wrapped his hands. He advanced the other more cautiously. Here
below the surface the killing current of the barrier was dead, shorted
away by the dirty water.
He drew himself downward, hand over hand along the closely spaced
wires, down to where the barrier met the ground. He probed at the mud,
holding himself in place with one hand. Wires. And at full arm's depth
in the mud, still wires. He hooked his feet into the fence and dug with
both hands, flinging the gooey muck aside in great, swirling gobs until
the water grew thick and viscid around him. More strands of wire. He
dug more frantically, hanging head down in the hole he had made. And
then his clawing fingers encountered the solid rock into which the
steel supports of the barrier were anchored. It was impossible to dig
under that.
A trickle of muddy water seeped into the mask, stinging the lining of
his nose and making him want to sneeze. With an effort he extracted
himself from the sticky burrow and clung to the ground level strands
until the spasm passed. The hissing tone of the compressed oxygen was
perceptibly lower.
* * * * *
Gently he grasped one strand with both cloth-wrapped hands, spreading
his fingers in an attempt to avoid the barbs. But this was no ordinary
barbed wire and the spacing of the evilly sharp, machine-finished
prongs was such that one still pressed against each palm. His heavy
boots protected his feet as he braced them against the adjoining strand.
He brought his powerful back and leg muscles into play, ignoring the
pain that lanced through his hands. The wires gave a fraction of an
inch. He pulled again. The wires had been four inches apart; now they
were almost six. At the third pull he could feel the barb in his left
hand touch bone with a grating rasp, but the wires stretched still
further. Again and again he tugged, resting only when he grew dizzy
with pain.
And then the oxygen was gone. He had just time to gulp in one last
lungful as the hissing died and the bubbles around his face stopped.
Once more he heaved at the wires, using every ounce of power his body
could muster.
Then, holding his breath, he rolled sideways into the gap he had
created. The slackened wires sagged down and the cruel barbs bit into
his chest and back and legs.
He winced at the pain as he tore his hands loose from the deeply
embedded prongs, then pulled the wires away from his chest and rolled
his body further into the opening. The points dug into his chest again
while he moved one leg and then the other.
When he knew he could hold his breath only a few seconds more he broke
clear with a lurch that left bleeding furrows across his body and
floated dizzily toward the surface. One hand whipped the useless, empty
oxygen bottle from his face.
He sucked in the thin air of Mars with harsh, rasping, grateful breaths
as he broke surface, glancing around to restore his sense of direction.
He was inside the barrier.
Seven of the armored cars were lined up along the southern boundary
of the camp, the focusing coils on the muzzles of their proton cannon
glowing red from continual firing, their powerful lights picking out
targets for the gunners. As Nick swam on, one of the cars tried to move
forward and struck a soft spot in the muddy ground. Its light waved
wildly, then went out as the car overturned and rolled into the water.
High above the dark water the hull of the spaceship glowed in the
starlight. Nick headed straight toward it, sometimes swimming,
sometimes floundering through deep, sticky mud that sucked tenaciously
at his feet. Even in the darkness and confusion he knew his way, for
Central Camp had been his home for many months.
As suddenly as it had appeared the water began to recede, draining
into the ground. Nick understood. The barrier had been breached, and
Martians were not able to swim. The heavy combat vehicles of the
Exploiters were bogged down in the mud, but from the sounds of firing
Nick knew that a good many Mecs had gained the safety of the high,
unflooded guard towers. With daylight the surviving Martians would be
forced to retreat.
There were still many deep pools of water about, and a layer of
slippery silt over everything, when his route took him close to the
administration building. He edged quietly around the corner just as
a wet, bedraggled figure floundered through the mire to the doorway.
The figure, outlined for an instant, was human enough, but to Nick it
seemed somehow _wrong_. Quickly his mind placed the discrepancy. The
man wore a coat instead of the short uniform jacket of the Mec.
Mud sucked noisily at Nick's boots as he followed, but the sound was
drowned in a renewed burst of gunfire. Nick smiled grimly as his killer
training awoke again under the influence of familiar surroundings.
Harmon was halfway up the stairs, sure of his own safety and pausing to
wipe some of the mud from his face, when Nick's knife point penetrated
the overlord's expensive suit and jabbed at his back.
"Don't move!" Nick snapped.