by Jacques Jean Ferrat
[Pseudonym of Sam Merwin, Jr.]
_We might have known it would be dangerous to publish a
science fantasy novel as well-liked as Jacques Jean Ferrat’s_
NIGHTMARE TOWER, _followed by a sequel in much the
same exciting vein. Unhappily for us the popularity of_ THE
WHITE RAIN CAME _spread in widening circles all the way to
Mars and brought dire threats of telepathic reprisal for our delay
in enlivening our pages once again with Lynne and Rolf Marcein
in Martian splendor arrayed. Here then is a second sequel, made
mandatory by our desire to keep all such threats at bay._
=So bright and fateful was Lynne Marcein’s destiny that it set her
apart from all other women. She was soon to have a baby--on Mars!=
Lynne Fenlay Marcein was the most conspicuous landmark at Nampura
Depot--or, for that matter, on all of Mars. Although the Red Planet
was sparsely populated, with only a little over a million men and
women to cultivate its vast, waterless land-area, she could go nowhere
outside of the Depot itself without finding a crowd of the curious, the
awestruck, and the morbidly pessimistic about her.
She had long since given up her weekly visits to New Samarkand, the
Martian metropolis and capital city. She could not enter a store,
a theater, or an office without finding herself a focus of a mass
interest that brought all normal traffic to a standstill. Women eyed
her with sympathy and disbelief, men with downright incredulity. For
Lynne was the only visibly pregnant woman on the entire planet.
“Not only visible, but apparently downright shocking,” she told her
husband, Rolf Marcein, over the Earth-Mars radarphone during their
weekly conversation. “Hold on tight, _vinral_,” Rolf told her,
using the Martian term of supreme endearment. She longed to see his
face, but so far there was no vidar communication between Mars and the
mother planet. With obvious concern, he asked, “How soon?”
“Dr. Smetana says another two weeks, at least,” she replied. “Don’t
worry, darling. If that little snip Rana Willis could have her baby
here on Mars, I can be lucky too.”
Rolf said, “I could kill these _ferkab_ VIP’s in Paulo City for
their _czanworm_ sluggishness. We’ve had their E-source taped
for a solid Martian month. It’s right smack under the Eastern Siberian
topsoil. I’ve laid down a reserve power-program, but they won’t let me
go until they’ve adapted it officially. Right now the date seems as far
away as ever.”
“I know,” said Lynne soothingly. “You stick there until the job is
done. I’m doing wonderfully well, according to Dr. Smetana. It’s just
that I’m getting a little tired of being a freak.”
“And I’m getting fed up with being an engineering genius fifty million
miles away while a lot of politicians check endless brain-team
coordinates to make sure E-power on Earth won’t upset their wretched
little _ferkab_ arrangements. Also, _vinral_, I miss you
_farbly_.”
“Doubled in diamonds,” said Lynne warmly. Before she could add further
words of affection her transmission time expired and she was cut off
from her husband for another Earth-week.
The fact that Lynne Marcein was pregnant was no small thing on the Red
Planet. From the very first, when pioneering space ranging humanity
sought to colonize Mars, the combination of rarefied atmosphere and
light gravity had rendered child-bearing impossible. Since the rigors
of settling a planet alien to humanity demanded the highest-level young
minds and bodies, the genetic solution had originally been through
induced identical twins and a better solution had not been found.
From birth one twin was conditioned and trained for life on the Red
Planet, while the other was trained for life on Earth. Thus, Earth was
not stripped of its most gifted and adventurous young men and women,
and Mars was equally favored. Both Rolf and Lynne were the products of
such training.
But Lynne was especially remarkable. She had not only been one of a
pair of identical twins of opposite sexes--she had been trained for
life on Earth, while her brother, Revere, had been the Mars-bred one.
And yet, here she was, a Martian in the fullest sense.
“Once a freak, always a freak,” she told herself wryly, as she left
the Earth-Mars communications chamber and walked slowly across the
courtyard of Nampura Depot Center. Her objective was the residence wing
where both she, and Rolf--and the Willises--had their apartments.
Rough lichen-shrubs, a triumph of creative botany, bordered a smooth
pathway that had a short while previously been as bare of foliage as
the aluminum, cold-resistant coverall that housed both Lynne and the
unborn life within her. She halted for a moment to look upward at the
incredible blaze of the night heavens in the black-velvet sky, noting
the brilliant passage of Deimos, one of Mars’ two small moons, as it
slowly blacked out of the three-starred belt of Orion.
Since she had become partially inured to the rarefied atmosphere that
had made breathing difficult on her first landing, and since she hadn’t
far to go, she did not bother to use her oxyrespirator. The cold air
stung her nostrils like fine sand and caused her to inhale deeply.
She was grateful for the air’s lack of density, since its very
sparseness enabled the heavens to blaze without atmospheric hindrance.
She would never, being Earth-conditioned, cease wondering at the
incredible splendor of the Martian skies.
And yet it seemed to her that the spectacle was infinitesimally less
brilliant than it had been during her early months on the Red Planet.
She could remember vividly how, abetted by her husband-to-be, she
had helped save the telepaths, on whom all Mars depended for lateral
planetwide communications. By themselves they would have succumbed
to the maddening onslaught of the bodiless, electricity-devouring
aborigines who had so nearly driven her twin insane with their
insidious mind-destroying suggestions.
She had been virtually shanghaied to Mars by Rolf Marcein and, later,
had helped him to discover and harness the E-power sources--those
mysterious mineral brains that seemed to exist either on or within
every stable planet and atmosphere-bearing satellite. It was E-power
that had brought atmospheric moisture to Mars, where virtually no
atmosphere existed, and had thereby speeded up the process of making
the planet increasingly fertile and habitable.
Yet it was E-power that was holding her husband on faraway Earth, when
she longed more than ever before to have him by her side. Not, she
thought, that Rolf or any man could help her with the ordeal of giving
birth to the second baby born on Mars. And it was the result of E-power
that would someday blanket the spectacle of the night skies by giving
the Red Planet a new atmosphere.