"These damned plants are charged with electricity, Axel. At least, one
of 'em is. It just unloosed a bolt of lightning."
"The hell you say! Are you hurt?"
"No, the car grounded the charge," I said, "but it gave me one big
scare."
"Think you can bring in a sample?" he asked.
"What the devil, Axel! Do you want me to be electrocuted?"
"It's just an idea I had. Remember, you'll be safe in your spacesuit.
It'll ground the charge, just like the Mars-car did."
"Well, I'll try."
I put on my helmet and got out of the car. First I walked carefully
toward the banks of the stream. I avoided the saguaro-type plants,
but I noticed that when my boots struck shoots and stalks of some of
the other plants, sparks flew. More than half of the plants had the
characteristics of an electric eel.
The stream, while stagnant, was steaming. It wasn't hot water, for the
temperature must have been in the low forties, but the atmospheric
pressure was so light that water was evaporating in great quantities.
It was difficult to see how the stream was supplied with water, since
it extended between two oases, both apparently fed by the same stream.
And there didn't seem to be very much flow, although after watching the
stream for a few minutes I decided it was moving in the direction of
Major.
Then I saw tiny springs along the bank, sending little rivulets of
water into the canal. It was so simple that I should have guessed where
the water came from. It all came from the polar caps, of course, but
the water flowed underground. The Martians had simply cut their canals
to feed on the artesian supply from the North Pole.
I took the can Axel had put in the locks and filled it. Then I lugged
it back to the Mars-car. After I stowed the water in the locks I walked
gingerly back to the saguaro I had knocked down a few minutes before.
It was somewhat charred, but the fire had gone out. Apparently the air
would not support much combustion. Using my knife I gingerly cut off
one of the branches. No sparks flew, but I noticed that instead of
sap, there was a thick, pasty pulp inside. It was acid, because before
I could wipe my knife on the ground, the substance had etched itself
slightly into the surface.
I carried the stalk back to the car and tossed it into the locks. I'd
stepped inside myself and had just closed the door when I saw movement
to my right--on my side of the canal, in the direction of Solis Lacus
Major.
A small creature, a little larger than a St. Bernard, was approaching
the Mars-car. It looked like a dwarf camel, except that it was
headless. And the hump wasn't a hump, but a shiny bump with a metallic
luster.
I said it had no head, but it did have a mouth--gaping, grinning and
full of pointed teeth. It had four legs and many arms--long, sinuous,
many-jointed, with two fingers at the end--growing like a fringe around
that bump in the middle of the creature's back.
Then I saw that the vegetation in its path was smoldering. The animal
had only to move a small black thing that sprouted on a stem from the
top of its hump, and whatever lay in front of it started to smoke.
"Axel!" I screamed into my helmet transmitter. "There's a Martian down
here!"
No one had told me what it was and none of its acts had shown that
it had intelligence, but some instinct told me this creature was the
highest form of life on Mars.
_Chapter 13_
The machine in which I traveled made no distinction between forward and
reverse. You set a hand throttle in one direction to go forward, and in
another to go back. It went just as fast one way as the other and there
was no need to turn it around. I started back up the incline without
turning anything but my seat, so anxious was I to get away from that
Martian.
I'd started up the incline before I glanced back in my rear-vision
mirror and saw that this creature had been joined by a companion,
identical in every detail to my indiscriminating eyes, although I
suppose their mothers could have told them apart.
Axel's voice jabbered in my ears but I wasn't listening. I wanted to
get out of this canal and away from these horrible creatures. I didn't
like their teeth, I didn't like their black humps or radar antennae,
or even their padded feet. That destroying heat ray was radar.
"What's that about radar, Bill?" came Axel's voice. I knew I'd spoken
aloud.
"They've got built-in radar instead of eyes!" I said. "It's so powerful
it sets fire to things." Radar could do that. Strong stations on
earth could literally cook a man unfortunate enough to get within
close range. Even weak stations could set off flashlight bulbs in a
photographer's camera. The walls of the car had protected me. Even my
spacesuit probably would have been sufficient protection. But I didn't
like all this power in a living body.
The Martians, apparently startled as much by me as I had been by them,
hesitated before starting in pursuit. I was hitting the steep grade
up the wall of the canal before they came after me. But they ran
slowly and gracefully, in no hurry to catch me. They kept a reasonable
distance.
"Did they do anything to you, Bill?" Axel asked. "Are you all right?"
There was a worried note in his voice.
"I'm okay," I assured him, "but these--these monsters are following me.
Two of them. They look awful. No eyes, not even a head, just a hump on
their backs like a camel and a fringe of arms on each side--" I glanced
back. "Eight arms," I told him, counting them. "Stay where you are and
I'll pick you up. Main thing is to get back to the ship. They don't run
very fast and I think I can outdistance 'em on level ground."
Then Dr. Spartan, who had heard our radio conversation, interrupted.
"Why didn't you shoot them, Drake?"
"I was in the car," I told him. "And they're two to one."
He hesitated, then said, "Don't try to outrun them. Lead them slowly.
Give me a chance to get there."
"Yes, sir," I said.
You don't argue with Spartan and I was too busy guiding the car
over the rocky slope to answer anyhow. I don't think I could have
outdistanced the Martians going uphill as I was. On level ground
though, it would be different.
My radio suddenly started to chatter with a series of strange noises.
The Martians seemed to have discovered my wave length. It was a sound
the like of which I'd never heard before. It's hard to describe it.
The nearest comparison would be a cricket singing bass. Or perhaps
the _dah_ of dit-dah Morse on a code transmitter. But the Martians had
demonstrated that they could change frequencies, and vaguely I wondered
how they'd do on television and FM channels.
Suddenly they seemed to be trying to imitate my voice.
"Yessir--yessir--yessir--"
They were like talking crows.
Finally I reached the lip of the canal and, rolling over the ridge, saw
Axel standing beside a pile of light crates he'd stacked up beside the
rocket ship. He waved his hands and I steered toward him.
Beyond him came Spartan, in the other Mars-car, hitting high speed on
the sand. I thought of the garrison rushing to rescue the besieged
wagon train in the woolly frontier days.
"Bill Drake!" Axel called, his voice wedging into the chattering
Martian voices.
"Billdrake--billdrake--" mocked the Martians.
I braked the car and Axel scrambled toward the locks as the Martians
appeared on the rim of the canal behind me.
Axel took one apprehensive glance in that direction before he climbed
aboard.
"Tain't human!" he gasped, which was the understatement of the solar
system.
Dr. Spartan's Mars-car halted about two hundred yards south of us. I
saw him climbing out of the locks, his rifle in his hand.
"Tanetooman," chanted the Martians.
"This way, Drake!" Spartan signaled with his arms that I was to pass to
his left.
"Thiswaydrake--" screamed my earphones in raucous echo.
"Billdrake--tanetooman--yessir--"
"Aw, shuddup," said Axel to the Martians.
"Shuddup--"
Axel looked at me and shook his head at the Martian reply.
I wheeled the Mars-car around behind Spartan's, halting in a position
which would allow me to watch.
The Martians were loping casually toward the two cars, seemingly in
no rush to get there. And it was then I suddenly realized that their
actions weren't hostile. I'd been frightened when they'd set fire to
the Martian saguaro in the canal, but I realized that this had been
defensive. They had been as afraid of me as I had been of them. Nothing
in the world panics a man as does a situation he's never encountered
before and does not know how to handle. And I suppose, in this respect,
the Martians were human.
In fact, I was soon to learn that although physical bodies were apt
to assume strangely different shapes, the psychology of the Martians
was as human as intelligence. And it was a logical thing, too. After
all, most of life's actions, possibly all, are aimed toward a double
purpose--preservation of the individual and of the race. This fact
is as basic as Newton's laws governing the physical actions of the
universe.
In fact, the two kinds of matter in space, animate and inanimate, may
not be so different, after all. The energy that is in all matter, may
be seeking to control its destiny, and life may be a basic property of
the power that exists in every atom.
But it was no time for philosophy. I didn't think these thoughts
then--it was not until long afterwards that they occurred to me.
I was watching the Martians who now had slowed to a lazy canter,
focusing their biological radar on the two similar objects parked in
the desert.
As they came abreast of the spaceship, they looked at that too. I
expected to see the pile of supplies Axel had stacked near the ship to
go up in smoke--flames being highly unlikely in thin air like this. But
the Martians were no longer frightened. The enemy had fled at their
approach. They assumed, no doubt, that we were no match for them. And
this is another trait that has proved the undoing of many a human
being--to suspect weakness where it does not exist.
Dr. Spartan dropped to a prone position and raised his rifle.
Apparently the Martians had not noticed him because they were too busy
examining the rocket ship, the supplies and the two Mars-cars. Perhaps
they mistook the cars for earthlings. They'd never seen us before.
As they looked, their chattering ceased, so engrossed had they become
in the sights before their antennae.
"Don't shoot, Dr. Spartan," said Axel. "They're not acting hostile."