_In the Desert_
Mellie, Sira's personal maid, was too disturbed by her mistress's
kidnaping to seek other employment. She saw the teletabloid forecasts
of the wedding, made life-like by clever technical faking, but rumors
of the princess' escape were circulating freely despite a rigid
censorship. She imagined that lovely body down in the muck of the
canal, crawled over by slimy things, and she was sick with horror.
Mellie lived with her brother, Wasil Hopspur, and her aged mother.
Wasil was an accomplished technician in the service of the
Interplanetary Radio and Television Co., and his income was ample to
provide a better than average home on the desert margin of South
Tarog. Here Mellie sat in the glass-roofed garden, staring moodily at
the luxuriant vegetation.
She looked abstractedly at the young man coming down the garden walk,
annoyed by the disturbance. There was something familiar in the sway
of his hips as he walked.
And then she flew up the path. Her arms went around the visitor, and
Mellie, the maid, and Princess Sira kissed.
Mellie was immediately confused. A terrible breach of etiquette, this.
But Sira laughed.
"Never mind, Mellie. It is good for me, a fugitive, to find a home.
Will you keep me here?"
"Will I?" Mellie poured into these words all her adoration.
"Mellie, the time has come for action. Not for the monarchy. I am sick
of my claims. I would give it all--You remember the young officer of
the I. F. P.? The one who kissed me?"
"Yes."
"Well, that comes later. First I must consider the war conspiracy.
Have you heard of it?"
"There are rumors."
"They are true. Will Wasil help me?"
"He has worshiped you, my princess, ever since the time I let him help
me serve you at the games."
"One more question." Sira's eyes were soft and misty. "My dear Mellie,
you realize that I may be trailed here? What may happen to you?"
"Yes, my princess. And I don't care!"
* * * * *
As Murray parted from his brother-in-arms, Sime Hemingway, on the roof
of the cylindrical fortress in the Gray Mountains, he felt the
latter's look of bitter contempt keenly. He longed bitterly to give
Sime some hint, some assurance, but dared not, for Scar Balta's
cynical smile somehow suggested that he could look through men and
read what was in their hearts. So Murray played out his renegade part
to the last detail, even forcing his thoughts into the role that he
had assumed in order that some unregarded detail should not give him
away. He convinced the other I. F. P. man, anyway.
But Murray had an uneasy feeling that Balta was laughing at him, and
when the shifty soldier politician invited him into his ship for the
ride back to Tarog, Murray had a compelling intuition that he would
not be in a position to step out of the ship when it landed on the
parkway of Scar Balta's hotel.
Having infinite trust in his intuitions, Murray thereupon made certain
plans of his own.
He noted that the ship, which was far more luxurious than one would
expect a mere army colonel to own, had a trap-door in the floor of the
main salon. Murray pondered over the purpose of this trap. He could
not assign any practical use for it, in the ordinary use of the ship.
But he could not escape the conviction that it would be a splendid way
to get rid of an undesirable passenger. Dropped through that trap-door
a man's body would have an uninterrupted fall until it smashed on the
rocks below.
Murray then examined the neuro-pistol that had been given him. It
looked all right. But when he broke the seal and unscrewed the little
glass tube in the butt, he discovered that it was empty. The gray,
synthetic radio-active material from which it drew its power had been
removed.
Murray grinned at this discovery, without mirth. It was conclusive.
* * * * *
At the first opportunity he jostled one of the soldiers, knocking his
neuro-pistol to the floor--his own, too. And when he apologetically
stooped and retrieved them the mollified soldier had the one with the
empty magazine.
So far, so good. Murray noted that the wall receptacles were all
provided with parachutes. It would be simple to take one of these,
make a long count, and be on the ground before he was missed. Provided
that he could leave unobserved.
The ship was now well in the air, and beginning to move away from the
fort. But they were only ten miles away, and Murray had hardly
expected that Balta would be in such a hurry.
"You get off here!" Balta said, and Murray felt the muzzle of the
neuro-pistol on his spinal column.
A grinning soldier seized a countersunk ring and raised the trap-door.
"So you're going to murder me," Murray said, speaking calmly.
"I take no chances," was Balta's short answer. "Step!"
Murray stepped, swaying like a man in deadly fear. He lowered his feet
through the hole. Looking down, he saw that they were about to pass
over a bitter salt lake, occasionally found in the Martian desert. He
looked up into the muzzle of the menacing neuro-pistol.
"Balta, you're a dog!" he stated coldly.
"A live dog, anyway," the other remarked with a twisted grin. "You
know the saying about dead lions."
Murray's fingers clenched on the edge of the rug. It was thin and
strong, woven of fine metal threads. They were just over the edge of
the salt lake.
Murray dropped through, but retained his death-like grip on the rug.
It followed jerkily, as the men above tripped, fell, and rolled
desperately clear.
* * * * *
Murray's heart nearly stopped as he fell the first thousand feet. The
rug, sheer as the finest silk, failed to catch the wind. It ran out
like a thin rivulet of metal, following Murray in his unchecked drop.
But he had a number of seconds more to fall, and he occupied the time
left to him. He fumbled for corners, found two, lost precious time
looking for the others. He had three corners wrapped around one hand
when the wind finally caught the sheer fabric, bellied it out with a
sharp crack. The sudden deceleration nearly jerked his arm out.
Even so, he was still falling at a fearful rate. The free corner was
trailing and snapping spitefully, and the greasy white waters of the
lake were rushing up!
At any rate, the rug held him upright, so that he did not strike the
water flat. His toes clove the water like an arrow, and the rug was
torn from his grasp. The water crashed together over his head with
stunning force. After that it seemed to Murray that he didn't care. It
didn't matter that his eyes stung--that his throat was filled with
bitter alkali. All of his sensations merged in an all-pervading,
comfortable warmth. There was a feeling of flowing blackness, of time
standing still.
Murray's return to consciousness was far less pleasant. His entire
body was a crying pain: every internal organ that he knew of harbored
an ache of its own. He groaned, and by that token knew that he was
breathing.
As unwillingly he struggled back to consciousness he realized that he
was inside a rock cave, lying on a thin, folded fabric that might well
be the rug that had served as an emergency parachute. He could see the
irregular arch of the cave opening, could catch hints of rough stone
on the interior.
* * * * *
He sat up with an effort. There was a vile taste in his mouth, and he
looked around for something to drink. There was a desert water bottle
standing on the floor beside him. That meant he had been found and
rescued by some Martian desert rat who had probably witnessed his
fall. He rinsed out his mouth with clean, sweet spring water from the
bottle, drank freely. His stomach promptly took advantage of the
opportunity to clear itself of the alkali, and Murray, controlling his
desire to vomit, crawled outside into the blinding light of the
Martian afternoon. He saw that the cave was high up on the side of one
of the more prominent cliffs. There were many such hollowed places,
indicating that the sloping shelf on which he now lay had once been
the beach of a vast sea which at some time must have covered all but
the higher peaks of the Gray Mountains. It was, of course, the sea
that had deposited the scanty soil which here and there covered the
rocks. During geologic ages it shrunk until it all but disappeared,
leaving only a few small and bitter lakes in unexpected pockets.
There was a succession of prehistoric beaches below Murray's vantage
point, marking each temporary sea level, giving the mountain a
terraced appearance. A thousand feet below was the white lake,
sluggish and dead.
Murray was looking for the man who had saved him. He was able to
discern him, after a little effort, toiling up the steep slopes. He
was still nearly all the way down. He could see only that he seemed to
be dressed in white desert trousers and blouse, and that he wore a
broad-brimmed sun helmet. He was carrying something in a bag over his
shoulder. He was making the difficult ascent with practiced ease, his
body thrown well forward, making fast time for such an apparently
deliberate gait.
* * * * *
The desert glare hurt Murray's eyes. He closed them and fell asleep.
He awoke to the shaking of his shoulder, looked up into a
black-bearded face, a beard as fierce and luxuriant as his own. But
where Murray was bald, this man's hair was as thick and black as his
beard. He had thrown off his helmet, so that his massive head was
outlined against the sky. His torso was thick, his shoulders broad.
Large, intelligent eyes and brilliant coral skin proclaimed the man to
be a native of Mars.
The man's white teeth flashed brilliantly when he spoke.
"Feeling better? Man, you can feel good to be here at all! Time and
again have I seen Scar Balta drop 'em into that lake, but you're the
first one ever to break the surface again. He gave you a break,
though. First time he ever gave anybody as much as a pocket
handkerchief to ease his fall. That lake is useful to Scar. It keeps
the bodies he gives it, and none ever turn up for evidence."
Murray was still struggling with nausea. "Want to thank you," he
managed. "I got it bad enough. Ow! I feel sick!"
The Martian bestirred himself. He scraped up the ancient shingle,
making a little pillow of sand for Murray's head. The Sun was already
nearing the western horizon, and its heat was no longer excessive.
Murray watched through half-closed lids as the big man descended a
short distance, returning with an armful of short, greasy shrubs. He
broke the shrub into bits, made a neat stack; stacked a larger ring of
fuel around this, until he had a flat conical pile about eight inches
high and two feet in diameter.
* * * * *
From a pocket safe he procured a tiny fire pellet. This he moistened
with saliva and quickly dropped into the center of his fuel stack. The
pellet began to glow fiercely, throwing off an intense heat. In a few
seconds the fuel caught, burning briskly and without smoke.
"Wouldn't dare do this in the open," the Martian explained, "if this
stuff gave off any smoke at all. The pulpwood mounds down in the
flats make a nice fire, but they smoke and leave black ashes, easy to
see from the sky. Now you just rest easy. You'll feel better soon as
you get some skitties under your belt."
The skitties proved to be a species of quasi-shellfish, possessing
hemispherical houses. In lieu of the other half of their shell they
attached themselves to sedimentary rocks. They were the only form of
life that had been able to adapt themselves to the chemicalization of
the ancient sea-remnant. The Martian had left them thin flakes of
rock. Now he placed the shells in the red-hot coals, and in a very
short time the skitties were turning out, crisp and appetizing.
Following his host's example, Murray speared one with the point of his
stiletto, blew on it to cool it. It proved to be delicious, although
just a trifle salty.
"Drink plenty water with it," the Martian advised him. "Plenty more
about five hundred feet down. Artesian spring there. Fact is, that's
all that keeps that lake from drying up. You ought to see the mist
rise at night."
Murray ate four of the skitties. Then, because the sun was getting
ready to plop down, they carefully extinguished the fire, scattering
the ashes. The I. F. P. agent felt greatly strengthened by his meal
and assisted his host with the evening chores. Nightfall found them in
their darkened cave, ready for an evening's yarning.
* * * * *
"I took the liberty of examining your effects," the Martian began.
"Sort of introduced you to myself. The fact that you wore the Martian
army uniform was no fine recommendation to me, though I once wore it
myself. Your weapons I hid, except for the knife you needed to eat.
But you'll find them in that little hollow right over your head. The
fact that you're an enemy of Scar Balta is enough for the present.
That alone is repayment for the labor of carrying you up all this
way."
Murray then told him of work on Mars. There was no use concealing
anything from one who was obviously a fellow fugitive, and who might
be persuaded to do away with his guest, should he have strong enough
suspicions. He told of the war cabal, of the financial-political
oligarchy and its opposing monarchists. He related his own discovery
and arrest; the pretended enlistment in Scar Balta's forces which
terminated in Scar's prompt and ruthless action. When he finished he
sensed that he had made a deep impression on his host. The latter
spoke.
"What you have told me, Murray, relieves me very much," he said. "I
know that we can work together. You might as well know how I came to
be here. Perhaps I look forty or fifty years old. Well, I'm thirty. I
was news director for the televisor corporations. I didn't have to be
very smart to realize that a lot of the stuff we were ordered to send
out was propaganda, pure and simple. Propaganda for the war interests,
propaganda for the financiers. Commercial propaganda too.
"Why, the stuff we put out was a crime! The service to the
teletabloids was the worst. You know how they outstrip the news; hired
actors take the part of personages in the news. Ever watch 'em? The
way they enact a murder is good, isn't it?"
* * * * *
"We got orders to bear down on your service too, the I. F. P. Your
crew has too many points of contact, hiking from planet to planet. The
high command couldn't see things the bankers liked, I guess.
"So whenever a man of the I. F. P. figured in the news we always gave
him the worst of it. We hired bums to play his part, criminals,
vicious degenerates. People believe what they see--that's the idea. I
had seen very few of your men but I knew we were giving them a dirty
deal. Orders were orders, though. We got lots of orders we didn't
understand. Then secret deals were made, and those orders
countermanded.
"But the order against the I. F. P. remained standing, and we
certainly did effective work against 'em. The people had no way of
knowing the difference, either, for the company controls all means of
communication, and the I. F. P. does most of its work in out of the
way places. Why just to show you how effective our work was--the
people, in a special plebiscite, voted to withdraw their support from
the Plutonian campaign! But that was going too far; the financiers
quietly reversed that.
"At the same time, we got orders to glorify Wilcox, the planetary
president. It was Wilcox signing a bill to feed the hungry--after
their property had been stripped by the taxes. It was Wilcox the
benevolent; Wilcox the superman. Wilcox, in carefully rehearsed
dramatic situations, reproduced on the stereo-screens in every home.
You know who put over the slogan, 'Wilcox, the Solar Savior?' We did
it. It was easy!" He laughed shortly.
"The only time we failed was, when they wanted to end, once and for
all, the prestige of the royal house. That was after they had bought
the assassination of the claimant, his wife and their son. Didn't dare
take Princess Sira too, because she has always been a popular darling.
It would have been too raw, wiping out the whole family. They left one
claimant, see? And then put it up to us to discredit her!
"Man! That fell down! The first attempt was very smooth, at that. But
it brought in such a storm of condemnation they had to drop that.
"You can guess how we boys at the central office felt about it. No
wonder we got cynical and lost all self-respect. We couldn't have
stood it at all, but sometimes we'd put on a special party, just to
let off steam. Did we rip 'em up high and handsome? The more
outrageous the flattery we sent out, disguised as news, the more
baldly truthful we were in those early morning rehearsals, with the
mikes and telegs dead. Wilcox was our special meat.
"Of course, it was foolhardy. One night a mixer in the room below us
got his numbers mixed, killing a banquet program on a trunk channel
and sending our outrageous burlesque out instead. When the poor fellow
discovered his mistake he made for the bottom of the canal. As for me,
I made for the desert. I never heard what became of the others, and
that was six years ago. I wonder if I've changed much."
"What's your name?" Murray asked suddenly.
"Tuman. Nay Tuman."
"The others must have been caught. As for yourself, orders have been
sent all over the solar system to kill you on sight. They hung the
killing of that electrician on you."
"That's their way!" Nay Tuman absented gloomily. "A price on my head.
They thought I'd stow away on some rocket liner, I suppose."
"Weren't you afraid some desert rat would give you away?"
"No danger. They're just about all fugitives themselves. They hid me
till I grew this foliage. They showed me how to find food and water
where seemingly there was none. The desert isn't sterile. Why, I know
of three or four men within fifty miles of here! Sometimes they stop
at my spring for water. As for the harness frames at the fort, those
sojers might as well be blind, considering all they miss."
"You asked a while ago if you've changed much. You have. I remember
your picture. All of us studied it, because there's a 100,000 I. P.
dollar reward out. You were a slim lad then, not the fuzzy bear you
are now. How would you like to go in to Tarog with me? They seem to
have us licked now--but did you ever hear that the I. F. P. is most
dangerous when it's been thoroughly licked?"
"I don't know--I'm used to the solitude," Tuman demurred. "In the city
I'd be lost."
But Murray won him over. He had a persuasive way with him.
* * * * *
The next morning they started, guiding their course by the Sun. They
made no attempt to travel fast, but the going was easy. Although they
rested during the heat of the day, and buried themselves for the
nights in the sun-warmed sand, they made about fifteen miles a day.
They saw no other human being. These desert dwellers did not meet for
mere sociability.
They left the mountains on the second day, descending to the lower
level of a broad, sterile plain which was studded by the low, greenish
pulp-mounds, that resembled mossy rocks more than vegetation. After
two days more they came to a region where huge blocks of stone, of the
prevailing orange or brick color, lay scattered around on the plain.
"They look good to me," Tuman said. "If some patrol comes along now
we'll have plenty of cover, at least. This belt is a hundred miles
wide, maybe a little more. Good hunting there. Plenty of desert hogs,
as fat and as round as a ball of bovine butter. I can knock 'em over
with a rock, and you can use your neuro, in a pinch."
They did, in fact, succeed in capturing one of the little creatures
soon afterward, and, dropping a moistened fire pellet on top of a
pulp-mound, soon were roasting their meat.
Not once, however, did either one relax his vigilance. Almost
simultaneously they discovered the little black dot that seemed to pop
out of the irregular southern horizon. They leaped to their feet,
kicked out the fire. They would have covered the ashes with sand but
for hundreds of feet in either direction there was nothing but bare
rock.
"Never mind!" Murray said. "Let's make for cover. They may think it's
an old fireplace. With rains only about once in three years that spot
will look like that indefinitely."
"Yes," Tuman agreed, running along, "if they didn't see the smoke!"
* * * * *
As the craft neared they could make out the orange and green of the
Martian army.
"From the fort," Murray guessed. "Scar Balta must have had his doubts
about me. He ordered them out to finish the job, if necessary."
"It's drifting," Tuman observed. "The driving tail seems to be
missing."
"Well, anyway, it's coming down, and where an army ship comes down is
no place for us."
They heard the scrape of her keel as she settled down. Murray gave a
gasp of surprise.
"Tuman," he muttered, "that fellow wearing the Martian uniform is an
I. F. P. agent named Hemingway. The uniform doesn't fit and I bet the
man he took it from is no longer alive. Do you know the giant with
him?"
"Under that dirt and blood, I'd say he's Tolto, Princess Sira's
special pet. No other man of Mars could be that big! Seven or eight
years ago--she was just a kid, you know--she picked him up in some
rural province. Kids just naturally do run to pets, don't they? And
the princess was no exception. But he looks like nobody's pet now. I'd
rather have him peg me with his neuro, though, than to take me in his
hands!"
They watched as Sime and Tolto slowly walked about in widening
circles, and when they were sufficiently far away Murray and Tuman
closed in. They had no expectation of finding the ship unlocked, and
wasted no time trying to get it. Instead they climbed a flat-topped
block of stone about ten feet high. From this position they could
command, with Murray's neuro, anyone who might seek to enter the ship.
"These fellows are our best hope," Murray told Tuman. "But we have to
convince 'em that we're friends first. Otherwise we're liable to be
cold meat, and cold meat can't convince anybody. Keep your head down."
The necessity of lying flat, in order to keep from silhouetting
themselves against the sky, deprived them of the opportunity to see.
Nevertheless, they could tell, by the sound of their voices, when Sime
and Tolto returned. When it seemed that they were directly beneath,
Murray risked a look. There they were.
Murray carefully set the little focalizer wheel for maximum diffusion.
He felt sure that it would not be fatal, considering the distance and
the physical vigor of the men he meant to hold. He pressed the
trigger.
"Get down quick!" he snapped. "I'll let up for a second; you grab
their neuros."
Tuman executed the order with dispatch. Stepping back, he trained the
pistols on their late owners, while Sime and Tolto, a little dazed,
stumbled to their feet. A man may argue, or take chances, when menaced
by a needle-ray, but mere bravery does not count with the neuros. All
men's nervous systems are similar, and when nerves are stricken,
courage is of no avail.