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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ghost of Mars, Amazing Stories, December 1938
Warlords of Mars, Amazing Stories, June 1940
Kidnaped in Mars, Amazing Stories, October 1941
Outlaw of Mars, Amazing Stories, January 1942
Devil Birds of Deimos, Amazing Stories, April 1942
Into the Caves of Mars, Amazing Stories, August 1942
Twisted Giant of Mars, Amazing Stories, May 1943
Conspirators of Phobos, Amazing Stories, June 1943
Madcap of Mars, Amazing Stories, September 1943
WHEN Festus Pragnell sent us his manuscript for “Ghost of Mars” it added a bit more to our respect for the brand of science fiction our English cousins are turning out across the water. There’s something real, some vivid touch that makes these English-written stories convincing, exemplified in each. And in presenting this latest yam, we feel that we are giving you a lot of pleasant entertainment and convincing imagination. And because it is so real, we have made it the subject of our cover painting this month (and we think you’ll like that too—to judge from what you’ve already said about Robert Fuqua, the artist).
CHAPTER I
Spectres
TO Don Hargreaves the squat buildings of Martian Metals were not a pleasant sight. Their crude, square shapes were coated with a layer of black dust, as was the surrounding landscape for about a mile in every direction.
They pained him with their distressful ugliness and filth after the smoothly rounded beauty of the ancient and long deserted Martian city nearby. Yet it was here that fabulous riches in rare metals were won for wealthy shareholder back on Earth, and where hundreds of toiling workers labored to earn enough to give their families a taste of the better things of life.
If those workers returned! For the accident rate was high. He had access to the figures and he knew, as few did, how very high that rate was. But every man that died meant one fewer to transport all those millions of miles back to their home planet, or to feed on the way. Death was profitable to Martian Metals.
It had been with extreme distaste that he had accepted the unwelcome assignment to escort heartless, unfeeling Elsa Thorwaldson about the ruins of the ancient Martian city near the mines, and now, walking beside her space-suited figure, he resented his duty even more. Just a mention of the legend of Martian ghosts had made her laugh him to scorn. Even now she continued to titter into her helmet radio.
The sound of her laugh grated on his nerves. It seemed to him not at all good taste to laugh in the presence of the tragedy of the departed life of Mars.
She had, he reflected, something of the hard, mercenary outlook of her father, resident manager of the Martian Metals Company. He had spoken to her father about the hard conditions of the mines, and of the lack of safety precautions, and had been told abruptly that the high cost of transport from Earth to Mars made better things impossible. He had spoken, too, of what seemed to him to be the unwisdom of the new policy of employing so much low-grade labor from such places as Java, Burmah, Siam and Borneo. White men were so few here, and help was millions of miles away.
At this, also, both father and daughter scoffed.
It distressed him to find one so beautiful, so elegant as Elsa Thorwaldson to be so lacking in human feelings.
“You talk of ghosts,” she said suddenly, “and yet you want me to go into this old city. I don’t want to walk among a lot of graveyards.”
“Shall we visit the mines instead?” he asked, somewhat stiffly.
“Yes, do. I’ve had enough of this.”
HE led the way. To Elsa, still unaccustomed to Martian gravity, it was a difficult walk. The fur suits, helmets and air tanks weighed heavily, yet even with these loads she still felt oddly light in the feeble grip of Mars. Every step carried her about twice as far as she expected it to.
It was treacherous going. It was late in the afternoon, and shadows of inky blackness lay everywhere. At first it had been thrilling to feel with one’s foot where there appeared to be nothing and find solid rock; but now she ignored the black spaces, treading firmly in them.
So that when she came to a real hole she put her foot squarely in it. Luckily Hargreaves, whose eyes were accustomed to the conditions, and who knew holes from shadows, was nearby and caught her. Not that the fall was likely to be dangerous, but there was always the possibility of cracking a face-plate and letting the air out.
They walked along a regular lane through the dust, where the vehicles ran, so as not to stir up the filthy dust with their feet.
Through the soles of their boots they could feel the steady “Thump, thump, thump!” of the explosions that drove the power-generating station. It was this vibration that loosened stones in the roofs of the mine passages, causing them to fall on the miners beneath. A silencer to damp down the vibrations could be quite easily constructed, yet Thorwaldson said it was not practicable.
The exhaust gas was like a black fog round the power station, gradually spreading out and settling down to form more black dust, making a great round spot on Mars, a spot just visible in the telescopes of Earth.
“Isn’t it repulsive-looking, after the smooth but strong beauty of the Martian city?” he said to the girl.
Her reply was unexpected.
“It’s the best we can do. You ought to have been a Martian. You like Martian things so much more than you do the things of Earth. I like to see these works. They look homely, like so many places back in our own world that you despise so much. That weird city gives me the creeps.”
“You think I ought to be a Martian?” he repeated.
“Well, nothing on Earth is good enough for you, is it? You grumble about everything. Workers are underpaid and overworked, according to you, machines are ugly, factories are ugly, towns are ugly. You expect too much. We do the best we can. Perhaps you would have been happier among the Martians. Perhaps they managed these things better than we do.”
“I’ll bet they did,” he murmured, bitterly.
Then, remembering that she was his employer’s daughter, he went on: “Even in these prosaic surroundings there are said to be ghosts. Ghostly Martians are said to haunt the mines.”
“Ghosts in the mines?”
“Yes. Numbers of men claim to have seen them, or rather him, for it appears to be the same ghost popping up every time anybody goes into a certain tunnel.”
In obvious disbelief she asked to hear more.
“When the men were boring this particular tunnel they came up against a wall of the dark green metal that the Martians used for building purposes.
When this wall was broken through the workers found themselves in a large round tunnel running at a sharp angle to their own and lined throughout with the same green metal.”
“A Martian tunnel?”
“Yes. It was undoubtedly Martian work. A water main probably, when the city was populated. You can imagine how startled the men were to find themselves in this vast, dim place, a place where, to their excited imaginations, almost anything might occur.”
“Did the ghost appear then?”
“He was standing about thirty feet away from them, with his dog.”
“A Martian dog? What was it like?”
“That’s the weak point in the story. Everybody agrees that the dog was there, but they all differ as to what it looked like. One says it was like a greyhound and as tall as its ghostly master. Another says it was similar to a bulldog and about the sam
e size. Others cannot describe it at all, but say their eyes were on this ghostly Martian, so that they took little notice of the dog.”
“What did the ghost do?” she demanded, impatiently.
“I haven’t finished describing him yet. The men say he was dressed in pale blue clothes with a metal belt and fittings, and that from the clothes came a pale blue radiance that filled the tunnel with ghostly light. On his forehead was another light that directed its beam on the men and their boring machine.
“He appeared, they say, suddenly, without any sound or warning. It was as though he had been there all the while they were breaking in, and turned his lights on when he was ready to reveal himself.
“About the next stage in the story everybody is agreed. This ghostly Martian raised his long left arm, pointed at the men, and said to the ghostly dog by his side the one word, ‘Seize!’”
“And then what?”
“They did not stop to see. They ran, leaving the boring machine behind.”
“A pretty story,” she admitted acidly, “but there’s one flaw in it. You say they could see the Martian’s face, so that presumably he had no voice-amplifier. How could they hear what he said?”
“In some of our deeper workings there is enough air for voices to be heard fairly well. The tunnels have acoustic properties, too, magnifying sound. If the Martian spoke loudly, and with his huge lungs I should imagine he could speak very loudly if he chose, the men would hear him all right. But there is a flaw in the story all the same. It’s this. How could a Martian have known the English word, ‘Seize’? I expect if we knew more we should find that he was actually saying some Martian word whose meaning we do not know.”
He was interrupted by a gust of mocking laughter, the same laughter as had irritated him some while before.
“Why, upon my word! So you actually believe in this silly ghost? You really believe that a ghost of a dead Martian walks the tunnels?”
Within his helmet he blushed hotly. “A large number of men have seen him. They all agree as to the details, too. I noticed particularly that they all said that the ghost raised his left arm, not his right. And it is since that date that Professor Winterton announced his opinion that the Martians were a left-handed race.
“Anybody can see the ghost any time they like, according to the miners. All one has to do is to walk into the haunted tunnel and go a little way along it. Every time anyone does that he appears, clothed in light, with his dog, and points at you, saying, ‘Seize’ ! It is as though there was something sacred to the Martians in that tunnel, and as though he was a ghostly sentry keeping guard over it, driving away any vandals who might disturb whatever it is.”
“And has nobody had the courage to stay long enough for this dog to seize him?” Her tone was scornful.
“So far as is known, no.”
“What do you mean, ‘So far as is known’ ?”
“Professor Winterton announced his intention of investigating the ghost mystery, alone. Next day he disappeared, and has never been seen since. Several miners and other people have disappeared, too.”
“Fanciful nonsense,” she snorted. “I’m going to look into this ghost business myself. And you are going to take me.”
“But you can’t go down into the deepest part of the mine!”
“Why not?”
“Your father would not approve. The dangers. Falling stones. You might be crushed.”
“My father says these dangers you speak of are much exaggerated. You are afraid of the ghost. Cowardly custard! Come along, or I’ll go alone, and you will get into trouble for leaving me.”
He reflected that perhaps it would only be poetic justice on her father if her undeniably beautiful but self-willed body was crushed as so many fathers of families had been, down there in the dismal darkness.
CHAPTER II
The Haunted Tunnel
THE cage shot down the shaft, passing stopping-places where passages ran off, following the ore-bearing veins that ran in chance-arranged streaks through the igneous rock.
Unthinkably long ago there had been great upsurgings of deeper, molten rock breaking through the crust and forcing itself into cracks in the higher layers here. Upon that fact the whole great organization of Martian Metals rested.[1]
After a long descent, they reached the bottom with a jolt.
It was possible to open their faceplates down here. The air was dense, and they could breathe in fair comfort. The density was about the same as one finds on the tops of high mountains on Earth. But they had to be careful, for the high oxygen content of the atmosphere was apt to bring on a delusive feeling of well-being, leading to overexertion and collapse.
Elsa raised her face-plate. Her face, so revealed, was freshly colored, well rounded, and sparkling with health and vitality. The harsh glare of the artificial lights showed up her health and boundless self-confidence better than even sunlight did.
A wonderful woman, thought Donald.
Ore-bearing trucks clattered through the gloom, on wide caterpillar tracks. It had not been worth the expense to smooth the floors of the passages enough for wheels to run on them. Besides which the fallen slabs of rock made the way very rough. The heavy trucks clattered and lurched with a din that, even in the comparatively thin air, battered painfully on the eardrums: their single headlights glared ahead balefully, making him think of so many army tanks advancing to battle. The sudden crashes as they lurched over obstacles, magnified by the tunnel walls, sounded like the roar of exploding shells.
Walking was hard work on the rough floors, and they had a long way to go. Donald looked round for a truck to take them. He approached a knot of dark-skinned men who looked at him with furtive hatred.
“A passenger truck for Miss Thorwaldson and myself,” he ordered, trying to sound imperious.
Nobody moved.
“We get truck when foreman he tells us,” said one of the men, grinning maliciously. There seemed to be some hidden meaning to his words.
Donald thought again of how unwise it was to employ so many low-paid Asiatics in the mines. The whites were few here, and the sharp discipline they kept up rested in the end on nothing but bluff. These men ought to be working, not lounging against the wall in this manner.
He went into the checker’s office.
“What’s wrong here? I asked for a truck for myself and Miss Thorwaldson, and those fellows refused to get one.”
The clerk looked from him to the lady.
“Miss Thorwaldson here? Is it safe?”
“She insisted on coming.”
“Oh! Well, I don’t know what’s wrong with the men, but they have been unusually surly and ill-tempered all through the shift. We’ve been looking for the foreman, but we can’t find him. And they say they won’t work until he comes to tell them what to do. It is beginning to look as though an accident has happened to him.”
Donald repeated his request for a truck in which to show Miss Thorwaldson round the mine.
The checker grimaced.
“Wants to look round the mine? I should have thought one glance would have been enough. I’ll fix you up.” He rang bells. Presently a laborer appeared.
THEY followed the heavily muscled workman. Two Burmese stood in their way and were insolently slow in moving to let them pass. Hargreaves saw the knotted muscles and set jaw of the miner, and knew that only the presence of the lady had saved those two slight, dark-skinned men from being knocked down. He saw, also, the gleaming eyes of the other Asiatics, and their hands resting on what might have been knives or might have been firearms in their pockets, and was relieved when they got past without trouble.
The truck lurched and rattled away, its radio-beam “feeler” reaching out and picking up power from the central power-station at the top of the shaft. He thought of the terrible noise there must have been here when each truck ran on its own explosive engine. Now the power-beams attracted the power silently, reaching upward unerringly through miles of rock.
The t
unnel walls were grey-green in the light of the headlamp, streaked with veins of many colors seldom seen in the rocks of Earth. Here and there a beautiful crystal gleamed at them in its stony setting.
“Are those diamonds in the walls?” she asked in his ear. “How lovely!”
“Those are not diamonds,” he answered. “Those are mere worthless crystals. But diamonds are found here, and topaz and many precious stones. They form a valuable by-product of the mine. Only the biggest and most flawless are worth the cost of transporting back to Earth.
“Stringent precautions are taken to prevent the miners secreting them back.
Stones thrown away here may be worth a small fortune on Earth. For all our care some of the men get away with it. Extraordinary tricks they get up to smuggle diamonds. They even cut themselves and press diamonds into the wounds. But the X-ray examination usually finds them. One man swallowed a diamond so large that it lodged in his intestines and killed him.”
The driver spoke, his powerful bellow carrying easily above the racket made by the vehicle in its blundering progress.
“Is there anywhere in particular that ye want to go? These tunnels are all pretty much alike. There ain’t much to show ye.”
“The lady wants to see tunnel 57.” The truck came to an abrupt halt. The sudden silence was startling.
“Did ye say tunnel 57?”
“Yes.”
The powerful man looked scared. “Faith and begorrah, ye can’t go there.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? But ye know why not, Mr. Hargreaves. Tunnel 57 is closed.”
“But the lady wants to go there. She wants to see the ghost for herself.”
“Oh, does she?” His color was slowly coming back. “Then she’s got more pluck than I have. Ask her, does she know that several men have gone into tunnel 57 and never come back?” But Elsa Thorwaldson only laughed, stridently.
“I’m not scared of those silly stories. Are you going to take us into the tunnel or not? What’s the delay?” Donald thought now that bravery of hers wasn’t real, that in an emergency it wouldn’t be so evident. She wasn’t brave, she was bold.
The Complete Saga of Don Hargreaves Page 1
