Food was brought to them, ordinary-looking food, but queerly flavored.
“Switching off now,” announced the Professor. “We’ve had a pleasant chat and I’m tired. Let my people know I’m all right if you ever go back. I’ll ring you up as soon as there is any news.” Elsa snorted.
“What a man! It sounded just as though he was trying to persuade us to live the rest of our lives in these burrows, like moles.”
“It might not be so bad,” he murmured, thinking of slums and unemployed queues.
She snorted again, and sat silent, trying to show her disgust. Hargreaves let her show it.
Presently she said, “Now listen, Hargreaves. The Professor said he was going to ring us up again on this queer telephone and television thing. Next time you mustn’t allow him to do all the talking. Explain to him that we’ve got to do something about the Asiatics. The rebels can’t be allowed to steal our mine like this. I’ve got to get back, too.”
“Why should I?” he asked, not liking her abrupt orders.
“Why? Do you ask me why? When my father is your employer, providing your food and keep?”
“Perhaps I may be independent of your father from now on.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you hear the Professor say that we would be allowed to remain in Mars if we chose? If we stay in Mars, both of us, we need not trouble about your father any more.”
“What are you talking about? I shall refuse to. stay on Mars. I shall insist that we return, both of us.”
But her confidence was fading.
“You can insist, you can order,” he said. “But remember this: to the Martians we are not the boss’ daughter and an employee. We are simply a man and a woman. We go or we stay, together. I am the man, and the Professor made it clear that it is I who will be expected to make the decisions. If I say we go, then, if it is possible, we go. If I decide to stay, we stay.”
He said it only to tease her. He knew of no reason why Elsa Thorwaldson could not return, even if he stayed. But to her it seemed quite possible. She had paid but little attention to the Professor’s words. She could not understand why the women of Mars dressed with so little display if theirs was not a downtrodden position.
Her mind worked rapidly.
“You want to stay on Mars with me as your woman?”
Donald was startled, and blushed.
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
Which was quite true, but to her his blush was proof. She had seen his admiration of her robust beauty in his eyes many times.
She smiled at him. He was not accustomed to women, and this broad, super-charming smile took his breath away. He was not so much dazzled as startled.
In an artificially-lighted dance hall, among painted faces (male and female), it would have been perfect. Here in a cavern on Mars, under a blue-shining ceiling with a tall Martian looking on (three had gone out on some mysterious errand), it looked excessive.
“Confess!” she invited him. “You were thinking of it. You do find me attractive.”
He had a sense of drowning. Then she wanted him to say yes.
“Nobody can deny your beauty, Miss Thorwaldson,” he said.
She thought him very stiff. Actually, he was frightened.
“You are so small,” she said, “so pale and delicate-looking. I’ve often thought I’d like to mother you.”
He looked uncomfortable.
“At least, I thought so until last night,” she declared. “Then you were so brave and strong. Altogether different from what I expected. When you stayed so bravely in that tunnel, and faced the ghost that everybody else feared.”
“Was I?”
“Oh, you were wonderful!”
Her wavy black hair, her lively brown eyes, her red cheeks and lips, were irresistible. He kissed her. Though she was holding herself out to be kissed as plainly as she could, yet he thought he was being very daring.
“I love you!” he blurted out, throwing his arms round her.
“My darling,” she answered.
And neither of them took the least notice of the tall Martian sitting on his seat, staring past them, taking not the least interest in either of them or in their antics. He had been so still and silent that they had come to regard him as part of the furniture of the room.
“SEE,” said the Martian suddenly, his mobile features directing their attention to the crystal ball in the middle of the floor, while his arms played rapidly over his keyboards and wheels.
They parted just in time. Professor Winterton’s image was back again, staring at them.
“Ah, still there, I see? There’s been a lot of fuss and excitement over you down here. Ringing up people, sending messages, getting the views of important persons who had gone on holidays and were difficult to trace, oh, such a confusion! There hasn’t been so much excitement on Mars since the Queen dismissed her husband and installed an air-pilot as King in his place.
“But at last we traced nearly everybody who mattered, and all those people who would have been offended if they had not been consulted. Such a lot of them! Phew!
“Ah! Here comes the last report. From the King and Queen. These messages come to me because you would not understand them.
“Her Majesty says, ‘I think the ducky little boy must stay on Mars. Didn’t he look nice and shy when she was kissing him? He must come to my court.’
“His Majesty says, ‘Send him back at once!’
“Their Majesties are now discussing the matter with some excitement, and there seems to be little chance of their arriving at any agreed decision.” Donald broke in.
“I say, have they been watching us?”
“ALL Mars has been watching you. They had to see you in order to make up their minds. But I shouldn’t let that worry you: kissing is unknown on Mars. When the natives want to express affection they bite each other’s noses, and rub each other’s foreheads and cheeks with their noses. It is the nose and not the lips that expresses affection with them. They would not understand a kiss, unless they guessed its meaning by a sort of intuition, as Her Majesty seems to have done.”
Elsa was not in the least embarrassed. “What’s going to be done about the Asiatics?”
“Let me explain one thing at a time. You can go or you can stay, just as you choose. The scientists say there will not be enough krypton in your blood yet to do any harm. So you can forget about that problem: that won’t stop you.”
“Could one of us go and the other stay?” asked Elsa.
“Certainly, but I thought you would want to be together.”
“And what about the Asiatics? What are they going to do about those brigands and murderers?”
“I warned you that the rulers of Mars would not be likely to interfere in a quarrel between Earthmen. And that is what they have decided. This fighting is no concern of Mars. Mars cannot intervene.”
“But something’s got to be done. Something must be done.”
“I have explained carefully that these people are criminals who have made an unprovoked attack on peaceful people. They are prepared to arm you if you care to try an attack on these men yourselves, and to allow you the help of one of their domestic fighting animals, a zekolo, which they keep to protect them from snakes. But more than that they will not do. They will do nothing themselves.”
“How are we to get back?” asked Donald. “We can’t go through the mine. We’d walk straight into a trap. And if the power is off we couldn’t get up the shaft.”
“They’ve thought of that. You would not go through the mine. They would take you along the underground passages to their city, and show you the way out. But you can’t go yet. It is night time outside, and in the Martian night you would freeze to death if you tried to cross the open space between city and mine. You have several hours to wait.”
“Wait a minute,” said Donald. He saw that he would have to make a single-handed attack on several hundred men, and he was not sure that the idea attracted him. “Giv
e me time to think it over. We have several hours to sunrise. Give me time to make up my mind and tell you later what I mean to do.”
“Yes, that’s all right. I’ll make arrangements to have you rung up later, about dawn.”
The projection vanished.
Elsa looked at Donald with an expression he could not understand.
“We are tired. We must rest,” she said to the Martian.
“I savvy.” He guided them to sleeping quarters where he left the couple to their own devices.
“WON’T you do it, for my sake?” she asked, when they were alone. “You were so brave in the mine, facing the giant that everybody else ran from. You won’t spoil the picture I made of you then, will you? You won’t shirk your duty now, my hero?”
“What chance would I have, against hundreds?”
“Are you afraid of the danger?”
“Yes, I am. Why pretend I’m not, when I’m certain to be killed? But I’ll try it. I’ll do what you say is my duty, on one condition.”
“What is your condition?” she asked softly with a shy smile.
“You know how hard the lives of the miners are? What a lot of accidents there are? If I succeed I want better conditions in the mines, shorter working days and safety measures.”
She had expected something quite different.
“But that would absorb all the profits. Martian Metals would have to close down.”
“It would not. The company would still be able to pay ten per cent. If it couldn’t, production would have to be cut down to force up prices. It would only mean less explosives for armaments.
“Listen to me. The Professor says that your father is confined to the big house. That means he is still on the telephone. I can go a little way into the mine and send a message to him, if the wires are not cut. I’ll tell him of the attempt that I propose to make, and of my conditions, should I be successful. And in case anyone should be listening I’ll speak in French. He knows that language fairly well, and the Asiatics are hardly likely to understand.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t,” she pleaded.
“You don’t know what it would mean. He’d lose his position. The shareholders would turn him out of control.”
“He’d still be wealthy, if they did.”
She put her arms around him.
“Donald, my darling! You won’t insist on these conditions. You don’t know what they mean. Come to me and promise me you’ll forget them.”
He knew little about women. Intoxicated by her powerful charms, his reason swept away.
He took her in his arms, and gave the promise she asked for, feeling like a traitor as he did so.
But tomorrow he was going to be killed. He was quite certain he was going to be killed. What did anything matter except that he was going to die?
CHAPTER VII
The Rescue
A WHISTLING sounded outside the round door.
“What is it?” asked Donald, half aroused.
“Dawn.”
Donald sat up. He was sleepy still. He had had only a little light sleep, and did not feel in the least like heroic deeds. What he wanted was more rest.
But he had promised to go through with it.
He woke Elsa, who was bleary-eyed and not nearly so dazzling as she had appeared before.
“Morning,” he said. “We have to get up.”
They went into the other room, where three Martians waited. He wondered if they ever slept.
Without a word they adjusted the plugs and the keyboard. The projection of Professor Winterton appeared, in a long blue gown.
“What have you decided, Donald?”
“I am going back to see what I can do to help the others.”
“Good boy. I knew you would. We’d come and help you, but we can’t because of the krypton in our blood. We would not be allowed to, either. But our best wishes go with you.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s a dangerous job you are undertaking, but the Martian nerve-ray producer is an excellent weapon. It has unlimited range, and can be set, by turning a handle, to sweep a wide area or to focus and so carry a very long way. There is a switch: press it to the right and it produces unconsciousness, press it to the left and it kills. It produces chemical reactions in nerves that stops them working. You will be given a pair of special glasses, too, through which you can see the ray shining out of the box. That’s a great help in aiming.
“And the zekolo. That’s one of the shell-wearing creatures that follow the Martians about like dogs. Their shells are so hard as to be almost impossible to damage, even with explosive bullets. If their tentacles are shot away they simply grow more in a few days.
“They understand a few orders in Martian words. If you say, ‘Grahbo!’ to them they will rush upon and kill whoever you point out. Say, “Grahlee!” and they simply knock your enemy down and disarm him. Now repeat those instructions.”
Donald repeated the information. “That’s right. Better write it down to memorize.”
Donald did, and the Professor checked what he had written.
“Correct. Now perhaps you had better practice with the ray producer until you are quite proficient. Remember that it operates, though not so strongly, through thin walls and glass provided they have not been specially protected. You can stand on one side of a wall and render a man on the other side of the wall unconscious or dead.”
The Martians handed him a ray-producing box, and let him practice with it, after fixing a safety catch that prevented it being turned so as to produce a fatal ray. It was a good thing they did, for he swept the ray too wide in his first attempt, and caught one of the arms of a Martian, causing it to hang uselessly at his side for some hours afterwards. But they only laughed at this, and said it did not matter.
A LITTLE while later, with the Professor’s good wishes ringing in his ears, Donald and a Martian set out in the swiftly rolling sphere along the green-lined tunnels.
Elsa stayed behind. Fighting was not a woman’s business.
They came out into the ancient surface city as the sun was beginning to shine slantingly through its walls. The sphere rolled through the wide, winding streets.
Donald thought he could see a sad, wistful look on their Martian companion’s face within his air-helmet as he looked upon the lovely architecture his ancestors had built in the open, under the light of the sun. Now his race was confined to darkness and phosphorus-lit caverns underground, and the driver himself could stay here only a few minutes, for fear of the krypton forming bubbles in his blood.
The sphere stopped. They got out.
“I go,” said the Martian. “Danger here for me.”
The sphere rolled away.
They were alone again. The nerve-ray producer was in Donald’s hands, the zekolo by his side. Ahead was a desperate battle against heavy odds.
But he knew that the longer he stopped to think about it the more his fears would mount and the harder it would be to start. Without a word he set out, firmly.
The zekolo came by his side. It had a fascinating way of walking, its many tentacles weaving in and out in a manner his eyes could not follow. When it came to a downward slope it withdrew inside its shell, closed itself up and
rolled on its edge, waiting for him at the bottom of the slope.
It carried a large reserve of oxygen in its lungs, so that it could move about without air for a long while.
He came to the edge of the black soot that surrounded the power-station. A man approached, but in the air-helmet he could not see whether he was white or Asiatic.
The man raised an arm in a signal for him to stop. He saw that he carried a rifle.
Don pressed his switch, and the man fell in the slow, deliberate way one falls on Mars.
Approaching, he saw that he was a dark-skinned Afghan, probably a sentry.
He would be all right there until evening, but when evening came he would have to be carried in before he froze.
That was one Asiatic accounted f
or. The success gave him confidence.
HE went on toward the mine buildings. There would be more danger there, for men would be able to see him before he saw them, and shoot from behind walls, or out of doorways. He would have to be very alert, and keep his eyes wide open.
A group of four men came out of the nearest building toward him. No doubt they had seen their comrade fall, and knew him for an enemy. One fired, and an explosive bullet sang past him to explode on the rocks beyond.[5]
He adjusted the ray, which he could see like a stream of pale pink smoke coming from his box, and the four sank to the ground as though they were overcome with weariness.
There was an explosion in front of him, and another to his right. The shots came from somewhere among the heap of crushed rock, waste products of the mine, just ahead. Someone was hiding there and sniping at him, but he could not see where the man was.
He swept the rubble heap with his ray, but the shots still came, some of them being uncomfortably close.
It was awkward. To come any closer was to be blown to pieces.
He thought of the zekolo beside him.
“Grahlee!” he ordered, pointing, and the creature set off rapidly, its tentacles drawn halfway inside its shell for protection.
Really, it was amusing to watch the way it ran, its many tentacles weaving in and out. It could travel swiftly, too.
The apparition of the weird creature charging toward their hiding-place was too much for the nerves of the two Asiatics who were lying among the rubble. They jumped up and ran in terror, dropping their rifles.
He brought one down, but the other disappeared among the buildings, the zekolo after him.
The Complete Saga of Don Hargreaves Page 4
