THEY pushed through the swinging doors and walked to the bar, past tables circled by the bleary-eyed dregs of Iopa and the “girls” who consorted with them.
Mary was a washed-out blonde who could easily have passed for forty, in the dusk with the lights behind her. She wore a rubber apron over her magnificent girth, and leaned on the bar, watching her customers with a fishy, dispirited eye.
“Hullo, Princess,” was Sloane’s greeting. “Get your cloak. We’ve come to rescue you. Or don’t you want to be rescued?”
“Yeah?” said Mary. “Who ya kiddin’ ?”
“Bright-eyes,” said Red, “we are happy. We are very happy. We’ve been happy all night. We would like everybody to be happy. So you can give me a tremendous slug of kisju. Give everybody a tremendous slug of kisju . . . even this frogfaced gentleman next to me, name of Sloane. Mart, meet Mary. Mary, Mart.”
He liked the sound of that. He repeated it several times.
“Mary,” said Sloane, “may we serve you, my pretty? Can we slay some evil knight for you?”
Mary decided that the best way to get rid of these nasty people was to fall in with their ideas, he pointed out a man at the other end of the bar, with his back to them. “See that guy?” she asked. “I don’t like his face. I can’t see it from here, but I still don’t like it. Sorta slug him for me, will ya?”
“Sure. Sure,” Red agreed happily. “Anything you say, Mary.”
He picked up a handy bottle and advanced on the unsuspecting victim, licking his lips and walking on tiptoe. He raised the bottle.
It had come to Sloane, meanwhile, that there was something oddly familiar about the man with his back toward them. Now he knew. The fact that the stranger wore civilian clothes had thrown him off for a moment, but he recognized him now.
“Red!” he yelled. “Don’t hit that guy! It’s—”
Too late! The bottle smashed down.
Sergeant MacBride rose unsteadily to his feet and combed glass out of his hair. He looked uncertainly about him with glazed eyes until he spotted the astonished faces of Mart and Keating. The sergeant turned apoplectic; his collar seemed to be choking him.
“You!” he said. With great and obvious self-control he pulled himself together. “Come on,” he said, calmly taking each of the soldiers by an arm. “Come quietly. Come very quietly. I want to have a long, long talk with you.”
Sloane paused at the doors. He looked back.
“Mary,” he said, “that was a helluva dirty trick.”
THE drills on the parade ground of the Iopa Reservation were long, tedious, tiring, and much-cursed, but necessary. Without this preliminary training the Tellies’ troops would not have lasted a day in tire desert. Drill—drill—drill—and drill some more. Marking time full pack, marching up and down . . . squads right and squads left, right front into line . . . and then the dirty son-of-a-gun—he gives us double time . . .
Exercises under the noonday sun under the supervision of barking non-coms. And the fifteen-mile marches out into the desert, where the men set up camp, cook and eat their noontime meal, rest for an hour, and return to Iopa. “Picnics,” these little trips were called.
Toward evening, one day, Sloane and Keating sat with Barry Fawnes on the latter’s cot, polishing their equipment and talking of people they had known back on Earth.
“Speaking of people,” said Keating suddenly, “where’re all the natives? Mart and I have been here for eight months now, and not a lousy Martian have we seen. You’d think they’d pop up once in a while, running a shop, or as guides, or something.”
“That’s been puzzling me, too,” put in Sloane. “Not only the fact that you never see them, but that no one ever mentions them or refers to them in any way. Yet there must be some about some place. Too many things point to it. Their buildings, for instance; old, but not terribly so. Not more than one or two hundred years, at any rate. And the roads . . . magnificent! Paved smoother than anything on Earth. And yet no Martians. Surely they can’t all have died off before we arrived!”
Fawnes looked at his reflection in the bit of metal he was industriously rubbing, and glanced up at them. “Oh, there are Martians, certainly. Not the ones that built the roads and buildings, however. Those structures are at least a thousand years old; the roads are older yet. Out in the desert you will find ruins that will make those buildings you saw look like a new housing project.
“The first Martians seen at close range were those that greeted the first spaceship to land. They waited until the ship had grounded and the crew emerged, then killed them all and lugged the ship off into the desert and buried it there. They did the same thing to the second ship three years later, and they plagued merry hell out of the first colonists. Kept ’em in a perpetual state of siege, you know. When more Earthmen, and more, arrived, though, the Martians grew quite cautious and withdrew into their abandoned cities in the Outlands. They’ve always been rather a mystery to everyone. I’ve been in the service for five years, and in all that time I’ve seen but three and those were at least a mile from me at the time. They never seem to come near the cities any more.”
“What do they look like?” Sloane questioned.
Fawnes shrugged. “From what little I’ve seen, and from what I’ve heard, which might very well be fable, they’re eight-foot horrors, oval-shaped and greenish. They get around pretty swiftly, though no one knows how—they may or may not have legs. You see, nobody at all knows anything about them.”
Red shuddered. “Nice pets,” he said, and spat, accurately inundating a tiny lizard investigating the mysteries of a crack in the cement floor. The lizard scurried away.
Martin looked at him sorrowfully, a shocked, hurt expression twisting his lean face. “Oh, you low, vulgar person!” he exclaimed, mournfully, shaking his head.
DISCIPLINE was even more strict at Camp Shroyer, whither the two were transferred, but orders couldn’t stop the men from thinking. The colonel’s orderly heard something at the keyhole of a conference, and told the mess-sergeant. The mess-sergeant told the sutler-sergeant, who told just one corporal, who told a friend who happened to be a private, and in an hour it was all over the post.
Sloane sat on the edge of his bunk, his feet in a pan of warm water, after the inevitable march into the middle of nowhere and back, when Red shattered his lauguorous calm. “I hear,” said Red, “about those things—”
Mart looked at him with murder in his eye. “That’s just fine,” he said acidly. “Look, Red, I was happy until you came in. Won’t you please go very far away? What things?”
The big man goggled.
“Don’t you know? Where’ve you been? I got it from a personal friend of the commandant—we march tomorrow!” Sloane sank back with a groan. His face turned scarlet and his eyes bulged dangerously. “Oh, God! Oh, you—you—! Of course we march tomorrow . . .”
“No, no! I mean, against the Greenies, Mart! Aren’t you excited? Aren’t you scared?”
The miraculously recovered man smiled quietly. “Not yet, kid. But I will be. It’s only the lad without any gray matter that isn’t afraid of anything. You’ve got to conquer fear to be brave, and here’s how you can do it. You know how to handle a posi-rifle; sometimes the gun backfires, and you get your face burned, but it isn’t often. And when a good marksman aims and fires, he can call his shots. Well—you’re the shot. Somebody . . . something aimed you in one direction and whatever you think you’re doing you’re going ahead the way you were aimed, and nowhere else. That’s predestination, my son—and if you can’t overcome your fear of the Greenies, or if you’re all set to go in and rip them open and take their hides home on your belt, you won’t do what you aren’t meant to do by the man behind the gun.”
Red scratched his head. He had been listening and trying to understand, when all he knew was that he wasn’t afraid any more, and that he felt closer than ever before to his companion of drunken days and nights. He said, “Damned if I see what you mean, but I’ll take your word f
or it, Martin. But we gotta get ready for inspection in a couple of hours. Let me have your rifle; I’ll polish it up a little.”
“Nuts to you, y’big lug!” said Sloane.
“I’ve got arms, haven’t I?”
CHAPTER THREE
On the March
THE guns glistened dully in the hot spears of the Martian sun as a snaky column of one hundred or so men, in neutral-colored uniforms, marched with the long, swinging stride that produced maximum efficiency for the air and gravity of the red planet. In the fifth rank, side by side, strode Red and Sloane. They had been ten long days on the road, and soon there would be no more road—just sand. Sloane knew what that meant: sun from above and sun from below, made more terrible by its reflection from the blistering floor of the desert. The flexol capes were sweaty and uncomfortable, but a man who neglected to don the garment that enveloped his head and shoulders in crinkling folds would first be blistered, then driven mad by the harsh, pitiless radiations. And when the sun shot below the flat horizon and the icy winds swept around the little, two-man shelters, there was no relief.
Why were they fighting for possession of a dead planet? Why were they marching into hells undreamed of back on happy little Earth? Not one-quarter of the men knew, but it was for their home world that they threw their lives away.
Mars is a pauper among the worlds, for air and water, but its treasures of minerals are almost limitless. Dreaded cancer’s claws had been at the throat of the Third Planet ever since the dawn of man; with the Age of Machines they spread wider and gripped all the tighter.
It was as though the spirit of disease had loosened its clutch for a space, but to jeer at man, and then to haul him back to the slime.
Then the priceless luano crystals were discovered on Mars; tiny gleaming things that meant life to Earth and its peoples. The ships that drove through space were loaded with the stuff; it was for that that the Tellies were stationed on the bleak, red world. For there had drifted rumors back to Tellus—ugly rumors of great, horrible green things. The miners who lived there and had established true homes; the “wanted” men and women who had found brief haven far from the scene of their crimes; the giddy creatures of wealth who scurried to Mars for the thrills and the novelty; the seekers of easy wealth who probed the low, tough hills for gems and metals; and the men of science who had come to the strange planet for the sake of the new knowledge—something was wrong, they all said. No, not all, for not all were there. It was conceivable that men had died of the myriad vices to be found in the jerry-built sin-centers, but the terrified whispers persisted and grew. Caravans had vanished. Colonies had been utterly extinguished; not a trace of them ever found to prove their previous existence. And when the supply of luano was checked, the Tellies came into being.
This was to be no mere punitive patrol, thought Sloane, easing his rifle on his shoulder. This was a strong force of one hundred and fifty picked men. The time was near when—
There was a faint musical chiming in his ears; by his side Heimroth, the German, was sinking so slowly and quietly to his knees; then he sprawled flatly and limply. The column dispersed to the sides of the road as one hundred men assumed one hundred defensive positions, but no enemy was in sight, nor did any further casualties ensue.
A sliver of copper ten inches long protruded from the body’s throat. Tersely the M. O. gave his statement, the peculiarly deadly nature of the missile lay in the fact that it spun so swiftly and violently in its flight that it twisted and tore veins, muscles, and tendons as far as eighteen inches from the actual wound. A nasty weapon.
The column moved on, some men sweating and white-faced-with fear, hardly able to pack their rifles. Others were glad of the few moments’ rest that tragedy had afforded them.
They reached the road’s end, and without a pause marched on, their eyes hardened for the glare of sun and sand, readjusting their flexol capes on the move and cursing as the recalcitrant material scratched chins and foreheads. The air gradually grew chilly, and a cold, thin wind soughed around them, twisting the sand into fantastic shapes. At the company commander’s orders the column halted and bivouaced on the spot. What point to fussiness, when each patch of sand is precisely like its neighbor? Tents were pitched in a neat, circular formation, outposts established. Within twenty minutes the mobile battle-unit had become a quiescent field of furry hillocks, and the sudden Martian night fell.
SILENTLY sentries changed during the night; the first hint of dawn saw a sketchy breakfast distributed to the men, and the striking of the tents. The Tellies were on the march.
A soldier without a watch couldn’t have told what time it was when it happened, so embracing was the monotony, but all at once two men staggered, clutched at their bodies, and fell, and some heard faint tinklings. The line held and went on, but there were heard mutterings against the officers who were driving them into slaughter; insensibly the tension increased until, about noon, the first file screamed and pointed ahead. Rapidly the word spread along the column, “Towers . . . it’s one of their cities . . . towers—” There was an unconscious tightening of grips on rifle butts, an involuntary hitching up of equipment.
Red turned a puzzled face to Sloane: “Are we stopping here? What’s up—do we storm the city?”
Sloane smiled. “If there’s one thing I learned in the army, my boy, it’s that officers are the lowest form of animal in the System. But don’t forget that they have things in their little black bags of tricks that you don’t know about. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be officers. If they don’t know what they’re doing, nobody does.”
“Yeah,” Red worried, unconvinced, “but does anybody?”
They could see the city then, if city it was. Towers of red rock, squared and brutal, rising around a central walled plain, it seemed to be. In response to orders the men deployed to a spearheaded formation, Captain Suchminski at the point. They wormed up to the squat towers—there was no sign of life, inimical or otherwise. Even the usual tiny lizards were lacking. Suchminski, taking a rather long chance for the effect on the morale of his company, stood up and gave the order to take the city. Up to great, massive doors in the central enclosure’s wall they marched, and through them. Without instructions several of the soldiers swung the great gates shut and dropped the precisely-hung bar that locked them.
Two-man patrols, dispatched to investigate the city, soon returned, and the entire detachment was drawn up into line; Suchminski was to address them.
“Stand at ease, men,” he opened. “You may smoke, if you like, but please pay attention to what I have to say. I like speechmaking as little as you do, but this is quite necessary.
“You men are well-trained—the top-rankers of the Army. You have been hand-picked for a very important job, one that will be found in all the histories of the future . . . the job of cleaning up the vermin that infest this planet. These-monsters have been called by various names; ‘greenies’ is one; a fanciful classicist who spent his sabbatical on Mars gave the rumored natives the name of ‘lamiae’—loathsome beasts from the dregs of mythology. Enough to say that we are here to stamp them out. To give our Earth her chance for life! These blasts have tampered with, and shall eventually bring about a stoppage of the production of our Martian luana crystals, if unchecked. Our difficulty is that we are totally in ignorance of the nature of these creatures, save that they are bent on the destruction of human life on Mars, and so, eventually, on the extinction of man on his own Tellus.
“This city we are now in is typical of the mystery that surrounds the greenies. Why is it here? Why is it—in perfect condition—abandoned? Why have we not been attacked in force? We do not know! And there’s the whole story. We know only that their phychology is one of logic: to stop our crystal supply they slaughter our miners; to deter further colonists they horribly mutilate those they snare. Yet no one has ever seen them. That is all—absolutely all—we know. We are here to find facts, to draw conclusions from those facts. That is all.”
; A long silence followed; then, “Company, attention! First Sergeant. Dismiss the company.”
THE wind was not as fierce that night; the walls that surrounded them broke its back. Sloane and his friend found it perfectly comfortable to remain awake and talk.
“What Such’ really said was that, whether we know it or not, this is a scientific expedition.”
“Yeah?”
“The lamiae have a weak spot, presumably . . . a weak point or one which may, by some strange freak of fortune, be vulnerable to Tellurians though useless to any race constituted slightly otherwise. And our job is to find that potential Achilles heel—though we don’t know if they have feet or not. This is the first time, I know, that an outpost has actually been flung into the teeth of the things. It’s a dare, a chip on the shoulder. The Central Tactical Committee hopes that one or two of us will survive the expected ‘molestation’, as they say in the reports. But nobody has gotten out alive, up to now. You get stories from hopheads and bats, but that’s about all . . .”
“Yeah.”
“Why doesn’t Such’ examine the problem analytically? Their fundamental characteristic is a strangeness, as far as we know, to Earthly attitudes and concepts. You have to fling yourself out of your body as far as you can—If you were a greeny, Red, how would you go about killing you? We won’t find that the proper weapon to use is the positron bolt or a bomb, when we get a clue. Those things are different, I’m convinced—as incredibly alien to us as anything could ever be.
That must be why we hate them; probably why they hate us as they do . . . And yet I can understand their position. They’re fighting for their planet, just as we’re fighting for ours . . .”
He paused. Red said:
“I once heard an old rumdum in a Frisco dive say that he’d seen them. Yeah, seen the greenies! He was high as a kite on ethyl—he said that after he met them he swore he’d stay drunk till the day he died.”
Collected Short Fiction Page 5
