Beneath Strange Stars

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “I’m…I’m terribly sorry, Professor,” Harkness stammered. “I knew you had been injured on Mars, but…I had no idea…” He stood, composed himself, and looked directly into Professor Miles’ crystalline eyes. “Professor Miles, will you accompany me to Mars, as a special advisor to my expedition?” After a moment, he added: “I feel you might help yourself even more than you will help the expedition. Please?”

  Gears whirring and levers clicking, Professor Miles nodded.

  “Capital!” Harkness exclaimed. “We have much to do, for I am determined we shall leave in a fortnight.”

  So, two weeks later, Professor Hezekiah Miles found himself bound for a planet to which he had sworn he would never return. After his resurrection, there had been a spate of invitations, for the expertise he brought to expeditions, excavations and investigations on Mars was not easily found in any other man. But, as each request encountered a refusal, the invitations tapered off, then vanished altogether, and so he had been quite surprised when his former colleague had referred Harkness to him. The general feeling was that although the medical and engineering sciences could reconstruct the body, there was little that could be done for the inner man, that not even the greatest alienist could mend his mind from the mental trauma attending the aethership accident.

  Miles let them think what they wanted.

  An fiction of an aethership mishap was much easier to understand than the truth.

  Miles spent most of the journey to Mars in his cabin, studying journals, papers and maps, Harkness his only visitor. Ever since discovering that Miles’ accident had occurred upon the selfsame plateau indicated by the Martian artefact, Harkness had pumped Miles for information about the region, but Miles had remained vague, explaining that the ill-fated expedition had focussed entirely on gathering botanical samples for the Martian Royal Geographic Society, not on any physical survey. At times, Harkness accepted Miles’ nebulous answers, but other times regarded the scientist with something that approached suspicion.

  After entering the Red Planet’s attenuated atmosphere, they made for Syrtis Major, where they registered with the authorities and purchased supplies. Setting out, Miles and Harkness worked with the aethership captain and navigator to plot their approach to the desolate and isolated plateau in the Northern Martian Highlands.

  “This is where you want to set down and establish your main base,” Miles said, indicating a sector on the map. “Very little remains, but it was the site of Jerrack-Dor’s citadel, or so I believe.”

  It was mid-spring in the northern hemisphere, but upon that ancient plateau it was no warmer than a deep winter day in the canal lowlands. The light was dim and oblique, as in autumnal Scotland, when the sunlight engenders melancholia, shadows always seem to creep closer when no one is looking.

  The first several days were spent in setting up camp and conducting general surveys of the area, preparing the detailed maps that would later be presented to the Martian Geographic Society.

  Miles was left to his own devices. He spent the time roaming through a landscape that was as alien as it was familiar.

  It was so strange being back on Mars. For the longest time he had resisted the urge to return, so much so that at times he almost actually believed he did not want to return…almost.

  He was a strange sight to others of the expedition, and he did not mind their avoidance. They accepted his engineered form, with its flow of steam and pressurized gases, with a clockwork heart self-wound by his movements. They knew his activators drew upon the all-pervasive aether, just as the big interplanetary craft did. None of that was strange. What offended them was how he wandered about in khaki shorts and blouse, a pith helmet upon his head.

  Because there was so little left of the physical man he once had been, he needed only what was necessary for modesty and societal conventions, while all the others, even the Martian workers they had brought up from Syrtis Major, centre of British imperialism on Mars, were so bundled in greatcoats and scarves that getting around was something of a chore, and they wore the sort of caps favoured by Andean tribes, with earflaps to protect from frostbite.

  Professor Miles was well aware how much the other members of the expedition hated him.

  What they did not realise, however, was how much he hated them and they humanity.

  After a week of trekking here and there over that ancient godforsaken ill-lit legend-haunted plateau, making them follow one clue after another, Professor Miles led them to the crevasse that hid the vault of the beast. It was just as he remembered.

  The journey downward was quite difficult, and they lost three people in the narrow defile within the thin crevasse almost hidden by the dense scrub and copse of sulpherwood trees. One human, a Spaniard named de Vaca, whom Miles detested because of the way he always watched him out of the corners of his eyes, lost his footing and plunged into the depths of the plateau; two Martian workers were carried to their deaths when an overhead rock gave way and bowled them over. Theirs was an unfortunate loss because their muscles would have come in handy, but Miles felt no great empathy for them – they were Martians, they knew the reputation of this place, and they should have known better than to accept human gold in payment for blasphemy.

  At the bottom of the crevasse, Miles contrived to let Harkness pass ahead of him, to enter the darkest thickets and shine his electric torch into the heavy gloom beyond, and thus become the ‘first’ to see the doorway, battered and moss covered. It was Harkness’ discovery, and his excitement eclipsed any emotions he might have felt about the loss of the men.

  “By God, Professor Miles, we did it!” he exclaimed. “This is it! It has to be the Vault of Cthulhu! Those glyphs! I can’t…Professor, please examine those markings and tell me they are the same as on the Ponape Tablet.! You men, get back and make way for the Professor!”

  With Harkness holding his torch high, hand trembling, Miles made a show of examining the weathered carvings through a powerful glass, comparing them to his notebook.

  “Precisely the same, Harkness,” Miles announced.

  Harkness nodded and turned to the assembled men. “We’re going to lose what little light we have in less than three hours. I want the camp moved down to the bottom of this crevasse before then. Please move with purpose, gentlemen!”

  “What about de Vaca and the two Martians, Harkness?” asked Meeton, an engineer.

  “What?” For a moment, Harkness looked confused, then he frowned. “Returning their bodies to the ship would slow you down too much. After the new base camp is established, we’ll bury them.”

  None of the men looked pleased by the decision, but none dared speak against it.

  “And,” Harkness added, “inform the Captain of the change in plans. He can keep a skeleton crew to man and maintain the aethership, but I want all others down here. Keep a close watch on the Martians – I don’t want any of them bolting.”

  “What are you going to do, Harkness?” Miles asked when they were alone.

  “In the morning, I mean to gain entrance to the Vault.”

  “Is that wise?”

  Harkness scowled darkly. “I did not come all the way to Mars, Professor Miles, did not sacrifice three men, to not enter the vault.”

  “Yes,” Miles agreed unexpectedly. “That’s the spirit.”

  The last light of day vanished from the bottom of the crevasse long before the pale sun set below the edge of the plateau. Final preparation of the new camp was accomplished by firelight, the tents erected and the evening meal prepared.

  As the men sat about the campfires the Martian labourers, who always insisted on keeping to their own company, away from the humans, began jabbering wildly and loudly in their own tongue and gesticulating madly.

  “What the devil are they on about?” Harkness demanded. “I can’t follow what they’re saying. Too fast!” He turned to Miles. “What is it, Professor?”

  Miles listened intently, then barked sharply at the Martians in their own language. They sett
led into silence, almost cowed before the clockwork human, but were still a restive crew, trembling and looking around madly, as if at any moment they might be set upon.

  “Professor?” Harkness urged.

  “The Purple Spiders of Leng,” Miles explained motioning toward the stone walls rising nearly sheer about then, “and the flashing diamond eyes of the Mhi-Gho – they see them, fear they might return to life, punish us all for trespassing. It seems our Martian friends have now decided that their cultural legends trump your gold.”

  Harkness gazed up the walls and saw what had by day escaped their view – monstrous images painted upon the stone, now glowing softly in the gloom.

  “They see the images as guardians,” Miles explained. “They want to leave because they think we are doomed.”

  Harkness frowned deeply. “No one leaves,” he growled in the Martian language, then in English. “Understand?”

  Reluctantly the Martians nodded, and they drew closer together against the darkness. Harkness gazed at the other members of the expedition with frigid eyes. They all nodded, or simply looked to the fire, which now seemed so small in the immensity of the night.

  An armed guard was posted at the trail leading upward, though only a fool would have tried to traverse such a narrow and dangerous path in the dark. One campfire was kept going, but its fight against the darkness was a feeble one. Beyond its small sphere of light the night was absolute, except for the ancient monsters that watched over them with luminescent eyes.

  Hours later, the silence was shattered by explosions above . The camp was roused to a man. They discovered the Martian workers had fled and the guard left to secure the trail had been murdered. A party sent up the perilous trail returned with the dire news that the aethership had been destroyed.

  “It’s spread across the plateau,” the scouts reported to Harness. “Everything’s burning. An explosion of some kind. No survivors, none we could find.”

  Harkness regarded the men looking expectantly at him. They knew exactly what he knew – their only communication with the outside world, both the wireless and the aether-wave sets, had been destroyed with the ship.

  “There’s still hope,” Miles said into the silence. “Patrols do sweep this far northward – that was how I was found after the accident. Our flight plan was filed with the authorities in Syrtis Major. It won’t be long before we’re missed.”

  The men looked visibly relieved at this information.

  “Professor Miles is right,” Harkness told them, following up on the moment. “We are not at all stranded here. We will be rescued. Until then, there is much work to get done. We must complete our work before the rescue ship arrives. We cannot let this set back stop us from doing what we came to do. True, without the Martians the work will be harder but we must persevere.”

  So inspired were the men that when dawn came filtering wanly down the crevasse, the expedition started work almost as if nothing had happened. Harkness strove hard to keep every man completely occupied. Those not needed to document the area geographically and cartographically were put to work on trying to find some way to breach the vault door.

  “I just don’t understand about the Martian workers,” Harkness said softly to Miles. “They were scared, but seemed under control when we turned in. The guard’s murder does not make sense. Lowland Martians are not known for violent natures, which leaves me at a total loss to account for the destruction of the aethership.”

  “Their cultural traditions and taboos finally caught up with them,” Miles explained. “I was a bit surprised when the wages you offered them overcame their natural trepidation about this region, but they seemed a sturdy lot.”

  “And the destruction of the aethership?”

  “They tried to escape the plateau in the aethership, and their lack of experience led to the explosion,” Miles explained. “What they did they did out of fear. Fear is, at its base, irrational. You can go barking mad trying to explain the irrational.”

  Harkness shrugged, shook his head and returned to the matter of the vault door. Despite its great antiquity, its battered nature and the lichen that had etched into the metal, it resisted their best efforts. Neither brute force nor mechanical tools nor corrosive chemicals could breach the sealed portal. When the light began to fail, Harkness wanted to keep the men at it by the light of arc-lamps, but fuel for the generators had to be conserved. Besides, the men were discouraged and dead tired. To stave off a mutiny, Harkness put off work till first light the next day.

  Earlier in the day, a party had returned to the site of the wreck, but the devastation by the light of day was even more complete than they had estimated in darkness. There were no survivors, and what supplies they managed to salvage added to their stores only minimally. Of the Martians there was no sign at all, either bodies in the wreck or that they had set out on foot.

  After a sullen and silent supper, the men turned in, pulling lots for guard duty. All of them regarded Harkness with the treacherous glare for which all captains keep a weather eye, but their gazes were almost benevolent compared to the harsh, furtive looks they threw toward Miles when he seemed preoccupied.

  What the men did not realise, was that Miles was always watching them, especially when he appeared not to be.

  At the neap of the night a shrill scream cut through the silent camp. Men spilled from their tents, gathering around the fire with whatever tool they could manage as weapons. Less than half the men were present. The watch guards were dead, and many men lay in their blood-soaked cots.

  “The Martians have come back!” one of the men screamed hysterically. “They’ve come to kill us all!”

  Harkness slapped him hard across the face. “Get a grip on yourself, man!”

  “No Martian cut these men’s throats,” said Caruthers, a botanist, letting his gaze sweep evenly over his companions.

  “Don’t be an ass, Caruthers!” Harkness snapped. “We have enough problems without turning on each other.”

  “Something came up out of the pit,” averred Dennison, a navvy who had been sent down from the aethership as a porter. “Smell that?” He sniffed the air. “Death. Old death.”

  “Start up the generators,” Harkness ordered.

  The generators hissed to life, fuel oil heating the liquid medium that had replaced inefficient water in modern steam engines. The arc-lamps sputtered and flared. As the light steadied, everyone gasped. Revealed in the harsh light of the arc-lamps was the vault yawning open. A fearsome sound came echoing from the depths, and their already strained nerves broke. Despite Harkness’ harsh commands, then entreaties and pleas, the men broke and ran. From the screams that followed. It was certain many lost their lives on the treacherous trail. If any reached the surface, all they would find was a slow, lingering, inevitable death.

  Of the entire expedition, only Harkness and Miles remained at the bottom of the crevasse, surrounded by ancient ghosts and confronted by a terror from beyond time. Harkness left Miles, then returned mere moments later, armed with two Webley Bulldog revolvers and a .500 Nitro Express. He tried to give one of the Bulldogs to Miles, but was refused, and he returned the weapon to his holster.

  “I have other means of defending myself, thanks to the same madmen who thought it was a good idea to transform a man into a monstrosity.” Wicked blades emerged from his hands. What appeared to be the barrels of aether-oscillators appeared atop each forearm. “Designed by the clever lads at BSA, powered by the same aether-energy collator that powers portions of my frame.”

  “Professor Miles,” Harkness said slowly, looking at Miles’ hands, “is that blood on those blades.”

  Miles looked down. “I did not have time to tidy up.”

  “Professor, you…”

  “I’m really surprised you remained, Harkness,” Miles said. “I thought you might flee with the others. Surprised, but pleasantly so. I thought I would have to enter the vault alone, as I did before, but I’m pleased that will not be the case.”

 
; “The aethership, the Martians, the men…”

  “Unfortunate, but very necessary.”

  “And your accident?”

  “When the patrol craft found me that morning, it was much easier to relate a believable lie than to confess the incredible truth,” Miles explained. “Do I tell them everything was destroyed and everyone killed in a terrible accident, or that we were attacked by the servitors of an alien godlike being imprisoned before mankind’s rise from the age of unpolished stone? What would you have said? Besides, I never thought I would live, and I had the foolish notion of protecting others from the same forbidden knowledge.”

  Other fearsome cries echoed up from the depths.

  “I never thought I would return,” Miles murmured. “Now I am glad that I kept the truth to myself, else you might not have come.”

  “Revenge against the beast? Is that what this is?”

  Miles laughed, or it sounded like an attempt, but it lacked either mirth or humanity. “Can the ant take revenge against the boot? No, I seek something greater, something I glimpsed for an instant in the gaze of a dreaming god.”

  “You’re stark barking mad!”

  Accompanied by a cacophony of whirs, clicks and hisses, Miles shrugged. “You may be right, Harkness.”

  A low roar, bestial and full of menace, sounded hollowly within the vault. Harkness stepped forward.

  “You should return to the surface,” Miles said. “You might make it. Join the others who escaped one doom to find another.”

  “There will be no search, will there? No rescue?”

  “As I said, Miles, I did not come this far not to enter the vault.”

  Harkness stepped through the brush, into the full glare of the arc-lamps, his rifle at the ready. He heard Miles coming up behind, but he concentrated on the yawning vault.

  “Did you open the vault somehow?”

  “Like any vault, it has a key,” Miles replied. “You would never have discovered it on your own.”