The loudspeaker sounded the alert. Major Noel’s voice came on. “I am about to fire a small nuclear missile at the tip of the lichen peninsula. Range 6100 yards. There is no danger for us except from flash. All ports will now be covered. Repeat. All ports will now be covered and will remain covered until the all-clear is announced.”
Humphries exhaled. “He’s going to blow hell out of it!” He twisted the control switch for the panels, and the metal lids grated shut over the observation ports.
The speaker said, “Stand by for firing. Three minutes till firing.”
Dane visualized the thing streaking on the course over which fire control would guide it to the precise destination. A short comet tail of blue fire would trail it. It would arch high and fall to the searing, blinding fission that would dispatch and disperse the target decreed for it by its master’s invisible finger.
Three minutes was a long time. Dane stood woodenly as the sweep second hand slipped around the dial of the switchboard clock. For a nuclear missile, even a small one, 6100 yards range was close for comfort. Maybe they had decided to fire it now before the range shortened, though the object wasn’t plain. The explosion should scorch and sear off the entire tip of the lichen peninsula, but hadn’t it occurred to them that the lichen beds could sprout another peninsula? Especially if the present one was really the result of attraction by the metal of the Far Venture?
“Now!” Humphries shouted.
They stared at the photo plane table. The missile would move slowly enough. No need for hurry and supersonic speed here on Mars. It would pass circumspectly above the sands, its nose following its invisible pre-ordered path.
But when it did come to its detonation, there was only a wink of light on the plane table to announce it. Then as the reception image of the cloud spread deliberately, the burn area showed clearly on the glass.
“All clear!” the loudspeaker said. “All clear.”
Humphries’ face worked. “That’ll give them something to think about! He thrust suddenly at the port-cover switches, shoving at them.
The familiar explosion cloud hung in the Martian upper sky, spreading like surly contamination away from its funnel stem. Dane went close to the glassite port that faced the thing. He stood there for a long time, vague and wordless in mind, letting the feeling of ill-being vegetate, without fixation, without effort, gradually relaxing against it.
When the tension had ebbed, the troubled thought slowly emerged. Across the many millions of miles they had come, to be met with the old pattern of violence and to offer it up in return. The high skill of Earth expressed for a new world in the form of a nuclear bomb. Even against insensate plants the sign of limitless destruction.
24
IT BEGAN with darting filaments of lichen. They sprang out from the blasted end of the peninsula in radial tracery, fanning a net over the quarter-mile blotch of the burn. Dane strained his eyes at the scope. The net was filling in. In a minute it was a knob head on the stem of the peninsula. Filaments spurted ahead of the knob, spreading wider and inclining toward the spacecraft. In five minutes they had grown into mile-long streamers. Then, as suddenly as it had commenced, the phenomenon ceased.
“Dr. Dane to command post,” the speaker blared.
Dane hurried down the ladders. Before he swung off on 1-high deck he could hear argument, Wertz’s hoarse voice obscuring others.
The small command bay was crowded. Its door was open and men were overflowing into the passage. Major Noel sat at the command desk, idly snapping the key of the intercom. He nodded to Dane. “The gentleman of the press. We were discussing the lichens. Some of these other gentlemen are worried about the defense of the vehicle.” He was practically affable.
Wertz broke in again. “I’ve been trying to tell him the things are too dangerous to risk getting any closer to us. In the first place, it was a big mistake to use the fission bomb on them. Now we’ve got to get over there and burn off their growing ends.” He looked at his friend. “Even Cruzate here goes along with that. We all agree on that.”
Dane recognized the appeal for a recruit. He saw Forrest, the bacteriologist, and Wade, the zoologist, nod. The archaeologist Steffany kept his opinion to himself.
“It was a mistake to use fission on them,” Wertz repeated. “The radiation must have stimulated hell out of them. You’re not up against a growth like a plant. A better word for it would be a ‘formation.’ These things may resemble Earth lichens, but in one way they’re different as hell. They’re biochemical in the most literal sense of the word. They’re not plants. They’re biochemicals. With the accent on the chemical aspect of their existence. We saw the evidence right here in the Far Venture. What happened here proved it. They form themselves chemically, like crystals in a saturated solution. The fission radiation maybe stimulated new plants to form like hell.”
“What we’ve got to think about, at least what I have got to think about,” Noel said, “is the balance between any danger from the lichens and our resources to combat them. I’ve got to assume that if they keep on advancing I’ll have to keep them away from any contact with the Far Venture’s hull. Now when I think about that, I’ve got to think about how much fire fuel I have in hand to expend—maybe a total of eight or nine hours. I can’t defend a perimeter of three miles’ radius with that. Supposing we burn off the advance now, and then they come on again from a dozen other starts? I intend to hold a perimeter of about a hundred yards to a hundred and fifty in radius. I can hold that all the way around. We just wait until we can see the whites of their eyes, that’s all.”
Dane said, “There’s always the thought that actually we may completely misunderstand why the lichens are thrusting out at us. Just to hazard a wild guess, they might be a vehicle by which the Martians are approaching us. Maybe, for example, the Martians are parasitic upon them. Maybe they live within the plants, like bacteria in a blood stream.”
“Nothing wrong with your imagination,” Forrest spoke up. “But there really is something screwy about the whole life setup on this minus-two-dollar-an-acre ball of real estate. I don’t think we’ve given enough weight to it, except to be mighty puzzled by it. That’s the total absence of any sign or semblance of life on this planet and certainly in this area except these damn lichens. It just doesn’t add up. I’ll admit the lichen is a low form, but it’s a lot higher than many other forms of life. Bacteria, for instance. Why aren’t there any native bacteria observable here? With a big part of the surface covered with vegetation, there certainly should be a wide variety of unicellular organisms. What I’m getting at is how do these lichens have an apparent monopoly, as far as we know, on the life principle here?”
“Except for our mysteriously hidden Martians,” Dane reminded him.
“There is fossil evidence of the existence of blue-green algae and unicellular fungi on Earth two billion years ago” Wade said.
“Exactly,” Forrest answered the zoologist. “How do you doubt such forms existed on Mars? How about the algae-like components of the lichen plants here? Captured sometime surely from someplace by the fungus component. Did all the other one-celled organisms commit suicide? Why can’t we find any trace of evolutionary development? What I’m getting to is did the lichens come along later and somehow destroy every other form of life on the planet?”
“Oxygen,” Steffany asked, “how about the lack of oxygen? Wouldn’t that prevent any other form of life except something like the lichens with special apparatus for making their own?”
“There are anaerobic bacteria in the soil of Earth,” Forrest told him. “They exist in the absence of free oxygen. Why not here? No,” he went on, “I hardly can escape a conclusion that in some way all the forms of life that we might reasonably expect have been suppressed except the lichens.”
“How about Dane’s Martians?” Steffany put in.
“Obviously they have survived too,” Forrest said. “Maybe the lichens fit someway into their economy or plan of existence. That’s just it. How about the Mart
ians? I wouldn’t want to say no to the idea that maybe they know all about these lichens and their peculiar growing actions. And maybe a lot more. It’s damned funny we can’t find any trace of bacterial life here. There’s nothing in the environment to forbid it. It suggests manipulation.”
Noel said, “Well, one thing we do know, we’ve got lichens if we haven’t got anything else. From what we know of them, we don’t want them in contact with the Far Venture. We can’t risk it. Any plan we make has got to be based on that. We start out with that.”
Wertz nodded. “That’s right for sure. We already know that they can attack timageel in their aggravated state. It could very well be that in their forming state—growing state if you want to call it that—they are especially acid-producing. Maybe the older formations that have been standing for a while are weaker. That could explain our walking through them in pressure suits. But it is precisely their growing peaks that the peninsula is addressing to us. Obviously if it reaches the spacecraft, it will impinge newly forming lichens against the timageel shell.”
“Major Beloit and Mr. Vining have set noon tomorrow as the earliest we can possibly attempt a take-off,” Noel said. “The lichens now stand at a range of only forty-two hundred yards. Since the bomb strike, their advance has been a good two thousand yards. That took only five minutes. At that rate it’s possible for them to be on us in ten minutes. Even if they have exhausted their spurt and return to the rate of growth we observed earlier this afternoon, then they are still capable of a hundred yards in a few minutes. Say six hundred yards an hour. That’s too close for comfort, even if the night cold stops them dead. Seven hours would bring them here. Seven growing hours. Say four or five left before the cold gets them today. Any way you figure it, they’re capable of getting to us before noon tomorrow, if not a whole lot sooner.”
Dane felt a hand on his shoulder. It was the flight surgeon. Captain King murmured a “Pardon me” and pushed his little round belly past to get close to Noel and whisper in his ear.
Noel gazed at him with expressionless face. “I looked in on the infirmary myself at 1530,” he said. “They were all right then.”
Captain King bent over his ear again.
Noel jerked aside. “Speak out. These men are in this too.”
King straightened up out of his pose. “As you wish, sir,” King said, all in a stiff mouthful. “I was just going to say that I had been expecting them both to regain consciousness within a few hours. Both their respirations were good. Hearts steady. Color improving rapidly.”
“I read your reports regularly,” Noel interrupted him.
King glanced nervously at the circle of faces “It’s this” His voice dropped almost to a whisper again. “No one went in there. The nurse was on duty. He says he didn’t move from the front desk since he went around with you. He’s been sitting there reading ever since, until he went in to fill in the charts a few minutes ago and found them. Nobody could have gotten in there without him knowing it!”
“If it’s not a military secret,” Dane broke in, “what’s this all about?
Noel stared at him a moment. “Beemis and Jackson are dead,” he said slowly. “Both of them. Killed dead,” he added. He stood up in the middle of the quick gabble. “I’ve got to go.”
“What do you mean, ‘killed dead’?” Dane demanded.
Noel swung back at him. “They were murdered”
“They were murdered in their beds,” King said. “Both of them. Unconscious in their beds.”
“Come on, Major, make sense!” Wertz edged in sharply. How could they be murdered? What makes you say they were murdered? They’ve been out ever since Dane dragged them in from the lichen beds. They just died, that’s all.”
“You think somebody with his mouth stuffed full of red sand and more sand rammed up his nose just died!” King said fiercely. “You think red Mars sand just drifted into the infirmary and suffocated them? Just like that!”
It fell among them.
“But why!” Cruzate popped into the sudden no-talking. “Who wants to do this thing?”
“That’s what I intend to find out,” Noel said strongly. “Somebody wanted to shut them up. Now we won’t ever know what Pembroke did or found out on the planet.” He glared at Captain King. “Somebody else must have been reading your reports. Somebody didn’t want them to regain consciousness.”
“But nobody could have got in the infirmary without being seen. King protested. “The nurse was sitting at the door all the time!
“I’m going up to talk to that gentleman now,” Noel said. “He’s covering up. He left his post. Either that or he’s covering up for somebody else.”
Forrest laughed nervously. “Why would a murderer use sand? Why would he use sand from outside? From Mars? There are lots of easier ways to kill a man. Especially if he’s already unconscious.” Behind his thick, tinted lenses his wide-spaced eyes darted to and fro, dancing from Noel to King and back again. He slapped the palm of his white hand against the back of its mate, flattening the thin black growth.
“It’s frightening!” he exploded. “I don’t like it. It must mean they’re inside the spacecraft somehow. We don’t see them but they’re in here. That’s why the man didn’t see anybody!”
Major Noel observed him briefly. Then he grabbed his arm and shook him. “You better go lie down and take it easy. Meantime you can take my word it was somebody more substantial than invisible Martians. How do you think that sand got in there?” he shouted out. “You think microscopic Martians like Dane yammers about can carry in man-sized handfuls of red sand and ram them into a couple of guys’ throats?” He snapped his head like a swimmer emerging from a dive. “Sometimes I wonder about you guys. Always good for a brainstorm.”
Captain King was staring at Forrest. “I was working in my office,” he said hoarsely. “I was there all the time. I could see the front desk out my door. Like he said, Takonik was sitting there reading a book. He never moved. If he had left, I would have seen him! But something got in!”
Noel wheeled on him. “Didn’t you forget the fact that we had an alert at 1551? Didn’t you forget all about the nuclear missile we fired at 1603?”
King wet his lips. “No. I didn’t forget.”
“Didn’t you leave your office while all that was going on? Don’t you think something might have happened then?”
King shook his head. “I stayed at my desk. I was there all through the alert. After it too.”
“So you calmly stayed at your desk! While we track an N-bomb and explode it. You’re not curious? You don’t want to see what happens?” Noel’s disbelief was rank. “You pick that kind of a time to shuffle papers on your desk?”
“I was writing a message to my wife.” King’s face reddened.
“You what!” Noel blared.
“A letter. I was writing to my wife. I didn’t know what might happen, so I was writing a letter. In case something happened to us and another expedition came and found us maybe. Then maybe she would know.”
Dane felt acute discomfort for the man’s embarrassment. This was what the news hucksters called great human interest stuff. If he were worth his salt to Amalgamated Press, he would now ask the man what his wife “would know.”
Noel asked it for him.
King squirmed. “I wanted her to know I was thinking about her. That is, if anything happened and anybody ever found us again,” he added apologetically.
Noel spread his hands. “You think with you in that state of mind that Takonik couldn’t slip away from his post for a few minutes or maybe let someone go in without you even noticing it?”
King wiped his face with his palm. “I had an eye on him all the time. I know he didn’t leave.”
“Now look,” Noel said sharply, “you mean you sat there and scribbled a note to your wife and watched that man too? All the time?”
“I was glad he was there,” King said. “I was scared, and I was glad he was there where I could see someone.”
“He could still let someone in, couldn’t he?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so! But you don’t know so?”
“I couldn’t see the main corridor and the door if you mean that.”
“That’s exactly what I do mean. All you saw was Takonik sitting at the desk.”
“He’s a good boy,” King insisted. “I don’t think he would lie to me.”
“You don’t know. All you know is you found those men dead. Murdered.”
“He found them. He told me. Why should he lie about it? Not with it murder.”
Noel said, “That’s exactly what I’m going to find out somebody obviously went in there and kept those men from talking. I’m going to find out why and who. If Takonik didn’t leave, then he knows who. Probably why.”
Dane said, “Tong Asia enters the plot again.”
“You got any better ideas?” Noel retorted. “Or do you want to vote for a Martian sandman too?”
“That makes six men we’ve lost. Six out of 125,” Heileman said. “Every now and then we lose a man. You understand what actually kills each one of them, but you wouldn’t ever have expected it. Something just happens. Every now and then another guy gets it. When you least expect it and for some cause you never could have foreseen or prevented First it was Houck. Dane and Wertz find him dead and flat on his back in the lichens. How or why, nobody can guess. Then Dr. Pembroke gets off his bat and shoots himself. Then the lichens go crazy in Wertz’s lab and Spear and Gonzales get it. Who could have thought of that? Yet they get it. Now Beemis and Jackson. That makes six of us. None of them dead in any way you might have expected, like a Martian snake biting one of us. If there had been any snakes, I mean. Still, at least you would understand something like a snake possibly living here. Or an accident of some kind here with the equipment. Or an infection by some unknown disease here. But nothing like that! Nothing simple like that! It’s so irrational that I damn near got to think maybe something is going on with this Tong Asia business like Noel said. Without something damn funny going on, none of these guys getting killed makes any sense at all, except maybe the ones that got caught in the lichen explosion.”
Not in Solitude [Revised Edition] Page 18
