The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  He was astounded to discover that the hieroglyphics and the verse keyed the two languages and offered the first translation of the ancient parchments in the Bureau of Standards.

  The rest was a matter of detail. Kramer had managed to hide in the gallery at night. Alone, behind locked doors, he had selected one folio of the hundred and twenty-six in the glass cases. It was that one, he knew, which held the secret of the Void.

  There remained then but one thing to do. Hom Valla, the Martian philologist, must be removed. Hom Valla had announced only recently that, after years of study, he was finally on the verge of deciphering early Martian and the folios.

  Kramer had taken his time. He waited until Hom Valla was known to be leaving on a trip up-country. Then he had entered his apartment, fired one shot with a heat gun and fed the body into the city’s refuse tubes.

  Blanchard? Yes, Blanchard would probably couple the three details: the stolen folio, the death of Hom Valla, and Kramer’s disappearance. But it would take time, and during that time Kramer would be increasing the distance between himself and the law.

  He began to study the canal as he paced along. Straight as a knife blade, it stretched before him to the vanishing point. The walls were sheer, dug out of the red rock by a means that so far had baffled archaeologists. Three-quarters of the way up he could see a series of darker serrated lines, and he knew these were the ancient water marks.

  How many hundreds of explorers had started this way, hoping to penetrate the secret of the Void, only to disappear completely. And what was the Void? If it held retnite at its core, what power did it wield to entrap all trespassers?

  The stolen folio in this respect had been oddly disappointing. It had charted the location of the lode, in such a way that only a person able to decipher ancient Martian could read it. It had mapped a route through the labyrinth of canals, but it had made no mention of the mystery that lay ahead.

  At noon, by his Earth watch, Kramer halted for a rest. After a half hour he set off again, walking at that same mechanical pace that ate up the miles.

  The red ditch faded out of his thoughts now. He saw the canals as they were of old, as the Chronicles had described them. Luxurious waterways clogged with commercial shipping, with tapestried gondolas and canopied barges. He saw the gigantic locks and the way stations where swashbuckling pilots drank genith and watched South Martian girls writhe and sway to the rhythm of the Ucatel drums.

  It was at that moment that preceded the sudden advance of night that Kramer found himself rudely torn back to reality. He had kept his visa set turned on, and now a low magnetic hum told him that its finder was in operation. The vision plate above his eyes began to glow with a dull light.

  Abruptly a violent shock swept through him!

  In the plate he saw a section of red wall and the huge studded entrance door through which he had recently passed. As he watched, that door opened, and a man appeared clad in a space suit. Through the crystal helmet his features revealed themselves clearly. It was Blanchard!

  The I. P. man was on his hands and knees, examining the sand on the floor of the canal. Presently he straightened and began to stride forward rapidly.

  Kramer swore. Only a few hours had elapsed since he had dispatched Hom Valla. How could Blanchard possibly have picked up the trail so quickly? In some way he, Kramer, must have erred, must have left a clue.

  For a moment panic swept over the former salvage ratio clerk. Then quickly he was in control of himself again. He lay down on the sand, swallowed a few food concentrate pellets and in a moment was asleep.

  Awakening before dawn, he pushed on again in the darkness. But with the coming of the sun the first of the three quanthrows swooped down to attack him.

  The quanthrows were far south for this time of year, but their ferocity was no less great. Strangely resembling sword fish, but with octagon-shaped heads and curious square wingspreads, they wheeled out of the saffron sky with rasping squawks that vibrated the earphones in Kramer’s helmet.

  He killed the first with a single shot, managed to wound fatally the second with a double charge from his heat pistol. The third, a colossus of avian strength shot toward him, its steel-like proboscis thrust straight for his throat.

  Kramer escaped the murderous attack by inches. Even so, before he could whip out his knife and jam it upward, the “sword” penetrated his suit and bit deep in his shoulder.

  Breathing hard, he stood there looking down at the three lifeless bodies. And then, with that sudden clarity which physical action always brought him, Kramer thought of something.

  If there were three quanthrows, there must be ninety-seven more close by. It was one of the peculiarities of this creature to travel always in flocks of a hundred. Also—and here in spite of the pain in his shoulder, Kramer permitted himself to indulge in a broad smile, the one thing which would attract a quanthrow was salt.

  In an instant he was ripping open his haversack, pouring the white crystals on the three dead bodies.

  With their strange clannishness, the quanthrows would miss these members of their flock shortly and would return to investigate their absence. When they found the salt they would linger there for hours. And Blanchard…! Kramer walked on again with new vigor.

  The sword cut in his suit was easily repaired. Duore-silient tape fixed that. To his dismay, however, Kramer found that the attack by the quanthrows had damaged the delicate wiring of his visa set. Several times he switched it on, expecting to see the oncoming Blanchard. But the vision plate remained blurred.

  At nightfall of the second day he reached the first way station. Stumbling in the doorless cubicle, Kramer threw himself prone on the debris-covered floor, panting with exhaustion.

  Here at least he could rest a while, free from the incredible dangers of this world.

  The cubicle ages ago had housed the air filtration apparatus and heat control units of the way station. This machinery had weathered to a pile of oxidized metal. But in a hermetically sealed cabinet mounted on one wall Kramer found a spanner glass still in usable operation.

  He pursed his lips in satisfaction, quickly transferred the battery connections of his suit to the device and tripped over the vernier.

  For a long moment the cracked screen showed a blank surface. Then, with an oath. Kramer drove his clenched fist into the panel, shattering pintax tubes in a shower of fragments.

  He had seen enough. Clearly outlined in the screen the figure of Blanchard could be seen, plodding doggedly through the sand. Kramer dropped into a ruined settee and chinned the stud feeding a lighted cheroot to his lips. He inhaled the rank smoke savagely.

  He stood up and began a careful survey of the cubicle’s interior. Nothing at all which might serve to entrap the oncoming I. P. man. Kramer went outside and began to pace along the short narrow street.

  On the right was the matrilated dome where canaleers passed the night so long ago. On the left stood the remnants of the harthode tower where first, second and third Monarchy Martian dispatchers had pored over their charts and lock controls, guiding the network of traffic in and out of Canal Grand.

  The last structure was still in fairly good preservation. It was a canalserai, and Kramer’s heart leaped as his gaze took it in. Even pilots in those days had not lacked for entertainment. This was their pleasure palace where gambling and dancing had taken place.

  The door to this building had long since vanished and five feet over the threshold was a small mound of drifted sand. Inside, however, Kramer, found the rarified air had kept things in pretty good trim.

  The long demdem bar still stood before one wall. Farther on he saw the little alcoves where incoming pilots had drowsed under the effect of the forbidden electro-hypnotic machines.

  The dismantled parts of one of these machines still stood in a corner, and he paused to examine it. Self applied hypnotism was one of the accomplishments of the early Martians. This device was simple. It consisted of two prism-shaped piece of translucent metal, mounted on b
rackets in front of a many-side panel of refracto-glass. Seated before the instrument, under a powerful ato-light, the imbiber found his gaze drawn toward a single perspective, where the reflection of his own eyes was transmitted back to him.

  Abruptly Kramer seized the instrument and carried it to the doorway of the room, scooped the drifted sand into a higher mound, and placed the machine upon it.

  Directly above a stone girder hung precariously, balanced by the jammed key stone in the archway. Kramer dug toe holes in the crumbling masonry, mounted to that key stone and loosened it with his knife blade. An instant later only a few chips of stone kept the massive girder from plunging downward.

  Back on the floor level again, he whipped out his electric stylus and wrote the following words across the refracto-glass panel:

  Blanchard: I know you’re after me, but our trails part here. If you want to know which canal

  I’ve taken, the secret lies in the glass.

  He signed his name and smiled quietly. It was a rather complicated trap, but if he knew the I. P. man, it was a good one. Blanchard would enter here, searching for clues. He would see the hypnosis machine, and he would read the message.

  From the moment he looked into the refracto glass, the machine would begin its spell. Blanchard would be lulled into a quick, deep sleep, and as he slumped backward against the wall, the dislodged girder above would complete the story.

  Five minor canals angled off Canal Grand at this way station. But Kramer’s original plan of taking one of these to throw his pursuer off the track was gone now. Sure of himself, he continued almost lightheartedly down Canal Grand.

  As he went on, he worked at the wiring of his visa set. Once he got it in partial operation, but then it blurred again, and refused to respond to the controls. The pain in his shoulder was a dull throb now; his whole arm felt numb and feverish, and there was a growing lump in the gland under his armpit.

  By noon he was aware of a subtle change in the scene about him. The canal’s walls seemed to draw closer together and become deeper. The sides of the great ditch took on a deeper brownish red hue that caught the glare of the sun and refracted it back into his eyeballs.

  Abruptly Kramer halted, staring with wide-open eyes. A quarter mile ahead a large black mound barred his path.

  Rocks! As he drew nearer he could see the outlines of gargantuan boulders piled high in a grotesque cairn. But how had they come here? They had not rolled down from the top of the canal, for no whim of nature could have constructed such a regular formation.

  Kramer approached with caution. Twenty yards away he stopped again, and a wave of fear swept over him. There was something curiously life-like about those stones. He received the impression they were watching him with unseen eyes.

  Then suppressing the scream which arose in his throat, he turned and ran. Simultaneously he looked over his shoulder, and an incredible sight met his eyes.

  The “stones” had left their mound and were now deploying over the hard-packed ground and slowly, but unmistakably, pursuing him.

  Not until that moment did Kramer realize what he had blundered into. They were the horrors of the canals—the kanal-bras, Mars’ link between organic and inorganic life.

  At first he outdistanced them easily. Then, as they increased their locomotion, he seemed to be running on a treadmill with painted scenery unrolling on either side. The kanal-bras came on with no apparent effort, gliding across the surface of the sand as if they weighed nothing at all. Looking back, Kramer thought he could see cavernous mouths and multiple eyes.

  He understood their purpose. They were inorganic, yes, but they were also omnivorous. That is, feeding on organic matter, they permitted that matter to adhere to their surfaces and slowly petrify like a coal deposit.

  They were close upon him now. Kramer’s breath was searing his lungs, and he could hear the exhaust valve in the back of his helmet rattle open and shut like a shuttleclock.

  And then once again his reading background came to the aid of the former salvage ratio clerk. Somewhere he remembered that a kanal-bra reacted to sub-sonic vibrations. They alone could penetrate their metal-stone bodies.

  He had no vibrator, but he did have his heat pistol. Frantically he clawed the weapon out of its holster and twisted the control stud to its farthest marking. From a heat ray to an infra-red ray to a sub-sonic ray was but a step. He turned and fired.

  Even then he was not prepared for the results. As the single blast pulsed out of the barrel, the kanal-bras lost their forward momentum and halted. Like a slow motion camera turned backward, they slowly retreated across the sand. Reaching their former position, they mounted one upon the other, until they formed the identical mound Kramer had seen before.

  He stood still a long moment, staring in amazement. Then boldly he tried an experiment. The heat pistol was of the latest Gan-Larkington type, and the tiny rheostat was capable of controlling vibrations almost the entire breadth of the vibratory scale. Super-sonic charges, though rare with most weapons, were included in the Gan-Larkington.

  If a sub-sonic charge would thus stultify the kanal-bras would not a super-sonic or ultra-sonic wave tend to release them?

  Kramer tried it. He adjusted the weapon, fired a shot and saw the stony creatures immediately erupt into life. A sub-sonic blast sent them returning in that curious retrogressive action to their former position.

  He smoked a cigarette over the discovery. A quarter of an hour later he had set his third trap. Beyond a doubt there wasn’t the slightest need for it. But with the stakes he had, there was no use taking chances.

  He buried the heat gun in the sand, leaving only the barrel and the trigger exposed. He stretched a cord tightly for twenty yards across the canal floor, connecting one end to the trigger. The barrel he aimed directly at the motionless kanal-bras.

  “Now,” he muttered, “if Blanchard does get by the way station, he’ll get a surprise. All you need, these days, is brains.”

  With a quick step he skirted the living rock cairn and headed down the canal.

  Within a quarter mile he found it necessary to consult the stolen map. And a mile farther on found him clutching the folio in one hand, gazing at it constantly as he walked.

  At intervals of every few hundred yards other tributary canals branched off the main stem. Some of these were equally as large and impressive as Canal Grand, and shortly it dawned upon Kramer that he might be lost.

  The map was clearly enough marked, but apparently new waterways had been dug since those ancient cartographers had penned the manuscript. Kramer swore but did not slow his pace. He still had his magno compass. He might wander off the main artery, but sooner or later he should be able to place his position and swing back into it.

  Faded hieroglyphics began to make their appearance now, stenciled deeply in colossal letters above the water marks on the canal’s sides. Some of them were undecipherable. Others, Kramer tried to ease his growing tension, by translating.

  “Praise to Zara,” one of them read. Another: “Calthedra five hundred legaros.” There was one in larger marking that caused Kramer to knit his brows in puzzlement. Translated freely, it read: “Beware of the Echo.”

  He forgot the hieroglyphics abruptly when he tripped over a heavier mound of sand and fell sprawling. The sudden shock did something to his visa set. It crackled, hummed, began operation, then went dead again.

  But that momentary glimpse in the vision plate was enough. Kramer had seen Blanchard plodding forward relentlessly through the drifted sand. He had safely passed both traps.

  Was there no stopping the man?

  Kramer lurched to his feet and began to walk at a faster pace, though the pain in his shoulder had increased a hundredfold.

  He noticed now that the red banks of the canal had given way to a kind of lusterless, metallic wall. Slate gray in color, they towered even higher than before, and they seemed to converge at the top like a tunnel.

  Simultaneously he felt a cloud of mental uneasiness s
weep over him, accompanied by an overpowering desire to break the brooding oppressive silence.

  Twenty yards forward, and that desire had become maddening. The utter quiet pressed against his ears. Against his will he found his steps drawn toward the nearer wall. And here, like a crazed man, he seized a heavy rock fragment and began dashing it again and again against the metallic bank.

  He could feel the snapping recoil as the blow traveled up his arm. The hum in his headset told him there was nothing wrong with his audiphone.

  But the blows produced no sound.

  It was as if he had struck a mallet into a pile of cotton. And then he went rigid. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen something leap up from the rock fragment even as he hit it and race outward across the canal with incredible speed. A shadow, it seemed to be, and yet a shadow that possessed a certain miniature form with moving ghost legs and arms and a tiny button knob that might have been a head.

  Again he struck the rock and again a shadow leaped up and sped away. An instant later Kramer threw himself flat upon the sand, groveling in agony. The shadows, a dozen of them, had formed a phalanx at the opposite wall of the canal, and had raced back upon him.

  As they came, they carried the delayed sound of Kramer’s blows upon the stone.

  Delayed, but multiplied and amplified a thousand times. The concentrated roar was agonizing. Vainly he thumbed the switch, disconnecting the headset. But the vibration pulsed relentlessly through the space suit and hextar helmet. He thought he felt the shadow bodies leaping upon him, striking his skull with tiny invisible hammers.

  Were they sound shadows, some mixture of light and sound waves possessing the ability to travel through space and time, a mutant echo that had the dominant characteristics of living matter?

  Or was the whole thing a vagary of his brain, the result of a mounting fever from his infected arm? He did not know.