Menace Under Marswood

by Sterling E. Lanier

  With hardly a spasm of motion, the strange boat had smoothly backed off the beach and freed itself. Then it glided into a turn until the prow was facing into the mist, when it began to move and Slater sensed the faint hum of whatever was propelling them. As he felt it, he saw out of the corner of his eye that their guards were moving back the way they had come. "Now that we're alone for a bit," Colonel Muller said, "check your holdouts and then conceal them again."

  They quickly inventoried what equipment they still had. Nakamura and the colonel had tiny boot knives; they and Slater, three or four miniature grenades of the kind Muller had used on the cave monster with the immense tentacles.

  Thought of the cave monster made Slater stare at the smooth blue-green water over which the boat was calmly moving. It was not fast, not much faster than a man could run, but it was steady.

  What was in that water? As he stared about, a motion to his left caught his eye. The bulgotes turned their heads also.

  A tall, whitish spike, thicker at the base, stood out of the water and towered high over their upturned eyes. As Slater watched it, the end curled and a ripple ran down the thing's length. Slater's scalp crawled.

  "Everyone stay still; do not move!" came the sharp tones of Thau Lang. "They said back on the land that we were safe if we stayed in the boat. We must believe that. We were not brought all this way to be killed before they can question us. Don't talk, don't move, stay still!"

  As they watched, other spikes, all a ripple with movement, appeared near the first, until eight or ten of the ghastly arms were waving and writhing above the water. The boat moved steadily on until the faint mist hid the writhing tower of palps. Only then did Slater notice the acrid reek hanging over the water.

  Nakamura put the thought into words. "That stink and those arms! Why, it was the same thing—"

  The colonel cut him off. "Probably not same one, lad. Interesting, eh, Feng? The Martian variant of an Earthly squid can live out of water for long periods and move about on land. Wonder if the damned things are that big on Earth, or if they still exist in the deeps of the sea."

  "It was the same kind of thought-life," the Wise Woman beside them said. "That animal was like the one in the tunnels. But something held it off here. It fears something—maybe this." She slapped the gunwale of the strange craft that bore them.

  Muller also stroked the boat's side. "What do you think, Thau? Feel anything odd about this boat?"

  "Plastic only, but plastic with a strange feel to it. I don't see how it could bother a terrible beast like that one. But, Louis, what about sound? The hum of this box which sends power, that might be a warning to the animal, one that it fears like a bulgote fears the distant howl of a hunting pack."

  They sat in silence as the boat prowled on, each lost in his or her own thoughts. Danna looked over her shoulder at Slater and silently pursed her lips in a kiss. He did the same, then looked over her head for he saw a shadow looming. Then the boat left the mist. Land lay ahead. The shadow Slater had seen was the rising ground covered with vegetation.

  Before them lay a shore that only two of them had glimpsed. The view was as clear as it was eerie. None of the viewers was a child and four of them had known two planets. But the men of Terra were as new to this landscape as the three Rucker males and the young Wise Woman.

  Before the prow of their moving vessel, and no more than a kilometer away, an alien view rose before them through thin steams and wisps of fog. Great reddish fronds hung low, nearly to the shore, from lofty, blackish trunks whose bark looked strangely scaled. Among the strange trees, Slater noted other growth. Great barrel cactuses appeared here and there, and some of the vines that hung down from the taller plants were vaguely familiar. But along the shore, save in one place, grew things like giant reeds that were new to any of them. From their lofty crowns, where an Earth plant might flower, burst a mass of whiplike purple tendrils, which, as the boat drew closer, could be seen to be in constant movement.

  "Something like a Terran sea anemone," Feng ventured. "The tendrils sting its prey to death. Watch out when we get close."

  As they drew closer to the shore, one of the reed whips snared a giant moth and enfolded its catch in a ball of shining purple.

  "Damned if I think that's even Martian," Feng muttered.

  "Perhaps Old Martian, eh, Captain?" Muller asked.

  Just then the craft began to angle its approach to the shore, slanting a trifle to the left. There Slater saw an opening appear in the growth. The strange reeds did not block the opening, nor did the more ordinary and smaller ones he now saw among the others. As the boat entered the opening, they saw a small pebbly beach that sloped up to a gap in the strange verdure and a path, wide enough for three persons to walk abreast, which led up the gentle slope a ways before disappearing into the darkness.

  The boat grounded itself with a crunch on the little strand of smooth pebbles. Muller's party sat quietly for a moment. Slater noted that the big gotes' eyes were wide open, their nostrils flared. He himself was conscious of strange perfumes, some wild and some sharp and bitter.

  "Milla and Arta, get out and keep watch upslope," Muller rapped. "Slater, you and Feng next—take the bulgotes under one of the big trees. We three will make up a rear guard."

  Slater realized that Nakamura had been given no assignment, so he was not surprised when he saw Muller whisper to the big man. Without a word, Nakamura faded off to one flank and vanished. Slater let his four-legged ally lick his ear and part his hair with a long wet tongue, and the remainder of the team stood and waited.

  They did not have to wait very long. Out of the shadows near where the two young warmen crouched, there was a long hooting wail like the cry of a mourning Marswolf crossed with the rippling voice of some large and very strange bird. As a sound, it was as alien as any of the peculiar plant life about them. More so, for it had in it something clear and beckoning, which caught at one's nerves. It was a summons, and Slater looked at Danna, who nodded. She was on the same wavelength as himself, remembering the dream.

  The colonel's voice came to life. "Let's move out. Burg and Breen first, then you three and the gotes, Thau and me last." His voice shifted and dropped. "What say, Slater? Is this the same as your pipe dream? What of yours, Danna? The same?"

  "Not quite, sir," Slater said, as he led his beast forward. "But very close in lots of ways." He moved up the path under the trees, Feng and the other gote coming next. As he did so, he heard Danna's voice ripple out.

  "In the dream, I had to go or come as the boatman wished and as the voice called. Here I feel the pull, yet I do not have to do anything. I am stronger here than I was then." Slater agreed. He felt an urge but no compulsion to do anything. Muller's next words were quite clear, and he knew were meant for him as well as the girl.

  "The call may get stronger," Muller said. "You two may be able to resist better than others because of the dream. But behave and act as if you were as strongly held as anyone else. Stay captive unless I say something or you can't help it for a stronger reason."

  They moved up the clearly defined path, which wound among the trees. The long, reddish fronds, which sometimes trailed from lower branches to the ground, were like huge, coarse feathers, as wide as Slater's head but several meters long. The bark was odd also, like a mesh of oiled metal links as much as anything. The smells were odder still and they changed, so that one second, one's nose wrinkled at something acrid, the next, something sickly sweet and cloying. An adapted Martian starling, bigger than an Earth crow, peered at him from a branch once and seemed quite at home. At intervals he could hear things rustling in the darkness under the tree boles. Once he saw a pallid spider as large as his head run up a vine. Strombok was alert and nervous, and his big yellow eyes flickered first one way and then another while he sniffed and snuffed at the unfamiliar scents.

  Insects were abundant, and the biting flies seemed far larger than any Slater had encountered before. They hummed and buzzed hungrily. Occasionally he saw the
strange four-winged thing with a body like a fat brown pear flap by. After some time, the two gotes snorted and checked, and he heard Feng's voice.

  "Did you spot that, Lieutenant? It had six legs at least, but I saw what looked like ears. Nothing in the books or files like that."

  As they climbed upward, they kept a steady and easy pace. Half the time he could not even see the two warmen in advance. Slowly it grew lighter and he could see farther through the undergrowth.

  Then he heard a quick whistle from ahead and checked the gote he was leading. Back came Arta Burg, one hand raised in warning.

  "We are approaching a place where there are no plants, only grass. And there is a building of stone, a big one."

  The colonel had moved up from behind, and the other two as well. When he heard the news, he simply made a forward motion with one hand and faded back with the others.

  It was quite a sight indeed, Slater found as he advanced. They had got to level ground and the big plants simply stopped. Before them in the misty, amber light reared an odd structure surrounded by twenty-foot walls of red stone, smooth yet weathered. Above and within loomed four domes, of the same material, set like a clump of mushrooms. Metal structures, like strange blue antennae, quickly appeared at the tops of two of the domes. At the same time, the section of the stone wall at the path's end began to roll up and back like a flexible metal sheet.

  A gasp from Danna was silenced by Muller. "That's not stonework there. It has to be metal, camouflaged to look like the rest of the wall. Anyone get a feeling of time about this place?"

  Age, incredible age! That was what radiated from the structure. Over the whole place, at every angle and curve, there lay like a blanket of impenetrability vast, stupefying age! Slater had seen many ancient relics like the pyramids of Egypt, but he had never felt the shadow of the aeons that this unknown place cast. Old, very old it was, so old, he felt, that its true age lay almost beyond human reckoning. And yet it was alive—the movement of the strange metal antennae and the rolling up of the gate proved that.

  As they watched, spellbound by the mystery that lay before them, a sound broke the hushed silence. It was a voice and it came loud and clear, but with a strange crackle behind and under it. It spoke in Unit, and only one word. "Come!" it commanded. "Come!" it repeated and, after the fifth or sixth time, at the sides of the gate green, glowing flames burned like two great round green eyes.

  "Hear that purring, crackling noise?" Muller asked. "I think we're hearing a recording. Let's go. Do what it says. Let's go through that gap." He motioned Slater and Feng first, and they went pulling their two gotes.

  As they moved forward, side by side, Slater looked back quickly and saw the others following. He thought of Danna and choked off a curse in his throat. If only she could be saved from whatever peril lay before them! He caught himself and stifled his emotions. Muller knew what he was doing. Besides, he remembered Muller's words on the subject of Danna. He, Slater, was not to hurt the Rucker girl. Why? Because Muller was strangely fond of her. That gave him comfort.

  Across the low green and yellow moss of the open sward they went. As they drew near the strange gate, Slater suddenly realized why the turf was so familiar. It was exactly like the covering of the ramp road over which they had come to find this place. It was mowed by a vast replica of his tiny pet, Grabbit.

  They saw and heard nothing as they approached the open gate. Only the very faintest breeze moved the cloudy mists above their heads, causing the amber and pink light of the day to change slowly, now darkening, now growing brighter.

  Then they were at the gate itself and Slater could not help but halt. Feng did the same, staring ahead. Before them lay more level ground with close-trimmed moss. Across a short bit of green and gold carpet lay another entrance, one with a real door, into a building. The building was topped by the largest of the four domes they had seen from the wood.

  Slater noticed something else. Above the door of the building was yet another of the blue metal appendages. It was ridged and flexible, as if constructed of endless socketed joints, and it was moving, like the tentacle of some mechanical octopus.

  Its movement ceased when it was angled in a lazy arc pointing in their direction. At its tip was a swollen knob of metal as large as a closed fist. As they watched, a sliding shutter flicked up over the end of the ball and a green lens fixed on them. They were under observation.

  The voice still repeated its monotonous command, but the volume had lowered. The source seemed to be directly in front of them, just below the observation lens.

  "Go ahead," the colonel said.

  Slater and Feng moved out, the two bulgotes obediently behind them. They crossed the short space that lay ahead and entered the doorway side by side. Their feet began to ring on stone flags, and Slater soon heard the others in their wake.

  Before them lay a short passage with an arched ceiling in the reddish stone. Ahead was a bright light. They emerged together in a large and very high-ceilinged room, brightly lit from overhead by long blue-white bands of light that seemed to be immense tubes unlike any fluorescents Slater had ever seen.

  But he and Feng were looking straight ahead now at a raised metal platform in the middle of the great chamber. On this platform sat a lone figure behind a broad panel of what looked like instruments. The figure was familiar to Slater at least, a thin, bony shape, which by its length, even when seated, must be very tall. The head was hidden by a round metal helmet with two peglike projections where a man's ears would be. A black band of glass or plastic ran across the helmet where human eyes might be. The body covering was a metallic robe that fell to the shod feet and the gloved hands, whose fingers were long and strangely twisted.

  "The dream!" Danna exclaimed. "It is the one—the boat man of the dream sea!"

  Chapter Thirteen – The Last of the Attendants

  EVERYONE was staring by then. As Slater watched in fascination, the figure began to move. The hands lifted, one to each side of the ball helmet. The fingers were twice the length of a man's and there seemed to be too many of them. Even the creature's sleek gloves did not disguise their strangeness.

  Both hands fixed on the underside of the helmet rim and lifted. The helmet rose higher and higher and, when totally free, was gently laid on a shelf near the owner's chair.

  Two immense eyes, lambent jet in color, ran far around each side of the large, rounded head. The head itself came to a blunt point at the top rear. It had no hair and its skin was a very light blue. Two vertical nostrils pierced a nose that was more of a muzzle, short and blunt. Higher than human ears would be were the blunt cones, such as those they had seen on the column head and the helmets of the "new clan" that had captured them. The mouth was a long gash above the round and fluid-looking chin and now it opened.

  The sound that came from the dark gap was no surprise. It was Unit, accented with a trilling—high and strange, but easy to understand. It was the same voice that they had been hearing, the voice that said "Come."

  "I am Satreel," the being said. "I am the one you seek, whom all must seek, on this fourth world of the system, the world you call Mars." The voice was slow, and somehow Slater knew it was repeating things it had said many times before. He felt numb. He did not need to look at the others to know it was the same for them. From those black, glowing, impossibly large orbs, intelligence gleamed, and the intelligence was alien, utterly different, from outside human understanding. Allah aid us, said Slater's mind to his pounding heart, the Old Martians are real and we stand before one!

  The voice went on, the strange purring, trilling voice, and while it did, the odd head swiveled slowly and the enormous eyes, those incredible eyes, took them all in.

  "You see before you a judge. I, Satreel, am the judge of all this world. I come from beyond, and I serve those you will never see, the Masters of the Universe, the Le-ashimath. I have studied your race for long, as we of the Far Places have been here for long. You are young, you who were bred on the third planet, yo
ung and unguided. I shall show you how things must be done. All things, for everything must be done in the correct way. The only way—for this planet, this small Solar System, is but a step on the road, a mere stop on the way to the ultimate road, the road that was traced before your pitiful race existed ... the path to the stars and beyond."

  The humans and the gotes stood unmoving as if Satreel's words had placed them all a stasis field. But Slater heard a familiar penetrating voice from behind, and the voice awakened his nervous system. It was the colonel and he sounded reflective.

  "So we're a way station, are we? And this is the secret of the Old Martians. No more Martian than Mercurian or Jovian. They come from Outside."

  The voice of their strange interlocutor had fallen silent though he watched them still. Colonel Muller stepped forward. "Why do you not speak in the language of the True People? Why use the tongue of the Earth enemies? Are not the True People over all this planet your allies?... Or your servants?"

  "I use what tongues I choose. From the third planet, I can listen to anything, and this installation has done so for so many thousand cycles of these planets that you could not understand. I use the tongue of the bipeds with some glimmering of science. I know them and I know their history. From when they first began to build things that could be seen from space, they have been watched and studied. Long ago, so long it would mean nothing to you here, we went down to that third planet and watched as you humans became what you think of as intelligent. It was from curiosity alone that we went. We needed nothing from you in this system." The voice gave a long keening note then, sounding like a strange and mournful bird, but with a grating, reptilian hiss at the end.

  "I think I see," Muller said calmly. "You had a base here and it was forgotten or bypassed long ago. You and yours are only the last of a lost colony. You are the guardian of a long-defunct way station, forgotten by the ones who sent you here in the first place." He paused. "What makes you our judge? You are not of this Solar System but only a living remnant—like some of the strange life-forms of this world—which is no more Martian than you are. With your trees and your foreign animals about you, what gives you the right to judge us, who were born and bred under this Sun?"