Menace Under Marswood

by Sterling E. Lanier

  "He likes Danna," Captain Feng said.

  "I think that's the equivalent of a cat's purr," Muller added. "Let's see what we can do with him. Can you get him to chew what I want, Lieutenant?"

  Without hesitation, Slater passed the little thing from his open palm to his love's. "She can do anything better than I, I sir. Remember that trick of making him a compass?"

  "Right here," the colonel said, pointing with his forefinger. "We'll keep it simple. I want him to gnaw through the plastic or whatever it is and then go to work on the bar that locks this door—if he can. If he can't, we're going to have to think up another idea."

  Without a word, Danna held the tiny animal up, then thought at it. Grabbit was happy to help, and his little claws came out and began to cut away at the place his new mistress had laid her finger. He went into the plastic on the door as if it were cheese.

  While he was boring in, Slater turned to his commanding officer. "If you don't mind, sir, can you tell us what you and that ... Satreel talked of, while you were alone?"

  "Oh, yes," Muller said. "No problem about that. I wanted to learn whether he was alone here, or whether there are more of the aliens about the premises." He sighed. "Also, I must admit to being selfish. I simply had to talk with the first intelligent alien that man has ever encountered. And I wanted to clear up a final suspicion. I was afraid our dear friend, JayBee the clever, might have thought up a robot or dummy of some kind that could pass as an alien."

  "I don't worry about that," Danna said flatly. "Whatever he, she, or it is, it is not from this world." Danna turned to Muller. "You are all Greenies, but the konsel and my two husbands would know. Colonel, though you are more at home here than these two, you do not know the feel of this planet as we who are born here. I should not laugh at you—but honest, couldn't you smell that strange smell?" She turned to Slater and smiled tenderly at him. "If I'm going to be in love with a Greenie, I guess I must learn he can't do what I do. The smells of this whole place are foreign and that of Satreel is the most strange of all."

  Slater caught Muller looking at Danna and was intrigued to see both an air of affection and something else. Could it be pride? he wondered to himself?

  "She's right, of course," said Muller. "I get occasional whiffs of a strange odor or so but, like you two, I was born in a city complex and raised surrounded by machine odors and chemicals. Danna wasn't and she has the keen nostrils of those born in the wild."

  "I bow to you, sir." Feng smiled as he did so. "But what did you and the honorable alien have to say to one another?"

  "I listened mostly," the colonel said. "I also asked what questions I thought possible. You all heard what I said in the big control room. This is indeed the last of a lost garrison. Where those masters of his came from, I can't guess. But they are from far, far away, that's for sure. Satreel is very, very old, impossibly so by our human rules.

  "I also think he may not be alone. He made references to other guardians—attendants, he calls them. Damned if I know who or what they are. They could be like him, but cryogenic cases subject to recall from deep freeze or some kind of stasis that has a similar effect. We have to be careful."

  "But, sir, why did he want you alone? He told JayBee and his two to get out. And how did they get here so fast?"

  "The latter was simple. I fear we must bounce the I-Corps, Captain. The former Miss Dutt got a UN chopper out somehow. And through JayBee's contacts with Satreel's so-called new clan, JayBee made contact with this place and was vectored in past or through any screens or baffles."

  As Muller talked, he leaned over to watch Danna's hand and what it held. There was now an oval hole in the oily brown plastic and Grabbit was in it. As they listened in silence, they could hear a tiny, whirring, crunching sound.

  Muller patted Danna on the shoulder. "Good girl. He's through the plastic and into that bar already. Keep it up. Now, what did interest our friend from Out There about me? I tried to make myself interesting. I think he's desperate to get home. He is as loyal to his absentee masters—what does he call them? Oh, yes, the Le-ashimath. He is as locked to them as any good dog to a master. Plus I think he's homesick. Doesn't mean he ever saw what he calls home, you know. Maybe it's not our kind of 'homesick' either, but he misses something and it might be the whole culture complex that spawned him. Or a sun he never saw but his mother told him about. Call it pure loneliness and you do as well as I can."

  "That's how I figured it," Slater said. "He wants to go back and he never met anyone before who could make him think he might get there."

  "Precisely. For once, Mr. Pelham, the Master Mind, has missed a point. But this one he missed seems to be Comrade Satreel's weak point. I guess JayBee never felt that way about anything in his thorny life, so he couldn't recognize it in anyone, let alone an alien being."

  Three of them stood in thoughtful silence, staring at the oily sheen of the brown floor. But the fourth broke in on their thoughts with a sudden squeal of joy. As she did, she held up her open palm on which a small shape was waving its pincer claws and humming quite loudly.

  "He's through, Moe, he's through! I can get his think. He cut the locking bar that holds us in and he came back to me and said so!"

  Very gently, Muller exerted pressure on the door with his left hand. The others each picked up a weapon. Slight as the pressure was, their path, or its' first step, was now open.

  Chapter Fourteen – Conflict Throughout Nowhere

  IT WAS AN unquiet evening at Grand Base, Orcus Prime. As men and women of the UN Command moved through the long and echoing corridors, many were armed—and not just with sidearms.

  In a small, well-guarded room just off the main Control Room of Base Central, the two top men of Mars Command sat staring at one another briefly. Marshal Mutesa looked hard at his second-in-command, General Scott, and Scott returned his gaze.

  "Blast and curse everything and everybody!" the marshal said at length. His face was twisted with frustration. "We know too much and too little at the same time. Robert, where has that freelance Muller got to?"

  His junior shuffled a small deck of recent reports, obviously searching for a sensible answer. "Look, Philip, I get everything as fast as it comes in, and you get it as soon as I can get it to you. Neither of us knows anything the other doesn't." He turned back to the reports and then continued. "I'll compress what we know and if I miss anything, jump on me. The Ruckers are quiet—as quiet as they can be, that is. Space Force claims that it has caught all the arms-smuggling ships and blasted the asteroid base they were coming from or to. Okay? Next, Earth Central has raided five of the big corporate headquarters that were, they think, providing the arms and the same ships. 'Investigations continue' and all that police nonsense." He looked at another tab sheet and his ruddy face grew a little more strained.

  "We cannot find any trace of JayBee. It took too long to trace the escape of that woman from Fort Agnew. She killed a man and took a jet-heli into the wilds. Because of her Indian background, it looks as if she is linked to Medawar, Pelham's chief of staff. Finally, we have lost Louis Muller. The spy-eyes, the hovering Air Scouts, the airwaves being monitored, have all come to nothing. The one link we had in the big Rucker meeting says JayBee was there, he thinks Medawar, some woman who might be our I-Corps traitor, Miss Dutt, and all the people sent from Agnew by us. All gone and probably in the Dead Zone around or in Cimmerium." He laughed bitterly. "We Greenies are stumped, baffled, and bewildered."

  The marshal's powerful face grew impassive. "I have alerted the whole command, Robert. A strike force of five hundred of our best is on instant standby. You and I sometimes think alike. Let's hear what you'd do with them."

  "Sir! Put 'em all on float-ships, ready for a snap putdown. Have the ships hang over the center of Cimmerium."

  The last hereditary ruler of a long-vanished African kingdom also sat back, but on his face was a wistful smile. "You forgot something, I think. For two credits I'd forget my age and my job and go instead. Don't be pr
oud. You don't have to beg, not with me. Robert, take command of the group and report to me when aloft."

  The Duke of Buccleuch was out of his seat, out the door, and running while his superior officer leaned back and stared at a picture on the wall, a holograph of a particularly tangled piece of the Ruck. "Wish I could go," he murmured aloud to himself. "Wonder what's going on down there. Ah, hell, the Venus Transplant should be ready to go in a year. I'll go on that if things work out here." He turned his attention to another stack of reports.

  VERY SLOWLY, Muller pushed open the door but he did not step out into the corridor. He listened and the other three waited in silence. At length he beckoned Feng forward to lead then the girl and Slater. The colonel brought up the rear. With two signals, he posted Feng facing to the right up one direction and Danna and Slater to the left on the other. With his guards out, for whatever it was worth, he crossed to the other cell and silently slid the locking bar back.

  Before them lay a dimly lighted, boxlike cell. Thau Lang stood facing them, arms folded, and beside him, the two young warmen, Arta and Milla, one to a side. All looked ready for death. When they saw who had opened their prison, joy shone from their eyes.

  "Quiet! Not a sound! Move by my signal until I speak," Muller said. He took a plaspad and scripter from his blouse, wrote for a minute or two, then showed the results to Thau Lang. The konsel read for a moment, then showed the message to Breen and Burg. Muller nodded to Danna and handed her the plaspad. She took it and stepped back between her two ex-cellmates. Danna held up four pages of the small pad for Feng and Slater to read. It was quite clear, and in plain Unit script.

  1) We're going to snatch Satreel. Burg and Breen go first. They can smell better, hear better, and see better.

  2) Thau Lang and I come next. Slater and Danna follow. Feng is rearguard.

  3) Carry your weapons at the ready. If we see an enemy, use them fast. Very fast!

  4) We'll retrace the way to the control room. There are sound detectors all over this place from what I heard Satreel say. Pattern and location are unknown.

  5) There may be monitors or beam-trip devices. If you see anything like that, stop us all. Let's go—and win!

  Silently and stealthily down the ancient passage, illumined only by the dim glow of the ceiling strip, they went.

  Slater and Danna had just turned the corner to the first passage when they heard a mechanical murmur to one side. An oval door suddenly slid aside at the juncture of the two passages and out of it, metal tentacles whirling, came the bullet shape of the robot jailer. Its only sound was a humming buzz as it rolled after the group in the main passage, at about the speed of a running six-year-old but far more silent.

  The machine could not count or it did not bother. Possibly its instruments and sensors were defective. Ahead of it fled six humans and it pursued, its rollers turning. Behind it sped the seventh, and that one was a Kendo man, though his stick was less than a yard long.

  Slater turned at the savage hiss and saw what he had hoped would come end even better. Behind the opaque translucence of the robot's dome he saw Captain Feng run up and strike forward with his deadly stick, just below the forward curve of the plastic bullet cap. The knobkerry was as hard as Feng had said. With two lethal blows, the dome split, big shards falling off and flakes puffing away in a cloud. As the machine tried to deal with its new adversary, the third blow struck home in the maze of lights and circuitry that made up the robot's control center. In a matter of seconds, Feng's onslaught had reduced the dangerous mechanism to an immobile pile of scrap. Its lights were out, it sank to its round base, and the flexible arms sprawled like wet spaghetti on the floor of the passage.

  Muller walked back quickly and took a careful look. Then, smiling, he punched Feng's nearest bicep and nodded. A rare broad smile split the usually impassive visage of the I-Corps captain, and with no more celebration they all went on, exactly as before.

  Along the main corridor down which they had passed only hours before, they ran in utter silence and as wary as aroused ferkats. After what seemed like days, the upraised hands of Arta and Milla, who were well up front, brought them to a poised halt. The team moved up slowly at Muller's signal. Ahead was the panel of the door to the great chamber of Satreel.

  Slater squeezed Danna's arm and looked carefully at the door. It was as they had seen, a sliding panel, which, from inside, looked just like any other part of the control room wall. From the rear, though, it looked very different. Continuous bands of sturdy metal ran across the plasticene of the door and a pair of round, bright-blue knobs was set in recessed sockets to one side.

  "Those must be manual controls," Muller whispered. "But for whom? Maybe only one of the robots can use them, and if we try we may set off an alarm. Everyone think for a second and see if we can stir up an idea."

  Milla Breen said nothing, but he stepped smoothly through the other six and pointed. At the end of his forefinger was a well-concealed but perfectly visible outline in the right wall of the passage, perhaps two feet from the door they had been examining. Moreover, the camouflaged side door had what looked like a very simple recessed manual handle colored the same dull brown as the rest of the blank wall.

  "Good man, Warman Breen!" It was the konsel who gave muttered approval, but Muller smiled and tapped Milla's arm. The young warrior drew himself up proudly, managing to give Arta Burg a derisive look as he did.

  "Probably nothing more than an access corridor or just a closet for tools." The colonel stepped forward and carefully freed the almost invisible catch. He then slid the narrow door to one side. It moved without a sound. Muller stepped aside with a smile and they could all look.

  It was not a closet. Inside was a very narrow passage with room only for one man at a time. It was far too narrow for the bulk of either of the two robots they had seen. It ended in a perfectly plain curve, which seemed to taper away to the left. They all looked to Muller.

  "I want the UN people first this time. There will be machines, and we have more training in spotting or using such things. Slater at point, then me, then the four True People and Captain Feng's sharp vision as rear guard. Let's go."

  A thrill went through the Anglo-Pathan as he took the lead. He touched Danna's arm as he passed her and entered the narrow tunnel. Satreel or one of his kind could use this, he thought. Or a robot of a kind we haven't seen yet. He paced on slowly and carefully, trying to miss nothing. He heard the scuff of movement at his back and finally the faint sound of the access door sliding shut.

  The tight space seemed featureless, with the usual dull-brown plastic on the walls, ceiling, and underfoot. Suddenly Slater checked. He had been wondering if the narrow passage went round the whole control room of Satreel when he saw something in an alcove in the wall to his right front, no wider than his chest and at his shoulder level. It was dark but something was on the curved shelf that formed its floor. He waved the others back. Then he went forward and looked carefully, wishing he had a pocket beamlight. But those had gone to either Satreel or the "new clansmen" he used as guards.

  On close inspection, he could see that it was a dust-covered tool of some kind. He examined the bottom of the shelf with great care, but he could see nothing that resembled an alarm.

  He signaled behind his back and he knew Muller would come up. With great care, he picked the object up and held it out to his chief. They looked at it hard and Muller looked at him as well. They nodded and smiled. Both of them were veterans, and the younger was not stupid. It was a weapon.

  The butt was huge, and when Muller took the thing in his hand, he could not reach the trigger—a button the front of the grip—with his index finger. Under the dust was the alien blue metal of the barrel, which was short in proportion to the grip and came to a blunt point. At the tip of the point was a small hole, and the edge was worn on this opening, worn and fused looking. Finally, on the plastic of the side of the device a strange stamp was embossed. It looked like a circled bullet with arms, made of some differ
ent metal.

  "Could be used for welding or maybe it's an odd cooking utensil," the colonel said gently. He winked at Slater and then turned and murmured, "Found a gun of sorts" to Thau Lang, who was next to him. The konsel passed the word back. Meanwhile Muller had tapped Slater's shoulder and urged him to move on.

  As Slater went on, he began to notice that he could actually "feel" the left curve of the strange passage. That they were indeed going around the control room of their captor finally came home to him. On and on went the slow curve, but no more niches appeared in the walls and the strip of light in the narrow roof caught nothing but greasy dust as it rose in sluggish swirls under his careful feet. He was suddenly conscious of a very dry throat and he knew it was not fear but thirst. They had not had any water for a long time, he realized. How long had it been and how was Danna holding out? His thoughts did not slow his steady progress, and he checked instantly when he saw two things that drove all other thoughts from his head.

  First, he saw that the passage ahead lay straight. And not only was it straight but at the end of visibility it was crossed at right angles by a barrier. In an instant he knew what he was seeing—it had to be the passage into the dome of the alien control room, the one down which they had all come when Satreel called to them. He knew there had to be another door there.

  From three openings on the left side of the passage, and not so far from his position, there came a glow of intensified light. He was not conscious of signaling to Muller but the colonel was immediately beside him, looking past him intently.

  "They must be sealed. I hear nothing. Never noticed them when we were inside there. Might be one-way glass, or could be views of another room just outside the big chamber." He paused. "No point in brooding. Go on, boy. Be careful."

  As Slater moved on, he thought of the strange find that the senior officer now carried. Probably empty and tossed away a hundred and fifty years ago by Satreel's mother, said his mind, and then he forgot all about the thing for he had reached the first of the light sources. He peered around the near comer with one eye and blinked as he did. The dim light he had grown used to in the corridor was a different strength from what he was now getting. There could be no mistake about that light, if it had been seen even once. It was the eerie bluish-white glow that lit the great domed control room in which they had seen their helpless animals turned into slime.