Menace Under Marswood

by Sterling E. Lanier

The intense beam of violet heat lashed out of the beamer once again, striking the body just below the head. Whatever the composition of the creature's skin, it was not so strong as human epidermis, or as Muller pointed out later, a human survival suit. Almost decapitated, the great tall shape simply fell forward, with a series of feathery clicks and thuds, landing just in front of Danna. The two bulging eyes, pupilless and shining, looked exactly the same as before. No life seemed to have left them, but the whole long shape, which now was seen to have many legs, lay limp and unmoving in seconds. A thick green slime flowed sluggishly from the wound.

  The others had all come up by now and were staring, but it was Captain Feng, his face alive with interest, who spoke first. "Incredible what those star rovers had in the way of science!" He turned to Muller. "This is impossible, Colonel, even with the lighter gravity of Mars. No insect should be able to even move at that size, nor should its circulatory system work. Quite apart from whatever growth it was bred to, how under Heaven did they do it?"

  Muller looked at Slater and smiled. "I had a few tribal ancestors, long ago in the extreme southern part of Africa. They thought the praying mantis was a god. Here's one they never met but which might qualify, eh?"

  Slater turned to Danna and put one arm about her shoulders. "Look, Wise Martian Woman. Here's something from the home of your ancestors, a thing I used to catch and squash when I was young. I squashed this one for you, so it wouldn't pick you up in those claw arms and eat you. Now who's a stupid Greenie?"

  "Ugh, horrible!" She smiled up at him and returned the one-armed hug. "Please stay and protect me, Moe. And keep any of those pets back on Earth."

  Thau Lang moved around the immense insect's corpse, then called out. "Here is another open door. How many of these doors can there be, Louis? And why are they now open?"

  "Because, my dear fellow, Slater and I opened them. It was the last thing Satreel did for us, telling us how to do it. Before you ask why it would be 'for us', think a second. Jay Bee and that very nasty girl are also in this building. With this crew of killer beasts loose, we have two chances—one of having them killed by the animals, the other of killing them ourselves before they kill us." He turned to Slater who was nearby. "Recall that interrupted humming noise when we pulled the lever? It must have been opening and shutting cage doors. So, my friends, let's get back to work and find whatever else is around. We found good weapons twice. Back to work and find more."

  They spread out and began to examine everything they came across. A few strange-looking cabinets were sealed shut, and no one dared try force on them. All appeared to be metal, though coated with some plasticene covering. Some were blue, some yellow, and a few even purple.

  Suddenly Arta Burg's choked cry made the others stop their roving and turn. Three tall shapes had unexpectedly appeared, their bearded faces furious. In seconds Arta fell, transfixed by a spear he could not dodge.

  Danna screamed as the new clansmen, in full battle array, shouted as one man, "Kill the Earthlings, kill them all!" Spears, swords, and shields ready, they rushed to the attack. And behind them more burst from the wall in a milling, tangled crowd, all yelling and waving weapons.

  "Shoot to kill!" Muller roared. Even as he said it, he was crouched, firing the alien pistol that shot explosive bullets. He sprayed the new clansmen with silver death. As Feng had guessed, it was a superb anti-personnel weapon. A whole section of the advancing horde's front rank went down, shredded dead on the spot.

  Meanwhile, Thau Lang, and Slater had begun to fire their beamers. The three-part barrage of explosives and superlaser fire stopped the wild rash in its tracks. Those new clansmen not hit fled back to the wide doorway from which they had just burst, leaving their wounded and at least twenty dead behind. Blood, charred meat, and fragmented flesh and bone were spattered all over. The battle was over in seconds.

  "It seems that JayBee has found allies or servants," Muller said. "These poor devils didn't come here on their own, they were sent. He is somewhere around, taking care not to get hit himself—and I want him! If he gets any real weapons, anything like our stuff, we're dead! I want him dead, not us, and I don't want to give him a chance to escape—which he'll do if he can't get us first." Muller paused while he looked about with cold rage. He tried to not listen to the moans of the wounded giants who lay among the dead and pieces of the dead.

  "Listen up, you guys. One thing I want you all to know about," Muller went on. "Outside, before we ever came in this alien hellhole, I gave Nakamura some instructions. Our mission is to finish this place, I hoped that if they got us, he, with his size and his knowledge, might get away somehow as a member of this so-called new clan. I had to take as few chances as possible, and Lieutenant Nakamura was my last hope of getting the word out if we ended up dead. So, look out when you shoot or hit anyone, just because he's big. Nakamura might be in with them."

  Slater was wondering if Nakamura was still alive when he noticed Danna and Milla Breen kneeling by a limp form that lay in the middle of the fragmented dead. Realizing who it must be, he ran over to them, trying not to slip in the gore.

  Danna looked up, her eyes full of unshed tears. "He never had a chance. Poor Arta. He had just become a warman and he guarded me all his life." She buried her face in both hands. As he looked down, Slater realized that young Burg could not have felt much. The point of the heavy spear was deep in his upper chest. He sensed movement at his side and saw Thau Lang had joined them.

  "Come, up, both of you. Milla, you are the last husband now and have more to do. No time for mourning here. We must avenge him. Later we will sing his praises."

  The young Ruckers got up, and Slater put his arm over Danna's shoulder. Allah! To think I was once jealous of that poor dead kid went through his mind as he hugged the shaken girl. But before he could get maudlin, Muller interrupted.

  "Over here, all of you. We may have found something we can use." Muller was pointing to a lever in a hollow on the floor under the central panel.

  Slater crouched and studied the heavy, dull-blue lever that thrust up at a slight angle from a depression on the floor. Next to it, a raised, square-ended projection protruded from the underside of the panel. On the face of that a strange mark was deeply incised in the metal, a hemisphere with lines from the pole to the diameter line. Across the whole thing was something that looked as if it might be a word in a strange script.

  Slater looked up at Feng and saw the I-Corps captain was excited from the expression on his face. He looked down again and an idea came to him suddenly. "Might be a picture of a shelter of some kind, like a domed tent. But maybe it stands for a grid, a dome over something. I don't know—"

  "Why not a power grid? Over all this area?" Feng asked.

  "We know there is one," the colonel said. "This whole area of the rift is one of the Dead Zones; has been since we first came to Mars. There are others. There's one about or near about the mountain. But this is the one we've known about the longest."

  They stared at the enigmatic lever until Muller broke the silence. "Let's go. We'll have to take a chance and hope we won't blow ourselves and the whole place sky high. We can't read their script and we have no time to go to school. Pull it over—all the way, Lieutenant."

  Slater grinned at Danna and yanked the lever. A long moment went by, in complete silence.

  "All right, Feng. Try the thing you think is a radio or whatever." He smiled at Slater who still crouched by the lever. "The captain is reasonably sure he has located a comm of some sort on the top left over there. Let's see if that blows us up."

  Feng turned a knob and spoke loudly into an oily cable that ended in yet another knob. "To any UN force within sound of my voice, come in please! This is an I-Corps flash. I repeat, this is an I-Corps flash." Nothing happened, so after a brief pause, he rotated the knob and repeated the call.

  The response was immediate but not too loud. Even Muller jumped a little when they heard it. "General Scott here, Captain. I read you five by. I have a fix o
n you. What's your status? Over." The new voice was projected from under the panel in front of Feng, but Slater could not see from what.

  "We need help, sir—" was all Feng got out before Muller leaned over and took the mike from him.

  "Colonel Muller here, General. Are you nearby? What's your strength?"

  "Almost directly over you," came the answer. "Six floaters and five hundred troops. A crash force I put together. What's the situation?"

  "Come straight down, sir. JayBee's here but I think he has little in the way of weapons beyond knives and spears. We killed the communications blackout. He seems to be in control of the new clan. I don't know how many there are, but they are armed with only crude hand weapons. We are holding an al ... we are holding the archaic control room of this fort. Tell your men to touch no controls or odd-looking devices at all. Might blow us up and them too."

  "We're descending now, Colonel. Anything else?"

  Slater was gesturing wildly and pointing to the body of the hairy monster that had appeared first. Muller nodded. "Strange life-forms wandering about here. Many of them, and they can be very bad news. Instruct the men to kill on sight."

  "Very good. Keep this channel open."

  Muller leaned back against the control panel and let out a sigh of relief. "I know Scott, a good man. Tough and quick when he needs to be." He looked around with a fresh light gleaming in his eyes. Slater could see a new plan forming even before he spoke.

  "We have to get JayBee and this new clan he's inherited. We don't know where they are, or even if they believe enough in JayBee to follow him." He looked searchingly about the vast room. "Captain Feng, you stay here with the com and keep watch. Danna Strom, you stay too. Lieutenant Slater and I will form one team, Thau Lang and Milla Breen the other. We'll fan out through the side corridors and keep looking for JayBee. Feng, you tell General Scott what we're doing,"

  But Danna would not stay if Mohammed Slater went. And she carried the point with ridiculous ease, Slater thought, considering that she was opposing Colonel Muller. All he did was listen quietly, smile, and nod. Feng shrugged and settled at the panels of the control board.

  And so they set off, the two Ruckers down the tunnel from which the giant mammal had come, the other three down the larger one from which the praying mantis had emerged. Even as they passed through strange doors, they could hear the roar and whistles of noncoms as the UN strike force formed up.

  Muller went first, Danna next, and Slater brought up the rear. For a long time the corridor ran gently down on a curving slant. Eventually Muller held up his hand; they halted and drew together, weapons at the ready.

  "Listen," he murmured. "I heard something move." As Slater peered ahead, he could see that the dimly lit, featureless passage curved yet again, this time to the left. Further, when he had stared for a few seconds, he had the impression that a larger space lay beyond, from which came a very faint light. He muttered this to Muller who bobbed his head. Then, as they listened, sounds about which there could be no argument burst upon them. One was a high, piercing scream that rose until it hurt the eardrums. The other, which underlay the scream, was something else. Part shrieking roar, part grating hiss, it was a horrid sound and its volume alone gave an impression of great size as well as appalling savagery.

  "Let's go!" Muller snapped. They raced for the curve that lay ahead, the two men in front with weapons poised and the girl just behind, her spear ready. They whipped around the shallow curve and burst into a great underground room, a sunken cavern of a place with rough walls arching overhead and a floor of earth and rock littered with small chunks of rubble.

  Yet the place was not entirely natural, and it had at least once been used. Overhead a few large fluor lamps glared and here and there were strewn bits of furniture and utensils of some sort. But it was the scene before them that gripped them.

  Three persons were backed up on to a low mound of debris, some distance away to their left. They could be seen clearly in the lights. One, taller than the other two, was their greatest enemy. Alongside JayBee, her face twisted in fear, stood Mohini Dutt-Medawar, all beauty gone in her stark terror. And in front of them, her arms held behind her back by JayBee, stood an unknown quantity!

  She was young and seemed, in that flashing instant, to be lovely in a strange and unearthly way. She was straining against Pelham's grip. A lovely young woman with orange hair! It did not seem to be dyed hair either, though one could not have said just why, but a flame color that verged on a fire yellow. Her mouth was open and she screamed again, high and piercing. Her teeth were clearly visible and to Slater they looked somehow wrong, though white. But his gaze and that of the others was really fixed elsewhere. The flame-haired woman in her swirls of blue robe was incidental.

  Crouched a little lower than the three on the mound was the creature that had made the ghastly roar. As they came in the tunnel entrance, it turned to look at them and it bore the head of a nightmare!

  The creature was the size of an ox or one of the extinct giant bears of Earth. Its huge head had small ears, vast jaws full of great teeth and a pair of upper canines that looked like huge tusks. From its lower jaw stuck bone flanges into which the great upper teeth obviously fit when the mouth was closed. The massive body was powerful and bearlike but with a long tail such as no bear ever has or had. The mighty legs had vast paws with longs claws, and the whole close-furred body was striped along its length, white stripes on a reddish background. They could smell its reeking odor, pungent and rank.

  Alien fauna, Slater thought. Something they brought from the stars and it got loose when we pushed Satreel's button? But there was no time for much thought. The thing had finally focused on the new prey. That hissing bellow erupted again from the gaping jaws, and it hurled itself at them.

  "Fan out!" Muller screamed as he fired. Slater tried to step in front of Danna, but, to his surprise, the colonel beat him to it, so the lieutenant ducked the other way and crouched to get a better aim.

  The two weapons did the trick, but not by much. The explosive needles from Muller's gun tore into the giant chest of the oncoming behemoth, while Slater's ray burned through the great right shoulder, which was nearest to him, and he fanned the weapon a little to spread its effect.

  With a last coughing, choking ripsaw of sound, deafening even as it gave way to gasps of pain, the creature fell so close to the colonel that a spray of saliva from the dying jaws fell across Muller's feet. The two men ceased their fire but stayed in a crouch, weapons ready in case the monster had some last strength in reserve. Suddenly Danna noticed movement ahead. "Moe! JayBee's getting away over there!"

  Behind the mound of earth and rubble JayBee and Mohini had been standing on, was an opening in the rough wall of rock. Mohini had already entered it and JayBee was right behind, dragging the strange girl by one arm.

  Slater leaped forward, his pistol raised. Behind him, Muller yelled something, in which the only word he caught was "alien!"

  Pelham was out of sight and Slater could see only a rough crevice in the wall. As he rushed forward, the stare of the strange girl, who was pulling in his direction without effect, met his eyes head on. The eyes filled his vision and sent a chill down his spine. Large eyes they were, and reddish. The pupils were narrow, jet black, and vertical. No human eye ever had such a pupil!

  The girl disappeared in the crevice before he could reach her. Without a pause Slater ran into the opening but found it was dark and lightless. He rushed on as fast as he could and he heard a grinding noise in the blackness ahead, a noise that ended with a heavy thud. Seconds later he ran smack into a hard barrier and bruised his out flung left arm badly. He tripped on a piece of loose rock and fell to the floor, annoyed and blind.

  Then, suddenly, a light went on behind him and he whirled, heat beam ready, just as Danna and Muller rushed up. Danna was holding a small pocket beamlight.

  "Found it on the mound," Muller said. "JayBee must have dropped it while struggling with the girl."

&nb
sp; They carefully checked the great door that had blocked the passage. It was made of some dense, dull metal. There was no control or latch, nothing but blank, immobile metal in one huge slab, which closed the rocky tunnel from floor to roof.

  "Shouldn't we go back to the big room, sir? We might find another of these openings there." Danna's hand slipped into Slater's own behind his back.

  "We may have to." The colonel was using the small beam to examine the vast block in the passage very carefully. "May still have to," he went on, "but let's try something first. We'll all get our hands flat on the surface and push. First, this way, to the right."

  Under their pressure, the great slab was quite motionless and inert. "Now the left," Muller prompted, and to Slater's amazement, the huge thing began to slide.

  When a narrow opening had appeared on the right, the colonel made them stop, while he reconnoitered, peering around the corner very carefully. "Nothing," he said at length, standing back. "Just an empty passage, dimly lit, but a smooth one, not like this at all. Plastic coating all over, I think, under the dust. The footprints went straight on and there were broad smudges. JayBee must have been dragging that very odd captive of his. Anything about her strike you as peculiar, lieutenant, aside from the startling hair?"

  Slater gulped, his mind racing. "Well, sir, her eyes. They had vertical and very long pupils. Like a ferkat's, only bigger. Maybe something strange about her teeth too, although I can't think what it was."

  Muller laughed softly and the laugh wrinkles about his eyes crinkled in the reflected torchlight. "They were fangs, young man—pointed, very sharp fangs. I missed the eyes myself but you got closer. Good observation." The laughter died from his face and it grew solemn for a moment. "Glad to see Danna's man has good vision. Makes an old fellow feel better."

  At their look of joint incomprehension, he smiled again. "I have a responsibility to Danna, lieutenant, quite apart from my job and rank and this search of ours." He paused and then reached out his free hand and patted the girl's shoulder. "We won't go into the details right now. I had never seen her until she came to Fort Agnew. But I knew about her long before." His powerful arm left the girl's shoulder and slipped around her slender waist as he pulled her in close to his body.