Men Against the Stars - [Adventures in Science Fiction 01]

by Edited By Martin Grrenburg

  ~ * ~

  S

  parks Avery, on vigil beside his radio equipment, saw the three men coming. He didn’t have to look twice to know that something was wrong. Rising, he opened the controls that manipulated the outer door of the lock.

  From the stern of the ship came a rattle of pots and pans as Shorty Adams, the dour cook, prepared the evening meal.

  Angus McIlrath, far-wandering son of Scotland, came forward from his engine room. Momentarily, as he opened the door, the muted hiss of the uranium fission engines sounded.

  “What is it, lad?” McIlrath asked.

  Sparks pointed to the three men. They were nearer now. Coming across the sandy square, the dust splashed around their feet and hung in an eddying cloud behind them, dust that had never known rain.

  McIlrath squinted through the double glass of the port, shielding his old eyes against the thin sun glare of Mars. “I don’t like their faces, lad.”

  Sparks did not answer. Heavy boots clumped in the lock. The outer door clanged. Air hissed softly. The inner door opened.

  Martin Frome, tall and thin, came first. His blue-gray eyes rested for an instant on the radio man. He said nothing. Behind him came James Sutter, swinging his long arms like a waddling ape. And last came Vincent Orsatti, blinking weak eyes behind thick-lensed spectacles.

  “Is everything all right in the ship?” Frome asked.

  “Right, sir,” Sparks answered.

  “You kept close watch from the ports, as I directed?”

  “Yes.”

  “You observed nothing unusual, no movement of any kind?”

  “Nothing.”

  Frome turned to McIlrath. “Are the engines ready?”

  “The engines,” said McIlrath evenly, “are always ready.”

  “Keep them that way,” said Frome flatly.

  McIlrath touched his cap with two fingers. “Aye, captain.”

  Frome turned to the two men who had entered with him. “Sutter, prepare for immediate transmission by radio to our main base a short archaeological report on the city itself.”

  The archaeologist, already pulling off his heavy garments, clumped across the room to a table.

  “Orsatti,” Frome said, “you will oblige me greatly if you will tackle a report on this.” He opened the knapsack that he carried, took an object from it which he laid on a table.

  “Gladly, captain,” Orsatti answered. “Oh. On that?”

  There was startled inquiry in Orsatti’s voice. Sparks leaned forward to look at the object Frome had laid on the table. A gleam of brilliant ruby lanced out from it. “What is it?” he asked.

  “We don’t know,” Frome answered. “They’re scattered everywhere, all over the city. In one place we found them piled three feet high against a door, like a load of coal dumped from a truck. They look like jewels, but they aren’t that.”

  It did look like a jewel, like a ruby as big as a man’s fist. It was round and its surface was a mass of facets from which reddish beams of reflected light winked.

  “But, captain,” Orsatti protested. “My speciality is biochemistry. I am also a metallurgist, of sorts, but this doesn’t fall within either of my fields.”

  “Describe it as best you can,” Frome said gruffly. “While I prepare a report on the fate of our first expedition to this triply-cursed city of Torms.”

  “You found them?” Sparks interrupted quickly.

  “We located their ship from the air, before we landed.”

  “I know that. But the men—”

  Frome’s lips knifed into a straight line. “We found the men, too.”

  “Oh,” Sparks answered. For a second he stared at the captain, his face working. Then he turned on his heel and walked over and eased his lithe body into the chair in front of the radio transmitter. McIlrath looked at him sadly, but said nothing.

  ~ * ~

  Orsatti’s report was finished first. He handed the single sheet to the radio man. Sparks read:

  The jewellike objects which we have discovered here in Torms seem to be unique. So far as my personal knowledge goes, they have never been reported elsewhere on Mars.

  We picked them up all over the city. Apparently the first expedition discovered them, for we found several in their ship, one under the commander’s bunk, others near the vessel.

  They appear either singly or in groups that may run as high as several hundreds. In one place we found thousands of them piled, as Captain Frome described it, “like coal in front of a basement door.”

  It is doubtful that they belonged to the unknown inhabitants of this city. A more likely hypothesis is that they have been brought here after the inhabitants died.

  In appearance they much resemble gigantic jewels, and at first glance, they seem to have been carved into definite facets. A more careful examination, however, discloses that the facets are natural, and apparently result from the crystalline structure of these strange objects.

  Another unique characteristic is their fragility. Sutter dropped one of them. It shattered into fragments so minute as to be almost invisible, and then, to add to our uncertainty about these crystals, the fragments rapidly dissolved into a thin red gas which seemed to have a tendency to flow together.

  We have as yet not been able to suggest an adequate explanation for the origin of these crystals or to determine what they really are.

  —Signed, Vincent Orsatti, biochemist with the rescue expedition to Torms.

  ~ * ~

  Sparks snapped a series of switches. A transformer hummed. Radio tubes warmed. He spoke into the microphone. “Rescue ship Kepler calling Main Base. Rescue ship Kepler calling Main Base.”

  “Go ahead, rescue ship,” the loudspeaker answered.

  By the time he had finished the first message, Sutter had completed his report. Sparks started reading the archaeologist’s account into the microphone.

  ~ * ~

  “Unquestionably this is the most important archaeological discovery made since the first ship landed on Mars eleven years ago. It is not necessary for me to recount here the explorations made since that date.

  “You recall the eagerness with which the first exploratory efforts were carried out, the hurried, frantic search for intelligent life on Mars. There was never any question that life had existed here. Dust had almost filled the canals, dust covered the sites, but the canals and the sites proved that a race of remarkable scientific achievement had developed on this planet. You recall how our eagerness faded into wonder as the reports of the exploring parties came in. They found cities—with sand drifting down the streets. The condition of the cities indicated that they had been abandoned in a manner which suggested that the inhabitants had slowly fled before an advancing enemy. We found tools scattered everywhere, ornaments, the strange scroll books covered with indecipherable hieroglyphics. But we never found the race that had created these things. We found their bones, dry in the sand. But we never found them. Nor did we find the enemy before which they had fled.

  “Nor are there any inhabitants here in this city of Torms. But there is something here that I regard as very significant.

  “Here everything is in perfect order. The books are neatly stacked in the shelves, the contents of the few houses we entered are in place, and the tools and engines of the race that built this city are packed in the equivalent of cosmoline, a heavy grease that protects them from rusting.

  “Everything here is in perfect order—as if the owners planned to return at some future day.

  “A secret is hidden here, a secret that may account for the disappearance of the race that once inhabited Mars. This city is newer than any of the others we have found. It was abandoned last. The clue to the fate of the life on this planet is here.

  “Upon the desirability of determining the fate of this people, of solving the vast mystery that shrouds this planet, I need not comment.

  “I therefore recommend that a most careful investigation be made here.

  “Signed—James Sutter
.”

  ~ * ~

  Sparks took a deep breath. “End of the second report,” he said.

  “It sounds interesting,” the speaker said. “But have you got any dope on what happened to the first expedition?”

  “It will be along in a minute,” Sparks answered.

  “All right, don’t snap my head off,” the speaker grated. The operator’s voice trailed into suddenly embarrassed silence. “Avery, I’m sorry. I—just forgot.”

  “Skip it,” the radio man said gruffly. “I’m not asking for any sympathy.” He looked up. Captain Frome, his face looking as if it had been chiseled from granite, stood beside him.

  “Transmit this,” Frome said. He laid his hand on the radio operator’s shoulder, his fingers dug into the flesh.

  Sparks didn’t feel them. He read the message. “O.K.,” he said, “that’s what I wanted to know.”

  Frome’s voice was suspiciously husky. “Lad, I’m sorry.”

  “You can skip that, too,” Sparks answered. Frome walked away. The operator’s voice droned into the microphone, repeating the message Frome had given him.

  ~ * ~

  “October 16, 2347.—When the radio signals of the first expedition to Torms ceased coming through, we were sent to ascertain if the expedition was in trouble. This is a report of what we found.

  “We sighted the ship from the air. It was resting in one of the squares peculiar to Martian cities. We landed as near to it as we could, in a nearby square, and immediately Orsatti, Sutter and myself walked to the ship, leaving Avery, our radio operator, McIlrath, our engineer, and Adams, our cook, to guard our own vessel.

  “I regret to inform you that we found the three members of the first expedition dead.

  “We were unable to determine the cause of death. There were no wounds on their bodies, but the expression on their faces indicated that they had died in agony. Commander Richard Avery was in his bunk. His legs and arms, stiffened in death, were drawn up in a position that hinted he had been aroused from slumber and had tried to defend himself. However this is merely an impression. No evidence substantiates it. Samuel Funk, the archaeologist, was at the radio transmitter. The impression I received was that he died trying to call for help. The radio set was dead because of power failure, which is utterly incredible, for the power that fed the set was drawn directly from the uranium fission driving engines, which had ceased to operate. In my personal experience this is the first and only time an uranium fission engine has failed to function. I can suggest no reason for this failure. However the engines are dead. We tested them.

  “John Orms, language expert who was attempting to decipher the Martian language, was found at some distance from the ship. His tracks in the sand indicated he had fled from the vessel. The same agony was on his face.

  “In an effort to determine if the ship had been attacked, we examined the sand near it. No footprints, other than those made by the three men, were found.

  “We buried them in the sand of the square in which their ship had landed.

  “We will make a complete investigation. It is essential that we know not only what caused their deaths, but what stopped the engines of their ship. Also we will attempt to solve the mystery of this city, as indicated by James Sutter, our archaeologist.

  Signed—Martin Frome, captain of the rescue ship Kepler

  ~ * ~

  Sparks’ steady voice faltered. He swallowed. Then he spoke again. “This is the end of the transmission at this time.” He snapped off the transmitter.

  There was silence in the ship. Sparks looked at the radio equipment, saying nothing. He raised his head when a voice spoke.

  “Ye’re a haard man, Martin Frome.” It was Angus McIlrath. In moments of stress the burr of his far-distant homeland appeared in his voice.

  “You need not remind me of that fact, Angus,” Frome answered.

  “Skip it, Angus,” said Sparks bluntly.

  “But ‘twas yer own faither, lad, that they buried there. The least they could have done was to tell ye as soon as they returned—what they had found—instead of making ye wait and learn it from the messages.” He turned to Frome. “I say it again. Ye’re a haard man.”

  “This is a hard planet, Angus, and it is a hard trail we travel getting here. It is no place for weakness of any kind—”

  “Aye, but—”

  “I said to forget it, Angus,” Sparks interrupted. “My father was a hard man, too. If he had not been, he would not have been what he was—the first human to set foot on Mars. I know very well what he was called. ‘Old find-a-way-or-make-one Avery.’ ‘Old damn the risk; we’re going through.’ Whenever anything went wrong—and everything must have gone wrong on that first trip—he had a saying, ‘For every evil, nature provides a cure. But she doesn’t hand you that cure on a silver platter. You’ve got to find it yourself, or die.’ He hated any show of sentiment, any weakness of any kind. Captain Frome told me my father was dead in exactly the way he would have wished the news to reach me. As to his death, he died as he would have wished, fighting the unknown. He is buried where he would have wished to be—in the sand of Mars.”

  Silence followed the radio operator’s outburst, the awkward silence of men who want to show their sympathy and can’t find the words.

  “I was on that first trip with him,” said McIlrath. “I learned to know him. Ye’re his own true son.”

  “Sorry,” Sparks answered. “I didn’t mean to blow off steam that way. He wouldn’t have liked it. But he was always sort of a god to me, and”—his lips tightened—”something killed him.”

  The central door opened. The cook stood there. “Come and get it,” he said, “or I’ll throw it away.”

  “Come on,” said Sparks bitterly. “Let’s go eat.”

  When they left the room the jewel was lying on the table where Orsatti had been examining it.

  When they returned it was gone.

  They searched the ship for it. They didn’t find it. They didn’t even find a tiny opening in the inner hull down near the floor, a hole that looked as if a rivet might have dropped out of it. The hole was no larger than a lead pencil, which was probably why they missed it. There was another tiny opening in the outer shell of the ship.

  The jewel was gone.

  “Gentlemen,” said Captain Frome, “tonight we will take turns standing guard.”

  ~ * ~

  But nothing happened that night. No intruder tried to gain entrance to the ship. The wind of Mars, blowing the dry dust of the red planet, whimpered softly around the vessel. There was no other sound.

  But what happened the next day made them forget, temporarily at least, all about the jewel that had disappeared so mysteriously.

  Early in the morning Sutter and Orsatti went out to continue their investigation of the city. Frome remained in the ship, writing up a complete report. McIlrath, under orders from Frome, had gone to the vessel of the first expedition, to examine the engines. He had returned dourly shaking his head. The engines were dead. He had reported to Frome that he was unable to determine the cause of their failure, and muttering had gone back to his own engine room.

  Sparks, on lookout duty at the port, saw the man coming. It was Sutter. He was running.

  “We’ve found them!” Sutter gasped as he came through the inner door of the lock. “The inhabitants of Mars. In a cavern under the city. You remember that door where all the jewels were piled? We shoveled them out of the way and opened it. The Martians are down below. Frozen sleep,” he gasped in explanation.

  “Then they’re alive?” Frome snapped.

  “No. Not yet. But they can be awakened, I think. Orsatti says they can and he ought to know. He’s down there now.” The archaeologist was so excited he could not speak coherently.

  Sparks knew what this find meant to Sutter. It meant a lot to all of them. One of the big reasons why men had been so anxious to blaze a trail across space to Mars had been to meet the inhabitants of the planet. Photographs taken in 1
939 had showed conclusively that the canals of Mars were artificial. Therefore there was life on the sister world across the void.

  But when they reached the planet, they hadn’t found the men of Mars. Instead they had found desolation and dust and sand. And death. Deserted cities.

  If Sutter was right, this was the big moment in the history of the exploration of Mars. Even the arrival of the first spaceship from Earth was not as important as this discovery. His heart leaped at the thought. The long lost inhabitants of Mars had been found!