Rebels of the Red Planet
Page 14
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Dark and Maya sat with their backs against the wall of Ultra Vires, andQril squatted before them, towering huge above them. A little distanceaway the other three Martians were grouped, playing some sort of game,doing some sort of work or participating in some sort of jointdemonstration. Dark could not be sure which.
Qril boomed out a long, rolling sentence and Maya broke into laughter.She turned to Dark and translated:
"He said he didn't understand why I'm wearing a helmet, when you aren't.I explained that I have to wear a helmet to breathe, and he said that,since you and I are alike, it appears that we'd dress alike. So you see,darling, even the Martians recognize that we're made for each other."
Dark shook his head in wonderment.
"No human has ever been able to figure out Martian thinking processes,and I doubt that one ever will," he remarked. "This is the Martian whoexplained to you the physiological structure that permits me to livewithout oxygen, and yet he asks a question like that!"
"There's one thing that puzzles me," said Maya curiously. "Without ahelmet, you can't use your marsuit heater, and you said you walked herenaked. But the temperature out here right now is well below freezing.Aren't you cold?"
"No," answered Dark. "I get cold in temperatures that are uncomfortableto anyone else when I'm in a dome or a building and breathing. But outhere, when I'm not breathing, I'm aware of temperature changes but theydon't cause me any discomfort. It must be that switching to directutilization of solar power alters my reactions to temperature."
"Well," said Maya, "I can understand that utilization of solar powerwhen you're in the sunshine. But how can you keep operating when you'rein shadow, or at night, and not breathing?"
"I don't know. Maybe Qril does."
Maya asked the Martian, and relayed his answer to Dark:
"Qril says that you store excess energy in the tissues, very much as theMartians store oxygen. In a sense, direct sunlight's your generator, andit charges your batteries for power when it isn't operating. Now, Dark,why don't you ask him anything you want to know about your origin, andI'll act as translator."
"All right," agreed Dark. "But first, it was among Martians that I awokewhen I returned to life the first time in the Icaria Desert. That'spretty far away, but I understand Martians have a weird sort ofsympathetic communication among themselves. Does he know anything abouthow I got there?"
Maya talked with Qril and translated:
"Qril is one of the Martians I saw come by here and pick up your bodythe morning after Goat killed you and threw your body out in the desert.Qril says they recognized you from your genetic pattern--and don't askme how they did this!--as being the one they had completed embryonicalteration on years before, so they picked you up and took you with themto give you a chance to regenerate and revive."
"But how and why did I turn up after my revival with Dark Kensington'smemories?"
"He says they gave you a memory pattern by a deep telepathic process,"answered Maya after talking with Qril, "because your memory pattern asBrute was of no value to you in meeting a new environment. It seems thatthere was some blockage in the operation of your brain as Brute, becauseof a slight fault in the embryonic alteration, and they corrected thatbefore you revived."
"But why Dark Kensington's memory pattern?" asked Dark. "It turned outto be a valuable one for me, but I've met the real Dark Kensington sincethen, and he's a much older man. Why did they choose his memorypattern?"
Maya talked with Qril.
"He says names mean very little to them," she said then. "That'ssomething I learned as a child: that Martians often interchange theirnames, and the names evidently refer to a state of experience and beingrather than to a specific individual. But he says that the memorypattern they chose to give you was that of your father!"
Dark stared at her, stunned.
"Then," he said slowly, "Old Beard is my father. I should have known! Ithink I felt it."
"I'm not surprised if you did," said Maya. "From what Qril tells me,Dark, this prenatal alteration they performed on you gave you even moreextensive powers than we realized. He says that you have extraordinaryextrasensory ability, if you would only make an effort to use it."
"Oh, I do, do I?" murmured Dark thoughtfully.
He looked over at the other Martians, seated in a circle in the morningsunshine. They were taking turns tossing some small polygons, andevidently the objective of whatever they were doing lay in the way thepolygons fell.
Dark felt a sudden surge of power in his brain. He concentrated it, hefocused it, and one of the polygons rose slowly from the ground anddrifted into the air above the Martians' heads.
Dark could feel the strength that went out and raised the polygon, likean invisible extension of himself. Then he felt another force seize thepolygon, and it was drawn back firmly and without hesitation to itsformer place.
Dark turned his head back to look into Qril's huge eyes, and at once hewas in mental contact with the Martian.
Qril was laughing at him. There was no change of expression on Qril'sface, but in his mind was the atmosphere of high humor. Qril's thoughtscame to him without words, in no language, silently but clearly:
_You have not practised your power. Experience will be necessary beforeyou can compete with the simplest effort of one of our race._
Dark turned to Maya.
"He's right," said Dark. "I do have extrasensory powers, but they'llneed some development."
"I know," said Maya. "The telepathic voltage in the atmosphere must bevery high right now, because even I sensed your effort in lifting thatobject, and I understood Qril's communication to you."
Maya and Dark took their leave of Qril, and went back into Ultra Vires.As they did so, Qril and the other Martians arose and began to driftaway into the desert, as though they had had a mission in staying here,which was now accomplished.
"I hope you know something about mechanics," said Maya as they walkeddown the corridor together. "Because if you don't, it looks like we'restuck here for a while. At least I am, unless you can run one of thesegroundcars with psychokinetic power."
"No, apparently I'm not that good at it yet," said Dark. "Maybe I couldteleport in any parts you need. No wait! I just remembered something!Come with me."
They turned off into a side corridor, found stairs and climbed to thetop floor of the building. There they followed another corridor untilDark stopped and opened a door.
It was the door to a small airlock. Dark led Maya through it into a hugeroom.
A helicopter stood in its center.
"Goat _did_ leave it here!" exclaimed Dark joyfully. "I'd forgotten thathe had this. He must have just packed the most necessary things when heleft the place, planning to send trucks and a crew back and clean it outlater at his leisure. Now, if this copter's only in good flying shape,we're set."
He checked the machine over. Everything was in order.
"How do we get it out of here?" asked Maya curiously, looking around theroom. "That little airlock's too small for a copter to go through it."
"The roof rolls back," said Dark. "Put on your helmet, and I'll showyou."
Maya donned her marshelmet. Dark went to the wall and pulled a switch.Nothing happened.
"I forgot," he said. "The electricity's off. Well, let's try something."
Dark concentrated his mind intensely on the movable ceiling. For amoment, there was resistance, then, very slowly, it began to open. Acrack appeared in its center, and the air of the room hissed out withthe swish of a minor tempest. After that, it was easier. The crackwidened swiftly, and the roof rolled back to the walls, leaving the roomopen to the heavens.
"All we have to do now is to climb into it and go," said Dark withsatisfaction. "You fill the fuel tanks, and I'll run down to the motorpool and pick up those other two marsuits. One of them is for my friendHappy, who is very fat, and he couldn't wear either of the emergencysuits in the copter."
Maya uncoiled the hose from one of the fuel d
rums in the room and pokedit into the copter's tank. Dark left the room, walked down the corridorand descended the stairs.
He made his way to the motor pool. Maya was wearing one of the threemarsuits he had brought down, but the other two were still lying on thefloor. He picked them up and started back.
He was walking down the first floor corridor, carrying the marsuits,when there crashed in on his mind a terrifying, silent scream:
_Help!_
Dark stopped, appalled. It took him a moment to realize that he wasstill standing in the corridor. It took him a moment to realize that heactually had heard nothing.
The corridor stretched away ahead of him, dim and dusty. There was nomovement in it, no sound. It was utterly silent. He stood there, in adim, dusty corridor, in waiting silence, holding two marsuits under hisarms.
_Help!_
It was a cry that shrieked in his mind, reverberated in his mind,touching nothing around him, touching not the silent corridor.
_Maya!_
Dark's mind went out to her, rode up on swift wings to the room abovewhere she had waited for his return.
He was there, in that room, and there was the helicopter. There was noMaya there.
But there were figures in the copter, moving.
He was in the copter, and there was Maya, struggling and writhing, asNuwell Eli, in a furious concentration of savage energy, bound her intoone of its seats with a length of rope.
Dark touched her mind, and her mind grasped his, desperately.
_Dark, he followed us up here, and hid until you left. He crept upbehind me and seized me. Hurry, Dark, he's taking me away!_
Hurry? Down those corridors, up those steps, when Nuwell already wassliding into the pilot's seat of the copter?
Frantically, Dark grasped at his only chance of reaching her in time.Teleportation.
He clamped down with his mind on himself. With a frenzied burst ofstrength, he sought to lift himself bodily, to be there in the copterwith them. He put every ounce of energy he possessed into the effort.
And he failed.
He was standing in the dim, dusty corridor, two marsuits under his arm,straining futilely toward a place he could not reach. And now heactually heard, with his ears, the muted vibration above him as thecopter's engines roared to life.
Dark started running.
He dropped the marsuits, and ran down the corridor. He leaped up thestairs, two and three at a time. Breathless, his heart pounding, hestaggered down the upper corridor and impatiently went through theseemingly interminable process of negotiating the airlock.
He emerged into the big room.
It was empty.
The ceiling was open to the Martian sky. The sunlight poured into theroofless room.
In the sky, a small, teetering object rose and moved away from UltraVires, its blades whirring a sparkling circle in the thin air.
Dark reached out to it with his mind, and again he was in the copter.Nuwell sat tensely at the controls, guiding it. Maya was in the otherseat, her arms bound down by her sides, her expression agonized.
Nuwell was unaware of Dark's mental presence. Maya sensed it and hermind turned toward him.
_Dark, Dark, what can we do? I should have been watching for him. Ishould have known, after he saw us together, that he would dosomething._
Dark: _It was my fault, Maya. I shouldn't have left you alone. I justdidn't consider him a factor to be reckoned with, and I should haveknown better._
Maya: _What can we do?_
Nuwell turned to Maya, and his face was bitter and sullen. His browneyes were flat with anger.
"You treacherous witch, I should have known better than to trust youafter that trick of trying to help Kensington escape. I wanted to giveyou a chance, because I thought that, with him dead, you might haverecovered from your madness," he said.
A change came over his face: a mixture of fear, disbelief and utter lackof comprehension.
"He _was_ dead," said Nuwell, a hysterical note underlying his tone. "Isaw him. You saw him dead, too, didn't you, Maya? How could he be backthere with you?"
Maya's only answer was a defiant smile.
"There's some explanation for this," said Nuwell, more positively. "Idon't know what it is, but I'll find it. That man back there isn't DarkKensington, because Kensington's dead. Maya, I promise you, I'm going tofind out what the answer is, but first I'm going to make sure that youdon't cause me any more trouble."
Dark touched Maya's mind.
_Maya, I'm going to try something here._
He moved back. He was outside the copter, near it, keeping pace with itas it flew. It was tilted slightly forward, falling forward through thesky at the pull of its blades.
Dark seized the copter with his mind. He tried to drag it back.
It hesitated. It quivered. Then it jerked forward and went on. He felthis mental grasp slipping from it.
Suddenly he was completely in the big room in Ultra Vires, the room withits roof open to the sky. He could no longer touch the copter. He couldno longer be in it. He could no longer touch Maya's mind.
He tried. He reached out again. But he failed. He was where he was.
He realized he was almost exhausted. The tremendous drain of his effortson his energy told on him at last. He no longer had the strength to tryany more, and Nuwell and Maya were gone away from him into the Martiansky.
Wearily, he turned back and went through the airlock, down the corridorand down the stairs.
There was nothing more he could do now. Nuwell undoubtedly would takeMaya to Mars City. And then?
Maya would refuse to marry Nuwell now, and Dark doubted that Nuwellcould force her. What Nuwell would do with her, he did not know.Probably some sort of confinement, eventually perhaps a trial. ButNuwell had no ground or reason to do her any real harm.
He would have to try to get to Maya as soon as he could, and that meantintensification of his efforts. But there was only one course he couldhope to follow successfully, and that was the course he had planned whenhe started out for Ultra Vires.
Only now he _could_ speed it up.
He had to have some rest. Then he would pick up three marsuits and walkback across the desert to the Canfell Hydroponic Farm.