PLATINUM POHL (22 page)
Authors: Frederik Pohl
“Sure,” I said shortly. “Watch what you’re doing.” I wasn’t in a mood for conversation—not only because of the circumstances, but because my nose was getting sore. Even in the car we wore respirators, on Keever’s orders—I think he had an idea that a Martian attack might blow out our pressure before we could put them on. And three hours that morning, plus five hours each of the several days before, had left my nose pretty tender where the respirator plugs fit in.
Dr. Solveig said worriedly, “I agree with William, please. You have come very close to the other cars many times. If we should hit—”
“We won’t hit,” said Demaree. But he did concentrate on his driving; he maintained his forty meters behind the second car, following their lead as they sought the path of least ups-and-downs through the sand dunes toward Kelcy. It began to look, I thought as I watched the reddish sand streaming by, as though Keever’s “calculated risk” was paying off. Certainly we had come nearly twenty miles without trouble, and past the worst danger spot on the trip, the Split Cliffs. If our luck held for ten minutes more—
It didn’t.
“God almighty!” yelled Demaree, jolting me out of my thoughts. I looked where he was looking, just in time to see flame coursing flat along the ground. It snaked in a quivering course right at the middle sand car of our three; and when the snaking light and the jolting car intersected—
Catastrophe. Even in the thin air, the sound was like an atomic bomb. The spurt of flame leaped forty yards into the air.
We were out of the car in seconds, and the men from Keever’s car joined us. But there was nothing to do for the seven men in the second car.
“They went after the biggest,” Keever said bitterly. “Now—” He shrugged. One thing was sure, and he didn’t have to say it. None of us wanted to be in a sand car with the motor going right there and then.
There was no sign of the enemy. Around us were empty sand dunes—but not empty, because out of them had come the missile. The only break was the fringe of the Split Cliffs behind us.
Keever methodically zipped up his sand cape and went through the routine of tucking in flaps at the neck and arms without speaking. None of us had anything to say either. Demaree, with a stronger stomach than mine, took another look inside the blackened frame of the second sand car, and came back looking as though his stomach wasn’t so strong after all.
We scattered away from the parked sand cars and the wreck of the one that would never move again, and held a council of war. By Keever’s watch, we had time to get to Kelcy or go back to Niobe—at a half trot in either case. We were exactly at midpoint between the two towns. No one even suggested using the sand cars again, though there wasn’t a flicker of a threat from the dunes.
But we knew by experience how abruptly they could explode.
The decision was for Kelcy.
But the Martians took the decision out of our hands.
We trotted along for nearly an hour, on the move for twenty minutes, resting for five, and it began to look as if we’d make it to Kelcy without any more trouble—though, in truth, we had had trouble enough; because it would be enough of a job to try to get ourselves back to Niobe without the strong probability of carrying injured survivors from Kelcy. The remorseless noonday deadline would apply the next day; and travel on Mars by night was nearly out of the question. It is a thin-aired planet, so the sun beats down fiercely; it is a thin-aired planet, so the heat is gone minutes after sundown. I suppose all of us were thinking those thoughts, though we hadn’t the breath to speak them, when the Martians struck again, this time with something new. There was a golden glow from a sand dune ahead of us to the right, and one from a dune ahead of us to the left. Keever, in the lead, hesitated for a second; but he didn’t hesitate enough. He plunged on, and when he and two of the others were between the two dunes, golden lightning flashed. It was like the spray of a fiery hose, from one dune top to the other; and where it passed, three men lay dead.
It wasn’t fire; there wasn’t a mark on the bodies; but they were dead. We instinctively all of us blasted the tops of the glowing dunes with our flame rifles, but of course it was a little late for that. Demaree and I broke for the dune to the right, rifles at the ready. We scrambled up the sides and spread out halfway up to circle it—it was slagged from our own rifles at the top, and certainly nothing could be alive up there. But nothing was alive behind it, either—nothing we could see. The sands were empty.
Demaree swore lividly all the way back to where the bodies of the three men lay. Dr. Solveig, bending over them, said sharply, “That is enough, Demaree! Think what we must do!”
“But those filthy—”
“Demaree!” Solveig stood up straight and beckoned to the only other survivor—who had raced to explore the dune to the left, with the same results. He was a man named Garcia; he and I had come out together, but I didn’t know him very well. “Have you seen anything?” Solveig demanded.
Garcia said bitterly, “More of that fire, Doc! From that hill I could see two or three others shining, down along the way to Kelcy.”
“I had thought so,” Solveig said somberly. “The Martians were of course aware of what we proposed. Kelcy is booby-trapped; we cannot expect to get there.
“So where does that leave us?” demanded Demaree. “We can’t stay here! We can’t even make it back to Niobe—we’ll get caught in the sandstorm. Maybe you’d like that, Doc—but I saw a man after the sandstorm got him a year ago!” And so had I; a patrolman like ourselves, who incautiously found himself out in the middle of nowhere at dusk, when the twilight sandstorm rages from East to West and no human can live for an hour, until the gale passes and the tiny, lethal sand grains subside to the surface of the planet-wide desert again. His own respirators had killed him; the tiny whirl-pumps were clogged solid with sand grains packed against the filters, and he had died of suffocation.
Solveig said, “We go back. Believe me, it is the only way.”
“Back where? It’s twenty-five miles to—”
“To Niobe, yes. But we shall not go that far. I have two proposals. One, the sand cars; at least inside them you will not suffocate. Two—the Split Cliffs.”
We all looked at him as though he had gone insane. But in the end he talked us around—all but Garcia, who clung obstinately to the cars.
We got back to the Split Cliffs, leaving Garcia huddled inside the first car with something of the feelings of the worshippers leaving Andromeda chained to the rock. Not that we were much better off—but at least there were three of us.
Solveig had pointed out, persuasively, that inside the growth of the Split Cliffs the sandstorm couldn’t touch us; that there were caves and tunnels where the three of us, huddled together, might keep each other alive till morning. He admitted that the probability that we would find Martians there before us was high—but we
knew
the Martians had spotted the cars. And at least inside the junglelike Split Cliffs, they would be at as grave a disadvantage as we; unless they could overpower us by numbers, we should be able to fight them off if they discovered us. And even if they did outnumber us, we might be able to kill a few—and on the sand dunes, as we had discovered, they would strike and be gone.
knew
the Martians had spotted the cars. And at least inside the junglelike Split Cliffs, they would be at as grave a disadvantage as we; unless they could overpower us by numbers, we should be able to fight them off if they discovered us. And even if they did outnumber us, we might be able to kill a few—and on the sand dunes, as we had discovered, they would strike and be gone.
Dr. Solveig, in the lead, hesitated and then slipped into the dense yellowish vegetation. Demaree looked at me, and we followed.
There were no trails inside, nothing but a mad tangle of twisty, feather-leaved vines. I heard dry vine-pods rattling ahead as Solveig spearheaded our group, and in a moment we saw him again.
The ground was covered with the fine red sand that overlies all of Mars, but it was only an inch or two deep. Beneath was raw rock, split and fissured with hairline cracks into which the water-seeking tendrils of the vegetation disappeared.
Demaree said softly, “Dr. Solveig. Up ahead there, by the little yellow bush. Doesn’t that look like a path?”
It wasn’t much, just a few branches bent back and a couple broken off; a certain amount of extra bare rock showing where feet might have scuffed the surface sand off.
“Perhaps so,” said Solveig. “Let us look.”
We bent under the long, sweeping branches of a smoke tree—too cool now to give off its misty yellow gases. We found ourselves looking down an almost straight lane, too straight to be natural.
“It is a path,” said Dr. Solveig. “Ah, so. Let us investigate it.”
I started to follow him, but Demaree’s hand was on my shoulder, his other hand pointing. I looked, off to one side, and saw nothing but the tangle of growth.
Solveig turned inquiringly. Demaree frowned. “I thought I heard something.”
“Oh,” said Solveig, and unlimbered his flame rifle. All three of us stood frozen for a moment, listening and watching; but if there had been anything, it was quiet and invisible now.
Demaree said, “Let me go first, Doc. I’m a little younger than you.” And faster on the draw, he meant. Solveig nodded.
“Of course.” He stepped aside, and Demaree moved silently along the trail, looking into the underbrush from side to side. Solveig waited a moment, then followed; and a few yards behind I brought up the rear. I could just see Demaree’s body flickering between the gnarled tree trunks and vines up ahead. He hesitated, then stepped over something, a vine or dead tree, that lay snaked across the path. He half-turned as if to gesture—
Snap!
The vine whipped up and twisted about his leg, clung and dragged him ten feet into the air, hanging head down, as a long straight tree beside the path snapped erect.
A deadfall—the oldest snare in the book!
“Jack!” I yelled, forgetting about being quiet—and half-forgetting, too, that I was on Mars. I leaped toward him, and blundered against the trees as my legs carried me farther than I thought. Solveig and I scrambled to him, rifles ready, staring around for a sight of whatever it was that had set the trap. But again—nothing.
Demaree wasn’t hurt, just tangled and helpless. A flood of livid curses floated down from him as he got his wind back and began struggling against the vine loop around his legs. “Take it easy!” I called. “I’ll get you down!” And while Solveig stood guard I scrambled up the tree and cut him loose. I tried to hold the vine but I slipped, and he plunged sprawling to the ground—still unhurt, but angry.
And the three of us stood there for a moment, waiting for the attack. And it didn’t come.
For a moment the Martians had had us; while Demaree was in the tree and Solveig and I racing toward him, they could have cut us down. And they hadn’t. They had set the trap—and passed up its fruits.
We looked at each other wonderingly.
We found a cave just off the trail, narrow and high, but the best protection in sight against the dusk sandstorm and the night’s cold. The three of us huddled inside—and waited. Demaree suggested making a fire; but, although the wood on the ground was dry enough to burn even in Mars’ thin air, we decided against it. Maybe, later on, if we couldn’t stand the cold, we’d have no choice; but meanwhile there was no sense attracting attention.
We asked Solveig, who seemed to be in command of our party, if he thought there was any objection to talking, and he shrugged. “How can one tell? Perhaps they hear, perhaps they do not. Air is thin and sounds do not carry far—to our ears. To Martian ears? I don’t know.”
So we talked—not loud, and not much, because there wasn’t, after all, much to say. We were preoccupied with the contradictions and puzzlements the Martians presented. Fantastic weapons that struck from nowhere or shimmered into being between sand dunes—and a culture little beyond the neolithic. Even Earth’s best guided missiles could have been no more accurate and little more deadly, considering the nature of the target, than the one that obliterated car number two. And the golden glow that killed Keever was out of our experience altogether. And yet—villages of sticks! There had been no trace in any Martian dwelling of anything so complicated as a flame-rifle, much less these others … .
It grew very slightly darker, bit by bit; and then it was black. Even in our cave we could hear the screaming of the twilight wind. We were in a little slit in the raw rock, halfway down one of the crevasses that gave the Split Cliffs area its name. Craggy, tumbled, bare rocks a hundred feet below us, and the other wall of the crevasse barely jumping distance away. We had come to it along an irregular sloping ledge, and to reach us at all the wind had to pass through a series of natural baffles. And even so, we saw the scant shrubbery at the cave mouth whipped and scoured by the dusk-wind.
Demaree shivered and attempted to light a cigarette. On the fourth try he got it burning, but it went out almost at once—it is possible to smoke in Mars’ air, but not
easy, because of the pressure. The tobacco burns poorly, and tastes worse. He grunted, “Damn the stuff. You think we’ll be all right here?”
easy, because of the pressure. The tobacco burns poorly, and tastes worse. He grunted, “Damn the stuff. You think we’ll be all right here?”
“From the wind?” asked Solveig. “Oh, certainly. You have seen how little sand was carried in here. It is the cold that follows that I am thinking of … .”
We could feel the cold settling in the air, even while the twilight wind was blowing. In half an hour the wind was gone, but the cold remained, deeper and more intense than anything I had ever felt before. Our sand capes were a help, almost thermally non-conducting in either direction; we carefully tucked under all the vents designed to let perspiration escape, we folded them around us meticulously, we kept close together—and still the cold was almost unbearable. And it would grow steadily worse for hours … .
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