The Martian Pendant (18 page)

Inside, starting on the second deck, one of the many mounds of soft rock was attacked, first with a jackhammer, and then by hand, using hammer and chisel. When the concretions were removed, very little was found except for a hollow in the shape of what could easily have been mistaken for a coffin. There was a thick layer of dust on the deck suggested that the original lining had long since crumbled. Expecting to find fossils, Max ordered similar work on the neighboring formations, with identical results. Nothing more was found. That evening, he gathered with his students to ponder the meaning of their findings.

“Coffins,” one said, “but where are the fossil bones?”

Max rejected that, saying, “If they had been coffins, why? Wouldn’t this ship have been bringing live people here? What better shape could their beds have been in than what we found today? Over six feet in length. That suggests that if they were bipeds, they might have been about as tall as we are.”

“Or as long as we are tall,” said Steve, taking a devil’s advocate stance, “maybe they were like lizards, or crocodiles.”

“Oh, come now, let’s stick to the facts. They have stairs, so they walked upright, probably,” Max chided. “We must assume that those spaces--I’ll call them pods--contained material that has long since rotted away, left by their occupants. When the spaceship landed, the pods probably contained passengers, now gone without a trace, at least in the few that we‘ve opened. Did they leave, or are they part of that residual dust layer we see?”

Nobody had a reasonable answer, leading the professor to say, “We’ll just have to keep searching. Tomorrow let’s try the top deck, as the third deck contains the same type of objects that we found today, making the total almost two thousand.”

The next day, Steve and his co-workers, digging along the starboard side, broke into a cavern. They were able to see, through the clear water, a large opening suggesting a cargo hatch. This was near the top of the hulk, opening onto one of the upper decks, but with the interior obscured by concretions, suggesting the previous presence of a screen. Unlike the mineral layer that had initially blocked the smaller ports, this broad expanse already had a large, central, jagged opening. No door was seen, evidently having been retracted and then covered in limestone.

Unarmed, and inexpert with firearms, the workers dared not enter because of the water and their fear of meeting the crocodile. Max was called to the scene, and ordered the water level drawn down by pumping. Dragunov showed up and was allowed to view the new finding, out of deference to his role there, but his camera was nowhere in evidence. He did make notes, however.

FOURTEEN

The Attack  

That afternoon, Diana flew in with mail and lengths of electrical cable. Coming in on her approach, she saw the herd of cattle that natives were tending quite close to the camp. Unlike the Maasai, who usually had one man for each ten or so cows, she saw the ratio there was almost reversed. And they didn’t wear red robes or blankets, but blended well into the terrain, as if wearing camouflage. She made a mental note to discuss this seeming anomaly with Chet and Dan when she landed. Something was amiss. She had radioed ahead earlier to advertise the mail’s arrival, and was met by an expectant and happy crowd as she shut down the plane’s engine.

While the contents of the mail pouch were being handed out, and after collecting her own mail, she looked for the Pinkerton chief and ran into Dan. As they embraced in a rare moment of privacy, it was easy to see the herd, not a half-mile from their compound.

“What do you make of it, Danny? They aren’t Maasai, the usual people around here. There are, in fact, far more men than one would think necessary for the job.”

Borrowing her binoculars, he surveyed the herd for a minute and responded, “You may have something there, Di. But in the Southwest, near the Mexican border, cattle have to be protected by gunslingers to prevent rustling. A short hop over the border, and you never see them again. Here, maybe something like that holds true. As I understand it, the Maasai’s attitude is that all the cattle in the world belong to them anyway.”

Diana exclaimed, “But they are obviously not Maasai, Danny!” Seeing Chet, she called him over, handed him the binoculars, and asked, “What do you think, Chet? Are those men anything like the Mau Mau you shot when they ambushed us?”

After studying them closely, he handed the glasses back, and in haste headed back to the compound, calling, “They look like the others, all right, and they have rifles slung over their shoulders. I’m callin’ my men together, and ya’all should make tracks fer shelter.”

Quickly, Diana herded all the workers in the area back to the circle of vehicles, telling them to take cover and to expect an attack. Dan went to gather the men from the dig, and to tell the Sicilian drivers to get their weapons. Max and Krueger, notified by a runner, ran up from the work at the ship, and were informed of the threat. While Max hardly knew what to do, Krueger hastened to his tent, emerging almost immediately armed with a high-powered rifle, ready for action. The camp soon bristled with weapons, almost everyone armed with a rifle or a handgun, after a student brought the roustabouts back from the drilling rig and they were armed. Chet assumed command easily, and with quiet instructions, soon had the perimeter manned and ready. He posted most of the men facing the known threat, but a couple of BAR men were placed on either flank of their circle to ward off assault, if necessary, from the rear. A command post was set up centrally, with Diana and Myra to serve as medics, familiar as they were with the medical supplies.

They didn’t have long to wait. As the sun dropped toward the western hills, the air was rent by a sudden chorus of screams, followed by the appearance of clouds of dust and the sound of clattering hooves.

Chet shouted, “They’re stampedin’ the cattle! Get into the vehicles until they jump past, and then get down again. They’re Mau Mau, all right, and countin’ on comin’ in out of the setting sun and in the dust from the herd, so keep yer sunglasses on, and pull down the brims of your hats. Shoot when ya get a target, and keep shootin’!”

Diana and Myra had quickly set up a first aid station near the command post in one of the trucks, and with Diana's Winchester rifle slung across her back, she arranged bandages and I.V. fluids for use. Everyone from the University was frightened, but there was no panic except on the part of the frightened animals. Only around 20 cattle were stampeding, but what they lacked in numbers they made up for by bouncing against the circled trucks and trailers and scattering the barriers of boxes piled between the vehicles. On their way out of the enclosure, they trampled most of the tents.

Before the dust settled, the Mau Mau riflemen came running toward the camp, wildly firing their Enfields and screaming at the top of their lungs, “Uhuru, Uhuru!”

Chet, positioned next to Dan, shouted, “If it’s freedom they want, let’s give it to ’em, like the Japanese got in their
Banzai
charges!”

With that, the camp’s firepower erupted. A half-dozen automatic rifles opened up almost simultaneously, and the din of the rapid fire and screaming would have seemed deafening, if anyone had time to notice. Not one of the more than thirty charging men reached the circled vehicles, so effective was the defensive fire. It ended almost as soon as it had begun. Instead of rifle shots, there was only the mixture of the cries of the wounded and the shouts of the defenders. As the remnants of the defeated Mau Mau withdrew, they were pursued for a short distance by the Pinkertons. Scattered fires that had been started in the dry grass were quickly stamped out by Dan and the roustabouts. Only a few wounded attackers were found and brought in for treatment.

At the aid station, it was all Diana and Myra could do to keep up. Only a few defenders had been wounded, and in the triage that was necessary, the ones with the most treatable conditions were attended to first.

That included Dragunov, who had been on the firing line with his hunting rifle. A .303 Caliber bullet had hit him in the right frontal region, laterally and above the eye. Luckily for him, it was a tangential shot, creasing and fracturing the skull, but not penetrating inside. At first unconscious when he was brought in, he regained his senses after several minutes, and seemed lucid. As Diana cleansed the wound prior to bandaging it, she noted that the bullet had cut across the temporal region, where the bone is extremely thin, almost taking his ear off as it exited. It took a number of stitches to close the wound and to tack the ear back together, before everything was covered with a head dressing.

She then busied herself with one of the Sicilians, who had a gunshot wound in the abdomen, a wound that was beyond the simple measures available there. She started an I.V. with antibiotics, but knew his only hope was timely surgery. Ordinarily he’d be flown to Dar, but because of darkness, that was out. Going by truck to Dodoma was the only viable alternative, since the hospital there had the necessary surgical facilities.

She found Max in his tent comforting Myra, who had found the day’s events too much for her, and had broken down in tears. “Max,” Diana said, “Krueger looks like he’ll survive, if complications such as an epidural hematoma don’t occur, but the truck driver will die, and painfully, of peritonitis if he isn’t taken to the hospital. He can get to Dodoma by truck tonight well before I can fly him to Dar in the morning.”

Max, deferring to Diana’s medical knowledge, called Staltieri. “One of your men has been seriously wounded in the abdomen, and unless he’s taken immediately to a hospital, he’ll have no chance. I suggest you have a couple of your men run him over to Dodoma. The darkness makes it too late to fly.”

The head driver nodded, and called two of his men over. In rapid Italian, he directed them to their wounded comrade. As they carried him to the truck, the driver smirked, and slowly shook his head.

The three wounded Mau Mau had all been shot in the chest, and were gasping their last breaths. She couldn’t do much, but was able to seal one wound that was sucking air with Vaseline gauze, thereby aiding the man’s breathing. Each was given morphine to lessen the pain, which incidentally slowed the bleeding. It was only then that she realized how tired she was. She felt as if she had been carrying extra weight on her shoulders, besides the responsibility for the lives of her charges.

Dan came in just before she collapsed into a camp chair and asked, “Di, sweetie, why do you still have that rifle slung over your shoulder?”

The question was rhetorical, but after she hastily removed the rifle, she was overcome with relief. Then, as she sought the comfort of Dan’s arms, her profuse tears covered his dusty, sweaty shirt.

“Come on,” he said, basking in her long-sought closeness. “You need something to eat, and even more, something to drink. The aftermath of the battle has just begun.”

That night, one by one, the wounded attackers died, amid the wild screams of the hyenas fighting over the bodies of the others outside the perimeter. And there was commotion in the aid tent also; Krueger had become delirious, and was beginning to babble. Diana asked one of the women grad students to watch him, and ironically, it was Adina who drew the short straw. His ravings became more active toward morning, leading her to give him a sedative of the same kind she had slipped in his drink before. That quieted him down, but not before she was able to identify that his apparent gibberish was indeed Russian. Before she reported on that discovery, snooping through his things, she found his silver drug case, and his hat camera.

In the morning, everyone was busy cleaning up the debris of the stampede and burying the three Mau Mau bodies. However, they were spared the duty of burying the others who had been cut down outside their defenses. The hyenas had begun that work the night before, and then, with the first light of day, the vultures began.

For the people on the expedition, breakfast was rudimentary, the mess tent having been trashed by the rampaging herd. In a minor irony, there was plenty of milk, which was available from the dozen or so cows that had returned to the camp during the night for protection and water. Diana watched in fascination as Ballard, who had grown up on a farm in England, showed her how to fill a milking pail. By the time a full half-gallon was produced, they had arrived at a plan on how to proceed with the exploration.

“First,” he said, “we really should collect what scattered shards of material we can find, box them, and ship them home. With one known Soviet agent in our midst, our secrets here are indeed vulnerable. And in this motley crew, who knows how many others are spies?”

Diana nodded in agreement. “We have a duty to keep the propulsion system secret also. Now that we have the cutting equipment, that narrow extension behind the hull that mounts the rocket pod, or whatever type of propulsion engine it is, can be cut through, and the entire assembly sent as well.”

“But don’t forget the source of the nuclear activity to the south,” he said. “That could be the shattered propulsion unit from the other ship that appears to have been blown to bits.”

“I think that probably is the case,” she agreed, “as it seems to be within the same debris field. Let’s go talk to Max.”

The expedition leader readily agreed to the plan, but pointed out the shortage of extra hands for the task. Those working in the dig, now mainly in the ship, and the roustabouts and engineers, who were busy with the ever-deepening drilling, could not be spared. The security men had proven the importance of their protection, and the drivers were busy shuttling back and forth trucking in supplies, including food and fuel. Aside from Diana, Dan, and Myra, that left only a very few.

Rather than gather native laborers, it was decided that all would participate in the retrieval of the few scattered fragments that could be found, their other activities permitting. They drove a truck slowly up and down, gathering scattered bits and pieces of the shattered shell of the other spaceship. It was hard work, and because of snakes, there was a certain danger to it. In this way, a bagful was gathered, without event aside from a few scratches to the vehicle, and some low back soreness among the gatherers from all the stooping and bending. This part of the operation would continue over the next month, although at a somewhat reduced pace, as those engaged were frequently called away to other duties as the need arose.

The matter of cutting into the spaceship’s stern boom for removal of the propulsion unit took some planning. Further excavation, deep enough to back a heavy trailer under it, had to be carried out. Some precautions would be necessary in regard to radiation because of the remaining nuclear activity. This work occupied one of the bulldozers and its operator for days.

With the second heavy equipment operator driving the other D-8 Cat, Diana, Dan and Ballard drove in the scout car south, to the site where the other propulsion unit had been detected. Earlier, with the use of the scintiscanner, Cavanagh had found where it was buried. It took a week to uncover it, the last few days employing both dozers. What they found was just wreckage. The super-hard shell had vaporized, along with most of the rest of the ship, and the unit itself was a mass of twisted radioactive metal, scarcely resembling an engine of any type. In everyone’s opinion, very little information would be gleaned from what they had found. But, once transported back to the compound, the salvaged material was boxed and tied down on a trailer for transportation to Dar-es-Salaam, for shipping back to the U.S. when the time came.

Work on the ship’s propulsion unit continued. Almost everything in the hulk was encumbered by limestone concretions, and the ship’s engine housing was no exception. Olszewski was able to cut completely around its mounts, through the shell and the rest of the skin, but the heavy nuclear engine did not budge, still supported by the equivalent of reinforced concrete, solid struts of stone. Only after the jackhammer was employed did the unit in the bulbous stern appendage, still connected to the ship by a number of conduits and wires,
drop onto the trailer beneath. It was decided that both nuclear engines should not be shipped together, which led to the intact unit being left on the trailer onsite. Security around the trove was tightened; Pinkerton guards were posted there around the clock.