by Various
"Hell!" Nelsen said flatly.
"Now who else should I gossip about?" Eileen questioned. "Oh, yes--Harv Diamond, hero of our lost youth, who got space fatigue. Well, he recovered and returned to active duty in the U.S.S.F. Which perhaps leaves me with just my own love life to confess." She smiled lightly. "Once there was a kid named Frankie Nelsen, who turned out to be a very conscientious jerk. Since then, there have been scads of rugged, romantic characters on all sides... You're going to ask about Miguel Ramos."
She paused, looked unhappy and tired. "The celebrity," she said. "Mashed up. But he'll recover--this time. I've seen him--sent him flowers, sat beside him. But what do you do with a clown like that? Lock him in the closet or look at him through a telescope? Goodbye--hello--goodbye. A kid with gaudy banners flying, if he lives to be forty--which he never will. They'll be giving him artificial hands and feet, and he'll be trying for Pluto. A friend. I guess I'm proud. That's all. Anything else you want to know?"
"Yeah. There was a cute little girl at Serene."
"Jennie Harper. She married one of those singing Moon prospectors. Somebody murdered them both--way out on Far Side."
Frank Nelsen's mouth twisted. "That's enough, pal," he said. "I better go do my sitting tight someplace else. Keep your Archer handy. Thanks, and see you..."
Within forty minutes David Lester was showing him some pictures that a hopper had brought in from a vault in a surface-asteroid.
On the screen, great, mottled shapes moved through a lush forest. Thousands of tiny, flitting bat-like creatures--miniature pterodactyls of the terrestrial Age of Reptiles--hovered over a swamp, where millions of insects hung like motes in the light of the low sun. A much larger pterodactyl, far above, glided gracefully over a cliff, and out to sea, its long, beaked head turning watchfully.
"Hey!" Nelsen said mildly, as his jaded mind responded.
Lester nodded. "They were on Earth, too--as the Martians must have been--exploring and taking pictures, during the Cretaceous Period. Oh, but there's a perhaps even better sequence! Like the Martians, they had a world-wrecking missile, which they were building in space. Spherical. About six miles in diameter, I calculate. Shall I show you?"
"No... I think I'll toddle over to the offices, Les. Keep wearing those Archers, people. Glad the kid likes to play in his..."
Nelsen had donned his own Seven, with the helmet fastened across his chest by a strap. At the KRNH office, there was a letter, which luckily hadn't been sent out to Post Eight. The tone was more serious than that of any that Nance Codiss had sent before.
"Dear Frank: I'm actually coming your way. I'll be stopping to work at the Survey Station Hospital on Mars for two months en route..."
He read that far when he heard the sirens and saw the flashes of defending batteries that were trying to ward off missiles from Pallastown. He latched his helmet in place. He was headed for the underground galleries when the first impacts came. He saw four domes vanish in flashes of fire. Then he didn't run anymore. He had his small rocket launcher, from the office. If they ever came close enough... But of course they'd stay thousands of miles off. He got to the nearest fallen dome as fast as he could. Everybody had been in armor, but there were over a hundred dead. Emergency and rescue crews were operating efficiently.
He glanced around for indications. No explosive, chemical or nuclear, had yet been used. But there was the old Jolly Lad trick: Accelerate a chunk of asteroid-material to a speed of several miles per second by grasping it with your gloved hands, while the shoulder-ionic of your armor was at full power. Start at a great distance, aim your missile with your body, let it go... Impact would be sheer, blasting incandescence. A few hundred chunks of raw metal could finish Pallastown... Were these just crazy, wild slobs whooping it up, or real crud provided with a purpose and reward? Either way, here was the eternal danger to any Belt settlement.
Nelsen could have tried to reach an escape-exit into open space, but he helped with the injured while he waited for more impacts to come. There was another series of deflecting flashes from the defense batteries. Two more domes vanished... Then--somehow--nothing more. Evidently some of the attackers had been only half hearted, this time. Reprieve...
Almost four hundred people were dead. It could have been the whole Town. Then spreading disaster. All Nelsen's friends were okay. The Posts called in--okay, too. Nelsen waited three days. He wanted to help defend, if the attack was renewed. But now the U.N.S.F. was concentrating in the vicinity. For a while, things would be quiet, Out Here. Just the same, he felt kind of fed up. He felt as if the end of everything he knew had crept inevitably a little closer.
He beamed Mars--the Survey Station. He contacted Nance. He had known that she should have arrived already. He was relieved. He knew what the region between here and there could be like when there was trouble.
"It's me--Frank Nelsen--Nance," he said into his helmet-phone, as he stood beyond the outskirts of the Town, on the barren, glittering surface of Pallas. "I'm still wearing the sweater. Stay where you are. I've never been on Mars, either. But I'll be there, soon..."
His old uncertainties about talking to her evaporated now that he was doing it.
"For Pete's sake--Frank!" he heard her laugh happily, still sounding like the neighbor kid. "Gosh, it's good to hear you!"
He left for Post One, soon after that. Nowadays, it was almost a miniature of the ever more magnificent--if insecure--Pallastown. He kept thinking angrily of Art Kuzak, getting a little overstuffed, it seemed. The hunkie kid, the ex-football player who had become a big commercial and industrial baron of the Belt. Easy living. Cuties around. And poor twin Joe--just another stooge...
Nelsen went into the office, his fists clenched overdramatically. "I'm taking a leave, Art--maybe a long one," he said.
Art Kuzak stared at him. "You damned, independent bums--you, too, Nelsen!" he began to growl. But when he saw Nelsen's jaw harden, he got the point, and grinned, instead. "Okay, Frank. Nobody's indispensible. I might do the same when you come back--who knows...?"
Frank Nelsen joined a KRNH bubb convoy--Earthbound, but also passing fairly close to Mars--within a few hours.
VII
Frank Nelsen meant the journey to be vagabond escape, an interlude of to hell with it relief from the grind, and from the increasingly uncertain mainstream of the things he knew best.
He rode with a long train of bubbs and great sheaves of smelted metal rods--tungsten, osmium, uranium 238. The sheaves had their own propelling ionic motors. He lazed like a tramp. He talked with asteroid-hoppers who meant to spend some time on Earth. Several had become almost rich. Most had strong, quiet faces that showed both distance- and home-hunger. A few had broken, and the angry sensitivity was visible.
Nelsen treated himself well. He was relieved of the duty of eternal vigilance by men whose job it was. So, for a while, his purpose was almost successful.
But the memory--or ghost--of Mitch Storey was never quite out of his mind. And, as a tiny, at first telescopic crescent with a rusty light enlarged with lessened distance ahead, the ugly enigma of present-day Mars dug deeper into his brain.
Every twenty-four hours and thirty-eight minutes--the length of the Martian day--whenever the blue-green wedge of Syrtis Major appeared in the crescent, he beamed the Survey Station, which was still maintained for the increase of knowledge, and as a safeguard for incautious adventurers who will tackle any dangerous mystery or obstacle. His object was to talk to Nance Codiss.
"I thought perhaps you and your group had gotten restless and had started out for the Belt already," he laughed during their first conversation.
"Oh, no--a lab technician like me is far too busy here, for one thing," she assured him, her happy tone bridging the distance. "We came this far with a well-armed freight caravan, in good passenger quarters. If we went on, I suppose it would be the same... Anyway, for years you didn't worry much about me. Why now, Frank?"
"A mystery," he teased in return. "Or perhaps because I consi
dered Earth safe--instinctively."
But he was right in the first place. It was a mystery--something to do with the startling news that she was on the way, that closer friendship was pending. The impulse to go meet her had been his first, almost thoughtless impulse.
He was still glad that she wasn't out between Mars and the Belt, where disaster had once hit him hard. But now he wondered if the Survey Station was any better for anybody, even though it was reputed to be quite secure.
The caravan he rode approached his destination no closer than ten million miles. Taking cautious note of radar data which indicated that space all around was safely empty, he cast off in his Archer with a small, new, professional-type bubb packed across his hips. Inside his helmet he lighted a cigarette--quite an unusual luxury.
It took a long time to reach Phobos. They gave him shots there--new preventative medicine that was partially effective against the viruses of Mars. Descent in the winged rocket was rough. But then he was gliding with a sibilant whistle through a natural atmosphere, again. Within minutes he was at the Station--low, dusty domes, many of them deserted, now, at the edge of the airfield, a lazily-spinning wind gauge, tractors, auto-jeeps, several helicopters.
He stepped down with his gear. Mars was all around him: A few ground-clinging growths nearby--harmless, locally evolved vegetation. Distant, coppery cliffs reflecting the setting sun. Ancient excavations notched them. Dun desert to the east, with little plumes of dust blowing. Through his Archer--a necessary garment here not only because the atmosphere was only one-tenth as dense as Earth-air and poor in oxygen, but because of the microscopic dangers it bore--Nelsen could hear the faint sough of the wind.
The thirty-eight percent of terrestrial gravity actually seemed strong to him now, and made him awkward, as he turned and looked west. Perhaps two miles off, past a barbed-wire fence and what must be an old tractor trail of the hopeful days of colonization, he saw the blue-green edge of Syrtis Major, the greatest of the thickets, with here and there a jutting spur of it projecting toward him along a gully. Nelsen's hide tingled. But his first glimpse was handicapped by distance. He saw only an expanse of low shagginess that might have been scrub growths of any kind.
Dug into the salt-bearing ground at intervals, he knew, were the fire weapons ready to throw oxygen and synthetic napalm--jellied gasoline. Never yet had they been discharged, along this defense line. But you could never be sure just what might be necessary here.
A man of about thirty had approached. "I meet the new arrivals," he said. "If you'll come along with me, Mr. Nelsen..."
He was dark, and medium large, and he had a genial way. He looked like a hopper--an asteroid-miner--the tough, level-headed kind that adjusts to space and keeps his balance.
"Name's Ed Huth," he continued, as they walked to the reception dome. "Canadian. Good, international crowd here--however long you mean to stay. Most interesting frontier in the solar system, too. Probably you've heard most of the rules and advice. But here's a paper. Refresh your memory by reading it over as soon as you can. There is one thing which I am required to show everybody who comes here. Inside this peek box. You are instructed to take a good look."
Huth's geniality had vanished.
The metal box was a yard high, and twice as long and wide. It stood, like a memorial, before the reception dome entrance. A light shone beyond the glass-covered slot, as Nelsen bent to peer.
He had seen horror before now. He had seen a pink mist dissolve in the sunshine as a man in armor out in the Belt was hit by an explosive missile, his blood spraying and boiling. Besides, he had read up on the thickets of Mars, watched motion pictures, heard Gimp Hines' stories of his brief visit here. So, at first, he could be almost casual about what he saw in the peek box. There were many ghastly ways for a man to die.
Even the thicket plant in the box seemed dead, though Nelsen knew that plant successors to the original Martians had the rugged power of revival. This one showed the usual paper-dry whorls or leaves, and the usual barrel-body, perhaps common to arid country growths, everywhere. Scattered over the barrel, between the spines, were glinting specks--vegetable, light-sensitive cells developed into actual visual organs. The plant had the usual tympanic pods of its kind--a band of muscle-like tissue stretched across a hollow interior--by which it could make buzzing sounds. Nelsen knew that, like any Earthly green plant, it produced oxygen, but that, instead of releasing it, it stored the gas in spongy compartments within its horny shell, using it to support an animal-like tissue combustion to keep its vitals from freezing during the bitterly frigid nights.
Nelsen also knew that deeper within the thing was a network of whitish pulp, expanded at intervals to form little knobs. Sectioned, under a microscope, they would look like fibred masses of animal or human nerve and brain cells, except that, chemically, they were starch and cellulose rather than protein.
Worst to see was the rigid clutch of monster's tactile organs, which grew from the barrel's crown. It was like a powerful man struggling to uproot a rock, or a bear or an octopus crushing an enemy. It was dark-hole drama, like something from another galaxy. Like some horribly effective piece of sculpture, the tableau in the box preserved the last gasp of an incautious youth in armor.
The tendrils of the thicket plant were furred with erect spines of a shiny, russet color. They were so fine that they looked almost soft. But Nelsen was aware that they were sharper than the hypodermic needles they resembled--in another approach to science. Now, Nelsen felt the tingling revulsion and hatred.
"Of course you know that you don't have to get caught like that poor bloke did," Huth said dryly. "Just not to disinfect the outside of your Archer well enough and then leave it near you, indoors, is sufficient. I was here before there was any trouble. When it came, it was a shambles..."
Huth eyed Nelsen for a moment, then continued on another tack. "Biology... Given the whole universe to experiment in, I suppose you can never know what it will come up with--or what is possible. These devils--you get to hate them in your sleep. If their flesh--or their methods--were something like ours, as was the case with the original Martians or the people of the Asteroid Planet, it wouldn't seem so bad. Still, they make you wonder: What would you do, if, in your own way, you could think and observe, but were rooted to the ground; if you were denied the animal ability of rapid motion, if you didn't have hands with which to fashion tools or build apparatus, if fire was something you could scarcely use?..."
Nelsen smiled. "I am wondering," he said. "I promise to do a lot more of it as soon as I get squared away. I could inflate my bubb, and sleep in the yard in it, if I had to. Then, as usual, off the Earth, you'll expect me to earn my breathing air and keep, after a couple of days, whether I can pay instead or not. That's fine with me, of course. There's another matter which I'd like to discuss, but that can be later."
"No sleeping out," Huth laughed. "That's just where people get careless. There are plenty of quarters available since the retreat of settlers almost emptied this world of terrestrial intrusion--except for us here and the die-hard desert rats, and the new, screwball adventurers... By the way, if it ever becomes important, the deserts are safe--at least from what you just saw--as you probably know..."
Nelsen passed through an airlock, where live steam and a special silicone oil accomplished the all-important disinfection of his Archer, his bubb, and the outside of his small, sealed baggage roll. Armor and bubb he left racked with rows of others.
It wasn't till he got into the reception dome lounge that he saw Nance Codiss. She didn't rush at him. Reserve had dropped over them both again as if in reconsideration of a contact made important too suddenly. He clasped her fingers, then just stood looking at her. Lately, they had exchanged a few pictures.
"Your photographs don't lie, Nance," he said at last.
"Yours do, Frank," she answered with complete poise. "You look a lot less grim and tired."
"Wait," he told her. "I'll be right back..."
He went with E
d Huth to ditch his roll in his sleeping cubicle, get cleaned up and change his clothes.
She was beautiful, she had grave moods, she was wearing his fabulous bracelet--if only not to offend him. But when he returned, he met two of the girls who had come out to Mars with her--a nurse and another lab technician. They were the bubbly type, full of bravado and giggles for their strange, new surroundings. For a moment he felt far too old at twenty-four for Nance's twenty. He wondered regretfully if her being here was no more than part of his excuse for getting away from the Belt and from the sense of ultimate human disaster building up.
But much of his feeling of separation from her disappeared as they sat alone in the lounge, talking--first about Jarviston, then about here. Nance had available information about the thickets pretty well down pat.
"You can't keep those plants alive here at the Station, Frank," she said quietly. "They make study difficult by dying. It's as if they knew that they couldn't win here. So they retreat--to keep their secrets. But Dr. Pacetti, our head of Medical Research, says that we can never know that they won't find a way to attack us directly. That's what the waiting napalm line is for. I don't think he is exaggerating."
"Why do you say that?" Nelsen asked.
He was encouraging her, of course. But he wasn't being patronizing. Frost tingled in his nerves. He wanted to know her version.
"I'll show you the little museum we have," she replied, her eyes widening slightly. "This is probably old hat to you--but it's weird--it gives you the creeps..."
He followed her along a covered causeway to another dome. In a gallery there, a series of dry specimens were set up, inside sealed boxes made of clear plastic.
The first display was centered around a tapered brass tube--perhaps one of the barrels of an antique pair of fieldglasses. Wrapping it was a spiny brown tendril from which grew two sucker-like organs, shaped like acorn tops. One was firmly attached to the metal. The other had been pulled free, its original position on the barrel marked by a circular area of corrosion. The face of the detached sucker was also shown--a honeycomb structure of waxy vegetable tissue, detailed with thousands of tiny ducts and hairlike feelers.