Across the room, Tomson opened his eyes.
"You'd better get up," said Lattimer. "There isn't much time before the ceremony opens."
"You want me to come out and sit in the rain with a lot of seals staring at me?" said Tomson scornfully. "No, thank you! I'm staying right here."
He listened. "God, what a foul row!" he added. "What is it?"
"That's the morning hymn," said Lattimer. "I told you to get up!"
Tomson tutted gently. "It'd look awfully strange if you brought me down at the point of a gun, wouldn't it?" he said. "Have fun!"
"All right," said Lattimer calmly. He took a coil of the natives' tough fibre rope from a hook on the wall. "If you aren't coming now, I'll have to make sure you don't come at all." With a swift motion he twitched the light blanket from Tomson's body, and as the other sat up with a startled cry, he struck him on the temple with the butt of his blaster.
He bound and gagged the unconscious man with scientific thoroughness, leaving himself barely time to dress before the Awakeners returned to usher him down to the council square. He would be hungry before the day was out, not having had time to eat his breakfast, but his own discomfort weighed lightly against the risk of leaving Tomson free. He managed to shield the unconscious body from the view of the natives when he let himself out to prevent them noticing him and wondering.
He took his place on the dais as for an audience without making any mention of Tomson's failure to appear. Let them reflect that the ways of gods were not those of themselves, he thought grimly. The ceremony began.
It was complex and high symbolic, with the interminable ritual of the primitive. And always, there was the keening sound of the natives singing, singing . . .
The service wound on its slow way, each member of the clan making his personal devotion to the living god, and the rain thundered across the ground. Lattimer noticed anxious glances being exchanged between Chinsel and the elders, and the latter redoubled the volume of the song. This was without a doubt the biggest rain on record. He composed himself and went on trying to be a god, while his stomach growled in hunger and the water soaked into his clothes.
The ritual was barely halfway through—Chinsel had just risen to make formal acknowledgment of the tribe's debt to man—when he heard a sound which he had been subconsciously fearing he would hear ever since he took his place that morning. It filled him with sick horror.
He turned to see what he knew must be there. Tomson. And drunk.
The first-aid kit, thought Lattimer desperately. He remembered where I kept it. There was surgical spirit in the kit. He must have taken that!
The other man weaved an unsteady path down the track from the Residency, waving his uncharged blaster. He was shouting in the native tongue, the accent bad, but the meaning of his words unmistakable. "Stop this row! Stop it! You're driving me mad!"
Lattimer rose to his feet. The song died spasmodically away, while the elders looked for some proof that this was no more than a bad dream—that their gods had not failed them.
Lattimer wondered frantically how he was going to solve this one. In a few seconds, Tomson had undone three years' careful patient work; the clan would have to be wiped out to prevent the rumors spreading. How Tomson had managed to work free worried him, but he forced himself to disregard that while there was still a chance to answer the major question. But the Service would not come now—
He was reaching slowly for his blaster to burn the drunkard down, when in the near-silence left by the cessation of the song he made out a sound which he could never have believed he would be glad to hear. It was a lurching, grinding, splashing sound, distinguished from the noise of the rain by its sheer volume.
The levees had broken!
Above its noise he shouted, "My brother has come to warn us that the village is in danger! Stop the worship! The homage of my people is not to be placed above their safety!"
He confirmed the words by leaping from the dais and running towards Tomson. His blaster stuck in its sodden holster, but he wrenched it free. "All right!" he said softly, barely to be heard above the rush of water. "I've got you out of this one, Tomson—but that was your very last chance." He brought the weapon up under the other's chin, hoping that the blow would pass unnoticed by the crowd behind him, and Tomson folded tidily at the knees and waist.
"Ris! Floakh!" shouted Lattimer.
The two Awakeners came running.
"My brother ran so fast to warn us of the levee breaking that he can go no further," he improvised hasily. "Take him to the Residency and place him on my bed. Then let all the clan gather there. The village will probably be destroyed."
He turned and watched the black figures rushing from the square to salvage a few precious belongings before the levee wall finally crumbled and drowned the whole low ground of the village.
It took barely ten minutes for the flood to finish its work.
Lattimer stood at the door looking out over the already subsiding waters. Three years* work—gone in a day, he thought. All the carefully reclaimed paddies of paplet, all the curra and most of the chirrits—all the houses except the Residency, and that lives only because it is a temple and is built on high ground. Another symbol in the complex of human deity; the temple becomes the sanctuary in time of trouble.
Beside him the natives watched the disaster. Some of them moaned quietly, but most of them sat in silence.
He turned at a slight noise and found Tomson sitting up. "What happened?" the man asked hoarsely.
Lattimer crossed the room to him, shoving the assembled natives aside, "You did your damnedest to wreck all I've managed to do here," he answered in English. "You tried to destroy what the natives looked to us for. If the floods hadn't stepped in, you and I would be dead."
Tomson tried his sneering grin again. His face was stiff, but his self-confidence made it half-successful. "You're a pretty smart guy, aren't you?" he said. "But it's still more than eighteen months before your relief calls for you, and I've still got my chance to have some fun out of being a god."
Lattimer shook his head. "I warned you," he said, "but you didn't believe me. You're going to be psyched, as I said."
There was a roar from outside, and the natives scrambled hastily to their feet to bow to the occupants of a mud-sled which came skidding and sliding across the sodden soil at the edge of the forest and approached the door of the Residency. They wore the familiar uniform of the Service.
Tomson, stark terror gleaming in his eyes, stammered, "How did you call them?"
"You smashed the radio," said Lattimer. "I couldn't tell them I postponed worship day. I couldn't tell them whether the worship day service was correct, or whether the natives had started to suspect. If they ever do that, we shall strike. We may not be omnipotent or omniscient, but to the natives we must appear to be both. Goodbye, Jim."
For the third time he hit the other man inconspicuously to keep him quiet, and turned to face the lieutenant in command of the visiting party.
"My people" said Lattimer, "the time has come for me to go from among you."
He looked around. Chinsel, in the front rank of the elders, was glowing with pride as one whose work in designing levees has been commended twice in his life by a man.
For a few seconds Lattimer was silent, remembering. Ris was not there—nor was the former chief, Miglaun. The flood had taken its toll, as had the years. But the new paplet paddies were bigger than the old ones; the new levees were stronger, the village more numerous.
"But another has come who was with you before. He it was who warned you of the levee breaking in the time of the Greatest Rain. You knew me as Lattimer; you will know him as Tomson, my brother. Do for him as you have done for me. I have spoken."
He turned to the man who sat beside him on the dais as the song of welcome went up from the assembled tribe. He spoke almost under his breath.
"Good luck, Jim. But you won't really need it, I don't think. Did they tell you my story?"
T
omson nodded. "That's why I asked to come back here," he said. "They offered me a village further south a month ago, but I said I'd hold on."
Lattimer smiled reminiscently. "Psyching is quite a technique," he said. "I killed a woman once—I must have been
more primitive than these people here. But psyching isn't enough by itself, unless you get the chance to show it's worked. This job gives you that chance. There's no other task which makes a man pay so much attention as trying to be perfect. And nothing makes a man mend his habits faster than having someone look up to him. You won't have any trouble from these people here—they're a good bunch. But watch yourself—that's the danger."
They shook hands. Then Lattimer turned and went across the fields to the waiting mud-sled, and Tomson spoke his first words of command to the people whose god he was.
Not a god, really. No. But a very much better man.
♦ ♦ ♦
Mars, almost waterless, mainly desert, old even in the astronomical sense, may prove to he as ancient as any civilization could become. Is there or was there ever a Martian culture? Does it exist today or did it vanish a million million years ago to leave only enigmatic relics for the first Terrestrial visitors to ponder? It should take a truly mystically inspired mind to penetrate the vanished dreams of such an archaic world, and among all the writers of science-fiction perhaps that of Robert Moore could best do justice to this vision.
THE RED DEATH OF MARS
by Robert Moore Williams ♦ ♦♦♦♦♦
I
Sparks Avery, on vigil beside his radio equipment, saw the three men coming. He didn't need 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 Mcllrath, far-wandering son of Scodand, came for-
ward from his engine room. Momentarily, as he opened the door, the muted hiss of the uranium fission engines sounded. "What is it, lad?" Mcllrath asked.
Sparks pointed to the three men. They were nearer now. Coming across the sandy square, the dust splashed around their feet and hung ;n an eddying cloud behind them, dust that had never known rain.
Mcllrath 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 Mcllrath. "Are the engines ready?"
"The engines," said Mcllrath evenly, "are always ready."
"Keep them that way," said Frome flatly.
Mcllrath 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. Mcllrath 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, th
e 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."
More Adventures On Other Planets Page 8