by Anthology
Slowly, the three cadets worked their way through the pile on the deck in front of the hatch opening and then started on the main pile in the opening itself. But as soon as they made a little progress on the main pile, the sand would fall right in again from the open hatch, and after two hours of steady work, the sand in front of the hatch still filled the entire opening. Their work had been all for nothing. They sat down for a rest.
"Let's try it a little higher up, Tom," suggested Roger. "Maybe this stuff isn't as deep as we think."
Tom nodded and stepped up, feeling around the top of the opening. He began clawing at the sand overhead. The sand still came pouring through the opening.
"See anything?" asked Astro.
"I--don't--know--" spluttered Tom as the sand slid down burying him to his waist.
"Better back up, Tom," warned Roger. "Might be a cave-in and you'll get buried."
"Wait a minute!" shouted Tom. "I think I see something!"
"A light?" asked Astro eagerly.
"Careful, Tom," warned Roger again.
Tom clawed at the top of the pile, ignoring the sand that was heaped around him.
"I've got it," shouted Tom, struggling back into the power deck just in time to avoid being buried under a sudden avalanche. "There's another hatch up there, just behind the ladder that leads into the passenger lounge. That's the side facing the storm! And as soon as we dig a little, the sand falls from that pile. But the opposite side, leading to the jet-boat deck, is free and clear!"
"Then all we have to do is force our way through to the top," said Astro.
"That's all," said Tom. "We'd be here until doomsday digging our way clear."
"I get it!" said Roger. "The storm filled up the side of the ship facing that way, and that is where the passenger lounge is. I remember now. I left the hatch open when we came down here to the power deck, so the sand just kept pouring in." He smiled sheepishly. "I guess it's all my fault."
"Never mind that now!" said Tom. "Take this hose and stick it in your mouth, Astro. Breath through your mouth and plug up your nose so you won't get it all stopped up with sand while you pull your way through."
"I'll take this rope with me too," said Astro. "That way I can help pull you guys up after me."
"Good idea," said Roger.
"As soon as you get outside the hatch here," said Tom, "turn back this way. Keep your face up against the bulkhead until you get to the top. Right above you is the ladder. You can grab it to pull yourself up."
[Illustration]
"O.K.," said Astro and took the length of hose and put it in his mouth. Then, taking a piece of waste cotton, he stopped up his nose and tested the hose.
"Can you breathe O.K.?" asked Tom.
Astro signaled that he could and stepped through the hatch. He turned, and facing backward, began clawing his way upward.
"Keep that hose clear, Roger!" ordered Tom. "There's about five feet of sand that he has to dig through and if any of it gets into the hose--well--"
"Don't worry, Tom," interrupted Roger. "I've got the end of the hose right next to the oxygen bottle. He's getting pure stuff!"
Soon the big cadet was lost to view. Only the slow movement of the hose and rope indicated that Astro was all right. Finally the hose and rope stopped moving.
Tom and Roger looked at each other, worried.
"You think something might be wrong?" asked Tom.
"I don't know--" Roger caught himself. "Say, look--the rope! It's jerking--Astro's signaling!"
[Illustration]
"He made it!" cried Tom.
"I wonder if--" Roger suddenly picked up the end of the hose and spoke into it. "Astro? Hey, Astro, can you hear me?"
"Sure I can." Astro's voice came back through the hose. "Don't shout so loud! I'm not on Earth, you know. I'm just ten feet above you!"
Roger and Tom clapped each other on the shoulders in glee.
"All set down there?" called Astro, through the hose.
"O.K." replied Tom.
"Listen," said Astro, "when you get outside the hatch, you'll find a pipe running along the bulkhead right over your head. Grab that and pull yourself up. Tie the rope around your shoulder, but leave enough of it so the next guy can come up. We don't have any way of getting it back down there!" he warned. "Who's coming up first?"
Tom looked at Roger.
"You're stronger, Tom," said Roger. "You go up now and then you can give Astro a hand pulling me through."
"All right," agreed Tom. He began pulling the hose back through the sand. He took the end, cleared it out with a few blasts from the oxygen bottle and put it in his mouth. Then, after Roger had helped him tie the rope around his shoulders, he stuffed his nose with the waste cotton. He stepped to the opening. Roger gave three quick jerks on the rope and Astro started hauling in.
With Astro's help, Tom was soon free and clear, standing beside Astro on the jet-boat deck.
"Phoooeeeey!" said Tom, spitting out the sand that had filtered into his mouth. "I never want to do that again!" He dusted himself off and flashed his emergency light around the deck. "Look at that!" he said in amazement. "If we'd kept on digging, we'd have been trapped down there for--" he paused and looked at Astro who was grinning--"a long, long time!" He held the light on the sand that was flowing out of the open hatch of the passenger lounge.
"Come on," urged Astro. "Let's get Roger out of there!"
They called to Roger through the hose and told him to bring two more emergency lights and the remainder of the Martian water. Three minutes later the Polaris unit was together again.
Standing on the deck beside his two unit-mates, Roger brushed himself off and smiled. "Well," he said, "looks like we made it!"
"Yeah," said Tom, "but take a look at this!" He walked across the jet-boat deck to the nearest window port. What should have been a clear view of the desert was a mass of solidly packed sand.
"Oh, no!" cried Roger. "Don't tell me we have to go through that again?"
"I don't think it'll be so bad this time," said Astro.
"Why not?" asked Tom.
"The sand is banked the heaviest on the port side of the ship. And the window ports on the starboard side of the control deck were pretty high off the ground."
"Well, let's not just stand here and talk about it," said Roger. "Let's take a look!" He turned and walked through the jet-boat deck.
Tom and Astro followed the blond cadet through the darkened passages of the dead ship, and after digging a small pile of sand away from the control-deck hatch, found themselves once more amid the jumble of the wrecked instruments.
For the first time in three days, the boys saw sunlight streaking through the crystal port.
"I told you," cried Astro triumphantly.
"But there still isn't any way out of this place!" said Roger. "We can't break that port. It's six inches thick!"
"Find me a wrench," said Astro. "I can take the whole window port apart from inside. How do you think they replace these things when they get cracked?"
Hurriedly searching through the rubble, Tom finally produced a wrench and handed it to Astro. In a half hour Astro had taken the whole section down and had pushed the crystal outward. The air of the desert rushed into the control room in a hot blast.
"Whew!" cried Roger. "It must be at least a hundred and twenty-five degrees out there!"
"Come on. Let's take a look," said Tom. "And keep your fingers crossed!"
"Why?" asked Roger.
"That we can dig enough of the sand away from the ship to make it recognizable from the air."
Following Tom's lead, Roger and Astro climbed through the open port and out onto the sand.
"Well, blast my jets!" said Astro. "You can't even tell there was a storm."
"You can't if you don't look at the ship," said Tom bitterly. "That was the only thing around here of any size that would offer resistance to the sand and make it pile up. And, spaceman, look at that pile!"
Astro and Roger turne
d to look at the spaceship. Instead of seeing the ship, they saw a small mountain of sand, well over a hundred feet high. They walked around it and soon discovered that the window port in the control deck had been the only possible way out.
"Call it what you want," said Roger, "but I think it's just plain dumb luck that we were able to get out!" He eyed the mound of sand. Unless one knew there was a spaceship beneath it, it would have been impossible to distinguish it from the rest of the desert.
"We're not in the clear yet!" commented Astro grimly. "It would take a hundred men at least a week to clear away enough of that sand so search parties could recognize it." He glanced toward the horizon. "There isn't anything but sand here, fellows, sand that stretches for a thousand miles in every direction."
"And we've got to walk it," said Tom.
"Either that or sit here and die of thirst," said Roger.
"Any canals around here, Tom?" asked Astro softly.
"There better be," replied Tom thoughtfully. He turned to Roger. "If you can estimate our position, Roger, I'll go back inside and see if I can find a chart to plot it on. That way, we might get a direction to start on at least."
Astro glanced up at the pale-blue sky. "It's going to be a hot day," he said softly, looking out over the flat plain of the desert, "an awful hot day!"
[Illustration]
CHAPTER 20
"Got everything we need?" asked Tom.
"Everything we'll need--and about all we can safely carry without weighing ourselves down too much," answered Roger. "Enough food for a week, the rest of the Martian water, space goggles to protect our eyes from the sun and emergency lights for each of us."
"Not much to walk a hundred and fifty miles on," offered Astro. "Too bad the sand got in the galley and messed up the rest of that good food."
"We'll have plenty to get us by--if my calculations are right," said Tom. "One hundred and fifty-four miles to be exact."
"Exact only as far as my sun sight told me," said Roger.
"Do you think it's right?" asked Tom.
"I'll answer you this way," Roger replied. "I took that sight six times in a half hour and got a mean average on all of them that came out within a few miles of each other. If I'm wrong, I'm very wrong, but if I'm right, we're within three to five miles of the position I gave you."
"That's good enough for me," said Astro. "If we're going out there"--he pointed toward the desert--"instead of sitting around here waiting for Strong or someone to show up, then I'd just as soon go now!"
"Wait a minute, fellas. Let's get this straight," said Tom. "We're all agreed that the odds on Captain Strong's showing up here before our water runs out are too great to risk it, and that we'll try to reach the nearest canal. The most important thing in this place is water. If we stay and the water we have runs out, we're done for. If we go, we might not reach the canal--and the chance of being spotted in the desert is even smaller than if we wait here at the ship." He paused. "So we move on?" He looked at the others. Astro nodded and looked at Roger, who bobbed his head in agreement.
"O.K., then," said Tom, "it's settled. We'll move at night when it's cool, and try to rest during the day when it's the hottest."
Roger looked up at the blazing white sphere in the pale-blue sky that burned down relentlessly. "I figure we have about six hours before she drops for the day," he said.
"Then let's go back inside the ship and get some rest," he said.
Without another word, the three cadets climbed back inside the ship and made places for themselves amid the littered deck of the control room. A hot wind blew out of the New Sahara through the open port like a breath of fire. Stripped to their shorts, the three boys lay around the deck unable to sleep, each thinking quietly about the task ahead, each remembering stories of the early pioneers who first reached Mars. In the mad rush for the uranium-yielding pitchblende, they had swarmed over the deserts toward the dwarf mountains by the thousands. Greedy, thinking only of the fortunes that could be torn from the rugged little mountains, they had come unprepared for the heat of the Martian deserts and nine out of ten had never returned.
Each boy thought, too, of the dangers they had just faced. This new danger was different. This was something that couldn't be defeated with an idea or a sudden lucky break. This danger was ever present--a fight against nature, man against the elements on an alien planet. It was a battle of endurance that would wring the last drop of moisture mercilessly from the body, until it became a dry, brittle husk.
"Getting pretty close to sundown," said Tom finally. He stood beside the open port and shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun, now slowly sinking below the Martian horizon.
"I guess we'd better get going," said Roger. "All set, Astro?"
"Ready, Roger," answered the Venusian.
The three boys dressed and arranged the food packs on their backs. Tom carried the remainder of the Martian water, two quart plastic containers, and a six-yard square of space cloth, an extremely durable flyweight fabric that would serve as protection from the sun during the rest stop of the day. Roger and Astro carried the food in compact packs on their backs. Each boy wore a makeshift hat of space cloth, along with space goggles, a clear sheet of colored plastic that fitted snugly across the face. All three carried emergency lights salvaged from the wrecked ship.
Tom walked out away from the ship several hundred yards and studied his pocket compass. He held it steady for a moment, watching the needle swing around. He turned and walked slowly still watching the needle of the compass. He waited for it to steady again, then turned back to Roger and Astro who stood watching from the window port.
"This is the way." Tom pointed away from the ship. "Three degrees south of east, one hundred and fifty-four miles away, if everything is correct, should bring us smack on top of a major canal."
"So long, Lady Venus," said Astro, as he left the ship.
"Don't think it hasn't been fun," added Roger, "because it hasn't!"
Astro fell in behind Roger, who in turn followed Tom who walked some ten feet ahead. A light breeze sprang up and blew across the surface of the powdery sand. Ten minutes later, when they stopped to adjust their shoulder packs, they looked back. The breeze had obliterated their tracks and the mountain of sand covering the spaceship appeared to be no different from any of the other small dunes on the desert. The New Sahara desert of Mars had claimed another Earth-ship victim.
"If we can't see the Lady Venus standing still, and knowing where to look," said Astro, "how could a man in a rocket scout ever find it?"
"He wouldn't," said Roger flatly. "And when the water ran out, we'd just be sitting there."
"We're losing time," said Tom. "Let's move." He lengthened his stride through the soft sand that sucked at his high space boots and faced the already dimming horizon. The light breeze felt good on his face.
* * * * *
The three cadets had no fear of running into anything in their march through the darkness across the shifting sands. And only an occasional flash of the emergency light to check the compass was necessary to keep them moving in the right direction.
There wasn't much talk. There wasn't much to talk about. About nine o'clock the boys stopped and opened one of the containers of food and ate a quick meal of sandwiches. This was followed by a carefully measured ounce of water, and fifteen minutes later they resumed their march across the New Sahara.
About ten o'clock, Deimos, one of the small twin moons of Mars, swung up overhead, washing the desert with a pale cold light. By morning, when the cherry-red sun broke the line of the horizon, Tom estimated that they had walked about twenty miles.
"Think we ought to camp here?" asked Astro.
"If you can show me a better spot," said Roger with a laugh, "I'll be happy to use it!" He swung his arm in a wide circle, indicating a wasteland of sand that spread as far as the eyes could see.
"I could go for another hour or so," said Astro, "before it gets too hot."
"And wait for the h
eat to reach the top of the thermometer? Uh-huh, not me," said Roger. "I'll take as much sleep as I can get now--while it's still a little cool."
"Roger's right," said Tom. "We'd better take it easy now. We won't be able to get much sleep after noon."
"What do we do from noon until evening?" asked Astro.
"Aside from just sitting under this hunk of space cloth, I guess we'll come as close to being roasted alive as a human can get."
"You want to eat now?" asked Astro.
Tom and Roger laughed. "I'm not hungry, but you go ahead," said Tom. "I know that appetite of yours won't wait."