Charley carefully laid the pelt across his knees, stroked the deep brown fur with a wrinkled hand.
“Six of ‘em,” he said. His old eyes, blue as the sheen of ice, sparkled as he looked at Kent. “We’ll make a haul this time, boy,” he said. “Best huntin’ I’ve seen in five years or more.”
Kent nodded. “Sure will,” he agreed.
The hunting had been good. Out only a month now and they had six pelts, more than many trappers and hunters were able to get during an entire year. The pelts would bring a thousand apiece—perhaps more—back at the Red Rock trading post. Most valuable fur in the entire Solar System, they would sell at three times that amount back in the London or New York fur marts. A wrap of them would cost a cool one hundred thousand.
Deep, rich, heavy fur. Kent shivered as he thought about it. The fur had to be heavy. Otherwise the beaver would never be able to exist. At night, the temperature plunged to 40 and 50 below, Centigrade, seldom reached above 20 below at high noon. Mars was cold! Here on the equator the temperature varied little, unlike the poles, where it might rise to 20 above during the summer when, for ten long months, the Sun never set, dropped to 100 or more below in the winter, when the Sun was unseen for equally as long.
He leaned back in his chair and gazed out through the quartz walls of the igloo. Far down the slope of the canal wall he saw the flickering lights of the Ghosts, those tenuous, wraith-like forms whose origin, true nature, and purpose were still the bone of bitter scientific contention.
The starlight threw strange lights and shadows on the twisted terrain of the canal. The naturally weird surface formations became a nightmare of strange, awe-impelling shapes, like pages snatched from the portfolio of a mad artist.
A black shape crossed a lighted ravine, slunk into the shadows.
“A Hound,” said Kent.
Charley cursed in his whiskers.
“If them lopers keep hangin’ around,” he prophesied savagely, “we’ll have some of their pelts to take out to Red Rock.”
“They’re mighty gun-shy,” declared Kent. “Can’t get near one of them.”
“Yeah,” said Charley, “but just try goin’ out without a gun and see what happens. ‘Most as bad as the Eaters. Only difference is that the Hounds would just as soon eat a man, an’ the Eaters would rather eat a man. They sure hanker after human flesh.”
Another of the black shapes, slinking low, belly close to the ground, crossed the ravine.
“Another one,” said Kent.
Something else was moving in the ravine, a figure that glinted in the starlight.
Kent leaned forward, choking back a cry. Then he was on his feet.
“A man,” he shouted. “There’s a man out there!”
Charley’s chair overturned as he leaped up and stared through the quartz.
The space-armored figure was toiling up the slope that led to the igloo. In one hand the man carried a short blast rifle, and as they watched, the two trappers saw him halt and wheel about, the rifle leveled, ready for action, to stare back at the shadows into which the two Hounds had disappeared only a moment before.
A slight movement to the left and behind the man outside caught Kent’s eye and spurred him into action.
He leaped across the igloo and jerked from its rack his quartz-treated space suit, started clambering into it.
“What’s the trouble?” demanded Charley. “What the hell you doin’?”
“There’s an Eater out there,” shouted Kent. “I saw it just a minute ago.”
He snapped down the helmet and reached for his rifle as Charley spun open the inner air-lock port. Swiftly Kent leaped through, heard the inner port being screwed shut as he swung open the outer door.
Cold bit through the suit and into his very bones as he stepped out into the Martian night. With a swift flip he turned on the chemical heat units and felt a glow of warmth sweep over him.
The man in the ravine below was trudging up the path toward the igloo.
Kent shouted at him.
“Come on! Fast as you can!”
The man halted at the shout, stared upward.
“Come on!” screamed Kent.
The spacesuit moved forward.
Kent, racing down the ravine, saw the silica-armored brute that lurched out of the shadows and sped toward the unsuspecting visitor.
Kent’s rifle came to his shoulder. The sights lined on the ugly head of the Eater. His finger depressed the firing mechanism and the gun spat a tight column of destructive blue fire. The blast crumpled the Eater in mid-leap, flung him off his stride and to one side. But it did not kill him. His unlovely body, gleaming like a reddish mirror in the starlight, clawed upon its feet, stood swinging the gigantic head from side to side.
A shrill scream sounded in Kent’s helmet phones, but he was too busy getting the sights of the weapon lined on the Eater again to pay it any attention.
Again the rifle spat and purred, the blue blast-flame impinging squarely on the silica-armored head. Bright sparks flew from the beast’s head and then suddenly the head seemed to dissolve, melting down into a gob of blackened matter that glowed redly in places. The Eater slowly toppled sidewise and skidded ponderously down the slope to come to rest against a crimson boulder.
Kent signaled to the visitor.
“Come on,” he shouted. “Quick about it! There may be more!”
Swiftly the man in the space suit came up the slope toward Kent.
“Thanks,” he said as he drew abreast of the trapper.
“Get going, fellow,” said Kent tersely. “It isn’t safe to be out here at night.”
He fell in behind the visitor as they hurried toward the open port of the airlock.
The visitor lifted the helmet and laid it on the table and in the dim light of the radium bulb Kent saw the face of a woman.
He stood silent, staring. A visit by a man to their igloo in this out-of-the way spot would have been unusual enough; that a woman should drop in on them seemed almost incredible.
“A woman,” said Charley. “Dim my sights, it’s a woman.”
“Yes, I’m a woman,” said the visitor, and her tone, while it held a hidden hint of culture, was sharp as a whip. It reminded one of the bite of the wind outside. Her eyebrows were naturally high arched, giving her an air of eternal question and now she fastened that questioning gaze on the old trapper.
“You are Charley Wallace, aren’t you?” she asked.
Charley shifted from one foot to another, uncomfortable under that level stare. “That’s me,” he admitted, “but you have the advantage of me, ma’am.”
She hesitated, as if uncertain what he meant and then she laughed, a laugh that seemed to come from deep in her throat, full and musical. “I’m Ann Smith,” she said.
She watched them, eyes flickering from one to the other, but in them she saw no faintest hint of recognition, no start of surprise at the name.
“They told me at Red Rock I’d find you somewhere in Skeleton Canal,” she explained.
“You was a-lookin’ for us?” asked Charley.
She nodded. “They told me you knew every foot of this country.”
Charley squared his shoulders, pawed at his beard. His eyes gleamed brightly. Here was talk he understood. “I know it as well as anyone,” he admitted.
She wriggled her shoulders free of the spacesuit, let it slide, crumpling to the floor, and stepped out of it. Kent stored his own suit on the rack and, picking the girl’s suit off the floor, placed it beside his own.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Charley, “I’ve roamed these canals for over twenty Martian years and I know ‘em as good as most. I wouldn’t be afraid of gettin’ lost.”
Kent studied their visitor. She was dressed in trim sports attire, faultless in fashion, hinting of expensive shops. Her light brown, almost blond hair,
was smartly coiffed.
“But why were you lookin’ for us?” asked Charley.
“I was hoping you would do something for me,” she told him.
“Now,” Charley replied, “I’d be glad to do something for you. Anything I can do.”
Kent, watching her face, thought he saw a flicker of anxiety flit across her features. But she did not hesitate. There was no faltering of words as she spoke.
“You know the way to Mad-Man’s Canal?”
If she had slapped Charley across the face with her gloved hand the expression on his face could not have been more awe-struck and dumfounded.
He started to speak, stuttered, was silent.
“You can’t mean,” said Kent, softly, “that you want us to go into Mad-Man’s Canal.”
She whirled on him and it was as if he were an enemy. Her defenses were up. “That’s exactly what I mean,” she said and again there was that wind-like lash in her voice. “But I don’t want you to go alone. I’ll go with you.”
She walked slowly to one of the two chairs in the igloo, dropped into it, crossed her knees, swung one booted foot impatiently.
In the silence Kent could hear the chuckling of the atmosphere condensers, the faint sputter of the heating grids.
“Ma’am,” said Charley, “you sure must be jokin’. You don’t really mean you want to go into Mad-Man’s?”
She faced him with a level stare. “But I do,” she declared. “I never was more serious in my life. There’s someone there I have to see.”
“Lady,” protested the old trapper, “someone’s been spoofin’ you. There ain’t nobody over in Mad-Man’s. You couldn’t find a canal-man in his right mind who’d go near the place.”
“There is,” she told him. “And probably you’ll laugh at this, too, but I happen to know it to be the truth. The man I want to see is Harry, the Hermit.”
Kent guffawed, softly, little more than a chuckle under his breath. But she heard and came up out of the chair.
“You’re laughing,” she said and the words were an accusation.
“Sit down,” said Kent, “and let me tell you something. Something that no canal-man could admit, but something that every one of them know is the truth.”
Slowly she sat down in the chair. Kent sat easily on the edge of the table.
“There isn’t any such a person as Harry, the Hermit,” he said. “It’s just a myth. Just one of those stories that have grown up among the canal-men. Wild tales that they think up when they sit alone in the desolation of the Martian wilderness. Just figments of imagination they concoct to pass away the time. And then, when they go out with their furs, they tell these stories over the drinks at the trading posts and those they tell them to, tell them to the others—and so the tale is started. It goes from mouth to mouth. It gains strength as it goes, and each man improves upon it just a little, until in a year or two it is a full-blown legend. Something that the canal-men almost believe themselves, but know all the time is just a wild canal-tale.”
“But I know,” protested Ann. “I know there is such a man. I have to see him. I know he lives in Mad-Man’s Canal.”
“Listen,” snapped Kent and the quiet casualness was gone from his words. “Harry, the Hermit, is everywhere. Go a few hundred miles from here and men will tell you he lives here in Skeleton Canal. Or he is down in the Big Eater system or he’s up north in the Icy Hills. He is just an imaginary person, I tell you. Like the Paul Bunyan of the old lumberjacks back on Earth. Like Pecos Pete of the old American southwest. Like the fairies of the old Irish stories. Some trapper thought him up one lonely night and another trapper improved on him and a fellow dealing a stud poker hand in some little town improved a little more until today he is almost a real personage. Maybe he is real—real as a symbol of a certain group of men—but for all practical purposes, he is just a story, a fabrication of imagination.”
The girl, he saw, was angry. She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a flat case. Her hands trembled as she opened it and took out a cigarette. She closed the case and tapped the cigarette against her thumbnail. A pencil of metal, pulled from the case, flared into flame.
She thrust the white cylinder between her lips and Kent reached down and took it away.
“Not here,” he said and smiled.
She flared at him. “Why not?” she asked.
“Atmosphere,” he said. “Neither Charley nor I smoke. Can’t afford to. The condensers are small. We don’t have too much current to run them. Two persons is the capacity of this igloo. Everything has to be figured down to scratch in this business. We need all the air we get, without fouling it with tobacco smoke.” He handed her the cigarette.
In silence she put it back in the case, returned the case to her pocket. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.”
“Sorry I had to stop you,” Kent told her.
She rose. “Perhaps I had better go,” she said.
Charley’s jaw went slack. “Go where?” he asked.
“My canal car,” she said. “I left it about a mile from here. Went past your place before I saw the light.”
“But you can’t spend the night in a car,” protested Kent. “I’m afraid you’ll have to stay here.”
“Sure,” urged Charley, “we can’t let you go. Sleeping in a car is no picnic.”
“We’re harmless,” Kent assured her.
She flushed. “I wasn’t thinking of that,” she said. “But you said two persons was the capacity of the igloo.”
“It is,” Kent agreed, “but we can manage. We’ll cut down the heater current a little and step up the condensers. It may get a little chilly, but we can manage with air.”
He turned to Charley. “How about a pot of coffee,” he suggested.
Charley grinned, waggled his chin whiskers like a frolicsome billy goat. “I was just thinkin’ about that myself,” he said.
Ann set down the coffee cup and looked at them. “You see,” she explained, “it’s not just something I want to do myself. Not just some foolish whim of mine. It’s something I’ve got to do. Something that may help someone else—someone who is very dear to me. I won’t be able to sleep or eat or live, if I fail at least to try. You have to understand that I simply must go to Mad-Man’s Canal and try to find Harry, the Hermit.”
“But there ain’t no Harry, the Hermit,” protested Charley. He wiped the coffee off his beard and sighed. “Goodness knows, I wished there was, since you’re so set on findin’ him.”
“But even if there isn’t,” said Ann, “I’d at least have to go and look. I couldn’t go through life wondering if you might have been mistaken. Wondering if I should have given up so easily. If I go and try to find him and fail—why, then I’ve done everything I can, everything I could have expected myself to do. But if I don’t I’ll always wonder … there’ll always be that doubt to torment me.”
She looked from one face to the other.
“You surely understand,” she pleaded.
Charley regarded her steadily, his blue eyes shining. “This thing kind of means a lot to you, don’t it?” he said.
She nodded.
Kent’s voice broke the spell. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said. “You flew down from Landing City to Red Rock in a nice comfortable rocket ship, and now because you covered the hundred miles between here and Red Rock in a canal car, you think you’re an old-timer.”
He stared back at her hurt eyes.
“Well, you aren’t,” he declared.
“Now, lad,” said Charley, “you needn’t get so rough.”
“Rough!” said Kent. “I’m not getting rough. I’m just telling her a few of the things she has to know. She came across the desert in the car and everything went swell. Now she thinks it’s just as easy to travel the canals.”
“No, I don’t,” she fl
ared at him, but he went on mercilessly.
“The canal country is dangerous. There’s all sorts of chances for crack-ups. There are all sorts of dangers. Every discomfort you can imagine. Crack your car against a boulder—and you peel off the quartz. Then the ozone gets in its work. It eats through the metal. Put a crack in your suit and the same thing happens. This atmosphere is poisonous to metal. So full of ozone that if you breathe much of it it starts to work on your lung tissues. Not so much danger of that up on the plateaus, where the air is thinner, but down here where there’s more air, there’s more ozone and it works just that much faster.”
She tried to stop him, but he waved her into silence and went on:
“There are the Eaters. Hundreds of them. All with an insane appetite for human bones. They love the phosphate. Every one of them figuring how to get through a car or a spacesuit and at the food inside. You’ve never seen more than a couple of Eaters together at a time. But Charley and I have seen them by the thousands—great herds of them on their periodic migrations up and down the canyons. They’ve kept us penned in our igloo for days while they milled around outside, trying to reach us. And the Hounds, too, although they aren’t so dangerous. And in the deeper places you find swarms of Ghosts. Funny things, the Ghosts. No physical harm from them. Maybe they don’t even exist. Nobody knows what they are. But they are apt to drive you mad. Just looking at them, knowing they are watching all the time.”
Impressive silence fell.
Charley wagged his beard.
“No place for a woman,” he declared. “The canal ain’t.”
“I don’t care,” said Ann. “You’re trying to frighten me, and I won’t be frightened. I have to go to Mad-Man’s Canal.”
“Listen, lady,” said Charley, “pick any other place—any other place at all—and I will take you there. But don’t ask me to go into Mad-Man’s.”
“Why not?” she cried. “Why are you so afraid of Mad-Man’s?”
She tried to find the answer in their faces but there was none.
Charley spoke slowly, apparently trying to choose his words with care. “Because,” he said, “Mad-Man’s is the deepest canal in this whole country. Far as I know, no man has ever been to the bottom of it and come out alive. Some have gone down part way and came back—mad and frothin’ at the mouth, their eyes all glazed, babblin’ crazy things. That’s why they call it Mad-Man’s.”
New Folks' Home: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 6) Page 6