Then Meklos came inside. People parted from him as if he were going to harm them. He had a woman with him, and it took Gabrielle a moment to realize it was one of the divers.
“What did you find?” she asked, barely able to control her excitement. The museum? Treasures? She wasn’t sure she could hide any of it now, but that mattered less than the fact of the artifacts. She wanted to see the famous Spoils of War Museum that the Denonites had created.
“Nothing,” the woman said. She sounded tired.
“It’s a long story,” Meklos said. Obviously, he already knew what the story was.
Gabrielle glared at him. He was still getting in her way.
But he didn’t seem to notice her glare. Instead, he was staring at the drawing.
“This is brilliant,” he said to the diver. “This is how the Denonites protected themselves against siege. Those passages below had to have once been easily visible from the ground. The Denonites built this so that they could track anyone entering.”
“And prevent them from coming into the city with those barriers,” the diver said.
“What barriers?” Gabrielle asked.
But they ignored her. She wasn’t used to being ignored.
She was about to ask the question again, when the light moved to the last part of a Spire. It flickered for a moment, and then disappeared.
There was a grinding above her.
The ceiling closed.
The lights were gone.
“What was that?” she asked.
But she didn’t expect anyone to answer her, so she hurried outside. The light no longer flowed down from the Spires.
The city looked normal—as normal as it had before the sirens went off.
The defense system had shut off, but she didn’t know why. She was beginning to think she didn’t know anything.
All her assumptions had been false.
She was torn between awe at the system she’d seen and a disconcerting sense of unease, as if life as she had known it had suddenly and irrevocably changed.
40
“He got out,” Navi said softly. “He got out.”
She felt more relief than she expected to.
“I’ll give him a few minutes, and then contact the ship.”
She looked at Meklos.
“I can’t believe he got out.”
Meklos smiled. He seemed calmer too. “He got out and the system shut off. This thing is brilliant. The threat is gone, so the entire system is back in wait mode.”
“We’re going to be studying this for a long time,” Navi said. “Will you help?”
“When everything checks out,” Meklos said.
She nodded. She understood that. She took her pack from Meklos, dug into the pouch, and grabbed her communicator.
Damn, it was nice to use a powerful system again.
She held it up to him. His smile widened.
She walked to the door. Gabrielle Reese was sitting on the stairs outside, looking like she was lost.
And she had lost. The woman was smart enough to know that the change in the Spires made the dig something completely different.
Oddly, Navi wanted to comfort her, to tell her that what she would lose financially, she would gain in reputation. Gabrielle Reese would forever be the woman who discovered the long-lost technology of the Denonites.
But Navi didn’t say that. Instead she stepped into the street, bathing in the warmth of Amnthra’s bright sun. She held up her communicator, pressing it on.
She didn’t use any identifying words. The signal from the comm should have been enough.
“I’m checking on Roye,” she said. “Is he all right?”
He looks like he’s made of snow, the pilot of her deep exploration ship answered. But he’s all right. Glad to be out of there. You coming to join us?
She looked over her shoulder. There were too many changes here, too much going on. Much as she trusted Meklos Verr, she had a hunch he didn’t trust her.
And there was too much at stake to leave to a man she’d just hired.
“No, I’m staying here. I’ll send up a full report tonight. We’re going to need a lot of experts here very fast. And not the kind that we have. We’re dealing with technology now, not ancient art.”
Figured out that much, the pilot said. Roye wants to know if you’re all right. Does he need to come over the mountain to find you?
“I’m fine,” she said, then she took a deep breath of the warm air.
More than fine. She was thrilled.
Everything had turned out much better than she expected.
“Tell him,” she said, “I’m just fine.”
41
It didn’t take Meklos long to check out Navi Salvino, now that he had the proper equipment. He spent most of his time digging through information logs from far away, ones she never would have thought to tamper with.
While he did that, Meklos had his team set up a better perimeter. He put robots and motion detectors all around the rim of the crater, like he’d wanted to do from the beginning.
He was going to ask if he could stay here. He wanted to study the Spires system. It fascinated him.
He’d been in countless cities that protected themselves from attack, but not like this place. He wanted to know more.
And he had a hunch there would always be more to know.
He lifted his face toward the Spires. He’d thought them beautiful when he first saw them.
But now he realized they were more than beautiful. They were fascinating and, more importantly, useful.
He smiled at them—and silently promised he would always keep them safe.
OVER THE TOP, by Lester del Rey
The sky was lousy with stars—nasty little pinpoints of cold hostility that had neither the remoteness of space nor the friendly warmth of Earth. They didn’t twinkle honestly, but tittered and snickered down. And there wasn’t even one moon. Dave Mannen knew better, but his eyes looked for the low scudding forms of Deimos and Phobos because of all the romanticists who’d written of them. They were up there all right, but only cold rocks, too small to see.
Rocks in the sky, and rocks in his head—not to mention the lump on the back of his skull. He ran tense fingers over his wiry black hair until he found the swelling, and winced. With better luck, he’d have had every inch of his three-foot body mashed to jelly, instead of that, though. Blast Mars!
He flipped the searchlight on and looked out, but the view hadn’t improved any. It was nothing but a drab plain of tarnished reddish sand, chucked about in ridiculous potholes, running out beyond the light without change. The stringy ropes of plantlike stuff had decided to clump into balls during the night, but their bilious green still had a clabbered appearance, like the result of a three days’ binge. There was a thin rime of frost over them, catching the light in little wicked sparks. That was probably significant data; it would prove that there was more water in the air than the scientists had figured, even with revised calculations from the twenty-four-inch lunar refractor.
But that was normal enough. The bright boys got together with their hundred-ton electronic slipsticks and brought forth all manner of results; after that, they had to send someone out to die here and there before they found why the sticks had slipped. Like Dave. Sure, the refractory tube linings were good for twenty-four hours of continual blast—tested under the most rigorous lab conditions, even tried on a couple of Moon hops.
So naturally, with Unitech’s billionaire backer and new power handling methods giving them the idea of beating the Services to Mars—no need to stop on the Moon even, they were that good—they didn’t include spare linings. They’d have had to leave out some of their fancy radar junk and wait for results until the rocket returned.
Well, the tubes had been good. It was only after three hours of blasting, total, when he was braking down for Mars, that they began pitting. Then they’d held up after a fashion until there was only forty feet of free fall—about the same as fifte
en on Earth. The ship hadn’t been damaged, had even landed on her tripod legs, and the radar stuff had come through fine. The only trouble was that Dave had no return ticket. There was food for six months, water for more by condensing and reusing; but the clicking of the air machine wouldn’t let him forget his supply of breathing material was being emptied, a trickle at a time. And there was only enough there for three weeks, at the outside. After that, curtains.
Of course, if the bright boys’ plans had worked, he could live on compressed air drawn from outside by the air lock pumps. Too bad the landing had sprung them just enough so they could barely hold their own and keep him from losing air if he decided to go outside. A lot of things were too bad.
But at least the radar was working fine. He couldn’t breathe it or take off with it, but the crystal amplifiers would have taken even a free fall all the way from mid-space. He cut the power on, fiddling until he found the Lunar broadcast from Earth. It had a squiggly sound, but most of the words come through on the begacycle band. There was something about a fool kid who’d sneaked into a plane and got off the ground somehow, leaving a hundred honest pilots trying to kill themselves in getting him down. People could kill each other by the millions, but they’d go all out to save one spectacular useless life, as usual.
Then it came: “No word from the United Technical Foundation rocket, now fourteen hours overdue in reporting. Foundation men have given up hope, and feel that Mannen must have died in space from unknown causes, leaving the rocket to coast past Mars unmanned. Any violent crash would have tripped automatic signalers, and there was no word of trouble from Mannen—”
There was more, though less than on the kid. One rocket had been tried two years before, and gone wide because the tubes blew before reversal; the world had heard the clicking of Morse code right to the end, then. This failure was only a secondhand novelty, without anything new to gush over. Well, let them wonder. If they wanted to know what had happened, let ’em come and find out. There’d be no pretty last words from him.
Dave listened a moment longer, as the announcer picked up the latest rift in the supposedly refurbished United Nations, then cut off in disgust. The Atlantic Nations were as determined as Russia, and both had bombs now. If they wanted to blast themselves out of existence, maybe it was a good thing. Mars was a stinking world, but at least it had died quietly, instead of raising all that fuss.
Why worry about them? They’d never done him any favors. He’d been gypped all along. With a grade-A brain and a matinee idol’s face, he’d been given a three-foot body and the brilliant future of a circus freak—the kind the crowd laughed at, rather than looked at in awe. His only chance had come when Unitech was building the ship, before they knew how much power they had, and figured on saving weight by designing it for a midget and a consequently smaller supply of air, water, and food. Even then, after he’d seen the ad, he’d had to fight his way into position through days of grueling tests. They hadn’t tossed anything in his lap.
It had looked like the big chance, then. Fame and statues they could keep, but the book and endorsement rights would have put him where he could look down and laugh at the six-footers. And the guys with the electronic brains had cheated him out of it.
Let them whistle for their radar signals. Let them blow themselves to bits playing soldier. It was none of his worry now.
He clumped down from the observatory tip into his tiny quarters, swallowed a couple of barbiturates, and crawled into his sleeping cushions. Three weeks to go, and not even a bottle of whiskey on the ship. He cursed in disgust, turned over, and let sleep creep up on him.
It was inevitable that he’d go outside, of course. Three days of nothing but sitting, standing up, and sleeping was too much. Dave let the pumps suck at the air in the lock, zipping down his helmet over the soft rubber seal, tested his equipment, and waited until the pressure stood about even, outside and in. Then he opened the outer lock, tossed down the plastic ramp, and stepped out. He’d got used to the low gravity while still aboard, and paid no attention to it.
The tripod had dug into the sand, but the platform feet had kept the tubes open, and Dave swore at them softly. They looked good—except where part of one lining hung out in shreds. And with lining replacements, they’d be good—the blast had been cut off before the tubes themselves were harmed. He turned his back on the ship finally and faced out to the shockingly near horizon.
This, according to the stories, was supposed to be man’s high moment—the first living human to touch the soil outside his own world and its useless satellite. The lock opened, and out stepped the hero—dying in pride with man’s triumph and conquest of space! Dave pushed the rubbery flap of his helmet back against his lips, opened the orifice, and spat on the ground. If this was an experience, so was last year’s stale beer.
There wasn’t even a “canal” within fifty miles of him. He regretted that, in a way, since finding out what made the streaks would have killed time. He’d seen them as he approached, and there was no illusion to them—as the lunar scope had proved before. But they definitely weren’t water ditches, anyhow. There’d been no chance to pick his landing site, and he’d have to get along without them.
It didn’t leave much to explore. The ropes of vegetation were stretched out now, holding up loops of green fuzz to the sun, but there seemed to be no variation of species to break up the pattern. Probably a grove of trees on Earth would look the same to a mythical Martian. Possibly they represented six million and seven varieties. But Dave couldn’t see it. The only point of interest was the way they wiggled their fuzz back and forth, and that soon grew monotonous.
Then his foot squeaked up at him, winding up in a gurgle. He jumped a good six feet up in surprise, and the squeak came again in the middle of his leap, making him stumble as he landed. But his eyes focused finally on a dull brownish lump fastened to his boot. It looked something like a circular cluster of a dozen pine cones, with fuzz all over, but there were little leglike members coming out of it—a dozen of them that went into rapid motion as he looked.
“Queeklrle,” the thing repeated, sending the sound up through the denser air in his suit. It scrambled up briskly, coming to a stop over his supply kit and fumbling hurriedly. “Queeklrle!”
Oddly, there was no menace in it, probably because it was anything but a bug-eyed monster; there were no signs of any sensory organs. Dave blinked. It reminded him of a kitten he’d once had, somehow, before his usual luck found him and killed the little creature with some cat disease. He reacted automatically.
“Queekle yourself!” His fingers slipped into the kit and came out with a chocolate square, unpeeling the cellophane quickly. “It’ll probably make you sick or kill you—but if that’s what you’re after, take it.”
Queckle was after it, obviously. The creature took the square in its pseudopods, tucked it under its body, and relaxed, making faint gobbling sounds. For a second, it was silent, but then it squeaked again, sharper this time. “Queeklrle!”
Dave fed it two more of the squares before the creature seemed satisfied, and began climbing back down, leaving the nuts in the chocolate neatly piled on the ground behind it. Then Queekle went scooting off into the vegetation. Dave grimaced; its gratitude was practically human.
“Nuts to you, too,” he muttered, kicking the pile of peanuts aside. But it proved at least that men had never been there before—humans were almost as fond of exterminating other life as they were of killing off their own kind.
He shrugged, and swung off toward the horizon at random in a loose, loping stride. After the cramped quarters of the ship, running felt good. He went on without purpose for an hour or more, until his muscles began protesting. Then he dug out his water bottle, pushed the tube through the helmet orifice, and drank briefly. Everything around him was the same as it had been near the ship, except for a small cluster of the plants that had dull red fuzz instead of green; he’d noticed them before, but couldn’t tell whether they were one stage of the
same plant or a different species. He didn’t really care.
In any event, going farther was purposeless. He’d been looking for another Queekle casually, but had seen none. And on the return trip, he studied the ground under the fuzz plants more carefully, but there was nothing to see. There wasn’t even a wind to break up the monotony, and he clumped up to the ramp of the ship as bored as he had left it. Maybe it was just as well his air supply was low, if this was all Mars had to offer.
Dave pulled up the ramp and spun the outer lock closed, blinking in the gloom, until the lights snapped on as the air lock sealed. He watched the pressure gauge rise to ten pounds, normal for the ship, and reached for the inner lock. Then he jerked back, staring at the floor.
Queekle was there, and had brought along part of Mars. Now its squeaks came out in a steady stream as the inner seal opened. And in front of it, fifteen or twenty of the plant things went into abrupt motion, moving aside to form a narrow lane through which the creature went rapidly on into the ship. Dave followed, shaking his head. Apparently there was no way of being sure about anything here. Plants that stood steady on their roots outside could move about at will, it seemed—and to what was evidently a command.
The fool beast! Apparently the warmth of the ship had looked good to it, and it was all set to take up housekeeping—in an atmosphere that was at least a hundred times too dense for it. Dave started up the narrow steps to his quarters, hesitated, and cursed. It still reminded him of the kitten, moving around in exploratory circles. He came back down and made a dive for it.
Queekle let out a series of squeals as Dave tossed it back into the air lock and closed the inner seal. Its squeaks died down as the pressure was pumped back and the outer seal opened, though, and were inaudible by the time he moved back up the ladder. He grumbled to himself halfheartedly. That’s what came of feeding the thing—it decided to move in and own him.
But he felt better as he downed what passed for supper. The lift lasted for an hour or so afterward-and then left him feeling more cramped and disgusted than ever as he sat staring at the walls of his tiny room. There wasn’t even a book to read, aside from the typed manual for general care of the ship, and he’d read that often enough already.
The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack Page 13