Marion Zimmer Bradley Super Pack

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “They were fine when I left,” Andrew said.

  “Okay. Hang on,” the driver warned, and at Andrew’s nod, cut in the rockets and the sand-car leaped forward, eating up the desert.

  Mount Denver was dirty and smelly after the clean coldness of the mountains. Andrew found his way through the maze of army barracks and waited in the officers’ Rec quarters while a call-system located Colonel Reese Montray.

  He hadn’t been surprised to find out that the head of the other half of the expedition was a Colonel in active service; after all, within the limits imposed by regulations, the Army was genuinely anxious for Reade to find something at Xanadu. A genuine discovery might make some impression on the bureaucrats back on Earth; they might be able to revive public interest in Mars, get “some more money and supplies instead of seeing everything diverted to Venus and Europa.

  Montray was a tall thin man with a heavy Lunar Colony accent, the tiny stars of the Space Service glimmering above the Army chevrons on his sleeve. He gestured Andrew into a private office and Listened, with a bored look, up to the point where he left Reade; then began to shoot questions at him.

  “Has he proper chemical testing equipment for the business? Protection against gas—chemicals?”

  “I don’t think so,” Andrew said. He’d forgotten Reade’s theory about hallucinogens in spinosa mortis; so much had happened since that it didn’t seem to make much difference.

  “Maybe we’d better get it to him. I can wind things up here in an hour or so, if I have to, I’ve only got to tell the Commander what’s going on. He’ll put me on detached duty. You can attend to things here at the Geographic Society Headquarters, can’t you, Slayton?”

  Andrew said quietly, “I’m going back with you, Colonel Montray. And you won’t need gas equipment. I did make contact with one of the old Martians.”

  Montray sighed and reached for the telephone. “You can tell Dr. Cranston all about it, over at the hospital.”

  “I knew you’d think I was crazy,” Andrew said in resignation, “but I can show you a pass that will take you through the Double Ridge in three hours, not three days—less, if you have a sand-car.”

  The Colonel’s hand was actually on the telephone, but he didn’t pick it up. He leaned back and looked at Andrew curiously. “You discovered this pass?”

  “Well, yes and no, sir.” He told his story quickly, skipping over the parts about Kamellin, concentrating on the fact of the roadway. Montray heard him out in silence, then picked up the telephone, but he didn’t call the hospital. Instead he called an employment bureau in the poorer part of Mount Denver. While he waited for the connection he looked uncertainly at Andrew and muttered, “I’d have to go out there in a few weeks anyhow. They said, if Reade got well started, he could use Army equipment—” he broke off and spoke into the clicking phone.

  “Montray here for the Geographic. I want twenty roughnecks for desert work. Have them here in two hours.” He held down the contact button, dialed again, this time to call Dupont, Mars Limited, and requisition a first-class staff chemist, top priority. The third call, while Andrew waited— admiring, yet resenting the smoothness with which Montray could pull strings, was to the Martian Geographic Society headquarters; then he heaved himself up out of his chair and said, “So that’s that. I’ll buy your story, Slayton. You go down—” he scrawled on a pink form, “and commandeer an Army sand-bus that will hold twenty roughnecks and equipment. If you’ve told the truth, the Reade expedition is already a success and the Army will take over. And if you haven’t—” he made a curt gesture of dismissal, and Andrew knew that if anything went wrong, he’d be better off in the psycho ward than anywhere Montray could get at him.

  When Army wheels started to go round, they ran smoothly. Within five hours they were out of Mount Denver with an ease and speed which made Andrew—accustomed to the penny-pinching of Martian Geographic—gape in amazement. He wondered if this much string-pulling could have saved Kingslander. Crammed in the front seat of the sand-bus, between Montray and the Dupont chemist, Andrew reflected gloomily on the military mind and its effect on Reade. What would Reade say when he saw Andrew back again?

  The wind was rising. A sandstorm on Mars makes the worst earthly wind look like a breeze to fly kites; the Army driver swore helplessly as he tried to see through the blinding sand, and the roughnecks huddled under a tarpaulin, coarse bandanas over their eyes, swearing in seven languages. The chemist braced his kit on his knees—he’d refused to trust it to the baggage-bins slung under the chassis next to the turbines—and pulled his dustkerchief over his eyes as the hurricane wind buffeted the sand-bus. Montray shouted above the roar, “Doesn’t that road of yours come out somewhere along here?”

  Shielding his eyes, Andrew peered over the low windbreak and crouched again, wiping sand from his face. “Half a mile more.”

  Montray tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Here.”

  The bus roared to a stop and the wind, unchallenged by the turbine noise, took over in their ears.

  Montray gripped his wrist. “Crawl back under the canvas and we’ll look at the map.”

  Heads low, they crawled in among the roughnecks; Montray flashed a pocket light on the “map”, which was no more than a rough aerial photo taken by a low flier over the ridge. At one edge were a group of black dots which might or might not have been Xanadu, and the ridge itself was a confusing series of blobs; Andrew rubbed a gritty finger over the photo.

  “Look, this is the route we followed; Reade’s Pass, we named it. Kingslander went this way; a thousand feet lower, but too much loose rock. The canyon is about here—that dark line could be it.”

  “Funny the flier who took the picture didn’t see it.” Montray raised his voice. “All out—let’s march!”

  “In’a dees’ weather?” protested a gloomy voice, touching off a chorus of protest. Montray was_ inflexible. “Reade might be in bad trouble. Packs, everybody.”

  Grumbling, the roughnecks tumbled out and adjusted packs and dust-bandanas. Montray waved the map-photo at Andrew; “Want this?”

  “I can find my way without it.”

  A straggling disorderly line, they began, Andrew leading, He felt strong and confident. In his mind Kamellin lay dormant and that pleased him too; he needed every scrap of his mind to fight the screaming torment of the wind. It sifted its way through his bandana and ate into his skin, though he had greased his face heavily with lanolin before leaving the barracks. It worked, a gritty nuisance, through his jacket and his gloves. But it was his own kind of weather; Mars weather. It suited him, even though he swore as loud as anyone else.

  Montray swore too, and spat grit from his throat.

  “Where is this canyon of yours?”

  A little break in the hillocky terrain led northward, then the trail angled sharply, turned into the lee of a bleak canyon wall. “Around there.” Andrew fell back, letting Montray lead, while he gave a hand to the old man from DuPont.

  Montray’s angry grip jerked at his elbow; Andrew’s bandana slid down and sailed away on the storm, and the chemist stumbled and fell to his knees. Andrew bent and helped the old fellow to his feet before he thrust his head around to Montray and demanded, “What the hell is the big idea?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you!” Montray’s furious voice shouted the storm down. Andrew half fell around the turn, hauled by Montray’s grip; then gulped, swallowing sand, while the wind bit unheeded at his naked cheeks. For there was now no trail through the ridge. Only a steep slope of rock lay before them, blank and bare, every crevice filled to the brim with deep-drifted sand.

  Andrew turned to Montray, his jaw dropping. “I don’t understand this at all, sir,” he” gulped, and went toward the edge. There was no sign of ramp or steps.

  “I do.” Montray bit his words off and spat them at Andrew. “You’re coming back to Mount Denver—under arrest!”

  “Sir, I came through here yesterday! There was a wide track, a ramp, about eleven feet w
ide, and at one side there were steps, deep steps—” he moved toward the edge, seeking signs of the vanished trailway. Montray’s grip on his arm did not loosen. “Yeah, and a big lake full of pink lemonade down at the bottom. Okay, back to the bus.”

  The roughnecks crowded behind ‘them, close to the deep-deep-drifted sand near the spires of rock Andrew had sighted as landmarks on either side of the canyon. One of them stepped past Montray, glaring at the mountain of sand.

  “All the way out here for a looney!” he said in disgust.

  He took another step—then suddenly started sinking-stumbled, flailed and went up to his waist in the loose-piled dust.

  “Careful—get back—” Andrew yelled. “You’ll go in over your heads!” The words came without volition.

  The man in the sand stopped in mid-yell, and his kicking arms stopped throwing up dust. He looked thoughtfully up at the other roughnecks. “Colonel”, he said slowly, “I don’t think Slayton’s so crazy. I’m standing on a step, and there’s another one under my knee. Here, dig me out.” He began to brush sand away with his two hands. “Big steps—”

  Andrew let out a yell of exultation, bending to haul the man free. “That’s IT,” he shouted. “The sandstorm last night just blew a big drift into the mouth of the canyon, that’s all! If we could get through this drift, the rest lies between rock walls and around the next angle, the sand can’t blow!”

  Montray pulled binoculars from his pocket and focused them carefully. “In farther, I do see a break in the slope that looks like a canyon,” he said. “If you look at it quick, it seems to be just a flat patch; but with the glasses, you can see that it goes down between walls . . . but there’s a hundred feet of sand, at least, drifted into the entrance, and it might as well be a hundred miles. We can’t wade through that.” He frowned, looking around at the sandbus. “How wide did you say this canyon was?”

  “About fifteen feet. The ramp’s about eleven feet wide.”

  Montray’s brow ridged. “These busses are supposed to cross drifts up to eighty feet We’ll chance it. Though if I take an army sandbus in there, and get it stuck in a drift, we might as well pack for space.”

  Andrew felt grim as they piled back into the bus. Montray displaced the driver and took the controls himself. He gave the mail} rocket high power; the bus shot forward, its quickly-extruded glider units sliding lightly, without traction, over the drifted sand. It skidded a little as Montray gunned it for the turn;, the chassis hit the drift like a ton of lead. Swearing prayerfully, Montray slammed on the auxiliary rockets, and it roared—whined—sprayed up sand like a miniature sirocco, then, mercifully, the traction lessened, the gliders began to function, and the sandbus skied lightly across the drift and down the surface of the monster ramp, into the canyon.

  It seemed hours, but actually it was less than four minutes before the glider units scraped rock and Montray shut off the power and called two men to help him wind up the retractors . . . The gliders could be shot out at a moment’s notice, because on Mars when they were needed, they were needed fast, but retracting them again was a long, slow business. He craned his neck over the windbreak, looking up at the towering walls, leaning at a dizzy angle over them. He whistled sharply. “This is no natural formation!”

  “I told you it wasn’t,” Andrew said.

  The man from Dupont scowled. “Almost anything can be a natural formation, in rock,” he contradicted. “You say you discovered this pass, Slayton?”

  Andrew caught Montray’s eye and said meekly, “Yes, sir.”

  The sandbus cruised easily along the canyon floor, and up the great ramp at the other end; Montray drove stubbornly, his chin thrust out. Once he said, “Well, at least the Double Ridge—isn’t a barricade any more,” and once he muttered, “You could have discovered this by accident—delirious—and then rationalized it. . . .”

  The Martian night was hanging, ready to fall, when the squat towers of the city reared up, fat and brown, against the horizon. From that distance they could see nothing of Reade’s camp except a thin trail of smoke, clear against the purplish twilight. Vague unease stirred Andrew’s mind and for the first time in hours, Kamellin’s thoughts flickered dimly alive in the corridors of his brain.

  I am fearful. There is trouble.

  Montray shouted, and Andrew jerked up his head in dismay, then leaped headlong from the still-moving sandbus. He ran across the sand. Reade’s tent lay in a smoking ruin on the red sand. His throat tight with dread, Andrew knelt and gently turned up the heavy form that lay, unmoving, beside the charred ruin.

  Fat Kater had lost more than his shirt.

  Montray finally stood up and beckoned three of the roughnecks. “Better bury him here,” he said heavily, “and see if there’s anything left unburned.”

  One of the men had turned aside and was noisily getting rid of everything he’d eaten for a week. Andrew felt like doing the same, but Montray’s hand was heavy on his shoulder.

  “Easy,” he said. “No, I don’t suspect you. He hasn’t been dead more than an hour. Reade sent you away before it started, evidently.” He gave commands; “No one else seems to have died in the fire. Spread out, two arid two, and look for Reade’s men.” He glanced at the sun, hovering too close to the horizon; half an hour of sunlight, and Phobos would give light for another couple of hours—he said grimly, “After that, we get back to the bus and get out of here, fast. We can come back tomorrow, but we’re not going to wander around here by Deimos-light.” He unholstered his pistol.

  Don’t, said the eerie mentor in Andrew’s brain, no weapons.

  Andrew said urgently, “Colonel, have the roughnecks turn in their pistols! Kingslander’s men killed each other pretty much like this!”

  “And suppose someone meets a banshee? And Reade’s men all have pistols, and if they’re wandering around, raving mad—”

  The next hour was nightmarish, dark phantoms moving shoulder to shoulder across the rock-needled ground; muttered words, far away the distant screams of a banshee somewhere. Once the crack of a pistol cut the night; it developed—after the roughnecks had all come running in, and half a dozen random shots had been fired, fortunately wounding no one—that one man had mistaken a rock-spire for a banshee. Montray cursed the man and sent him back to the sandbus with blistered ears. The sun dropped out of sight. Phobos, a vast purple balloon, sketched the towers of the city in faint shadows on the sand. The wind wailed and flung sand at the crags.

  An abrupt shout of masculine hysteria cut the darkness; Montray jumped, stumbled and swore. “If this is another false alarm—”

  It wasn’t. Somebody flashed an electric torch on the sand; Mike Fairbanks, a bullet hole cleanly through his temple, lay on the sand that was only a little redder than his blood.

  That left Hansen, Webber—and John Reade.

  I can find them: let me find them! Before something worse happens—

  “Sir, I think I can find the others. I told you about Kamellin. This proves—”

  “Proves nothing,” grunted Montray. “But go ahead.” Andrew felt coldly certain that inside the pocket of his leathers, Montray’s finger was crooked around a trigger trained on his heart. Tense and terrified, Andrew let Kamellin lead him. How did he know that this was not an elaborate trap for the Earthmen? For Kamellin led them straight beneath the walls of the city and to an open door—an open door, and three expeditions had blasted without success!

  One of my people has taken over one of your men. He must have found the hidden door. If only he is still sane, we have a bare chance. ...

  “Stop there,” Montray ordered curtly.

  “Stop there,” echoed a harsh wild voice, and the disheveled figure of John Reade, hatless, his jacket charred, appeared in the doorway. “Andrew!” His distorted shout broke into a sobbing gasp of relief, and he pitched headlong into Andrew’s arms. “Andy, thank God you’re here! They—shot me—”

  Andrew eased him gently to the ground. Montray bent over the old man, urging, �
��Tell us what happened, John.” “Shot in the side—Andy you were right—something got

  Spade first, then Kater fired the tent—Spade rushed him, shot Mike Fairbanks—then—then, Andy, it got me, it sneaked inside me, inside my head when I wasn’t looking, inside my head—”

  His” head lolled on Andrew’s shoulder.

  Montray let go his wrist with a futile gesture. “He’s hurt pretty bad. Delirious.”

  “His head’s as clear as mine. He’s fainted, that’s all,” Andrew protested. “If we bring him around, he can tell us—”

  “He’ll be in no shape to answer questions,” said the scientist from Dupont, very definitely, “not for a long time. Montray, round up the men; we’ve got to get out of here in a hurry—”

  “Look out!” shouted somebody. A pistol shot crashed and the scream of an injured man raised wild echoes. Andrew felt his heart suck and turn over; then he suddenly sank into blindness and felt himself leap to his feet and run toward the voices. Kamellin had taken over!

  Spade Hansen, tottering on his feet, stumbled toward them. His shirt hung raggedly in charred fragments. Through some alien set of senses, like seeing double, Andrew sensed the presence of another, one of Kamellin’s kind.

  If I can get through to him—”

  Montray cocked, levelled his pistol.

  “Hansen!” His voice cracked a whip, “stand where you are!”

  Spade yelled something.

  “Po’ki hai marrai nic Mahari—”

  “You fool! They are afraid of us! Stand back!

  Spade flung himself forward and threw his pistol to the ground at Andrew’s feet. “Kamellin!” .he screamed, but the voice was not his own. Andrew’s heart thudded. He stepped forward, letting the dark intruder in his mind take over all his senses again. A prisoner, he heard the alien voice shouting, felt his throat spewing forth alien syllables. There were

  shouts, a despairing howl, then somewhere two pistols cracked together and Andrew flickered back to full consciousness to see Hansen reel, stumble and fall inert. Andrew sagged, swayed; Montray held him upright, and Andrew whispered incredulously, “You shot him!”