'No matter,' said Tavares with the calm of resignation. 'It is too late for any of those things.' He nodded towards where the plane had landed.
'You think they mean trouble?' Wakulla demanded.
'Think?' Tavares glanced at him opaquely, then once again out across the hot, dry sand. 'I do not think. I know. Look.'
A flare of flame, almost invisible against the bright sky, fringed with bits of metal and sand and unidentifiable debris, leaped up over the dunes.
Smoke followed.
'They are taking no chances,' said Tavares slowly. 'They looked for you, and when you were not to be found, they destroyed your home--
perhaps you had hidden, you see. But now they will look some more.'
In a moment, the sound of the explosion reached them.
The boy began to cry.
• • • •
5
The sky was full of aircraft, high-winged light planes that chopped the desert into sector strips and patrolled them, seeking, seeking; helicopters that darted from place to place.
'I never saw so many planes,' breathed Joan Bunnell, one arm around the boy. He was thrilled, so excited that he forgot to be afraid; he had never seen so many planes either, had hardly believed that so many planes existed.
All through the afternoon, they lay there in the waning heat, while the searching planes crisscrossed the sky. Wakulla looked angry, then puzzled, then contemptuous. He said: 'Stupid! Why don't they follow our tracks? If it was me up there, I'd find the jeeps in ten minutes!'
Tavares shrugged. He was very silent; he didn't want to talk, it seemed. Hardee and the others kept probing at him with questions, but he only shook his head. The heat was wearing. Even under the strain of the time, it lulled them, drugged them ...
Hardee woke up, and it was a cold, bright night.
The sun had set.
Overhead, the stars washed across the sky. While he watched, one larger star--no, not a star; the second moon--soared in a great wide arc down towards the eastern horizon, steel-blue and familiar. Hardee squinted up wonderingly. If this was not Mars, then what was this lesser moon in the sky?
He woke the others.
The planes were gone and the desert was silent. They crept out and got into their jeeps and headed back towards the demolished prefab.
They stopped a couple of hundred yards away.
Still in the night, a faint red glow and ruddy smoke showed where part of the destroyed house still smouldered. Hardee caught his breath and touched Tavares on the shoulder.
'Look,' he whispered.
In the starlight, metal glinted. It was a wing of the old Ford tri-motor.
The plane was still there!
For an instant, panic filled them all. But there was no sound, only their own breathing and the metallic pinging from the smouldering ruin of the house.
The boy, silent and sleepy, stirred restlessly next to his father. 'My tractor,' he mumbled, and was silent. There was no toy tractor any more.
There was no house. Only the smouldering metal and plastic were left.
Tavares said quaveringly: 'I think perhaps they could not get the plane off the ground. There were helicopters, and it may be that they took the crew off with them. It is bad sand here for a plane.'
'And maybe it's a trap!' rumbled Wakulla.
Tavares said softly: 'Yes. Maybe it is.'
Hardee said: 'We don't have any choice. Let's take a look.'
Cautiously they moved up with the jeeps. Hardee backed his near the open door in the washboard fuselage; Wakulla rolled to a stop a dozen yards away and turned his headlights on the plane. They climbed onto the hood of Hardee's jeep and peered inside.
Tinkling crystal bells whispered in their ears.
Under the lights from Wakulla's jeep, a metallic scurry of wavy jointed legs and of sliding, clicking bodies: the hold of the plane was full of skitterbugs.
Hardee took a deep breath.
'Come on,' he said. 'Let's look around.'
They clambered into the plane.
The skitterbugs clicked and pinged protestingly underfoot. Chuck dove for a pair of them and came up with them proudly. 'Daddy, can I keep them? I mean now that Alfie and Alice are gone?'
'Sure,' said Hardee gently, and set the boy out of the way. To Wakulla, he said: 'You come with me. If there's anybody left in the plane, they'll probably be up front, by the controls--'
Screech of metal, and a tinny crash.
The door slammed shut. Lights blazed on inside the plane. The elliptical door at the forward end of the ship opened and Griswold, his haunted eyes staring, peered out.
'There is,' he said. 'Welcome aboard, all of you.'
Hardee tensed to jump him, and felt Wakulla gathering his muscles beside him--but it was too late, too late! There was a choking sputtering roar from outside--another, and a third; the three engines were spinning, warming up. Griswold stepped back a second before their leap and the door slammed in their faces.
As Hardee and Wakulla piled up against the elliptical door that led to the pilot's cabin, the engines shrilled louder and louder. The vibrations evened, smoothed, were synchronized.
Then--crash, crash! Two thundering blows smote them. The plane was a croquet ball, and a mallet huger than Thor's slammed it forward--
bump and bump--across the uneven sands. Through the one small window left unblocked, they could see the trail of exhaust flame from the engines; and then, beside that flame and below it, a huger, brighter torch--a JATO
unit, hurling the tired old transport up and out and into the thin air.
The JATO rockets flared twenty yards of heaving flame and then they were dark, but by then their work was completely done.
The plane sagged for a second. Waddling in the thin cold air, it began lumpishly to climb and gain altitude.
They were trapped.
• • • •
A while later, the elliptical door opened again briefly--long enough for Griswold, carrying a gun, to come back to join them.
He said heavily: 'I was afraid we would catch you.'
He stood regarding them. Queerly, he seemed more afraid than they.
'Don't try anything,' he told them, shouting over the racket of the motors. 'It's a waste of time. You see?'
And he held open the elliptical door for them to look. Through it they saw the bucket seats for pilot and co-pilot, and what was in those seats.
And then the door was closed again, and Griswold was gone.
Hardee felt a sudden sharp convulsion in his stomach. He heard Wakulla swear and the girl cry out and knew that they had seen what he had seen: In the seats, clinging to a metal grid, a pair of skitterbugs.
And riding on them, like a jockey on a horse: Bright bronze death's heads with beady black eyes.
Wakulla rumbled: 'What--what the hell was that?'
'Martians?' whispered the girl. 'But, Dom, you said we weren't on Mars!'
Tavares shrugged. His face was quiet and resigned now; he had given up. 'I didn't say where we were,' he pointed out. 'Nor did I say what manner of creature might be with us.'
Hardee shook his head to clear it.
His arm was tight around the shoulders of the boy. Having him there was a help; it made it necessary for Hardee to think. He couldn't merely give up, for the boy's life was dependent on what he did now.
He tried to reason it out.
'We are not on Mars,' he said, testing the truth of the statement.
'You're sure of that, Dom?'
'Sure?' Tavares laughed. 'Can you lift three hundred pounds?' he asked queerly, his eyes watering. 'Do you see two tiny moons he asked queerly, his eyes watering. 'Do you see two tiny moons in the sky? No, not the big moon. That is too big, too bright; that might be Earth's moon, but not one of those of Mars!'
'There are two moons,' Joan said reasonably.
'No.' Tavares shook his head. 'A moon and a satellite. An orbiting spaceship. I believe. It is a hoax. We were never on Mars.'
'But what's the purpose of it?' demanded Hardee.
Tavares shook his head. 'Don't you think I've wondered, for five years? But I haven't been able to guess. All that I know is that they told us this was Mars, but it is not. Mars is a red star in the sky. I have seen it myself. This I know. I know nothing else.'
'And all these years you haven't said anything?' asked Hardee roughly.
'I have not. Why? For the reason that I did not dare, Hardee. Yes, I, Tavares, who was once a fighter in France, in the war that happened before you were born--I did not dare. You recall when you woke up eh?'
'Woke up? You mean the first time, before I came to the colony?'
Hardee nodded. 'I remember. I was in a room--'
'Yes,' said Tavares. 'That room. And you were asked many questions, were you not, like the rest of us?'
'I was. Crazy ones.'
'No, Hardee! Not crazy. They were for a purpose. Consider. You were asked what you knew about Mars--they said it was because you were being sent there, eh? And you told them, very truly, that you knew nothing. I do not know what would have happened if, by chance, you had been an astronomer, or perhaps a journalist, and had answered that question differently. But I know that you would never have come to the colony.'
Hardee, frowning, ground out: 'Go on!'
'And then they began to describe the planet Mars to you--to get you ready for your experience, they said. Right? They described it just as it turned out--in fine, not like Mars itself! And they watched you. And you showed no signs of doubting them.
'I know that this is so. For, at the time when I awoke, there was another with me, also awakened; and this one doubted, and let them see that he doubted. 'Mars has a light gravity,' he told them. 'And almost no air!
And--' Oh, he went on and on.
'It was a mistake.'
'They took him away.'
Hardee said reasonably: 'But that doesn't prove anything, Tavares.
There could have been some perfectly simple reason.'
'I heard him scream!' Tavares plunged his face into his hands, rocking slowly. 'And so all these years, I have said nothing, I have questioned nothing, for I did not dare. But now it is too late to be afraid. For that stranger you found, Hardee, he proved that all of this is a lie.
'And now the liars must come out into the open--at least for us here, who know of this lie. And the liars--we have seen them.'
He flung his arm out, pointing towards the elliptical door to the pilot's chamber--where they had seen the skitterbugs poised calmly on their metalic webs, with the bronze death's-head riders perched on their shining carapaces.
The flying antique thumped and pounded in strong air currents. But it was not air-sickness that made them feel sick and faint.
The elliptical door opened. Griswold came back, carrying the gun.
Behind him they caught another glimpse of the skitterbugs and their bronze inhuman riders.
Griswold closed the door and called: 'Sit down, all of you. We're coming down!'
'Thanks,' said Hardee shortly. 'I didn't expected this much consideration.'
Griswold measured him with the eyes of a man who knew demons.
'You blame me,' he said. 'Of course you do. What can I do about it?'
He motioned Hardee to the tiny window. 'Look down there,' he ordered. 'See that city? It's full of skitterbugs--hundreds of thousands of them! There's hardly a human being alive in it, though it used to be full of them. The skitterbugs have taken over!'
'Taken over?' Hardee echoed, puzzled. Then--are we--'
'On Earth, yes.' Griswold nodded. 'But it doesn't belong to the human race any more. You'll find out' He stared at Hardee with pity and fright. 'You could have lived out your life in the colony,' he said sombrely, 'but you had to find that man. Now God knows what the bugs will do to you. But you'll never see the colony again.'
'And neither will you!' bawled an enormous voice behind them.
Griswold spun, trying to bring the gun up, but there was no time, and the shifting footing of crawling bugs beneath them tripped him, caught him off balance. Wakulla, grinning like a maddened gorilla, caught the old man with one square hand. The gun fell one way and Griswold fell the other--out cold.
'Come on!' shouted Wakulla, and dived for the gun. He stumbled knee deep through the crawling little monsters up towards the elliptical door. Hardee followed, almost without thought. They burst through the door...
Twin bronze creatures turned to regard them out of black and hollow eyes. They were small by human standards, built like huge metallic frogs, golden bronze, with tiny limbs and huge faces. They rode the skitterbugs, but they were not joined to them. One of them made a harsh metallic whistling sound and flopped off its mount, towards something that glittered on the floor--a weapon, perhaps.
Whatever it was, the bronze creature never reached it. Wakulla, bellowing madly, lunged into the cabin and brought his heavy foot down on the creature. There was a screech and a thin crackling sound; and that was the end of that one.
The other was getting into motion by now. But it never had a chance.
Wakulla steadied himself, took aim and fired--again and again, pumping bullets at the thing, and though his aim was none too good, enough of them connected to splatter the creature against the control panels.
The ancient plane wobbled and begun to fall off on one wing.
'Hold on!' bawled Wakulla, and grabbed for the control wheel.
Hardee, panting, fought his way into the seat beside him. 'Can you fly one of these things ?'
'I can try!' said Wakulla, grinning. Straight ahead of them, through the glass, Hardee could see a patchwork of trees and houses, roads and open land. 'I'll land it there!' Wakulla yelled, horsing the stick back.
They hit the ground hard at more than a hundred miles an hour, bounced, came down on one wheel, blew a tyre and slid crab-wise across an open meadow. If there were brakes, Wakulla didn't know where to find them; if there was a way to stop the plane before it reached the fence at the edge of the field, he didn't know it. It hit the brush fence, still going fast.
Hardee felt the windshield fly up and smack him in the face. The last thought he had was: Fire.
• • • •
6
It was full morning; he had been unconscious for at least an hour.
Over against the trees, an enormous smoke plume showed where the tri-motor was giving up the ghost. Joan Bunnell was leaning over him, her cheek bloody, her clothing torn. 'Hardee, you're all right?' she breathed.
He pushed himself up. 'I guess so.' He looked around. 'Wakulla--?'
'His neck was broken.' The girl rocked back on her heels. Tavares was sitting on the damp grass nearby, cradling the boy in his lap. Beside him, Griswold lay face down, unmoving. 'The rest of us are all right,' Joan said. 'Griswold has a bad arm. That's all.'
Hardee shook his head and began to rub his ears. It felt like golf-tees driven into his eardrums; the old crate had come down fast and the change in pressure was bad. He could hardly hear what Joan was saying.
'Poor Wakulla,' she murmured. 'Maybe he saved our lives.'
'And maybe he killed us all,' said Griswold, painfully turning on one side to face them. His face was perspiring, and he clutched one arm with the other hand. 'They'll never let this go by,' he warned.
Hardee got up dizzily and strode over to the old man. 'Talk!' he said.
'What are the bugs? Where are they from?'
Griswold said wretchedly: 'I don't know. The bugs don't matter--it's the skulls that are important. They're smart. And they aren't from Earth.'
He sat up, holding his twisted arm. In the hot sunlight, the field they were in was alive with skitterbugs, flashing and leaping, loosed from the wrecked plane.
Griswold said: 'The bugs are only brainless machines. They are seeded and grow, and when they are large enough, the skulls harvest them.
Sometimes they use human beings for the job of harvesting--like you.'
&nbs
p; Hardee walked over to the burning plane. The heat kept him yards away. Wakulla was in there, probably hardly more than a cinder by now, but he couldn't be seen. Just as well, thought Hardee. A few skitterbugs, damaged in the crash, limped brokenly around on the grass, excited by the floods of radiant energy from the sun and the fire, but unable to move very fast.
And something else metallic lay in the grass.
Hardee bent for it; his head thundered, but he kept his balance and picked it up. It was the gun Wakulla had taken from Griswold. Hardee opened it, looked inside and swore.
Only one bullet left
But it was better than nothing.
Back where the others were waiting, Tavares was relentlessly questioning Griswold. 'These creatures, you say they came from space, in that great ship that now orbits around the Earth?'
'Five years ago,' said Griswold, nodding. 'They have a ray--I don't know how it works. But they sprayed the world with it, and every living thing went to sleep. Some are sleeping yet--those that haven't starved to death, though metabolism is slowed considerably.'
Hardee looked at Joan Bunnell and put his arm protectingly around the boy. 'Would that be October, 1959?' he asked.
'It would,' said Griswold heavily. 'You begin to understand, I see.
That's what happened to all of you at the colony. You weren't criminals--
except that, in the eyes of the skulls, it's a crime to be human at all.'
Not criminals! No forgotten crime to expiate! Hardee could scarcely believe it. But Griswold was still talking:
'They want our planet,' he explained. 'One shipload came, to get things ready, an advance party. I don't know when the rest of them will be here--but they're on their way. Perhaps a year or two. And they need to have the human race under control by then.'
He rubbed his arm and stared up at the sky. 'So some of us are helping them,' he said flatly. 'Call us traitors--we are! But what else is there to do? The skulls gave us a very simple alternative. Either we help them study us so that they can learn to rule the human race ... or they go back out into their ship and spray the Earth with another ray. Not a sleep ray, but one that will wipe out all life entirely.'
The Frederick Pohl Omnibus (1966) SSC Page 19