Menace Under Marswood

by Sterling E. Lanier

  When they were all seated around the long oval table in the conference room, Slater was still chuckling over the looks that they had received on the way. The orderly sergeant outside at the desk had almost gone into shock.

  A husky voice speaking Unit with a curious accent broke in on his musings. He realized the girl was standing and brought his thoughts back to the present. She went straight to the subject without any introduction.

  "We, the Wise Women of the Ferkat Clan, sent messages to the other Wise Women, to all we could reach. We sent messages also to some of the konsels such as Thau Lang, men we knew to be True People, unchanged and unready to give up our old ways. We sent Warnings. We began to look about us and see that the clans were being torn apart. Strange men had appeared who would not listen to other speech, other thoughts, than their own. The True People have no way of making people listen, save by persuasion. The Wise Women and the konsels are only to advise, to counsel, to dream for the people. They cannot give orders. Only men in?—" She looked at Thau Lang, obviously not knowing the word in Unit that she wanted.

  "Bond?" Colonel Muller said thoughtfully. "Men who were pledged, perhaps, Thau?"

  "War pledge is good," the older man replied. "War pledge, Danna."

  "Men in war pledge then, men who have sworn to follow a leader to the death, they can be commanded. But no others, unless a man and a woman make a oneness contract. Then they must follow each other forever.

  "Two of our years ago, such men began to come from the South, from the bad country. They were men of a new clan, they said, a secret clan, one that had been hidden deliberately to wait for the day when the whole planet would rise against Terra. They were to be our leaders, they said. There were not many of them, but they were a kind of True People, to most appearances anyway. We had no clan feud with them and we showed them such of our secrets as we would men of any clan with which we were at peace. They invited some of our young men to see their own country. They lived down south in the Bad Country, they said.

  "All this was some time ago. Nothing made us, the women, suspicious, and we even helped and sent these stranger men on to other clans, as they asked us to do.

  "But then things began to change. When we asked to be put in touch with the Wise Women of their secret clan, they grew puzzled, these messengers. First they said what we now believe to be the truth, that they had no Wise Women. When they saw that they did not gain approval by telling us this, they changed the story. Now they said that they had Wise Women, but that these women ruled them and were so powerful and secret that no one was allowed to see them." She stared at each of them before going on.

  "Thau Lang says I must tell you certain things, things known to our men. This is so you can understand us when you come out with us into the Ruck."

  In the name of God the Omnipotent's camel's ass, WHAT! thought Slater.

  "True Men and Women," she went on, "do not lie, unless a prisoner, taken in clan feud, is asked things like the place his clan hunts. A lie to protect the clan from an enemy is the only kind we can tell! Do you men understand?" Slater and Nakamura nodded, as did Feng, who had slipped silently into the room some minutes before.

  "This meant," the girl went on, "one of two things. Either these men were lying about their clan and thus considered us their enemies, or something much worse, they were lying about everything, their whole story was a lie, and we, the Wise Women, were being tricked for some purpose we could not even understand. Either way, it seemed that we had a secret enemy. Now we are sure of it.

  "Those two down in your cellar were True People also," she said. "But they simply could not believe that helping Greenies was the way to solve the problem. It is hard even for us," she added naively, "but since we felt such cooperation necessary, after listening to Thau Lang, we had to kill them. Had just one more of us decided the other way, we would have attacked you instead."

  And I'd never have seen your pretty pearl-gray teeth, Slater thought. Wonder who threw the winning vote? And when we go into the Ruck? Into the Ruck with a party of warmen and one of their legendary Wise Women! Whow! Despite his outward calm, Slater could not help but feel a thrill at the thought.

  "I have said that these strange men came from the bad country. I do not know what to say about that. It is a place we avoid. I do not know if I should say more. I will let Thau Lang talk now, since he is the elder among us and has much wisdom." She sat down but could not help looking at Slater as she did so, a demure quick glance.

  Her eyes seemed to pierce his very flesh and he grew warm. What in hell is happening to me? he wondered to himself.

  "Look at your map, soldiers." The konsel now stood before the big map that Colonel Muller had used earlier in the day. His horny forefinger moved down from the Ares Base at the North Pole to a point marked Mare Cimmerium.

  "We keep our own records you know. Some are quite complex. Among them are maps, early ones and any new that we make ourselves. Our young men make new maps whenever we go into new territory. Also, we steal your maps when we can, since you have the spy-eyes, up in the high heavens, and can see things once in a while that we do not." His finger went back to the blot marked Cimmerium.

  "We do not know this place. Men who have gone here—that is, young men seeking visions or new games areas, who said they were going here—have not ever returned. If any early expedition of your people, or perhaps far back, when they were our people, went here, it did not report either. For a long time we have avoided this place. On the maps kept by the Wise Women, which all clans have a right to use, this is bad country—'Bad Country One', because it is the first one we found." His finger moved to another uncharted area, also in the south, a narrower one labeled Scamander. "This is a second such place, Bad Country Two. We have heard of others still, on the other side of the planet, but they are only rumors, and it is with this hemisphere that we have to deal.

  "So, we have two bad countries. They are deep places, with what you call great canyons or rifts running down the center. And there are other things we know about them. Marswood is very strange there. The old Mars plants are large there as well as our new ones. In fact, they are very thick there. Also, there are some things you have never seen, and we—only far off. Beasts of some size but not, we think, of old Earth." His quiet tones died without echo. His auditors had plenty to think about.

  It had not surprised earlier scientists at all to find that Mars possessed a native plant life. Many were surprised, though, at its complexity. Save for a few thoughtful exobiologists, no one had realized that if Mars was truly a dying world, its oxygen locked up in its soil, any surviving forms of life would probably be extremely sophisticated, rather than the simple mosses or lichens of the earlier speculations. The plants of Mars were fantastic, both in appearance and in their methods of living.

  And they were still around. The tremendous boost in the oxygen content of the atmosphere had probably eliminated a few species, but most of the others had adapted somehow. For one thing, with all the free oxygen they needed, they could colonize places that the Terran life-forms still found too barren. As a result, the poles were a veritable jungle of Mars plants. They also grew thickly on the barren rock plateaus and deep into the caves, wherever even a minute amount of light penetrated. Many were distinctly dangerous.

  When still small—in the long eons before Terraforming—many of the latter had learned, like the bladderworts and pitcher plants of Earth, to trap the tiny "insects" that the first explorers found occasionally in the ground cover. In many cases now grown to large size, these same plants, the "old" plants as Thau Lang called them, were only too pleased with the introduced animal life, up to and including human beings. The time of greatest danger to unwary humans was the long Martian winter, when many of the introduced species died back, sporated, or simply hibernated. The Ruckers had learned to live with the plants of old Mars and even to make use of some, but a faint element of fear still shrouded everything not of Terran origin. For all their local knowledge, even the True
People felt on occasion that they were only trespassers on an ancient and alien world.

  "What animals? Only a couple have been recorded much larger than an Earth cat—the original ones I mean, not the ferkats." Feng was perhaps sharper than he meant to sound.

  As an Intelligence officer, he was supposed to be the last word on Martian life-forms. On Mars I-Corps was the military's science section as well, and the tall Chinese was a skilled biologist. But Lang was unruffled.

  Chapter Four – What's Out There?

  "CAPTAIN, I do not know how to answer you," Thau Lang replied. "Men who have very carefully scouted the edges of these two forbidden areas claim to have seen large shapes, to have seen strange tracks, to have heard sounds unlike anything else we know. If we go into the Ruck together—as Louis and I plan—perhaps then you will be the first to learn more. Who knows?"

  "Old Martians." In Nakamura's deep-chested tones, the phrase rang like a gong. "After all these years, are we really going out to look up some drunk prospector's tale? Granted, the weapon we just saw is a peculiar thing, but does it have to mean that an alien technology exists? I'd use Occam's Razor, sir, and postulate some kind of trick to make us believe just that—to take us off guard, so that the real enemy could be at our throats." Nakamura's glare of dislike swept the table but landed only on the four clanspeople. He had brought up something that they had all avoided, perhaps unconsciously.

  When old friends with long service on Mars met for a relaxed evening in a secluded spot, a certain subject was very apt indeed to recur—perhaps a tale about the finding of an oddly carved stone on a distant plateau. When the waitress brought drinks the conversation would stop, of course. But when she left, a second veteran might cap the first tale with one of his own, about the moving lights he had seen far off on a winter's night deep in the Ruck, lights of a strange violet shade, which seemed to rise in the air before fading out.

  Every scrap of such information, including the maunderings of the few half-insane souls who still tried to find treasure out in the wilderness of Marswood, was said to be kept in a sealed vault at I-Corps Center on Earth. This too was probably a legend, thought Slater. At least no I-Corps man or woman could be made to confirm it. All it meant, if true, was that even the cold computers and their human children who ruled I-Corps were not immune to the magic of finding another intelligent race in the Solar System.

  Yet innumerable books and space operas, the Tridee fare of young and old, resurrected the Old Martians each time they were buried by the tired voices of orthodox science. At least twice a year in the Parliament of Man, some delegate could be counted on to rise and "disclose new evidence of a native intelligent race on Mars", as well as to ask (or demand) that UN forces investigate, preferably within twenty-four hours. And high-echelon visitors always wanted to know what the "latest evidence" for intelligent Martian life was. They all seemed to feel that the UN Command had nothing better to do than run down the latest rumor on the subject. Since they all seemed to feel that the very same people had a great deal of information they were concealing, and made this belief plain, the exasperation of any Mars veteran about the subject of Old Martians was not hard to understand.

  All this passed through Slater's mind in a flicker, then he listened, for Muller was answering Nakamura.

  "Your theory may be right, Lieutenant. That is half right. I too am in favor of Occam's Razor. Let us eliminate the unnecessary from our calculations by all means. However. All the evidence says that the True People, our beloved enemies whom you regard with such proper suspicion, are not behind this drive for unity. They are being used." He crushed his cigarette in an ashtray of native jadeite.

  "That artifact we examined may have been made on Earth, or it may have been made here. By whoever is leading this movement—by the 'U-Men', let us say. Or it may have been made in neither place." He smiled slightly at the effect of his words.

  "No, I am not seriously proposing that we have visitors from Pluto or the Crab Nebula. But let's assume that we have human enemies to deal with. People who dislike the present world government. Does any other place seem plausible as a headquarters? I address my officers, since this is their province rather than that of the True Men."

  "The asteroid belt. A secret factory. It's the logical place, sir, with all the big-company mines having their plants out there. A secret base would be a cinch and it's nearer than Earth is in most of its trajectories." Feng coughed and even appeared a little embarrassed. "I, ugh, sometimes compose absurd theories of warfare for my own amusement, sir, and I have often thought that the belt was a logical spot to use as a base for an attack. I thought of Earth as the target, though, not Mars."

  "Yes, the belt is not well policed and we know that the big corporations do not always comply with regulations. If one of them is implicated, the belt is a good place. So good that we are having it looked at in-depth, as we sit here. But it will be a long search, out there and back on Earth as well. The only thing we can do here is to improve our surveillance satellites so that if a ship is dodging the ones now used, it may be caught. And a good spy, maybe a plant at H.Q., could even negate that move.

  "So we are left with the Ruck. Gentlemen, I need three flexible men—good combat men—to work in the Ruck, with our friends here. In fact, I want you disguised as Ruckers. If you accept, I'll get on with it. Any questions?—Yes, Lieutenant Nakamura?"

  "My size, sir. I've never seen a Rucker my size. I thought six feet was the absolute limit. I don't see how I fit in here."

  "Very sound thinking. I'll let Danna Strom answer you."

  The girl was not rude, simply terse. "These new strange men, the ones who say they belong to a secret clan: They are all as big as you, Lieutenant, at least the ones we have seen. They know that many of our foolish young men think that great size is important in a man. The strangers say that all will be their size, the size of gods, when the Greenies are kicked off the planet."

  "You mean that I'm supposed to impersonate one of these mystery men? But I can't even speak Rucker, let alone whatever these weird types talk. And are they brown-eyed? With my yellow hair?"

  "Don't worry, we've thought of that one." Muller's tone was easy and relaxed. "You'll have dye on your skin and hair. Contacts too. As for language, nothing could teach you believable Rucker in less than a year, so you'll be under a vow of silence. It's a common thing among the younger warmen, teaches them discipline. And you'll be getting lessons from the True People with us as well, so that in a short time you can understand some of what's said. That's the most important thing."

  "Despite—well, shall we say pronounced lack of cooperation from the Ruckers, there is a considerable body of material available on their social life. I can release any of it needed. And I shall welcome the chance to see how much of our data are accurate." Captain Feng was as close to being enthusiastic as he ever allowed himself. "How long to when we leave, sir?"

  "Three days. That is so no possible leak can develop and also because we are desperate for quick results. Not much time."

  They were to plunge into the Ruck, into Marswood, on a mission of extraordinary danger allied to four of their bitterest enemies, people who had by their own admission killed many UN men in battle. With these strange guides, the four officers were to penetrate utterly unknown country, going into areas deemed by the savages themselves too dangerous to trifle with. Apart from the known hazards of Marswood, which were lethal enough, the likelihood of encountering something unknown and inimical appeared excellent. In cold light of reason, the only sensible thing to do was to bolt from the room and ask to be hospitalized, choosing cowardice as the far less of two evils!

  Since no one contemplated anything of the kind, it was evident that the colonel knew his men. Actually, they were being given an opportunity for a secret mission into enemy country—the dream of any junior officer. Even the usually imperturbable Captain Feng could not conceal his excitement. Yes, Muller knew his men, Slater conceded ruefully to himself.

 
; "I will instruct Feng on how to brief you two," the commander said. "There's a dance tonight and you might as well enjoy it. Keep your mouths shut and I'll see you in the morning. This is Wednesday. We leave at dawn on Saturday, before daylight. The True People will be quartered in the I-Corps Section, except for Thau Lang, who will share my quarters. I'll give separate orders about them."

  As the Ruckers filed out behind the old konsel, Slater kept his eyes on the young Wise Woman. Was he mistaken, or had a wistful look come over her face at the mention of the dance? At the door she turned and looked back at him before going out with the others. What did they say, those tawny eyes, that made his skin tingle whenever they met his?

  THE WEEKLY dance in the Free Lounge was usually good fun, and this one was no exception. The fort was buzzing with rumors, and the tight seal on outside communication had hardly damped them. Since it was known that Slater and Nakamura were in the inner circle, they were besieged with pleas for information.

  "Come on, Lieutenant, give!" Private Bobbie Lee Wilcox, the post clown, was eager for any kind of information. "You can have my booze card for a month, honest!"

  "Bobbie Lee," Slater said, before taking a judicious pull at his Old Marswood and soda, "your ration was pledged, the last time I checked, three years ahead to various lads and ladies. Otherwise I'd be glad to help out." There was a shout of laughter from the others around them. "The Prophet forbids me strong drink," he added impassively.

  Eventually the crowd drifted off to pounce on Nakamura, who had just walked in. Slater was brooding over his next drink when dulcet tones inquired if he cared to dance. Looking up, he found Mohini Dutt smiling down at him. The Benares Bomber wore a few strategic wisps of green here and there that managed to make her magnificent brown body seem about three times nakeder than if she had been nude.