Menace Under Marswood

by Sterling E. Lanier

  THE NEXT MORNING they crossed the marsh and regained the ramp, in the same formation as the previous day. They had had a decent rest and were full of food and energy. They had decided to start early and see if they could make good time before the lawnmower-tank analog of Grabbit made its appearance.

  The ramp road still led downward, and the going was easy and firm underfoot. Plenty of noises arose from the mist about them, and once in a clear patch Slater and Feng saw a large dark shape flutter out of the white fog with a great moth in its wide mouth. They both saw it clearly.

  "That was one of those flying things from the cavern we passed through," the captain said as he made a few notes on his belt pad. "They don't seem to have eyes and they may not like the Martian days, so perhaps they use echo-radar squeaks on an ultrasonic level as bats do back on Earth."

  "Don't need teeth either," Slater said, "if bugs such as that big moth are available. Wonder what they ate before the Central Country or someone or other dumped all those bugs here."

  "Spare me the ancestral insults." Feng laughed. "If you are going to blame poor old China for misspent zeal, please remember you ate your fill of water-beetle steak last evening." Then he looked thoughtful. "There must have been small flying things in quantity here once, though there are not so many left now—of the locals, that is."

  They had been tramping along, in and out of the opalescent clouds of mist and fog, for about three hours when a break came in their progress. Through the many calls and whistles, trills and clickings from the marsh on either side came a new one that froze them in their tracks. It was the long and echoing sound of something like a horn. It seemed to come from ahead. As soon as it began, the cries and sounds from the swamp ceased abruptly, at least those nearby.

  A command whistle low and clear brought them all up and back to where the colonel and the konsel stood listening with Danna and the two animals.

  "That was certainly a horn or bugle or something of the sort, wasn't it, sir?"

  "Certainly it was, Nakamura, unless it was something quite different. We are in the unknown here, Lieutenant, recall that. We could encounter a mushroom that sings operatic arias for all we know. That large replica of Slater's little guide made a sound like a steam whistle."

  "The True People use small horns made from the horns of bulgotes," Thau Lang declared. "But the sound is far lower and not like that at all. That sound was deeper and far-carrying. Do you have any ideas, Louis?"

  Muller's dark face was thoughtful and his brow wrinkled in a question. "I heard something vaguely similar long ago. But where and when I have no idea. But I do think that sound says 'Earth' to me, not 'Mars'."

  They listened in silence but the horn did not come again. Gradually the wildlife in the surrounding mists began to call as it had before the strange horn sounded.

  The march continued for another few minutes, until another whistle brought them all up forward. The two warmen had found something.

  Milla silently pointed and the others drew up and around. On the left side of the ramp stood a column, and atop the column was a head or face. The column, of some polished, dark-red stone, was about the height of two men. On the top a face looked back the way they had just come. Slater caught his breath as he looked up. He had seen that face before—short nose; ears like cones, blunt and short; great eyes, these carved of some yellow material tapering halfway round the skull. The head was the size of a human head, but it came to a dull peak at the back and there seemed nothing like hair.

  And as they stared, the ambush hit them.

  Chapter Twelve – The Dweller and the Lair

  FROM BEHIND them, the horn bellowed again. It was close! Out of the foggy swirls on all sides came men, leaping and scrambling up the sides of the ramp. Big men they were. Their golden helmets came to a point and bore projections on the sides. Another line of them approached from up the causeway. From behind another raced out of the white mist, suddenly visible in the pearly light. They did not attack though all had long spears and some, swords. On their breasts gleamed metal too, for they wore breastplate armor. And they had beards and long, sweeping mustaches, which gleamed in the light over the kite-shaped shields each bore in the left hand. On four sides, they halted just beyond spear length, and then one of them advanced and held up his empty right hand. In the other he shook a curving horn, a half-circle of gleaming, coppery metal with a trumpet spout at one end and a mouthpiece at the other.

  "Freeze and let me do the talking!" Colonel Muller rapped.

  Then the light-brown mustache of big man in front lifted to expose gray teeth and from a deep bass voice came the words in accented but clear Unit. "Lower your weapons, all of you! Take off those that you wear on your persons. We are here to guard the Great Place. We can kill and we will!" The dark eyes shifted to fix on the straight shape of the oldest Rucker.

  "You! You are a Wise One of the True People, those who war above on our enemies. Now you face the spears and points of the real True People! You may have heard of us. Maybe you have not. It makes no difference to us what you are up on the top. We will rule this whole world. You have a choice, one choice only. Be with us or against us! Come and learn how to fight the Terrans who befoul our planet. Or die here now!"

  The deep voice went silent. With arms folded, the man stood waiting.

  Colonel Muller hissed, "Do it!" and his party obeyed, discarding knives, bows, spears, rifles, and lasguns. Slater could see it was a terrible wrench for the Ruckers. As he stood with both hands in his hip pockets, he wondered if any of the others still had a weapon concealed. He thought of one item and smiled inwardly.

  The colonel's hands flickered and Slater saw that the konsel also had noticed. Chevroned face impassive, the old war chief stood forward, arms folded across his chest like the leader of the foe, and an impressive figure too, though he had to look up to meet the eyes of the giant who confronted them.

  "I have heard many strange rumors, I—a konsel—of a new clan of the True People. I have come and I bring five more of us also to find the truth, four men and a woman. Also, a strange, speechless one, who was found some time ago in Ruck by friends. We think, my friends and I, that he too might be a member of a new clan. Could it be yours?" The friendly interest in the konsel's voice was well done, Slater thought, as the older man pointed at the impassive face of Helge Nakamura.

  The enemy leader seemed interested and stepped forward to look more closely at the big Norse-Japanese. Nakamura could and did look him in the eye. Slater noted a ripple of interest in the four lines that hemmed the colonel's party in. The giants looked hard at Nakamura, and Slater could see that many were muttering to each other as they looked. Small wonder, the lieutenant thought, if he had a beard and was dressed right, Nak could disappear into the new clan's ranks.

  "We will investigate this," the giants' leader said at length. Why don't they use the Rucker language? Slater wondered. "Much is strange these times and much to be revealed." Then his voice hardened. "So you are a konsel of the so-called True People. Well, let that be so. What then do you do with a group of the enemy in your following?" His hand swept over Muller and Feng and then passed to Slater. "Can these three be the allies and friends of the True People—especially one of their leaders?"

  Thau Lang looked slightly puzzled, then his face cleared. "Oh, them?" His disinterest, bordering on contempt, was easy to read. "There have been many strange and new recruits to the True People, as you may know, you of this mysterious new clan. These three fled their base at one of the mines and seemed reliable. We had a new road and a strange one to travel and needed experienced men who could fight. They are not True People yet but if they do well, they might some day be voted as such—if they prove useful, trustworthy, and believers in nothing but 'Death to the Terrans and free Mars for those who love it and live there.' Were we not all Terrans, we or our forefathers, including your own, once upon a time? They are not important."

  The tall leader looked unconvinced but thoughtful. Then his brow
cleared and he smoothed his long mustache.

  "It is not for us here to decide," he said. "We were warned that intruders were in our lands, which are sacred and not to be entered. We have many guards on our lands, some of which you might see and others not. Thus were you taken." He raised his voice again and gave commands. "You will come with us, you and your gotes. You will march in the middle, together, as you are now. We will see who and what you are and those who examine you will know the truth ... all of it."

  He rapped out a few orders to his troops in a tongue Slater could make nothing of. It had a lot of glottals and curious hisses that he had never heard before. The commands were terse and smooth and, in an odd way, repetitive, as if given by rote. It was as if the leader were somehow using a ritual language. Slater thought of the ancient Latin of the Christian Church of Rome and the even more obscure Geez of the Coptic Church of Ethiopia. Did the men speak this odd tongue or had they simply learned phrases of it?

  Now they began to move, in the direction they were heading before the sudden attack. One rank of guards ahead, one rank behind, one on the left, one on the right, that was the order of march, with the party from the upper world and their two beasts in the center. Danna was on Slater's left, her pert face impassive in the best Wise Woman tradition. To his right towered Nakamura. One glance showed that the big man was excited. His face was flushed and his eyes glittered.

  Slater was conscious of Danna's presence, but she walked in silence. Knowing women and something of Rucker customs, he knew she was very angry. Thau Lang had been addressed personally. But the leader of this band of the new clan had totally ignored a Wise Woman! This outfit was ignoring the protocol and the rules of a very tough people.

  He smiled inwardly. His own Gilzai and Pathan ancestors had also made that mistake. It had done them no good either.

  After they had been marching along for some time, Slater noted that the gentle downward slope of their mossy road was slowly leveling off. The calls from the mist on either side still kept up, but he had not heard a ferkat or a bulgote for a long time. Great reeds and lofty ferns thrust through the mist at intervals, and once he glimpsed a great cone thing like the one they had seen snap up a gote with such ease. The humming and buzzing of insect life was still thick, and several times he saw giant moths and once a flapping object with four wings and a body like that of a small egg, which he had never noted before.

  As a matter of course, he counted the guards. Although the mist made it hard to tell, Slater thought there might be as many sixty.

  A half hour more passed and then, in front of them, the note of that horn sounded twice. On all four sides the giants halted and so did the prisoners. Then, farther off, another, deeper, horn sounded three long calls.

  As they resumed their progress, the mist before them seemed to grow thinner and lighter. Slater soon saw that the apparent change was quite real. A breeze had appeared also, coming from their left. From it he caught a whiff of new odors that were wild and strange. Then he noticed that the bulgotes were rearing and straining at their leads, trying to pull forward; yanking their guides off their feet. Several of the guards broke step and ran to hold the frantic animals, which slowly quieted. But their heads still pointed into the thinning mist, forward and to the left.

  The tall, bearded leader bellowed something in the odd language and then walked to the little knot of prisoners. He eyed them coldly a second or two and then spoke.

  "I must go back with my men to patrol. I send eight men forward with you, and they will be alert. Any trouble and they kill—quick they kill!"

  "That is fine," Thau Lang said. "Where does our brother who leads this group of the True People lead us?"

  "You go to be examined by the real masters of Mars. Be truthful and you may be permitted to live, even to join us." Then he turned and yelled another order. In a moment most of the guards were vanishing on the backtrail, the way they had all just come. The prisoners were alone save for eight of the new clansmen, four at the rear and four in front.

  One of the four in the rear stepped out a little. "Go," he barked in Unit. "That way," and he pointed his spear in the same direction the gotes were straining. At a hand signal from Muller, the group resumed its march.

  As they moved, once again the swirling opalescence of the mist thinned and grew lighter before them. Unexpectedly one of the gotes bleated as it strained forward. And suddenly, before them, lay the goal!

  Danna gasped beside Slater. He could not help turning slightly to look at the younger folk of the Ruck. Danna and her two husbands were obviously stunned. For the first time in their lives, they were looking at a thing that they had seen only in pictures, and that rarely. They were gazing down a gentle slope and out over a great expanse of open water—blue-green water, extending far out until lost in the haze and fog.

  The eight guards were calm. To Slater, they seemed amused. He moved closer to Danna and leaned over to whisper in her small ear. "It's only water, dear. You've seen water before, up on top, in your own kind of country."

  "Oh, yes, Moe, yes, but not like this! You know what we have on the surface. Shallow ponds, sometimes marsh that comes and goes with the ice melt. None are large, ever. In a cave now and then we find ponds. But this, this is one of your seas! No one knew of this. If there were even any tales or rumors about such a thing, I, a Wise Woman, would have heard of them. This is unknown!"

  Arta and Milla moved up while Danna and Slater were talking, and they had heard the last exchange. Milla broke in. "Warmth, plenty of water, and all together in one place. This is a country of the gods, this depth we are in. No such place is known; it should not exist!"

  A deeper voice spoke from behind them, and they all whipped about like children caught doing something forbidden. To Slater's eye, even Thau Lang's iron countenance was visibly moved. The old Rucker chief kept his impassivity, but he too was shaken. His dark eyes were flashing. "I have seen wide waters in the bottom of a few of the big craters. Not like this, never like this. I have heard what you young ones said. This is indeed a land of the gods."

  One of the guards reached down, picked up a long horn that lay by a rock spur, and raised the horn to his lips. Slater was conscious of two things. One was the bluish metal of the horn, which was like that of the strange weapon that Muller and Thau Lang had brought into Fort Agnew days before. The other was a memory; the whole scene was familiar to him. But before he could get the memory to surface, he felt Danna's hand on his arm.

  "Moe," she whispered. "You Greenie dreamer—are you remembering? This was our dream when we took the Tea of Dreams together. It was like this, I think. Don't you remember?"

  The sound of the horn broke in on her, long and echoing. Three times it blew, then the man who used it put it down exactly where he had picked it up.

  When he had done so, the guards fell back with leveled spears until they formed a line across the ramp with the prisoners between them and the short stretch of gravel that led to the water. The leader barked to them in Unit. "Wait now and stay in place. A thing comes to take you. Stay in place."

  Slater sidled closer to the colonel. When near enough, he muttered to him. "Danna and I had a thing like this happen in a dream, under that Rucker tea back at the fort. I told you, sir."

  "You told me. I wondered if you would recall it, boy. Now watch and stay alert. Let's see if the boat is the same, eh?"

  And as he finished, the boat appeared. Slater shed the disbelieving expression on his face and tried to concentrate. He stared at the vessel that had emerged from the haze ahead of them and moved toward them across the calm water.

  It was not the same as in the dream. For one thing, it was much larger and beamier. A quick look showed him that it could easily hold them all. Also, there was no steersman or pilot of any kind. The blunt-bowed vessel had only a boxy object amidships with a spike sticking up from it.

  "Remote-control boat on a nonexistent lake of Mars. Not bad for this new clan of the True People, eh, Mr. Slater?" Mul
ler's voice betrayed his great interest.

  As the boat came closer, Slater saw it had four thwarts. From the box in the middle a metallic snake went over the floorboards aft until it disappeared in the stern. Slater figured that the boat had a rudder of some kind controlled from the box.

  Soon the vessel was close upon them, heading toward the gravel of the little beach a few yards away. It went aground, bows on, and there is stayed. It was a muddy brown and gleamed as if it was made of plastic.

  The voice of the senior guard broke the silence.. "Step into the middle of that thing. When you get in, do not move until it comes to rest on land once more, or you will die when it turns over. There are other guards of the real True People ... some of them live in the water. You would not like to meet them."

  "Get in everyone," Muller said. "Thau Lang and I will be up front with Danna Strom between us. Gotes in the middle. Have them lie down. Stay still and don't rock the boat. We'll await events until the other shore or wherever this thing takes us."

  They clambered, in, quieting the animals and sorting themselves on the thwarts. Then they sat, waiting expectantly. Slater, in the stern with Nakamura, watched as the same man picked up the metal horn and blew a single note.

  From what seemed far off in the hazy swirls from which the boat had first come, another note sounded. It did not sound like any horn they had ever heard before. It was more like a strange wail, mournful and yet resonant and echoing, higher in pitch than any of the horn noises. It made Slater's skin crawl. As he tried to focus on the sound, he saw Danna turn on her seat up front and stare back at him over Milla's shoulder. As she did, she raised a hand and made a drinking motion to her lips. He nodded. The sound was a reflection of their dream. Mournful and strident.

  "Familiar, eh, from your teatime?" The colonel had been itching them. "A little precognition, I imagine. Have to get you to the telepathy group at I-Corps Center if we ever get back. They might have ideas."