They were led to Scott. Captain Feng was with him, as were Thau Lang and Milla.
"We've got to get out of here, sir, and get out damned fast," Slater explained to the general.
"Give me details on the way out," he snapped and issued instant orders. "We'll get everyone in those ships, crowded or not. I'll take as many of those disarmed locals as we can. If Muller thinks this place is mined somehow, then, by God, I listen."
"A steady drone from the control board started about twenty-five minutes ago," Feng said. The general nodded and kept up his crisp volley of orders. Out of the various tunnel openings, men began to pour, mostly Marines but some of them pulling members of the new clan and even a few women and children.
Noting the bafflement on Slater's face, the general explained. "We found a village back in the woods behind this place. Took as many as we could alive. Some wouldn't surrender at all. Regrettable."
In less than a quarter hour, they were all in one or another of the big floaters that were grounded outside.
As they lifted off in the command ship, Slater suddenly felt the exhaustion of the last few days wash over him. He slumped by a port, staring out foggily while Danna hummed to herself and stroked his weary head.
"We're well away and getting farther," Nakamura yelled.
"If the colonel was right, we may have done it. Place looks peaceful, though, and I—God almighty! Get down and hang on, everyone!"
The whole point of wooded land on which the alien base lay was sinking into a smoking crater that had come into existence in a second. Steam rose about the edges of the vast and horrid subsidence, but the waters of the strange lake, whose shape they could at last see, rushed into quench any flames. They could make out the ground and the trees rippling at the land's edge where the point had once thrust out. And that was all, really. In only a few minutes, the swirling and discolored water, its murky rim growing wider as they watched, was the only trace of the lost colony from the stars.
"A good tomb for the colonel and a peaceful memorial," he heard a strange voice say. As he fell into total exhaustion, he knew it for his own voice.
THE CONFERENCE held several days later was tightly restricted. Aside from Marshal Mutesa and General Scott, only Captain Feng of I-Corps and Senior Lieutenants Nakamura and Slater were present of the UN forces. By invitation there were some odd guests, however. An elderly war chief of the Rucker clans was one. Another was a young native woman, the recent wife of Lieutenant Slater. And the third was a young Rucker warman, who, apparently mixed up, introduced himself as Mrs. Slater's husband.
"I'll start off," Scott said, "since I was there, at least for the last round. The marshal says we'll be informal. Just raise your hand if you want to ask anything or comment. Clear enough?" He was smiling and the others were also.
"What about that last bomb, the one that wrecked the alien's whole base and sank it, sir?"
Nakamura's answer came from the marshal. "Your unknown female seems to have done that, son. If the colonel was right and she was actually a revived alien, she knew her tricks. As well as my experts can figure it, there was a big fissure or cavern way beneath the base, and it may not have been natural. Whatever she blew off simply knocked the floor out from under everything. So the whole place just sank. There was no trace of atomic power in use. What they had there, we simply don't know."
"What about the animals, sir? Were any identified? Were any of them left, either dead or alive?" Feng was a zoology nut and his interest was intense.
"Nothing alive, but quite a few floating bodies that rose to the surface," Scott said. "We have all your reports on tape as well, while my boys took a few pictures." General Scott smiled and looked at the marshal. "Sorry you couldn't have been there, sir." He turned back to business. "As you all know, we were mainly out to prevent a planet-wide rebellion of the True People clans.
"Well, some of the pictures have been transmitted to Earth and the science boys were called in. From the pics alone ... the giant mantis, a miracle of breeding. That first big animal you killed in the control room: It sounds very much like a long extinct creature called Dinohyus, a vague ancestor of the pig, only much bigger and far meaner." He checked another page. "That one Slater and Muller got when you found JayBee pinned down by it sounds to them like one of the great carnivorous marsupials that lived in South America a million years or so ago, I think." He stopped reading and looked up. "Any questions? Those notes are on just the three animals you encountered before I got down with my men, and they're only guesses. There were a number of weird things no one can identify or will even try. The scientists don't think they were from Earth or even Mars. Well, let's have it."
Slater had his hand up, barely beating Feng, and got the general's nod. "Sir, what are the conclusions? That Satreel's people or their rulers came to Earth on collecting trips a million years ago? Then managed to save the embryos or adults as well and keep 'em alive somehow until now?" They sat in silence as the idea was voiced aloud. They had talked of it among themselves but were understandably wary of others.
"It may be fantastic," the general said calmly, "but that's what the feeling is." He nodded to Feng.
"Sir, what have we concluded about the, ah, Le-ashimath, those rulers that Satreel referred to? His kind seemed little more than their servants, if we heard right."
Scott looked at the marshal, and he did not speak until he got a nod from Mutesa. "Frankly, we think you saw one of these entities yourselves."
"The red-haired creature who JayBee blasted sounds as if she may have been one, kept in stasis for God knows how long. We don't really know. But she pulled the destruct switch. If the ancient rulers did leave some of their own in some kind of hibernation or stasis, we won't find it in the ruins of the base. Still, some might be elsewhere. On this point, I am turning you over to the marshal."
Mutesa leaned back in his chair and he smiled at the group. His ebon face shone with bland authority. "I will tell you a number of things, my friends. I think they'll please you. I wish I were more junior in rank and younger as well. Anyhow, here it is. A top-secret team is being formed to investigate other Dead Zones. One, for instance, is to explore Mount Victory." There was silence at this. The lofty volcano of Mars was a grim mystery, and no one who had ever gotten there and stayed for long had ever come back. The marshal went on. "We have selected a major and two captains to head up this team. They will select the remainder from the UN service or out of it, whoever they think they need." He paused and surveyed the crestfallen faces of Feng, Nakamura, and Slater before continuing. "I think Major Feng, Captain Nakamura, and Captain Slater might do, don't you? All three have exemplary records." He fell silent.
Slater knew they had all done well but the spot promotions were a bit stunning. He felt numb. He finally managed to mumble, "Thank you, sir."
The marshal continued as smoothly as ever. "There is evidence also that something lies buried on Venus. When you people finish on Mars, we will perhaps take a look there." He stopped and stared out the window. The room stayed quiet. Then he went on. "Wish I could go. Maybe you'd let me volunteer, perhaps without rank, eh?"
The room exploded in yells of triumph and excitement and all of them joined in except for Thau Lang. When his silence was noted, the others fell silent also. He smiled quietly.
"I know why you yell and you do well, for this is wonderful. But I am old and I think only of this planet. I think also of a man not here, my friend. It may not be an Earth custom but I ask a minute's quiet for a prayer of thanks. To my friend Louis Muller, for due to him alone, we are all alive."
Every head bowed, then the officers rose and stood at salute.
About the Author
Sterling Lanier, born in 1927, graduated from Harvard in 1951. When he was an editor at Chilton in the sixties, he published Frank Herbert's Dune, which went on to become one of the great sf bestsellers of all time. Lanier was trained as an anthropologist-archaeologist. He is also a well-known sculptor whose work is on exhibit
in several museums, including the Smithsonian. He lives in Maryland.
* * * * * *
Book information
A BEWITCHING INVITATION
"I have made the Tea of Dreaming." Danna Strom's amber cat-eyes stared into his from a foot away. "Drink. It will not harm you. I swear—by my medal of office." She drew the leather thong from her collar. On the end hung a flat medallion.
One side, much worn by time and use, bore a face. The chin was very square, and the large oval eyes wrapped around the round head to well on the sides. The ears, if that is what they were, were cones set high on the skull so that they were almost stubby horns. The forehead bulged.
There was only one response to such a gesture of trust—Slater tilted his cup and drank. As the hot liquid raced down his throat, its effect was instantaneous. Despite himself, he clawed for his holstered gun even as he slid sideways ...
A Del Rey Book
BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK
A Del Rey Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright © 1983 by Sterling E. Lanier
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 83-90025
ISBN 0-345-30882-4
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition: October 1983
Cover art by Darrell K. Sweet
For Katherine Williams and Berwick Bruce,
alias Kate and Bear,
who are my future
* * * * * *
Back cover
Seven Against the Unknown
For centuries the human outcasts of Mars lived wild, independent lives in the Martian outback called the Ruck.
But then the mysterious men of the "New Clan" came to preach total rebellion against the Mother Planet—and that Earth's U.N. Command could not allow.
So it sent a team of its best officers to learn the secrets of the "New Clan." Unfortunately, to do the job right, the Terrans would have to cooperate with their worst enemies—the Ruckers!
Menace Under Marswood Page 23