by Anthology
"Keep it up," she ordered. "They surely cannot stand it much longer."
"It shall be done!"
And the bees were driven in upon the men, again and again. Always the torches were kept waving, so that the insects never could tell just where to attack. Always the men kept moving steadily down-stream; and as they marched they left in their wake a black path of dead and dying bees. Half of them had been soldier bees, carrying enough poison in their stings to destroy a nation. Yet, nine little matches were too much for them!
Presently the invaders had approached to within a half-mile of the torture-place. One of Supreme's lieutenants made a suggestion:
"Had we not better destroy the men, rather than let them be rescued?"
The commandant considered this fully. "No," she decided. "To kill them would merely enrage the other villagers, and perhaps anger them so much as to make them unmanageable." More than once a human had been driven so frantic as to utterly disregard orders. "We cannot slay them all."
The bees attacked with unabated fury. Not once did the insects falter; orders were orders, and always had been. What mattered it if death came to them, so long as the Hive lived? For that is bee philosophy.
And then, just when it seemed that the wisest thing would be to withdraw, Supreme got the greatest idea she had ever had. For once she felt positively enthusiastic. Had she been a human she would have yelled aloud for sheer joy.
"Attention!" to her subordinates. "We attack no more! Instead, go into the huts and drive all the inferiors here! Compel them to bring their tools! Kill all that refuse!"
The lieutenants only dimly grasped the idea. "What shall we do when we get them here?"
"Do? Drive them against the invaders, of course!"
It was a daring thought. None but a super bee could have conceived it. Off flew the lieutenants, with Supreme's inspired order humming after them:
"Call out every bee! And drive every last one of the inferiors to this spot!"
And thus it came about that, a minute later, the nine looked around to see the bees making off at top speed. Sorplee raised a cheer.
"Hurrah!" he shouted, and the rest took it up. Neither admitted that he was vastly relieved; it had been a little nerve-shaking to know that a single thickness of leather had been all that stood, for an hour, between him and certain death. The buzzing, too, was demoralizing.
"Now, to release the two men!" reminded Deltos, and led the way to the torture-place. They found Corrus and Dulnop exactly as the two women had left them six weeks before, except that their faces were drawn with the agony of what they had endured. Below the surface of the ground their bodies had shriveled and whitened with their daily imprisonment. Only their spirits remained unchanged; they, of all the natives, had known what it was to feel superior.
For the last time they were dug out and helped to their feet. They could not stand by themselves, much less run; but it is not likely they would have fled. Somehow they knew that the strange head-coverings had human faces be hind them. And scarcely had they been freed before Sorplee, glancing about, gave an exclamation of delight as he saw a group of natives running toward them.
"Just what we want!" he exclaimed. "They've seen the scrap, and realize that we've won!"
Looking around, the nine could see the other groups likewise hurrying their way. All told, there were a couple of hundred of the villagers, and all were armed with tools they knew how to use very well.
"Who shall do the honors?" asked Sorplee. "Wish Somat was here, to explain for us."
"Don't need him," reminded Deltos. "All we've got to do is to show these two fellows we dug up."
And it was not until the first of the villagers was within twenty yards that the nine suspected anything. Then they heard the buzzing. Looking closer, they saw that it was--an attack!
"Stop!" cried Deltos, in swift panic. "We are friends, not enemies!"
It was like talking to the wind. The villagers had their choice of two fears: either fight the strangers with the magic flower, or--be stung to death. And no one can blame them for what they chose.
The nine had time enough to snatch knives or hatchets from their belts, or clubs from the ground. Then, with wild cries of fear, the natives closed in. They fought as only desperate people can fight, caught between two fires. And they were two hundred to nine!
In half a minute the first of the invaders was down, his head crushed by a mattock in the hands of a bee-tormented native. In a single minute all were gone but two; and a moment later, Deltos alone, because he had chanced to secure a long club, was alive of all that crew.
For a minute he kept them off by sheer strength. He swung the stick with such vigor that he fairly cleared a circle for himself. The natives paused, howling and shrieking, before the final rush.
An inspiration came to Deltos. He tore his cap from his head and his net from his face.
"Look!" he screamed, above the uproar. "I am a man, like yourselves! Do not kill!"
Next second he froze in his tracks. The next he was writhing in the death agony, and the bees were supreme once.
Supreme herself had stung Deltos.
XV
OVERLOOKED
Of the four on the earth, Smith was the first to make any comment. He had considerable difficulty in throwing his thought to the others; somehow he felt slightly dazed.
"This is--unbelievable!" he said, and repeated it twice. "To think that those insects are still the masters!"
"I wish"--Billie's voice shook somewhat--"I wish almost that I had let you warn Rolla. It might have helped--" She broke off suddenly, intent upon something Supreme was hearing. "Just listen!"
"Quick!" a lieutenant was humming excitedly to the commandant. "Back to the hives; give the order, Supreme!"
It was done, and immediately the bees quit the throng of natives and their victims, rushing at top speed for their precious city. As they went, Supreme demanded an explanation.
"What is the meaning of this?"
For answer the lieutenant pointed her antennae straight ahead. At first Supreme could see nothing in the growing darkness; then she saw that some of the sky was blacker than the rest. Next she caught a faint glow.
"Supreme, the deadly flower has come to the hives!"
It was true! In ten minutes the city was near enough for the commandant to see it all very clearly. The fire had started on the windward side, and already had swept through half the hives!
"Quick!" the order was snapped out. "Into the remaining houses, and save the young!"
She herself led the horde. Straight into the face of the flames they flew, unquestioningly, unhesitantly. What self, compared with the Hive?
Next moment, like a mammoth billow, the smoke rolled down upon them all. And thus it came about that the villagers, making their cautious way toward the bee city, shouted for joy and danced as they had never danced before, when they saw what had happened.
Not a bee was left alive. Every egg and larva was destroyed; every queen was burned. And every last soldier and worker had lost her life in the vain attempt at rescue.
Suddenly one of the villagers, who had been helping to carry Corrus and Dulnop to the spot, pointed out something on the other side of the fire! It was Rolla!
"Hail!" she shouted, hysterical with happiness as she ran toward her people. Cunora was close upon her heels. "Hail to the flowing flower!"
She held up a torch. Down fell the villagers to their knees. Rolla strode forward and found Corrus, even as Cunora located her Dulnop.
"Hail to the flowing flower!" shouted Rolla again. "And hail to the free people of this world! A new day cometh for us all! The masters--are no more!"
The four on the earth looked at each other inquiringly. There was a heavy silence. The doctor stood it as long as he could, and then said:
"So far as I'm concerned, this ends our investigations." They stared at him uncomprehendingly; he went on: "I don't see anything to be gained by this type of study. Here we've investigated t
he conditions on two planets pretty thoroughly, and yet we can't agree upon what we've learned!
"Van still thinks that the upper classes should rule, despite all the misery we saw on Capellette! And Billie is still convinced that the working classes, and no others, should govern! This, in the face of what we've just--seen! Sanus is absolute proof of what must happen when one class tries to rule; conflict, bloodshed, misery--little else! Besides" --remembering something, and glancing at his watch--"besides, it's time for dinner."
He and Smith got to their feet, and in silence quit the room. Billie and Van Emmon were still fumbling with their bracelets. The two young people rose from the chairs at the same time and started across the room to put flip bracelets away. The wire which connected them trailed in between and caught on the doctor's chair. It brought the two of them up short.
Van Emmon stared at the wire. He gave it a little tug. The chair did not move. Billie gave an answering jerk, with similar lack of results. Then they glanced swiftly at one another, and each stepped back enough to permit lifting the wire over the chair.
"In other words," Van Emmon stammered, with an effort to keep his voice steady--"in other words, Billie, we both had to give in a little, in order to get past that chair!"
Then he paused slightly, his heart pounding furiously.
"Yes Van." She dropped the bracelets. "And--as for me--Van, I didn't really want to see the bees win! I only pretended to--I wanted to make you--think!"
"Billie! I'll say 'cooperate' if you will!"
"Cooperate!"
He swept her into his arms, and held her so close that she could not see what had rushed to his eyes. "Speaking of cooperation," he remarked unsteadily, "reminds me--it takes two to make a kiss!"
They proceeded to experiment.
* * *
Contents
REBELS OF THE RED PLANET
By Charles L. Fontenay
MARS FOR THE MARTIANS!
Dark Kensington had been dead for twenty-five years. It was a fact; everyone knew it. Then suddenly he reappeared, youthful, brilliant, ready to take over the Phoenix, the rebel group that worked to overthrow the tyranny that gripped the settlers on Mars.
The Phoenix had been destroyed not once, not twice, but three times! But this time the resurrected Dark had new plans, plans which involved dangerous experiments in mutation and psionics.
And now the rebels realized they were in double jeopardy. Not only from the government's desperate hatred of their movement, but also from the growing possibility that the new breed of mutated monsters would get out of hand and bring terrors never before known to man.
CHARLES L. FONTENAY writes: "I was born in Brazil of a father who was by birth English and by parentage German and French, and of a mother who was by birth American and by parentage American and Scottish. This mess of internationalism caused me some trouble in the army during World War II as the government couldn't decide whether I was American, British, or Brazilian; and both as an enlisted man and an officer I dealt in secret work which required citizenship by birth. On three occasions I had to dig into the lawbooks. Finally they gave up and admitted I was an American citizen....
"I was raised on a West Tennessee farm and distinguished myself in school principally by being the youngest, smallest (and consequently the fastest-running) child in my classes ... Newspaper work has been my career since 1936. I have worked for three newspapers, including The Nashville Tennessean for which I am now rewrite man, and before the war for the Associated Press."
Mr. Fontenay is married, lives in Madison, Tenn., and has had one other novel published by Ace Books.
* * * * *
1
It is a sea, though they call it sand.
They call it sand because it is still and red and dense with grains. They call it sand because the thin wind whips it, and whirls its dusty skim away to the tight horizons of Mars.
But only a sea could so brood with the memory of aeons. Only a sea, lying so silent beneath the high skies, could hint the mystery of life still behind its barren veil.
To practical, rational man, it is the Xanthe Desert. Whatever else he might unwittingly be, S. Nuwell Eli considered himself a practical, rational man, and it was across the bumpy sands of the Xanthe Desert that he guided his groundcar westward with that somewhat cautious proficiency that mistrusts its own mastery of the machine. Maya Cara Nome, his colleague in this mission to which he had addressed himself, was a silent companion.
Nuwell's liquid brown eyes, insistent upon their visual clarity, saw the red sand as the blowing surface of unliving solidity. Only clarity was admitted to Nuwell, and the only living clarity was man and beast and vegetation, spotted in the dome cities and dome farms of the lowlands. He and Maya scurried, transiting sparks of the only life, insecure and hastening in the absence of the net of roads which eventually would bind the Martian surface to human reality from the toeholds of the dome cities.
In that opposite world which was the other side of the groundcar's seat, Maya Cara Nome's opaque black eyes struggled against the surface. They struggled not from any rational motivation but from long stubbornness, from habit, as a fly kicks six-legged and constant against the surface tension of a trapping pool.
Formally, Maya was allied to Newell's clarity and solidity, and she could express this alliance with complete logic if called on. But behind the casually blowing sand she sensed a depth. The shimmering atmosphere, hostile to man, which sealed the red desert was a lens that distorted and concealed by its intervention. The groundcar was a mechanical bug, an alienness with which timorous man had allied himself; allied with it against reality, she and Nuwell were hastened by it through reality, unseeing, toward the goal of a more comfortable unreality.
The groundcar bumped and slithered, and an orange dust-cloud boiled up from its broad tires and wafted away across the sculpted sand. The desert stretched away, silent and empty, to the distant horizon; the groundcar the only humming disturbance of its silence and emptiness. The steel-blue sky shimmered above, a lens capping the red surface.
The groundcar rolled westward, slashing toward its goal from the distant lowland of Solis Lacus. Far away, two men, machineless, plodded this same Xanthe Desert toward the same goal; but they plodded southward, approaching on a different radius.
They were naked. In a thin atmosphere without sufficient oxygen to support animal life or even the higher forms of terrestrial plant life, they wore no marsuits, no helmets, no oxygen tanks.
The man who walked in front was tall, erect, powerfully muscled. His features and short-clipped hair were coarse, but self-assured intelligence shone in his smoky eyes. He moved across the loose sand, barefoot, with easy grace.
The--man?--that shambled behind him was as tall, but appeared shorter and even more muscular because his shoulders and head were hunched forward. His even coarser face was characterized by vacuously slack mouth and blue eyes empty of any expression except an occasional brief frown of puzzlement.
Toward a focal point: from the east, two people; from the north, two people. If in the efficient self-assurance of Adam Hennessey could be paralleled a variant harmony with the insistent surfaceness of S. Nuwell Eli, does any coincidental parallelism exist between Brute Hennessey and Maya Cara Nome?
Puzzlement was the climate of Brute's mind. This surface film of things through which he ploughed his way, the swarming currents below the surface--all were chaos. He grasped vaguely at comprehension without achieving, the effective coalescence of electric ideas always falling short before reaching consciousness.
The two men plodded, naked, through the loose sand. Above them in the Mars-blue dome of day, the weak sun turned downward, warning of its eventual departure.
A two-passengered groundcar and two men, widely apart, and yet bound for the same destination....
The destination was a lone, sprawling building in the desert. It could have been a huge warehouse, or a fortress, of black, almost windowless Martian stone. The only outstan
ding feature of its virtually featureless hulk was a tower which struck upward from its northern side.
As the summer afternoon progressed, Dr. G. O. T. Hennessey paced the windy summit of the tower, peered frequently into the desert north beneath a sunshading hand, and waggled his goat beard in annoyance under his transparent marshelmet.
Had the helmet speaker been on or the air less thin, one might have determined that Goat Hennessey was utilizing some choice profanity, directed at those two absent personages whose names were, respectively, Adam and Brute.
The airlock to the tower elevator opened and a small creature--a child?--emerged onto the roof. Distorted, humpbacked and barrel-chested, it scuttled on reed-thin legs to Goat's side. It wore no marsuit.
"Father!" screeched this apparition, its thin voice curiously muffled by the tenuous air. "Petway fell in the laundry vat!"
"For the love of space!" muttered Goat in exasperation. "Is there water in it?"
When the newcomer gave no sign of hearing, Goat realized his helmet speaker was off. He switched it on.
"Is there water in the vat?" he repeated.
"Yes, sir. It's full of suds and clothes."
"Well, go fish him out before he soaks up all the water. The soap will make him sick."
The messenger turned, almost tripping over its own broad feet, and went back through the airlock. Goat returned to his northward vigil.
Miles away, Nuwell slowed the groundcar as it approached the lip of that precipitous slope bordering the short canal which connects Juventae Fons with the Arorae Sinus Lowland. He consulted a rough chart, and turned the groundcar southward. A drive of about a kilometer brought them to a wide descending ledge down which they were able to drive into the canal.