Marooned on Mars

by Lester Del Rey

  But Chuck had gotten fed up with the depression. He’d been hit hard enough himself, and his mood was still one of loose ends and futile gestures. Still, sitting around and watching other men go back to their blues didn’t help. He turned toward the hammocks to lie and think by himself, or to sleep if he could.

  Suddenly a high, keen wailing sound cut through the room, seeming to come from outside. Chuck felt the hair on the back of his neck bristle. He jumped to the hull, placing his ear against, it while the others rushed over to follow his example.

  There was nothing for a few minutes. Then it came again—a thin, piping sound that rose to a quivering shriek and died away slowly.

  Their faces were gray and taut as they faced each other. “It came from out there,” Chuck said, unnecessarily.

  The others nodded. Sokolsky laughed nervously. “The wind—there must be a hollow stone. No living lungs could have power enough to make that carry through this atmosphere!”

  “There’s no wind,” Vance told him quietly. “Up in the control room, I could see the sand out there lying completely still”

  The doctor shrugged. “It must be blowing out there, even if it isn’t here. It’s just the wind.”

  Nobody could dispute him, though Chuck wondered what force of wind would be needed.

  Vance stood up and moved back to the control room. Chuck started toward the hammocks, and then swung after his captain. He arrived just in time to hear the speaker come to life. There was a long preamble about the difficulty of getting exact estimates, but the message finally got down to brass tacks.

  “You have fuel enough to reach Earth it you take off in seventy days. Otherwise, you’ll have to use too much to reach us, and won’t be able to land.”

  Vance cut the set off sharply and snapped off the lights. He sat staring out toward the desert as Chuck turned and moved softly back toward his hammock.

  Seventy days to do work that couldn’t be done in a hundred! And if they couldn’t do it, they’d have to wait month after month until their supplies ran out before they had another chance.

  Suddenly he sat bolt upright, cursing himself. With six mouths to feed, they might make the long wait, if they had to. But his extra burden on their partly ruined supplies would, probably weigh the scales against them. Vance’s first lecture came back, accusingly. He had no right on Mars. The others had been sent, but he’d stolen his place, and bad no rightful claim on the food and water he’d consume.

  He got to sleep finally, but it wasn’t a restful sleep. His dreams were worse than his waking thoughts had been.

  He saw six graves out in the red Martian desert. There should have been seven, but someone had built a gallows instead, and a straw image of himself was hung there with the accusing details of his murder of the others written on it. As he looked, the straw man came to life and ran after him shrieking in a high wail that his ears couldn’t stand.

  CHAPTER 11

  Eyes in the Night

  It was exactly six o’clock when the sound of a gong woke Chuck. He turned over, growling at the noise, but the gong went on until sleep was impossible. Wearily, he dropped from the hammock to see the rest of the crew doing the same.

  Vance’s voice was the crack of a drillmaster as it followed the ending of the gong’s clatter. “Everybody up and out. We’re going to work!”

  Ginger was reaching for his clothes, mumbling and grumbling, staring through eyes still foggy with sleep for his missing pants. ” ‘Sa dirty trick. Nobody told me Mars would be like this.”

  “It’ll be worse. Ginger,” Vance stated. “From now on, you’ll be up half an hour earlier to prepare breakfast for the others. I took care of it this time.”

  They stumbled into the mess hall, to a heavy breakfast of powdered-egg omelet, bacon, and carefully toasted canned bread. At least Vance didn’t mean to starve them to death, as Steele commented.

  The captain grinned tightly. “That will come later, if we don’t finish in time. Now I expect you to work until you drop dead and then get up and try again. You’ll need the food. We’ve got less than seventy days to get this ship headed back to Moon City—my figures were wrong.”

  He stared at them, his mouth determined.

  “It can’t be done,” Sokolsky told him. “Men aren’t robots—you can’t work them twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Eighteen,” Vance stated. “And I wouldn’t expect robots to work the way you’re going to. We’ll let everything go that we can—if it can be fixed after we’re space-borne, we’ll skip it. We’ve got to get the Eros level and straighten her out. Doc, Lew and Ginger will form the digging crew. I’ve got a diagram here of where I want the digging to be done. Use what metal you must, but take it easy. The rest of us will start cutting where I’ve marked the places with chalk. Dick, you can give me a hand for half an hour to make sure I’m right in my figuring; you’re a better structural engineer than I am.”

  He marched them out on the half-hour, assigned them their stations, and came back to pick up one of the welding torches himself. The big acetylene-compressed oxygen rigs were the heaviest took they carried, and there were four of them. The Space Commission had insisted that four was the minimum number of men needed to repair a major meteor rip in space before they lost more than half their air, and the precaution was useful now.

  At noon, when the gong sounded again, Ginger came out with their lunches. Vance set the example by eating his with one hand while he went on cutting through beams with the other. There was another pause for an afternoon snack, and then they worked on until ten in the evening.

  “Get to bed,” Vance told them. He wiped his hand over his forehead and tried to grin encouragingly. “We’ve got more done than I expected today—but we’ll have to do even more tomorrow.”

  After three days of that, they were finished with the cutting, and Vance sent the whole crew out to dig, except for Rothman and Steele, who were improvising jacks to lift the section that had sagged.

  Chuck’s arms lost all feeling after a few hours. He kept telling himself that there was a limit to what the human animal could stand. Then his eyes would go to Vance, who was determined to drive himself hardest of all, and he would realize again that Vance had been right. Robots couldn’t do it, but men had to.

  He bent forward trying to step up the count he was using to keep himself going. Beside him, Lew matched his work scoop for scoop.

  That night they finished with the sand, although it took them until two in the morning. Vance pointed out that a single storm would undo half their work unless they did finish, and they went on. Every man grumbled, and most of them protested. But all of them worked.

  Chuck unbent his back and beaded for the air lock. Then his glance fell on Vance, conferring with Rothman and Steele, who had been turning the huge jacks that were raising the middle section. Vance reached for one of the levers, counting. Chuck took it out of the captain’s hands. The man was swaying as he moved.

  Vance didn’t protest “You’re ‘right, kid. I’m being a fool. If I collapse, I’m a liability on everyone’s hands. Five inches more, Dick, then I’m going to bed.”

  Dick stared after him, shaking his head. The three men exchanged brief, weary glances, and bent to the levers. The ship moved up, a slow fraction of an inch at a time. And at last that was finished. The Eros was still a wreck, but she rested levelly on the jacks and the sand, ready for repairs.

  Chuck had expected it to take over a week, and it had been done in four days. But he knew they could never keep it up. And even if they did, they would barely make their deadline.

  He sighed slowly, dropped down onto the sand, and fell asleep. Some eddy of semi consciousness told him that was picking him up, undressing him, and putting him to bed. But he didn’t have energy enough to protest.

  Vance was up as usual the next morning. “Easier work today—we’re all about shot. We’ll take a ten-hour day, welding the girders back together. The three non-welders will go back to supplies and separate
what’s good from the rest. They can carry the damaged stuff outside and get rid of it We don’t need extra weight.”

  He grinned at them, daring them to claim he wasn’t being kind to them. But no one said anything, though there were plenty of unvoiced opinions.

  It took them one week to get the Eros back in sound condition, as far as her frame was concerned. It was fine progress. But the lifting of the middle section had revealed a series of gashes and separated seams that would require at least five days of welding that had not been on the original schedule. The holes were calked temporarily with the last of the tent cloth and some of the paint that wouldn’t stay long.

  Vance gave no sign that it had upset his plans. He went over the group, one man at a time as they sat at supper, pointing out weakness and indicating strengths. He was a living balance sheet, and there could be no complaint of lack of justice in his statements. He went over his own work, as coolly and honestly as that of the others.

  Then he put down his pencil. “Vacations are just as important as work. I learned that a long time ago. Chuck, you and Sokolsky have tomorrow off; I’d suggest that you explore a bit—you’ll get more rest than just sitting around. Report in the next morning. Next week, I’ll pick two others, and they’ll be the men who have been the steadiest. But even if I think you’ve been slacking, you still get a vacation—you just go to the bottom of the list.”

  For the first time there was a brief, mutter of approval, and answering smiles as Vance got up from the table.

  He turned back to them. “Thanks for that. I needed a vacation from ugly looks too. Go to bed,”

  They laughed weakly as he walked out Steele grinned after him. “You know, I’ll bet we work harder next week. But I’m out for that vacation.”

  They got up in a body and turned toward their hammocks. There was no delay nowadays when it came time to bed down. Only Sokolsky lingered, motioning to Chuck to stay.

  “Can you hike?” he asked. “Now, I mean.”

  Chuck frowned, but nodded. The redhead bobbed up and down in excitement. “I can’t. Chuck. But I’m going to, just the same. Vance told me ahead of time, and I’ve got everything ready—spare batteries, suits, extra food packed into the helmets where we can reach it, and water. I’m going to find out what those canals are once and for all. You can come along or stay. I’m leaving now.”

  Chuck cursed himself again and started to cut his automatic nod of agreement off. Then he hesitated. If they ever got back to Earth without the answer to the riddle, there’d be no living it down. It was one of the chief reasons for the expedition. He chuckled in spite of himself. He was learning to be more honest, apparently—it was his own chief reason, and it didn’t matter about Earth.

  “Let’s go,” he agreed.

  Vance was coming down from the control room as they dressed and stopped for a brief wish of good luck. He handed Sokolsky the automatic. “There are shells in it this time. And you might take this compass. It seems to point roughly north.”

  Then he turned toward his sleeping hammock, and they went down the passage toward the entrance.

  The night was typical of Mars—cold air that showed the stars as slightly nickering sparks, low horizon, and a pinprick in the sky that was Phobos, the nearer hunk of rock that served as a moon here. It was only ten miles in diameter, but less than six thousand miles away, and just visible. Deimos hadn’t been spotted by any of the men.

  Sokolsky headed north, skirting the ruins of the city. He walked briskly, setting a pace that Chuck found hard to match. “Tragedy,” he said, pointing toward the rums. “Stark tragedy. I’ve come out here nights, sometimes, studying this. There was a rude civilization here once. But no fire and no metals. Did you notice that?”

  “No. How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve looked for even one bit of metal. But of course they couldn’t have metal without fire—oh, maybe a bit of copper, if they were lucky, but nothing else; and here on Mars that would be hard to find. I’ve looked for some place where they lighted a fire. Rocks crack under heat. There were no fireplaces, no chimneys. The floors show no fire cracks. I’ve even tested the glaze on that pottery. It’s good clay, but it was sun-baked—must have had some way of concentrating more sunlight on it, but it isn’t fired; and the glaze is a kind of lacquer. They didn’t have enough air to keep a fire going, even when they built this place. Know why they fell?”

  Chuck shook his head, and Sokolsky went on happily. “They didn’t have power. The winds here won’t do any real work; they had no running streams for water power. No coal—it was never wet enough for a Carboniferous age. No plants big enough to make a fire, even if they could have forced in oxygen enough. Nothing except their muscles. And civilization has to have power—each step up takes more. As soon as they learned about nice things and began to want them, they were licked—they could get them only by laying waste to what should have been saved for the future. And the future starved to death. Tragedy.”

  It sounded as reasonable as anything Chuck could find to explain the disappearance—if the Martians had disappeared. But there was no way of knowing. He had seen no sign of writing; if they had a literature, it must have been on something that rotted away ages ago.

  He wondered if sometime one of the Martians might come across the space ship and marvel at the race who had built this and then vanished, and try to explain it by some fantastic idea.

  Again, the thought picked at his mind that if such ever happened, it would be because he had stowed away, robbing six other men of a part of their chances to return. Nobody had mentioned it, and it seemed completely forgotten. But he couldn’t hide it from himself. He had no right to the power he was using to compress and moisten the air so that he could breathe it, or to the food he had eaten. He had no right to be on Mars.

  The city was behind now, and the soft sand of the desert was making every step an effort. Sokolsky pointed ahead, muttering something. He apparently had some theory as to the distribution of the plants. If so, it was productive of results. They found another strip of plants where the interlacing roots had given the ground some stability, and trudged on. They were making no more than five miles an hour, which was slow here, but Sokolsky seemed content.

  “We’ll march about halfway there, and then we’ll sleep. Ever sleep in a space suit? No? Well, it isn’t too bad. I did it on the Moon one night, just to see if it would work. I thought it might be useful. I don’t recommend it, but we can sleep anywhere, now that Vance is saving us from ourselves.”

  He chuckled, to show there was no bitterness in his words. With a chance to explore, Sokolsky seemed incapable of being bitter about anything.

  Far away, the hint of a thin, wailing cry cut through the air. Chuck had heard it twice more since the first night, but the hair on his neck still rose at the sound. “Do you still think it’s the wind?” he asked.

  Sokolsky nodded vigorously. “What else? But not around some natural rock. It’s in the city—I’ve heard it there, closer. But I can’t find where. Those ancient people must have made themselves a wind trumpet of some kind that works with very little wind. I’ll find it yet. It has to be that”

  Chuck wished he could be as certain. It reminded him of the stories Ginger knew of banshees. Nothing good could come of it, he was sure.

  Again Sokolsky led across a narrow strip of desert and found another vegetation-covered way for their feet. About half an hour more, according to their progress, and they could sleep. Chuck had begun to wish that he had never come out with the strange, intense little man.

  Something rustled across his legs! He jumped, landing with a weak cry, and began inspecting the ground. It was only a long creeper, running for perhaps a hundred feet. Then, as he watched it, it moved forward jerkily.

  Chuck swung his light toward the other end. For a brief moment, he seemed to see something scuttle away quickly. He snapped his head around to follow it, but it was gone. The vine lay still now, its balled-up leaves trying to dig back int
o the sand from which it had been disturbed. “Did you see anything?” he asked Sokolsky. .The doctor denied it, casually. Chuck wondered. But he was tired and jumpy, and the sound in the distance had upset him again. He had to admit that it could have been his eyes playing tricks on him, and that the creeper had probably been disturbed by his own feet. Yet he seemed to remember standing perfectly still and looking back at the moment he had felt it.

  Sokolsky went on a bit farther until he came to another barren patch. There he kicked about in the sand, digging a sort of trough. “This is it. Chuck,” he announced. “Well sleep here until the sun wakens us—I always waken when I see the sunlight. Then we can get a fresh start in the morning.”

  Chuck studied the sand dubiously. “Suppose a sandstorm comes up and buries us during the night?”

  “Piffle, as my old teacher used to say. If it kicks up that much fuss, the sound of the sand hitting our helmets will wake us and we’ll find a better place. Anyhow, I haven’t seen a good wind on Mars yet—fast, maybe, but not one with any strength to it I think those precious sandstorms are exaggerated. The wind just picks up the finest dust and blows it along. Somebody on the Moon looks down with a telescope and finds his seeing is cut off—as it is even with a fog. He knows it isn’t water, and he thinks of sand in the only way he knows—like the Sahara. So, presto, we have huge sandstorms. Dusty, yes—but buried in sand I won’t buy.”

  When Chuck thought it over, he had to agree with him wholeheartedly. Even against the weak gravity of Mars, it would take a terrific force of wind to give the thin air any real carrying power.

  He dropped into the sand beside the doctor, stretching out. The insulation of his suit would protect him from the sub-zero cold easily enough. Anyhow, from what he bad seen, the sand was a good insulating blanket. The plants seemed to find it wise to burrow down into it at night

  He turned over on his side as he heard the doctor snap off the radio. It was an act of consideration, since Sokolsky snored rather loudly. Chuck cut his own off.