Chapter 13

The machine in which I traveled made no distinction between forward and reverse. You set a hand throttle in one direction to go forward, and in another to go back. It went just as fast one way as the other and there was no need to turn it around. I started back up the incline without turning anything but my seat, so anxious was I to get away from that Martian.

I'd started up the incline before I glanced back in my rear-vision mirror and saw that this creature had been joined by a companion, identical in every detail to my indiscriminating eyes, although I suppose their mothers could have told them apart.

Axel's voice jabbered in my ears but I wasn't listening. I wanted to get out of this canal and away from these horrible creatures. I didn't like their teeth, I didn't like their black humps or radar antennae, or even their padded feet. That destroying heat ray was radar.

"What's that about radar, Bill?" came Axel's voice. I knew I'd spoken aloud.

"They've got built-in radar instead of eyes!" I said. "It's so powerful it sets fire to things." Radar could do that. Strong stations on earth could literally cook a man unfortunate enough to get within close range. Even weak stations could set off flashlight bulbs in a photographer's camera. The walls of the car had protected me. Even my spacesuit probably would have been sufficient protection. But I didn't like all this power in a living body.

The Martians, apparently startled as much by me as I had been by them, hesitated before starting in pursuit. I was hitting the steep grade up the wall of the canal before they came after me. But they ran slowly and gracefully, in no hurry to catch me. They kept a reasonable distance.

"Did they do anything to you, Bill?" Axel asked. "Are you all right?" There was a worried note in his voice.

"I'm okay," I assured him, "but these—these monsters are following me. Two of them. They look awful. No eyes, not even a head, just a hump on their backs like a camel and a fringe of arms on each side—" I glanced back. "Eight arms," I told him, counting them. "Stay where you are and I'll pick you up. Main thing is to get back to the ship. They don't run very fast and I think I can outdistance 'em on level ground."

Then Dr. Spartan, who had heard our radio conversation, interrupted. "Why didn't you shoot them, Drake?"

"I was in the car," I told him. "And they're two to one."

He hesitated, then said, "Don't try to outrun them. Lead them slowly. Give me a chance to get there."

"Yes, sir," I said.

You don't argue with Spartan and I was too busy guiding the car over the rocky slope to answer anyhow. I don't think I could have outdistanced the Martians going uphill as I was. On level ground though, it would be different.

My radio suddenly started to chatter with a series of strange noises. The Martians seemed to have discovered my wave length. It was a sound the like of which I'd never heard before. It's hard to describe it. The nearest comparison would be a cricket singing bass. Or perhaps the dah of dit-dah Morse on a code transmitter. But the Martians had demonstrated that they could change frequencies, and vaguely I wondered how they'd do on television and FM channels.

Suddenly they seemed to be trying to imitate my voice.

"Yessir—yessir—yessir—"

They were like talking crows.

Finally I reached the lip of the canal and, rolling over the ridge, saw Axel standing beside a pile of light crates he'd stacked up beside the rocket ship. He waved his hands and I steered toward him.

Beyond him came Spartan, in the other Mars-car, hitting high speed on the sand. I thought of the garrison rushing to rescue the besieged wagon train in the woolly frontier days.

"Bill Drake!" Axel called, his voice wedging into the chattering Martian voices.

"Billdrake—billdrake—" mocked the Martians.

I braked the car and Axel scrambled toward the locks as the Martians appeared on the rim of the canal behind me.

Axel took one apprehensive glance in that direction before he climbed aboard.

"Tain't human!" he gasped, which was the understatement of the solar system.

Dr. Spartan's Mars-car halted about two hundred yards south of us. I saw him climbing out of the locks, his rifle in his hand.

"Tanetooman," chanted the Martians.

"This way, Drake!" Spartan signaled with his arms that I was to pass to his left.

"Thiswaydrake—" screamed my earphones in raucous echo. "Billdrake—tanetooman—yessir—"

"Aw, shuddup," said Axel to the Martians.

"Shuddup—"

Axel looked at me and shook his head at the Martian reply.

I wheeled the Mars-car around behind Spartan's, halting in a position which would allow me to watch.

The Martians were loping casually toward the two cars, seemingly in no rush to get there. And it was then I suddenly realized that their actions weren't hostile. I'd been frightened when they'd set fire to the Martian saguaro in the canal, but I realized that this had been defensive. They had been as afraid of me as I had been of them. Nothing in the world panics a man as does a situation he's never encountered before and does not know how to handle. And I suppose, in this respect, the Martians were human.

In fact, I was soon to learn that although physical bodies were apt to assume strangely different shapes, the psychology of the Martians was as human as intelligence. And it was a logical thing, too. After all, most of life's actions, possibly all, are aimed toward a double purpose—preservation of the individual and of the race. This fact is as basic as Newton's laws governing the physical actions of the universe.

In fact, the two kinds of matter in space, animate and inanimate, may not be so different, after all. The energy that is in all matter, may be seeking to control its destiny, and life may be a basic property of the power that exists in every atom.

But it was no time for philosophy. I didn't think these thoughts then—it was not until long afterwards that they occurred to me.

I was watching the Martians who now had slowed to a lazy canter, focusing their biological radar on the two similar objects parked in the desert.

As they came abreast of the spaceship, they looked at that too. I expected to see the pile of supplies Axel had stacked near the ship to go up in smoke—flames being highly unlikely in thin air like this. But the Martians were no longer frightened. The enemy had fled at their approach. They assumed, no doubt, that we were no match for them. And this is another trait that has proved the undoing of many a human being—to suspect weakness where it does not exist.

Dr. Spartan dropped to a prone position and raised his rifle. Apparently the Martians had not noticed him because they were too busy examining the rocket ship, the supplies and the two Mars-cars. Perhaps they mistook the cars for earthlings. They'd never seen us before.

As they looked, their chattering ceased, so engrossed had they become in the sights before their antennae.

"Don't shoot, Dr. Spartan," said Axel. "They're not acting hostile."

The Martians picked up the last words, "Nottacking hossile."

"Bah!" said Spartan. And he fired.

An explosive bullet struck the Martian on the right. We didn't hear the crack of the rifle or the blast of the bullet as it struck the poor creature. But we saw the smoke and flying flesh. What remained of the beast collapsed in a heap on the sand.

The second Martian, not having seen Spartan, seemed to freeze in terror for an instant. Possibly there had been some sort of a dying scream from his companion—one that could not be heard on the wave length of our helmet receivers. At any rate, it took only a split second for Martian No. 2 to realize we were neither weak nor harmless, as we had seemed. He turned and fled toward the canal at full gallop.

His speed was astonishing.

Dr. Spartan fired again. His shot missed and sent a geyser of sand skyward, ahead of the fleet monster. He swore and fired again. But the next shot was not an explosive bullet. It missed, too, and he switched his weapon to automatic and emptied the magazine with rapid fire. I saw the path cut across the sand and intercept the Martian. The creature staggered, then sank to the ground.

"Hah!" Spartan exclaimed triumphantly. "Let's take the dead creature to the ship! I'd like to see how he's constructed."

It was a gruesome business, but we loaded the scaly body into the locks of our car. The one Spartan had shot first was too torn and shattered to be worth transporting. Besides, the fluid that might be called blood, or sap, looked like acid and I was afraid it might damage the floor of the locks. My judgment turned out to be correct, for when Gail, our biologist, examined the beast we brought back, she announced that he was a mass of deadly poison and so were the plant samples I'd brought back from the canals.

"What kind of poison?" Spartan asked.

"I'm not sure, but Bill Drake can tell with a few tests," she said.

Spartan gestured to me. "Go ahead, Drake."

I got chemicals from the supplies Axel brought from the overturned ship and set to work.

It was fortunate that I made these tests. The Martian plants and the dead Martian were very similar chemically, giving rise to speculation that the evolution of life on Mars had taken place about the time the planet had stabilized into its present state. On earth, life began while the planet was evolving from an earlier form and the changes continued while life developed. The changes probably brought about the division of the animal and vegetable kingdoms and they might have continued until sixty million years ago when the giant reptiles were wiped out, or even later through the glacial ages.

But on Mars there was only one kingdom. It wasn't wholly animal, or wholly vegetable, although it was more the latter than anything else. And the tissues were formed from a very deadly series of molecules which had cyanide as their base. In other words, Martians were poison to us, and very likely we were poison to the Martians.

Furthermore, the water we had brought from the Martian canal was impregnated with ammonium hydroxide, in large enough quantities to cause serious illness should we be foolish enough to drink it. However, it was very useful for washing the cyanide from our gloves and spacesuits after we performed the autopsy.

And the autopsy, beyond determining that the Martians probably obtained chemicals and oxygen by chewing up the soil, which contained many oxides, was bewildering. Spartan made pictures and microscope slides which could be studied if or when we got back on the earth.

All we know was that on Mars, life was a sort of mobile vegetable which wasn't really a vegetable; and it was decidedly poisonous. We didn't know how these creatures reproduced, but Gail expressed the opinion that some of the "arms," all of which seemed to have different uses, might be sex organs and that Martians gave birth to their young by a kind of "budding," which exists among lower forms of life on earth. "Probably every Martian is both male and female," she said, "like some worms."

Like the electric eel, they had organs which produced a strong electric current. But their radar equipment—the metallic hump and the black spot on top of it—baffled us all. Nature had done the job compactly and bewilderingly, with cells.

"Those teeth look vicious," said Gail.

"I wonder if their owners are," said Joel. "They spied on us during the entire trip from earth. They clouded our scope so we couldn't use radar. They chased Drake. That's an indication that they might be vicious."

Axel shook his head. "They were just cautious," he said. "We'd have been just as cautious if Martians had come to the earth. And they didn't really seem to be chasing Bill. He was frightened and ran. They saw no reason to fear him, so they followed, possibly trying to establish communication."

"Yes," I said. "They tried to imitate our language. Did a pretty good job, too." There had been nothing vicious or hostile in that.

"But one thing we can be sure of," said Axel, "is that the next time they see us, they will attack us. We have lost our chance to be friends of the Martians. I'm sure the two who saw Bill had seen sent to spy on us and they must have notified others, by radio, that they had made contact. Now they are missing. Only one conclusion could be drawn. We killed them. And this is an act they'll demand revenge for."

"Bah!" said Spartan. "There's nothing to worry about. We've shown them we are the ones to fear. We have strength. These lower forms of life understand strength—they'll leave us alone."

"Lower forms of life?" said Axel. "And what makes a creature a higher form? I'd say we're the lower forms on Mars, because we have difficulty living here. We're not successful in this environment. We'd become extinct in a short time if we were transplanted here permanently."

Dr. Spartan's face grew dark inside his helmet. His words were spoken in a manner implying threat.

"You're forgetting, Ludson," he said, "that I'm the commander here. I'm not to be contradicted or spoken to in the way you've just done. I'll do all the thinking for this group."

He rinsed off his gloves with the water from the canal and went into the ship.