Part 2

They walked around the rock, and slid down to the hard sand. Faint twists of sand curled around the sides of the rock but they were sheltered from the wind, and out of sight of the entrance, as if in a world of their own.

She rested her head on his shoulder contentedly as he turned the old, crudely typeset pages of the manual. There were pen and ink illustrations of strange beasts, but no chapters on inhabitants.

"We're the only people here--" said Hilda, in an awed tone.

"Regular Adam and Eve picnic, with clothes on."

"I'd hate to be without clothes on this desert. No garden here."

"That's right. No place for a nudist colony on Mars."

She sat up suddenly, looking past the rock at a distant shadow. Her face grew pale, and she whispered fearfully, "Look, John! There's something moving over by those rocks."

He leaped to his feet. "Yes--and it's a Mars Coyote. I noticed a picture on page three. Harmless, I guess, but we'd better get back. It's close. We should have been watching."

* * * * *

They rose hastily and walked around the boulder, back toward the entrance. Hilda started and stifled a scream as they left the shelter. John drew his clumsy gas gun and stepped in front of her. Before them, on the red stretch of sand toward the entrance, were hundreds of the reddish-gray, smooth haired animals, with pointed noses and wickedly gleaming eyes.

These moved back silently as the two humans approached, but only a little way.

"The book says they're cowardly," she gasped, "but there are so many!"

"Too damned many--I wonder if I ought to shoot one, to keep the others away."

The red-gray circle bent away from them slowly, as they walked steadily across the weirdly shadowed sand toward the gleaming metal door, so far ahead. The animals massed thickly before them, and were finally crowded up against the cliff and its door. They slid out sidewise but tumbled into each other. One made a dash forward, but John dropped it with the little gas pellet that broke against its hide, with a sinking yellow cloud of gas. There was also an injection of paralysis fluid from the plastic point of the pellet. The little gun made no noise as it was operated by a spring. John levered another pellet into the firing tube. After the yellow gas had blown away in the strong wind, the red-gray bodies crept toward their fallen comrade and suddenly rushed in, with a horrible clicking of teeth and fierce, silent ripping of flesh.

"Oh--" cried Hilda--"and it's still alive. They're eating it alive!"

"Not much difference," grunted John as he aimed and fired rapidly at three more. Then he led her around the circle of rolling, crowding bodies. One coyote at the edge of the circle howled dismally. There were still a dozen or more between them and the door.

* * * * *

John tried a new trick. He shot one of the beasts and ran quickly forward with his radilight in the cliff's shadow, frightening the others back. Then, while Hilda held her gun ready, he quickly scooped up the fallen coyote by its bushy tail and whirled it round his head to heave it far out over the milling mass of hungry bodies. Each hairy carcass felt unbelievably light to him, and he could cast them thirty feet away. When most of the coyotes were facing the living food away from the door John dragged her toward the great copper portal, shooting as they ran.

The lighter gravity had made the work fairly easy, but even so, he was sweating and his hands trembled as he seized the last one and tossed it into the air. Hilda was fumbling with the door.

"Let me do it!" he gasped, "I remember--"

Just then a shadow fell over them, and they were so startled as to look up from the door and step back. About fifty feet in the air hovered a small, almost spherical air boat, with no visible means of suspension or power. A port slid open on its under side and a square black muzzle pointed at them. Hilda seized John's arm in terror, as they felt themselves lifted by invisible force from the ground, above the great pack of startled coyotes. John noticed that the beasts were looking up and many of them yelping as they ran into the rubble of rocks beyond the cliff. There wasn't time to see how many fled, for he and Hilda were quickly sucked up into the open port by invisible tractor rays, the metal hull clanged shut, and they were thrown roughly on a hard floor. John had a blurred vision of a circle of white, long-bearded faces, on slender bodied old men, before a gleaming mirror-like reflector dazzled him and he felt his hold on reality slipping. He struggled to his feet and reached for one of the old men, managing to seize a tangled silky beard before he fell forward into darkness.

* * * * *

They came to consciousness lying on soft low mattresses in a room softly illuminated with blue light. The air was slightly overwarm and humid but comfortable. They were dressed in skin fitting, silvery garments, partly transparent with skirts of blue, velvety cloth. Their hair was wrapped in transparent turbans.

Hilda recovered enough to blush uncomfortably and curl back on the couch. "I feel as if--I were wrapped in cellophane," she faltered.

"You're swell," gulped John gallantly, "an improvement in fact. I suppose they had to fumigate our own clothes or something. This superheated air suggests that our captors are old and delicate."

"The cellophane idea makes me wonder if we're wrapped up like rolls, or something, from the baker for--dinner."

"Meaning cannibalism? This kind of a room was never made by primitives, Honey."

"That's right--It's like a dream place." She rose up on her elbow again to look around.

There were no windows. It was utterly bare of ornament. John walked slowly around the circle of their walls. The only door opened to a tiny bath cubicle. Blue light, reflected upward from the juncture of floor and wall, cast no shadow, indicating its perfect diffusion. He paused with an exclamation.

"What is it, John?"

"Here's some kind of a control button, with symbols carved over it. Their language perhaps. I wonder what it's for."

"Better leave it alone--I'd sort of like to catch up with myself--"

But, at that moment, the button clicked in of its own accord--and one side of the wall glowed with rose colored light. A large screen showed an old man half reclining on a purple couch, dressed in a white, silver trimmed robe. He was smiling at them as he turned away from some recording device into which he spoke. His face was incredibly old, and wrinkled in a fine network of lines. His skin, strangely, seemed of some soft, young texture. The bones of his cheeks were prominent, and his hands were delicately pink white. He moved gracefully, and in leisurely fashion, from the couch to a small black box at the side of the room, and pressed a button. On a small screen in the old man's room, visible on their own wall, began to flash words in red script.

"Say! That's in German," cried John. "I don't read German, but I know the script."

"And that looks like Chinese--"

"Ah--that's better--"

In red square blocked letters on the little screen were the words in English, "WE MEAN YOU NO HARM."

The old man observed their excitement, and stopped the flow of the screen so that the message steadied. Then, under that sentence, appeared another "BE PATIENT WE MUST FINISH TRANSCRIBING YOUR LANGUAGE. IT WILL TAKE A FEW MORE TIME. EAT--SLEEP--REST."

The screen on their room faded out. The old man's face was gone. And through a slit near the floor of their room slid a tray of food, moved by some invisible force on small rollers, over toward the mattress where Hilda was still sitting.

"Oh Boy--food! And could I use some--"

"Wait until you're properly served, Mister."

She spread out the pale yellow cloth on the floor and arranged the food in orderly fashion. It was moulded into various patterns and colors, and was firm enough to eat with their fingers, which was fortunate as there were no eating utensils. They both ate hungrily and were nearly finished when soft music came into the air from some invisible source. It was hauntingly mingled in composition, but all vaguely familiar, drifting from the limited scale of the Orient to waltzes and furious Russian symphonies. The hill billy band that finally played seemed oddly out of harmony and yet aroused a nostalgia for home in their hearts.

"I feel like a nap--" said Hilda, yawning.

"So do I--wonder if there was a drug--in--that--milk."

It seemed only a moment to John that he had been sleeping, but his muscles were rested, his weariness was gone, and he felt invigorated. He looked for his watch, but it was not there. In fact there were no pockets. Then he remembered!

Hilda was splashing around in the bath cubicle, and singing.

"Hello, Sleepy!" she said, emerging and adjusting a strap in the strange silvery clothing.

"So--it wasn't a dream--"

"No, and hurry up with your bath. Your head is tousled. Maybe they'll feed us again. I don't want to eat opposite that mop."

"Yes, dear--" he said, attempting scorn, but only achieving a new tenderness.

She looked down, and instinctively dropped her crippled arm behind her back. The glove was no longer fresh, but stained from the desert, though wrinkled where she had tried to launder it. Under the transparency of her sleeve the ugly stump of her arm revealed itself discordantly. With a forced gaiety, she crossed the room and pretended to hunt for their breakfast. But it didn't come.

"Maybe they don't know our eating habits," remarked John glumly, as he plastered his unruly locks with his hands. "Wish I had a comb."

* * * * *

At last the slide opened in the wall and a tray came in, but on it, instead of food, was a book. Hilda seized it eagerly, crying, "It's a lexicon. See, here are the English words, and the signs for their language. The ink still smells fresh. They must have just printed it."

"What's the sign for ham and eggs?"

"Maybe we'd better try just 'food'--can't be too particular."

"What'll we write with?"

"Here's a kind of pencil, but no lead on it."

"Look, Hilda, there's a new white spot on the wall. Let me have that pencil thing." A blue line followed his tracing, and it glowed with a faint edging of fire.

"Some kind of a transfer current I suppose. Well, here goes--Let me see that food character."

"Here it is--just a round circle, with three dots at the side."

"Fine, Sister, here's hoping the dots mean eggs and that you get one of them."

"Pig!"

There were no eggs, but the little round cakes, appearing a moment later, proved delicious. A warm liquid in the crystal cups was almost a substitute for coffee. In fact, it proved much more stimulating.

After breakfast, John boldly pressed the visi-screen control. This time, instead of one old man, they faced a group of them around a green table, covered with lexicons, other books, and charts.

They recognized the spokesman who stepped forward into a close up perspective and began the conversation. "I hope you will forgive our seeming--" he paused. "Aloofness," supplied one of the other men, after hastily examining a lexicon. "That's right, our aloofness, but we are products of an artificial world. Your primitive contagion would be dangerous for us.

"I am also sorry," he went on, "that the conversation must be one direction until you learn more of our language, and we can pronounce more finely and hear. We have had difficulty even in assembling visual information about you. There was a collection of Earth photographs which we have magnified so that we could read your street signs. And the first expedition left a few scraps of paper. We had never considered it worth learning your way of speech before."

He paused, as if this part of the address had been memorized. Then he continued slowly, with hesitations and stumbling pronunciation. "We are trying to vocalize your words from those we have heard you speak--but our ears are poor--I mean inadequate." The other old men rustled charts and books and nodded at his correction. The address went on with more pauses and confirmations. Occasionally John had to write "repeat" on the wall chart. The Martians spoke with a strange sibilant hiss, and accents followed a different system, changing even common words enough to make it difficult to understand. In general, this was their explanation....

"Our scientists discovered your world several thousands years ago, but as it was a more primitive one, progressing slowly, they could not see any advantage in making contact. The one danger to us here, a lack of water, could not be remedied by travel to the Blue Planet. Instead, our wise ones devoted themselves to developing an underground civilization, free from the extremes of temperature on our planet. Atomic energy had given us all the heat and power we needed, and in a short time we were able to devote our energies to aesthetics, as soon as the physical necessities were satisfied."

"Each year the flooding polar caps supply us with natural vegetation along the water channels and in the marshes. These plants are harvested and chemically treated for efficiency of use. When the last moisture fails, the remnant of our people must migrate, but that will not be for several of our generations. It may surprise you to know that each of us is over two hundred years old, that is of your years. Our younger men spend fifty years in attaining an education, under very sheltered conditions. We do not wish to disturb them by curiosity about you--at least not for the present. Our women live a very specialized existence, as the birth rate is low, and it takes nearly all of their energy to protect young life and to keep our population from diminishing too rapidly."

* * * * *

John thumbed feverishly through the little book until he found the word for "space ship" then another for "Earth--" He puzzled for other words and wrote, "many years--last--not see--" It was incoherent but these old men had an uncanny way of guessing context of meaning.

"You mean, why did previous expeditions not find us? We took care of that, since we knew, long before they started, that they were coming. Much of the life on your world is transmitted to us by devices your mind have not yet dreamed. When the ships came we covered--no, camouflaged--our entrances. We were not discovered. You two have been brought here for a medical reason--"

John wrote, "question."

"Yes, we want to know about your woman companion's arm, and about the others in the cave--what has happened on earth--?"

The old man's face peered, suddenly eager, closer up to the screen. His eyes watered, and the calm manner was gone. His thin fingers tapped a lexicon nervously.

Hilda pointed to words in her lexicon and John wrote, "cripple--colony."

The old scientist grew pale and he staggered a bit as he turned to the others. Their white beards bent in an almost comical cluster over the little green table and bobbed excitedly. Their hissing syllables were shrill. Suddenly the screen blanked out.

"Well, what do you know about that?"

"John, do you remember what they said about 'primitive contagion'?"

"Yes, I get it--You mean they are afraid."

"Of many things--other colonies to follow this--their eventual discovery--diseases! Perhaps it is partly that we cripples offend their sense of beauty--"

"Forget it, Kid, you've got more pep in one hand than any girl I ever knew had in two."

She smiled at him gratefully, before she turned away, and then her voice was still gay--"That isn't what you say to all the girls--Well, what next?"

John stood with his feet apart as if alert to danger. He combed his fingers through the already tousled mop of reddish brown hair. After a moment of silence, he said, "Do you suppose that will make a difference in their attitude toward us?"

"Perhaps not--after all, most of the trouble came with the ship. They are not angry with us--We'll just have to wait and see."

It wasn't a long wait. A larger opening in the wall allowed the sliding entrance of a small glass-like dome, containing their Earth clothes and oxygen helmets on a low bench inside.

The old scientist who had been talking to them before, appeared again on the screen. He ordered, impersonally, "Dress yourselves, lift the cover, and then strap yourselves to the seat inside. We are going to take you for a trip. The dome is to protect us from you."

"Isn't much else to do, is there?" said John hopelessly.

"Let's assume they are friendly, until they prove otherwise."

Their tiny glass cage slid away down a dimly lighted corridor, with no visible means of power, and clicked into place in the cabin of the same round aircraft that had captured them. Several of the old men were seated in padded and swinging chairs which moved rhythmically at moments of unsteadiness. They, too, were strapped in place, as if ready for any violent action of the ship, and the arc of each swaying chair was limited.

In an hour they were hovering over the desert area again. Heavy sunset clouds were rich in coloring. The desert sands were whirling into a gathering dusk and the whole sky was overcast. The speed slowed, and John recognized the familiar rock and cliff entrance where they had been captured. At last their small ship settled down on the sand and the little cage slid out gently on the hard sand.

"Maybe they're just going to let us go, John."

"I hope not--I want to know more about them."

A crackling and distorted voice spoke electrically in their ears, "Please get out and walk quietly toward the entrance. We mean you no harm. Your friends are coming--"

"Well, that's that!" John rolled back the cover and straddled over the edge, turning to help Hilda follow him.

They gasped as the intense cold of sunset struck through their thin clothing. Then they turned and ran toward the metal door, leaning into the wind and sheltering their hands from the blowing sand. The door slid open and Doctor Smithson came running toward them with fur coats in his arms. Behind him walked Mary, the nurse, bundled up and smiling. Even more slowly, old Jake Adams hobbled on crutches. Doctor Smithson cast uneasy glances at the strange airship, but came steadily toward them. Just as he was helping John into a coat, the lower port of the Mars ship opened and that square black projection came thrusting through. John saw it and cried, disgustedly, "Don't be afraid. This won't hurt--We're going for a ride upstairs!..."

His last words were spoken from a distance of ten feet above ground.... In a few minutes, the five of them were crowded into that little glass cage, and sat staring at the old men in resentment. Jake had lost his crutches and lay, in a ridiculous posture, on the floor, his two wooden pegs spread out at a wide angle. He scowled truculently at the old men.

III

It was warm in the round Mars ship and cage. In a few minutes, they were sailing into rapidly falling darkness. John lost all sense of direction. At last, blue lights flashed in the cold night above a dim floor of thick plant life, and their little ship slid sidewise to a stop inside a massive hillside door. They could not understand why Jake was rayed into unconsciousness and taken away, before they were sent sliding and unattended down the long corridor to their former room. There were now four of the low beds and a fresh tray of food had been prepared. They ate, and fell into drugged sleep.

Life went on quietly, back in this observation cage, nearly a week. Every morning they were questioned for an hour or more by the council of scientists through the wall screen. Hilda persuaded John to be as co-operative as possible, hoping that the old men's intentions were still kind. The questions were especially centered about details of health on earth, medicine, eugenic control, the number of sick people, and about the possibility of future colonies.

Mary and Dr. Smithson proved fascinating companions in the long idle hours, with a dramatic story to tell of their recent trip to Venus. Earth's first expedition to that world in 1978 had not yet been reported in the public press.

It was on the sixth day that they saw Jake Adams again. He came sliding in on a rolling stretcher, propelled by unseen forces, and his eyes were closed.

Mary gasped, "Look at his legs!"

John stepped quickly to the stretcher and ran his hands over Jake's body, then stood and cried. "They're warm--and alive!"

During their brief wait in the cave they had seen the old soldier stumping around on two wooden legs, supplemented by crutches. He was spry and cheerful for a man nearly seventy years old, and his hands and arms were abnormally strong. Hilda had been indignant that the army should neglect this old hero and fail to provide him with suitable artificial limbs. Her own handicap made her feel a special sympathy, and she had stopped to talk with the old fellow briefly. He told her that he had been wounded in the battle against the Japs in the Marshall Islands during 1944.

Now the old soldier lay, with a slightly flushed face, breathing quietly, and in place of the wooden pegs were _two perfectly formed legs wrapped in silvery transparent leggings_!

As they watched, the old man slowly awakened, but lay still as if dazed. Then an expression of alarm or amazement began to open his eyes. He moved his toes, and then lay back muttering, "No, it's just another of them nerve tricks--the way I used to feel about the weather!" But he slowly raised his head, as if fascinated. When his eyes focused on the new feet, he snapped suddenly to a sitting position and reached for his ankles.

"I can feel! I can feel--They're alive!" he screamed.

Then he saw John bending over him, and the others in the background. "How did you do it--What's happened--Am I dreaming?"

"No, old chap, it's real enough, but the old ones must have done it for you."

A high, thin voice interrupted--"We're glad you are pleased."

They whirled toward the wall screen. Old Senegar faced them from his purple couch, leaning wearily on an elbow--"It was quite a bit of trouble, but interesting."

John fumbled through his lexicon and found the word for "how?" and scribbled it on the white wall plate.

"We thought you would want to know--Sit down, it will take a few minutes. I will try to be elementary in my discussion."

They squatted in a half circle on the floor, all except Jake--who refused to sit, and teetered around feeling the muscles of his new legs, jumping, stretching, rocking on his toes, but listening all the while.