Part 2

Tate stood up, his face very white. "Tell me one thing," he begged. "Will our two races ever live together in amity?"

The Martian lowered his head. "That is for unborn generations." He looked at Tate again and aimed the energy gun. "You are a brave man," he said. "I am sorry."

Syme saw all his hopes of treasure and glory go glimmering down the sights of the Martian's Benson gun, and suddenly the pent-up rage in him exploded. Too swiftly for his intention to be telegraphed, before he knew himself what he meant to do, he hurled himself bodily into the Martian.

* * * * *

It was like tangling with a draft horse. The Martian was astonishingly strong. Syme scrambled desperately for the gun, got it, but couldn't tear it out of the Martian's fingers. And all the time he could almost feel the Martian's telepathic call for help surging out. He heard the swift pad of his followers coming across the cavern.

He put everything he had into one mighty, murderous effort. Every muscle fiber in his superbly trained body crackled and surged with power. He roared his fury. And the gun twisted out of the Martian's iron grip!

He clubbed the prostrate leader with it instantly, then reversed the weapon and snapped a shot at the nearest Martian. The creature dropped his lance and fell without a sound.

The next instant a ray blinked at him, and he rolled out of the way barely in time. The searing ray cut a swath over the leader's body and swerved to cut down on him. Still rolling, he fired at the holder of the weapon. The gun dropped and winked out on the floor.

Syme jumped to his feet and faced his enemies, snarling like the trapped tiger he was. Another ray slashed at him, and he bent lithely to let it whistle over his head. Another, lower this time. He flipped his body into the air and landed upright, his gun still blazing. His right leg burned fiercely from a ray-graze, but he ignored it. And all the while he was mowing down the massed natives in great swaths, seeking out the ones armed with Bensons in swift, terrible slashes, dodging spears and other missiles in midair, and roaring at the top of his powerful lungs.

At last there were none with guns left to oppose him. He scythed down the rest in two terrible, lightning sweeps of his ray, then dropped the weapon from blistered fingers.

He was gasping for breath, and realized that he was losing air from the seared-open right leg of his suit. He reached for the emergency kit at his side, drawing in great, gasping breaths, and fumbled out a tube of sealing liquid. He spread the stuff on liberally, smearing it impartially over flesh and fabric. It felt like liquid hell on the burned, bleeding leg, but he kept on until the quick-drying fluid formed an airtight patch.

Only then did he turn, to see Tate flattened against the wall behind him, his hands empty at his sides. "I'm sorry," Tate said miserably. "I could have grabbed a spear or something, but--I just couldn't, not even to save my own life. I--I halfway hoped they'd kill both of us."

Syme glared at him and spat, too enraged to think of diplomacy. He turned and strode out of the cavern, carrying his right leg stiffly, but with his feral, tigerish head held high.

He led the way, wordlessly, back to the wrecked sand car. Tate followed him with a hangdog, beaten air, as though he had just found something that shattered all his previous concepts of the verities in life, and didn't know what to do about it.

Still silently, Syme refilled his oxygen tank, watched Tate do the same, and then picked up two spare tanks and the precious black suitcase and handed one of the tanks to Tate. Then he stumped around to the back of the car and inspected the damage. The cable reel, which might have drawn them out of the gully, was hopelessly smashed. That was that.

* * * * *

They started off down the canyon, Syme urging the slighter man to a fast clip, even though his leg was already stiffening. When they finally reached a climbable spot, Syme was limping badly and Tate was obviously exhausted.

They clambered wearily out onto the level sands again just as the small, blazing sun was setting. "Luck," grunted Syme. "Our only chance of getting near the city is at night." He peered around, shading his eyes from the sun's glare with a gauntleted hand. "See that?"

Following his pointing finger, Tate saw a faint, ephemeral arc showing above a line of low hills in the distance. "Kal-Jmar," said Syme.

Tate brightened a little. His body was too filled with fatigue for his mind to do any work on the problem that was baffling him, and so it receded into the back of his mind.

"Kal-Jmar," whispered Syme again.

There was no twilight. The sun dropped abruptly behind the low horizon, and darkness fell, sudden and absolute. Syme picked up the extra oxygen tank and the suitcase, checked his direction by a wrist compass, and started toward the hills. Tate rose wearily to his feet and followed again.

Two hours later, Kal-Jmar stood before them. They had wormed their way past the sentry posts, doing most of the last two hundred meters on all fours. With skill and luck, and with Syme's fierce, burning determination, they had managed to escape detection--and there they were. Journey's end.

Tate stared up at the shining, starlight towers in speechless admiration. If the people who had built this city had been decadent, still their architecture was magnificent. The city was a rhapsody made solid. There was a sense of decay about it, he thought, but it was the decay of supreme beauty, caught at the very verge of dissolution and preserved for all eternity.

"Well?" demanded Syme.

Tate started, shaken out of his dream. He looked down at the black suitcase, a little wonderingly, and then pulled it to him and opened it.

Inside, carefully wrapped in shock-absorbing tissue, was a fragile contrivance of many tubes and wires, and a tiny parabolic mirror. It had a brand new Elecorp 210 volt battery, and it needed every volt of that tremendous power. Tate made the connections, his hands trembling slightly, and set it up on a telescoping tripod. Syme watched him closely, his big body tensed with expectation.

The field was before them, shimmering faintly in the starlight. It looked unsubstantial as the stuff of dreams, but both men knew that no power man possessed, unless it was the thing Tate held, could penetrate that screen.

Tate set the mechanism up close to the field, aimed it very delicately, and closed a minute switch. After a long second, he opened it again.

Nothing happened.

The screen was still there, as unsubstantial and as solid as ever. There was no change.

* * * * *

Tate looked worriedly at his wiring, a deep wrinkle appearing between his pale, serious eyes. Syme stood stock-still but quivering with repressed energy, scowling like a thundercloud.

"It must be capable of working," Tate told himself querulously. "The Martians knew--they wouldn't have tried to stop us if--Wait a minute." He paced back and forth, biting his lip. Syme watched him with catlike eyes, clenching and unclenching his great fists.

Tate paused. "I think I have it," he said slowly. "I haven't enough power to hetrodyne the whole screen, although that's theoretically possible. But there must be weaker portions of the field--doors--set to open on the impact of a beam like this one. But I've only got power enough for two more tries. Jones, where would you put an entrance, if you'd built Kal-Jmar?"

Syme's eyes widened, and he stared around slowly. "A thousand years ago?" he muttered. "Two thousand? These hills were raised in five hundred. We can't go by topography.

"In front of one of the main arteries, then. But there are dozens, no one larger than the other. Did they have dozens of doors?"

"Maybe," said Tate. He pointed to the right, where the fairy towers of Kal-Jmar swept aside to leave a broad avenue. "It's the nearest--as good as any other."

They walked over to it in silence, and in silence Tate set up his equipment once more. He shifted it from side to side, squinting, until he had it lined up exactly on the center of the avenue. Then he took a long breath, and closed the switch again.

The switch came up. Syme stared with fierce eagerness, eyes ablaze. For a moment there was nothing, and then--

Tate clutched the big man's arm. "Look!" he breathed.

Where the ray from Tate's machine had impinged, a faintly-glowing spot of violet radiance! As they watched it widened, dilating into a perfect circle of violet, enclosing nothingness. The door was opening.

"It worked," Tate said softly. "It worked!"

Syme shook off his grip impatiently, put his hand to the gun in the holster of his suit. Tate was still watching, fascinated. "Look," he said again. "The color is changing slightly, falling down the spectrum. I think that's a warning signal. When it reaches red, the door will close." He moved toward the widening door, like a sleepwalker.

"Wait," Syme said hoarsely. "You forgot the machine."

Tate turned, said, "Oh yes," and walked back. Then he saw the gun in Syme's hand. His jaw dropped slightly, but he didn't say anything. He just stood there, looking dumbly from the gun to Syme's dark face.

Syme shot him carefully in the chest.

He dropped like a rag doll, but Syme's aim had been bad. He wasn't dead yet. He rolled his eyes up, like a child. His lips moved. In spite of himself, Syme bent forward to listen.

"_You'll be_--_sorry_," Tate said, and died.

Air was sighing out through the widening hole in the screen. Syme straightened and smiled tolerantly. For a moment, he had been unreasonably afraid of what Tate was about to say. Some detail he had forgotten, perhaps, something that would trap him now that Tate, the man who knew the answers, was dead. But--he'd be sorry!

For what? Another dead fool?

He gathered up the delicate mechanism in one arm, and, filling his deep lungs, stepped forward through the opening.

* * * * *

The towers of dead Kal-Jmar loomed over him in the dusk as he strode like a conqueror down the long-deserted avenue. The city was full of the whisperings of Kal-Jmar's ancient wraiths, but they touched only a corner of his mind. He was filled to overflowing with the bright, glowing joy of conquest. The city was his!

His boots trod an avenue where no foot had fallen these untold eons, yet there was no dust. The city was bright and furbished waiting for him. He was intoxicated. _The city was his!_

There was a gentle ramp leading upward, and Syme followed it, breathing in the manufactured air of his pressure suit like wine. All around him, the city blazed with treasures beyond price.

_It was his!_

The ramp led to a portal set in the side of a shining needle of a building. Syme strode up to the threshold, and the door dilated for him. He stepped inside; the door closed and a soft light glowed on.

There was air here: good, breathable air. A tiny zephyr of it was blowing from some hidden source against his body. Greatly daring, he unfastened the helmet of his suit and flung it back. He breathed in a lungful of it. God, but it was good after that canned stuff! It was a little heady; it made his head swim--but it was good air, excellent air!

He looked around him, measuring, assessing for the first time. This room alone was worth a fortune. There was platinum; in ornaments, set into the walls, in furniture. That would be enough to buy the little things--a new ship, or perhaps even immunity back on Earth. But that was as nothing to the rest of it, the things three worlds would clamor for--the artifacts, the record books, the machines!

He strode about the room, building plan on grandiose plan. He could take back only a little with him at first; but he could return again and again, with Tate's mechanism and new batteries. But he'd explore the city thoroughly before he left. Somewhere there must be weapons. An invincible weapon, perhaps, that a man could carry in his hand. Perhaps even a perfect body screen. With that he wouldn't have to steal away from Mars on a freighter, hiding his loot and his greatness in a dingy engine room. He could walk into a Triplanet ship and order its captain to take him wherever he chose to go!

* * * * *

He stood then in the middle of the room, arms akimbo, his head swimming with glory--and remembered suddenly that he was hungry. He felt in the container of his helmet, extracted a couple of food tablets, and popped them into his mouth.

They would take care of his needs, but they didn't satisfy his hunger. No food tablets for him after this! Steaks, wines, souffles.... His mouth began to water at the very thought.

And then the robot rolled on soundless wheels into the room. Syme whirled and saw it only when it was almost upon him. The thing was remarkably lifelike, and for a moment he was startled.

But it was not alive. It was only a Martian feeding-machine, kept in repair all these millennia by other robots. It was not intelligent, and so it did not know that its masters would never return. It did not know, either, that Syme was not a Martian, or that he wanted a steak, and not the distilled liquor of the _xopa_ fungus, which still grew in the subterranean gardens of Kal-Jmar. It was capable only of receiving the mental impulse of hunger, and of responding to that impulse.

And so when Syme saw it and opened his mouth in startlement, the robot acted as it had done with its degenerate, slothful masters. Its flexible feeding tube darted out and half down the man's gullet before he could move to avoid it. And down Syme Rector's throat poured a flood of _xopa_-juice, nectar to Martians, but swift, terrible death to human beings....

Outside, the last doorway to Kal-Jmar closed forever, across from the cold body of Tate.