Part 5

The pantheocratic creatures of ancient Mars were far more diverse than their counterparts on Earth--and of course utterly exotic. Here were creatures with two, three and four heads, with innumerable appendages, with reproductive organs so weird as to defy comment or moral reaction.

* * * * *

One feature Lynne noted at once. Like their Asiatic counterparts on Earth, they seemed to belong to a theocratic rather than a scientific culture--yet the buildings themselves were utterly beyond the creative techniques of even an interplanetary human culture.

She said, "Are the other towers of Mars like this?"

"In general," replied the Eurasian girl. "The aborigines seem to have been mostly a philosophic sort. Perhaps they became so when their planet began to die. All that have survived are such low life-orders as the _czanworm_ and sand-_lurtonk_. Unless, of course, the invisible ones are natives. I for one am inclined to believe they are."

"So does Rolf Marcein," said Lynne.

"You love him, don't you?" Lao asked matter-of-factly.

"I'm beginning to be afraid so," said Lynne as frankly.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," replied the other. "I love Revere, you know--and I don't expect to see him ever again."

"I know," said Lynne, feeling her companion's unhappiness like a knife. She pulled the parka over her head although it was not the cool Martian afternoon breeze that was making her cold. She said, "It must have been very difficult for you--what you had to do to help get me here. I don't wonder if you hate me."

"I don't hate you, Lynne," said Lao. "But if you fail on this job I shall. I should not enjoy sacrificing Revere for nothing."

"I won't fail," Lynne told her with more assurance than she felt. "After all, I have Revere to think of--and you--_and_ Rolf."

"I encourage myself with similar thoughts," said Lao. "Come--let us go on inside."

It was like entering a pagan cathedral. The tower in which Lynne's post was bore heavy over-marks of human habitation. Probably, she thought, it had long since been stripped by the archeologists of any objects of historical or cultural value. Save for its crystaline flying buttresses it might almost have been an Earth skyscraper.

But, outside of a few pieces of scaffolding, where restoration work or study was evidently in progress, this immense building had been left untouched by the new inhabitants of the red planet. Thanks probably to the thinness and dryness of the atmosphere, brilliant murals had retained their coloring intact. Yet in numerous patches the colors seemed to fade into neutral tints at variance with the brightness of the rest.

"Here." Lao took from a table, on which tools and other instruments had been laid, an odd-looking stereoptical device, handed it to Lynne, adding, "Adjust it and you'll get the full effect. A lot of their work was done below the human color-scale, in the infra-red."

Lynne gasped when she studied the hitherto drab patches in the murals through the double-eye-piece of the viewer. She saw strange beings, hauntingly near-human, engaged in fantastic gambols. Multi-faceted eyes leered out at her from the Capuchin heads of twin-bodied smaller creatures of a boldness that almost made her flinch. And there were endlessly varied poses of both sorts of beings....

"Rather disturbing, isn't it?" said Lao. "I didn't bring you out here just to see the sights, Lynne. From what little your brother was able to tell me, the odd little games those creatures are playing are very like those his invaders hinted at."

"You mean," said Lynne with a shudder, "that the zombies or whatever they are looked like that before they lost their bodies?"

"Or before they became invisible," said Lao quietly. "The near-humans seem to have been the dominant species. These others--the twin-bodied monkeylike things--seem to have been their pets."

"What disgusting games they played!" said Lynne. "They sound a lot like...." She hesitated, realising she was about to repeat Lao's remark.

"Exactly," said Lao.

They walked back to the settlement in silence. Both girls had a great deal to ponder over. When they got there Lynne settled down to listen to some musicrolls in the recreation building and Lao left to tend to her various executive functions.

Lynne's new life on Mars passed without notable incident for another week, Earth-time. She was beginning to adjust to days and nights almost twice as long as those of her home planet, to the small cool sun, to the use of her oxyrespirator whenever her lungs felt empty.

She was even beginning to enjoy the give-and-take of the neo-pioneer society of Barkutburg. Yet loneliness continued to gnaw at her, loneliness for the twin she had known such a short time, loneliness for Rolf, at whose activities she could only guess. And some of her guesses were in lurid vidarcolor.

Late one afternoon, in the recreation building, the musicroll was playing a fine concerto for theraharp by Liston-Lutz, the most important human composer yet to emerge on Mars. Back on Earth his music had seemed to Lynne to be both glaringly dissonant and a trifle decadent. Here on Mars she understood it. He was writing of the red planet itself, of a world that had all but died and was now having its life renewed through lusty Earth-pioneers.

"Like it?" one of the engineers enjoying an off-shift rest asked Lynne over a colafizz globe.

"Very much. It--fits," said Lynne. She was still smiling at him when the headache came back--with a sharpness and depth of discomfort she had never felt on Earth. For a full minute or two she thought she was going to be physically sick from the pain.

She managed to get up and move toward her quarters before anyone noticed she was feeling badly. It would never do to have them worried about _her_--after all, they had enough to worry about. Besides, she knew what was the matter. Revere was in New Samarkand and they were doing something to him, something that might easily either kill him or drive him permanently insane.

VII

Lynne lay down on her simple cot and tried to flash a personal message through to Revere. But all she got was an increase of agony that almost blacked her out.

Then she tried to reach Rolf Marcein. Although she lacked the advantage of being high in her tower-post, the emotional urgency of the moment more than compensated for this adverse factor. She got through to him quickly, discovered his mind was open. So intense was his concentration that he seemed momentarily unaware of her probing.

He was sitting in a hospital room, an operating room, and Revere lay in front of him, stretched out on a surgical table. Sight of him made Lynne feel another wave of nausea. An anestherator had been attached to his nose and mouth and an alert nurse stood by the regulator. Revere's temples had been slit by twin incisions, from which tubes were attached to an odd and complex piece of machinery that seemed to support a visual-grid.

Rolf Marcein was digging at her twin mentally, at the same time seeking to receive whatever messages came from his tortured brain. Lynne could read Rolf's thoughts clearly as he waved to her twin, _Their shape--you of all of us must have received some vision of their appearance_. Crehut, _Fenlay, we've got to know how they think of themselves!_

* * * * *

Then came a chaotic jumble of answering thoughts from Revere's damaged brain. And even as she suffered sympathetic anguish Lynne understood that with full anesthesia the mind itself would be dulled so that no messages would be possible. It was a hideous moment.

_I'm trying, Rolf--I'm trying...._ In spite of the agony he was undergoing Lynne's brother was beginning to formulate his thoughts. Little by little a picture was building itself on the screen. It was a wispy fragmentary picture, like a vidarscreen suffering from old-fashioned television "ghosts." The figures he projected looked wispy, blurred, repeated side by side in overlapping focus.

Lynne noted that Rolf and the alert attendants present were using stereoscopic devices, forced herself to see through the mind of one of them, to learn the impressions they were getting of the infra-red portions of the picture.

It was like some of the images Lynne had seen earlier on the Martian mural--but all balled up. It looked like one of the near-human dominant species, yet had the multiple body of one of their disgusting pets. Its antics were even more suggestive than the mural.

Lynne quickly re-transferred herself. She remembered all at once what Tony Willis had told her about women being better able to resist the aliens than men. They were incredible, impossible, she thought, yet there was a hint of intense pleasure in their....

All at once she lost the entire image in a flash of worry, confusion and finally frustration. Yet her headache persisted, grew worse, and she got a definite impression that Revere was dying, that Rolf was mercilessly goading him on to destruction. Outraged, she tried to key furious thoughts in Rolf's direction--but so greatly was she herself suffering that she was unable to focus her powers.

Then, abruptly, the agony was over. Whatever had happened was finished, done with. Lynne sat up on her bed, feeling limp and sore all over, as if she had taken a physical beating. She ran an acti-comb through her blond hair, freshened up her looks generally, though she felt like the proverbial wrath of Satan, went out to the recreation room. At the moment she needed human company.

Through a window she saw that the sun was low in the west, looked in awe at the brilliant colors of the Martian sunset. Thanks to the thinner atmosphere and its high impregnation of dust, the brilliance far exceeded anything on Earth, even though the sun looked far-away and cold.

Someone offered her a colafizz, which she accepted gratefully. She tried to reach Revere but got only a wall of blankness. He was either unconscious--or dead, she decided. She didn't know whether to be relieved or grief-stricken at the prospect. True, Revere was her identical twin--yet she barely knew him, had no real close ties.

Then Lao appeared and under the artificial lighting of the chemilamps, Lynne was surprised to note how tired the Eurasio-Martian girl looked. She appeared thin enough to be blown away by the first breeze and there were deep purple circles under her slightly tilted black almond-eyes--yet the fingers that gripped her skinless cigarette were rock-steady.

She said, "They've done something to Revere, haven't they?"

"I think so," Lynne replied. "How did you know?"

"I felt it--until just lately," said Lao. "Most of us are somewhat telepathic on Mars. In moments of emotional stress especially."

"I'm not sure what's happened," Lynne told her. "They were trying to get him to record the shape of the invaders on a grid."

Lao's already pale face turned ashy-white. She whispered, "I _knew_ it! They've used the necro-recorder on him."

"What is it?" Lynne inquired.

"It's a Martian device--supposed to get impressions from the minds of dying men. It was used in the early days when we had more crime." There was sudden listlessness in her manner.

Lynne read her thoughts all too plainly. Lao Mei-O'Connell was stunned with grief. No one, it seemed, had ever survived treatment with this machine--survived to sanity at any rate. So Revere was dead--or as good as dead.

Lynne looked blankly at the Eurasian woman, utterly unable to think under the sudden shock of her words. And then, out of nowhere, came the fragment of a thought. _Don't give up the space-ship, Lynne--tell Lao I'm not completely batty yet._

It was Revere--unquestionably. Lynne tried to get him again but the blank wall was back. Only now, for some reason, it didn't seem so terrifying. She looked at Lao, who said, "You got something just now, Lynne. Was it...?"

Lynne nodded. "It was Revere. He--he asked me to tell you he's okay--not completely batty yet was the way he put it."

For a moment doubt blanked Lao's face. Then she smiled and looked on the verge of passing out herself. She said, "I might not have believed you, Lynne. But that phrase--it's--well, it's the way he would have said it."

"It was Revere," Lynne repeated. She looked at the chronometer above the door of the room, realized it was getting late. "I've barely got time to eat dinner," she said. "I don't want to miss my shift."

"No, you don't," the other told her. "There might be a message."

"Why not share it with me?" Lynne offered. "I could use some company."

Lao shook her head regretfully. "I've got a million things to do here," she said. Then, with the ghost of a smile lighting her exotic features, "Besides, I'd be afraid it might be bad news."

"I'll send you a message via the ground-communicator the second I learn anything," Lynne told her. Then the two women went in to dine at the head table. They were two islands of preoccupation amid the rough good-humored gaiety of the room. It was Saturday night at Barkutburg and there was going to be a dance.

Lynne found herself wondering at the morals of her new companions. They certainly didn't seem backward about sex--and the planet-wide dislike of privacy seemed to extend into even their most intimate personal relationships. Yet when Lynne thought about Janet Downes and certain other young men and women of the supposedly more civilized home planet, she decided the Martians were probably the nicer. At any rate they lived their emotional lives right out in the open.

For the first time since her first few days on the red planet she felt alone as she stepped off the uplift and entered her listening and message-post, high in the crystal tower. There was something frightening about sitting alone in this ruined building with the wind making its night sounds through the flying buttresses about her and what appeared like the whole of Mars stretched out in panorama before her.

It had looked desolate enough in the daylight. Now, with the stars blazing an enigmatic backdrop, it looked dark--and twice as desolate. Lynne found herself wondering what strange and fearsome caravans, what hideous battles and frightful plagues, had passed within view of her post. She seemed to see again the strange capering figures of the murals and bas-reliefs, and of the vision-grid she had viewed telepathically that afternoon in the distant hospital room at New Samarkand.

She told herself she was getting the jams, sent a tune-up message through to Cathayville. Though the telepathic operator should have been on duty there was no response. She reached out further to locate Revere, could not get to him, found Rolf. He told her, _Lay off, you_ marlet, _Lynne. You nearly jammed the works this afternoon._

_How is Revere?_ She was insistent.

_In coma--and hereafter use the proper channels, Lynne. You're supposed to key all messages for New Samarkand through Cathayville._

_Cathayville fails to answer_, she informed him.

_Cease sending at once! Cease sending at once, Lynne. If Cathayville is out it means.... Cease sending at once!_

_What does if mean?_ Lynne was unused to Martian directness, unused to taking peremptory orders, especially from a man. She had no intention of obeying before she was good and ready and....

Suddenly they were there, all around her. Thanks to having viewed the murals and the scene on the visual-grid that afternoon she was able to get some idea of their nature--or what had been their nature before a dying globe had driven them to seek the refuge of pure thought and feeling-forms.

First one of them came fluttering into the room, like some giant invisible moth, then came another and another and another until she lost count. They were gay for some reason and nibbled at her mind like moths nibbling at wool in a closet.

Worse, now that she had allowed them into her brain she was unable to drive them out. They darted away, amused, just beyond the reach of her questing probe. Then they came back, doing their strange dances and whispering outrageous suggestions. Alien or not they had definite erotic appeal, that awakened in Lynne responses she had never before suspected she possessed.

_What kind of creature_ am _I?_ she thought hysterically after a particularly ingenious lascivious mental embrace. And then, from some hidden source, she drew the strength to fight. She concentrated as never before in her life--even while working with the group-machine--and little by little began to win the battle with the aliens.

_You'll regret it--just let us have the loan of your body and we'll show you joys you have never dreamt of._ The thoughts pounded at her head with frail persistent powdery punches, that promised to win through sheer weight of numbers what they lacked in power.

But Lynne forced herself to think of kindly prosaic Mother Weedon. At once, seizing upon her thought, the invaders suggested all sorts of indecent sports for that mature lady. And the very idea of Mother Weedon indulging in such pursuits was so absurd that Lynne was unable to resist laughing out loud.

At once the creatures were gone. They were unable to stand the brain waves of ridicule. Lynne wondered about it. For the moment she felt carried aloft on a wave of high excitement at her victory. She tried to code through a message to Rolf Marcein through the proper Cathayville channel.

Cathayville had been attacked earlier in the evening and for awhile the telepath on duty had been forced to keep his mind resolutely shut, lest he fall prey to the enemy. Repulsed, they had moved on to Barkutburg and Lynne. She gave the message for relay, received information to the effect that Rolf Marcein's current whereabouts were unknown and that he was maintaining a closed mind to all messages and was therefore not to be reached.

Lynne felt terribly alone at this message and the invaders chose that moment, while her mind was still open, to return in greater force. This time Lynne found herself in actual pain. Their promise was no longer mere physical pleasure--although their abandonment of bodies had unquestionably led them to overstress the joys of the flesh. Now they promised pain unless Lynne were to give way to them, the sort of pain, a thousand times magnified, that she had felt sympathetically while Revere was enduring similar attack.

She tried to concentrate on Mother Weedon but the creatures were not to be fooled twice by the same ruse. This time it was their laughter that hurt. Lynne cast about wildly for help from any telepath within mental reach, lest she actually surrender body and mind to their control. She even tried to reach Lao Mei-O'Connell but the Eurasian woman was not telepathic enough to respond to the appeal.

Then, as she was about to give up, support reached her. Revere was sending to her, helping her to steady herself. She could sense his complete exhaustion, felt concern for him even while she accepted gratefully his mental powers of assistance. Only such a relationship as theirs, she realised, could cope with the blanketing torment of the invaders.

He was telling her something, that Rolf and the others had compiled some sort of error that afternoon from the vision-grid. The thought ran, _They think they know what the creatures are now but they don't. Even I don't. My images were mixed. They are not the dominant near-human species we thought but something else...._

Slowly his thoughts faded once more, unable to hold out against the fatigue that was plaguing him. But his hopeless message of defeat had sprung a fresh thought-train in Lynne's mind, one that so occupied her attention she was able to hold the invaders at bay almost without effort.

She recalled the murals--the near-human looking dominants and their pets with the disgusting dual bodies and vile games and many-faceted eyes. She thought back to what Revere had just said via thought-waves--_They are not the dominant near-human species we thought but something else...._

She saw once more, in clear memory-vision, the telepathic picture that had come to her of Rolf and Revere and the visual-grid. No wonder the pictures had looked foggy and full of "ghosts." In his mind's eye, limited by the fixed belief of Mars that only the dominant species could have survived in invisible form, Revere had tried to project these near-humans onto the screen.

Inwardly, subconsciously, he had known better. The dominant species had _not_ survived--on Mars at any rate. It was the horrid little creatures with the multi-faceted eyes and the capuchin-like heads and the dual bodies that had managed to shed their corporate existence and still maintain life of a sort. The masters had gone--the beasts remained....

Lynne felt a wave of delight at her discovery, realised it was more a result of her not having been inhibited by the traditions of Martian conditioning than through any genius of her own. For an instant she let down the bars of her mind--and the invaders, hovering unseen about her in the tower-room, came swarming in for their third and fiercest attack. They knew she had guessed their nature, were determined to prevent Lynne from making the discovery clear to other humans. For they too were telepathic.

VIII

This time they actually knocked Lynne to the floor of the tower-room. It was greater torment than she had ever endured in her life. Somehow she could sense the pattern behind its intensity, even while she was in the grip of a mental confusion that seemed to be burning out the very fibers of her brain.

This was the showdown, the decisive battle. Her being imported to Mars had been a step in the duel between the invisible aliens and the Communications Integration of the red planet, headed by Rolf Marcein and his telepaths and other department workers.

Unless the aliens were stopped and stopped now there would be no holding them. Earthfolk on Mars were becoming increasingly telepathic and telepaths were the prey of the invisible foes. Lynne _knew_ somehow, from the thoughts of the aliens, that they had been growing steadily in strength since the arrival of the Earthmen on their planet, that after a creepingly slow revival for decades they had finally snow-balled to sufficient power to make open attacks upon human brains laid bare for telepathic communication. They longed to renew the lost pleasures of the flesh through possession of human bodies.

Rolf and the scientists had learned something that afternoon from Lynne's twin, something about the nature and life-form of the attackers that had hitherto been concealed from them. They were moving to the attack themselves--and it was of vital import to them that Lynne should now get through with the message that would reveal this true nature.

She tried desperately to reach Rolf--and when this effort failed to think of Mother Weedon or even plump Tony Willis engaged in amorous sports--but the keynote of the alien attack had been altered from suggestion of sensation to outright mental attack. Instead of bribery or blackmail through pain, she was being given sledgehammer treatment.

But she _had_ to get her message through. Without her knowledge of the nature of the aliens Rolf would use faulty weapons against them, would lose precious time, time that might prove decisive for the survival of Earthmen on Mars.

Despairing, knowing she could not hold out much longer against the attack with her mind open, Lynne summoned reserve powers she did not know she possessed and swept the planet's surface with her thoughts, seeking Rolf. Her love for him, her fear for Revere's ultimate fate, her affection for her new comrades--all combined to help her make a final superhuman effort.

Yet for awhile it seemed that even this despairing try was destined to defeat. The floor was beginning to swim before her eyes when at last she reached Rolf, got him, lost him, got him again. With darkness closing about her she poured out her information, her theory, her surmises.