Part 9

It was about three miles to the fallen spaceship. It had toppled in the soft sand, narrowly missing an outcropping of rock. Perhaps the base of the craft had struck the rock, causing the ship to fall over. I noticed the rocks were highly polished, without any sign of stratification. Probably they were igneous. Sandstorms must have given them that fine polish--there was no water around to erode them and the polar glaciers didn't come this far south.

A little ridge prevented us from looking down into the canal, and we drove over it for our first close glimpse of this Martian phenomenon.

We weren't quite prepared for the grandeur of the view. The canal was at least five miles wide, possibly three miles deep. The walls were sometimes sheer, dropping thousands of feet, leveling off, then dropping again to form a series of gigantic terraces. In other spots landslides had crumbled the walls and a slope had been formed, rather steep, but not too precipitous for a Mars-car to negotiate.

"Let's go down!" I said.

I wanted to see the bottom of this majestic ditch. It was awe-inspiring, like the Grand Canyon, which it resembled in color, except that the walls were unstratified. These rocks had never been formed at the bottom of the sea, but had been baked by the internal fires of the planet. The last sea had dried before the canals had been cut. Although they were red, the color shaded from a brilliant scarlet to a brownish green at the bottom. There was vegetation down there, and something else, as precious as anything we'd seen thus far--water!

There wasn't too much of it; merely a tiny stream flowing in the center of the canal, its path straight, like the canal itself. "I hope it's fit to drink," I told Axel. "But it's gotta be. This canal wasn't made by forces of nature. Nor could it have been built by hands, beaks or paws. Only tools could have done it. And tools are used only by intelligent life."

Axel knew it. I didn't have to tell him. He was already reaching for the microphone. He snapped on the transmitter. "Dr. Spartan!" he called.

There was no immediate answer. Then Joel's voice came over the radio. "Spartan's not here, Axel. He's checking some of the scientific equipment. Anything important?"

"There's water down here in the canal," Axel said. "Does he want us to bring some?"

"Stand by," said Joel. "I'll ask."

We waited several minutes. Then Spartan's gruff voice came to us. "Of course bring water, you stupid fool. Is it fit to drink?"

"We don't know, sir," Axel said. His face flushed with the anger brought on by Spartan's words. "It's at the bottom of the canal."

"How long will it take to find out?"

"Thirty minutes to an hour," said Axel. "There's a steep incline to the bottom of the canal."

"Drake can do it," said Spartan. "You unload the rocket ship. Both of you can stow it aboard the Mars-car when Drake returns."

"Yes, sir." Axel switched off the radio. He turned to me and shook his head. "That guy doesn't know how to be civil, does he?"

"No," I said, "but what worries me is why he's letting me fetch the water. It must be because he thinks I'm more expendable than you and he figures there's danger down there."

"Martians?"

"Yes," I said. I checked my pistol. It was loaded.

Axel put on his helmet and got out of the locks. He disappeared into the rocket and presently reappeared with a five-gallon can, which he stowed in the locks. Then I started down one of the less steep inclines toward the canal.

It was rough and bumpy all the way down. Long before I reached the bottom, I noted that the vegetation which had looked so small from the top of the canal, was big and, in some cases, twenty or thirty feet tall.

There was a sort of timberline, about fifty feet above the level of the stream. Beyond that no vegetation grew. Below, the ground was covered with all kinds of plants. That is the best name I could give them. They really were vegetable, but they weren't like any plants I'd ever seen.

Some were tall, like trees. Others were round, hugging the ground and looking like brownish cabbages. There were some that looked like toadstools, except that they were branched and had several caps. Nearly all the plants were branched, and a few had flowers ranging from delicate pink to deep purple. None seemed to have leaves.

The largest looked like the Giant Cactus--the saguaro--of Arizona, although it was not spined.

I found a place where none of the plants looked big enough and tough enough to impede the Mars-car and headed for the stream, which now appeared to be about twenty feet wide and very stagnant. I picked up my mike to tell Axel what I saw.

Then my wheels touched the stem of a Martian saguaro shoot. I heard a whiplike crack and the whole car was enveloped in blue flame.

I pressed my foot down on the accelerator and rolled over the plant. Looking back, I saw that it had fallen across another plant, a woody, slender type that was jointed like bamboo. Both of the plants were smoking. Sparks were flying from the saguaro with all the deadliness of a high power line.

"What's the matter, Bill?" Axel called back.

I realized that I must have shouted with surprise at the display.

"These damned plants are charged with electricity, Axel. At least, one of 'em is. It just unloosed a bolt of lightning."

"The hell you say! Are you hurt?"

"No, the car grounded the charge," I said, "but it gave me one big scare."

"Think you can bring in a sample?" he asked.

"What the devil, Axel! Do you want me to be electrocuted?"

"It's just an idea I had. Remember, you'll be safe in your spacesuit. It'll ground the charge, just like the Mars-car did."

"Well, I'll try."

I put on my helmet and got out of the car. First I walked carefully toward the banks of the stream. I avoided the saguaro-type plants, but I noticed that when my boots struck shoots and stalks of some of the other plants, sparks flew. More than half of the plants had the characteristics of an electric eel.

The stream, while stagnant, was steaming. It wasn't hot water, for the temperature must have been in the low forties, but the atmospheric pressure was so light that water was evaporating in great quantities.

It was difficult to see how the stream was supplied with water, since it extended between two oases, both apparently fed by the same stream. And there didn't seem to be very much flow, although after watching the stream for a few minutes I decided it was moving in the direction of Major.

Then I saw tiny springs along the bank, sending little rivulets of water into the canal. It was so simple that I should have guessed where the water came from. It all came from the polar caps, of course, but the water flowed underground. The Martians had simply cut their canals to feed on the artesian supply from the North Pole.

I took the can Axel had put in the locks and filled it. Then I lugged it back to the Mars-car. After I stowed the water in the locks I walked gingerly back to the saguaro I had knocked down a few minutes before. It was somewhat charred, but the fire had gone out. Apparently the air would not support much combustion. Using my knife I gingerly cut off one of the branches. No sparks flew, but I noticed that instead of sap, there was a thick, pasty pulp inside. It was acid, because before I could wipe my knife on the ground, the substance had etched itself slightly into the surface.

I carried the stalk back to the car and tossed it into the locks. I'd stepped inside myself and had just closed the door when I saw movement to my right--on my side of the canal, in the direction of Solis Lacus Major.

A small creature, a little larger than a St. Bernard, was approaching the Mars-car. It looked like a dwarf camel, except that it was headless. And the hump wasn't a hump, but a shiny bump with a metallic luster.

I said it had no head, but it did have a mouth--gaping, grinning and full of pointed teeth. It had four legs and many arms--long, sinuous, many-jointed, with two fingers at the end--growing like a fringe around that bump in the middle of the creature's back.

Then I saw that the vegetation in its path was smoldering. The animal had only to move a small black thing that sprouted on a stem from the top of its hump, and whatever lay in front of it started to smoke.

"Axel!" I screamed into my helmet transmitter. "There's a Martian down here!"

No one had told me what it was and none of its acts had shown that it had intelligence, but some instinct told me this creature was the highest form of life on Mars.

_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.

_Chapter 14_

If Spartan was doing all the thinking, his mental processes were similar to Axel's, or perhaps Axel's stated ideas had taken root. He ordered Joel and me to get the ship ready for a lift-off, in the event of a Martian attack. This would cut down our exploration time on Mars, but we already had made a successful landing, and we had determined a few facts about life on Mars. Naturally, we still would try to push forward with our mission until the Martians drove us off. This would include the exploration of a considerable area of the planet in our vicinity. Later, while the Jehad was circling Mars, we would be able to take pictures of the rest of the surface features. Later expeditions, which would follow someday, could do the rest.

All of our supplies had been piled inside the moat and those we needed were taken into the headquarters rocket. Spartan and Axel dismantled the overturned rocket and obtained enough metal to construct a scaffold and ramp from the ground to the locks, eliminating the necessity of using a ladder to enter and leave the ship.

During the time we prepared our living quarters and defenses, all of us were engaged in the task of learning as much as we could about Mars. We made analysis of the soil and rocks, studied the weather and took countless photographs. Gail made a trip to the canal, unmolested by Martians, and brought back additional samples of Martian vegetation.

The water problem still confronted us. There were many things in the Martian water that could not be removed by distillation. However, the water was an excellent solvent and was used for our cleaning and sanitary purposes.

Spartan and Axel made a short trip to Lacus Minor, which was 150 miles west of our ship. Gail and I were left behind to analyze the plants she had found, while Dr. Joel was picking up rock samples along the rim of the canal.

We finished our analysis and when we'd cleaned up and disposed of the poisonous substances we had examined, I said, "It's time to do something about Spartan, Gail."

She gave me a sharp look. "I thought we decided the expedition came first, Bill Drake."