III-2
820 Words
“IT’S NICE AND WARM here now,” said Hugh, “but you’d ought to spend a winter here. An Arctic blizzard is a gentle breeze compared with the Martian pole in winter time. You don’t see the Sun for almost ten months and the mercury goes down to 100 below, Centigrade. Hoar frost piles up three and four feet thick and a man can’t stir out of the ship.”
He gestured at the bag.
“I was getting ready for another winter. Just like a squirrel. My supplies got low before this spring and I had to find something to store up against another season. I found a half dozen different kinds of bulbs and roots and some berries. I’ve been gathering them all summer, storing them away.”
“But the Martians?” protested Scott. “Wouldn’t the Martians help you?”
His brother looked at him curiously.
“The Martians?” he asked.
“Yes, the Martians.”
“Scott,” Hugh said, “I haven’t found the Martians.”
Scott stared at him. “Let’s get this straight now. You mean you don’t know who the Martians are?”
Hugh nodded. “That’s exactly it. I tried to find them hard enough. I did all sorts of screwy things to contact that intelligence which talked with the Earth and sent the rockets full of seed, but I’ve gotten exactly nowhere. I’ve finally given up.”
“Those bugs,” suggested Scott. “The shining bugs.”
Hugh shook his head. “No soap. I got the same idea and managed to bat down a couple of them. But they’re mechanical. That’s all. Just machines. Operated by radium.
“It almost drove me nuts at first. Those bugs flying around and the building standing there and the Martian lilies all around, but no signs of any intelligence. I tried to get into the building but there aren’t any doors or windows. Just little holes the bugs fly in and out of.
“I couldn’t understand a thing. Nothing seemed right. No purpose to any of it. No apparent reason. Only one thing I could understand. Over on the other side of the building I found the cradle that is used to shoot the rockets to Earth. I’ve watched that done.”
“But what happened?” asked Scott. “Why didn’t you come back? What happened to the ship?”
“We had no fuel,” said Hugh.
Scott nodded his head.
“A meteor in space.”
“Not that,” Hugh told him, “Harry simply turned the petcocks, let our gasoline run into the sand.”
“Good Lord! Was he crazy?”
“That’s exactly what he was,” Hugh declared. “Batty as a bedbug. Touch of space madness. I felt sorry for him. He cowered like a mad animal, beaten by the sense of loneliness and space. He was afraid of shadows. He got so he didn’t act like a man. I was glad for him when he died.”
“But even a crazy man would want to get back to Earth!” protested Scott.
“It wasn’t Harry,” Hugh explained. “It was the Martians, I am sure. Whatever or wherever they are, they probably have intelligences greater than ours. It would be no feat for them, perhaps, to gain control of the brain of a demented man. They might not be able to dominate us, but a man whose thought processes were all tangled up by space madness would be an easy mark for them. They could make him do and think whatever they wanted him to think or do. It wasn’t Harry who opened those petcocks, Scott. It was the Martians.”
He leaned against the pitted side of the ship and stared up at the massive building.
“I was plenty sore at him when I caught him at it,” he said. “I gave him one hell of a beating. I’ve always been sorry for that.”
“What finally happened to him?” asked Scott.
“He ran out of the airlock without his suit,” Hugh explained. “It took me half an hour to run him down and bring him back. He took pneumonia. You have to be careful here. Exposure to the Martian atmosphere plays hell with a man’s lung tissues. You can breathe it all right ... might even be able to live in it for a few hours, but it’s deadly just the same.”
“Well, it’s all over now,” declared Scott. “We’ll get my ship squared around and we’ll blast off for Earth. We made it here and we can make it back. And you’ll be the first man who ever set his foot on Mars.”
Hugh grinned. “That will be something, won’t it, Scott? But somehow I’m not satisfied. I haven’t accomplished a thing. I haven’t even found the Martians. I know they’re here. An intelligance that’s at least capable of thinking along parallel lines with us although its thought processes may not be parallel with ours.”
“We’ll talk it over later,” said Scott. “After we get a cup of coffee into you. I bet you haven’t had one in weeks.”
“Weeks,” jeered Hugh. “Man, it’s been ten months.”
“Okay, then,” said Scott. “Let’s round up Jimmy. He must be around here somewhere. I don’t like to let him get out of my sight too much.”
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- Writer
