The Secret of the Martian Moons (8 page)

Nelson mentioned again the strange three-fingered handprint that he had found on the Congreve.

Worden remarked, “I'm inclined to think now that these creatures were not the Martians. Your suggestion before sounds a little more likely now.”

"Why do you say that?” asked Nelson, his eyes watching the steadily growing disk of Deimos, outlined against the star-strewn black of space.

"Because I’ve figured out that the Martians must have had much the same kind of hand we have. I’ve studied their things, their machinery, their household stuff. It has always seemed to me that their handles and controls were designed to fit a hand like our own and not anything very different. Of course, I could be mistaken, but in things like this, the mechanics of everyday living can be a pretty reliable guide.” Nelson nodded briefly, switched on the engines and began his braking maneuvers. Again they were shoved into their seats, and conversation died as they fought to bring the craft into landing adjustment.

Nelson was too busy at the controls to pay much attention to outside things, but Jim Worden was watching space. He was staring at a group of bright stars when suddenly one of them blinked out. He stared wide-eyed, then another next to it blinked off and the first came into sight. “Hey!” he said.

Nelson looked up. “What?” 

Worden stared sharply. He could see nothing more. “Sorry, thought I saw something just then.” He explained what he’d seen. “Thought maybe it could have been another ship between us and that sector of the sky.”

“Probably just a meteor,” said Nelson.

Now they were rapidly approaching Deimos. The little moon, like its sister, was quite spherical and fairly smooth-surfaced. They winged around it a couple of times to brake their speed exactly, and then Nelson brought the ship down and skimmed the surface. It was apparent that Deimos also showed but one hemisphere to Mars; a curious circumstance was Nelson’s fleeting thought, as he jockeyed to find a good spot for their observations.

Finally, he came down for his landing on a wide flat belt, shining ruddy in the daytime glow of Mars. They slid neatly to a perfect stop on a hard and smooth surface.

“Good work,” said Jim glancing at the control dials. “Telders couldn’t have done it better. Now let’s get the junk out.”

Adjusting their suits to space, they slid open the boat’s top and climbed carefully out. Outside of the fact that the horizon was even nearer their feet than before, this little world was not very different from the barren satellite they had left. Above them the globe of the red planet was visibly smaller but still quite large enough to see details with the naked eye.

Without wasting words, they unstrapped the framework of their telescope. Then they looked around. “This isn’t as good a landing place as we thought,” said Nelson, now that he could see his whereabouts better. “You might have told me I was coming in on a slant.”

“Didn’t want to upset you,” said Jim. “Fact is I was hoping I wouldn’t get another jolt.”

Mars was not properly in the center of their sky, but down at one side. “I think we’ll just carry the frame and lens over about three miles and we’ll get a better view,” said Nelson. Suiting action to words, he hefted the framework and apparatus, and Worden loaded himself with other stuff. Then they started off in easy long bounds.

In only a short time they had covered the space, so easy is it to travel without weight. The boat had fallen out of sight beneath the horizon after the first two or three such bounds. Almost a fifth of the satellite away, on the flattish plain, they set up their instruments.

It was more than two hours since they had left Phobos and they were relieved when they finally put their eyes in turn to the eyepiece of their scope to see that the mysterious crates were still standing in plain sight exactly as they had been. By this time their friends on Phobos had lost sight of the objective. It was a relief to know that in the half hour that no one had been able to observe the spot, nothing had happened.

There was one drawback though. At this distance from Mars, the lens which had been powerful enough to carry their vision to such a close range was weaker. Visually they seemed farther away and streets and objects in the ancient Martian city were therefore smaller in appearance.

“Is this the strongest lens we have?” asked Nelson, bent over the instrument.

“No,” said Jim. “There’s one stronger still.”

“Got it here?” asked Nelson, still absorbed in the view.

“No, it’s back on the ship, I’m afraid,” said Jim, after looking through the stuff they had brought.

“Maybe one of us had better go back and get it,” Nelse suggested. “If we spot anything, were not going to get any decent details with this eyepiece.”

“I’ll go,” said Jim. “You keep the watch.” He set off back to the ship without waiting for Nelson to object. In a few moments he had disappeared below the narrow horizon.

Nelson Parr watched the pile of crates, but nothing happened. He casually swept the telescope back and forth over the city, checking its open areas and connecting viaducts. Then he drew in his breath sharply, stopped his sweep. Over a hitherto unnoticed old road, by the side of the green belt leading into the city, three shapes were moving!

He watched them and was able to make out that they were vehicles of some sort, rather tear-shaped and moving swiftly without sign of wheels. If he had the stronger lens he could have made out their full detail, but as it was he could make out their dull metallic glint and nothing more.

He fidgeted, wondering when Worden was coming back. He kept the teardrop shapes in sight, noticing that they were following a route that would bring them up to the crates fairly soon. Undoubtedly they were conveyances which would pick up the boxes and take them somewhere else, probably to the main hideaway of the Martians. He dared not take his eye off them and yet he longed to drop everything and go after Worden to hurry him up.

It seemed to him that Jim was taking unusually long. He couldn’t call him on his helmet phone, for he knew that the limited direct beam transmission would work only when both senders were in sight, or at least on the same plane.

Quickly he calculated mentally the speed of the teardrops and the distance and time it would take them to reach the crates. That should give him about twenty minutes. He decided to take the chance. He removed his eye from the view, glanced around. Worden was still not in sight.

He turned back to where they had left the ship and went after it as fast as he dared in the nearly gravityless conditions of little Deimos. Leaping along he kept watching to spot Jim returning to him, but strangely he did not see him.

Before long he spotted their spaceboat in the distance. He made it in three more giant leaps—and found Worden. His friend and companion was lying just outside the little rocket boat, lying flat on the ground, motionless.

Nelson bent over him, turned him over. Jim Worden’s helmet was shattered, his air gone. One look at Jim’s face, and Nelson knew that his companion was dead. Nelson got to his feet, stunned. Then he looked at the rocket ship and got his second shock.

Someone or something had gotten into it and smashed its controls! As if a madman with an ax had chopped away at it, the little craft had been ruined, its control board battered to a mass of broken wires and tubes, its engines hacked and bent.

For a moment Nelson simply stood there, too horrified to do anything, aware only of the loss of his friend, unthinking of his own danger. Why had this happened? Surely the Martians could not think of them as enemies? Then his horror was replaced by cold steely anger. This act, this ugly killing, was the act of cowards, of creatures that had not dared come face to face, had not dared show themselves. For it was obvious that Jim Worden had been struck from behind, struck probably while in the act of climbing into the little rocket boat to get the telescope lens. The cowards had crept up on him, struck when his back was turned, without a word of warning.

Then, too, there was the deliberate destruction of the rocket. That was an act designed to block any further aid to Jim and Nelson. It was an act designed to leave Nelson stranded, helpless. He turned, looked into the ship, keeping a wary eye for motion behind him. He estimated the stock of supplies, the tanks of air.

It wasn’t much. He and Jim hadn’t expected to stay on the smaller moon more than a dozen hours or so, hence very little food, scarcely more air. It was clear that Nelson’s own hours were seriously limited. He glanced at the radio in the ship, but that too had been ripped apart. He could not even call for help, though his chances of being heard even if it were working would have been slight.

He searched for a weapon, wondering whether the ship had carried any among its regular lifeboat provisions. But there were no weapons, for what need would an interplanetary lifeboat have for such things in the lifeless reaches of space?

So he turned back to the ship, standing before the crumpled body, and knew he was alone, unarmed on a moon stalked by the unknown. He realized that he himself must be their next target, that they must have him marked for death.

Warily he glanced around. Low ridges of rocks bordered one side, on the other the horizon cut the plain very near to him. All a foe would have to do would be to stay just beyond the horizon, stalk, and when his back was turned long enough, a few flying leaps would be enough for the foe to land on his back. Who could tell who was waiting just out of sight?

Nelson thought fast and coldly. He might die, but he would see his slayers first. He would not be caught. He would come to grips with them and they would see, yes, they would see.

And then another thought struck him. He remembered Jim’s remark during their trip to Deimos about another ship, something that had blocked the light of stars for a moment. That, he thought, must have been the spaceship in which these unseen stalkers had arrived. That ship must still be here, must be somewhere on Deimos!

The thing he could do, the only apparent course that held even a glimmer of a chance for him, was to try to find that other spacecraft, find it and somehow capture it! Wild as that chance seemed, there was simply no other course! And while hunting it, escape the clutches of the killers!

Nelson looked around sharply. He saw nothing, yet instinctively felt that he was being watched. Behind the rocks possibly. ... He turned, glanced into the spaceship, acting as if he suspected nothing. Then slowly he walked around the ship. On the other side, he ducked down as if to examine something, glanced carefully around the side, hoping to detect some signs of his hunters. But they were out of sight.

He walked back, then started off in bounds back to where the telescope still stood. He would act as if he did not know they were following him, but he would keep moving fast enough to prevent their leaping upon him unawares.

He retraced his course to the observation post in great leaps, feeling they must be following him. Once, glancing back at the top of a particularly high leap, he thought he spotted a movement in the distance. But he could not be sure. Leap, bound, leap, he went on, the great ruddy disk of Mars looming higher in his sky, until at last he came to the spot where he had left his telescope.

It was not there! It was gone! Nothing was present but some tracks in the dust, some blurry footprints, prints of which all that could be told was that they were not his own.

Nelson wasted no time searching around. It was clear to him that there must be several in the party of unknown stalkers. While a couple were watching the spaceship, others must have carted away his instruments, probably taking them to their own spaceship.

Nelson spotted another bit of motion on his horizon. Wheeling around, he felt he saw something else move behind one of the rock ridges which seemed to be about the only distinguishing feature of this otherwise bald-surfaced worldlet. They were closing in on him from several sides.

He leaped again, continuing in the direction in which he was going. Now he cast caution to the winds, and leaped as fast and far as he could, determined to see if he could outdistance his pursuers and thus lose them, or perhaps accidentally arrive at the spot where their spaceship was resting before they had time to get there and move it.

What followed now was like a scene out of a peculiarly unpleasant nightmare. Nelson was moving forward over the bleak red-lit landscape of Deimos, hurtling now upward into the black and starry sky, now plunging with eerie slowness down toward the gray rocky landscape with its fiery overtones and jet-black shadows. Forward and forward as if forever, and as he moved, Mars seemed to move in the sky, for he was on his way to circling the tiny world and nearing the hemisphere where Mars never shone, the side upon which the sun was now shining equally strangely in the dark cold sky.

Behind him he occasionally glimpsed movement, a tiny spot, glinting red as tire Marslight hit it at the top of its own pursuing bounds. He urged his body forward and drove on, silently, in the murderous emptiness of Deimos.

After a while Mars vanished from view entirely, and below him the moonscape shone cold and white where the far sun with its weirdly flickering corona dominated the heavens. And now he came to a very rough section of the surface, where the flat plain was for once replaced with a frothy sea of ridges and crevices. Here there was the darkness of space on the surface, here there were shadows and hiding places.

He bounded into a lightless tiny canyon and here decided to end his flight. He had seen no sign of the other spacecraft, but it occurred to him now that this very area might be the ideal place to hide it. He slipped into a dark and shadowed corner beneath an overhanging wall, where no light penetrated to reveal his presence and there he waited.

At first there was no sign of pursuit. He caught his breath again, stood there tensely waiting. Then he saw a spot flicker past overhead, lit by the sun a moment, a spot that could be the size of a bounding manlike being. Another followed and then three more in rapid succession.