The Secret of the Martian Moons (9 page)

He waited, planning to slip up above the ridge and spy on them, but suddenly one of them shot back overhead. Quickly Nelson crouched down in the shadow. Had they spotted him?

One by one the mysterious figures shot back, and it dawned on Nelson that they too had landed in this same nest of ridges and canyons. Then perhaps his guess about the hiding place of their spaceship was right? Was it somewhere nearby?

He felt a vibration in the rocky surface through the metal soles of his boots. The pursuers were in this very canyon walking, walking toward him!

Nelson Parr started to walk forward, keeping ahead of the unknowns. If they were coming his way it meant one of two things. Either they had spotted him by some means, such as radar, or else this was the canyon leading to their spaceship. In either case, the trail was hot and Nelson might come upon the ship before they did.

He tried to keep his steps from vibrating. It came to him that apparently they had not spotted him after all, had abandoned the chase, for the heaviness of their tread indicated they were not concerned with the possibility of warning their quarry. Therefore it must be they were heading toward their ship.

Nelson kept in the shadow and moved silently along, turning a sharp comer. He stopped, baffled. For beyond the comer there was only the sudden wall of the canyon, the end of the crevice—and no craft. Behind him the tread could be felt, echoing through the stone with that long-carrying intensity possible only in the cold and vacuum of a little world. Desperately his eyes searched the canyon and now he saw that in the base of the wall was a deeper blackness, a black spot that the reflected light did not penetrate. It was a cave.

Quickly he dashed across the remaining space and into the dark opening. He found the cave to be a natural tunnel, a crack penetrating downward into the rocky surface of Deimos. He hid in the entrance, waited.

In a few moments, five figures rounded the corner of the deep canyon. They were manlike, walking upright on legs, having arms like men, muffled from all detail by curious gray rubbery garments from head to toe, with only dark slits for eyepieces. Two of them carried the frame and equipment of his telescope, the others carried objects that might be weapons. They walked on, directly toward Nelson, directly to the mouth of his tunnel.

Nelson had no choice but to push farther on into the blackness. He scrambled ahead, hoping there were no sudden drops in the lightless dark interior. He bumped into a wall and, with his pursuers not yet quite at the opening, dared to flick on a light momentarily from his helmet. He saw that the tunnel turned and proceeded in a steadily downward incline. He headed on, disappearing from view as lights suddenly flicked on where he had been as the five unknowns walked into the tunnel.

Casting caution aside, Nelson ran as fast as he could down the dark tunnel, in the uncanny blackness. As he ran he gradually became aware that there was a dim bluish light in the depths of the tunnel, that some sort of radiation or glow made the tunnel not as pitch-dark as it had been at first. And in this dim glow he also became aware of something else. This tunnel was no natural feature. It was smooth-surfaced, leveled, graded. It was artificial. And just as this became clear to him, he burst into a crossing where the tunnel branched into three short corridors, each of which ended at a closed metal door.

He hesitated, not knowing which way to turn. Knowing his pursuers were close on his heels, he went to the door directly before him. He saw no knob or obvious means of opening it. He pushed upon it, but it remained immovable. Feeling the vibration of footsteps, he glanced rapidly about, picked the farther corridor, ran to it, and flattened himself against the wall, hoping to keep himself out of sight, hoping that he had not picked the very corridor his pursuers would take.

He waited, breathless, and then the five came into sight and marched up to the middle door, the one Nelson had tried. Without even glancing around, the first man reached up and probed a hole set just to one side of the door and shoved a finger into it. The door slid aside and the men marched through and it closed behind them.

Nelson waited a moment, then slipped out and went softly up to the door himself. He glanced at it, spotted the little indentation which evidently was the electronic control that motivated it.

For a brief while, he hesitated. It was obvious to him that this was no hiding place of a spaceship. That even if the five unknowns had arrived on Deimos by a ship, that this must be much more than that. This looked like a permanent hideaway, and not the hangar of a craft. He did not have to follow them. He could go outside now and hunt for the real spaceship hangar. But he knew that would be possibly pointless and might simply make him a target for some other sentinels chase. No, the thing to do was to get to the heart of the matter, enter the base itself, learn at least something of the truth.

And there was always Jim Worden. Somehow, to flee Deimos would be to betray his comrade. Nelson frowned, and the anger he had felt on first finding his friends body again flooded through him. Vigorously, boldly, he reached out a finger, punched it into the little hole beside the door.

There was a tingling sensation in his finger, and then the door silently slid back into the rock. There was darkness beyond but Nelson stepped unhesitatingly into it. The door slid tightly shut behind him.

In the utter blackness, Nelson strained his senses to detect the slightest sign that would indicate just where he was. But no ray of light, no vibration, reached him. Cautiously he reached his hand up, flicked on the dim glow of his helmet lamp momentarily.

He was alone in a tiny room hollowed out of the cold rock. The door through which he had entered was sealed tightly behind him. In front of him a few feet was a similar door. Outside of that, there was nothing else in the little chamber.

He looked at the door, saw that it too bore the indentation beside it which was the opener. He pushed his finger into it. Again a slight tingling feeling and that door slid aside.

He felt a sudden vibration around him, a slight push as something seemed to flow over his suit and helmet. Through the open door was again only darkness and the motion of the unseen substance.

For a moment he was puzzled until he realized that the entry room was an airlock, that he had entered a place beneath the surface of the little moon where there was air under pressure. But where—and who would be watching?

He flicked his helmet light on again. This time he saw that he was facing a short corridor from which branched off a number of others. He stepped through the door, and as he did so, the door slid silently shut behind him. In the darkness he strained his eyes, but the five strangers who had preceded him were out of sight. He saw no sign of life.

He dared his helmet light again and this time left it on, dimly glowing, just enough to betray the outlines of his immediate surroundings, not enough to attract attention.

How was he to know where to go, which corridor to follow? He tried to recall whether he had ever read anything of the system of the Martian underground corridors that would help him. Explorers had worked out what they believed to be the methods and general layout of the subsurface workings of Mars. If these unknowns were the lost Martians, then perhaps that system would work here.

But he could think of nothing that would help. And it also occurred to him, grimly, that it made no difference. Anywhere he went here would be a discovery, any path might lead to disaster or to hope, and only trial would tell. And so he stepped out softly and made his way along the corridor directly ahead.

It seemed to wind in a generally curving way and it seemed to descend farther and farther beneath the surface. At last he rounded a corner and in the light of his helmet he saw that there were several doors set into the wall along this section. He stopped before the first, saw that the indentation system was standard here. He reached a finger for it, hesitated. It dawned on him that nowhere on Mars had he ever recalled hearing of or seeing such a system. The Martian doors were always circular, opening when they did by a touch.

Could it be that these moon-hiding strangers were not the lost Martians? He remembered Jim Worden’s speculation on the hands of the vanished civilization’s makers and the contrast with the handprint on the Congreve. He opened the door.

There was darkness, and his helmet light penetrated it to show that it was but a room, moderately sized, and empty. He glanced around, but there was nothing there and dust lay undisturbed on the floor.

He withdrew his head, went on to the next door and tried that. Again an empty room. One after another he tried the doors in this section and they were all bare. Evidently this part of the hideaway had never been occupied or else had been abandoned.

He went on along the main corridor, around more turns, winding down again and coming out on a new level. Here there were more rooms. He wondered if he were right to pry into them, for he might suddenly burst into one which was occupied. But again he realized there was little else he could do.

He punched open the first of these new doors, and this room was not empty. No one was there and it also was dusty, but it was obviously a storeroom of sorts. There were strange balls there, big metallic globes as large as Nelson himself, with curious markings, and bands of some substance to hold them together. Possibly boxes or containers of some sort . . .

The next room held an assortment of globes of smaller sizes, one of which was half open. Nelson went into the room and glanced into the sphere. It was almost empty, but there were scraps of stuff inside, the sort of material that might be used in packing delicate apparatus.

Then these were indeed storerooms. Nelson wondered if he would be able to find one with weapons in it or something practical. It dawned on him that he was hungry and thirsty. He hadn’t eaten in quite a long time. Perhaps if he hunted hard enough he might find food.

He went into every room along the line then. Most had the globes, one was piled high with huge rolls of some plastic-like substance, another had shelves with stocks of little objects tooled from metal, the use of which he could not guess. And finally he came to the chamber at the end of this particular line and found what he sought.

This room had shelves piled high with curious cubical packages, soft to the touch, strangely like packets of raw tea. He lifted one, then broke it open with his hands. He saw that inside it was of a spongy grayish consistency and looked as if it might be some sort of food. The only way to find out would be to test it.

He had not opened his helmet thus far and now he had to face that decision. He couldn’t eat with his helmet on; there was no device that would permit that. And though there was air here, he had no idea as to whether it would prove breathable to him. It might be very thin, it might be an atmosphere designed to give comfort to beings that would die in oxygen. If, for instance, the unknowns had originated on a planet like Jupiter or Saturn or Uranus, this air would be high in chlorine and ammonia, and would be deadly gas to a human.

But on the other hand, what choice did he really have? So he reached up and opened his helmet. There was a puff as the air in his suit escaped into the quite thinner air around. He choked for a minute trying to catch his breath, coughed severely several times and then managed to control his lungs. The new air was breathable. Thin, stale-tasting, oddly metallic, but breathable.

Nelson sat down on the floor and looked and sniffed again at the broken packet he held. It smelled moldy, but definitely like something of an organic nature. He tasted a bit of it experimentally. Not at all bad, he realized, for it tasted a bit like mushroom. He crammed a chunk into his mouth and munched on it.

It proved quite satisfying. Not quite like anything he remembered having eaten, the nearest he could determine of its taste was as if you could imagine bread made from mushrooms gone a little bit sour. He supposed that if he were not so hungry and the surroundings not so strange he would refuse to eat the stuff.

He sat there satisfying his hunger and wondering where he could find something to drink when he felt the vibration of footsteps coming from outside. Instantly he snapped off his helmet light and sat rigidly in the darkness, wishing he had thought to close the rooms door.

The footsteps came closer, stopped nearby. For a few moments there was no sound, then suddenly the room was flooded with light. Nelson was blinded as the glare hit his eyes. He leaped to his feet.

"Stop! Stand right where you are!” said a sharp high-pitched voice. Nelson stood where he was, staring at the man standing in the doorway, the being from the interior of Deimos.

He was a human, or at least human enough to pass for such on first inspection. He stood about five feet high and his odd hands were holding a curious pistol-like weapon, holding it a bit tremblingly but managing to keep it pointed at Nelson enough for the young man to know that to move would be to invite sudden death.

The strangers skin was pale and white like that of a being who has spent all his life indoors, away from the sun. There seemed to be a faint bluish tinge to his skin. His eyes were sharp and hazel-colored, almost yellowish. His hair was white with a glint of metallic silver, sparse on his scalp but adorning his face in a short straggly beard. The old man, for he was visibly old, as shown by the lines around his eyes and face, was clad in a tight-fitting one-piece blue garment without ornament or distinction of cut.

His hands had but three fingers, and they ended in a short splay of tiny tendrils instead of nails. They were the hands of the unknown searcher of the Congreve.

Nelson stood, arms away from his sides, staring at him, mentally wondering whether he could chance an attack. The old man was scared, and a scared man with a gun can be many times more dangerous than a calm one. Nelson decided to wait and see what the old man had to say.

“Sit down and finish eating,” said the old man in a whispering voice. “Sit down but don’t make any outcry; don’t make noise if you want to keep your life.” Nelson was still hungry and he saw no reason for disobeying this order. Something was wrong here, he told himself. This man did not act like an aroused conqueror or proud captor. Casually the Earthling squatted again and finished the piece of the synthetic bread-food he had been chewing on when discovered.