A large anthology of sci.., p.355
A Large Anthology of Science Fiction, page 355
The platform cage glided to a stop again, its seventh, and a well-lighted corridor lay beyond the oval port. Lois went swiftly out of the unmoving compartment with Lee at her side. And for the first time he noticed how their pressure suits wrinkled and flapped about their bodies.
He tested the outer pressure by cracking the helmet valve. There was no escape of oxygen. Gingerly he sniffed, sniffed again more deeply—and tugged at his helmet until it loosened and hung back on his shoulder hinges.
“Clean air,” he cried. “Air with the smell of flowers and green growing things in it! Moist air!”
Lois followed suit. For several long sobbing breaths they were content to stand there and suck in the heady fragrance of the thick air. It made them dizzy after a time, forced them to breathe more shallowly as they peeled off their cumbersome pressure gear.
“How deep would we be,” demanded Lois, “before air pressure equaled Earth Normal?”
“Plenty deep, Lois. And the air is moist!”
“So what? Our domes in South Mars are the same.”
Lee muttered something uncomplimentary about “Toad Lovers” and started down the corridor. For several hundred feet it extended straight as an arrow, a softly glowing tube of perhaps twenty feet in diameter. The girl hurried after Lee.
Their now useless pressure suits and helmets, as well as the useless sand gear, they left behind. Finally Lee spoke:
“Moisture means water, possibly an underground lake or sea. North Mars Incorporated wouldn’t have to close its mines. We’ve been in the red for the past two years buying all our water from the Toads!”
“I’m glad they’re not in our hemisphere,” agreed Lois.
“Yeah.” Cynicism dripped from the word. His lips uncurled. “Sorry. Forget you’re just a brat. Shouldn’t be taking out my dislike for SML on you.”
“I’m nineteen,” the girl cried, “and no brat! But most of us do feel sorry for your people in the north—the women and children, that is.”
“Thought you’d qualify it.” Suddenly Lee halted and his right hand went down to the gas-powered pocket gun holstered at his hip. It contained a clip of a thousand biaton-tipped needles—each needle an explosive miniature grenade. Because the needles were expelled, rather than fired, the common term of expoder was given them.
A forty-foot section of corridor had lost its glowing coating, it lay jumbled and dull on the floor, and the slimy darkness of water puddled there as well. On the left a branching corridor, also in darkness, opened. And there Lee thought he had detected movement.
His hand fell away. He laughed at himself. How could there be life here in this long-deserted necropolis? Of course the weird elevator shafts yet functioned and there was the mysterious light, but in other abandoned cities Earthmen had discovered vast atom-powered machines purring untended after thousands of years. At Port Bemis, his homedome, all the power they needed for lights and heat came from a single Martian-power plant.
Carefully he picked his way over the debris by the dim light from beyond. He passed the intersecting emptiness, a smaller unlighted way, and then a scrabbling sound came to him. Probably Lois. He started to turn.
“Jud, behind you!” the girl’s voice screamed.
His leisurely movements changed. He flung himself forward and spun about, dropping to his knees with the expoder jutting from his fist. He saw three dwarfish squatty shapes, heavy clubs upraised, almost upon him. They must have come from the unlighted passage.
And then the hand gun sewed its needles across their torsos, those missing the targets exploding against the corridor’s wall. A miniature series of thunderclaps boomed along the way. But even as the echoes died away the last of his attackers fell.
Lee came forward warily, his solar torch at plus sunlight searching into the other tunnel for other foes. It was empty to a depth of perhaps a hundred feet, but it curved to the right and therefore he could see no further.
He turned again to the fallen men, discovering them to be dwarfed humanoid creatures, thick-shouldered and hairy, their teeth yellowed fangs, and with foreheads little higher than their bulging frontal sinuses. Two of the naked beast-men were darkhaired, and the other covered with matted, straw-colored hair. Yet among the native Martians of the polar regions, black hair was almost unknown; reddish-blond hair, coarse and thick as fur, being their natural covering.
And the size of their chests, when compared with the vast lung cavities of the polar natives, was pitifully inadequate. They were warped, bow-legged, and gnarled, with the filthy skin under their coarse-haired covering whiter than that of Lois.
He returned to the girl.
“Better go back, hadn’t we?” he asked.
She bit her sagging lip and her damp eyes grew hot. Her body straightened defiantly. Stooping over a dead savage she found his club, a knotted cudgel longer than a man’s forearm, and lifted it. She moved past Lee. “Come on, Grandpa,” she challenged, leading the way.
Lee moved up beside her, his hand gun in his fingers, and his eyes alert. Together they strode down the seemingly unending length of the huge tube. Foolhardy it was, perhaps, but the water-hunger that only a native-born Martian knows, burned hot in both their hearts.
Something of the man’s excitement and flaming hope had touched the girl. In her eyes was the same overpowering lust for water, and more water, that rivaled mankind’s earlier madness for gold.
Less than half a mile the gallery extended into the misty glow of its inner walls. Then they came out on a wide ledge of stone, its outer wall of living granite waist-high, and realized that they perched near the roof of a vast subterranean abyss. On either side the ledge extended unbroken, an observation platform for the long-vanished citizens of the Raba Depression.
“This must have been a zoological garden, a living museum of Earth,” whispered Lois softly.
The cavern floor, a thousand feet below, was almost five miles in length and half as wide. And three-fourths of its area was island-rimmed water!
Directly beneath them a grassy miniature tableland sprouted oddly familiar structures of stone—castles and crazily constructed little huddles of thatched huts. The castles, four in all, were in ruins, but about the last of them to the right, two-legged figures were moving. There, too, were a few patches of tilled ground with rowed dottings of cultivated green.
And rimming the lake, basking in the all-pervading glow of light similar to that of the corridor, lifted a mighty tangled forest of familiar, and unfamiliar, trees.
“Those wild men were Earthmen!” Lee moved slightly away from the girl’s too-obvious nearness. “I thought their structure was decidedly unMartian, too-slight lung capacity.”
“Must be old King Raba Dagan had quite a zoo.” Lois lolled on the rocky parapet’s flat top and studied the scene below. “Suppose there’s another cave like this for Venusian fauna and stuff?”
Lee massaged a knuckle thoughtfully. He nodded. “Uh huh. Those murals, those paintings, were advertising the wonders of the strange life imprisoned here.
“This is a paradise, though. All this water. Means NMI won’t have to close down after all.”
Lois’s laugh was nasty. “If we can get topside, yes. Don’t forget the sand has covered the opening and your signal is buried. We may be trapped here forever.”
“I hope not. Probably by now Lopez is starting to hunt for us. Or soon will be. And the crack in the dome may be uncovered again.”
“Isn’t it thrilling, though, Gramp?” giggled Lois. “We’re like castaways—Adam and Eve in a garden—Harveth and Elise on Luna.”
“Martian hill-dog and a desert cat in a bag more likely,” said Lee dryly. “And we’re not alone, either. Look, coming.”
She turned to look in the direction his hand gun indicated, to the left. They saw a tall, broad-shouldered man, his thick black beard like a mane down across his hairy chest, and an ancient explosive-type rifle in his hand. His only garment was a rough, but effective, swathing of animal hide about his hips. He was less than twenty feet from them and the small black eye of the rifle was upon them.
Behind the savage-appearing creature clustered a dozen of the twisted dwarfs, more beasts than men, that they had already encountered.
For a long moment they fronted one another, unmoving, before the stranger’s weapon dropped away and his beard split to reveal uneven white teeth. His voice was deep and unsteady, the words blurred by alien pronunciation.
“Good day, sirs,” he said, apparently mistaking Lois’s golden slacks and brown jacket for a masculine outfit.
“Greetings, Thug,” chirped Lois. She grinned at Lee’s warning frown. In an undertone she demanded, “Isn’t that a perfectly good caveman title?”
Lee grunted something about fools and their heads ending in two separate sectors of space.
“Hello,” he said quietly. “Earthman?”
“Indeed I am,” said the bearded giant, advancing. “We are all Earthmen.” His arm indicated the motley knot of little monsters at his heels.
“But you are more recently arrived, eh?”
The big man grimaced his understanding. “Thirty years ago my father found this horrible place. He came from the desert after his ship was crushed in landing.”
Lee’s eyes were shining. “The first spacers landed about then. What is your father’s name?”
“Grant Ashley. He is dead now.” He pulled an ancient pocket-watch of worn soft gold from a pouch beneath his great beard. “One hundred twenty days and—almost an hour from now—ago.”
Lois bowed her head over it. “I see,” she laughed, “how you knew thirty years have passed. You couldn’t miss seeing this.
“But you don’t look to be that old.” The big man’s eyes were fixed on the girl. He took a step toward her, hands clawed in a horrible, hungry sort of way, and then another. A ghastly bubbling cry of misery and unbelieving joy wrung from his lips.
“A woman—an Earth woman,” he mumbled. “Always they told me I must mate with the ugly little shes. But now G’Ash has a woman.”
Lois backed away uncertainly, getting behind Lee. Lee grimaced with distaste, but held his ground.
“My woman,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Then I must fight you for her.”
The big savage dropped his rifle and bared his teeth. Then, in imitation of Lee, “sorry.”
Lee shook his head. “The little hes may fight so over their women. Not so real Earthmen. They let the woman choose.”
The bearded man scratched his shaggy head. His beard again covered his teeth. He grunted grudging assent, but he continued to regard Lois hungrily. Lee knew the truce would not last.
“My father married a little she,” he told Lee and the girl. He pointed down into the cavern valley toward the castle with the cultivated fields. “Mine,” he added proudly, “you come there, please?”
“How many of the dwarf-men are there?” Lee wanted to know as they studied the valley.
G’Ash fiddled with his huge splayed fingers, his lips moving as he counted laboriously and silently.
“Maybe sixty-one, sixty-two or three, perhaps. Some have rebelled and hide in the forests or in the valley of the Frog People.”
Lee nodded. “The Venusians. Where does it open off this valley?” G’Ash indicated the dark opening at the left-hand end of the valley. “There,” he said savagely. “Some day I will lead my people into it again.”
“Are there other valleys, more lakes?”
The bearded man grunted. “At other end of the cavern. But all is water there, and the light is bad, almost gone. Also huge swimming things fill the water.”
Lee looked at Lois, and then, meaningly, down into the cavern. She shook her head slightly. He turned to G’Ash.
“We must return to our friends,” he said, extending his hand, “but we will return again soon.”
The big man scowled, but he took Lee’s hand. Suddenly he jerked the flyer toward him and his other fist crunched into Lee’s jaw. A second blow landed on his temple and he felt his legs crumpling under him. Feebly he struggled to strike back, to reach his expoder.
He heard Lois screaming, and he saw the pipestem crooked legs of the degenerate warriors about him, with the last fading senses. Then cool stone was crushing his lips and nose and he knew no more.
He was penned in a time-weathered dungeon, light seeping through yard-thick walls of masonry, and silvering the cobwebs festooning the falls and ceilings. His bed was a heap of mildewed weeds and reeds on a low stone platform, and in the cell’s center a tiny spring bubbled up. From this a tiny rill crossed the rocky floor and vanished into a gaping cavity wider than a man’s skull.
Lee went to the narrow slit of the single window, standing on a heap of debris to do so. He looked out over the weedy patches of cultivated ground, and saw the willow-grown border of the lake. In the garden plots misshapen little women worked, their naked flesh a hideous, fish-belly white. And grotesque little dogs played with unsmiling tiny children upon the uncut grass between the gardens.
The inbred, simple-minded inhabitants of this hidden Eden beneath the ruddy desert, never laughed, and Lee, only once, heard their unintelligible speech raised in a broken sort of song. The proud knights and their humble serfs, brought here from Earth, had fallen far from their early estate.
Lee tested the walls, searching for loose masonry that could be removed. He tried the warped metal door, and found it to be strengthened by a second sturdy gate of interlocked logs and branches. Last of all he examined the ceiling, a dozen feet overhead, and found it had suffered least of all in the passing years.
His only hope of escape seemed to be through the opening cut into the walls by the spring’s overflow, and toward this he started to move. But a sound of shuffling feet in the corridor beyond arrested his steps and he faced the doorway. The overlooked clip of needles was worthless as a weapon.
G’Ash stood in the doorway, a fire-blackened lump of flesh, its white-jointed bone protruding, in his left hand. In his other fist was Lee’s needle-expelling hand gun. He tossed the hunk of meat at Lee.
“Your woman fled from me,” he complained, his forehead wrinkled. “She hides in the forest beside the lake with the rebellious people.”
“Good for her,” said Lee. “I told you we Earthlings allow the women to choose.”
“You must summon her,” ordered G’Ash. “Then When she is close I can capture her.”
“Go in a vacuum,” Lee told him. He gnawed at a huge mouthful of the underdone meat.
“You refuse?” G’Ash took a threatening step forward.
Lee gave the bone and most of the meat back to the bearded giant—in the teeth! He followed the hurled missile with his fists and the weight of his tough sand boots. But the big man weathered the storm easily. One big hand seized Lee and hurled him, stunned, against the further wall of the dungeon.
He paused only to pick up the misused joint of meat.
“When you grow hungry,” he roared, “you will be glad to call your woman for me.”
Lee felt the numbness leaving his battered flesh. He made no sign he knew G’Ash was about. Instead he began masticating the mouthful of meat he had retained.
The bearded savage growled and lunged off along the corridor beyond. And as his footsteps grew inaudible Lee came to his hands and knees and crawled over to the spring to drink. Then, despite the pain that every movement brought, he lowered himself into the water-slimed cavity where the little rill disappeared.
His feet found a footing on a narrow ledge; then his elbows locked him in the narrowness of the crooked channel as he slowly descended. Once he stuck fast and for perhaps twenty minutes hung there with the falling water saturating and chilling his coveralls and the garments beneath.
Then cloth ripped along his back and he was precipitated suddenly downward about eight feet into a thigh-deep pool with a slimy mud bottom. He groped about in the icy depths, his solar torch gone along with his hand gun, and came up a gradual slope of possibly twenty feet m all, to a waterless expanse of rock.
The echoes, hollow and booming, of his boots on the rocky floor, informed him that he was inside a lower cavity of considerable area. He groped along the edge of the pool, found where it overflowed, and followed the escaping thread of water.
He squeezed through narrow slits in the rocky walls and traversed vast chambers where a faint rippling play of electricity revealed inky pools and lakes. He heard splashings that only living things could make, and he armed himself as best he could with a keen-edged splinter of rock twice as large as his palm. In the depths, darting trails of pale light marked the passage of the watery denizens.
Three times he slept, his cramped limbs and aching muscles awakening him before he was rested. He was hungry, his stomach crying out for the food that successfully evaded his attempts to scoop it from the growing bitterness of the cavern pools.
Then came the moment when he wriggled upward through a narrowing slot of dank rock above the gurgling rush of piled-up water. And saw light ahead!
Once beyond the narrowing of the walls he hobbled along a widening ledge for a hundred yards—and emerged through a trailing curtain of Venusian thidin vines, and lacy, crimson-hued swamp air, into a watery valley yet larger than that of the Earthmen.
Floating islands of thidin dotted the foggy surface of the steaming lake, and along the narrow shoreline the fruit-heavy bushes of the nilc-nik clustered. Their orange-‘hued husks were specked scarlet.
Lee ate the ripe fruit, the faded globes of brown with the enlarged splotches of red, as slowly as his hunger permitted. Nor did he have his fill of the crisp salmon-hued pulp and its thumb-sized black seeds when he reluctantly pushed off into the pale jungle.
He slept once before he discovered the linking passageway with the Earth cavern. It was near the mile-high arch of the cavern’s roof and led upward. A well-worn trail had grooved the stubborn surface of rock to a depth of an inch.
In the Venusian cavern he had only once seen a noseless, gray-hued Frog. And that lop-eared aborigine had been paddling a living raft of thidin out in the lake. Of the Sarthmen reputed to have taken refuge in the lower valley he saw not a sign.
