Masters of the Pit or Barbarians of Mars

  "Of course. But how do you know her?"

  "Well, you left her in your airship when you went to inspect the vaults of the Yaksha, did you not?"

  "We did."

  "Apparently the girl became a little bored and began fiddling with the control panel of the ship. She meant no harm, naturally, but by accident she released the mooring lines of the airship and the craft began to drift in the wind."

  "So that is what happened. Lucky for her that it did, I think."

  "Why so?"

  "Because otherwise she would have been found by those who captured us."

  "Who were they?"

  "I'll tell you that when I've heard the rest of your story.”

  "Very well. The airship drifted on the air currents for many days before it was sighted by one of our patrol craft which had set out with a message for you from Shizala."

  "A message?"

  "Yes. I will also tell you of that in a moment."

  "The girl told of the situation in Cend-Amrid and why you had gone to the Yaksha vaults. The ship returned first to

  Vamal with the girl and its news. Then I headed this expedition to Yaksha to see if we could help since we guessed you would be almost stranded there without any means of transport -though we thought you might make for Mendishar.

  "When we arrived at Mendishar they had no news of you, so we went to Yaksha."

  "And found us gone."

  "Exactly."

  "What did you do then?"

  "Well, we did discover signs that many of the machines had been removed. Also, we found the corpses of many warriors whom we did not recognize. We gathered that you had been in a fight and had vanquished your enemies. We guessed then that you might have been captured. Travelling overland, we were able to follow a trail through the desert to the coast where we found further signs that a ship had recently left there."

  "What did you do when you discovered that the ship had probably taken us over the sea?"

  "There was little we could do, save try to find the ship -and we never did find it. All we could do after that was scour both sea and coast in the hope of finding some clue. We were on our fifth trip back when we sighted your boat and were able to help you."

  "In the nick of time," I said. "I'm very grateful, Damad."

  "Nonsense. But what has happened to you? Did you find a machine that will be able to cure the plague?"

  "No, I am sorry to say."

  Then I told Damad all that had happened to us. He listened avidly.

  "I am glad you both survived," he said. "And I hope we shall all be able to see the cat-people some day."

  "Now," I smiled. "I have been patient enough. What was the message being borne to me from Shizala?"

  "A joyful one," Damad said. "You are to become a father!"

  That one scrap of news did more for me than anything else. I could hardly contain my enthusiasm, and everyone joined in congratulating me.

  It had been worth going through all I had done to hear that

  Shizala was going to give me a child. I could not wait to get home and see her.

  But first there was my duty. I had to visit the Yakslia vaults and seek the device that the Yaksha must have possessed to counter the effects of the Green Death.

  Now we were_ crossing the land and the Yaksha vaults in the desert would soon be reached.

  Then we saw them below us and Darnad brought the airship closer to the ground.

  The ships were moored and we left a few men on guard while we once again entered the vaults.

  This time, with more men, we could make a really thorough search for the device we sought. For all I knew it might be in tablet or even liquid form, but knowing the fantastically sophisticated science of the Yaksha I thought it might be a machine capable of dispensing some kind of ray that would work directly on the disease germs.

  We searched for several days. The vaults were vast, and it took time to check everything we found. The barbarians had left a great deal. They had taken, in fact, only those machines that seemed designed for war. Many other types were left, though all the war machines, it seemed, had gone. Now I knew they were destroyed for good, and perhaps it was just as well, though I regretted missing the opportunity of analysing their principles.

  But, though we checked everything, we could find nothing that seemed designed to counter the Green Death. At length we were forced to give up and return to the airships.

  Now I sat at the controls while Darnad relaxed.

  I set a course for Vamal.

  "Now what can we do?" Darnad asked gloomily. "Must we forget Cend-Amrid''"

  "If you had seen the horror there," I told him, "you would not suggest that. We shall just have to try to find a cure ourselves, though the time that would take must be very long -unless we are very lucky."

  We did not pass over Cend-Amrid on our way back and I was rather relieved, for I did not think I could bear to look on the place, even from such a height.

  But it was as we neared the Crimson Plain that lies quite close to Vamal that I noticed a vast procession of people below me.

  At first I thought it was an army on the march, but its order was too ragged.

  I dropped lower to see it and observed that it was in fact made up of men, women and children of all ages.

  I was fascinated by the sight and could not understand why so many people should be on the move.

  I guided the airship down lower and then saw in horror what I had half feared since I had left Cend-Amrid.

  The Green Death was on them all.

  Somehow a traveller must have come and gone from Cend-Amrid and taken the seeds of the plague with him.

  Perhaps he had returned to his own city - and it had become infected.

  But why were they on the move?

  I took the megaphone from its place near the control panel and went to the cabin door.

  I shouted down at the crowd, who were by this time gaping up.

  They wereall in rags, with gaunt, haunted faces.

  "Who are you?" I bellowed through the megaphone. “Where are you from?"

  One of them shouted back: "We are the non-functional! We seek refuge."

  "What do you mean, non-functional? Do you come, then, from Cend-Amrid?"

  "Some of us do. But many come from Opquel, Fiola and Ishal, too."

  "Who told you you were non-functional?" I shouted. "The folk of Cend-Amrid?"

  "We have a mechanic with us. He, too, is non-functional. He is our head - we are his hands, his motor, his feet."

  I realized then that not only the plague had come from Cend-Amrid - so had part of the dreadful creed that ruled there.

  “If he is non-functional, why does he lead you?”

  "We are the great non-functional. It is our duty to produce a non-functional world."

  I was experiencing a further perversion of logic whereby someone had convinced those infected by the plague that it was good to have the plague and bad not to have it.

  This could mean that the Green Death could spread like wildfire throughout Southern Mars - perhaps across the whole planet - unless it could somehow be checked.

  "Where do you go now?" I asked.

  "Varnal!" came the reply.

  I almost dropped the megaphone in horror.

  The Green Death must not reach Varnal.

  Now I had something even more intensely personal to fight for. Would I keep my head?

  I prayed that I would.

  "Do not go to Varnal!" I cried, half pleadingly. "Stay where you are! We will find a way of curing you. Do not fear!"

  "Cure us!" shouted the man. "Why should you wish to? We are bringing the joys of the Green Death to all menji!"

  "But the Green Death means horror and agony!" I cried. "How can you believe that it is good?"

  "Because it is Death!" replied the man.

  "But surely you cannot seek death. You cannot want to die - it is against all that is human!"

  "Death brings the cessation of function,
" droned the plague victim. "Cessation of function is good. The evil man is the functioning man."

  I shut the cabin door against him. I leaned back against the walls of the cabin, sweating.

  "They must be stopped!" growled Hool Haji, who had overheard most of the conversation.

  "How?" I half moaned.

  "If it comes to that, we must destroy them," he said bleakly.

  "No!" I cried.

  But I knew I hardly believed what I said. I was becoming a victim of fear.

  I must fight that fear, I knew. But what was I to do?

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE THREAT TO VARNAL

  We sped as rapidly as we could towards Varaal and at last her slender towers came in sight.

  As soon as we had landed I made for the palace and there, waiting on the steps to greet me, was my Shizala, lovely Bradhinaka of the Kanala, loveliest flower of the House of Varnal.

  I sprang to embrace her, careless of who saw us.

  She returned my embrace and looked into my face with shining eyes.

  "Oh, Michael Kane, you are back at last! I had feared you dead, my Bradhinak!"

  "I cannot die while you live," I said. "That would be foolish of me."

  She smiled at me then.

  "Have you heard my news?" she said.

  I pretended I had not.

  I wished to hear it from her own lips.

  "Then come to our apartments," she told me. "And I will tell you there."

  In our apartments she told me simply that we were to have a child. It was enough to bring a surge of joy to me just as strong as when I first heard the news, and I lifted her high in my arms with enthusiasm, putting her down again so rapidly when I remembered her condition that she laughed at me.

  "We of the Kanala are not delicate." She smiled. "My old mother was out riding her dahara when I first showed signs of my arrival into the world."

  I grinned back. "Nonetheless," I said, "I will have to make sure you have plenty of protection from now on."

  "Treat me like a baby and I'll be off to marry an Argzoon," she threatened jokingly.

  My elation began to be clouded again as I thought of the carriers of the Green Death moving so steadily towards Varnal.

  She seemed to notice that something was wrong and asked me what it was.

  I told her, grimly, simply, trying not to dramatize the situation, though heaven knew it was bad enough.

  She nodded thoughtfully when I had finished.

  "But what can we do about it?" she said. "We cannot kill them. They are not sane or well - they hardly know they threaten us."

  "That is the trouble," I said. "How do we stop them coming to Varnal?"

  "There might be one way," she suggested.

  "What is that?"

  "We could set the Crimson Plain afire - that would deter them, surely?"

  "It would be a crime to destroy the Crimson Plain. And, besides, there are towns and villages on it that would suffer."

  "You are right," she agreed.

  "Moreover," I said, "they have probably already reached the Crimson Plain by now. It will not be long before they arrive at their destination."

  "You mean Varnal?"

  "Varnal is the city of which they spoke."

  Shizala sighed.

  I sat down on a chair and leaned on the table next to it, loosening the war-harness I had worn for so long. Something clattered in my pouch and I drew out what had made the noise.

  It was the small tube, the complete part of one of the destroyed machines, I'd guessed, that I had picked up in ruined Bagarad.

  I placed it on the table, echoing Shizala's sigh.

  "In a few days the Green Death will come to Varnal," she mused, "unless something can be done. Something ..."

  "I have sought a means of countering the effects of the plague," I said. "I have sought it for a very long time - across two continents. I do not think it exists."

  “There is still hope,” she said, trying to keep my spirits up.

  I rose and hugged her close. "Thank you," I said. "Yes -there is still a little hope."

  The next momiog I was in the central hall conferring with my father by marriage, the Bradhi Camak; his son, Bradhinak Damad; my wife, the Bradhinaka Shizala; and my friend the Bradhi Hool Haji. I, the Bradhinak Michael Kane, completed this royal gathering.

  Our royal minds seemed incapable of constructive thought as we debated the problem of the Green Death.

  I clung to my principles, though it was difficult when my wife and unborn child were being threatened.

  "We cannot kill them," I repeated. "It is not their fault. If we kill them we kill something in ourselves."

  "I understand you, Michael Kane," said old Camak, nodding his massive head in agreement. "But what else can we do if Vamal is to be made safe from the Green Death?"

  "I think we shall have to come to the decision in the end, Michael Kane," said Hool Haji seriously. "I can see no alternative."

  "There has to be an alternative."

  'There are five minds trying to think of one," Damad pointed out. "Five good minds, too - and not one of them has come up with a constructive idea. We could try capturing them - something like that."

  "But that would mean coming in physical contact with them and risking the plague ourselves," said Hool Haji. "Thus we should defeat our object."

  "We could use some kind of big net to trap them," said Shizala. 'Though I suppose that is an impractical idea."

  "Indeed, it probably is." Camak frowned. "But it is an idea, my dear."

  They were all looking at me. I shrugged. "My mind is as empty as anyone's could be," I said.

  Damad sighed.

  'There is only one thing to do, you know, Michael Kane.”

  "What is that? Not to kill them -1 must resist that solution.”

  "We must go out in our airship and try to persuade them to turn back again," he said.

  I agreed. It was about the only sensible thing we could do now.

  So, soon afterwards, we had taken the air again - Hool Haji, Damad and myself.

  It was not long before we had sighted the rabble, pouring raggedly across the Crimson Plain. It seemed, too, that they had taken on some extra numbers, perhaps folk from some of the villages they had passed through.

  Green-tainted faces looked up as we began to drop towards them. They stopped moving and waited.

  I used the megaphone to address them again.

  "People of the Green Death," I shouted. "Why do you not stay where you are? Have you thought that you might be wrong?"

  "You are the one who spoke to us yesterday," came a voice. "You must speak with the mechanic now. It is he who leads us to the ultimate non-functioning!"

  The crowd backed away from a man with a green-ravaged face and large, insane eyes. He seemed to resemble in some ways the physician we had originally met in Cend-Amrid.

  "Are you the leader?" I asked.

  "I am the mind, they are the hands, the motor - all the parts of the moving machine."

  "Why do you lead them?"

  "Because it is my place to lead."

  "Then why do you lead them to other settlements, towns and cities when you know that you will spread the plague wherever you go?"

  "It is the benefits I bring them - the benefits of death, the release from life, the ultimate non-functioning."

  "Have you no thought for those you infect?”

  "We bring them peace," he rephed.

  "Please do not go to Vamal," I urged. 'They do not want your peace - they only want their own."

  "Our peace is the one peace - the ultimate non-functioning.”

  It was obviously still impossible to break through the man's insanity. It would take a subtler psychologist than myself even to begin.

  "Do you realize that there are those in Vamal who speak of destroying you because of the threat you offer?" I asked him. "Destroy us and we shall not function. That is good." There was no way round it. The man was totally mad. Wi
th heavy hearts we returned to Vamal.

  In the City of the Green Mists - soon to be renamed City of the Green Death, I reflected, if the rabble continued its march - we sat beside the green lake and again tried to resolve our problem.

  Damad was frowning as if searching mentally for a forgotten piece of information.

  Suddenly he looked up. "I have heard of one man who might have the skill to devise a cure for the Green Death," he said. "Though I believe the man is a legend - he might not even exist."

  "Who is he?" I asked.

  "His name is Mas Rava. He was once a physician at the court of Mishim Tep, but he became afflicted with philosophical notions and went off to the mountains somewhere in the far South, Mas Rava had studied all the old Sheev texts he could find. But something turned him into a contemplative and he was never seen again."

  "When was he supposed to have been at the court of Mishim Tep?" I asked.

  "More than a hundred years ago.”

  "Then he could be dead,"

  "I am not sure. I never listened very carefully to the stories about him in Mishim Tep. But one thing I remember - they say he had given himself immortality."

  "There is a slim chance that he still exists, however," I said.

  "Just a slim one, yes."

  "But the chances of finding him are even slimmer in the time we have at our disposal," Camak pointed out.

  "We could never find him in time, whatever happened,' Hool Haji said.

  Shizala said nothing. She simply bowed her head and looked into the waters of the green lake.

  Suddenly there came a cry from behind us and a Pukan Nara - which was the name used on Vashu for a leader of a detachment of warriors - came rushing towards us.

  "What is it?" I asked him.

  "One of our scouting airships has returned," he said.

  "Well?" Camak asked.

  “The rabble is moving with unnatural rapidity. They will be at the walls of Varnal within a day."

  Damad glanced at me. "So soon?" he said. "I would never have suspected it. By talking to them we seem to have done ourselves a disservice."

  "They are running," the Pukan-Nara said. "From what the scout says, many drop exhausted or dead, but the rest run. Something is causing them to rush towards Vamal. We must stop them!"

  "We have considered all ways of stopping them," I told him.