It would have been silly to argue. Hilton was taller, stronger, and more alert. Gibson handed over his weapon without a word.
There can be no weirder sensation than that of walking along a narrow track between high leafy walls, knowing that at any moment you may come face to face with a totally unknown and perhaps unfriendly creature. Gibson tried to remind himself that animals which had never before encountered man were seldom hostile— though there were enough exceptions to this rule to make life interesting.
They had gone about halfway through the forest when the track branched into two. Hilton took the turn to the right, but soon discovered that this was a cul-de-sac. It led to a clearing about twenty meters across, in which all the plants had been cut— or eaten— to within a short distance of the ground, leaving only the stumps showing. These were already beginning to sprout again, and it was obvious that this patch had been deserted for some time by whatever creatures had come here.
“Herbivores,” whispered Gibson.
“And fairly intelligent,” said Hilton. “See the way they’ve left the roots to come up again? Let’s go back along the other branch.”
They came across the second clearing five minutes later. It was a good deal larger than the first, and it was not empty.
Hilton tightened his grip on the flash-gun, and in a single smooth, well-practiced movement Gibson swung his camera into position and began to take the most famous photographs ever made on Mars. Then they all relaxed, and stood waiting for the Martians to notice them.
In that moment centuries of fantasy and legend were swept away. All Man’s dreams of neighbors not unlike himself vanished into limbo. With them, unlamented, went Wells’ tentacled monstrosities and the other legions of crawling, nightmare horrors. And there vanished also the myth of coldly inhuman intelligences which might look down dispassionately on Man from their fabulous heights of wisdom— and might brush him aside with no more malice than he himself might destroy a creeping insect.
There were ten of the creatures in the glade, and they were all too busy eating to take any notice of the intruders. In appearance they resembled very plump kangaroos, their almost spherical bodies balanced on two large, slender hindlimbs. They were hairless, and their skin had a curious waxy sheen like polished leather. Two thin forearms, which seemed to be completely flexible, sprouted from the upper part of the body and ended in tiny hands like the claws of a bird— too small and feeble, one would have thought, to have been of much practical use. Their heads were set directly on the trunk with no suspicion of a neck, and bore two large pale eyes with wide pupils. There were no nostrils— only a very odd triangular mouth with three stubby bills which were making short work of the foliage. A pair of large, almost transparent ears hung limply from the head, twitching occasionally and sometimes folding themselves into trumpets which looked as if they might be extremely efficient sound detectors, even in this thin atmosphere.
The largest of the beasts was about as tall as Hilton, but all the others were considerably smaller. One baby, less than a meter high, could only be described by the overworked adjective “cute.” It was hopping excitedly about in an effort to reach the more succulent leaves, and from time to time emitted thin, piping cries which were irresistibly pathetic.
“How intelligent would you say they are?” whispered Gibson at last.
“It’s hard to say. Notice how they’re careful not to destroy the plants they eat? Of course, that may be pure instinct— like bees knowing how to build their hives.”
“They move very slowly, don’t they? I wonder if they’re warm-blooded.”
“I don’t see why they should have blood at all. Their metabolism must be pretty weird for them to survive in this climate.”
“It’s about time they took some notice of us.”
“The big fellow knows we’re here. I’ve caught him looking at us out of the corner of his eye. Do you notice the way his ears keep pointing towards us?”
“Let’s go out into the open.”
Hilton thought this over.
“I don’t see how they can do us much harm, even if they want to. Those little hands look rather feeble— but I suppose those three-sided beaks could do some damage. We’ll go forward, very slowly, for six paces. If they come at us, I’ll give them a flash with the gun while you make a bolt for it. I’m sure we can outrun them easily. They certainly don’t look built for speed.”
Moving with a slowness which they hoped would appear reassuring rather than stealthy, they walked forward into the glade. There was now no doubt that the Martians saw them; half a dozen pairs of great, calm eyes stared at them, then looked away as their owners got on with the more important business of eating.
“They don’t even seem to be inquisitive,” said Gibson, somewhat disappointed. “Are we as uninteresting as all this?”
“Hello— Junior’s spotted us! What’s he up to?”
The smallest Martian had stopped eating and was staring at the intruders with an expression that might have meant anything from rank disbelief to hopeful anticipation of another meal. It gave a couple of shrill squeaks which were answered by a noncommittal “honk” from one of the adults. Then it began to hop towards the interested spectators.
It halted a couple of paces away, showing not the slightest signs of fear or caution.
“How do you do?” said Hilton solemnly. “Let me introduce us. On my right, James Spencer; on my left, Martin Gibson. But I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch your name.”
“Squeak,” said the small Martian.
“Well, Squeak, what can we do for you?”
The little creature put out an exploring hand and tugged at Hilton’s clothing. Then it hopped towards Gibson, who had been busily photographing this exchange of courtesies. Once again it put forward an enquiring paw, and Gibson moved the camera round out of harm’s way. He held out his hand, and the little fingers closed round it with surprising strength.
“Friendly little chap, isn’t he?” said Gibson, having disentangled himself with difficulty. “At least he’s not as stuck-up as his relatives.”
The adults had so far taken not the slightest notice of the proceedings. They were still munching placidly at the other side of the glade.
“I wish we had something to give him, but I don’t suppose he could eat any of our food. Lend me your knife, Jimmy. I’ll cut down a bit of seaweed for him, just to prove that we’re friends.”
This gift was gratefully received and promptly eaten, and the small hands reached out for more.
“You seem to have made a hit, Martin,” said Hilton.
“I’m afraid it’s cupboard love,” sighed Gibson. “Hey, leave my camera alone— you can’t eat that!”
“I say,” said Hilton suddenly. “There’s something odd here. What color would you say this little chap is?”
“Why, brown in the front and— oh, a dirty gray at the back.”
“Well, just walk to the other side of him and offer another bit of food.”
Gibson obliged, Squeak rotating on his haunches so that he could grab the new morsel. And as he did so, an extraordinary thing happened.
The brown covering on the front of his body slowly faded, and in less than a minute had become a dingy gray. At the same time, exactly the reverse happened on the creature’s back, until the interchange was complete.
“Good Lord!” said Gibson. “It’s just like a chameleon. What do you think the idea is? Protective coloration?”
“No, it’s cleverer than that. Look at those others over there. You see, they’re always brown— or nearly black— on the side towards the sun. It’s simply a scheme to catch as much heat as possible, and avoid re-radiating it. The plants do just the same— I wonder who thought of it first? It wouldn’t be any use on an animal that had to move quickly, but some of those big chaps haven’t changed position in the last five minutes.”
Gibson promptly set to work photographing this peculiar phenomenon— not a very difficult feat to do, as
wherever he moved Squeak always turned hopefully towards him and sat waiting patiently. When he had finished, Hilton remarked:
“I hate to break up this touching scene, but we said we’d be back in an hour.”
“We needn’t all go. Be a good chap, Jimmy— run back and say that we’re all right.”
But Jimmy was staring at the sky— the first to realize that for the last five minutes an aircraft had been circling high over the valley.
Their united cheer disturbed even the placidly browsing Martians, who looked round disapprovingly. It scared Squeak so much that he shot backwards in one tremendous hop, but soon got over his fright and came forward again.
“See you later!” called Gibson over his shoulder as they hurried out of the glade. The natives took not the slightest notice.
They were halfway out of the little forest when Gibson suddenly became aware of the fact that he was being followed. He stopped and looked back. Making heavy weather, but still hopping along gamely behind him, was Squeak.
“Shoo!” said Gibson, flapping his arms around like a distraught scarecrow. “Go back to Mother! I haven’t got anything for you.”
It was not the slightest use, and his pause had merely enabled Squeak to catch up with him. The others were already out of sight, unaware that Gibson had dropped back. They therefore missed a very interesting cameo as Gibson tried, without hurting Squeak’s feelings, to disengage himself from his new-found friend.
He gave up the direct approach after five minutes, and tried guile. Fortunately he had failed to return Jimmy’s knife, and after much panting and hacking managed to collect a small pile of “seaweed” which he laid in front of Squeak. This, he hoped, would keep him busy for quite a while.
He had just finished this when Hilton and Jimmy came hurrying back to find what had happened to him.
“O.K.— I’m coming along now,” he said. “I had to get rid of Squeak somehow. That’ll stop him following.”
The pilot in the crashed aircraft had been getting anxious, for the hour was nearly up and there was still no sign of his companions. By climbing on to the top of the fuselage he could see halfway across the valley, and to the dark area of vegetation into which they had disappeared. He was examining this when the rescue aircraft came driving out of the east and began to circle the valley.
When he was sure it had spotted him he turned his attention to the ground again. He was just in time to see a group of figures emerging into the open plain— and a moment later he rubbed his eyes in rank disbelief.
Three people had gone into the forest; but four were coming out. And the fourth looked a very odd sort of person indeed.
CHAPTER
13
After what was later to be christened the most successful crash in the history of Martian exploration, the visit to Trivium Charontis and Port Schiaparelli was, inevitably, something of an anticlimax. Indeed Gibson had wished to postpone it altogether and to return to Port Lowell immediately with his prize. He had soon abandoned all attempts to jettison Squeak, and as everyone in the colony would be on tenterhooks to see a real, live Martian it had been decided to fly the little creature back with them.
But Port Lowell would not let them return; indeed, it was ten days before they saw the capital again. Under the great domes, one of the decisive battles for the possession of the planet was now being fought. It was a battle which Gibson knew of only through the radio reports— a silent but deadly battle which he was thankful to have missed.
The epidemic which Dr. Scott had asked for had arrived. At its peak, a tenth of the city’s population was sick with Martian fever. But the serum from Earth broke the attack, and the battle was won with only three fatal casualties. It was the last time that the fever ever threatened the colony.
Taking Squeak to Port Schiaparelli involved considerable difficulties, for it meant flying large quantities of his staple diet ahead of him. At first it was doubted if he could live in the oxygenated atmosphere of the domes, but it was soon discovered that this did not worry him in the least— though it reduced his appetite considerably. The explanation of this fortunate accident was not discovered until a good deal later. What never was discovered at all was the reason for Squeak’s attachment to Gibson. Someone suggested, rather unkindly, that it was because they were approximately the same shape.
Before they continued their journey, Gibson and his colleagues, with the pilot of the rescue plane and the repair crew who arrived later, made several visits to the little family of Martians. They discovered only the one group, and Gibson wondered if these were the last specimens left on the planet. This, as it later turned out, was not the case.
The rescue plane had been searching along the track of their flight when it had received a radio message from Phobos reporting brilliant flashes in Aetheria. (Just how those flashes had been made had puzzled everyone considerably until Gibson, with justifiable pride, gave the explanation.) When they discovered it would take only a few hours to replace the jet units on their plane, they had decided to wait while the repairs were carried out and to use the time studying the Martians in their natural haunts. It was then that Gibson first suspected the secret of their existence.
In the remote past they had probably been oxygen breathers, and their life processes still depended on the element. They could not obtain it direct from the soil, where it lay in such countless trillions of tons; but the plants they ate could do so. Gibson quickly found that the numerous “pods” in the seaweedlike fronds contained oxygen under quite high pressure. By slowing down their metabolism, the Martians had managed to evolve a balance— almost a symbiosis— with the plants which provided them, literally, with food and air. It was a precarious balance which, one would have thought, might have been upset at any time by some natural catastrophe. But conditions on Mars had long ago reached stability, and the balance would be maintained for ages yet— unless Man disturbed it.
The repairs took a little longer than expected, and they did not reach Port Schiaparelli until three days after leaving Port Lowell. The second city of Mars held less than a thousand people, living under two domes on a long, narrow plateau. This had been the site of the original landing on Mars, and so the position of the city was really an historical accident. Not until some years later, when the planet’s resources began to be better known, was it decided to move the colony’s center of gravity to Lowell and not to expand Schiaparelli any further.
The little city was in many respects an exact replica of its larger and more modern rival. Its specialty was light engineering, geological— or rather aerological— research, and the exploration of the surrounding regions. The fact that Gibson and his colleagues had accidentally stumbled on the greatest discovery so far made on Mars, less than an hour’s flight from the city, was thus the cause of some heartburning.
The visit must have had a demoralizing effect on all normal activity in Port Schiaparelli, for wherever Gibson went everything stopped while crowds gathered around Squeak. A favorite occupation was to lure him into a field of uniform illumination and to watch him turn black all over, as he blissfully tried to extract the maximum advantage from this state of affairs. It was in Schiaparelli that someone hit on the deplorable scheme of projecting simple pictures onto Squeak, and photographing the result before it faded. One day Gibson was very annoyed to come across a photo of his pet bearing a crude but recognizable caricature of a well-known television star.
On the whole, their stay in Port Schiaparelli was not a very happy one. After the first three days they had seen everything worth seeing, and the few trips they were able to make into the surrounding countryside did not provide much of interest. Jimmy was continually worrying about Irene, and putting through expensive calls to Port Lowell. Gibson was impatient to get back to the big city which, not so long ago, he had called an overgrown village. Only Hilton, who seemed to possess unlimited reserves of patience, took life easily and relaxed while the others fussed around him.
There was one excitement
during their stay in the city. Gibson had often wondered, a little apprehensively, what would happen if the pressurizing dome ever failed. He received the answer— or as much of it as he had any desire for— one quiet afternoon when he was interviewing the city’s chief engineer in his office. Squeak had been with them, propped up on his large, flexible lower limbs like some improbable nursery doll.
As the interview progressed, Gibson became aware that his victim was showing more than the usual signs of restiveness. His mind was obviously very far away, and he seemed to be waiting for something to happen. Suddenly, without warning, the whole building trembled slightly as if hit by an earthquake. Two more shocks, equally spaced, came in quick succession. From a loudspeaker on the wall a voice called urgently: “Blowout! Practice only! You have ten seconds to reach shelter! Blowout! Practice only!”
Gibson had jumped out of his chair, but immediately realized there was nothing he need do. From far away there came a sound of slamming doors— then silence. The engineer got to his feet and walked over to the window, overlooking the city’s only main street.
“Everyone seems to have got to cover,” he said. “Of course, it isn’t possible to make these tests a complete surprise. There’s one a month, and we have to tell people what day it will be because they might think it was the real thing.”
“Just what are we all supposed to do?” asked Gibson, who had been told at least twice but had become a little rusty on the subject.
“As soon as you hear the signal— that’s the three ground explosions— you’ve got to get under cover. If you’re indoors you have to grab your breathing mask to rescue anyone who can’t make it. You see, if pressure goes every house becomes a self-contained unit with enough air for several hours.”
“And anyone out in the open?”
“It would take a few seconds for the pressure to go right down, and as every building has its own airlock it should always be possible to reach shelter in time. Even if you collapsed in the open, you’d probably be all right if you were rescued inside two minutes— unless you’d got a bad heart. And no one comes to Mars if he’s got a bad heart.”