"I don't understand," Mason muttered. "How could they wreck a whole planet?"
"We wrecked Earth in thirty years."
"Not this way. They've used Mars up. Used up everything. Nothing left. Nothing at all. It's one vast scrap-heap."
Shakily Halloway tried to light a cigarette. The match burned feebly, then sputtered out. He felt light and dopey. His heart throbbed heavily. The distant sun beat down, pale and small. Mars was a cold, lonely dead world.
Halloway said, "They must have had a hell of a time, watching their cities rot away. No water or minerals, finally no soil." He picked up a handful of dry sand, let it trickle through his fingers.
"Transmitter working," a crew member said.
Mason got to his feet and lumbered awkwardly over to the transmitter. "I'll tell Davidson what we've found." He bent over the microphone.
Young looked across at Halloway. "Well, I guess we're stuck. How long will our supplies carry us?"
"Couple of months."
"And then -" Young snapped his fingers. "Like the Martians." He squinted at the long corroded wall of a ruined house. "I wonder what they were like."
"A semantics team is probing the ruins. Maybe they'll turn up something."
Beyond the ruined city stretched out what had once been an industrial area. Fields of twisted installations, towers and pipes and machinery. Sand-covered and partly rusted. The surface of the land was pocked with great gaping sores. Yawning pits where scoops had once dredged. Entrances of underground mines. Mars was honeycombed. Termite-ridden. A whole race had burrowed and dug in trying to stay alive. The Martians had sucked Mars dry, then fled it.
"A graveyard," Young said. "Well, they got what they deserved."
"You blame them? What should they have done? Perished a few thousand years sooner and left their planet in better shape?"
"They could have left us something," Young said stubbornly. "Maybe we can dig up their bones and boil them. I'd like to get my hands on one of them long enough to -"
A pair of crewmen came hurrying across the sand. "Look at these!" They carried armloads of metal tubes, glittering cylinders heaped up in piles. "Look what we found buried!"
Halloway roused himself. "What is it?"
"Records. Written documents. Get these to the semantics team!" Carmichael spilled his armload at Halloway's feet. "And this isn't all. We found something else – installations."
"Installations? What kind?"
"Rocket launchers. Old towers, rusty as hell. There are fields of them on the other side of the town." Carmichael wiped perspiration from his red face. "They didn't die, Halloway. They took off. They used up this place, then left."
Doctor Judde and Young pored over the gleaming tubes. "It's coming," Judde murmured, absorbed in the shifting pattern undulating across the scanner.
"Can you make anything out?" Halloway asked tensely.
"They left, all right. Took off. The whole lot of them."
Young turned to Halloway. "What do you think of that? So they didn't die out."
"Can't you tell where they went?"
Judde shook his head. "Some planet their scout ships located. Ideal climate and temperature." He pushed the scanner aside. "In their last period the whole Martian civilization was oriented around this escape planet. Big project, moving a society lock, stock and barrel. It took them three or four hundred years to get everything of value off Mars and on its way to the other planet."
"How did the operation come out?"
"Not so good. The planet was beautiful. But they had to adapt. Apparently they didn't anticipate all the problems arising from colonization on a strange planet." Judde indicated a cylinder. "The colonies deteriorated rapidly. Couldn't keep the traditions and techniques going. The society broke apart. Then came war, barbarism."
"Then their migration was a failure." Halloway pondered. "Maybe it can't be done. Maybe it's impossible."
"Not a failure," Judde corrected. "They lived, at least. This place was no good any more. Better to live as savages on a strange world than stay here and die. So they say, on these cylinders."
"Come along," Young said to Halloway. The two men stepped outside the semantics hut. It was night. The sky was littered with glowing stars. The two moons had risen. They glimmered coldly, two dead eyes in the chilly sky.
"This place won't do," Young stated. "We can't migrate here. That's settled."
Halloway eyed him. "What's on your mind?"
"This was the last of the nine planets. We tested every one of them." Young's face was alive with emotion. "None of them will support life. All of them are lethal or useless, like this rubbish heap. The whole damn solar system is out."
"So?"
"We'll have to leave the solar system."
"And go where? How?"
Young pointed toward the Martian ruins, to the city and the rusted, bent rows of towers. "Where they went. They found a place to go. An untouched world outside the solar system. And they developed some kind of outer-space drive to get them there."
"You mean -"
"Follow them. This solar system is dead. But outside, someplace in some other system, they found an escape world. And they were able to get there."
"We'd have to fight with them if we land on their planet. They won't want to share it."
Young spat angrily on the sand. "Their colonies deteriorated. Remember? Broke down into barbarism. We can handle them. We've got everything in the way of war weapons – weapons that can wipe a planet clean."
"We don't want to do that."
"What do we want to do? Tell Davidson we're stuck on Terra? Let the human race turn into underground moles? Blind crawling things…"
"If we follow the Martians we'll be competing for their world. They found it; the damn thing belongs to them, not us. And maybe we can't work out their drive. Maybe the schematics are lost."
Judde emerged from the semantics hut. "I've some more information. The whole story is here. Details on the escape planet. Fauna and flora. Studies of its gravity, air density, mineral possessions, soil layer, climate, temperature – everything."
"How about their drive?"
"Breakdown on that, too. Everything." Judde was shaking with excitement. "I have an idea. Let's get the designs team on these drive schematics and see if they can duplicate it. If they can, we could follow the Martians. We could sort of share their planet with them."
"See?" Young said to Halloway. "Davidson will say the same thing. It's obvious."
Halloway turned and walked off.
"What's wrong with him?" Judde asked.
"Nothing. He'll get over it." Young scratched out a quick message on a piece of paper. "Have this transmitted to Davidson back on Terra."
Judde peered at the message. He whistled. "You're telling him about the Martian migration. And about the escape planet?"
"We want to get started. It'll take a long time to get things under way."
"Will Halloway come around?"
"He'll come around," Young said. "Don't worry about him."
Halloway gazed up at the towers. The leaning, sagging towers from which the Martian transports had been launched thousands of years before.
Nothing stirred. No sign of life. The whole dried-up planet was dead.
Halloway wandered among the towers. The beam from his helmet cut a white path in front of him. Ruins, heaps of rusting metal. Bales of wire and building material. Parts of uncompleted equipment. Half-buried construction sections sticking up from the sand.
He came to a raised platform and mounted the ladder cautiously. He found himself in an observation mount, surrounded by the remains of dials and meters. A telescopic sight stuck up, rusted in place, frozen tight.
"Hey," a voice came from below. "Who's up there?"
"Halloway."
"God, you scared me." Carmichael slid his blast rifle away and climbed the ladder. "What are you doing?"
"Looking around."
Carmichael appeared beside him, puffing
and red-faced. "Interesting, these towers. This was an automatic sighting station. Fixed the take-off for supply transports. The population was already gone." Carmichael slapped at the ruined control board. "These supply ships continued to take off, loaded by machines and dispatched by machines, after all the Martians were gone."
"Lucky for them they had a place to go."
"Sure was. The minerals team says there's not a damn thing left here. Nothing but dead sand and rock and debris. Even the water's no good. They took everything of value."
"Judde says their escape world is pretty nice."
"Virgin." Carmichael smacked his fat lips. "Never touched. Trees and meadows and blue oceans. He showed me a scanner translation of a cylinder."
"Too bad we don't have a place like that to go. A virgin world for ourselves."
Carmichael was bent over the telescope. "This here sighted for them. When the escape planet swam into view a relay delivered a trigger charge to the control tower. The tower launched the ships. When the ships were gone a new flock came up into position." Carmichael began to polish the encrusted lenses of the telescope, wiping the accumulated rust and debris away. "Maybe we'll see their planet."
In the ancient lenses a vague luminous globe was swimming. Halloway could make it out, obscured by the filth of centuries, hidden behind a curtain of metallic particles and dirt.
Carmichael was down on his hands and knees, working with the focus mechanism. "See anything?" he demanded.
Halloway nodded. "Yeah."
Carmichael pushed him away. "Let me look." He squinted into the lens. "Aw, for God's sake!"
"What's wrong? Can't you see it?"
"I see it," Carmichael said, getting down on his hands and knees again. "The thing must have slipped. Or the time shift is too great. But this is supposed to adjust automatically. Of course, the gear box has been frozen for -"
"What's wrong?" Halloway demanded.
"That's Earth. Don't you recognize it?"
"Earth!"
Carmichael sneered with disgust. "This fool thing must be busted. I wanted to get a look at their dream planet. That's just old Terra, where we came from. All my work trying to fix this wreck up, and what do we see?"
"Earth!" Halloway murmured.
He had just finished telling Young about the telescope.
"I can't believe it," Young said. "But the description fitted Earth thousands of years ago…"
"How long ago did they take off?" Halloway asked.
"About six hundred thousand years ago," Judde said.
"And their colonies descended into barbarism on the new planet."
The four men were silent. They looked at each other, tight-lipped.
"We've destroyed two worlds," Halloway said at last. "Not one. Mars first. We finished up here, then we moved to Terra. And we destroyed Terra as systematically as we did Mars."
"A closed circle," Mason said. "We're back where we started. Back to reap the crop our ancestors sowed. They left Mars this way. Useless. And now we're back here poking around the ruins like ghouls."
"Shut up," Young snapped. He paced angrily back and forth. "I can't believe it."
"We're Martians. Descendants of the original stock that left here. We're back from the colonies. Back home." Mason's voice rose hysterically. "We're home again, where we belong!"
Judde pushed aside the scanner and got to his feet. "No doubt about it. I checked their analysis with our own archeological records. It fits. Their escape world was Terra, six hundred thousand years ago."
"What'll we tell Davidson?" Mason demanded. He giggled wildly. "We've found a perfect place. A word untouched by human hands. Still in the original cellophane wrapper."
Halloway moved to the door of the hut, stood gazing silently out. Judde joined him. "This is catastrophic. We're really stuck. What the hell are you looking at?"
Above them, the cold sky glittered. In the bleak light the barren plains of Mars stretched out, mile after mile of empty, wasted ruin.
"At that," Halloway said. "You know what it reminds me of?"
"A picnic site."
"Broken bottles and tin cans and wadded up plates. After the picnickers have left. Only, the picnickers are back. They're back – and they have to live in the mess they made."
"What'll we tell Davidson?" Mason demanded.
"I've already called him," Young said wearily. "I told him there was a planet, out of the solar system. Someplace we could go. The Martians had a drive."
"A drive." Judde pondered. "Those towers." His lips twisted. "Maybe they did have an outer space drive. Maybe it's worth going on with the translation."
They looked at each other.
"Tell Davidson we're going on," Halloway ordered. "We'll keep on until we find it. We're not staying on this God-forsaken junkyard." His gray eyes glowed. "We'll find it, yet. A virgin world. A world that's unspoiled."
"Unspoiled," Young echoed. "Nobody there ahead of us."
"We'll be the first," Judde muttered avidly.
"It's wrong!" Mason shouted. "Two are enough! Let's not destroy a third world!"
Nobody listened to him. Judde and Young and Halloway gazed up, faces eager, hands clenching and unclenching. As if they were already there. As if they were already holding onto the new world, clutching it with all their strength. Tearing it apart, atom by atom…
Prominent Author
"My husband," said Mary Ellis, "although he is a very prompt man, and hasn't been late to work in twenty-five years, is actually still some place around the house." She sipped at her faintly scented hormone and carbohydrate drink. "As a matter of fact, he won't be leaving for another ten minutes."
"Incredible," said Dorothy Lawrence, who had finished her drink, and now basked in the dermalmist spray that descended over her virtually unclad body from an automatic jet above the couch. "What they won't think of next!"
Mrs Ellis beamed proudly, as if she personally were an employee of Terran Development. "Yes, it is incredible. According to somebody down at the office, the whole history of civilization can be explained in terms of transportation techniques. Of course, I don't know anything about history. That's for Government research people. But from what this man told Henry -"
"Where's my briefcase?" came a fussy voice from the bedroom. "Good Lord, Mary. I know I left it on the clothes-cleaner last night."
"You left it upstairs," Mary replied, raising her voice slightly. "Look in the closet."
"Why would it be in the closet?" Sounds of angry stirring around. "You'd think a man's own briefcase would be safe." Henry Ellis stuck his head into the living-room briefly. "I found it. Hello, Mrs Lawrence."
"Good morning," Dorothy Lawrence replied. "Mary was explaining that you're still here."
"Yes, I'm still here." Ellis straightened his tie, as the mirror revolved slowly around him. "Anything you want me to pick up downtown, honey?"
"No," Mary replied. "Nothing I can think of. I'll vid you at the office if I remember something."
"Is it true," Mrs Lawrence asked, "that as soon as you step into it you're all the way downtown?"
"Well, almost all the way."
"A hundred and sixty miles! It's beyond belief. Why, it takes my husband two and a half hours to get his monojet through the commercial lanes and down at the parking lot then walk all the way up to his office."
"I know," Ellis muttered, grabbing his hat and coat. "Used to take me about that long. But no more." He kissed his wife good-bye. "So long. See you tonight. Nice to have seen you again, Mrs Lawrence."
"Can I – watch?" Mrs Lawrence asked hopefully.
"Watch? Of course, of course." Ellis hurried through the house, out the back door and down the steps into the yard. "Come along!" he shouted impatiently. "I don't want to be late. It's nine-fifty-nine and I have to be at my desk by ten."
Mrs Lawrence hurried eagerly after Ellis. In the backyard stood a big circular hoop that gleamed brightly in the mid-morning sun. Ellis turned some controls at the base. The h
oop changed color, from silver to a shimmering red.
"Here I go!" Ellis shouted. He stepped briskly into the hoop. The hoop fluttered about him. There was a faint pop. The glow died.
"Good Heavens!" Mrs Lawrence gasped. "He's gone!"
"He's in downtown N'York," Mary Ellis corrected. "I wish my husband had a Jiffi-scuttler. When they show up on the market commercially maybe I can afford to get him one."
"Oh, they're very handy," Mary Ellis agreed. "He's probably saying hello to the boys right this minute."
Henry Ellis was in a sort of tunnel. All round him a gray, formless tube stretched out in both directions, a sort of hazy sewer-pipe.
Framed in the opening behind him, he could see the faint outline of his own house. His back porch and yard, Mary standing on the steps in her red bra and slacks. Mrs Lawrence beside her in green-checkered shorts. The cedar tree and rows of petunias. A hill. The neat little houses of Cedar Groves, Pennsylvania. And in front of him -
New York City. A wavering glimpse of the busy street-corner in front of his office. The great building itself, a section of concrete and glass and steel. People moving. Skyscrapers. Monojets landing in swarms. Aerial signs. Endless white-collar workers hurrying everywhere, rushing to their offices.
Ellis moved leisurely toward the New York end. He had taken the Jiffi-scuttler often enough to know just exactly how many steps it was. Five steps. Five steps along the wavery gray tunnel and he had gone a hundred and sixty miles. He halted, glancing back. So far he had gone three steps. Ninety-six miles. More than half way.
The fourth dimension was a wonderful thing. Ellis lit his pipe, leaning his briefcase against his trouser-leg and groping in his coat pocket for his tobacco. He still had thirty seconds to get to work. Plenty of time. The pipe-lighter flared and he sucked in expertly. He snapped the lighter shut and restored it to his pocket.
A wonderful thing, all right. The Jiffi-scuttler had already revolutionized society. It was now possible to go anywhere in the world instantly, with no time lapse. And without wading through endless lanes of other monojets, also going places. The transportation problem had been a major headache since the middle of the twentieth century. Every year more families moved from the cities out into the country, adding numbers to the already swollen swarms that choked the roads and jetlanes. But it was all solved now. An infinite number of Jiffi-scuttlers could be set up; there was no interference between them. The Jiffi-scuttler bridged distances non-spacially, through another dimension of some kind (they hadn't explained that part too clearly to him). For a flat thousand credits any Terran family could have Jiffi-scuttler hoops set up, one in the back yard – the other in Berlin, or Bermuda, or San Francisco, or Port Said. Anywhere in the world. Of course, there was one drawback. The hoop had to be anchored in one specific spot. You picked your destination and that was that. But for an office worker, it was perfect. Step in one end, step out the other. Five steps – a hundred and sixty miles. A hundred and sixty miles that had been a two-hour nightmare of grinding gears and sudden jolts, monojets cutting in and out, speeders, reckless flyers, alert cops waiting to pounce, ulcers and bad tempers. It was all over now. All over for him, at least, as an employee of Terran Development, the manufacturer of the Jiffi-scuttler. And soon for everybody, when they were commercially on the market.