Alfred Coppel

“ How like the Martians, he thought with some irritation, to make it necessary to travel down in order to enter a tower. Everything the long way, the hard and devious way.
The outer doorway was shaped like a fleur-de-lis and it opened from the top down, sliding into a recess of ancient, oily machinery. It would be far too simple to make a door that looked and worked like a door. Everything Marley had seen during his months on Mars served only to increase his sense of alienage. He had seen only Tydore, of course, of the living Martians. ”

“ Tydore withheld too much, and there was so little time left. There was an acrid core of decadence in the old Martian, Marley thought. A consciousness of too many millenia of civilization and decay. Devious was the word, perhaps, though it seemed a pallid one for the reality of the Martian's intricate mind. It was always impossible to know what he was thinking—how much he knew. About Marley being a spy. About the war on Earth. In spite of himself, Marley smiled. It sounded so melodramatic that way, but it was the way it really was. The Martians held the perfect weapon. ”

“ The sun was a shrunken red disk against the starfields, a distant pale luminosity surrendering to the encroachment of the falling night. Hoarfrost crunched under Marley's feet as he walked by the still black waters of the canal, and then thin wind whispered over the sand and across the breasts of the ancient hills. ”

“ Tydore despised Marley as an outworld savage. One with the despoilers of the holy places of Mars.
Not that the Martians had gods. They had lived too long for that, and their deities existed only in their beautifully turned phrases and their hyper-cultured ritual. But the first men from Earth had looted the libraries and shattered the soaring towers. It was a thing no Martian would ever forget—or forgive. It marked Earthmen for what they were. In Martian eyes—precocious barbarians. Targets for Martian subtlety. ”