Joe Gibson

“ And here, within their minds, was that secret which had destroyed the race of Mars. But it was a secret the Earthians, too, had met—and they had conquered. As its searching thoughts touched upon that knowledge, its huge form writhed and twisted in a hell of searing, mental pain. Trembling, twittering, it crept from its lair....
Donovan stirred restlessly in the early morning twilight. Finally, he got up. Audry watched him with quiet amusement as he tied the loincloth about his middle. An animal wouldn't have noticed it, of course. A female had no reason to notice it. ”

“ They were hugging each other and laughing as the monstrous vehicle rumbled up and stopped at the curb beside them. It wasn't a bus, but it was probably as near and as big as the Martians could come to those specifications. It was, actually, a giant, open-topped moving van.
"Once around the park, Jeeves!" The thought bounced gleefully into his mind as he shoved Audry toward the van. It waited patiently until they had clambored up to the seats, squatting on the low metal frames that had once boasted cushions. Then it was off.
Audry gasped in surprise. "Where's it taking us?"
Donovan told her. ”

“ Mars was like Earth, only different. Earth was two-thirds under water, one third dry land. Mars was two-thirds stratospheric, one third under atmosphere. Breathable atmosphere.
They fished Audry's pressure suit from the pool that evening, bundled the two suits under their arms, and climbed onto the van. No more was said about the—something—that had shattered her helmet, and then vanished completely. She hadn't even caught a glimpse of it, whatever it was. But Donovan had taken the effort to wrench a light, strong metal bar from a railing on the fenced court. ”

“ Not with these Earthians! When they, the predicted Visitors from Beyond, had arrived, it had performed every feat possible that would assist them. Now it attempted to perform its final duty—to attune their minds telepathically to the great Recorders buried within the planet, where lay the knowledge and culture of a long-dead civilization.
Centuries before, a vast civilization had bloomed and thrived on the young red planet—the civilization of a race of super-intelligence, a race of beings who were in complete telepathic accord with one another and with everyone. ”

“ We're plunging into Mars—we'll have to! Jennings has a reckoning on our trajectory, now. We'll skim Mars! Smack through the atmosphere and on out into space! Looks like our only chance—velocity ten times too high for landing, and Jennings believes our nucleonic field can take that atmospheric pressure while it can't take the meteor! But it's going to be close and it's going to be hot outside! Jennings says to hang onto your hats."
Charles Donovan rolled off his bunk and slithered onto the cold metal deck. ”

“ The age-old creature lay flat upon the soft, caressing sand, the keen, sensitive impulse of its alien intelligence reaching out—probing the subconscious minds of the two sleeping Earthians! And it quivered and tensed as wave after wave of maddening terror swept through its being! ”

“ Give a woman a string of college degrees and that's what you get! Donovan pressed his lips together tightly, stepped forward in a lithe, pantherlike motion.
He was a spatial engineer. Being a spatial engineer meant you were something between a star-blessed sorcerer and a rule-of-thumb nuclear physicist. He had gotten his training from a neurotic old graybeard out at the old Lunar Atomic Warfare Base before interplanetary flight had even been heard of by the United Nations. His fist connected with the point of her small, pert chin and she spread-eagled out on the hard metal deck. ”

“ As in a Heaviside layer, they volatilized. Bigger stuff could be detected—and dodged. A planet's atmosphere was thick—definitely thick at the velocity they were traveling—but it also had a high degree of dispersion. It grew hot—and the nucleonic field lashed back at the heat with more heat of its own, plus a strong radiation pressure. It could take that.
But they were "passing" on the "forward" side of Mars! The planet was rolling toward them—and a planet's orbital velocity is something to reckon with. They not only skimmed through the atmosphere—they skimmed the surface of the planet. ”

“ It swung into the highway unerringly, selecting a specific lane, and whisked them back toward the spot where they had descended into the canal.
The elevator shaft in the tower was just large enough to accommodate the van. Donovan took it up—the lift worked—and returned to the broken hulk of the Starling. Audry waited at the foot of the tower, spear in hand. He returned with supplies, equipment and an extra pressure suit. Audry surprised him with an extra van.
"I just wished it up, and here it was!" she exclaimed happily. "Maybe these machines have just gotten used to having us around!" ”

“ Donovan mused apprehensively. They stood in the twilight hush of the bridge. The huge scanner screens loomed before them, cracked, broken. "We'll have to save all the air we've got, as much as possible. We might—just might—find a way to purify it and use it again."
"Fine chance," Audry snapped bitterly.
"Transmutation," he replied, grinning down at her. "I'm a spatial engineer, remember? Nucleonic stuff. We still have the power units in the nose jets."
"Darned little that is!" She swung about and stamped toward the yawing valve entrance. "You'll need equipment, mister, and plenty of it! ”

“ It kicked the fuel out of the jets in a raw, blazing byproduct of energy. It powered the intense nucleonic field.
They struck the planet's atmosphere at a velocity which likened it to shoving a cold bar through hard rock. The rock got hot—incredibly hot—but in this instant the bar didn't melt. The nucleonic field took the punishment. But a nucleonic field takes only so much. ”

“ The pressure suits were like thick, cumbersome second-skins of metal mesh and rubbery lining. They kept body pressure from expanding in vacuum or near-vacuum conditions. Mars' atmosphere was thin. A thick quartzite shell fitted over their heads, fastening by step-down clamps to their shoulders. Bulky tanks on their backs held air. They looked like two oversized figures in long metal underwear, but Audry was still noticeably tantalizing. ”

“ But then he was leaping after her, running nimbly along the wide, hard-surfaced wall of the canal—running easily in the slight gravitation.
It was a tower, all right, and there was something that looked like an elevator shaft. And stairs. Winding down, down an open stairwell for fifteen miles. The rooms were bare, empty chambers, constructed seemingly of some hard-baked porcelain. It was smooth, polished, and there were sand drifts in all the rooms, sometimes three feet deep. It looked—deserted.
Donovan shook his head. "Dead world!"
"What?"
"Dead world," he repeated. "Dead civilization. ”

“ One little piece of pipe in a radar apparatus. All we need is a shiny piece of tube, shaped just so, without the slightest, teensy-est scratch or blemish inside it. Otherwise—no radar! So we guess and fool around and maybe in two and a half years they'll land on Mars and maybe even find us with all the whole danged planet to explore. ”

“ A squat, turtle-backed machine rolled down the street on its three tiny wheels, lifted its front apron and climbed up on the sidewalk, and rolled up in front of them. It flicked open a panel on its rounded metal top and a long, jointed arm snaked out toward them. The arm stopped, poised directly before Donovan's helmet. ”

“ They had been giants, mentally, their civilization developing steadily, peacefully along lines which utilized machines more mental than mechanical. And onward they climbed, until they solved the secret of the Forces of the Stars, and the first mechanical adaptation of their discoveries had massacred millions. ”

“ Meteor!
Jennings, the eight-to-four watch pilot and ship's space jockey, was on the bridge. He saw the meteor coming and he knew what to do. Or he should have known—
Automatically, the meteor's trajectory was recorded and computed against the ship's trajectory. Automatically, direct interception was registered. It was a meteor, not a meteorite. It was heavy. Carefully, various jets were dampered—just the slightest. The Starling swerved on its course, a long, curved line in space. Completely automatic.
They plunged toward Mars!
Evans rode as eight-to-four astronaut. This wasn't his domain. ”

“ No meteor ever had the clutter of that nucleonic field, or those long streamers of raw energy blazing out in its fore. The ship was coming!
Donovan got out their sleek runabout. He climbed into the back seat and checked over the squat bulk of equipment installed there. Two great blocks of heavy insulation—Pu-239. And between them, a small clockwork mechanism and radio receiver. He checked it thoroughly. Then he checked the small, portable transmitter lying on the front seat. Finally he got out, went into the house, and crawled into a pressure suit. Audry followed him and did likewise. ”

“ They checked supplies. Foodstuffs, for the most part, were stored just forward of amidships. There had been a crew of twenty, supplies for a fifteen-month cruise through space. He made her list what they found, add it up, and calculate how long it would last them. They could eat for three years!
They checked equipment. Most of the electronic control and lab apparatus was forward near the bridge in the ship's nose. They had all that. ”

“ A robot, probably, and—and what? Something that dragged and didn't make footprints!
Of all the little red imps of Mars, this was the oddest!
They completed connections. They checked the apparatus painstakingly. They tested it on Deimos, which rode obligingly in the warm crimson sky. Everything checked.
They leafed through the Starling's star almanac, doubly rechecking their computations as to Earth's position. They had their longitude and latitude figured as close as could be expected. They had everything figured down to the dot over the last i. It was still early morning. ”