Red Planet Page 9

  They went through the pressure door and inside. A single clerk was on duty there. He looked up and Frank went to him. “Is there a scooter to South Colony today?”

  “In about twenty minutes,” said the clerk. “You want to ship those bags?”

  “No, we want tickets.” Frank handed over their joint funds.

  Silently the clerk attended to the transaction. Jim heaved a sigh of relief; scooters to the colony did not run every day. The chance that they might have to keep out of sight for a day or more and then try to get away without encountering Howe had been eating at him.

  They took seats in the back of the station and waited. Presently Jim said, “Frank, is Deimos up?”

  “I didn't notice. Why?”

  “Maybe I can get a call through to home.”

  “No money.”

  “I'll put it through collect.” He went to the booth opposite the clerk's desk; the clerk looked up but said nothing. Inside, he signalled the operator. Subconsciously he had been worrying about getting word to his father ever since Willis had spilled the secret of the so-called non-migration policy.

  The screen lighted up and a pleasant-appearing young woman with the fashionable striped hair appeared therein. “I'd like to call South Colony,” he said.

  “No relay until later this morning,” she informed him. “Would you like to record a delayed message?”

  He was stopped; delayed messages were not accepted on a collect basis. “No, thank you, I'll try later,” he fibbed and switched off.

  The clerk was tapping on the booth's door. “The driver is ready for you,” he told Jim. Jim hurriedly settled his mask in place and followed Frank out through the pressure door. The driver was just closing the baggage compartment of the scooter. He took their tickets and the two boys got aboard. Again they were the only passengers; they claimed the observation seats.

  Ten minutes later, tired of staring almost into a rising Sun, Jim announced, “I'm sleepy. I think I'll go down.”

  “I think I'll ask the driver to turn on the radio,” said Frank.

  “Oh, the heck with that. We've both had a hard night. Come on.”

  “Well—all right.” They went into the lower compartment, found bunks, and crawled in. In a few minutes they both were snoring.

  The scooter, leaving Syrtis Minor at sunrise, kept ahead of the daily thaw and did not have to lay over at Hesperidum. It continued south and reached Cynia about noon. So far advanced was the season that there was no worry about the ice holding from Cynia south to Charax; Strymon canal would not thaw again until the following spring.

  The driver was pleased to have kept his schedule. When Deimos rose toward the end of the morning's run he relaxed and switched on his radio. What he heard caused him to make a quick check of his passengers. They were still asleep; he decided not to do anything about it until he reached Cynia Station.

  On reaching there he hurried inside. Jim and Frank were awakened by the scooter stopping but did not get out. Presently the driver came back and said, “Meal stop. Everybody out.”

  Frank answered, “We're not hungry.”

  The driver looked disconcerted. “Better come in anyhow,” he insisted. “It gets pretty cold in the car when she's standing still.”

  “We don't mind.” Frank was thinking that he would dig a can of something out of his bag as soon as the driver had left; from suppertime the night before until noon today seemed a long time to his stomach.

  “What's the trouble?” the driver continued. “Broke?” Something in their expressions caused him to continue, “I'll stake you to a sandwich each.”

  Frank refused but Jim interceded. “Don't be silly, Frank. Thank you, sir. We accept.”

  George, the agent and factotum of Cynia Station, looked at them speculatively and served them sandwiches without comment. The driver bolted his food and was quickly through. When he got up, the boys did so, too. “Just take it easy,” he advised them. “I've got twenty, thirty minutes’ work, loading and checking.”

  “Can't we help you?” asked Jim.

  “Nope. You'd just be in the way. I'll call you when I'm ready.”

  “Well—thanks for the sandwich.”

  “Don't mention it.” He went out.

  Less than ten minutes later there came faintly to their ears the sound of the scooter starting up. Frank looked startled and rushed to the traffic-checking window. The car was already disappearing to the south. Frank turned to the agent. “Hey, he didn't wait for us!”

  “Nope.”

  “But he said he'd call us.”

  “Yep.” The agent resumed reading.

  “But—but why?” insisted Frank. “He told us to wait.”

  The agent put down his newspaper. “It's like this,” he said, “Clem is a peaceable man and he told me that he wasn't a cop. He said he would have no part in trying to arrest two strapping, able-bodied boys, both wearing guns.”

  “What!”

  “That's what I said. And don't go to fiddling around with those heaters. You'll notice I ain't wearing my gun; you can take the station apart for all of me.”

  Jim had joined Frank at the counter. “What's this all about?” he asked.

  “You tell me. All I know is, there's a call out to pick you up. You're charged with burglary, theft, truancy, destruction of Company property—pretty near everything but committing a nuisance in the canal. Seems like you are a couple of desperate characters— though you don't look the part.”

  “I see,” said Frank slowly. “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. Long about tomorrow morning a special scooter will arrive and I presume there will be force enough aboard her to subdue a couple of outlaws. In the meantime do as you please. Go outside. Wander around. When you get chilly, come back inside.” He went back to his reading.

  “I see. Come along, Jim.” They retreated to the far corner of the room for a war conference. The agent's attitude was easily understood. Cynia Station was almost literally a thousand miles from anywhere; the station itself was the only human habitation against the deadly cold of night.

  Jim was almost in tears. “I'm sorry, Frank. If I hadn't been so darned anxious to eat, this wouldn't have happened.”

  “Don't be so tragic about it,” Frank advised him. “Can you imagine us shooting it out with a couple of innocent bystanders and hijacking the scooter? I can't.”

  “Uh—no. I guess you're right.”

  “Certainly I am. What we've got to decide is what to do next.”

  “I know one thing; I'm not going to let them drag me back to school.”

  “Neither am I. What's more important, we've got to get word to our folks about the deal that's being cooked up against them.”

  “Say, look—maybe we can phone now!”

  “Do you think he—” Frank nodded toward the agent “—would let us?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. We've still got our guns—and I can be pushed just so far.” Jim got up and went to the agent. “Any objection to us using the phone?”

  The agent did not even glance up. “Not a bit. Help yourself.”

  Jim went into the booth. There was no local exchange; the instrument was simply a radio link to the relay station on the outer moon. A transparency announced that Deimos was above the horizon; seeing this, Jim punched the call button and asked for linkage to South Colony.

  There was an unusually long delay then a sweetly impersonal voice announced, “Due to circumstances beyond our control calls are not being accepted from Cynia Station to South Colony.”

  Jim started to ask if Deimos were visible at South Colony, since he knew that line-of-sight was essential to radio transmission on Mars—indeed, it was the only sort of radio transmission he was familiar with—but the relay station had switched off and made no answer when he again punched the call button. He left the booth and told Frank about it.

  “Sounds like Howe has fixed us,” Frank commented. “I don't believe there is a breakdown
. Unless—”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless there is more to it than that. Beecher may be rigging things to interfere with messages getting through until he's put over his scheme.”

  “Frank, we've got to get word to our folks. See here, I bet we could hole up with the Martians over at Cynia. After all, they offered us water and—”

  “Suppose we could. Where does that get us?”

  “Let me finish. We can mail a letter from here, giving our folks all the details and telling them where we are hiding. Then we could wait for them to come and get us.”

  Frank shook his head. “If we mail a letter from here, old frozen face over there is bound to know it. Then, when the cops show up and we are gone, he turns it over to them. Instead of our folks getting it, it goes back to Howe and Beecher.”

  “You really think so? Nobody has any right to touch private mail.”

  “Don't be a little innocent. Howe didn't have any right to order us to give up our guns—but he did. No, Jim, we've got to carry this message ourselves.”

  On the wall opposite them was a map of the area served by Cynia Station. Frank had been studying it idly while they talked. Suddenly he said, “Jim, what's that new station south of Cynia?”

  “Huh? Where do you mean?”

  “There.” Frank pointed. Inked on the original map was a station on west Strymon, south of them.

  “That?” said Jim. “That must be one of the shelters for the Project.” The grand plan for restoring oxygen to Mars called for setting up, the following spring, a string of processing plants in the desert between Cynia and Charax. Some of the shelters had been completed in anticipation of the success of plant number one in Libya.

  “It can't be much over a hundred miles away.”

  “A hundred and ten, maybe,” Jim commented, looking at the scale.

  Frank got a far-away look in his eyes. “I think I can skate that far before dark. Are you game?”

  “What? Are you crazy? We'd still be better than seven hundred miles from home.”

  “We can skate better than two hundred miles a day,” answered Frank. “Aren't there more shelters?”

  “The map doesn't show any.” Jim thought. “I know they've finished more than one; I've heard Dad talking about it.”

  “If we had to, we could skate all night and sleep in the daytime. That way we wouldn't freeze.”

  “Hmm … I think you're kidding yourself. I saw a man once who was caught out at night. He was stiff as a board. All right, when do we start?”

  “Right now.”

  They picked up their bags and headed for the door. The agent looked up and said, “Going somewhere?”

  “For a walk.”

  “Might as well leave your bags. You'll be back.”

  They did not answer but went on out the door. Five minutes later they were skating south on west Strymon.

  “HEY, JIM!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let's stop for a minute. I want to sling my bag.”

  “Just what I was thinking.” Their travel bags unbalanced them and prevented proper arm motion and any real speed. But skating was a common form of locomotion; the bags had straps which permitted them to be slung as haversacks. Jim opened his before he put it on; Willis extended his eye stalks and looked at him reproachfully. “Jim boy gone long time.”

  “Sorry, old fellow.”

  “Willis not talk.”

  “Willis can talk all he wants to now. Look, if I leave the bag open a litde bit so that you can see, will you manage not to fall out?”

  “Willis want out.”

  “Can't do that; I'm going to take you for a fine ride. You won't fall out?”

  “Willis not fall out.”

  “Okay.” He slung the bag and they set out again.

  They picked up speed. With fast ice, little air resistance, and the low Martian gravity the speed of a skater on Mars is limited only by his skill in stroking. Both of the boys were able. Willis let out a”Whee!” and they settled down to putting miles behind them.

  The desert plateau between Cynia and Charax is higher than the dead sea bottom between Cynia and the equator. This drop is used to move the waters of the southern polar cap across the desert to the great green belt near the equator. In midwinter the southern ice cap reaches to Charax; the double canal of Strymon, which starts at Charax, is one of the principal discharge points for the polar cap when it melts in the spring.

  The boys were starting at the lower end of the canal's drop; the walls of the canal reached high above their heads. Furthermore the water level—or ice level—was low because the season was late autumn; the water level would be much higher during spring flood. There was nothing to see but the banks of the canal converging ahead of them, the blue sky beyond, and the purple-black sky overhead. The Sun was behind them and a bit west of meridian; it was moving north toward northern summer solstice. Seasons do not lag on Mars as much as they do on Earth; there are no oceans to hold the heat and the only “flywheel” of the climate is the freezing and melting of the polar caps.

  With nothing to see the boys concentrated on skating, heads down and shoulders swinging.

  After many miles of monotonous speed Jim grew careless; the toe of his right runner caught on some minor obstruction in the ice. He went down. His suit saved him from ice burns and he knew how to fall safely, but Willis popped out of his bag like a cork from a bottle.

  The bouncer, true to instinct, hauled in all excrescences at once. He hit as a ball and rolled; he traveled over the ice for several hundred yards. Frank threw himself into a hockey stop as soon as he saw Jim tumble. He stopped in a shower of ice particles and went back to help Jim up. “You all right?”

  “Sure. Where's Willis?”

  They skated on and recovered the bouncer who was now standing on his tiny legs and waiting for them.”Whoopee!”yelled Willis as they came up. “Do it again!”

  “Not if I can help it,” Jim assured him and stuffed him back in the bag. “Say, Frank, how long have we been traveling?”

  “Not over three hours,” Frank decided, after a glance at the Sun.

  “I wish I had my watch,” complained Jim. “We don't want to overrun the shelter.”

  “Oh, we won't come to it for another couple of hours, at least.”

  “But what's to keep us from passing right by it? We can't see over these banks.”

  “Want to turn around and go back?”

  “No.”

  “Then quit worrying.”

  Jim shut up but continued to worry. Perhaps that was why he noticed the only indication of the shelter when they came to it, for Frank skated on past it. It was merely a ramp down the bank. There were such ramps every few miles, as ancient as the canals themselves, but this one had set above it an overhanging beam, as if to support a hoist. Jim spotted it as terrestrial workmanship.

  He stopped. Frank skated on ahead, noticed presently that Jim was not following him and came back.”What's up?” he called out.

  “I think this is it.”

  “Hmm … could be.” They removed their skates and climbed the ramp. At the top, set back a short distance from the bank, was one of the bubble-shaped buildings which are the sign anywhere on Mars of the alien from Earth. Beyond it a foundation had been started for the reducing plant. Jim heaved a big sigh. Frank nodded and said, “Just about where we expected to find it.”

  “And none too soon,” added Jim. The Sun was close to the western horizon and dropping closer as they watched.

  There was, of course, no one in the shelter; no further work would be done at this latitude until the following spring. The shelter was unpressurized; they simply unlatched the outer door, walked through the inner door without delay. Frank groped for the light switch, found it, and lighted up the place—the lighting circuit was powered by the building's atomic-fuel power pack and did not require the presence of men.

  It was a simple shelter, lined with bunks except for the space occupied by the k
itchen unit. Frank looked around happily. “Looks like we've found a home from home, Jim.”

  “Yep.” Jim looked around, located the shelter's thermostat, and cut it in. Shortly the room became warmer and with it there was a soft sighing sound as the building's pressure regulator, hooked in with the thermostat, started the building's supercharger. In a few minutes the boys were able to remove their masks and finally their outdoors suits as well.

  Jim poked around the kitchen unit, opening cupboards and peering into shelves. “Find anything?” asked Frank.

  “Nary a thing. Seems like they could have left at least a can of beans.”

  “Now maybe you're glad I raided the kitchen before we left. Supper in five minutes.”

  “Okay, so you've got a real talent for crime,” acknowledged Jim. “I salute you.” He tried the water tap. “Plenty of water in the tanks,” he announced.

  “Good!” Frank answered. “That saves me having to go down and chip ice. I need to fill my mask. I was dry the last few miles.” The high coxcomb structure on a Mars mask is not only a little supercharger with its power pack, needed to pressurize the mask; it is also a small water reservoir. A nipple in the mask permits the wearer to take a drink outdoors, but this is a secondary function. The prime need for water in a Mars mask is to wet a wick through which the air is forced before it reaches the wearer's nose.

  “You were? Well, for crying out loud—don't you know better than to drink yourself dry?”

  “I forgot to fill it before we left.”

  “Tourist!”

  “Well, we left in kind of a hurry, you know.”

  “How long were you dry?”

  “I don't know exactly,” Frank evaded.

  “How's your throat?”

  “All right. A little dry, maybe.”

  “Let me see it,” Jim persisted, coming closer.

  Frank pushed him away. “I tell you it's all right. Let's eat.”

  “Well—okay.”

  They dined off canned corned beef hash and went promptly to bed. Willis snuggled up against Jim's stomach and imitated his snores.