Lin Carter - The Man Who Loved Mars Read online

  But she took no harm from the cloud of spores; and we went on into a subterranean world whose mystery deepened about us with every step.

  In time the repulsive forest of giant mushrooms thinned out, and we came to its borders. We were happy to be free of the stench and slime of the monster fungi, but as we continued ahead, we began to regret the sickly green phosphorescence, whose dim luminosity extended no farther than the borders of the weird forest itself.

  We went forward gingerly into unbroken darkness.

  The floor of this cavern was broken and cluttered, and round, hollow things crunched underfoot. I am glad we had no light by which to see just what they were, for I have the feeling that they were skulls���but whether human or those of some beast native to this hellish region, I could not even guess.

  “Eh now, and if the sagas continue to foretell what lies in our path as truthfully as they have until now,” Huw wheezed at my shoulder, “this Zone of Darkness should end ere long, and we will emerge to find ourselves before the Bridge of Fire …”

  After a long time a dim, pulsing redness gleamed ahead of us. It was a dull ghost of light���as if some titan had crushed a giant ruby under its’ thumb and smeared the smouldering gem dust across the blackness.

  We emerged at length into a colossal space whose height or extremities we could not see. Deep, crimson fires pulsed slowly, waxing and waning, like the throbbing of a tremendous heart. And we saw before us yet another vision drawn from the world-old myths of Mars.

  The stony floor of this immensity was cleft asunder by a broad chasm of unplumbed gloom. Up from this pit a cold dank wind blew without ceasing. And spanning the chasm from rim to rim arched a fantastic thing of throbbing jeweled fire.

  “The Bridge of Fire!”

  It was beautiful and terrible beyond description��� beyond belief! All of jeweled minerals was it made, glittering with crystals whose thousand facets blazed with rhythmic fires. Of every shade of rubescence were these crystalline minerals … from the faintest ghost pink of early dawn, through the salmon-pink that glows within certain seashells … through red-orange and flaming scarlet … dark and sullen crimsons, like congealing blood … to the deepening purples that lay at the edge of the spectrum of visible light.

  All of many million gems was this arch of fiery brilliance fashioned, ranging in size from gems as small as sand grains up to crystals of monstrous and abnormal girth, larger than human arms could encompass.

  And the same gemlike fires that flickered in each single stone pulsed to the same throbbing rhythm!

  Keresny’s face was blank with awe.

  “Could such a miracle of nature be merely the work of geological forces?” he whispered. “And yet surely it must ���for how could such a thing be the work of man?”

  We stared in silence, drinking in the wonder of the bridge of beauty … And my mind wandered back to the old myths of Earth, to the Bifrost Bridge that spans the dizzy gap between the worlds of Men and of the godlike Aesir, the rainbow bridge of Norse epic and myth … and I thought of shining Serat, the sword-slender bridge of gleaming metal Allah flung across the gulf of Hell, and whereover the spirits of the dead must pass to attain to the blissful gardens of Mohammed’s paradise…

  We tested the blazing thing for strength, and it was solid beneath our feet. So we ventured forth upon the glittering arch. Underfoot, we trod gemmy fires that might have adorned the splendid crowns of czars and sultans. We went on, inching our way across the brilliant curve of puis-ing light, and every hue in the red segment of the spectrum flashed beneath our feet, from the hard scarlet of Chinese lacquer to the royal crimson that burns in the cloaks of emperors to the rich, deep, Tyrian purple that only the immortal caesars of Rome might wear.

  Beneath us, the glittering mass of jewels blossomed with incredible splendors of every ruby shade … rose and coral, the elusive orange flame that glimmers within the opal … ruby and garnet and the delicate pink blush that stains the rare fire pearl. It was a dream of gorgeous fable we trod, that soaring arch of brilliant fire that spanned the gloom-drowned abyss … and at its end we found an even greater wonder.

  The throbbing ruby glow shone from behind us now; we moved out into a great cavern whose floor was cluttered with curious shapes. But for these we had as yet no eyes��� they were drawn to that which rose before us!

  A circular pit was cut in the stony floor; within it, from wall to wall, amber mists coiled, but they were���frozen. A dim wall of translucent, clouded golden crystal and set deep within, three weird figures hung suspended, like flies trapped in oozy amber.

  The Three were inhumanly tall and gaunt, their attenuated limbs motionless. Naked were they of the slightest adornment, but their elongated bodies were sexless. Like ���and yet unlike���both Earthman and Martian were the Three and alien to either. For minute, sparkling scales dusted their slender limbs and torsos, like flakes of glinting, lucent mica.

  The more we looked, the further divergences we saw from the human norm. The Three possessed hands, but they were nine fingered and had two more joints than our own and utterly lacked nails. Their smooth, narrow chests were devoid of nipples, and their flat bellies had no navels … They were not mammals, as are both Martian and Earthmen, but reptilian, for all the anthropoid design of their bodies.

  They hung there, frozen in the amber crystal, and we could see that the heads and faces of the Three were the least humanlike portion of their strange anatomies. Narrow and long and elfin were those faces, with sharply pointed jaws, high, ridged cheekbones, noses as long and thin as knife blades, lipless and curiously triangular mouths���faces dusted all over with minute scales of lucent gold.

  The brow ridges of their faces were arched and very prominent, and above these their heads bulged in twin, swelling, hairless globes, cleft into two rounded lobes or bosses by a curious division down the center of the brow.

  Beneath those arched brow ridges the eyes of the Three were open and stared into our own with a fathomless gaze.

  Green as the depths of perfect emeralds were those eyes and undivided, as are our own, into whites and pupils: and many times more large than human eyes … depthless, tapering orbs of lambent jade, wherein your gaze sank endlessly, until you blinked awake and snatched your gaze away from those hypnotic wells of dim green fire with a start.

  They seemed to have no ears at all; at least no protuberances or orifices we could see.

  One of the Three held in his supple, nine-fingered hand a glittering thing. A hoop of pure crystal, struck across with crystal bars from which hung tiny rings of glassy stuff. A crossbar and a handle, also of crystal, completed the curious instrument. It reminded me of the mystic crux ansata, the Looped Cross, which the ancient Egyptians called the ankh, the Cross of Life. It reminded me also of the sistrum used by the priests of the Nile in certain ceremonies …

  We said nothing to each other.

  We knew who the three gaunt mummies frozen in the misted amber expanse of crystal were���or who they had been aeons before.

  The Timeless Ones…

  The features of the strange trinity were vacant, and the eyes were dull and lifeless. But their visages, alien though they might be, bore the marks of wisdom and kindness, gentleness and even humor.

  It was very easy to see why men should have thought them gods, and worshiped their memories through long ages.

  We turned our eyes away, and there was nothing to say.

  We looked about us, and then it was that our eyes lighted upon the fabulous treasure of the Ancients we had come so far and endured so much to find.

  For this cavern too the old Martians had devised a name.

  The Den of Miracles…

  And marvels and wonders lay about us to every side … treasures out of the past of an ancient world … miracles that old myths had only whispered of.

  Just beyond where Bolgov stood, a vast hoop of shining, chrome-bright metal clasped a clouded disc of milky jade
. Beyond, a slender rod of nameless indigo metal gleamed faintly, tipped with a cone of shimmering brass. A sphere of dew-clear crystal lay cupped in prongs of black metal.

  Keresny gazed about him with puzzled eyes.

  Wonderingly he touched a huge cylinder of gleaming white metal or porcelain or some strange synthetic. From its pointed crest, Medusa tresses of coppery coils fell away.

  The things lay all about us, cluttering the cavern floor; large and small they were, of plastic and ceramic, of metal and glass and crystal. Some were of the sleek simplicity of a Brancusi sculpture, others a complexity of design so bewildering the eye could scarcely grasp it all.

  They had the look of alien machines … instruments of an unknown and extraplanetary science …

  And that, of course, is what they were.

  Amazement and delight grew in the Doctor’s features as he began to realize this. I think it dawned on all of us at once, for we looked at one another, and simultaneously we began to laugh until the tears flowed down our cheeks.

  We had come on a sordid treasure hunt for gold and gems.

  But we had found, instead, something a million times more valuable than any treasure of mere gold could ever be: the lost scientific miracles of the Ancients! The wonder mechanisms of a mysterious people of time’s dawn, who had wrought with strange powers the forgotten art whereof the thought records and the Iron Crown were the only artifacts still known. And it lay all about us, heaped and mounded and untouched by time!

  The release of tension, the burst of clean, healthy laughter that welled up in us, was touched with hysteria. We laughed and laughed, clapping each other’s shoulders. I reached out and gathered Ilsa to me and kissed her soundly, until she was flushed and breathless.

  But one of us had no laughter.

  We turned, curiously, just as he spoke in cool, heavy tones that cut across our mood of hilarity like a spray of icy water.

  “Ivo Tengren, Josip Keresny, you are under arrest in the name of the Mandate.”

  Kuruk had no knowledge of our tongue, but he sensed the menace. He growled deep in his chest and reached for the hilt of his sword. I laid one hand on his arm, arresting the motion.

  Because it was Bolgov. And he had a gun.

  And I groaned inwardly, cursing myself: I had forgotten about that laser gun and forgotten my determination to take it from him. The thought had passed through my mind … and then I had gone on to other things!

  Now I wished most desperately that I had remembered about the gun. But now it was too late!

  Keresny understood none of this. He frowned at Bolgov, bewilderedly.

  “Konstantin, what are you doing?”

  The big man answered crisply, saying he was a Star-class agent of the AN Space Mandate. But I was not really listening to his words: I was watching him, half-bemused-ly, thinking to myself how very little we know about those around us. How long was it now, since that afternoon they had first approached my table, there in the arcade at Venice?���only thirty days, only a month? For the past month then, I had spent my days and nights in the company of the black-bearded Ukrainian; eaten by his side, ridden in

  The Man Who Loved Mars 139 his company, slept near him. And never once had I seen the real man behind the imposture; he had seemed a surly, grumbling lout, a sort of a caricature.

  Looking at him now as he stood cool and steady, eyes alert, amused, wary, hand rocksteady and unwavering on the gun, I knew that he had only been acting a part all those weeks. And never once had 1 seen through it!

  He was talking to the bewildered Keresny; I began to listen again.

  “… wandering commission, with no one to report to, no superior. We got wind of something up, something you had found in Thoth-Nepenthes on your last trip. Mars is in an explosive state right now, and any Earthside visitor is watched carefully, for Tengren’s cause has aroused surprising support among the Liberals and the Universalist party.”

  “I? But���I never said a word of my discovery!” the Doctor protested. Bolgov’s black eyes twinkled with amusement.

  “You didn’t have to! Your very actions were suspicious in themselves. With still ten days to go before your visitor’s visa expired, you suddenly closed down excavations, abandoned the site, and came hotfooting it back to Syrtis, leaving the planet almost immediately. Once back in Luna City, you retired from the museum and went to France to live with your granddaughter. The most cursory study of your activities, however, showed that you were nosing about the gray labor market, searching for a reliable space pilot who could handle a Mars skimmer and who had maybe been in a bit of trouble somewhere, so that he was not likely to ask too many questions. It was simplicity itself to set myself in your path and to get myself hired by you.

  “I must admit, I hardly expected you to spill the whole story of the treasure to me that first day. But now that we had some idea of what you were on to, I decided to just go along for the ride and let you find the treasure for us, if there was any to be found. Then, when you got the notion to get Tengren to help you, in return for an illicit one-way ticket back to Mars, things got more and more interesting.

  We have been anxious to catch Tengren out of bounds ever since his trial; we want him behind bars where he can’t get into any mischief. So here we are! I will admit, though, I never expected this thing to lead to anything quite like this,” he smiled, nodding at the weird machines that loomed about us in the vague light.

  “You’re just one man with a gun,” I pointed out. “Maybe you can herd us at gunpoint back up the stair to the surface again and maybe not. There are eight of us you’ll have to keep your eye on, you know.”

  “Maybe I’ll try harder, Cat-lover,” he chuckled. My lips tightened.

  “Maybe you will. You may get us all to the surface again, but do you really think you can get out of this, even if you manage to get that far? How are you going to get past all of Prince Kraa’s warriors, who are encamped outside the temple?”

  “Maybe it won’t be quite as much of a problem as you seem to think,” he said. “Maybe I’ll have a little help.”

  Training the cold black eye of the laser gun on us, rocksteady in one capable hand, he fumbled inside the open throat of his thermal suit and drew out a flat black case of plastic and metal which he showed us, smilingly.

  My heart sank, for I knew what it was. A beeper���an ultrawave radio beacon. He recognized from my expression that I knew the thing.

  “Two police boats have been following us from the last five days,” he said, “ever since we left Farad.”

  “I thought… Ivo said no craft could fly above the plateau,” Keresny faltered. “Too dangerous … the gas geysers …”

  “That may be true enough for skimmers,” replied Bolgov, “but these are space boats. They can go anywhere, land anywhere, and they pack enough punch to handle almost anything. I doubt if a couple dozen Cat-men, armed with bronze knives, can stand up very long under a barrage of ship-mounted lasers.”

  He was right, of course. The Moon Dragon warriors were gallant men, and they would fight bravely. They would die, fighting bravely; but they would still die.

  The Man Who Loved Mars 141 So it was defeat then … and just as we stood on the very threshold of victory. Well, it had happened before; but this time it was ended for good. They would never let me walk away from this debacle.

  The irony of it was that this time I had come within an inch of success! For the mysterious mechanisms that loomed all around us in the dimness represented an arsenal of super-weapons left behind by the Ancients. Not all of them were weapons, most likely, but some of them must have been. And I did not doubt that the sages and savants of the People could puzzle out the secrets of their ancestors���could learn to awaken and direct these mystery weapons from time’s dawn���and with them we could shatter the strength of the Mandate on Mars forever, sweep the CA cops from every foot of this world, hurl them back to Earth.

  Surely, enough of the ancient wisdom and th
e ancient science was stored in this one room to free Mars from its oppressors and keep it free forever!

  And now this bright dream, like all the others I had dreamed, was dimmed and would die too.

  14. When Sleepers Wake

  It was just at that moment, as I stood there with the bitter taste of defeat on my tongue, that an eerie music woke and

  sang.

  A faint, weird strain of unearthly melody rang through the cavern … the mere ghost of chiming bells, a tuneless crystalline ringing.

  And the gun in Bolgov’s hand���exploded. There was a deafening retort and a momentary flash of blinding glare.

  Bolgov screeched, clutching fingers seared to the bone in a spray of white-hot droplets of incandescent metal.

  The stench of cooked flesh was heavy in our nostrils. He fell to his knees, whimpering at the pain.

  Giving voice to a deep, booming cry of joyous fury, Kuruk pounced on the huddled figure of the Ukrainian and knocked him sprawling with one blow of big, hammerlike fists.

  Again that faint, trilling music as of wind-blown crystal bells, chiming sweetly, came to our ears.

  I was looking at Ilsa, at the dawning awe and wonder in her blue eyes. My gaze flashed to Prince Kraa, who had fallen to his knees suddenly and Chaka and hunched Dhu beside him.

  Bland, lazy Huw still stood, his face gaping, eyes staring at some wondrous sight behind me, where the great mass of smoky amber crystal rose from the pit in the floor, prisoning within it the three gaunt, alien figures of the dead gods.

  I turned and saw���glory!

  Amber crystal dissolved to whorls of amber mist! Coiling golden vapor, mixed with whirling clouds of tiny, glittering motes of starry fire … like the dazzling dust of diamonds or a mist composed of scintillant atoms of golden fire …

  The crystal was frozen no more!

  Still the impossibly slender bodies hovered in their places, but now the hard, frozen, impenetrable crystal that had sheathed them was gone. Now warm, amberous mists swirled about them���a vortex of glittering motes spun and seethed about the figures, which hovered weightlessly amidst insubstantial vapors.