to bed down. Only Sokolsky lingered, motioning to Chuck to stay.
“Can you hike?” he asked. “Now, I mean.”
Chuck frowned, but nodded. The redhead bobbed up and down in excitement. “I can’t. Chuck. But I’m going to, just the same. Vance told me ahead of time, and I’ve got everything ready—spare batteries, suits, extra food packed into the helmets where we can reach it, and water. I’m going to find out what those canals are once and for all. You can come along or stay. I’m leaving now.”
Chuck cursed himself again and started to cut his automatic nod of agreement off. Then he hesitated. If they ever got back to Earth without the answer to the riddle, there’d be no living it down. It was one of the chief reasons for the expedition. He chuckled in spite of himself. He was learning to be more honest, apparently—it was his own chief reason, and it didn’t matter about Earth.
“Let’s go,” he agreed.
Vance was coming down from the control room as they dressed and stopped for a brief wish of good luck. He handed Sokolsky the automatic. “There are shells in it this time. And you might take this compass. It seems to point roughly north.”
Then he turned toward his sleeping hammock, and they went down the passage toward the entrance.
The night was typical of Mars—cold air that showed the stars as slightly nickering sparks, low horizon, and a pinprick in the sky that was Phobos, the nearer hunk of rock that served as a moon here. It was only ten miles in diameter, but less than six thousand miles away, and just visible. Deimos hadn’t been spotted by any of the men.
Sokolsky headed north, skirting the ruins of the city. He walked briskly, setting a pace that Chuck found hard to match. “Tragedy,” he said, pointing toward the rums. “Stark tragedy. I’ve come out here nights, sometimes, studying this. There was a rude civilization here once. But no fire and no metals. Did you notice that?”
“No. How do you know?”
“Because I’ve looked for even one bit of metal. But of course they couldn’t have metal without fire—oh, maybe a bit of copper, if they were lucky, but nothing else; and here on Mars that would be hard to find. I’ve looked for some place where they lighted a fire. Rocks crack under heat. There were no fireplaces, no chimneys. The floors show no fire cracks. I’ve even tested the glaze on that pottery. It’s good clay, but it was sun-baked— must have had some way of concentrating more sunlight on it, but it isn’t fired; and the glaze is a kind of lacquer. They didn’t have enough air to keep a fire going, even when they built this place. Know why they fell?”
Chuck shook his head, and Sokolsky went on happily. “They didn’t have power. The winds here won’t do any real work; they had no running streams for water power. No coal—it was never wet enough for a Carboniferous age. No plants big enough to make a fire, even if they could have forced in oxygen enough. Nothing except their muscles. And civilization has to have power—each step up takes more. As soon as they learned about nice things and began to want them, they were licked—they could get them only by laying waste to what should have been saved for the future. And the future starved to death. Tragedy.”
It sounded as reasonable as anything Chuck could find to explain the disappearance—if the Martians had disappeared. But there was no way of knowing. He had seen no sign of writing; if they had a literature, it must have been on something that rotted away ages ago.
He wondered if sometime one of the Martians might come across the space ship and marvel at the race who had built this and then vanished, and try to explain it by some fantastic idea.
Again, the thought picked at his mind that if such ever happened, it would be because he had stowed away, robbing six other men of a part of their chances to return. Nobody had mentioned it, and it seemed completely forgotten. But he couldn’t hide it from himself. He had no right to the power he was using to compress and moisten the air so that he could breathe it, or to the food he had eaten. He had no right to be on Mars.
The city was behind now, and the soft sand of the desert was making every step an effort. Sokolsky pointed ahead, muttering something. He apparently had some theory as to the distribution of the plants. If so, it was productive of results. They found another strip of plants where the interlacing roots had given the ground some stability, and trudged on. They were making no more than five miles an hour, which was slow here, but Sokolsky seemed content.
“We’ll march about halfway there, and then we’ll sleep. Ever sleep in a space suit? No? Well, it isn’t too bad. I did it on the Moon one night, just to see if it would work. I thought it might be useful. I don’t recommend it, but we can sleep anywhere, now that Vance is saving us from ourselves.”
He chuckled, to show there was no bitterness in his words. With a chance to explore, Sokolsky seemed incapable of being bitter about anything.
Far away, the hint of a thin, wailing cry cut through the air. Chuck had heard it twice more since the first night, but the hair on his neck still rose at the sound. “Do you still think it’s the wind?” he asked.
Sokolsky nodded vigorously. “What else? But not around some natural rock. It’s in the city—I’ve heard it there, closer. But I can’t find where. Those ancient people must have made themselves a wind trumpet of some kind that works with very little wind. I’ll find it yet. It has to be that”
Chuck wished he could be as certain. It reminded him of the stories Ginger knew of banshees. Nothing good could come of it, he was sure.
Again Sokolsky led across a narrow strip of desert and found another vegetation-covered way for their feet. About half an hour more, according to their progress, and they could sleep. Chuck had begun to wish that he had never come out with the strange, intense little man.
Something rustled across his legs! He jumped, landing with a weak cry, and began inspecting the ground. It was only a long creeper, running for perhaps a hundred feet. Then, as he watched it, it moved forward jerkily.
Chuck swung his light toward the other end. For a brief moment, he seemed to see something scuttle away quickly. He snapped his head around to follow it, but it was gone. The vine lay still now, its balled-up leaves trying to dig back into the sand from which it had been disturbed. “Did you see anything?” he asked Sokolsky. .The doctor denied it, casually. Chuck wondered. But he was tired and jumpy, and the sound in the distance had upset him again. He had to admit that it could have been his eyes playing tricks on him, and that the creeper had probably been disturbed by his own feet. Yet he seemed to remember standing perfectly still and looking back at the moment he had felt it.
Sokolsky went on a bit farther until he came to another barren patch. There he kicked about in the sand, digging a sort of trough. “This is it. Chuck,” he announced. “Well sleep here until the sun wakens us—I always waken when I see the sunlight. Then we can get a fresh start in the morning.”
Chuck studied the sand dubiously. “Suppose a sandstorm comes up and buries us during the night?”
“Piffle, as my old teacher used to say. If it kicks up that much fuss, the sound of the sand hitting our helmets will wake us and we’ll find a better place. Anyhow, I haven’t seen a good wind on Mars yet—fast, maybe, but not one with any strength to it I think those precious sandstorms are exaggerated. The wind just picks up the finest dust and blows it along. Somebody on the Moon looks down with a telescope and finds his seeing is cut off—as it is even with a fog. He knows it isn’t water, and he thinks of sand in the only way he knows—like the Sahara. So, presto, we have huge sandstorms. Dusty, yes—but buried in sand I won’t buy.”
When Chuck thought it over, he had to agree with him wholeheartedly. Even against the weak gravity of Mars, it would take a terrific force of wind to give the thin air any real carrying power.
He dropped into the sand beside the doctor, stretching out. The insulation of his suit would protect him from the sub-zero cold easily enough. Anyhow, from what he bad seen, the sand was a good insulating blanket. The plants seemed to find it wise to burrow down into it at night
He turned over on his side as he heard the doctor snap off the radio. It was an act of consideration, since Sokolsky snored rather loudly. Chuck cut his own off.
Something rustled near him. He sat up and the sound went away, but when his helmet touched the sand again, the rustling sound was stronger. It sounded like footsteps—slow, careful steps—in the sand.
He sat up, touching helmets with Sokolsky. “Doc—do you hear anything?”
“Surely—the sand settling under our bodies!”
Chuck remembered beds that had made regular noises until he found the springs jiggled with his breathing. It could be—but he didn’t believe it. He lay back, trying to hold his breath.
This time, the sounds were nearer.
