He sat up again, and froze. Beyond Sokolsky, perhaps fifty feet away, two huge, luminous circles gleamed at him. This was no illusion. He’d seen cat’s eyes in the dark, and this was the same. Cautiously, he touched the doctor and tried to turn the man’s head toward the eyes.
There were four of them now, two pairs well apart.
Suddenly Sokolsky sat up with a jerk. The automatic came from his pouch, and the flash of a shot illuminated the night. It was a high, shrill explosion in Chuck’s ears.
The eyes vanished, and Sokolsky reached for Chuck, touching helmets. “Quite right. Chuck. They were eyes. I fired into the air of course—it wouldn’t do to kill anything as rare as Martian animals must be. If it had been a natural phenomenon, it would have remained; it ran at the sound of the shot, proving it was alive. Maybe you’re right about the cries you’ve been hearing. Hm-m-m. Wonder if it’s stalking us, or just curious?”
“What do you intend doing about it?” Chuck asked.
Sokolsky shrugged. “Nothing. We’re wearing space suits. I intend to go to sleep.”
A moment later, his regular breathing proved that he had lived up to his intentions. Chuck turned around carefully, to face three pairs of shining eyes.
They vanished as he looked, but it didn’t make him feel much happier.
CHAPTER 12
The Mysterious Canals
Sokolsky was as good as his word. At the first touch of the sun, he was up and waking Chuck. Even before the boy was fully awake, his eyes swung toward the place where the eyes had seemed to multiply during the night. But there was nothing there.
Chuck searched the sand for a sign of tracks, but there was no evidence. If there had been tracks, either the wind had covered them or they had been carefully destroyed.
Sokolsky was highly amused. “Of course I saw them. I agree that they were the eyes of some form of life. Fine. But we are not equipped to track them down, and all we can do is to report them. Of course, I’d like to study one— I wonder if they have three sexes, like the plants—but one must limit oneself to one’s abilities. Anyhow, as I said, they didn’t bother us. After they heard the shot from the automatic…”
His hand had gone to the pouch and now it came away empty. He stared at it in puzzlement, began searching hastily through his pouch, and then around the ground where he had slept There was no sign of the missing gun.
“But it’s impossible. I’m a light sleeper, Chuck. They couldn’t have sneaked it out of the pouch without my feeling it. Of course, if I dropped it on the ground…” ‘He nodded slowly. “That must be it. I dropped it. But why should an animal want a gun?”
Chuck could offer no help on these animals, or the general psychology of Martian beasts. All he knew was that the gun was obviously missing. On the other hand, the beasts had seemed to be harmless. He’d watched until there were over twenty pairs of eyes; they’d avoided him and disappeared when he looked at them, but by watching from the comer of his eyes, he had seen them increase. A pack of that number could easily have overpowered the two of them.
Yet there was no evidence of any attack. If Sokolsky was as light a sleeper as he claimed, any mouthing of their suits would have wakened him.
Chuck shrugged and tried to forget it. He made an unsavory meal out of the cubed concentrates Sokolsky had put in the little hopper under his chin. At the press of a lever, one cube would be popped up where he could get it. The tube that supplied water was also within reach, but he used that sparingly since it had to moisten the desiccated Martian air as well as supply his thirst. A final check showed him that there was considerable life left in the batteries that powered the air compressor.
Sokolsky was muttering unhappily to himself as they began the journey toward the mysterious canal. It still puzzled him that an animal should steal an automatic.
Then he brightened. “But there is the example of the magpie. It steals for no good reason. Several other animals do. And there is no way of telling what might smell—if they do smell—good to a Martian animal. Of course.”
Chuck smiled. Now that there was an example with which to compare it, Sokolsky was happy again. He was even whistling under his breath as they tramped along. Suddenly Chuck stopped, staring at the ground. “Doc!”
“Eh? Oh, you’ve found something.”
It was part of a footprint—or pawprint. There were four toelike members, the two outer ones smaller than the inner ones; behind that, there was part of the ball or heel of the foot. It looked about half the size of a human footprint.
“At least four-toed—and from the symmetry, it must be four-footed. Wish the back weren’t hidden or obliterated.” Sokolsky studied it with rapt attention. “Very interesting, though it doesn’t really tell us anything. If there were several of them, we could estimate the number of feet, the weight of the animal, and a number of other details. But this is only one, and incomplete. Still, it’s interesting to note that nature has evolved the toed foot here on Mars.”
There were a number of plant forms that neither had seen before, including one bigger one, something like a head of cauliflower, but with thicker leaves, and about the size of a large cabbage. This one was a dark purple color instead of the usual green. There were several others like it. Sokolsky inspected them carefully, and grinned with satisfaction. “Also three-sexed, though of a greatly different species. It would seemingly be safe to guess that all Martian plant life depends on two pollinators and a single incubator.”
Two more hours went by, and Sokolsky began to fret and worry again. He seemed to be able to maintain his calm doctor’s role as long as he liked, but to go suddenly off on a wild emotional tear as soon as he decided he was a biologist.
“The canals should be here. Rothman said it was about thirty miles north, didn’t he?”
Chuck nodded. “We’ve come somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. We may be short of it by several miles.”
Sokolsky agreed, but he didn’t look happy. He quickened the pace and went forward at almost a run. Chuck’s legs were still sore from the grueling week of work, but he had to stick with the doctor.
They came to a slight rise in the ground and surveyed the country beyond them. There was certainly no sign of a deep trench of any kind, nor of an old river bed, etched out in the billion years ago when Mars might have had water.
But Sokolsky’s eyes brightened. “See? There’s a darker streak. That must be it.”
Again he quickened his pace, and Chuck had to force himself along. But they were less than two miles away, and the space was quickly covered. Sokolsky pointed suddenly, and ran forward while Chuck stared around in an attempt to see what had drawn his attention.
He could see nothing except a great mass of plants with thick leaves about the size and shape of pumpkin leaves. But these were waxy and smooth instead -of rough, and they were of such a dark green color that they almost appeared black in the distance.
“Where’s the canal?” Chuck asked.
Sokolsky pointed to the plants. “Right here. Chuck. The best explanation I could ask to the old mystery, too. Look at them.”
Chuck moved forward until he was standing among the plants. They were peculiar. Lying along the ground, and connecting each plant to the next in line was a grayish rootlike tube. Crosswise, there were smaller, dark green filaments. But the straightness of the tubes and the exactitude with which they spaced themselves out caught Chuck’s attention. They looked like little rows of laundry lines, with the leaves for laundry. Or perhaps they were like the rows of telegraph poles he had once seen.
“Perfectly straight,” Sokolsky commented. “Look up there as far as your eye can see—no, get your head in line with one of the plants. Now look. What do you see?”
“A practically perfect row of plants—and I suppose they’re all connected together this way.”
