“Apparently. Here, cut one of them.”
Chuck bent down and pulled his knife from his pouch. The connecting tube was hard and tough, but he finally sawed through it. Three drops of thin liquid oozed out. “One of the first cases of a plant on Mars which secretes fluid,” Sokolsky told Chuck. “Now, watch what’s happening.”
The tube had contracted, sending a ripple back from each cut toward the mother stem. It reached, and a second later the broken halves of the tubes fell off. There was a small bud on the northern plant where the tube had been; on the southern one, there was a faint indentation.
“You see,” Sokolsky gloated. “They connect. Cut a tube, and it is drained, then discarded. And a new one will grow from this bud to the Opposite little socket. Chuck, what did Lowell think the canals were?”
“Just that—canals, built to carry water from the icecaps at the poles to the rest of the planet when the caps melt in the spring.”
“And here you have it—perhaps. See, they run in a straight line—I don’t know how wide, but it must be for miles here—as far as we can see. Each of those tubes-carries a bit of water one plant farther. It’s a regular canal system, Chuck—with a pumping station every two feet, wherever a plant stands. And notice how the foliage differs from other plants here—it would probably photograph enough differently to give just the effect the canals do give.”
Chuck stared up the line, and down again. So far as he could see, the plants were in perfectly straight order.
He turned away, disappointed. “I guess I’m a sucker, doctor, but I kind of hoped the canals might turn out to be the work of intelligence, after all.”
“And how do you know they’re not? Is it impossible for these plants to have intelligence? Could men design a better and more efficient system to distribute the tiny amounts of liquid which accumulate at the poles—a snow- cap only an inch or so deep, which only wets the ground when it melts—and yet which these plants may spread to their own kind over the whole planet?” Sokolsky stood admiring them. “A perfect answer to a mystery, and a perfect example of either intelligence or adaptation. I don’t know which.”
“But it isn’t the kind of intelligence I meant, and you know that,” Chuck protested.
“You mean animal intelligence, preferably like humans, of course.” Sokolsky pondered it, turning to stare across the great “river” of plants, and back to the land around. “I don’t know. We may never know the answer to that.”
“Why?”
“Well, look. Notice that the land is lower here—we came over a ridge, into a hollow to find these; across there, it seems to be the same way. And it’s the same as far as we can see. Maybe these are old river beds— though why they should be as straight as even the most crotchety astronomer admits, I don’t know. Maybe they are channels dug up by some race that lived here. Maybe the plants are something they grew to meet the dwindling water supply.”
He shook his head. “This is summer on Mars. If these plants produce some fruit, it might not show up for months yet. After all, we’re dealing with a year of 687 days. Perhaps they are both food and drink to some race on Mars— or were. But this trip, we can’t even be sure of how straight they are. We can say we have solved the secret of the canals—but we haven’t. We’ve left from a thousand to a million questions.”
Chuck was still disappointed, though his logic told him that this was a much more satisfactory answer than he had expected.
They stopped to eat and rest. Chuck had expected that Sokolsky would want to follow the canals down as far as they could toward the ship, but the man shook his head. They couldn’t find much more than they already knew, and their best chance would be to take a series of pictures as they rocketed up, if they ever did leave.
He leaned back, letting the feeble sun shine on him. “You like mysteries, don’t you? Well, consider this. We’ve found evidence that manlike things lived here once, and maybe a beast like our buffalo—both large animals, highly developed. Even those creatures we saw last night—or whose eyes we saw—were of considerable size and development. But there are no bugs, no small life forms, and so far as I can determine, no lower animal orders at all. Why should this be?”
“Extermination,” Chuck guessed. “Hey, wait—that means a high level of intelligence—we haven’t exterminated all the pests yet.”
“We haven’t had the reasons for it that Mars may have had. If they had no chance to live without getting rid of competition, even a fair level of intelligence might do a good job of elimination.”
Chuck changed his batteries and stood up. He’d had his share of puzzles and half-answers for the day.
They started back at a leisurely pace, returning over the same ground that they had covered before. Getting away from the drive and push around the ship had been the best possible answer. Chuck had to admit. He was beginning to feel like himself once more.
“How about sleeping out again?” he suggested.
Sokolsky considered it, and agreed readily. They had enough food concentrate if they were careful, and they might arrive thirsty, but no harm would be done. The batteries were lasting splendidly, and they had spares left. He seemed to feel like Chuck, that the longer they stayed away from Desperation Camp, as he called it, the better off they would be.
They stopped again to rest in the sunlight and to watch the plants moving about, leaves searching for more sunlight, while other leaves tried to climb over them. It had started out as a grueling grind after information but was settling down to a comfortable and pleasant rest. He’d have to recommend it to others.
Finally, Sokolsky stood up. “We’d better get within a mile or so of the camp,” he suggested. ‘Then we’ll have time to get in, eat a real breakfast, and still report for work.”
It sounded sensible to Chuck. They ambled along, killing time, but doing comparatively little talking. Chuck had expected all naturalists to be busy collectors of specimens, but Sokolsky made it clear that it would be useless now. They couldn’t keep the plants properly, and later expeditions with well-equipped laboratories—or actual colonies here—might do a much better job than he ever could. Why start false theories? He could report on what he saw, with a few specimens and a few pictures. It would be enough.
Chuck wondered about colonies. The plants would probably be the answer to that. Mars had little enough to offer, but Sokolsky had told him that the plants apparently contained all kinds of strange drugs; he’d tried one of them on a cut on his hand to see if it would attack flesh. Instead, the cut was already healed. He was taking specimens of that back. If it proved to be what it seemed, there could soon be a real trade between Earth and Mars.
They crossed their previous camping place and went on. Sokolsky was all for sleeping in the ruins of the old city but Chuck would have none of that. If the noise came from there, he would feel a lot happier on any other spot of ground.
Finally they compromised by finding a little section of sand a mile north of the ruins. The sun was just beginning to sink and the idea of sleep, was appealing after the short shift the night before and the long hike. Again Sokolsky turned off his radio and turned over, almost at once drifting off into the deep breathing of sleep. Chuck lay beside him, puzzling over all the doctor had told him. He couldn’t make up his mind as to whether Sokolsky had the best mind among them, or whether the man just loved to spout his own theories. But at least he was interesting.
His own body cut off the thoughts by forcing him to sink into heavy sleep beside the doctor.
Then he was suddenly sitting up, with a chill chasing up and down his back as the final notes of a weird cry rang in his ears. He shuddered and looked around.
There was a circle of shining eyes all about, ringing the two men in completely. Chuck watched them. The eyes disappeared as he looked, but popped up again when he seemed to close his eyes. They could obviously see him easily enough.
He dropped back, planning to wait for a while and surprise them. But something was singing in the darkness—a sound something like the cry of a cricket, but more regular, and somehow softer. He hadn’t heard crickets since he was a kid. It sounded good—sounded sleepy. He gave up trying to watch and lay back, letting his eyes fall shut.
In the morning, Sokolsky wakened him, and immediately reached for his pouch. “Didn’t you have a knife yesterday, Chuck?”
“Of course. I cut the tube of your plant with it.”
