Marooned on Mars

toward the ship.

It lay on its side again, though this time the entrance was just above the surface. Its fall had left part of the hole, but had filled in under it, where the digging had been necessary. And probably there were new cracks now releasing the air.

Chuck staggered toward it, only half-conscious of what he was doing. But now Vance and the others were coming up over the final rise of the sand and pouring down. They stopped at the side of the ship, staring at it without comprehension.

Finally, Vance turned back, shaking his head. “All right, I guess it wasn’t too bad—unless we’ve cracked the hull some more. And it looks more as if someone lowered it that as if it fell. We can blast and dig out the pit tomorrow. I’d rather have that than lose the last welder.”

“Vance!” Rothman’s voice jerked them around, and they turned toward him. He was standing over the two winches, pointing at them.

It was a sorry mess. A tank of the rocket fuel had been poured over the winch. The corrosive acid had eaten the cables through, stripped off the cogs of the gears, and generally ruined them completely. They wouldn’t be safe to support their own weight now.

The funny thing was that there was no blame on any of the men’s faces. They had learned not to blame the failure of any of them, apparently. Chuck stood there, holding back the bitter sobs that wanted to come, and he knew it would have turned on him in a body.

Yeah, he was a man. He knew what it meant. Maybe he did. But he wasn’t one when the chips were down. He wanted to go into a corner somewhere and cry.

Then he turned in stunned surprise as the sound of genuine crying hit his ears—a choking, horrible sound, worse than he could remember from childhood. Dick Steele stood over the winches, seeing the final failure of the machinery that had become a part of his life, and knowing that he had been somehow responsible for its destruction. There was nothing weak about that crying—it was a release of rage and futility, but there was no weakness.

Chuck stood frozen for a second longer. Then he turned with unsteady steps toward the fallen rocket ship. They’d never raise it now, he told himself. He’d failed them—it had all been his idea. He’d nailed the lids on their coffins as surely as the inscription in that early dream of his had indicated.

Vance’s voice was tired and numb. “Never mind. There’s scrap metal, and we’ve got good welders; if I have to, I can weld new cogs, and cut down pipe to make die new winches. It’ll take time, but we can do it. There’s still one welding machine on the ship.”

Chuck went on into the air lock and down the passage. He’d stored the welder away carefully. He’d done everything carefully. He’d been proving he was a man with the right to work with men.

He opened the cabinet The welder was gone!

His steps were steadier as he came back down the passage and entered the air lock again. They were frozen as he stepped but onto the surface. He turned his face toward the ruins of the city and began walking, one foot ahead of the other, the other after the one.

Vance came after him, but he went on walking until the man held him back by physical force.

“You don’t have a welder. Captain. They got the last one. They came out and let the ship down, burned up the winches, and walked off with the welder.”

“I know it.” Vance turned him around and led him back into the group. “Everyone here knew it when you came out. We must be getting psychic about such things—or experienced. We’ll weld everything with the electric torch, and we’ll dig a deeper hole, deep enough for the Eros to slide into it. You’ll fix the controls so they balance out— the instrument readings will let you do that—and it won’t matter if we do take off at an angle. We’ll last until we can make it on our fuel, or we’ll take off for Earth and tell them to ship out fuel to us on the little rockets, or well crash right into Moon City!”

He stopped for breath and turned to face the rest of them. “You don’t believe it—and I don’t believe it any more. But we are going to do it because we’re men, and there isn’t enough trickery on Mars to keep us from doing it!”

Chuck looked from one to another. They didn’t believe it could be done. Nobody was fooling himself any more. But they were going to go right ahead and try it.

“Let’s get in and see what damage was done to the ship,” Dick suggested, and his voice was quiet now.

They trooped in, one by one, and began moving up and down, searching with the smoke candles. But there was no sign that there were any new holes. A few tiny leaks along the seams remained, but so slow that they hardly mattered. The Eros had been let down gently, with the winches. That was why the cables were still on, instead of having been snapped out of their holds by the force of the shock.

“They took a look at her right-side-up and decided it didn’t look the way it should, so they put her back,” Ginger said. ,

“Why?” Rothman asked. “It doesn’t make sense. If they wanted to kill us, they could have waited until night and let her down with a rush. Why this way?”

Sokolsky shrugged. “It seems fairly obvious. They’re trying to make us stay, not to kill us. This is sort of a welcome mat. ‘Welcome, Earthmen.’ As far as they’re concerned, we can stay as long as we like—longer. They could have killed us all off by now. But they like us.”

“Why?” Rothman repeated.

“Because we have so many nice toys that they want. We bring them presents—but presents they don’t know how to use. They hang around in the sand—I think I mean that literally, buried in the sand where we won’t see them. They watch us use the toys. And then, when they find out what the pretty toys will do, they come and take them away. Why should they kill us when they can keep us here to show them the use of more things? Gentlemen, we’re being domesticated!”

CHAPTER 15 The Martians

It could only be one of two things. Chuck decided. He was sitting in the mess hall with the rest of the crew. But no one was doing much talking. There was no need for early sleep, now; they would have plenty of time in which to repair the ship, if it could be repaired. They might be short on supplies after a while, but there’d be more than time enough.

He turned everything over again, breaking all the elements down and recombining them, but the answer still came out to the two possibilities. It had to be one of them.

He got up, nodding to the others, and moved out toward the air lock where his suit was. The helmet was hanging there, with the little radio inside it. He studied it for a

second and then moved on to the tool storage section, now half-bare. All he needed was a small screwdriver, and a metal tube, and a new set of oxygen tanks.

When he came back to the suit, he had all of them. The screwdriver helped him to pull the radio set out and toss it aside. The metal pipe slid down one of the little tubes that led to the helmet. And the oxygen tanks replaced the blower he had been using. He studied the outfit for a few minutes. Something was missing.

In the tool supply room he located a fine wire and a small flashlight. Then he began working on the suit again. This time the little plastic tube came out completely, and the wire went down it on the inside. A dab of cement held it in place. He put the plastic tube down, soldered insulated wire to the metal one and led it out to the battery. Soldered connections soon led through the battery to the bulb which fitted snugly inside the helmet, and from the bulb to the wire attached to the plastic tube. Finally, he reinserted the metal into the plastic tube and squeezed it. The little bulb lighted and he nodded in satisfaction.

He climbed into his suit, snapped the helmet down and picked up the electric torch. The air lock closed behind him.

For a moment, he moved along the hull of the ship and the little torch sparkled in the darkness, spitting against the metal. Again he moved on, apparently paying no attention to anything except the tiny holes he seemed