resolved to push all thoughts of food and eating out of his mind.
The attempt proved largely unsuccessful. Like the tongue that has just discovered the still tender gap where a tooth used to be, his mind returned again and again to probe the subject despite the pain it caused him.
Under such extreme conditions hallucinations were perhaps to be expected. Still, despite this knowledge and his training in the ways of the human brain, the hallucination stopped him dead in his tracks.
Unremarkable as hallucinations go, it nevertheless hit him with a wounding impact, as if the thing had exploded in his face. He tottered on his heels for a moment and then stepped backwards into the wall behind him where he slid slowly to the floor, eyes starting from his skull in shock and disbelief.
There before him, glimmering faintly across the corridor, stood a door.
No snarling, hydra-headed monster could have alarmed him more than this simple architectural object. At first he thought it must be an optical illusion, a trick played by overtired eyes. Then he knew he was experiencing a hallucination-seeing doors where he desperately wanted them to be.
Following this observation, it dawned on him that persons undergoing hallucinations did not perceive them as such while in the very grip of them.
A door! His mind reeled. What could it mean? Indeed, what else could it mean?
Feverishly Spence began tearing away the algae by handfuls digging it out with his gloved fingers from around the imagined threshold. What emerged was an object of stone, cut from the stuff as the surrounding walls, with no external markings of any kind. He would have considered it a novelty of nature the except its smoothness, roundness, and perfect symmetry against a natural artifact. But he could not be sure. argued He lifted off his helmet and smacked it into the slab. He listened to the echo pinging away to the dim recess of the tunnel. He also heard a hollow sound beyond the b Overcome by a burning curiosity to see it lay beyond the supposed door, he leapt at the slab and began pushing with all his might, succeeding only in shoving his feet out from under him. Then he knelt before the door and tried to worm his fingers into the cracks at the sides. He arched his back and strained until he thought his heart would burst-and the slab began to move.
It slid a few centimeters, and he felt a gush of warm air from behind the door. The algae on the floor around him flushed brightly. He smelled the stale dry air flowing out; it had an odd taste which he could not place-sweet, yet rancid. The air of a tomb.
Once more he attacked the door with a fury. He was rewarded for his labors when at last the stone rolled back another few centimeters and he was able to squeeze his shoulders through.
He forced himself through the narrow opening, dizzy from the lack of oxygen and gasping for breath. He collapsed on the floor and lay down, panting while waves of nausea from his overexertion slammed into him.
A faint, reddish-gold radiance fell over him as he lay gazing upward, though where this might come from he could not readily tell. The walls around him were smooth stone and dull red in the ruddy twilight of the mysterious light.
After a while the wracking nausea subsided and he was able to raise his head and look around. There was not much to see. The passage, bone dry and dusty, continued upward at a steep angle directly ahead of him. In order to find out more about his new surroundings, he would have to haul himself back onto his weary legs and climb that incline.
Shaking with fatigue he squirmed onto his side and made to push himself up. His hand brushed something in the dust-a small ridge of stone. He looked down and saw between his hands the faintly outlined depression of a footprint.
4
… THE FOOTPRINT LAY SQUARELY in his path, outlined in the red dust thick upon the floor. A trick of the light, he thought; some odd stone formation. But he stared at it as if he expected it to disappear.
Spence leaned down over the print and carefully, as any archeologist would, blew away the dust. Then, with the tips of his fingers, ever so lightly, he brushed away the thicker silt that had accumulated.
The print remained, inexplicably pressed firmly into the stone-a print of an upright creature: quasi-human. Narrower and longer-it looked like someone had taken a man's foot and stretched it out of proportion. And it had only four small toes. On close inspection he decided that it was not missing any of its toes, as from an accident; it had been designed that way.
He looked around to see if there were any other prints nearby, but there were none. He did discover that the print lay in the bottom of a slight depression boundaries by two smooth banks, as if at one time long ago an underground stream had trickled along this course.
Spence sat in the dust, his mind reeling.
This was the discovery of a lifetime-of several lifetimes. Probably the most important find in the last two hundred years. In the last thousand!
Life on Mars! He, Dr. Spencer Reston, had discovered life on Mars. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Mars had once been home to something more significant than glowing algae. The thing that made that print walked upright like a man, perhaps thought as a man, was conscious of itself.
The implications of his discovery sorted themselves out only gradually. Once the dimensions of his find emerged in their immensity, the finer details could be seen. The print very clearly had been made ages past counting, in order for it to have solidified into stone. If other articles of Martian civilization existed they would most likely be dust and ashes, unless fossilized.
Of course, he argued, the print need not necessarily belong to an inhabitant of Mars at all. It could just as well belong to an intruder like himself. This did not diminish his enthusiasts in the least, nor belittle his discovery. The thing was extraordinary no matter how one viewed it, but it did cause Spence to slow somewhat and consider how little he knew about the print or how it had come to be there. Clearly, he had pushed speculation beyond reasonable limits for a scientist. He would have to have many more facts to substantiate his theories, to even begin to develop any theories.
One print alone was not enough. He needed more to go on. One print alone was almost worthless. What he needed were bones, artifacts-any of the normal archaeological building blocks.
Deathly tired, his mind beginning to wander, he crossed his arms on his chest and fell asleep beside the footprint with thoughts of red Martians crawling blithely over the landscape, besmeared with chalky red dust like pygmies, and himself towering over them saying something ridiculous like, 'Take me to your leader.' …
THE ACHE IN HIs gut was back when he awoke, and his throat burned. A thick, gummy film had formed in his mouth, foul-tasting and nasty. His tongue felt large and uncooperative. He had heard stories of men dying of thirst in the desert, whose tongues had swelled, turning black in their mouths and choking them in the end. He wondered if this was how it started.
Grimly he got to his feet, swaying dizzily. Black spots swam before his eyes. Hunger had become a demanding force, and thirst an ever-present fire. He knew that he had little time left before he collapsed in a faint. After several such collapses he would rise no more.
He considered returning to the tunnel behind the door where the algae grew in such lush profusion. It occurred to him that he might be able to eat them and sustain himself.
The only drawback to this plan was that the algae could well be poisonous. One mouthful could cause him to end his life retching out his entrails in a cold sweat, or send him screaming in agony to crush his head against the stones to stop the pain. These were the milder scenarios he imagined-less pleasant possibilities occurred to him which he did not care to entertain.
Spence decided that if he had found no water by the time he slept once more he would return to the passage beyond the stone door-he now considered it a door in every sense of the word-and eat the algae, come what may. He would by that time be on his last strength and it would not matter which way his life finally ceased. At that point he would be willing to gamble, but not before.
So, he lurched off once more, climbing up the passageway. Not more than a few meters up, the tunnel ended and he stepped into a vast underground cavity of enormous proportions. He began walking, head down, shoulders forward, arms swinging loosely at his sides.
Soon he was pleased to discover that his gnawing hunger had eased. He felt clean, lean, purged of a
