The Secret of the Ninth Planet by Donald A. Wollheim (funny books to read txt) 📗

at the ship's rocket launchers for an attack. The tail of the teardrop housed the built-in armament—the rocket tubes which could send forth destruction to an enemy. But though Haines sat with his finger on the launcher button, no aircraft rose to meet them from the city below. No guns barked at them. No panic started in the streets.

They could see tiny dots of living beings moving about, but no sign of alarm, no evidence that they had been noticed.

Even here, at the equator, there were streaks of white snow in the streets and rings of rime along the bases of the buildings.

Directly below them lay the Sun-tap station. The lines converged here, and the rings of distortion could be seen in the atmosphere, causing the city to flicker as if from the presence of invisible waves.

Then they saw the masts and their shining accumulators projecting about a cleared spot near the outskirts of the city. The customary walled ring and the open machinery were not visible.

"The Sun-tap station is under the city!" said Lockhart, shocked. "It's been built beneath the streets somewhere, and the Martians walk around above it and let the masts alone! They must be the builders!"

"If so, why are they killing themselves?" Burl couldn't see the sense of it. "And if they have reasons, then why don't they defend it? They were alerted while we were on Mercury. They must have spaceships if they are the enemy. Where are they?"

The ground was now but a few hundred feet below them, and still no one paid the strange ship hanging in the sky any attention. While the crew stood with bated breath, Lockhart brought the ship down and down, until it came to rest barely fifty feet above an intersection. There it hung, nearly touching the roofs, and was ignored.

The shining masts of the Sun-tap station continued to gleam, following the tiny bright Sun in its course through the dark blue of the sky. One of the two small Martian moons was climbing upward along the horizon. The canals beyond were dark lines of conduit, through which no life-giving waters flowed. And the Martians did nothing.

Chapter 11.
Martians Don't Care

"I don't like the looks of this at all," said Lockhart finally. "I suspect a trap. Yet we've got to land and get at that base. I'm going to take the ship out into the desert beyond the city and let a scouting squad go in first."

The Magellan lifted back into the sky, then moved out over the ocher wasteland that was the barren desert of the red planet. Slowly the ship dropped again until its pointed nether end hung about twenty feet above the cold shale and time-worn sand.

Captain Boulton and Ferrati were selected to do the initial survey. Burl and Haines helped them climb through the packed spaces of the outer hold. The jeep was swung out to the lowermost cargo port, and the spaceship's cargo derrick lowered the compact army vehicle to the ground.

The two scouts then put on altitude suits with oxygen masks, slung walkie-talkies about their chests, took light carbines in hand and pistols in belts and went down the rope ladder from the cargo port. They climbed into the sturdy jeep with its specially-designed carburetor and pressurized engine. The vehicle had been prepared to operate in the light atmosphere of Mars, as thin as the air on a Himalayan mountaintop, and low in free oxygen.

Burl and Haines, clad in pressure suits themselves, sat in the open port and watched the jeep set off. The engine kicked over and barked a few times in the strange air. Then Boulton at the wheel threw in the clutch, stepped on the gas, and the squat little car, painted in Air Force blue, rolled off over the flat rocky surface, kicking up a light cloud of sand as it went.

On Haines's lap sat a walkie-talkie. Boulton and Ferrati kept up a running commentary as they approached the city. Ferrati described the ground and the appearance of the oncoming city.

The jeep was now a small object merging with the dark mounds of the city's outermost buildings. "We haven't met any Martians yet," came Ferrari's voice. "Apparently they aren't interested in investigating us even now. And here we are rolling right up to the city limits." There was a pause.

The walkie-talkie emitted a series of squeaks and squawks, and Ferrati's voice came through now with distortion. "We're crossing the city limits—there's a sort of hard, plastic pavement that begins at the very edge. Now we're going down an intersection between the buildings."

The squawks became increasingly louder. They could hear only a word or two. Haines asked whether he was getting through to them, but he could not make out an answer because of the racket.

"It's the Sun-tap station. It's generating distortion. We'll have to wait until they return," said Burl.

Haines nodded and turned off the set which had begun to utter ear-piercing howls. The two men waited quietly for about half an hour. Only a phone call from the curious men in the control room interrupted their vigil.

Then finally Burl spotted a little cloud of dust on the horizon. "There they are!"

The two men stood up as the little jeep made its way back over the desert to the ship. As it drew closer, they saw a third occupant sitting in the back with Ferrati. Haines opened the walkie-talkie. "Wait till you see this fellow," Ferrati's comment came through.

The jeep drew up to the ship and stopped. Ferrati waved them down. A few seconds later they were joined by Lockhart and Clyde, also in pressure suits.

The creature in the back of the jeep was a Martian. They stared in fascination. It was about three feet long with a small, oval-shaped head and two very large, many-faceted eyes. A small, beaklike mouth and short, stubby antennae completed its face. The head was attached by a short neck to a body that consisted of three oval masses joined together by narrow belts, much like the joints of an insect. A pair of arms, ending in long three-fingered hands, grew from the first segment. A set of long, thin legs grew out of each of the two other segments. A glistening grayish-blue shell, its skin, covered it from head to foot.

At the moment, this particular Martian was tightly restrained by a strong nylon net, and was obviously the captive of the two explorers.

"Why, it looks like a giant insect!" exclaimed Burl.

"More like a kind of lobster," was Ferrati's answer. "But this is it. This is one of the city dwellers."

Lockhart shook his head. "I don't like this. We shouldn't do anything to antagonize the Martians. Taking one prisoner like this may be a bad first move."

Boulton stepped out of the jeep. "There wasn't anything else we could do. Besides, who said that Martians were ever our friends?"

"We got into the city," he went on, "and drove around the streets. There were plenty of these fellows around, going about their business. Hundreds of 'em. Do you think they stopped to look at us? Do you think they were curious? Do you think they talked to us? Called the police? Did anything at all?

"No," he answered himself. "They just walked around us as if we were a stick of something in the way. They don't say anything to each other. They just go on about their affairs, dragging things, carrying food, herding young ones, and not a darn word.

"They looked at us, and didn't even act as if they saw us. When we stopped one, it squirmed out of our grasp and walked away. Finally we took this fellow, simply grabbed him off the street, tied him up, stuffed him in the jeep and kidnaped him. And do you think anybody cared or turned in an alarm or tried to help him? No!"

Lockhart looked at the prisoner a moment. The Martian stared at him out of his unwinking multiple eyes. "Are you sure these are the engineers of the canals, the builders?"

Boulton nodded. "Definitely. We saw some of them at work. They were repairing a house and they used tools and fire. They have machines, and they use them. They've got their city working and well laid out, but I don't know how they do it. They must communicate in some way, but they act as if they had been drilled in their jobs and were going through an elaborate and complicated pantomime. Even the young don't utter a peep."

Lockhart stepped back a bit. "Untie this fellow. Let's see what he does."

When the Martian had been released from the enveloping net, it made no effort to communicate. It turned slowly around, a little wobbly at first, and wandered off, paying no attention to the men, the ship, or the jeep. Then it started walking at a rapid pace. The men watched as it trotted into the desert—away from the city!

It seemed to wander around as if lost, and then set out in another direction, but still one that would not take it to the city which was quite plainly in view.

The Martian disappeared from view behind a series of small hummocks, still bound for nowhere.

The men were lost in amazement. Russell Clyde uttered a low whistle. "Burl's right. It must be a sort of insect."

"This whole civilization seems to be insectlike, if you ask me," said Burl. "It's like a huge anthill, or a big bee-hive. It seems complicated, and the creatures go through complex activities, and all the time it's something they were born with."

Ferrati nodded. "Now that you mention it, that's exactly what the city was like. Nobody gave orders—everybody just did what they were supposed to do. Nobody was curious about us because it wasn't their business."

"And, individually, they haven't intelligence," Clyde added. "That one—the one you took away from his work—plainly is lost. He doesn't know how to go about getting back. He has no curiosity about us ... he may not even have much of a brain. Individual ants have no brain—only a sort of central nerve center. Collectively, they perform wonders; individually, they are quite helpless."

Lockhart interrupted the discussion. "Well, then, let's get on with it. Obviously, the Sun-tap builders placed their station in this city because it was a safe spot, protected by the Martians themselves, and because the Martians would never think to interfere with them. So you men can go back, take your stuff, dig out the station and put it out of commission. Get going."

Haines and Burl climbed into the jeep with Boulton and Ferrati. Russell Clyde insisted on joining them, and Lockhart gave his consent. Off they went, rumbling over the sand toward the city of instinct.

Burl was excited and curious about the Martians. They presented a strange mixture of contradictions. "How," he asked Russ, "could they have built a world-wide network of canals, set up pumping stations, laid out plantations, mastered hydraulic and power engineering, if they are mere creatures of instinct? Surely there must be brainy ones somewhere? A thinker species?"

"Not necessarily," said Russ. "Remember, these creatures are operating without opposition—they are really the highest type of life here. The need to conserve water and continue their hive life forced them to learn a practical kind of engineering. Nobody knows how the ants and bees formed their complex societies—there are none among them with any larger brains than the rest, and they do not talk. But somehow ants and bees communicate and somehow they act as a mass. Figure it on a world-wide scale, driven by the threat of their world drying up, and these creatures built up a mechanical civilization to meet it. But it also accounts for why they have never flown, not through the air and not through space, why they haven't attempted radio communication with Earth, and why they don't understand what the Sun-tap station is doing to them. Their world is being killed, and they literally haven't the brains to understand it."

They reached the city. All about was a silent hustle and bustle of enigmatic, shining, shelled creatures. Superficially, it looked like an intelligent civilization. There were wheeled carts driven by some sort of steam generator. Steam-driven engines ran factories.

The Martians made way for the jeep with unconcern. Never had they seen creatures as large as themselves that were not of their own kind on hive business. Hence, none such could exist. This was a world totally without individualism, a civilization without a spoken language, without names, without banners. Wherever or however the mass knowledge was located or transmitted, no individual of another species could ever hope to know. It would be forever as remote from human explorers as the farthest star on the farthest galaxy.

They drove to where the Sun-tap masts rose from the ground. The men parked the jeep out of the way of the silent traffic, climbed out and walked