The Secret of the Martian Moons (12 page)

“We didn't know how long it would be before they arrived at Vega and killed us all! We thought we had a few years, and we finally decided that the only smart thing to do would be to flee. We didn’t have spaceships but we knew all about them. We knew we could make them. Our science was advanced enough.

“We held a great conference in our world and we talked it over until we decided what to do.”

The scene showed a large underground cavern with hundreds of the rabbity men in heated debate.

“We built two giant spaceships in the form of two great big spheres. These ships were large enough to carry many thousands of people. Inside them they had room for factories and storehouses, synthetic farms, and all the things needed to carry on life entirely within them without need of sun or surface.”

The screen showed two tremendous frameworks going up, being filled in, being surfaced. Nelson gasped as he realized that he was looking at ships larger than any about which he had ever dreamed. By comparing them with the mountains nearby, he saw that the two ships towered above them, that the men who were building them seemed smaller than ants. Why—he gasped—they were the sizes of the two moons of Mars!

His suspicion was confirmed as the artificial globes were surfaced. The outside of the two vessels was made to look like barren rocks and cold stony plain. Before his eyes the contours of Deimos and Phobos took shape!

Kunosh went on: “We were just in time. As we were finishing our escape craft, the first of the Marauder ships was sighted.”

The screen showed a single advance scout, long and black and deadly-looking, flashing into the blue rays of the Vega system. A cloud of squarish battlecraft from the other worlds rose to meet it, but the black ship easily evaded them and disappeared in the direction from which it had come.

“Plainly our system was to be the next victim. We had no more time to lose. So we manned our two ships and took off.”

Nelson watched columns of men and women and children disappear into the interiors of the two great ships, while loads and loads of stores and things were crated in. Then, from their rocky valleys, the two towering spheres lifted slowly without sign of rocket or jet. They moved up in the sky and vanished.

Kunosh continued. “To travel between the stars takes more than the lifetime of any man. We could not build small ships and go. So what we did was to build two tiny worlds in which we could continue to live and work and have children while they traveled the long distances to safer regions of the heavens. Our trip across space took ...” he paused to mentally calculate his figures into terms Nelson could understand “. . . about three thousand of your terrestrial years.”

There were glimpses of life inside Deimos and Phobos as they moved together across the empty stretches of interstellar space. Nelson could catch views of the two worldlets, honeycombed with life, with anxious leaders viewing the stars toward which they drove, with several glimpses of huge machinery in the core of the spheres, driving the two vast craft by some means not yet discovered by humanity on Earth.

Then finally the screen showed a yellow star approaching and growing. Several planets were picked out circling it, and Nelson recognized the ringed vision of Saturn. The two huge craft entered the solar system, picked their way around it and came close to Mars.

“Of all worlds, this one seemed the best for us,” said Kunosh. “We looked at Earth, which was more like our home world, but we found it already filled with people and animal life of all kinds.”

Nelson was suddenly startled as the panel swooped down on Earth, and before his eyes plunged through cloud and rain to pick out the jungles of Africa, to spot a tiger leaping upon its prey in India, to flash briefly into a nest of snakes in some South American tree-top, and then, to his wide-eyed amazement, to swoop along an open field of green, to hover for a few incredible minutes over a battlefield on which men in plumed hats and curving metal helmets fought. Men dressed in gleaming breastplates, lugging cumbersome blunderbusses which they set up on tripods and fired at each other amid clouds of black smoke. He saw snorting cavalry go thundering across the field, while Cromwell’s Roundheads and the Cavaliers battled furiously with swords.

“That must have been about the seventeenth century,” remarked Nelson, realizing that he was seeing an actual visual record of some historical battle.

“About four hundred of your years ago, anyway,” said Kunosh.

The panel shifted to Mars, swooped low over its surface, over its deserts and green continents and cities. It was as quiet and deserted as ever. “We found this world, without violent weather, without inhabitants. We found the cities waiting to be taken and lived in and ready. We decided to stop, to put our two ships into orbits around it and watch to see if this was no deception.”

Now the vision of Mars steadied to that as seen from the surface of Deimos. Nelson said then, “Then your two ships have been moons of Mars for four hundred years and still you never colonized it!”

Kunosh looked at him gravely. “We are a very cautious people,” he began, only to be interrupted by the Phobos captive who had been quiet up to this point. “You mean foolish and cowardly!”

Kunosh angrily shook his head. “Cautious. We didn’t know whether the Marauders were going to visit this system someday and we didn’t know whether they had followed us. If they had we wanted to be ready to make our get-away without delay. Again, we were suspicious about this empty world. What had happened to its inhabitants? Were they wiped out by some dreadful plague that would do the same to us? Were they hiding, waiting to leap out and kill us all once we settled down? Anyway, until we found out, we were determined to take no chances.”

Kunosh paused awhile, picking his words. “There was another factor as well. Our study of historical development, of our cruder neighbors in the Vega system, showed us that you Earthmen were on your way to discovering the secrets of nature. We knew it would be but a matter of a few more generations before you would begin to hit on the rocket method of space flight. We knew that it would not be long, in an astronomical sense, before you too came to Mars to explore. We had no desire to mix with you or to engage in trade or perhaps get involved in arguments or warfare. If we did any of these things, it would change our ancient way of life; it would destroy our own civilization!”

The captive Phobosian burst out, “Aw—nonsense! All that thinking is wrong! People with courage and honor can obtain the respect of others with honor and can benefit by such contact. This idea of always being in hiding and avoiding other civilizations will be the death of all our people!”

Kunosh looked at the captive thoughtfully. “Yes,” he began, then turned back to Nelson. “What this enemy has said has become much the prevailing way of thought on our other spaceship, the moon you call Phobos. There, for some reason we cant understand, the ancient tried and honorable ways of our ancestors have been corrupted and perverted by such thoughts as these. The people there, though once our brothers, have split from us in views. From the first, they were the advocates of landing on Mars and taking a do-or-die stand. Their weaklings got the best of their true thinkers and advocated an end to running. They have even dared to send spies to Earth, disguised as Earthlings, with false faces and false hands, to keep an eye on the intentions of its inhabitants. They have been on Mars itself, prying into the works there, watching you colonists. In fact, I even think they started the business on Earth of suggesting your colony’s abandonment.”

The Phobos man laughed. “We didn’t. We didn’t have to, and in spite of your fears, we’ve never interfered with Earth’s politics. Oh, maybe we made a few mistakes by being spotted, but nothing much came of it. One of our best agents got into this young man’s room when he was coming back to Mars. If he had found what he was looking for, we’d have known about this spying expedition they left behind and they'd never have spotted us when we took over Mars.”

"And now look at the situation!” Kunosh snapped. "You tried to seize control of our smaller moon too, and drag our people down in your wild plan to land on Mars and take it over before the Earthmen decide to come back again. But thanks to your own bungling, this young savage was able to knock you all down. This should show you that when it comes to cleverness, as you are determined to try, you cannot stand up to these Earth people.”

Kunosh snapped orders in his own language. "I can't stand the sight of this traitor,” he then said to Nelson. Before Nelson could reply, the Phobosian had been hustled out of the room and out of sight.

"What do you plan to do now?” Nelson asked the old man.

It was plain that as even rabbits will turn when cornered so would these Vegans, who had modeled their thinking on rabbit lines. Evidently the Vegans on Phobos had tired of running, and were now like dangerous animals, ready to seize the home planet that had been hanging before their overcautious eyes the moment the last Earthlings left it. Like frenzied rabbits, they would bite . . . and had already done so where Jim Worden was concerned.

Kunosh switched off the wall panel, turned up the lighting in the room. There were now only three other Vegans present, sitting at panels or machines that probably dealt with governmental problems. The old man did not answer the young man for a while. Finally he shrugged.

“We haven’t made up our minds. Our general feeling is that we will stay here in our moon home in hiding until we see what happens. If the Phobos backsliders do attempt to settle Mars, we will watch them at their folly. If they die there, we shall still be here and shall continue our vigil. We will not come out until we are certain that never again will we have to encounter the strange ways of other-world people! Perhaps we may even decide to move our moon to some other star again and leave the vile throwbacks to their certain sad fate!”

Nelson looked at him. What a strange race, he thought. Capable of lies, capable of deception, endlessly cowardly, and yet thinking itself so superior!

The whole mentality was unhealthy, he reflected. A thought occurred to him:

“Sometime in your past, before you were civilized, you must have fought. You couldn’t have conquered even the wild animals of your native world without some spark of violent courage. And besides, where did this ers-gun come from? It’s a weapon . . .”

Kunosh shook his head. “If there were such traits amongst our primitive ancestors, they were animal characteristics which we have carefully weeded out and overcome. As for the weapon you have in your hands—it is something one of the first space visitors from our neighboring worlds around Vega left behind. We put it in our museum of horrors and that’s where I took it from.”

Young Parr hefted the odd gun and looked at it. “What does it do?” he asked. “You never told me.” The Vegan answered, “I don’t quite know myself. I prefer not to think about such awful matters. We ourselves have no weapons of our own, unless the degenerates of Phobos have made some since. There might be such on their ship.”

Nelson’s eyes popped. “On what? On their ship! But, of course, they must have a ship here on your moon! Where is it? If I can get to it, I can use it to go back and warn my friends.”

Kunosh looked horrified. “Didn’t I tell you that you must never leave here? We can’t let you go!”

“And you can’t stop me either!” yelled Nelson angrily. “You won’t use force, and I’ve got your only gun.” He pointed it at Kunosh. “Now take me to the Phobosians’ ship. The one they used to come here.”

For a moment it seemed as if the old man was going to refuse. He had no reply to Nelson's challenge, for it was true, the old Vegan would never stoop to using force. But then he glanced a moment at a dial on the wall, which looked as if it were a register of time, bit his lip, and turned.

He left the room with Nelson at his heels holding the ers-gun firmly. They walked through several halls with the natives again shrinking away from them as Kunosh warned them of the situation. They walked until they came to a shaft leading vertically upward. There was a moving chain of platforms, like the scoops of a dump truck, going up the shaft. Kunosh stepped on one and Nelson quickly joined him. They rose slowly in the enclosed space of the shaft.

“Where does this go?" asked Nelson.

“This goes up to our own spaceship port, which is in a cavern just underneath the surface. We have several craft there which we use between the two moons when we need them. The Phobosian ship must be there.”

The shaft continued its rise until it came to a stop at a small room cut in the rock. They stepped out of the scoop belt and Kunosh opened one of their sliding doors. They came through a second small chamber, which Nelson recognized as another airlock. They stepped out into a huge hangarlike hall where a number of curiously designed craft rested. They were somewhat wider and squatter than terrestrial designs, and in one comer was one that was very nearly cubical.

At a ship near the far wall, Nelson caught sight of several men in red-and-black striped suits clustering about the open door. “Hey!” he grabbed Kunosh by the arm. “Those are our prisoners! They re getting away!”

The old man stopped him. “Of course. Were sending them home. What did you expect us to do? We’re not going to do anything as bestial as locking them up or even killing them.”

“Blast it!” shouted Nelson in fury. “You cowards!” He dashed for the Phobos craft, shouting to the men to stop or he’d shoot.

The men in red-and-black stripes glanced back at him and, instead of stopping, rushed to get into their ship. As the last one piled into the open door and started to slam it shut, Nelson stopped, grabbed up his ers-gun and aimed it.

Behind him he heard Kunosh give a gasp and turn to run back to shelter in the shaft’s airlock room. For a split second it occurred to Nelson that if this unknown device fired an atomic or an explosive charge, it might mean his own death also in that enclosed space, but he was past worrying. These men had killed Jim Worden and were a menace to his father’s expedition. He touched off the trigger button of the gun.