The Secret of the Martian Moons (13 page)

Nothing happened.

The door of the small spaceship slammed shut. There was a whirring sound and a cleft appeared in the stony ceiling of the chamber. With a whoosh the air in the place started roaring out into the near vacuum of the outer surface of Deimos. Nelson stood staring down at the weapon in confusion. Desperately he began punching parts of it, in hopes that somehow he would hit on the means of making it work. But nothing happened.

The Phobos ship gave a vibration, lifted gently and hurled itself upward through the wide roof opening and into space, en route to its Phobos base.

Nelson felt his breath being sucked away, and he hastily closed his helmet and activated his spacesuit air system. The spaceship was gone and Kunosh was safely out of sight, protected by the airlock.

For a while Nelson debated what to do. He could leap out of the cavern through the roof hole, which was now beginning to close. Once on the surface, maybe he could signal his friends on Phobos. On the other hand, it might be too late. Once the escaped men reached their home, they would waste no time seizing the Earth expedition they had so carefully avoided during the months of its stay on their surface.

On the other hand, if he went back to Kunosh, he might manage to learn how to run one of their other spaceships and thus make his own get-away. Then it struck him that surely the Vegan colony on Deimos had some means of communicating directly with their sister starship of Phobos. Why, there must be a radio link or something even more advanced!

He started toward the airlock doorway as the cavern roof sealed shut again and he heard the whispering sigh of air being pumped back in the hangar. He studied the ers-gun carefully as he did so, and regretted that he had not taken the time to do so while Kunosh was telling the history of his people.

It looked like a dangerous weapon, but try as he would, no knob would turn, nothing would move on the thing. Now he poked his finger into the depression that opened the airlock chamber. Kunosh stood there in an attitude of listening. He seemed surprised to see Nelson.

The young man grabbed his arm. "How does this thing work?” he snapped. "It didn’t go off! Suppose your enemies had guns and I had needed it to save your people?”

Kunosh shrugged. “That was the chance you took. After all—you are really nothing to ones as advanced as we. As for this ers-gun ... well, you don’t think our ancestors would be so foolish as to keep such a thing in existence. This is a museum model, a dummy good enough to represent the real thing and therefore good enough for our museum of horrors. The original working reality we destroyed centuries ago!”

Nelson gritted his teeth in frustration. These spineless rabbits! These conceited gophers! he thought. Well, he could always use the ers-gun as a club!

He reversed the weapon, hefted it threateningly. “You must have means of talking with the Phobos star-ship?” he said, and when Kunosh nodded slightly, added, “Well, then, take me to it!”

The old man silently turned and the two went back without further word. Down the descending side of the scoop shaft, out through the halls, and back to the very same central governing room they had been before.

The clerks and directors—or whatever they were— were back on the job again. At Nelson’s entry they halted the routines they were engaged on and then slowly returned to them, keeping an eye cocked toward the stranger.

Kunosh went over to the far end of the room. There was a large wall panel there and he pressed some studs. The panel flickered, glowed to life, and settled down. Before them was a room identical in every way with the one they were standing in. The two starships must have been built on the same plans save for the difference in size.

In this Phobos room, men in the striped clothing distinctive to that branch of the Vegans were gathered in heated discussion. As they noticed that the intermoon panel was in operation, two of the men detached themselves and strode over to face Kunosh and Nelson.

Young Parr saw at once that these men had a confidence and hardness utterly lacking in the rabbitlike creatures of Deimos. The leader looked coldly at Kunosh and said something in their native tongue. Kunosh didn't bother to answer him, distaste for his opponent chieftain evident on his face. He jerked a finger to indicate that it was the Earthling who wanted the interview.

The Phobosian looked hard at Nelson, changed to English. “Oh, one of the two that got away. I didn't believe that old scarecrow had the nerve to capture you. Where’s your friend?"

Nelson stared back at him. “He was killed by your cowardly gang ... or didn't they bother to tell you?”

The other simply stared at him for a moment. He shifted his glance to Kunosh, who was biting his lip. “My—gang—as you call them—killed nobody. If we’d wanted to kill you, we could have done so easily anytime in the last few months. Why should we have to do so now?”

For a moment Nelson was speechless. “You're lying!" he said. “Your men sneaked up on Jim Worden and attacked him when he wasn’t looking. Then your men smashed our ship!”

The Phobos leader turned to Kunosh, said slowly, “So you do know how to use violence when you have to, you old hypocrite! Your gang of weaklings make me sick. All your prating about bestiality and throwbacks just to cover up your own bred-in-the-bone rottenness.”

A cold chill ran down the young Earthling’s spine. Could it be, could it possibly be that the killing had been done by the Deimosians, those rabbits? And it suddenly dawned on him that it had to be so. What the Phobosian had said made sense. They could have killed them anytime, certainly they didn’t need to follow them and do it on Deimos ... an act that would alienate their cowardly kin even more. And then there was the dishonest business about the ers-gun . ..

Nelson drew away from the old man. He spoke to the Phobos chieftain, “Where’s the rest of my expedition? My father, Gutman, and the others?”

The other looked at him. “We took them prisoner as soon as we saw they had track of our Mars operation. They’re safely under guard—and we have thrown overboard our ideas of hiding and running.” He turned to Kunosh, addressed him:

“Were sending a ship back to pick up this Earth-man. We want him where we know he won’t escape and where you won’t be able to kill him when he’s asleep either! Tell your rabbits to grab him!”

Kunosh stirred uneasily. He whined something back through the panel in his native tongue, but the Phobosian merely angrily repeated his request.

Nelson hefted the weapon. As a club, it could do plenty damage if the Deimosians attempted to carry out that order. The men in the room behind him had come to their feet, were slinking slowly closer to him. The Earthling turned his back to the panel. “Don’t try it!” he warned. “I can do plenty of damage if you dare touch me I”

The little crowd of Deimosians, their faces pale and twitching, their mouths working, continued to close in on him. Cowards or not, they were going to seize him. And Nelson realized now how true the Phobos charge was. The Deimosians could kill if they had to and undoubtedly were the slayers of Jim Worden. What a fool Kunosh had made of him!

He swung his weapon threateningly. The band shuffled closer to him, stood gathering their courage until they would leap at him in a burst of final desperation.

The communication panel to Phobos was still open, and several more of the striped-clad men had gathered before it on the Phobos side to watch the interesting spectacle of their cowardly brethren put to the test. Nelson could hear comments in their native language through the panel.

But as he braced himself for the assault, he heard a new note through the panel. The sound of someone running into the central Phobos room and shouting something. He heard a sudden rustling as the men on that moon seemed taken by a new thing. The young Earthling risked a glance back over his shoulder.

The Phobos men had drawn away from the panel, were standing around a gesticulating newcomer. Now the advancing ring of Deimosians closing in on Nelson hesitated, stopped, and its members began to break away in confusion. Whatever was being said over the panel must have been very important to distract their attention.

Nelson lowered his weapon, turned. Kunosh was at the panel, gesticulating to his opposite chieftain. The other man, who had turned away from his viewing plate, broke away from the messenger and returned to the panel, his face pale and shaken. Apparently breathless, evidently under the throes of great shock, he blurted out something to Kunosh.

The old man sagged and almost collapsed. There was a sudden silence in the Deimos room, and shock visibly ran through every man there.

“What is it?” asked Nelson in a whisper. Kunosh couldn’t answer him, but the Phobos leader looked at him blankly through the panel and said:

“The Marauders!”

The Marauders! The dread pirates of the starry spaces who had invaded the worlds of Vega, destroying and conquering! The Phobos leader stared at Nelson through the panel, and repeated his words.

“Our radar screens, which are far more advanced than your own devices and reach out to the orbit of Pluto, have detected an array of space vessels coming toward the sun. They are numbered in the hundreds and hundreds—a long stream reaching far out into the empty space between the stars, heading for this system like an arrow!

“Already the vanguard is inside Pluto’s orbit and still coming strong! It can be nothing else but the Marauder fleet! The horde of star pirates coming upon us at last!” The Phobosian suddenly clapped a hand to his forehead, turned away from the communication screen and hastened over to his comrades. A violent discussion was already under way there in the inner moon’s control room.

Behind Nelson, on Deimos, similar confusion already reigned. Kunosh, who had recovered somewhat, was holding another of his governing board by the shoulder and shouting at him. The other men were frantically running back and forth, apparently unable to recover their senses. The news had struck them like a bomb, had disrupted their entire mentalities, so geared to hiding instead of action.

Bewildered and entirely overlooked in the turmoil, Nelson Parr sat down and simply watched. What was he himself to do? Obviously he ought to take advantage of this confusion to escape—but where could he go?

He could probably find his way back to the Deimos spaceship hangar, but once there what would he do? He doubted if he could run one of their ships and if he did manage to, where would he take it? He couldn’t go to Phobos because that would simply be delivering himself from one captivity to another one. He could get to Mars, but it was deserted. He could probably keep himself alive there, but that would not remove the danger of the Marauders finding him.

Actually his most urgent task, his duty, was to find some way of notifying Earth of the danger, readying Earth’s defenses. It seemed, from what he had seen and heard of the oncoming pirate horde, that the best warcraft Earth could muster would hardly have a chance. He knew that really there was no chance at all. Warcraft for space was something almost unheard of. It had been speculated upon in stories before space flight really got under way, but the cold reality of interplanetary flight had brought no actual need for them. There had been no other planetary civilization to fight, no savage natives of other worlds, and the expenses and complexities of astral navigation had made space piracy an impossible fantasy—besides, what was there for such pirates to steal? In short, there had never been any reason for space-going warships.

On Earth itself, warfare between nations had been successfully abolished for over a hundred years, and save for a few ceremonial guards of honor there were really no soldiers. There were police forces only, and there were some stores of old armaments in various government warehouses and vaults.

At least if Earth could be warned in time, the leaders might hastily equip some spaceships with guns, or with means of launching atomic torpedoes. They might at least arm the people so that any attempt by the Marauders to land would cost them plenty.

In any case, Earth had to be warned! But how? At the moment it was already on the other side of the sun, well over two hundred million miles away, out of sight of both Mars and the invading fleet. No radio, not even such super-radios as perhaps die Vegans might possess, could possibly reach Earth across the interference of the sun.

The only way to warn Earth would be to go there . . . and that seemed to be an impossible hope.

The Deimosians had recovered a little of their senses, though they were still white and shaking. On the Phobos side, a serious conference was already taking place. Kunosh walked over to the panel and switched it off. He rapped for order, yelled a command, repeated it, and finally got the attention of his men.

They slowly quieted down, gathered around him. Kunosh talked swiftly, heatedly. There was little debate as the stunned councilors listened to him. Nelson, sitting at one side, assumed that this was a hasty conference to discuss ways and means of saving themselves. He got up, went over, and broke in:

“I want to say something, Kunosh. If you are deciding what to do, I have a suggestion to make.”

The old man glanced at him sharply. “This is an important meeting. What can you have to say?” Nelson spoke swiftly. “Your only hope of fighting off the Marauders is to throw in your lot with Earth. Earth has a huge population, great factories, and plenty of courage. If you come to Earth, warn the people, they will welcome your aid, give you shelter. With the special information you can bring, Earth can find a way to build defenses. Even if they can’t, they can make it so hot for the pirates that they’ll go away. Earth needs your science; you can use it to bargain for a place to settle down, a permanent home.

“Take Deimos across space to Earth while there is still time to outrun the Marauders. You can’t hope to hide here forever, especially since they may have records of your two moons from the Vega days, may be looking for you!”

Kunosh listened to him, frowning and shaking his head. He spoke to the others in the room, apparently translating Nelson’s words. The councilors glanced at him with horror. Those nearest him drew away. The old man brushed a hand over his brow.