The Secret of the Martian Moons (17 page)

Nelson pushed a second plug and a glow appeared in the center of the crossbars. It changed slowly from blue to green as he watched. He heard a humming sound coming from the board. The green changed slowly to yellow and began to work into orange. In a flash of intuition it struck Nelson that a force charge was building up, that something was charging the weapon in that wall.

The orange changed to a burning red dot, and then there was a click, and a plug popped out. The red dot remained, and now Nelson was sure that all he had to do was to push the new plug in and the weapon would discharge.

Taking no chances, young Parr proceeded to activate and charge the other three gunsights. Then he returned to the main control observation panel.

Even as he went toward it he knew the yellow dots were back. He leaned over the panel. The V of nine pursuers was there, reversed, coming again straight as an arrow for Nelson's ship.

He could dodge again, but eventually they would catch him. He decided to try his luck with the ship's guns.

Nelson watched the yellow dots creep slowly closer to his ship. He stepped over to the wall panel and the four visual disks. On one of them a spot of yellow had appeared at one far edge. The first of the Marauders was in sight of the ship’s detectors.

Nelson risked a glance out the actual window panel, but he could see nothing against the stars. But the gun-sights showed the enemy moving slowly closer to the central line of crossbars.

Another yellow dot appeared dimly behind the first one, but the first was visibly glowing brighter. Nelson watched closely with held breath as the yellow dot drew nearer the glowing point of scarlet. Minutes passed as he stood, keyed on edge, waiting for the two dots to overlap. At last the red dot began to eclipse the yellow one, to show an orange tint. He watched, his hand on the plug, and then came the moment that there was but a single dot in the exact center of the disk—a bright pure orange.

Nelson pushed the plug in.

There was an instantaneous flash of blinding white, and when Nelson s eyes stopped blinking, the disk was dark, one yellow spot—that of the second ship-hovering near the rim, and a dimmed yellow dot rapidly moving out to the edge and vanishing. A spot of blue shone in the crossbars and began to build up to green, as a new charge was loading into the gun.

Evidently the weapons launched a bolt of atomic power, like a huge lightning blast. He wondered whether it had destroyed the Marauder or only disabled it.

Now he glanced at the three other weapon disks and was dismayed to see that two of them carried yellow dots in sight. While he had been waiting, the rest of the pursuers had come up, were surrounding his ship, closing in.

He had not yet tasted the power of their weapons* His shot had probably taken them completely by surprise. But now they would come for him with their weapons blazing. Nelson realized that if they did, he had but scant moments to live.

He gritted his teeth. Well, he’d put up a fight as long as he could. All his four guns were activated, and on two of them, yellow dots were closing in to his target sight. He watched them come, bracing himself unconsciously for the blow that must surely be heading his way.

But somehow they were holding their fire. He was wet with perspiration as another red fire spot turned orange with its target. He slammed down the plug, and was rewarded by another blinding white flash, taking care this time to look away so that his sight would not be dazzled.

But when he looked back the yellow dot was still in the center of the disk and glowing brighter and brighter. He gazed with horror. Somehow the shot had been neutralized, deflected!

There came a terrific clap of thunder in his ears and the cube jolted violently. Nelson was thrown from his feet. The ship’s lights dimmed almost to darkness as he slid across the floor, tingling as if a mighty hand had slapped him.

He sat up dazed and shaken. Slowly the ship’s lights struggled back into brightness again. Nelson got to his knees, and then to his feet, dizzy from the shock. He shook his head, forced himself back to his full senses, groped back to the defense panel. But all four disks were black, lifeless, burned out.

Somehow, he thought, they were able to catch that thunderbolt, toss it back on its track, back to me! The ship was now helpless!

He hurried back to the control panel, but to his horror, it too was dark. They had blown the ship’s control system entirely. He was now boxed up, blind in space, out of control.

Nelson sat down and stared a moment. Would the Marauders leave him there now, go on their way? No, he decided, it wasn’t like them. They’d come in person to look the ship over, to see what they had captured. Well, he’d give them a fight if they did!

He got up, went to the room he’d been using as sleeping quarters, found his spacesuit, climbed into it. He buckled it on fully, secured his space helmet tightly, leaving only the face panel open. Attired thus, he went to the ladderway to the lower level, descended, and found the cabinet of tools that he had discovered there in his tour of exploration. He found a nice thick metal bar, a couple feet long, a perfect crowbar or cudgel. Armed with this, he clambered back up to the central chamber.

He didn’t have too long to wait. In a little while he heard a bump and a scraping sound along the outside of the ship. There was a clanging as if something was being affixed to the outside. Then there was a buzzing sound, and he recognized the noise of the outer space lock door being opened. There was a vibration in the floor as heavy feet tramped through and a sudden stir in the ship’s air as the inner lock door slid open.

Nelson closed his helmet face panel, slipped up to the entry to his chamber, and hefted his crowbar. He heard the clang of heavy feet stamping around down on the floor below. Then suddenly a black metallic helmet popped up through the round passageway in the floor. Nelson swung at it, and the head pulled back.

He had a glimpse of a curiously ridged black helmet, of a broad eye panel beneath it, and a brief glimpse of two eyes darkly within. At least the Marauders were humanoid, Nelson thought.

He waited. Then suddenly the opening seemed to erupt figures. Three, four black metal-clad men popped up through the floor trap as if shot from guns. Nelson swung his bar, dashed in at them.

He felt his weapon thud satisfyingly against a metal-clad body. There was a yelling. He got a glimpse of a man’s face glaring at him through a helmet, as a black form loomed suddenly over him ... a dark face with pale blue eyes, set under a jutting pair of red eyebrows. Nelson swung his club, but it was tom from his hands, and a second later there came a terrific thud on the side of his helmet, a second crash as someone else struck him, and everything went dark.

Nelson Parr turned over in bed, snuggling his face against his pillow. Gradually he became aware that he had been asleep, that he was waking up. Still, the drowsiness of slumber kept him from opening his eyes. He was warm, comfortable, and snug in bed, and the feel of the sheets was good.

He wondered whether there would be school today, down at the main junction, but then he remembered that he had graduated long ago. Well, then, he was going to Earth to study. Again, this thought did not ring true. No, he thought, still snuggled down, still unwilling to drop his last moments of sleep, that had been done and he was home now. So then what was he supposed to do today?

He lay still awhile, thinking. Gradually an uneasiness began to fill his mind. Various thoughts and strange memories pushed into his brain. They were going to evacuate Mars? But they already had! And he’d gone somewhere with his dad .. . oh, yes, to Phobos and Deimos. There’d been Jim Worden, he remembered now, and a cold chill suddenly struck him.

Why, Jim was dead, and terrible things had happened, and there had been Kunosh and his lies and treachery and then the cubical ship and then a chase.

The Marauders! The thought exploded in Nelson’s head like a bomb. His eyes popped open and he sat up in bed with a start.

He blinked. The first thing he saw was a triangular piece of cloth tacked to the wall bearing the inscription in bright red letters, Solis Lacus General School. It was his old school banner. He swiftly moved his eyes about. There was a carefully hand-framed fix-photo of his father and some ceremony. Against the wall was a jumping stick and other athletic equipment. His eyes fell on his old bureau, on his little folding desk, on a chair. On the chair was a pile of clothes, neatly folded. His rocket-travel jumper, his shoes.

He looked at his bed, and it was his own bed and this was his own room in his father’s house on Mars. Nelson rubbed his eyes, looked at his hands. Could this all have been a dream?

But the memory was too vivid. He rubbed his head and winced a little. There was a tender spot on his scalp where the Marauder club had struck him. This was no dream! But how had he got here? And what had happened to the space plunderers?

He climbed out of bed, half expecting someone to rush in, attack him. But he heard nothing. He was dressed in a pair of his own pajamas, a pair he remembered having left behind.

Hastily he changed clothes, got dressed. He glanced at himself in a mirror. He seemed changed, space-tanned. He looked as if he had been through an experience, no doubt about it.

Dressed, he stared around the bedroom he thought he had left behind forever. It seemed unchanged, and yet... he carefully enumerated everything in it. There was a change. Something caught his eye on the main wall. There had always been a blank panel there, a Martian picture panel presumably, inactive like all the Martian mysteries. It was still there—but it was no longer black and dull.

The panel was alive with light and color. Nelson went over, stared at it. There was a picture there, a painting perhaps, if you could imagine a painting made of light and pure color and incredible full-dimensional realism. It showed a scene on some strange fantasy world. Two suns glowed down from a purple sky and a figure in weird armor was battling with a dragonlike being. Nelson stared at it, awed by the scope. It might have been a true color, true depth photo—but it was fantasy.

Or was it fantasy? Perhaps—perhaps it was an actual photo of some place in the universe.

Nelson now perceived that another panel presumed to hide the original closet fixture of the Martian room was gently bright with color, though not picturing anything. He went over to it, touched it, and the panel drew silently aside.

There was a closet there, and in it hung clothing of strange designs and weaves, the clothing of the lost Martians.

Nelson opened the door of his room, went out. He heard nothing, saw nobody. Swiftly he went through the house. Everywhere it was the same. Where there had been mysterious and unresponsive panels, fixtures that wouldn't operate, now there were life and energy. The rooms glowed with a source of light plainly different from the crude string of Earth-made atomic bulbs. The kitchen apparatus, oddly designed, was responsive to the touch. The closets would open and there were all manner of Martian wonders in them.

In the main room, Nelson touched a panel that had been dark as long as he could remember and music came into the room. Music that followed no rules of symphonic construction, yet pleased and charmed. And with the music, lights and colors played over the room in harmony with it.

Nelson now did what so far he had not dared to do. He looked out of a window. It was apparently early morning, for the sun was rising low in the dark sky. Already the Iollipoplike plants that grew everywhere in the city were unfolding their cores, to reach out hungrily for the light that meant life to them. And Nelson realized that there were at least twice as many of these plants as there had been before.

There was a roadway passing the house and he saw something come along it. There was a flash and he got a glimpse of an oddly shaped vehicle bulleting past him ... a Martian “car,” one of those glimpsed on radar photos in the hidden vaults but never actually gotten at by Earth's explorers.

He left the window, suddenly hungry, returned to the kitchen. A panel revealed rows and rows of what were probably Martian canned edibles, but Nelson decided not to chance them. There was still his mothers portable storage space and there were still plenty of good old Earth foods left behind. So he made himself a breakfast and as he sat there, he tried to figure things out.

There wasn’t much he could work on. He had been caught by the Marauders, overcome. Obviously he had then been taken back to Mars by them, installed here, while they systematically plundered the old planet of its hidden treasures. Evidently they’d had no trouble cracking the secrets of its vaults. Probably to as accomplished a race of superscientific bandits, this would be simple.

Nelson was wondering how long it would take them to loot Mars before they set off to feast on Earth, and what they intended to do with him, when he heard footsteps come up to the door of the house. They were hard, firm steps, and Nelson gulped down the food in his mouth, stood up and went into the living room just as the door opened and two men came in.

They were short and chunkily built, both with the same kind of darkly tanned space-burned complexions, both with sharp pale blue eyes, both with short shocks of red hair, both smiling with reckless confidence. They were the faces of Marauders that Nelson had last seen through the eye slits of black space armor.

Now the two men, wearing brilliantly colored jackets, short leathery pants, and knee boots, stared at Nelson. One laughed, advanced toward the boy. “Ah,” he said in jovial-sounding though somewhat sharply clipped words, “here’s our bantam rooster now, up and doing!’

And before Nelson could get over his surprise, the Marauder grabbed him by an arm and slapped him comradely on the back. The young man jerked his arm away, turned angrily.

“Oh, now, Taktor,” called the other man, “watch out! He’s liable to give you a dose of his strong right arm too!’’

The first man hastily disengaged himself, backed away, holding up his hands, while laughing. “Take it easy,” he said quickly. “Whoa, boy, we don’t mean any harm!”