Chapter III

It was warm in the round Mars ship and cage. In a few minutes, they were sailing into rapidly falling darkness. John lost all sense of direction. At last, blue lights flashed in the cold night above a dim floor of thick plant life, and their little ship slid sidewise to a stop inside a massive hillside door. They could not understand why Jake was rayed into unconsciousness and taken away, before they were sent sliding and unattended down the long corridor to their former room. There were now four of the low beds and a fresh tray of food had been prepared. They ate, and fell into drugged sleep.

Life went on quietly, back in this observation cage, nearly a week. Every morning they were questioned for an hour or more by the council of scientists through the wall screen. Hilda persuaded John to be as co-operative as possible, hoping that the old men's intentions were still kind. The questions were especially centered about details of health on earth, medicine, eugenic control, the number of sick people, and about the possibility of future colonies.

Mary and Dr. Smithson proved fascinating companions in the long idle hours, with a dramatic story to tell of their recent trip to Venus. Earth's first expedition to that world in 1978 had not yet been reported in the public press.

It was on the sixth day that they saw Jake Adams again. He came sliding in on a rolling stretcher, propelled by unseen forces, and his eyes were closed.

Mary gasped, "Look at his legs!"

John stepped quickly to the stretcher and ran his hands over Jake's body, then stood and cried. "They're warm--and alive!"

During their brief wait in the cave they had seen the old soldier stumping around on two wooden legs, supplemented by crutches. He was spry and cheerful for a man nearly seventy years old, and his hands and arms were abnormally strong. Hilda had been indignant that the army should neglect this old hero and fail to provide him with suitable artificial limbs. Her own handicap made her feel a special sympathy, and she had stopped to talk with the old fellow briefly. He told her that he had been wounded in the battle against the Japs in the Marshall Islands during 1944.

Now the old soldier lay, with a slightly flushed face, breathing quietly, and in place of the wooden pegs were _two perfectly formed legs wrapped in silvery transparent leggings_!

As they watched, the old man slowly awakened, but lay still as if dazed. Then an expression of alarm or amazement began to open his eyes. He moved his toes, and then lay back muttering, "No, it's just another of them nerve tricks--the way I used to feel about the weather!" But he slowly raised his head, as if fascinated. When his eyes focused on the new feet, he snapped suddenly to a sitting position and reached for his ankles.

"I can feel! I can feel--They're alive!" he screamed.

Then he saw John bending over him, and the others in the background. "How did you do it--What's happened--Am I dreaming?"

"No, old chap, it's real enough, but the old ones must have done it for you."

A high, thin voice interrupted--"We're glad you are pleased."

They whirled toward the wall screen. Old Senegar faced them from his purple couch, leaning wearily on an elbow--"It was quite a bit of trouble, but interesting."

John fumbled through his lexicon and found the word for "how?" and scribbled it on the white wall plate.

"We thought you would want to know--Sit down, it will take a few minutes. I will try to be elementary in my discussion."

They squatted in a half circle on the floor, all except Jake--who refused to sit, and teetered around feeling the muscles of his new legs, jumping, stretching, rocking on his toes, but listening all the while.

"To us, it is relatively simple," went on the old man. "First we stimulate the bone cells to grow down a plastic hollow tube. This is done by depositing a calcium compound in the tube and focusing a ray of complex force upon it. Of course, the tube is made to order in relationship to measurements of the patient's other bones. Artificial veins and arteries are introduced. We do not bother with all the tiny capillaries. They will grow in later. Synthetic cell tissue is moulded into the shape of muscles and stimulated with pinealin, which we have at last isolated. Strangely, one of the most difficult techniques is that of skin grafting. We grow skin on a hairless type of laboratory animal and patch it on with grafting glue. The healing is hastened by a special ultra violet and electrodynamic apparatus. Of course, the artificial arteries are connected when installed. Their wall composition allows blood to flow out into the cell tissue in about two days. With the arteries is laid down a series of main nerve sheaths. We do not try to restore all the original sensitivity, because the procedure is too complex. We find that a clumsy subsidiary nervous tentacle is developed, under high pressure electric nerve currents introduced briefly through the central nervous system before the lower frequency body current is allowed its own way. His legs will never be quite as effective as the original pair but do well enough, and only a doctor could detect the difference."

* * * * *

Hilda stepped forward and wrote on the white square the words she had been finding in her lexicon. "Your kindness is almost beyond our understanding. I knew you were good people. We wish we could do something in return."

Senegar rolled his spare body off the couch and his high voice was almost senile in his excitement--"You can, my dear--you can!"

"Anything--we will do anything," she answered.

"It will be rather unpleasant for you at first."

"What do you want?" added John standing at Hilda's side.

"Sit down, sit down! I will tell you."

The group of Earth people relaxed but with upturned faces, held fascinated by the old one's earnestness. John's hands were clasped tightly around his knees. Doctor Smithson kept hitching his lean frame forward. The old man's voice was low as he went on.

"This is the trouble, my children, your people are a menace to us. All this ugliness would be bad enough, but the danger of infection is terrible. Our wise ones are fragile beings. We restore the flesh when there is injury or sickness, but we always lose a little of the original vitality. We cannot be killed, but we slowly wear out and must be protected. Our young ones are too few to risk contact with you. Thus we are forced to the logical conclusion that the Earth colony of sick ones must be destroyed and the next ship discouraged from returning."

"No!--No, that's inhuman!" gasped Mary.

"Nothing will happen to you five--We wish to retain you for medical and breeding purposes. But the others must go. Come, now, why should you care about them? You admitted they are all strangers to you. Think of the joy of living several hundred years."

"But those sick ones--they are human!" cried Hilda to John, weeping. "They must find some other way--How could they do such a thing, when they have just shown us such kindness?"

"Self protection, my dear," murmured the old man, reading her face and catching some of the words. "Self preservation and security for the qualitatively higher civilization of Mars. Let men from the Blue Planet continue to settle here, and in a hundred years we will be extinct. The Universe needs our wisdom. Those primitives must die, as you would kill your pet animals in a famine, or send sons to fight in one of your mad wars."

"You can have your--I mean my legs back," growled Jake, "gimme my pegs again." His pantomime may have been understood. Senegar smiled, faintly.

"Think it over carefully. Do not let your simple emotions confuse you. I will see you again tomorrow. We need your help."

The screen faded slowly into a blur, and in a moment they were alone in the plain, blue lighted room--five human beings, terror stricken in a place of comfort.

"My head aches," grunted Jake, "that machine they used on me first left a sore spot."

"What kind of a machine was it?"

"I dunno--some kind of a thing. They kept asking me questions and wrote down the answers even before I spoke--That was funny! And sometimes when I lied to them--about some of the things I did, on shore leave and so on, they laughed. It was almost like they partly read my mind."

"Perhaps they did," remarked Doctor Smithson, who had been very quiet during all the excitement. His eyes gleamed with an almost impersonal interest. "Our psychoanalysis is very clumsy. I have always wished there were some kind of mechanical means of intuitively reaching to the under experiences of the subconscious." Suddenly he got to his feet from the low mattress bed where he had been sitting alone since the stunning proposal. He began to pace the floor, clasping and unclasping his thin arms. "I wonder--" He seemed to have forgotten their presence, "I wonder if they can stimulate brain tissue with pinealin. I'll wager half of those mental cases back underground could be cured by these men in a week! If I could only persuade them to talk to me."

"Look who's here," remarked Jake quietly, as if nothing in this strange room could surprise him.

A slight young man, with brown hair and keen blue eyes, stood in a flowing white robe marked by silver trimmings and a red diagonal stripe running from his shoulder to the floor. There was no sign of a door where he had entered.

"I heard what you said, Doctor Smithson, or at least part of it," he remarked quietly in a soft musical voice. "I am Zingar. Some of us younger ones think the old men are too fearful--I wish I could go back to Earth with you and assist your struggling medical men."

John paged through the book hurriedly, hunting for words.

"Just a moment," interrupted the young stranger. He stepped to the wall and tapped a code sign. At his feet a slit opened and a dark gray, complicated machine slid into the room.

"That's one of them things they hitched to my head," said Jake excitedly.

* * * * *

Zingar drew out a cord from the gray machine, with a small black disk at the end, and laid it against the side of John's head, where it remained as if glued.

"Now think what you wish to say, and I will know the essence of your meaning," remarked Zingar. "It will not convey words or technical matter but blurred pictures of experience. I will ask questions to guide your memory. And if you will think aloud it may help as I already have memorized much of your spoken language."

John tried to think coherently, but, under his conscious sentences when he spoke aloud was a flickering jumble of excitement, ideas for escape, thoughts of Hilda as he looked at her, memories of their recent conversations with Senegar.

"Relax, young man," ordered the Martian youth, "I find it difficult to receive. This device only registers your subvocal thoughts. Your mind is like a kaleidoscope at present. Try not to think of the young lady."

Hilda drew in her breath quickly and blushed.

John's face was red from his neck to his hair. "Young man, yourself," he blurted, "how old do you think I am?"

"Young in comparison to me. I am seventy five. Now think of what your hospital was like back on earth."

John steadied his mind and visualized the events of their last day on Earth.

"There--that's better," said Zingar quietly. "If this could have registered technical matter the old ones wouldn't have to bother to learn your language." He shifted the black disk to Doctor Smithson's bony forehead.

"If you believe we should be helped, why not let us escape--even go with us," urged John.

"I have thought of it," he replied calmly.

Mary came up to him quickly--"Oh, please do. I know you are good--I _love_ those sick people back there underground. There are a few who think only of their sickness but most of them are really much finer than selfish normal people. Their handicaps have made them strong and kind. They can even laugh at pain."

Zingar abruptly removed the disk from Doctor Smithson, to the latter's disgust, and placed it gently on Mary's golden waves. "Please repeat--remember we cannot understand your words very clearly, but we can receive your picture thoughts. I heard part of what you said."

Mary repeated her plea, but she also blushed, as if the sudden nakedness of her secret mind before him was embarrassing. He smiled appreciatively and they withdrew to one of the low mattresses and sat together for an hour or more, apart from the others. They seemed to forget the present world entirely, but Zingar's questions were too low for John to hear, and he was still curious at the story back of Mary's quiet sadness. Hilda thought, why they can get as much acquainted in an hour as we do ordinarily in years. I never have really known what John thought about my hand.... Both of them glanced at Mary occasionally and it seemed, after a long time, that some of the strain passed from her face and a strange quiet happiness flowed over it. Finally they arose and came to the center of the room, where their companions were still talking excitedly.

"I will do it--tonight," said Zingar with dignity. "I will go with you, and be one of you--even back to the Earth. But first I must prepare and I want to bring my twin sister with me. We are inseparable."

He walked to the blank wall of the room and again tapped rhythmically on it until a low doorway opened. He stooped and disappeared. John immediately tried to repeat the tapping combination, but the wall remained as solid as if it were stone.

In the quiet room there was little sense of time. Food came in to them automatically after an hour or so. They were too excited to think of sleep.

At last the wall opening appeared again and Zingar returned, leading a beautiful, brown-haired girl by the hand. She was tall and dressed in pale blue transparencies, with a tight purple girdle, and a gleaming silver star surmounted her soft hair like a coronet.

John stared. In all his many and easy adventures with women he had never seen anyone like her. There was a fragility to her body yet the glow of health. Her eyes were luminous, of a warm green shade, and they seemed to hold strange secrets. Her body was identical with an Earth woman's except that the fingers were smoothly longer and the high forehead was slightly more prominent. He felt some hypnotic influence flow from her into his mind, and involuntarily stepped forward, then stopped, suddenly remembering his companion. He had not thrilled like this since he was seventeen.

Across the room, Hilda clasped the wrinkled glove on her artificial hand, until the fingers of her right hand were white, but she smiled and talked to Doctor Smithson as if she had not noticed.

"We will go now," said Zingar, taking command of the little party. "In the hallway are insulated suits for protection against our midnight cold. The ship will be warm, but we must step from the desert to your underground entrance. I do not think we will be hindered. The Old Ones sleep soundly." It was almost miraculous that his accent and hesitation disappeared so rapidly, perhaps because he was still relatively young and adaptable.

* * * * *

Their small round ship flared over the blackened planet; its rays, that had been invisible in the daylight, were now gleaming silent jets on the dimly starlit desert. Dr. Smithson, Jake, and Hilda sat together at the rear of their cabin compartment. John and Zingar's lovely sister stared into the night ahead. He had not touched her yet, but he felt drawn to her with a strange compulsion, partly spiritual. Her name was Molaee.

Mary and Zingar were now frankly in love, and sat with arms around each other, quietly content, as if they had never been strangers. The Mind Sounder was attached to her gleaming hair by its smooth round disk and she seemed to be pouring her whole life into Zingar's eager mind. All maidenly reserve had vanished. None of his questions embarrassed her.

That's a good thing, thought John, noticing them. Mary will keep him with us, and he will make her come to life.

They had flashed on through the night for about half an hour when Jake yelled, "They're after us!"

Like tiny streaming rockets a fleet of the little ships danced over the horizon in pursuit, still so distant as to seem but fireflies.

"Don't be alarmed," said Zingar, leaving Mary and staring behind them, somberly, "they will slowly overtake us but we will make the underground city in time. They have no weapons, for our civilization had no need for them. It will take time to invent and manufacture the means of destruction."

In half an hour, their ship slid slowly to the ground as Zingar deftly manipulated the controls. They donned the opaque and clumsy insulation garments, fastened helmets above them, and ran across the frozen sand toward the great copper door, dull in the starlight. John fumbled at the hand lock, but finally got it open, just as the first of the pursuing ships began its perpendicular descent from the higher air. The second metal door slid noisily into place before the lifting rays could touch them, and Hilda snapped on her radilight flash to guide the party down the sandy tunnel toward the colony.

In another half hour they were sitting in council, with Major Mattson, Hemingway, the old chemist, Dr. Henderson and other officials.

Dr. Henderson paid little attention to his recovered companions but questioned Zingar rapidly. The Mind Sounder and an occasional written question, or reference to a lexicon, kept the interview going smoothly. Finally Zingar stood and addressed the entire group.

"My people are ruthless and unemotional, but they are not equipped for war. I think this will be their plan of attack. They will set their machinery to work, producing the war weapons of several of the primitive planets, but that will take time, perhaps six months. Meanwhile they will try strategy, and perhaps drive the Mars beasts at us with their ship flares at night."

"What's them Martian beasts like?" grunted Jake. "That's maybe something I could fight."

"Oh, they're horrible!" murmured Mary. "Here, look at the pictures in this manual."

The old marine's weatherbeaten face paled a bit, but his voice was steady, as he said, "Well, anyway, they can't get through them copper doors."

"No, but my people will batter those down," said Zingar in a low tone.

"Then we must prepare for defense," cried Dr. Henderson, "if they can break down the front door we must barricade every passageway and fight them back foot by foot. What is the substance of your ship's hull?"

"It is a very dense metal, unknown to you. None of your rays will penetrate it except the atom cannon."

"And we only have one old cannon, with hardly any of the power jackets--" groaned Dr. Henderson, desperately.

"We will save that for the last attack," said Zingar, calmly. "The disintegrators will hold the beasts back for a long time, but there are thousands of them. How many of the half-hour disintegrator charges do you have?"

"Not very many--The Earth Council was limited in its budget. Perhaps they would last one day of continuous firing."