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Title: Doorway to Kal-Jmar
Author: Stuart Fleming
Release Date: October 6, 2020 [EBook #63392]
Language: English
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Doorway to Kal-Jmar
By Stuart Fleming
Two men had died before Syme Rector's guns
to give him the key to the ancient city of
Kal-Jmar--a city of untold wealth, and of
robots that made desires instant commands.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The tall man loitered a moment before a garish window display, his eyes
impassive in his space-burned face, as the Lillis patrolman passed.
Then he turned, burying his long chin in the folds of his sand cape,
and took up the pursuit of the dark figure ahead once more.
Above, the city's multicolored lights were reflected from the
translucent Dome--a distant, subtly distorted Lillis, through which the
stars shone dimly.
Getting through that dome had been his first urgent problem, but now he
had another, and a more pressing one. It had been simple enough to pass
himself off as an itinerant prospector and gain entrance to the city,
after his ship had crashed in the Mare Cimmerium. But the rest would
not be so simple. He had to acquire a spaceman's identity card, and he
had to do it fast. It was only a matter of time until the Triplanet
Patrol gave up the misleading trail he had made into the hill country,
and concluded that he must have reached Lillis. After that, his only
safety lay in shipping out on a freighter as soon as possible. He had
to get off Mars, because his trail was warm, and the Patrol thorough.
They knew, of course, that he was an outlaw--the very fact of the
crashed, illegally-armed ship would have told them that. But they
didn't know that he was Syme Rector, the most-wanted and most-feared
raider in the System. In that was his only advantage.
He walked a little faster, as his quarry turned up a side street and
then boarded a moving ramp to an upper level. He watched until the
short, wide-shouldered figure in spaceman's harness disappeared over
the top of the ramp, and then followed.
The man was waiting for him at the mouth of the ascending tunnel.
Syme looked at him casually, without a flicker of expression, and
started to walk on, but the other stepped into his path. He was quite
young, Syme saw, with a fighter's shoulders under the white leather,
and a hard, determined thrust to his firm jaw.
"All right," the boy said quietly. "What is it?"
"I don't understand," Syme said.
"The game, the angle. You've been following me. Do you want trouble?"
"Why, no," Syme told him bewilderedly. "I haven't been following you.
I--"
The boy knuckled his chin reflectively. "You could be lying," he said
finally. "But maybe I've made a mistake." Then--"Okay, citizen, you can
clear--but don't let me catch you on my tail again."
Syme murmured something and turned away, feeling the spaceman's eyes
on the small of his back until he turned the corner. At the next
street he took a ramp up, crossed over and came down on the other side
a block away. He waited until he saw the boy's broad figure pass the
intersection, and then followed again more cautiously.
It was risky, but there was no other way. The signatures, the data,
even the photograph on the card could be forged once Syme got his hands
on it, but the identity card itself--that oblong of dark diamondite,
glowing with the tiny fires of radioactivity--that could not be
imitated, and the only way to get it was to kill.
Up ahead was the Founders' Tower, the tallest building in Lillis. The
boy strode into the entrance lobby, bought a ticket for the observation
platform, and took the elevator. As soon as his car was out of sight in
the transparent tube, Syme followed. He put a half-credit slug into the
machine, took the punctured slip of plastic that came out. The ticket
went into a scanning slot in the wall of the car, and the elevator
whisked him up.
* * * * *
The tower was high, more than a hundred meters above the highest level
of the city, and the curved dome that kept air in Lillis was close
overhead. Syme looked up, after his first appraising glance about the
platform, and saw the bright-blue pinpoint of Earth. The sight stirred
a touch of nostalgia in him, as it always did, but he put it aside.
The boy was hunched over the circular balustrade a little distance
away. Except for him, the platform was empty. Syme loosened his slim,
deadly energy pistol in its holster and padded catlike toward the
silent figure.
It was over in a minute. The boy whirled as he came up, warned by
some slight sound, or by the breath of Syme's passage in the still
air. He opened his mouth to shout, and brought up his arm in a swift,
instinctive gesture. But the blow never landed. Syme's pistol spat its
silent white pencil of flame, and the boy crumpled to the floor with a
minute, charred hole in the white leather over his chest.
Syme stooped over him swiftly, found a thick wallet and thrust it into
his pocket without a second glance. Then he raised the body in his arms
and thrust it over the parapet.
It fell, and in the same instant Syme felt a violent tug at his wrist.
Before he could move to stop himself, he was over the edge. Too late,
he realized what had happened--one of the hooks on the dead spaceman's
harness had caught the heavy wristband of his chronometer. He was
falling, linked to the body of his victim!
Hardly knowing what he did, he lashed out wildly with his other arm,
felt his fingertips catch and bite into the edge of the balustrade. His
body hit the wall of the tower with a thump, and, a second later, the
corpse below him hit the wall. Then they both hung there, swaying a
little and Syme's fingers slipped a little with each motion.
Gritting his teeth, he brought the magnificent muscles of his arm into
play, raising the forearm against the dead weight of the dangling body.
Fraction by slow fraction of an inch, it came up. Syme could feel the
sweat pouring from his brow, running saltily into his eyes. His arms
felt as if they were being torn from their sockets. Then the hook
slipped free, and the tearing, unbearable weight vanished.
The reaction swung Syme against the building again, and he almost
lost his slippery hold on the balustrade. After a moment he heard the
spaceman's body strike with a squashy thud, somewhere below.
He swung up his other arm, got a better grip on the balustrade. He
tried cautiously to get a leg up, but the motion loosened his hold on
the smooth surface again. He relaxed, thinking furiously. He could hold
on for another minute at most; then it was the final blast-off.
He heard running footsteps, and then a pale face peered over the ledge
at him. He realized suddenly that the whole incident could have taken
only a few seconds. He croaked, "Get me up."
Wordlessly, the man clasped thin fingers around his wrist. The other
pulled, with much puffing and panting, and with his help Syme managed
to get a leg over the edge and hoist his trembling body to safety.
"Are you all right?"
* * * * *
Syme looked at the man, nursing the tortured muscles of his arms. His
rescuer was tall and thin, of indeterminate age. He had light, sandy
hair, a sharp nose, and--oddly conflicting--pale, serious eyes and a
humorous wide mouth. He was still panting.
"I'm not hurt," Syme said. He grinned, his white teeth flashing in his
dark, lean face. "Thanks for giving me a hand."
"You scared hell out of me," said the man. "I heard a thud. I
thought--you'd gone over." He looked at Syme questioningly.
"That was my bag," the outlaw said quickly. "It slipped out of my hand,
and I overbalanced myself when I grabbed for it."
The man sighed. "I need a drink. _You_ need a drink. Come on." He
picked up a small black suitcase from the floor and started for the
elevator, then stopped. "Oh--your bag. Shouldn't we do something about
that?"
"Never mind," said Syme, taking his arm. "The shock must have busted it
wide open. My laundry is probably all over Lillis by now."
They got off at the amusement level, three tiers down, and found a
cafe around the corner. Syme wasn't worried about the man he had just
killed. He had heard no second thud, so the body must have stayed on
the first outcropping of the tower it struck. It probably wouldn't be
found until morning.
And he had the wallet. When he paid for the first round of _culcha_, he
took it out and stole a glance at the identification card inside. There
it was--his ticket to freedom. He began feeling expansive, and even
friendly toward the slender, mouse-like man across the table. It was
the _culcha_, of course. He knew it, and didn't care. In the morning
he'd find a freighter berth--in as big a spaceport as Lillis, there
were always jobs open. Meanwhile, he might as well enjoy himself, and
it was safer to be seen with a companion than to be alone.
He listened lazily to what the other was saying, leaning his tall,
graceful body back into the softly-cushioned seat.
"Lissen," said Harold Tate. He leaned forward on one elbow, slipped,
caught himself, and looked at the elbow reproachfully. "Lissen," he
said again, "I trust you, Jones. You're obvi-obviously an adventurer,
but you have an honest face. I can't see it very well at the moment,
but I hic!--pardon--seem to recall it as an honest face. I'm going to
tell you something, because I need your help!--help." He paused. "I
need a guide. D'you know this part of Mars well?"
"Sure," said Syme absently. Out in the center of the floor, an AG
plate had been turned on. Five Venusian girls were diving and twisting
in its influence, propelling themselves by the motion of their
delicately-webbed feet and trailing long gauzy streamers of synthesilk
after them. Syme watched them through narrowed lids, feeling the glow
of _culcha_ inside him.
"I wanta go to Kal-Jmar," said Tate.
Syme snapped to attention, every nerve tingling. An indefinable sense,
a hunch that had served him well before, told him that something big
was coming--something that promised adventure and loot for Syme Rector.
"Why?" he asked softly. "Why to Kal-Jmar?"
Harold Tate told him, and later, when Syme had taken him to his rooms,
he showed him what was in his little black suitcase. Syme had been
right; it was big.
* * * * *
Kal-Jmar was the riddle of the Solar System. It was the only remaining
city of the ancient Martian race--the race that, legends said, had
risen to greater heights than any other Solar culture. The machines,
the artifacts, the records of the Martians were all there, perfectly
preserved inside the city's bubble-like dome, after God knew how many
thousands of years. But they couldn't be reached.
For Kal-Jmar's dome was not the thing of steelite that protected
Lillis: it was a tenuous, globular field of force that defied analysis
as it defied explosives and diamond drills. The field extended both
above and below the ground, and tunneling was of no avail. No one knew
what had happened to the Martians, whether they were the ancestors of
the present decadent Martian race, or a different species. No one knew
anything about them or about Kal-Jmar.
In the early days, when the conquest of Mars was just beginning, Earth
scientists had been wild to get into the city. They had observed it
from every angle, taken photographs of its architecture and the robots
that still patrolled its fantastically winding streets, and then they
had tried everything they knew to pierce the wall.
Later, however, when every unsuccessful attempt had precipitated a
bloody uprising of the present-day Martians--resulting in a rapid
dwindling of the number of Martians--the Mars Protectorate had stepped
in and forbidden any further experiments; forbidden, in fact, any
Earthman to go near the place.
Thus matter had stood for over a hundred years, until Harold Tate.
Tate, a physicist, had stumbled on a field that seemed to be identical
in properties to the Kal-Jmar dome; and what is more, he had found a
force that would break it down.
And so he had made his first trip to Mars, and within twenty-four
hours, by the blindest of chances, blurted out his secret to Syme
Rector, the scourge of the spaceways, the man with a thousand credits
on his sleek, tigerish head.
Syme's smile was not tigerish now; it was carefully, studiedly mild.
For Tate was no longer drunk, and it was important that it should not
occur to him that he had been indiscreet.
"This is native territory we're coming to, Harold," he said. "Better
strap on your gun."
"Why. Are they really dangerous?"
"They're unpredictable," Syme told him. "They're built differently, and
they think differently. They breathe like us, down in their caverns
where there's air, but they also eat sand, and get their oxygen that
way."
"Yes, I've heard about that," Tate said. "Iron oxide--very interesting
metabolism." He got his energy pistol out of the compartment and
strapped it on absently.
Syme turned the little sand car up a gentle rise towards the tortuous
hill country in the distance. "Not only that," he continued. "They
eat the damndest stuff. Lichens and fungi and tumble-grass off the
deserts--all full of deadly poisons, from arsenic up the line to
xopite. They seem intelligent enough--in their own way--but they never
come near our cities and they either can't or won't learn Terrestrial.
When the first colonists came here, they had to learn _their_ crazy
language. Every word of it can mean any one of a dozen different
things, depending on the inflection you give it. I can speak it some,
but not much. Nobody can. We don't think the same."
"So you think they might attack us?" Tate asked again, nervously.
"They _might_ do anything," Syme said curtly. "Don't worry about it."
The hills were much closer than they had seemed, because of Mars'
deceptively low horizon. In half an hour they were in the midst of a
wilderness of fantastically eroded dunes and channels, laboring on
sliding treads up the sides of steep hills only to slither down again
on the other side.
* * * * *
Syme stopped the car abruptly as a deep, winding channel appeared
across their path. "Gully," he announced. "Shall we cross it, or follow
it?"
Tate peered through the steelite nose of the car. "Follow, I guess,"
he offered. "It seems to go more or less where we're going, and if we
cross it we'll only come to a couple dozen more."
Syme nodded and moved the sand car up to the edge of the gully. Then he
pressed a stud on the control board; a metal arm extruded from the tail
of the car and a heavy spike slowly unscrewed from it, driving deep
into the sand. A light on the board flashed, indicating that the spike
was in and would bear the car's weight, and Syme started the car over
the edge.
As the little car nosed down into the gully, the metal arm left behind
revealed itself to be attached to a length of thick, very strong wire
cable, with a control cord inside. They inched down the almost vertical
incline, unreeling the cable behind them, and starting minor landslides
as they descended.
Finally they touched bottom. Syme pressed another stud, and above, the
metal spike that had supported them screwed itself out of the ground
again and the cable reeled in.
Tate had been watching with interest. "Very ingenious," he said. "But
how do we get up again?"
"Most of these gullies peter out gradually," said Syme, "but if we want
or have to climb out where it's deep, we have a little harpoon gun that
shoots the anchor up on top."
"Good. I shouldn't like to stay down here for the rest of my
natural life. Depressing view." He looked up at the narrow strip of
almost-black sky visible from the floor of the gully, and shook his
head.
Neither Syme nor Tate ever had a chance to test the efficiency of their
harpoon gun. They had traveled no more than five hundred meters, and
the gully was as deep as ever, when Tate, looking up, saw a deeper
blackness blot out part of the black sky directly overhead. He shouted,
"Look out!" and grabbed for the nearest steering lever.
The car wheeled around in a half circle and ran into the wall of the
gully. Syme was saying, "What--?" when there was a thunderous crash
that shook the sturdy walls of the car, as a huge boulder smashed into
the ground immediately to their left.
When the smoky red dust had cleared away, they saw that the left tread
of the sand car was crushed beyond all recognition.
Syme was cursing slowly and steadily with a deep, seething anger. Tate
said, "I guess we walk from here on." Then he looked up again and
caught a glimpse of the horde of beasts that were rushing up the gully
toward them.
"My God!" he said. "What are those?"
Syme looked. "Those," he said bitterly, "are Martians."
The natives, like all Martian fauna, were multi-legged. Also like all
Martian fauna, they moved so fast that you couldn't see how many legs
they did have. Actually, however, the natives had six legs apiece--or,
more properly, four legs and two arms. Their lungs were not as large
as they appeared, being collapsed at the moment. What caused the bulge
that made their torsos look like sausages was a huge air bladder, with
a valve arrangement from the stomach and feeding directly into the
bloodstream.
Their faces were vaguely canine, but the foreheads were high, and the
lips were not split. They did resemble dogs, in that their thick black
fur was splotched with irregulate patches of white. These patches of
white were subject to muscular control and could be spread out fanwise;
or, conversely, the black could be expanded to cover the white, which
helped to take care of the extremes of Martian temperature. Right now
they were mostly black.
The natives slowed down and spread out to surround the wrecked sand
car, and it could be seen that most of them were armed with spears,
although some had the slim Benson energy guns--strictly forbidden to
Martians.
Syme stopped cursing and watched tensely. Tate said nothing, but he
swallowed audibly.
One Martian, who looked exactly like all the rest, stepped forward and
motioned unmistakably for the two to come out. He waited a moment and
then gestured with his energy gun. That gun, Syme knew from experience,
could burn through a small thickness of steelite if held on the same
spot long enough.
* * * * *
"Come on," Syme said grimly. He rose and reached for a pressure suit,
and Tate followed him.
"What do you think they'll--" he began, and then stopped himself. "I
know. They're unpredictable."
"Yeah," said Syme, and opened the door. The air in the car _whooshed_
into the near-vacuum outside, and he and Tate stepped out.
The Martian leader looked at them enigmatically, then turned and
started off. The other natives closed in on them, and they all bounded
along under the weak gravity.
They bounded along for what Syme figured as a good kilometer and a
half, and they then reached a branch in the gully and turned down
it, going lower all the time. Under the light of their helmet lamps,
they could see the walls of the gully--a tunnel, now--getting darker
and more solid. Finally, when Syme estimated they were about nine
kilometers down, there was even a suggestion of moisture.
The tunnel debouched at last into a large cavern. There was a
phosphorescent gleam from fungus along the walls, but Syme couldn't
decide how far away the far wall was. He noticed something else, though.
"There's air here," he said to Tate. "I can see dust motes in it." He
switched his helmet microphone from radio over to the audio membrane
on the outside of the helmet. "_Kalis methra_," he began haltingly,
"_seltin guna getal._"
"Yes, there is air here," said the Martian leader, startlingly. "Not
enough for your use, however, so do not open your helmets."
Syme swore amazedly.
"I thought you said they didn't speak Terrestrial," Tate said. Syme
ignored him.
"We had our reasons for not doing so," the Martian said.
"But how--?"
"We are telepaths, of course. On a planet which is nearly airless on
its surface, we have to be. A tendency of the Terrestrial mind is to
ignore the obvious. We have not had a spoken language of our own for
several thousand years."
He darted a glance at Syme's darkly scowling face. His own hairy face
was expressionless, but Syme sensed that he was amused. "Yes, you're
right," he said. "The language you and your fellows struggled to learn
is a fraud, a hodge-podge concocted to deceive you."
Tate looked interested. "But why this--this gigantic masquerade?"
"You had nothing to give us," the Martian said simply.
Tate frowned, then flushed. "You mean you avoided revealing yourselves
because you--had nothing to gain from mental intercourse with us?"
"Yes."
Tate thought again. "But--"
"No," the Martian interrupted him, "revealing the extent of our
civilization would have spared us nothing at your people's hands. Yours
is an imperialist culture, and you would have had Mars, whether you
thought you were taking it from equals or not."
"Never mind that," Syme broke in impatiently. "What do you want with
us?"
The Martian looked at him appraisingly. "You already suspect.
Unfortunately, you must die."
* * * * *
It was a weird situation, Syme thought. His mind was racing, but as yet
he could see no way out. He began to wonder, if he did, could he keep
the Martians from knowing about it? Then he realized that the Martian
must have received that thought, too, and he was enraged. He stood,
holding himself in check with an effort.
"Will you tell us why?" Tate asked.
"You were brought here for that purpose. It is part of our conception
of justice. I will tell you and your--friend--anything you wish to
know."
Syme noticed that the other Martians had retired to the farther side of
the cavern. Some were munching the glowing fungus. That left only the
leader, who was standing alertly on all fours a short distance away
from them, holding the Benson gun trained on them. Syme tried not to
think about the gun, especially about making a grab for it. It was like
trying not to think of the word "hippopotamus."
Tate squatted down comfortably on the floor of the cavern, apparently
unconcerned, but his hands were trembling slightly. "First why--" he
began.
"There are many secrets in Kal-Jmar," the Martian said, "among them a
very simple catalyzing agent which could within fifty years transform
Mars to a planet with Terrestrially-thick atmosphere."
"I think I see," Tate said thoughtfully. "That's been the ultimate aim
all along, but so far the problem has us licked. If we solved it, then
we'd have all of Mars, not just the cities. Your people would die out.
You couldn't have that, of course."
He sighed deeply. He spread his gloved hands before him and looked
at them with a queer intentness. "Well--how about the Martians--the
Kal-Jmar Martians, I mean? I'd dearly love to know the answer to that
one."
"Neither of the alternatives in your mind is correct. They were not a
separate species, although they were unlike us. But they were not our
ancestors, either. They were the contemporaries of our ancestors."
"Several thousand years ago Mars' loss of atmosphere began to make
itself felt. There were two ways out. Some chose to seal themselves
into cities like Kal-Jmar; our ancestors chose to adapt their bodies to
the new conditions. Thus the race split. Their answer to the problem
was an evasion; they remained static. Our answer was the true one, for
we progressed. We progressed beyond the need of science; they remained
its slaves. They died of a plague--and other causes.
"You see," he finished gently, "our deception has caused a natural
confusion in your minds. They were the degenerates, not we."
"And yet," Tate mused, "you are being destroyed by contact with
an--inferior--culture."
"We hope to win yet," the Martian said.
Tate stood up, his face very white. "Tell me one thing," he begged.
"Will our two races ever live together in amity?"
The Martian lowered his head. "That is for unborn generations." He
looked at Tate again and aimed the energy gun. "You are a brave man,"
he said. "I am sorry."
Syme saw all his hopes of treasure and glory go glimmering down the
sights of the Martian's Benson gun, and suddenly the pent-up rage in
him exploded. Too swiftly for his intention to be telegraphed, before
he knew himself what he meant to do, he hurled himself bodily into the
Martian.
* * * * *
It was like tangling with a draft horse. The Martian was astonishingly
strong. Syme scrambled desperately for the gun, got it, but couldn't
tear it out of the Martian's fingers. And all the time he could almost
feel the Martian's telepathic call for help surging out. He heard the
swift pad of his followers coming across the cavern.
He put everything he had into one mighty, murderous effort. Every
muscle fiber in his superbly trained body crackled and surged with
power. He roared his fury. And the gun twisted out of the Martian's
iron grip!
He clubbed the prostrate leader with it instantly, then reversed the
weapon and snapped a shot at the nearest Martian. The creature dropped
his lance and fell without a sound.
The next instant a ray blinked at him, and he rolled out of the way
barely in time. The searing ray cut a swath over the leader's body and
swerved to cut down on him. Still rolling, he fired at the holder of
the weapon. The gun dropped and winked out on the floor.
Syme jumped to his feet and faced his enemies, snarling like the
trapped tiger he was. Another ray slashed at him, and he bent lithely
to let it whistle over his head. Another, lower this time. He flipped
his body into the air and landed upright, his gun still blazing. His
right leg burned fiercely from a ray-graze, but he ignored it. And
all the while he was mowing down the massed natives in great swaths,
seeking out the ones armed with Bensons in swift, terrible slashes,
dodging spears and other missiles in midair, and roaring at the top of
his powerful lungs.
At last there were none with guns left to oppose him. He scythed down
the rest in two terrible, lightning sweeps of his ray, then dropped
the weapon from blistered fingers.
He was gasping for breath, and realized that he was losing air from
the seared-open right leg of his suit. He reached for the emergency
kit at his side, drawing in great, gasping breaths, and fumbled out
a tube of sealing liquid. He spread the stuff on liberally, smearing
it impartially over flesh and fabric. It felt like liquid hell on the
burned, bleeding leg, but he kept on until the quick-drying fluid
formed an airtight patch.
Only then did he turn, to see Tate flattened against the wall behind
him, his hands empty at his sides. "I'm sorry," Tate said miserably. "I
could have grabbed a spear or something, but--I just couldn't, not even
to save my own life. I--I halfway hoped they'd kill both of us."
Syme glared at him and spat, too enraged to think of diplomacy. He
turned and strode out of the cavern, carrying his right leg stiffly,
but with his feral, tigerish head held high.
He led the way, wordlessly, back to the wrecked sand car. Tate followed
him with a hangdog, beaten air, as though he had just found something
that shattered all his previous concepts of the verities in life, and
didn't know what to do about it.
Still silently, Syme refilled his oxygen tank, watched Tate do the
same, and then picked up two spare tanks and the precious black
suitcase and handed one of the tanks to Tate. Then he stumped around
to the back of the car and inspected the damage. The cable reel, which
might have drawn them out of the gully, was hopelessly smashed. That
was that.
* * * * *
They started off down the canyon, Syme urging the slighter man to
a fast clip, even though his leg was already stiffening. When they
finally reached a climbable spot, Syme was limping badly and Tate was
obviously exhausted.
They clambered wearily out onto the level sands again just as the
small, blazing sun was setting. "Luck," grunted Syme. "Our only chance
of getting near the city is at night." He peered around, shading his
eyes from the sun's glare with a gauntleted hand. "See that?"
Following his pointing finger, Tate saw a faint, ephemeral arc showing
above a line of low hills in the distance. "Kal-Jmar," said Syme.
Tate brightened a little. His body was too filled with fatigue for his
mind to do any work on the problem that was baffling him, and so it
receded into the back of his mind.
"Kal-Jmar," whispered Syme again.
There was no twilight. The sun dropped abruptly behind the low horizon,
and darkness fell, sudden and absolute. Syme picked up the extra oxygen
tank and the suitcase, checked his direction by a wrist compass, and
started toward the hills. Tate rose wearily to his feet and followed
again.
Two hours later, Kal-Jmar stood before them. They had wormed their
way past the sentry posts, doing most of the last two hundred meters
on all fours. With skill and luck, and with Syme's fierce, burning
determination, they had managed to escape detection--and there they
were. Journey's end.
Tate stared up at the shining, starlight towers in speechless
admiration. If the people who had built this city had been decadent,
still their architecture was magnificent. The city was a rhapsody made
solid. There was a sense of decay about it, he thought, but it was the
decay of supreme beauty, caught at the very verge of dissolution and
preserved for all eternity.
"Well?" demanded Syme.
Tate started, shaken out of his dream. He looked down at the black
suitcase, a little wonderingly, and then pulled it to him and opened it.
Inside, carefully wrapped in shock-absorbing tissue, was a fragile
contrivance of many tubes and wires, and a tiny parabolic mirror. It
had a brand new Elecorp 210 volt battery, and it needed every volt of
that tremendous power. Tate made the connections, his hands trembling
slightly, and set it up on a telescoping tripod. Syme watched him
closely, his big body tensed with expectation.
The field was before them, shimmering faintly in the starlight. It
looked unsubstantial as the stuff of dreams, but both men knew that no
power man possessed, unless it was the thing Tate held, could penetrate
that screen.
Tate set the mechanism up close to the field, aimed it very delicately,
and closed a minute switch. After a long second, he opened it again.
Nothing happened.
The screen was still there, as unsubstantial and as solid as ever.
There was no change.
* * * * *
Tate looked worriedly at his wiring, a deep wrinkle appearing between
his pale, serious eyes. Syme stood stock-still but quivering with
repressed energy, scowling like a thundercloud.
"It must be capable of working," Tate told himself querulously. "The
Martians knew--they wouldn't have tried to stop us if--Wait a minute."
He paced back and forth, biting his lip. Syme watched him with catlike
eyes, clenching and unclenching his great fists.
Tate paused. "I think I have it," he said slowly. "I haven't enough
power to hetrodyne the whole screen, although that's theoretically
possible. But there must be weaker portions of the field--doors--set
to open on the impact of a beam like this one. But I've only got power
enough for two more tries. Jones, where would you put an entrance, if
you'd built Kal-Jmar?"
Syme's eyes widened, and he stared around slowly. "A thousand years
ago?" he muttered. "Two thousand? These hills were raised in five
hundred. We can't go by topography.
"In front of one of the main arteries, then. But there are dozens, no
one larger than the other. Did they have dozens of doors?"
"Maybe," said Tate. He pointed to the right, where the fairy towers of
Kal-Jmar swept aside to leave a broad avenue. "It's the nearest--as
good as any other."
They walked over to it in silence, and in silence Tate set up his
equipment once more. He shifted it from side to side, squinting, until
he had it lined up exactly on the center of the avenue. Then he took a
long breath, and closed the switch again.
The switch came up. Syme stared with fierce eagerness, eyes ablaze. For
a moment there was nothing, and then--
Tate clutched the big man's arm. "Look!" he breathed.
Where the ray from Tate's machine had impinged, a faintly-glowing
spot of violet radiance! As they watched it widened, dilating into a
perfect circle of violet, enclosing nothingness. The door was opening.
"It worked," Tate said softly. "It worked!"
Syme shook off his grip impatiently, put his hand to the gun in the
holster of his suit. Tate was still watching, fascinated. "Look," he
said again. "The color is changing slightly, falling down the spectrum.
I think that's a warning signal. When it reaches red, the door will
close." He moved toward the widening door, like a sleepwalker.
"Wait," Syme said hoarsely. "You forgot the machine."
Tate turned, said, "Oh yes," and walked back. Then he saw the gun in
Syme's hand. His jaw dropped slightly, but he didn't say anything. He
just stood there, looking dumbly from the gun to Syme's dark face.
Syme shot him carefully in the chest.
He dropped like a rag doll, but Syme's aim had been bad. He wasn't dead
yet. He rolled his eyes up, like a child. His lips moved. In spite of
himself, Syme bent forward to listen.
"_You'll be_--_sorry_," Tate said, and died.
Air was sighing out through the widening hole in the screen. Syme
straightened and smiled tolerantly. For a moment, he had been
unreasonably afraid of what Tate was about to say. Some detail he had
forgotten, perhaps, something that would trap him now that Tate, the
man who knew the answers, was dead. But--he'd be sorry!
For what? Another dead fool?
He gathered up the delicate mechanism in one arm, and, filling his deep
lungs, stepped forward through the opening.
* * * * *
The towers of dead Kal-Jmar loomed over him in the dusk as he strode
like a conqueror down the long-deserted avenue. The city was full of
the whisperings of Kal-Jmar's ancient wraiths, but they touched only
a corner of his mind. He was filled to overflowing with the bright,
glowing joy of conquest. The city was his!
His boots trod an avenue where no foot had fallen these untold eons,
yet there was no dust. The city was bright and furbished waiting for
him. He was intoxicated. _The city was his!_
There was a gentle ramp leading upward, and Syme followed it, breathing
in the manufactured air of his pressure suit like wine. All around him,
the city blazed with treasures beyond price.
_It was his!_
The ramp led to a portal set in the side of a shining needle of a
building. Syme strode up to the threshold, and the door dilated for
him. He stepped inside; the door closed and a soft light glowed on.
There was air here: good, breathable air. A tiny zephyr of it was
blowing from some hidden source against his body. Greatly daring, he
unfastened the helmet of his suit and flung it back. He breathed in a
lungful of it. God, but it was good after that canned stuff! It was a
little heady; it made his head swim--but it was good air, excellent air!
He looked around him, measuring, assessing for the first time. This
room alone was worth a fortune. There was platinum; in ornaments, set
into the walls, in furniture. That would be enough to buy the little
things--a new ship, or perhaps even immunity back on Earth. But that
was as nothing to the rest of it, the things three worlds would clamor
for--the artifacts, the record books, the machines!
He strode about the room, building plan on grandiose plan. He could
take back only a little with him at first; but he could return again
and again, with Tate's mechanism and new batteries. But he'd explore
the city thoroughly before he left. Somewhere there must be weapons. An
invincible weapon, perhaps, that a man could carry in his hand. Perhaps
even a perfect body screen. With that he wouldn't have to steal away
from Mars on a freighter, hiding his loot and his greatness in a dingy
engine room. He could walk into a Triplanet ship and order its captain
to take him wherever he chose to go!
* * * * *
He stood then in the middle of the room, arms akimbo, his head swimming
with glory--and remembered suddenly that he was hungry. He felt in the
container of his helmet, extracted a couple of food tablets, and popped
them into his mouth.
They would take care of his needs, but they didn't satisfy his hunger.
No food tablets for him after this! Steaks, wines, souffles.... His
mouth began to water at the very thought.
And then the robot rolled on soundless wheels into the room. Syme
whirled and saw it only when it was almost upon him. The thing was
remarkably lifelike, and for a moment he was startled.
But it was not alive. It was only a Martian feeding-machine, kept in
repair all these millennia by other robots. It was not intelligent,
and so it did not know that its masters would never return. It did not
know, either, that Syme was not a Martian, or that he wanted a steak,
and not the distilled liquor of the _xopa_ fungus, which still grew in
the subterranean gardens of Kal-Jmar. It was capable only of receiving
the mental impulse of hunger, and of responding to that impulse.
And so when Syme saw it and opened his mouth in startlement, the
robot acted as it had done with its degenerate, slothful masters. Its
flexible feeding tube darted out and half down the man's gullet before
he could move to avoid it. And down Syme Rector's throat poured a flood
of _xopa_-juice, nectar to Martians, but swift, terrible death to human
beings....
Outside, the last doorway to Kal-Jmar closed forever, across from the
cold body of Tate.
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