At the first opportunity he jostled one of the soldiers, knocking his neuro-pistol to the floor--his own, too. And when he apologetically stooped and retrieved them the mollified soldier had the one with the empty magazine.
So far, so good. Murray noted that the wall receptacles were all provided with parachutes. It would be simple to take one of these, make a long count, and be on the ground before he was missed. Provided that he could leave un.o.bserved.
The ship was now well in the air, and beginning to move away from the fort. But they were only ten miles away, and Murray had hardly expected that Balta would be in such a hurry.
"You get off here!" Balta said, and Murray felt the muzzle of the neuro-pistol on his spinal column.
A grinning soldier seized a countersunk ring and raised the trap-door.
"So you"re going to murder me," Murray said, speaking calmly.
"I take no chances," was Balta"s short answer. "Step!"
Murray stepped, swaying like a man in deadly fear. He lowered his feet through the hole. Looking down, he saw that they were about to pa.s.s over a bitter salt lake, occasionally found in the Martian desert. He looked up into the muzzle of the menacing neuro-pistol.
"Balta, you"re a dog!" he stated coldly.
"A live dog, anyway," the other remarked with a twisted grin. "You know the saying about dead lions."
Murray"s fingers clenched on the edge of the rug. It was thin and strong, woven of fine metal threads. They were just over the edge of the salt lake.
Murray dropped through, but retained his death-like grip on the rug.
It followed jerkily, as the men above tripped, fell, and rolled desperately clear.
Murray"s heart nearly stopped as he fell the first thousand feet. The rug, sheer as the finest silk, failed to catch the wind. It ran out like a thin rivulet of metal, following Murray in his unchecked drop.
But he had a number of seconds more to fall, and he occupied the time left to him. He fumbled for corners, found two, lost precious time looking for the others. He had three corners wrapped around one hand when the wind finally caught the sheer fabric, bellied it out with a sharp crack. The sudden deceleration nearly jerked his arm out.
Even so, he was still falling at a fearful rate. The free corner was trailing and snapping spitefully, and the greasy white waters of the lake were rushing up!
At any rate, the rug held him upright, so that he did not strike the water flat. His toes clove the water like an arrow, and the rug was torn from his grasp. The water crashed together over his head with stunning force. After that it seemed to Murray that he didn"t care. It didn"t matter that his eyes stung--that his throat was filled with bitter alkali. All of his sensations merged in an all-pervading, comfortable warmth. There was a feeling of flowing blackness, of time standing still.
Murray"s return to consciousness was far less pleasant. His entire body was a crying pain: every internal organ that he knew of harbored an ache of its own. He groaned, and by that token knew that he was breathing.
As unwillingly he struggled back to consciousness he realized that he was inside a rock cave, lying on a thin, folded fabric that might well be the rug that had served as an emergency parachute. He could see the irregular arch of the cave opening, could catch hints of rough stone on the interior.
He sat up with an effort. There was a vile taste in his mouth, and he looked around for something to drink. There was a desert water bottle standing on the floor beside him. That meant he had been found and rescued by some Martian desert rat who had probably witnessed his fall. He rinsed out his mouth with clean, sweet spring water from the bottle, drank freely. His stomach promptly took advantage of the opportunity to clear itself of the alkali, and Murray, controlling his desire to vomit, crawled outside into the blinding light of the Martian afternoon. He saw that the cave was high up on the side of one of the more prominent cliffs. There were many such hollowed places, indicating that the sloping shelf on which he now lay had once been the beach of a vast sea which at some time must have covered all but the higher peaks of the Gray Mountains. It was, of course, the sea that had deposited the scanty soil which here and there covered the rocks. During geologic ages it shrunk until it all but disappeared, leaving only a few small and bitter lakes in unexpected pockets.
There was a succession of prehistoric beaches below Murray"s vantage point, marking each temporary sea level, giving the mountain a terraced appearance. A thousand feet below was the white lake, sluggish and dead.
Murray was looking for the man who had saved him. He was able to discern him, after a little effort, toiling up the steep slopes. He was still nearly all the way down. He could see only that he seemed to be dressed in white desert trousers and blouse, and that he wore a broad-brimmed sun helmet. He was carrying something in a bag over his shoulder. He was making the difficult ascent with practiced ease, his body thrown well forward, making fast time for such an apparently deliberate gait.
The desert glare hurt Murray"s eyes. He closed them and fell asleep.
He awoke to the shaking of his shoulder, looked up into a black-bearded face, a beard as fierce and luxuriant as his own. But where Murray was bald, this man"s hair was as thick and black as his beard. He had thrown off his helmet, so that his ma.s.sive head was outlined against the sky. His torso was thick, his shoulders broad.
Large, intelligent eyes and brilliant coral skin proclaimed the man to be a native of Mars.
The man"s white teeth flashed brilliantly when he spoke.
"Feeling better? Man, you can feel good to be here at all! Time and again have I seen Scar Balta drop "em into that lake, but you"re the first one ever to break the surface again. He gave you a break, though. First time he ever gave anybody as much as a pocket handkerchief to ease his fall. That lake is useful to Scar. It keeps the bodies he gives it, and none ever turn up for evidence."
Murray was still struggling with nausea. "Want to thank you," he managed. "I got it bad enough. Ow! I feel sick!"
The Martian bestirred himself. He sc.r.a.ped up the ancient shingle, making a little pillow of sand for Murray"s head. The Sun was already nearing the western horizon, and its heat was no longer excessive.
Murray watched through half-closed lids as the big man descended a short distance, returning with an armful of short, greasy shrubs. He broke the shrub into bits, made a neat stack; stacked a larger ring of fuel around this, until he had a flat conical pile about eight inches high and two feet in diameter.
From a pocket safe he procured a tiny fire pellet. This he moistened with saliva and quickly dropped into the center of his fuel stack. The pellet began to glow fiercely, throwing off an intense heat. In a few seconds the fuel caught, burning briskly and without smoke.
"Wouldn"t dare do this in the open," the Martian explained, "if this stuff gave off any smoke at all. The pulpwood mounds down in the flats make a nice fire, but they smoke and leave black ashes, easy to see from the sky. Now you just rest easy. You"ll feel better soon as you get some skitties under your belt."
The skitties proved to be a species of quasi-sh.e.l.lfish, possessing hemispherical houses. In lieu of the other half of their sh.e.l.l they attached themselves to sedimentary rocks. They were the only form of life that had been able to adapt themselves to the chemicalization of the ancient sea-remnant. The Martian had left them thin flakes of rock. Now he placed the sh.e.l.ls in the red-hot coals, and in a very short time the skitties were turning out, crisp and appetizing.
Following his host"s example, Murray speared one with the point of his stiletto, blew on it to cool it. It proved to be delicious, although just a trifle salty.
"Drink plenty water with it," the Martian advised him. "Plenty more about five hundred feet down. Artesian spring there. Fact is, that"s all that keeps that lake from drying up. You ought to see the mist rise at night."
Murray ate four of the skitties. Then, because the sun was getting ready to plop down, they carefully extinguished the fire, scattering the ashes. The I. F. P. agent felt greatly strengthened by his meal and a.s.sisted his host with the evening ch.o.r.es. Nightfall found them in their darkened cave, ready for an evening"s yarning.
"I took the liberty of examining your effects," the Martian began.
"Sort of introduced you to myself. The fact that you wore the Martian army uniform was no fine recommendation to me, though I once wore it myself. Your weapons I hid, except for the knife you needed to eat.
But you"ll find them in that little hollow right over your head. The fact that you"re an enemy of Scar Balta is enough for the present.
That alone is repayment for the labor of carrying you up all this way."
Murray then told him of work on Mars. There was no use concealing anything from one who was obviously a fellow fugitive, and who might be persuaded to do away with his guest, should he have strong enough suspicions. He told of the war cabal, of the financial-political oligarchy and its opposing monarchists. He related his own discovery and arrest; the pretended enlistment in Scar Balta"s forces which terminated in Scar"s prompt and ruthless action. When he finished he sensed that he had made a deep impression on his host. The latter spoke.
"What you have told me, Murray, relieves me very much," he said. "I know that we can work together. You might as well know how I came to be here. Perhaps I look forty or fifty years old. Well, I"m thirty. I was news director for the televisor corporations. I didn"t have to be very smart to realize that a lot of the stuff we were ordered to send out was propaganda, pure and simple. Propaganda for the war interests, propaganda for the financiers. Commercial propaganda too.
"Why, the stuff we put out was a crime! The service to the teletabloids was the worst. You know how they outstrip the news; hired actors take the part of personages in the news. Ever watch "em? The way they enact a murder is good, isn"t it?"
"We got orders to bear down on your service too, the I. F. P. Your crew has too many points of contact, hiking from planet to planet. The high command couldn"t see things the bankers liked, I guess.
"So whenever a man of the I. F. P. figured in the news we always gave him the worst of it. We hired b.u.ms to play his part, criminals, vicious degenerates. People believe what they see--that"s the idea. I had seen very few of your men but I knew we were giving them a dirty deal. Orders were orders, though. We got lots of orders we didn"t understand. Then secret deals were made, and those orders countermanded.
"But the order against the I. F. P. remained standing, and we certainly did effective work against "em. The people had no way of knowing the difference, either, for the company controls all means of communication, and the I. F. P. does most of its work in out of the way places. Why just to show you how effective our work was--the people, in a special plebiscite, voted to withdraw their support from the Plutonian campaign! But that was going too far; the financiers quietly reversed that.
"At the same time, we got orders to glorify Wilc.o.x, the planetary president. It was Wilc.o.x signing a bill to feed the hungry--after their property had been stripped by the taxes. It was Wilc.o.x the benevolent; Wilc.o.x the superman. Wilc.o.x, in carefully rehea.r.s.ed dramatic situations, reproduced on the stereo-screens in every home.
You know who put over the slogan, "Wilc.o.x, the Solar Savior?" We did it. It was easy!" He laughed shortly.