The Long Voyage Part 2

Mason's lips curled in a sneer. "And just what makes you think we're going to believe that story?" he demanded.

Norris lit a cigar. "It's entirely immaterial to me whether you believe it or not."

But the story was believed, especially by the women, to whom the romantic angle appealed and Mason's embryonic mutiny died without being born, and the _Marie Galante_ sailed on through uncharted s.p.a.ce toward her ninth and last landing.

As the days dragged by and no word came from the bridge cuddy, restlessness began to grow amongst us. Rumor succeeded rumor, each story wilder and more incredible than the rest. Then just as the tension had mounted to fever pitch, there came the sickening lurch and grinding vibration of another landing.

Norris dispensed with his usual talk before marching out from the ship.

After testing the atmosphere with the ozonometer, he pa.s.sed out the heat pistols and distributed the various instruments for computing radioactivity and cosmic radiation.

"This is the planet Nizar," he said shortly. "Largest in the field of the sun Ponthis. You will make your survey as one group this time. I will remain here."

He stood watching us as we marched off down the cliff side. Then the blue _hensorr_ trees rose up to swallow him from view. Mason swung along at the head of our column, eyes bright, a figure of aggressive action.

We had gone but a hundred yards when it became apparent that, as a planet, Nizar was entirely different from its predecessors. There was considerable top soil, and here grew a tall reed-shaped plant that gave off varying chords of sound when the wind blew.

It was as if we were progressing through the nave of a mighty church with a muted organ in the distance. There was animal life too, a strange lizard-like bird that rose up in flocks ahead of us and flew screaming overhead.

"I don't exactly like it, Bagley," he said. "There's something unwholesome about this planet. The evolution is obviously in an early state of development, but I get the impression that it has gone backward; that the planet is really old and has reverted to its earlier life."

Above us the sky was heavily overcast, and a tenuous white mist rising up from the _hensorr_ trees formed curious shapes and designs. In the distance I could hear the swashing of waves on a beach.

Suddenly Mason stopped. "Look!" he said.

Below us stretched the sh.o.r.e of a great sea. But it was the structure rising up from that sh.o.r.e that drew a sharp exclamation from me. Shaped in a rough ellipse, yet mounted high toward a common point, was a large building of multiple hues and colors. The upper portion was eroded to crumbling ruins, the lower part studded with many bas-reliefs and triangular doorways.

"Let's go," Mason said, breaking out into a fast loping run.

The building was farther away than we had thought, but when we finally came up to it, we saw that it was even more of a ruin than it had at first appeared. It was only a sh.e.l.l with but two walls standing, alone and forlorn. Whatever race had lived here, they had come and gone.

We prowled about the ruins for more than an hour. The carvings on the walls were in the form of geometric designs and cabalistic symbols, giving no clue to the city's former occupants' ident.i.ty.

And then Mason found the stairs leading to the lower crypts. He switched on his ato-flash and led the way down cautiously. Level one ... level two ... three ... we descended lower and lower. Here water from the nearby sea oozed in little rivulets that glittered in the light of the flash.

We emerged at length on a wide underground plaisance, a kind of amphitheater, with tier on tier of seats surrounding it and extending back into the shadows.

"Judging from what we've seen," Mason said, "I would say that the race that built this place had reached approximately a grade C-5 of civilization, according to the Mokart scale. This apparently was their council chamber."

"What are those rectangular stone blocks depending from the ceiling?" I said.

Mason turned the light beam upward. "I don't know," he said. "But my guess is that they are burial vaults. Perhaps the creatures were ornithoid."

Away from the flash the floor of the plaisance appeared to be a great mirror that caught our reflections and distorted them fantastically and horribly. We saw then that it was a form of living mold, composed of millions of tiny plants, each with an eye-like iris at its center. Those eyes seemed to be watching us, and as we strode forward, a great sigh rose up, as if in resentment at our intrusion.

There was a small triangular dais in the center of the chamber, and in the middle of it stood an irregular black object. As we drew nearer, I saw that it had been carved roughly in the shape of this central building and that it was in a perfect state of preservation.

Mason walked around this carving several times, examining it curiously.

"Odd," he said. "It looks to be an object of religious veneration, but I never heard before of a race worshipping a replica of their own living quarters."

Suddenly his voice died off. He bent closer to the black stone, studying it in the light of the powerful ato-flash. He got a small magnifying gla.s.s out of his pocket and focused it on one of the miniature bas-reliefs midway toward the top of the stone. Unfastening his geologic hammer from his belt, he managed, with a sharp, swinging blow, to break off a small protruding piece.

He drew in his breath sharply, and I saw his face go pale. I stared at him in alarm.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

He motioned that I follow and led the way silently past the others toward the stair shaft. Climbing to the top level was a heart-pounding task, but Mason almost ran up those steps. At the surface he leaned against a pillar, his lips quivering spasmodically.

"Tell me I'm sane, Bagley," he said huskily. "Or rather, don't say anything until we've seen Norris. Come on. We've got to see Norris."

All the way back to the _Marie Galante_, I sought to soothe him, but he was a man possessed. He rushed up the ship's gangway, burst into central quarters and drew up before Navigator Norris like a runner stopping at the tape.

"You d.a.m.ned lying hypocrite!" he yelled.

Norris looked at him in his quiet way. "Take it easy, Mason," he said.

"Sit down and explain yourself."

But Mason didn't sit down. He thrust his hand in his pocket, pulled out the piece of black stone he had chipped off the image in the cavern and handed it to Norris.

"Take a look at that!" he demanded.

Norris took the stone, glanced at it and laid it down on his desk. His face was emotionless. "I expected this sooner or later," he said. "Yes, it's _Indurate_ all right. Is that what you want me to say?"

There was a dangerous fanatical glint in Mason's eyes now. With a sudden quick motion he pulled out his heat pistol.

"So you tricked us!" he snarled. "Why? I want to know why."

I stepped forward and seized Mason's gun hand. "Don't be a fool," I said. "It can't be that important."

Mason threw back his head and burst into an hysterical peal of laughter.

"Important!" he cried. "Tell him how important it is, Norris. _Tell him._"

Quietly the Navigator filled and lighted his pipe. "I'm afraid Mason is right," he said. "I did trick you. Not purposely, however. And in the beginning I had no intention of telling anything but the truth. Actually we're here because of a dead man's vengeance."

Norris took his pipe from his lips and stared at it absently.

"You'll remember that Ganeth-Klae, the Martian, and I worked together to invent _Indurate_. But whereas I was interested in the commercial aspects of that product, Klae was absorbed only in the experimental angle of it. He had some crazy idea that it should not be given to the general public at once, but rather should be allocated for the first few years to a select group of scientific organizations. You see, _Indurate_ was such a departure from all known materials that Ganeth-Klae feared it would be utilized for military purposes.

"I took him for a dreamer and a fool. Actually he was neither. How was I to know that his keen penetrating brain had seen through my motive to get control of all commercial marketing of _Indurate_? I had laid my plans carefully, and I had expected to reap a nice harvest. Klae must have been aware of my innermost thoughts, but Martian-like he said nothing."

Norris paused to wet his lips and lean against the desk. "I didn't kill Ganeth-Klae," he continued, "though I suppose in a court of law I would be judged responsible for his death. The manufacture of _Indurate_ required some ticklish work. As you know, we produced our halves of the formula separately. Physical contact with my half over a long period of time would prove fatal, I knew, and I simply neglected to so inform Ganeth-Klae.

"But his ultimate death was a boomerang. With Klae gone, I could find no trace of his half of the formula. I was almost beside myself for a time.

Then I thought of something. Klae had once said that the secret of his half of the formula lay in himself. A vague statement, to say the least.

But I took the words at their face value and gambled that he meant them literally; that is, that his body itself contained the formula.

"I tried everything: X-ray, chemical a.n.a.lysis of the skin. I even removed the cranial cap and examined the brain microscopically. All without result. Meanwhile the police were beginning to direct their suspicions toward me in the matter of Klae's disappearance.