The Secret of the Ninth Planet Part 12

"It's the Sun-tap station. It's generating distortion. We'll have to wait until they return," said Burl.

Haines nodded and turned off the set which had begun to utter ear-piercing howls. The two men waited quietly for about half an hour.

Only a phone call from the curious men in the control room interrupted their vigil.

Then finally Burl spotted a little cloud of dust on the horizon. "There they are!"

The two men stood up as the little jeep made its way back over the desert to the ship. As it drew closer, they saw a third occupant sitting in the back with Ferrati. Haines opened the walkie-talkie. "Wait till you see this fellow," Ferrati's comment came through.

The jeep drew up to the ship and stopped. Ferrati waved them down. A few seconds later they were joined by Lockhart and Clyde, also in pressure suits.

The creature in the back of the jeep was a Martian. They stared in fascination. It was about three feet long with a small, oval-shaped head and two very large, many-faceted eyes. A small, beaklike mouth and short, stubby antennae completed its face. The head was attached by a short neck to a body that consisted of three oval ma.s.ses joined together by narrow belts, much like the joints of an insect. A pair of arms, ending in long three-fingered hands, grew from the first segment. A set of long, thin legs grew out of each of the two other segments. A glistening grayish-blue sh.e.l.l, its skin, covered it from head to foot.

At the moment, this particular Martian was tightly restrained by a strong nylon net, and was obviously the captive of the two explorers.

"Why, it looks like a giant insect!" exclaimed Burl.

"More like a kind of lobster," was Ferrati's answer. "But this is it.

This is one of the city dwellers."

Lockhart shook his head. "I don't like this. We shouldn't do anything to antagonize the Martians. Taking one prisoner like this may be a bad first move."

Boulton stepped out of the jeep. "There wasn't anything else we could do. Besides, who said that Martians were ever our friends?"

"We got into the city," he went on, "and drove around the streets. There were plenty of these fellows around, going about their business.

Hundreds of 'em. Do you think they stopped to look at us? Do you think they were curious? Do you think they talked to us? Called the police?

Did anything at all?

"No," he answered himself. "They just walked around us as if we were a stick of something in the way. They don't say anything to each other.

They just go on about their affairs, dragging things, carrying food, herding young ones, and not a darn word.

"They looked at us, and didn't even act as if they saw us. When we stopped one, it squirmed out of our grasp and walked away. Finally we took this fellow, simply grabbed him off the street, tied him up, stuffed him in the jeep and kidnaped him. And do you think anybody cared or turned in an alarm or tried to help him? No!"

Lockhart looked at the prisoner a moment. The Martian stared at him out of his unwinking multiple eyes. "Are you sure these are the engineers of the ca.n.a.ls, the builders?"

Boulton nodded. "Definitely. We saw some of them at work. They were repairing a house and they used tools and fire. They have machines, and they use them. They've got their city working and well laid out, but I don't know how they do it. They must communicate in some way, but they act as if they had been drilled in their jobs and were going through an elaborate and complicated pantomime. Even the young don't utter a peep."

Lockhart stepped back a bit. "Untie this fellow. Let's see what he does."

When the Martian had been released from the enveloping net, it made no effort to communicate. It turned slowly around, a little wobbly at first, and wandered off, paying no attention to the men, the ship, or the jeep. Then it started walking at a rapid pace. The men watched as it trotted into the desert--away from the city!

It seemed to wander around as if lost, and then set out in another direction, but still one that would not take it to the city which was quite plainly in view.

The Martian disappeared from view behind a series of small hummocks, still bound for nowhere.

The men were lost in amazement. Russell Clyde uttered a low whistle.

"Burl's right. It must be a sort of insect."

"This whole civilization seems to be insectlike, if you ask me," said Burl. "It's like a huge anthill, or a big bee-hive. It seems complicated, and the creatures go through complex activities, and all the time it's something they were born with."

Ferrati nodded. "Now that you mention it, that's exactly what the city was like. n.o.body gave orders--everybody just did what they were supposed to do. n.o.body was curious about us because it wasn't their business."

"And, individually, they haven't intelligence," Clyde added. "That one--the one you took away from his work--plainly is lost. He doesn't know how to go about getting back. He has no curiosity about us ... he may not even have much of a brain. Individual ants have no brain--only a sort of central nerve center. Collectively, they perform wonders; individually, they are quite helpless."

Lockhart interrupted the discussion. "Well, then, let's get on with it.

Obviously, the Sun-tap builders placed their station in this city because it was a safe spot, protected by the Martians themselves, and because the Martians would never think to interfere with them. So you men can go back, take your stuff, dig out the station and put it out of commission. Get going."

Haines and Burl climbed into the jeep with Boulton and Ferrati. Russell Clyde insisted on joining them, and Lockhart gave his consent. Off they went, rumbling over the sand toward the city of instinct.

Burl was excited and curious about the Martians. They presented a strange mixture of contradictions. "How," he asked Russ, "could they have built a world-wide network of ca.n.a.ls, set up pumping stations, laid out plantations, mastered hydraulic and power engineering, if they are mere creatures of instinct? Surely there must be brainy ones somewhere?

A thinker species?"

"Not necessarily," said Russ. "Remember, these creatures are operating without opposition--they are really the highest type of life here. The need to conserve water and continue their hive life forced them to learn a practical kind of engineering. n.o.body knows how the ants and bees formed their complex societies--there are none among them with any larger brains than the rest, and they do not talk. But somehow ants and bees communicate and somehow they act as a ma.s.s. Figure it on a world-wide scale, driven by the threat of their world drying up, and these creatures built up a mechanical civilization to meet it. But it also accounts for why they have never flown, not through the air and not through s.p.a.ce, why they haven't attempted radio communication with Earth, and why they don't understand what the Sun-tap station is doing to them. Their world is being killed, and they literally haven't the brains to understand it."

They reached the city. All about was a silent hustle and bustle of enigmatic, shining, sh.e.l.led creatures. Superficially, it looked like an intelligent civilization. There were wheeled carts driven by some sort of steam generator. Steam-driven engines ran factories.

The Martians made way for the jeep with unconcern. Never had they seen creatures as large as themselves that were not of their own kind on hive business. Hence, none such could exist. This was a world totally without individualism, a civilization without a spoken language, without names, without banners. Wherever or however the ma.s.s knowledge was located or transmitted, no individual of another species could ever hope to know.

It would be forever as remote from human explorers as the farthest star on the farthest galaxy.

They drove to where the Sun-tap masts rose from the ground. The men parked the jeep out of the way of the silent traffic, climbed out and walked into the rounded door of a building. Its architecture was not like that of the other buildings. Inside the chambers were dark.

"These creatures have no lights," remarked Boulton. "They must use their feelers indoors."

"Ah, but look," said Burl, reaching out a hand to a little globe set on a pole in the floor. He touched it and the globe lighted up. "The Sun-tap builders needed light and put in their own fixtures here. I recognize their style."

The five men followed a hallway that sloped down into the ground, and came out into a large underground cellar--several hundred feet wide. It was the Sun-tap station. There were the now-familiar globes and rods, the force fields, the controls, the pedestals and the ends of the rotating masts.

They made their recordings, and Burl got ready to turn off the station.

Ferrati and Haines uncrated a small, tactical atomic bomb they had carried with them--one of the smallest perfected by the Army during the past half dozen years. They laid it down in the center of the equipment and set the timer for a half hour away.

Boulton found the alarm globe and prepared to blow it up. Then Burl took the control panel and switched off the station. They heard the thud of a crumbling mast. Boulton fired a shot into the alarm globe which had begun to turn red. It smashed.

"All right, men," snapped Haines, "let's go!"

As they moved toward the exit, Boulton hesitated. "Hey," he said, "there's one globe still in action!"

The others turned in time to see Boulton stride over to a very small globe which was glowing pale yellow against the wall near the doorway.

The Marine captain drew his pistol, aimed and fired. The globe burst, but as it did so, a level bolt of yellow light shot back along the path of the bullet. For a split second, Boulton was outlined in yellow fire.

There was a flash like lightning.

Each man reached for his weapons, but the underground station remained dark and dead. Their flashlights turned on Boulton. The stocky Marine was lying on the ground.

They ran to him. "He's alive!" cried Haines, as he saw that Boulton was still breathing, his breath whistling back and forth through the oxygen mask. Quickly Haines examined him. "His heart's all right. He's just been knocked unconscious."

Ferrati and Haines picked up the captain by his arms and legs. Though he would have been heavy on Earth, his weight on Mars was very slight, and each man knew he was capable of carrying great loads with his Earth-attuned muscles. Then, in single file, they left the cellar and came out of the doorway of the building.

As they emerged they were stopped short. Surrounding them was a tremendous and growing crowd of Martians. A solid wall of sh.e.l.l-like faces stared at them, and a small forest of short antennae waved and flickered in great agitation.