WIND moved sighing through the broken walls, and the dusk came down to join it. Far out across the Western wastes Phobos rode the last pale glow of the sun edging the rim of Mars. Ruh lay silent, barred and shuttered, but not asleep.
With night, shadows crept through the streets. Some of them came drifting in through secret portals in the city wall and then sought the heights of the King City, where they vanished. Upon entering the flaring torchlight in the throne-room, however, they became men.
Fighting men. Of different ages, sizes, coloring, in the harness of different city-states, but all alike in one thing—the look they bore. The look of wolves in a cage.
They sat around a table of blood-red wood worn hollow by the arms of centuries of war-chiefs. Haral the boy king, leaned forward like a bent blade from his high seat, and the eyes of Beudach, who stood always at his right hand, were as steel in the fire.
Only one shadow remained in the Quarters. It was small and hunched and swift-moving, and its eyes burned emerald in the Phobos-light. It went from door to door, whispering, asking, and the name it said was "Rick."
High up against the stars, in the ruined Tower of Destiny, Parras, the Seer, bent his fresh young face above his looking bowl. His mind reached out across the sea-bottoms, the sand deserts, the age-worn hills. It touched other minds, asking, and the name it said was "Rick."
To the green-eyed shadow and the mind of the seer came an unvarying answer.
"Not yet."
"Wait, then," Parras would tell them. "Keep watching. There is a blood debt to be paid. 'The wind is rising!' "
Down in the mine gallery, Rick put his hand on Mayo's shoulder. "Hold it," he cautioned the girl. "I thought I heard something."
They stood still. Presently Rick heard the noises quite clearly, somewhere far behind them in the stale blackness of the wormbore. The soft scrambling noises of many creatures, running.
"What'll we do?" Mayo asked.
"Keep going, I guess. I've only got one Mickey, and that won't even slow 'em down. Tired?"
"I'm all right. What happens when they catch us?"
"Ask me then."
They went on again. The going was fairly easy, the floor smooth and the turns gradual. Rick knew they must have left their original bore long ago, branching off into only the stars knew how many intersecting tunnels. He had no idea how long they had been wandering, only that it was too long. They simply kept going because there was nothing else to do.
The anthropoids, fresh and running easily by scent, drew closer by the minute. Rick hung back a little, behind the girl.
Quite suddenly Mayo gave a strangled cry and fell heavily. There was a dry sound of something splitting. Rick tried to stop, tripped, and went sprawling.
There was a smoothly serrated surface under him. It tapered upward, widening to the sides. He scrambled up and followed it, with Mayo beside him.
"The tunnel's blocked," she gasped. "Rick, it's blocked!"
"Sure. Here, climb up." He pulled her onto the top of the obstruction and began to crawl. Presently his head hit the roof. He reached out, groping. The obstruction curved into the side of the bore, sealing it completely.
Rick let his breath out, hard. He lay still, utterly relaxed, and listened to his heart. It was like thunder. The sweat felt cold on his skin. Mayo lay beside him, breathing unevenly.
Behind them, another sound grew louder, closing in.
After a while Rick pushed himself backward and turned around. He got the Mickey in his hand and sat waiting. His body was like lead. He slid his right hand out the length of the chain and found the girl's slender palm.
She gripped his fingers, and her grasp was cold, like ice. They sat listening to the soft rushing footsteps.
Suddenly she spoke, rather loudly. "What is this thing, Rick?"
"Don't know." He ran his knuckles over the smooth serrations. "Hey! Yes I do, too! It's the guy that built this tunnel—the old crawler himself. He died here, and turned to stone."
He laughed, not because it was particularly funny. He gave the fossil a crack with the barrel of the Mickey.
It rang hollow.
RICK hit it again, harder, and then he remembered the brittle cracking sound when Mayo fell. He got up on his knees, balled his fists together, and struck down with all his strength.
It nearly jarred his teeth out, but he knew. "Oh, cracky!" he whispered. "If I only had a pick, or a big maul!" He laughed again, sharply. He slid the heavy manacles as far down as they would go on his hands, wrapped the chain around them, and went to work.
He had a crack started when the anthropoids began to swarm up over the slope of the worm's tail.
Mayo took the Mickey. Rick went on pounding. They were so far back in the cleft between the fossil and the roof that the brutes had to come at them from the front only, and not many at a time. Mayo did all right with the Mickey, for a while. The shock-charge put the leading anthropoids to sleep, and their bodies rolled back to trip the ones coming up behind them. It was a blind fight. The blackness was choked with the sound of feet and moving bodies, and a rank animal smell. The anthropoids worked silently.
Rick drowned everything else with the smashing thunder of his manacles on the echoing stone.
"The Micky's dead, Rick," Mayo reported at last. "The charge is gone."
"Come here. I've made a hole." She found it. "Can you break the edges back?"
"I think so." He heard her kicking, beating and straining. Things snapped. Anthropoid paws found his leg and pulled him backward. He swung. He didn't have hands any more, only a numb mass bound together with metal. The mass hit something, and for the first time there was a scream.
"It's coming!" Rick heard Mayo say.
He swung again. The blackness was full of bodies. Every time Rick swung he hit something. There was a new smell, warm and dank and sweetish. His arms were wet.
There were too many bodies. They weighed him down. He went on swinging until his arms were held tight. He kicked. Things smashed and fell away from his boots, but they came back again. Presently his legs were held, too. He heaved and twisted. Some of the paws were shaken loose. For a moment he was almost free. He got in a few good ones, and then he was down again. From a great distance Mayo's voice was calling out.
"Rick! Rick, come on!" it said.
He tried it, but it was no good. And then suddenly a cyclone hit the heaving mass on top of him, and there were gaps in the paws that held him. Mayo screamed and tugged at him.
He used strength which he didn't know he had left, to thrash free. Mayo plunged down the hole, dragging his feet after her. An anthropoid grappled with him. He slugged it with his irons and dropped through into the inside of the fossil worm. Two of the brutes tried to get through the hole at once and jammed there.
Mayo helped him up and they staggered away down the worm's interior.
They were knee deep in dust. The intestinal structure had fallen away, crumbled, and dried, while the outer shell hardened. The clouds that rose behind them slowed the anthropoids. Rick and Mayo went on, far beyond their physical strength driven by a raw, primitive urge for survival.
It came to Rick dimly, after a while, that something was' happening.
"Falling in," he said thickly. "Vibration—cracking it." It was horrible in the dark. Smothering dust, the noise of splitting destruction everywhere. Parts of the shell had become homogenous with the hardened mud, and apparently that was caving in, too. The miners always feared the treacherous strata away from the true rock that held the ore veins. There were screams again behind them.
"When we reach the head there won't be any place to go," Mayo said suddenly. "Solid rock."
The cracking ran forward over their heads. A falling mass grazed Rick's shoulder. He pushed the girl on faster. Dust rolled strangling against their lungs. There was a terrible, crushing, bottled-up thunder.
Their heads struck the top abruptly. They dropped, crawling. The space narrowed in on them. The dust thickened. Mayo whimpered hoarsely. There was ripping, splitting crash!
Dead end . . . .
SEVERAL days later, Hugh St. John was standing on the terrace of his apartment, well up in the tallest building in Kahora, the Trade City for Mars. His sensitive young face was drawn and grim. He nervously was smoking a slender Venusian cigarette.
Kahora was halfway around the planet from Ruh and Fallon's Company. It was night. Diemos rode low in the purple-black sky above the glassite dome that covered the city, shielding its polyglot inhabitants from the naked weather of Mars.
Down below, the streets of Kahora lay like a little web of jewels. St. John listened to the city's pulse. It was a slow, quiet beat. The business that went on here was the sterile handling of things already made and done, figures added up by sleek men who spent their idle hours in the Dream Palace and the exotic night clubs. Even the air was artificial, carefully cleaned, scented, and kept at an even temperature.
He had been in Vhia, the Trade City for Venus. That hadn't been so bad. Venus was a young planet, lusty and strong. Even the glassite dome hadn't been able to keep out the savage beat of the rains and the sense of hot jungle just outside. Men were busy there, too, the heart and brain of the commerce of a thrusting, aggressive world. Where there was enmity with the Venusians, it had been a healthy one.
Here everything was old, passive, faded and worn out. Even the Martian hatred of the Earthmen, the invaders, was a silent thing, festering in barren darkness. The stream of Martian trade flowed through Kahora like the chilling blood of an old man already three-quarters dead.
St. John's mouth twisted bitterly. The only living thing on Mars was Ed Fallon and his alter ego, the Company. Alive, he thought, like an evil beast—hungry, independent, and fatal.
Presently the robot servant at the door identified and admitted the man St. John had been waiting for.
"Mak," St. John cried. "Mak, did you find out anything?"
Eran Mak shook his head. He was Martian, a Low-canaller from over Jekkara way, and he looked like what he was—a civilized bandit. The dubious fame of his people went as far back into Martian history as the history itself. He was a small, tough and wiry, with a slender dark face, a friendly smile, and eyes like drops of hot gold. He wore a cluster of tiny bells in his left ear, and his clothing, the fashionable white tunic of the Trade Cities gave him the satanic look.
"I'm afraid there's not much hope, Hugh," he said quietly. "I finally made connections with Christy. Since they found out about Mayo, he's scared green. She and this fellow Rick got away all right, into an abandoned drift, but heaven only knows what happened after that. Christy says they sent the black boys after them, and only a few came back. Some of them were all messed up—crushed arms and such, as through they'd been caught in a cave-in. So I guess they're both done for."
He lifted his lean shoulders. St. John turned away.
"Were you in love with her, Hugh?" Eran Mak was one of the few who could venture to ask such a question. He was St. John's best friend.
"I don't know. I don't think I could have sent her there if I had been in love with her. And yet, when I knew she was caught, and her radio suddenly stopped sending, my heart turned to ice." Suddenly he shivered. "Mak, if she's dead, then I killed her!"
"She knew what she was doing," Mak consoled him.
St. John shuddered again. He sat down and put his face in his hands.
Eran Mak crossed the terrace and also seated himself, the little bells tinkling faintly as he moved. He smoked a cigarette in silence. Then he frowned.
"This is going to make Fallon awfully suspicious." he said.
St. John drew a long breath. "That's true. Well, I'll stall him as long as I can. Anyway, I cashed his last draft!" He rose abruptly. "I don't know how we can manage to continue the work without the rat's money."
"It may not matter. There's a storm brewing, Hugh. One devil of a big thundering storm. It's all under cover, but here and there a little puff of breeze warns of a gathering tornado. It may blow us all clean off Mars."
"And this world's last chance of life will be gone. I've failed, Mak. My whole plan has been a fool's dream from the beginning."
HE GRIPPED the rail of the terrace, looking out over the jeweled city.
"Think what we could give them, Mak, if they'd only let us! The strength, the new ideas, the new roads to travel! But they won't allow it. They slam their doors in our faces, and the Martian Planetary Government only refrains from kicking us off into space because they don't want open trouble with Earth and Venus.
"Only Ed Fallon gets anywhere. He's going to own all Mars in a few years, because of that cursed ore he discovered. Money will make such a big noise in the Government's ears that any yelling the people do won't amount to a penny whistle in a hurricane. And Mars will be just as dead, either way it goes."
He hit the rail hard with his hand and started pacing.
"My only chance of getting rid of Fallon failed when Mayo was caught before she could get proof of what he and Storm are doing. With that, I might have gone to the Interplanetary Co-ordination Authority—their Labor Board would have made an investigation. But now it's too late!"
He sat down again.
Eran Mak set the tiny bells chiming with his fingertip.
"You know what I think?" he answered. "I think the job needed a bigger man than you, or me, or any of us. It would take a whale of a big man to unify Mars—all the scraps and pieces of us from Jekkara to the Pole, withdrawn into our little city-shells, sitting in the dust and hugging our memories. If we could find a Goliath like that, there might still be a chance.
"You might as well ask for Phobos to balance those bells in your ear." St. John leaned back and closed his eyes. He looked indescribably bitter and tired.
"Besides," he added, with a faint smile, "if we found a Goliath, someone else would find a David to slay him."