THE SURVIVORS

There were only four of them now. Soames and Rutherford had literally gone down with the ship in a roar of cascading rock and sand. Out of fifty square miles of the Martian plateau they had been unlucky enough to sit down on the egg-shell thin roof of a sector honey-combed with caves. Scant moments after the exploring party had disembarked, Soames' comments on their resemblance to a Sunday School picnic were suddenly broken off by a cacophonous medley of yells, the rolling thunder of sliding rock, and over all the agonized metallic shrieking of tortured metal as the ship fell, crushed and twisted. There came a final tremendous roar as the fuel tanks blew. The ground heaved convulsively, and shuddered into silence.

Stunned and deafened, Bradford, Canham, Palmer and Rodriguez pulled themselves to their feet, staring dazedly at the towering column of dust hanging like a malevolent genie over the half-mile wide chasm.

Palmer, white with shock, lunged forward, turning indignantly as Bradford's arm jerked him back.

"Soames—and Rutherford—" he stuttered. "We've got to do something!"

Bradford's lip twisted mirthlessly.

"What're you going to do—jump in after them? If there was anything left of them the fuel tanks took care of it. They're gone—we're here. And we'd better start figuring out what we're going to do about it."

The four of them looked at each other silently. They knew as well as he, what they faced. Theirs had been the task of setting up a temporary exploring base till the supply ship arrived in three months—with luck.

Supplies for six months and all their equipment except their emergency rations had gone down with the ship. No hope there—as well explore the Grand Canyon with a teaspoon as to try to salvage anything under that million tons of rock. Compressed food they had, two weeks supply per man; their extra oxygen tanks; an extra battery apiece for the suit heaters. Water would be their worst problem.

Bradford looked at the miles of barren, reddish wasteland and shrugged fatalistically.

"If there's any water at all, it will be at the Polar cap. We might as well get going—we've got a long hike."

Palmer grimaced wryly. "Forward, you Eagle Scouts. We can get our merit badges easy."

"Yeah, we can get them from Santa Claus at the Pole—" Rodriguez made a valiant attempt at his usual sardonic humor.

They piled a small cairn of the red rocks and Bradford planted the green and white flag of the Federated Nations. Encased in its protective covering he placed a note at its foot indicating their destination.

"We ought to sign it 'Kilroy,'" Canham grunted as they trudged forward. "Say, how far do we have to walk?"

"Around a hundred and fifty to two hundred miles."

Their concerted whistle of dismay echoing oddly in their ear-phones, they set out in thoughtful silence across the red face of Mars, the hovering dust blotting out their footprints as they went.

Three days and seventy five miles later, they huddled wearily against the face of a small cliff shivering in the icy chill of the night wind. They had found a desiccated bush or two in a protected nook during the afternoon and carried it with them. Now, they fed the wiry twigs into the fire with miserly care glad of its meager light against the haunted dark.

Rodriguez held a branch to the firelight. "Looks like a sort of poorhouse cousin to birch," he hazarded. "Wonder if they ever had forests on this God-forgotten planet?"

Palmer grinned. "Well, at least there is still life of sorts. Rutherford would have flipped his lid over those comical little fellows we saw today."

A half dozen times they had seen furry little marsupials, downy as chinchillas, their young poking out inquisitive snouts toward the interlopers and as promptly getting them slapped down again.

A flicker of motion on the perimeter of firelight caught his eye. "We've got a visitor," he whispered. "There's one of the little beggars now."

He tossed a crumb from his plate toward the peering head. Flicking a tongue like a lizard's, the visitor fielded it neatly in midair and advanced, peering hopefully at the circle of grinning faces. Palmer stretched out a stealthy hand and gripped it gently about the middle as it sniffed at his food can.

"Look at him," he cried delightedly. "He doesn't even squirm. He likes me!"

He tickled its ears, sliding his fingers down through the heavy, silky pelt. "You could make a fortune with these...." he dropped it abruptly with an anguished yelp and a string of blistering oaths, while his friends clung to each other and howled mirthfully.

"Your little friend, he pulled a knife on you. No?" queried Rodriguez sympathetically. The grin faded from his suddenly startled face.

"Amigo, que lo es? Hey, fellows—something's wrong!"

Palmer, his face shocked and dazed had dropped to his knees, whimpering and retching painfully.

"My God, look—his hand!" whispered Bradford.

They had removed their bulky gloves before eating and Palmer's exposed hand was black and swollen beyond recognition. Even as they watched, the skin split, leaking watery fluid. His body contorted, he rolled on the ground screaming with unbearable agony.

Bradford's hand dropped to his pistol and fell away again. He looked at the others pleadingly.

"We can't let him suffer this way. But my God—I can't do it...."

Canham looked at him dully. "You won't have to—he's finished."

The rigidly contorted body relaxed inertly, the tortured eyes open and glazed. Rodriguez crossed himself and burst into childish sobs.

Bradford put out a restraining hand toward Canham.

"Let him alone—I wish to God I could do the same thing. Give me a hand with Palmer—we'll have to bury him the best way we can."

Shaken with more than the night chill, they removed the clumsy oxygen and water containers and piled a protective cairn of rocks above the silent figure. Behind them, Rodriguez sobbed bitter Spanish curses and hurled rocks at telltale flickers of movement in the dark.

Through the next day and the next, they trudged on doggedly, speaking little as they put the reluctant miles behind them, taking what shelter they could during the bitter nights. During the day under the thin Martian sunlight, they turned off the suit-heaters, conserving the batteries; hoarding their remaining food and water with miserly care.

Bradford, assuming tacitly acknowledged leadership, pondered the situation wearily. Even with Palmer's supplies, it was doubtful that the three of them could last out the ten weeks or so remaining before the arrival of the second ship. If they could only make it to the Pole—there they were sure of water at least, in the vegetation belt surrounding the shallow icecap. If it was ice and not frozen carbon dioxide which some of the experts held out for. In their initial swing around the planet they had seen the narrow green belt dotted with shining pools. Plants meant oxygen, too; and it was possible that in a temperature supporting some kind of growing life, it would be warm enough so that they could remove their helmets for breathing, if only in the brief daylight hours.

Bradford, lost in thought, started as Canham touched his arm, motioning him to open his faceplate and turn off the head-phones.

"What's the matter with you?" he jerked impatiently.

Canham turned a thumb toward Rodriguez.

"Nothing's the matter with me. Him—I think he's going off his rocker."

Bradford looked at Rodriguez plodding unheedingly ahead. Since his first outburst after Palmer's death, he had gone mechanically about each day's routine, outwardly calm. He said little, but neither had the others. The only indication of his inner torment was when one of the deadly little marsupials peered at them as they went on their way. With deadly fury, he would hurl a barrage of rocks through the air, while the little animal eyed them in indifferent curiosity. Occasionally he scored a hit, laughing grimly as the dying animal erected the ruff of lethal spines through its silky fur.

Bradford snorted mirthlessly. "I doubt if either of us would pass a sanity test at the moment," he grunted. "What's so special about him?"

Canham's normally cheerful face retained its solemn worry.

"I know what you mean—but, watch him next time one of those dust-devils comes by."

The day before they had descended the northern slope of the high plateau onto the long, sandy plain that extended northward. Everywhere there were the dancing, careening dust-devils, tall columns of the brick-red sand; faintly menacing forms, pursuing some unseen purpose of their own. From time to time, one would swerve close, seeming to keep pace with them for a few steps before whirling off in its erratic dance.

One approached them now. Rodriguez turned toward it making a furtive gesture with thumb and forefinger and deliberately trickled a stream from his water bottle upon the sand.

Bradford came forward on the run, shouting into the hastily adjusted helmet mike. Angrily he jerked the bottle out of Rodriguez' unresisting hand.

"What the hell do you think you're playing at?" Bradford panted.

Rodriguez eyed him sullenly.

"I know these things, as my people know them. Los Bailerines del Diablo—the devil-dancers. One gives them what is most precious. Es muy necessario." More and more he was losing his usually fluent, faintly accented English and reverting to his native tongue.

Bradford eyed him sternly. "Rodriguez, you are a good Catholic. You wear a holy medal. What's all this talk about sacrifices to the devil?"

Rodriguez' gaze slid away. "I don't think God knows about this place. This is of El Diablo."

"So now you want to get in good with the Devil," Bradford grunted. "Well, you can do it some other way than with the last of the water." He jerked his head at Canham waiting wearily behind them.

"Come on, you two. We'll all feel better when we get out of this—desert." He ended with a wry twist of the lips. He had nearly said 'god-forsaken.' Maybe Rodriguez had the right idea after all.

During the afternoon, some chance convection of air currents sharply increased the dust whirls. The desert seemed full of their erratic, spinning shapes. Rodriguez plodded along, ignoring Canham's sporadic attempts at conversation. The chilly sunlight was waning and Bradford's face lighted with relief at the sight of a small sand hill. At least they could dig a hole to get their backs into and break the whistling winds. He felt an irrational comfort at the thought of the coming darkness—at least they wouldn't be able to see the dust-devils. Maybe they could get some talk going and snap Rodriguez out of his melancholy silence. Perhaps they had all been getting too introverted since the series of disasters.

They made camp before dark, digging themselves well in; Bradford and Canham forced themselves into a semblance of cheerfulness as they worked. Rodriguez's face remained dark and unsmiling. Like one of those damned stone images in the Yucatan jungle, Bradford thought with a brief burst of irritation. You wouldn't think that the little Mexican had been the ship's humorist, his face one perpetual white-toothed smile.

As they huddled cold and uncomfortable in the gathering darkness, Canham grinned apologetically and with the air of a conjuror producing trained seals from a hat, gravely presented three crushed and bent but undeniable cigarettes, distinctly contraband on the ship. He eyed Bradford with mock contrition.

"I can't imagine how I got these in my kit. I guess when I was packing everything just went black. Of course, if you'd care to be my companion in crime...?"

Bradford frowned darkly. "I ought to have you in irons for this, Mr. Canham! Now give me one of those things before I break your arm!"

With a muttered word of thanks, Rodriguez laid his carefully aside on a handy rock and slid out of the shelter into the early dark. Canham tossed a facetious remark after him and received the usual unprintable reply.

The other two sat, inhaling luxuriously. Bradford sighed comfortably.

"I think he's snapping out of it. Good thing you noticed what was happening. We'll all have to keep an eye on each other from now on."

"It's enough to drive anybody nuts. Have you noticed anything funny about—well, about the feel of the place?"

Bradford looked at him uneasily.

"What do you mean 'funny'!"

"It's just a feeling I get; you know how a brand-new house that's never been lived in feels different than an old house that's been deserted? They're both empty, but it's a different emptiness. It's the same way with pieces of country—where we trained on that high desert country in Arizona, it had a new, sort of unused feeling about it."

Bradford felt an unacknowledged tingling along his nerve ends.

"Well, this is a lot like it—" he tossed out defensively. In spite of himself he slid a sidelong glance at the surrounding dark.

Canham went on unnoticing.

"That's what I mean—it's a lot like it, but it's different too. Like it had been lived in for God knows how long, but everybody moved out."

"But there's no ruins, or anything—"

"Maybe there wouldn't be any after a million years or so. And how do we know what's under the sand? You can't even find your own footprints fifteen minutes after you've made them."

Bradford laughed shortly. "Well, keep your spooky ideas to yourself. We don't want Rodriguez going clear off his rocker."

They sat watching the fading landscape where the dust-devils still swooped and swung. Finally, with a faint frown, Bradford glanced at his chronometer.

"Roddy's been gone quite a while," he said uneasily. He stood suddenly and lifted his voice sharply.

"Rodriguez! Hey, amigo—andale Ud.!" He glanced at Canham. "I don't like this—we don't know what we're liable to run onto in this damned country...."

They set out, trotting clumsily in their heavy suits, circling the mound where Rodriguez footprints were already fading in the shifting sands. Canham gave a sudden convulsive clutch at his companion's arm. There was no need to speak—scattered over the sand were the component parts of a space-suit; the heavy gloves, the helmet, the shoes. And neatly wrapped in the padded coverall the oxygen tanks. Ahead, nearly invisible, were the prints of naked feet.

Bradford groaned. "Good God, he's gone completely nuts. He'll be frozen stiff in ten minutes!"

They saw the crumpled heap at the same moment and with a thrill of undefinable terror they saw the stooping, whirling shadow, spinning dizzily over the huddled shape.

Bradford wrenched his faceplate open, yelling frantically. Gasping, he slammed the mask shut against something like a rain of fiery sparks on his unprotected skin. It was all too evident that Rodriguez would never hear again.

Gathering his strength to turn the inert figure, he nearly over-balanced—there was no weight to it at all! Beside him, Canham cried out hoarsely, "My God—he's like a mummy—!"

The whole figure looked strangely unhuman. Completely dehydrated, the flesh molded tight over the protruding bones, Rodriguez lay peacefully, both stick-like hands clasped over the holy medal on his chest.

Sick and shaken, they bent to the task of scooping sand over the shrunken body, glancing sidelong at the devil-dancers whirling exultantly in the shadowy night.

Bradford with a defiant look at his companion, unhooked Rodriguez' half-empty water bottle from his own belt and placed it upright at the head of the mound.

"He knew what they wanted and I took it away from him. I guess we can spare him this!"

Retrieving the oxygen tank and the heat batteries as they went, they trudged wearily back to their meager shelter, sickeningly conscious of the vacant space beside them.

Canham gave a sudden choked exclamation.

"He didn't even get to smoke his cigarette—"

Bradford caught his up-thrown arm. "He left it for us. When things get tough we'll share it."

Canham gave an hysterical giggle. "When 'things get tough'—! Goodnight, Hardrock!"

The two days following went by in a continuous waking nightmare—putting one foot in front of the other foot, inching their way monotonously toward the still invisible Pole. They had left the dust-devils behind—due to some freakishness of the wind, so they figured.

Canham looks like Death on a pale horse, Bradford thought dully. And I probably look worse. He rubbed absently at the dry, scaly pits on his face where the unholy dust had stung him and reverted to his private worry. Suppose the carefully theorized solar compass was wrong? Suppose this double-damned planet possessed a field of its own that would throw their calculations out and they were going in circles? If they were heading North, the Pole couldn't be more than another day or two distant even if his reckoning had been off.

Unconsciously he lengthened his stride for a few paces, and was reminded by his quickened breathing that he was wasting his scant oxygen supply. They already had tapped their original spare tanks, thankful for the lessened weight as they jettisoned the empty. Even with Palmer and Rodriguez' partly filled tanks they only had enough for a couple of days full time use. Since they had left the region of the whirlwinds, they had been able to experiment cautiously with leaving their faceplates open a few minutes at a time, even though the thin, oxygen-starved air caused their lungs to labor painfully.

Bradford was roused from his musings by an astonished exclamation from his companion. Down on his knees, Canham was babbling incoherently, "—green! It's green!"

Bradford knelt beside him in awestruck silence. A tiny growth scarcely large enough to be dignified with the title of shrub, here in this arid plain and undeniably—green! Canham touched it caressingly.

"Baby, I hope all your brothers and sisters and the rest of the kinfolk are just over the hill!"

Clambering to their feet, they set off, lumbering awkwardly in their heavy suits, breath coming in labored gasps to halt abruptly at the edge of a steep downward slope. Before them lay another belt of arid sand and beyond a ring of marshy, pool-dotted soil encircling a solid belt of vivid green—and faintly visible on the horizon, the glimmer of the shallow snowcap.

Canham gulped audibly. "If Cortez really wanted a thrill, he should have discovered this overgrown duckpond. The Pacific—phooey!"

Bradford slapped him on the back. "I feel like I could flap my wings and fly down! Last one in's a rotten egg...."

Laughing with almost hysterical relief, they ran, waddled and slid, heedless of bumps and oxygen wastage. They picked themselves up at the bottom, grinning sheepishly.

"If Space Authority could only see us now!" Canham chortled. "Let us now with due dignity take possession of our kingdom."

Jubilantly they strode ahead, bowing to imaginary cheering crowds.

"We've got it made, Hardrock. We got it made!"

Bradford's grin wavered. "Well ... we've got it made this far anyway, with two months and half to go. Let's hope there's duck on that pond!"

Suddenly sobered they went on; before them the semi-arid belt seemed to stretch interminably toward the barely visible green area. The horizon seemed to retreat as they advanced.

"Another night in this damned desert," Bradford groaned. "At least we may be able to get a fire going with this brush—and a real swallow of water apiece. I hope that stuff we saw out there wasn't a mirage," he added disconsolately.

"Not that—that was real honest-to-God water. Wish I'd brought my duck gun. These damn supply sergeants never do send out the right equipment."

Towards dusk they scooped out a shallow hole in the sand and roofed it with green branches.

"With our luck this stuff will probably turn out to be poison ivy," Canham predicted gloomily. "Join me in my thatched hut, oh beauteous one—and look out for sandburs."

They slept fitfully, shivering through the long night hours. Bradford announced that this was undoubtedly the North Pole and they had arrived at the beginning of the six months night. With the first of the thin, cheerless rays of the distant sun, they clambered out of their cramped sleeping place, some of yesterday's enthusiasm waning as they stumbled about, relaxing stiffened muscles.

Vaguely uneasy and depressed they started out; the very nearness of their goal somehow seemed to make their chances of reaching it doubly unsure.

Afternoon brought them to the edge of the marshy area; they halted, surveying it doubtfully. Any such region on Earth would have been busy with life—frogs croaking on lily pads, water rats and fish making small plopping sounds in the water, tall reeds swaying. Here there was nothing that breathed of warm-blooded life. Only the shallow pools lying stagnant, reflecting stubby water-grasses, dotted here and there with small mounds growing a stunted bush or two.

Canham shivered suddenly. "This is more dead than a cypress swamp. How I'd love to see a little old cottonmouth rearing his ugly head out of that puddle."

Bradford shifted his shoulders uneasily.

"Well, here goes! Shall we circle around a bit to see if there's a dryer path?"

An hour's walking brought no change; always before them lay the silent marsh, inimical in its unending desolation. And beyond it, tantalizingly green, lay the only growing things on Mars.

With some difficulty they managed to find a branch apiece long enough for a probing pole and started out reluctantly, wincing as their feet sank deep in the fetid ooze.

"These boots are damned heavy," Bradford remarked doubtfully.

"You take yours off if you want to," Canham returned emphatically. "I'm damned if I'm going to step on some slimy, poisonous species of fauna in my bare feet."

They forged ahead doggedly, tapping with their poles, making for a stunted shrub lifting itself above the rest. Bradford, slightly in the lead, whirled as Canham gave a stifled yelp and hauled himself up on the mound, looking slightly green.

"Felt like a whale turned under my foot," he panted. "Let's get out of this so I can be sick—"

Foot by foot, they heaved and plunged their way through the relentless sucking mire.

"We must be nearly to the other side," Bradford wheezed. "We've got to make it before dark. It's a cinch we can't camp here."

Canham looked across the few hundred yards remaining and shook his head wearily.

"This thing is like a moat; I get the feeling that we're being kept out by one defense after another. Those harmless looking, poisonous little beasts that killed Palmer, the wind-devils that got Rodriguez and now—this."

Bradford repressed a shiver.

"Come on!" he said roughly. "Don't start telling your ghost stories here, for the love of heaven! Save them for your kids."

They plopped off the further side of the mound, their feet making gobbling noises as they lifted them one after the other in the tenacious, clinging mud. Bradford halted suddenly.

"There it is," he breathed. "You can see the shore from here...."

Caution forgotten, they plunged ahead, panting with effort. Canham gave a sudden startled cry.

"Brad! I can't—lift—my foot...! I can't move it!"

Bradford, a few steps to the right, felt his heart leap sickeningly at the stark terror in the voice.

"Take it easy! Get a grip on my pole—now!"

He heaved strongly, feet slipping, unable to get a purchase to make his strength felt against the pull of the quicksand. The perspiration trickled into his smarting eyes. Through Canham's faceplate, he could see his face set in agonized strain as he attempted to free his feet in their heavy boots, the water level rising from waist to armpits as he struggled. Bradford redoubled his efforts, muscles cracking as he tried to heave the other free bodily. Canham relaxed suddenly.

"It's no use," he panted heavily. "Don't come closer—it'll just get both of us. Don't stay and watch it—it'll just make it harder. Wait a minute—here, catch!"

With a last convulsive effort, he jerked loose the oxygen tank and gave it a desperate throw. Bradford automatically caught it, nearly going off-balance and righting himself with panic-stricken effort.

"Hold on! hold on—" he gritted. "I'll get some branches from that shrub; you can throw yourself forward so I can get a grip on you."

Canham looked at him palely.

"No use. But, I'm not going under with my helmet on, still alive, under—this!"

He shuddered queasily, and with one quick jerk freed his faceplate as he went under. For a moment the water boiled furiously as the remaining oxygen in his suit released. Then Bradford stood alone, staring stupidly with shock, watching as the bubbles rose more and more slowly and died away.

He had no recollection of floundering the remaining hundred yards to the shore. Physically sick and shaking with horror, he ploughed through the shallowing ooze and fell headlong on wet, but solid earth.

The sun was sinking as he finally stirred, groaning, and pulled himself further away from the haunted ooze. Incredibly, he slept at last, waking to the first rays of the sun, dazed and unbelieving. Turning instinctively for the reassurance of another face, remembrance hit him like a blow. Bile came up into his mouth as he wrenched his faceplate open and was grindingly, shudderingly sick.

The spasm over, he heaved himself to his feet, staring about stupidly. Surely there was something he had to do? Every morning for so long he had had to lift himself to his feet and force himself to go on till dark—toward the Pole.

But—here was the green and a few miles away the hoarfrost glitter of the snowcap. There was nowhere to go!

"We made it—" he said uncertainly, looking around. But there was no one to share the triumph. Dully, he thought of them all—Palmer, betrayed by a gentle, kittenlike thing—Rodriguez, a human sacrifice to something utterly alien—Canham, dead on the edge of victory. He looked at Canham's oxygen canister and laid his hand on it gently. Then slowly, with dragging steps, he went on toward the shining green that had cost them so much to achieve.

The ground and the air above it as he approached were strangely warm. And the plants too, were warm and oddly different. No biologist, he dimly sensed a difference from any growth that Earth knew. The stems, the leaves were veined with pulsing red and at the tip of each stem, a flower lifted, shaped like an open mouth. There was a space between each plant, none crowded his neighbor. It was very orderly and pleasant and so warm—so warm. He opened his faceplate.

Drowsy and relaxed, no longer driven by unrelenting urgency, he found himself nodding dreamily as he walked between the tall stems. With a sigh of pleasure, he laid down among them, conscious on the verge of sleep of an insistent demanding whisper—"More air! Give us air!" Unhesitatingly, he opened the gauge of the oxygen tank, drifting into a sea of darkness.

The red-veined plants about him pulsed with a quicker rhythm as the thousand opened mouths drank in the air, rich with a richness they had not known for a million years. And about the unconscious form of the man, poured the carbon dioxide from the lips of a thousand oxygen breathing creatures.

They had had a million years to learn the technique of survival as the atmosphere of their planet drained off into space. Retreating, adapting, eon by eon to their last stronghold: ringed round by their guardians of the Earth, the Air and the Water.

Here were the Survivors.

THE END