Collected Short Fiction, page 116
We heard the worst. War had run over all the earth like a flame. Half a million were already dead—most of them noncombatants, hardly aware that war was begun. Fleets of ionodyne fliers had bombed many cities—Moscow, London, Istanbul, Cairo, Yokohama. Nearly every nation on earth had already declared for one side or the other, driven by hatred or fear.
Dr. Eldred slumped down on a stool in my shed when he heard the news. Life seemed suddenly gone from the man. His shoulders sagged; his head hung dejectedly. His gray face was lined as with suddenly added years.
“It’s the end,” he whispered to me, in a dry, hopeless voice. “I did my best. But this is the end! War. Red war. Science debased to slay our fellow men. Our civilization can never weather another war—if you can call it a civilization that lets wars happen.”
He ran his long fingers despairingly through his hair. “Sidney, when we get back, earth may be burned out, as Mars is! Red slag . . .” he whispered, “red slag . . . red slag, where men and women and children used to toil and laugh and love.”
But most of the party took the news of war far differently. They hung in an excited mob about the station, clamoring for the latest news, wildly discussing each fragment. Everyone was eager to know which side his nation had joined, each eager to champion his country and to proclaim another in the wrong.
On the previous day the members of the expedition had seemed a sober, sane group of scientists, working at a serious problem, in whole-hearted cooperation. But the madness of war seemed planted in the blood of all. Before the day was gone, we were divided into two factions each eyeing the other with feverish suspicion.
Twice that day the words of heated argument gave place to blows, and once-sober scientists rolled on the red slag of Mar?, fighting with the same elemental weapons their ancestors had used in jungle war.
I was too busy with the photoscope apparatus to take any active part, physical or otherwise, in the discussion, though I confess that my sympathies were with the side my own nation had chosen to espouse—but few, in those days, shared Dr. Eldred’s sense of world-patriotism.
On that day several members of the expedition received messages in code, and replied to them in kind—without rousing my suspicion.
That night, after the earth had set and the messages had ceased, Dr. Eldred called us together in the main salon of the Princess of Peace. Lean, aged man, shoulders drooping as if the last day had added ten years to their burden, he walked out before us, and spoke.
“Men and women, we heard today that war has spread like devouring flame over our native planet. It is a terrible thing. Our world may be burned out when we return. A waste of red slag, like Mars. Any one of you may have friends on earth dying hideously at this instant.
“Many of us are already infected with the dread fever of war. We unreasonably hate the people of those nations that happen to be at war with ours. We are filled with hot madness, that bids us kill and maim and destroy.
“But we must subdue that fevered madness. We have work to do here, that requires all our efforts. It is perhaps the greatest task that our science has ever attempted, and great good may come of it, for the earth. We must let no spirit of dissension weaken our efforts, or we shall not only fail in that task, we shall all die here, miserably!”
Half a dozen men sprang to their feet, as he finished. Anido Castelar, the tall Chilean, was the first to speak, in his halting English.
“You mean we do not go back at once? Just today I have a call from my nation. My people, they need me. We must return.”
“We can’t leave Mars until our work here is done,” Dr. Eldred said.
Confusion rose. A veritable clamor of demands that we start back at once. Dr. Eldred held up a thin white hand until the uproar had ceased.
“We must think no longer of our individual nations, but of our planet as a whole,” he said quietly. “We must learn to live together on our globe, or die on it.
“Earth could gain nothing by our return. Our knowledge of science would only make the war more horrible. A single invention of mine, conceived without malice to any, has already cost the life of millions.
“Here we may accomplish something useful.”
“Let’s vote!” someone shouted. The cry was clamorously echoed.
A GAIN he silenced the room with his hand. “Our ship is too small a place for contention. We all depend upon each other. If half of us were dead, the other half would die, because they could not operate the ship.
“And the earth has become too small for war. Nations are too close together; they depend too much upon one another. They must learn to live without war—or die.”
He dismissed the meeting. For the time being, he had won. But it is hard for one man to cope with the war spirit in many. It is too strong, too elemental. Hate and fear can fan it into madness that no reason can curb. I knew trouble was to come.
The history of war, through the next month, need not be detailed here. The story is old as man. Men fought bravely, on land and under the sea and above the air—bravely, but futilely, vainly. Cities destroyed, fair lands ravaged, men killing men in panic insanity.
This was the old red tragedy, played on a greater stage. The dead were hundreds of millions. The ravaged lands were continents. The destroyed cities were New York and Seattle and Quebec; Vienna and Madrid and Nizhni Novgorod; Buenos Aires and Perth and Tashkend—those and many more.
Never had the power of science enabled men to destroy their fellows upon a scale so lavish; they proceeded with a fine abandon of enthusiasm, as if to finish the task out of hand.
It was difficult, during that month, for Dr. Eldred to maintain any discipline in the party. All insisted upon waiting about the photoscope for news, until he ordered me not to handle any private messages. And that made more trouble.
But the translation of the inscriptions proceeded rapidly.
One evening when I was in his office, aboard the Princess of Peace, Dr. Eldred summed up the results of the work, in a report that he dictated to Joan Lenwick, for me to transmit to earth.
“The cataclysm that transformed this planet into a red waste of burned lava,” he began, “took place nearly 100,000 years ago. At that time Mars was a habitable world. Oceans covered nearly a third of its surface; its continents supported luxuriant vegetation; its atmosphere contained sufficient humidity and oxygen for the highest life.
“The intelligent beings—quite unlike men in form—whose ruined buildings are found throughout the planet, possessed a mechanical civilization, higher, it may be, than ours of earth. But, like us, they had failed to stop war among themselves.
“At the last, the planet was divided between two great nations or leagues, each holding half the planet. Intermittent warfare had long flamed between them.”
The old scientist strode wearily back and forth across the room, sometimes running his thin fingers through his hair, with a quick impatient motion. His hair was fine and abundant; he wore it long, and it was always tousled from that habit of running his fingers through it.
Joan sat at her desk at the side of the room, cool and trim and straight. Her white fingers moved over the keys of her machine with an easy, confident skill. She wore green, I remember; and she looked very lovely, cool and calm and capable. She did not have to watch the keys; sometimes she looked across at me, with a hint of smile in her blue eyes.
“Finally, with new weapons that its scientists had developed,” Dr. Eldred went on, as he paced the floor, “one faction set out to crush the other. For a long time it prosecuted the war successfully, destroying the most of its enemies, and surrounding the others in a vast, fortified city, near the south pole of Mars.
“But the scientists in that last beleaguered stronghold were busy. They invented a new weapon. Fortunately, it is not described very fully on the monuments. But it seems to have been a force that disintegrated the element oxygen, breaking up its atoms and perhaps recombining their protons and electrons into atoms of other elements.
“The besieged inhabitants of that last city armed themselves with the new instrumentality—and burned Mars to red slag. Burned their enemies—if ‘burn’ can apply to such a process—burned the vegetable and animal life of the planet, as well as the surface rocks, to red slag. Converted the oceans into red deserts by destroying the oxygen in their waters. Disintegrated even the oxygen in the atmosphere.
“It must all have happened rather quickly. The new arm had a dreadful power of destruction. And those who besieged the city did not sue for peace. They devised breathing masks, and armor for their bodies, and made a final, desperate assault.
“They carried the barriers, in spite of the new weapon. Most of the people of the city died fighting in the streets—while that flaming ray was burning up the planet.
“It was too late when sanity came back to the few of each faction that survived. Mars was already wrecked. And still the ray was flaming on. The enemies united in a terrible struggle to put out the destroying ray. Few, few indeed, were left when it was done.
“Peace had come to Mars in the end, but its price had been the life of the planet.
“The survivors united their efforts to erect those monuments we have been deciphering, to serve as a warning to their children, if they were able to survive and to build a new civilization upon the desolated world.
“Aside from the monuments, we have found no trace of them. They must have paid the price of peace in full.”
CHAPTER IV
Mutiny!
THE gray, tired-faced old man stopped his weary pacing, and turned to me.
“Please send that to earth, tomorrow, Sidney,” he said. I nodded. “It may serve as a warning. It might help to save the earth. Sidney, we must save the earth! We can’t let this madness of war burn it out, as Mars was burned out!”
I said nothing. What could I have said? I knew that the iron heel of war had been on the neck of mankind since the first ape-men fought, and I could see no hope of lighting it. I doubted that a world hot with the fever of war would even read the message.
“Another thing, Sidney,” and he lowered his voice. “Be sure not to send any private messages—especially any in code.”
“I remember your instructions.”
“And don’t let anyone else have access to the set, when sending is possible.”
“Very well. Though I doubt that any of the others could operate it. A good deal of it is my own design, you know.”
“Be careful. And I’d better tell you why, so you can be on your guard.” He turned to Joan. “You, too, Miss Lenwick, must be on guard. Watch your notes—better keep them locked up, in the safe.
“Both of you may be surprised to learn,” he said with deliberate emphasis, “that certain members of our party have been trying to rediscover the ray that burned out Mars!”
“You mean—” I stammered, “you mean—”
“That they want to send that horror to the earth?” Joan finished quickly, her blue eyes wide, frightened.
“They do.”
“It’s incredible!” I burst out. “After they’ve seen Mars—”
“The madness of war makes men do incredible things,” he said. “They started work on it three weeks ago. One of them must have found something on the monuments that served as a clue. They were analyzing the red slag, deriving the formulae, and trying to deduce the reaction.
“I tried to stop it, of course. Destroyed their notes and apparatus, and told them to leave it alone. But I think some of them have been working at it secretly, since. I find from the watch that they have been slipping out at night, and there is more apparatus missing from the supplies. They must have a hidden laboratory, out in the hills.
“You think they’ve succeeded,” I asked in astonishment.
“I’m pretty sure of it. Able men, you know, all of them. The best scientists on earth—despite the hellish thing they plan. And they had gone a long way before I suspected anything.”
“You think,” Joan whispered, “they would send—that—to earth?”
“War makes savages and beasts out of men,” Dr. Eldred said. “Anyhow, Sidney, don’t send any messages in code.”
“I won’t,” I assured him. “And the men,” I asked. “Who—”
He looked at me curiously.
“What difference does it make, Sidney,” he asked me, “whether the earth is burned to red slag by the nation in which we were born, or by the enemies of that nation?”
“None. And Doctor, I hope that—that you don’t think—”
He smiled a little. “I think I could trust you, Sidney. And Joan. But few are immune to the germs of war. Anyhow, as it happens, you will not be tempted.
“And I may as well tell you, so you can be on your guard. The men are Castelar and Heink and Satsuma. They are the leaders. Sonia Milikov would probably be with them, and others.”
Joan seemed surprised. “Not the Don!” she exclaimed. “And Sonia! They seemed so nice!”
“The madness of war is in them. They are not responsible for what they do.”
The three came into my little shed on the second day after. It was late in the morning, when most of the party had already gone to the monuments, or were busy about the Princess of Peace. I was at the instruments, dispatching the scientific reports that had been written on the night before.
“Senor Tancred, you please send this.”
Castelar, the suave Chilean, addressed me, thrust into my hand a sheet of paper. I glanced down at it, saw that it was covered with the apparently jumbled letters of a code message.
Was this the information that might make of our earth a barren waste of red slag? It must be. Something made me tremble; I struggled to control my agitation.
I looked at the address. It seemed innocent enough. Leon Monotoya, 14 A 95, Vino del Mar, Valparaiso, Chile. It seemed innocent—but was it?
“Please send it at once,” Castelar repeated. “I have business connection in my own land that may not be neglected.”
I looked at the three. Anido Castelar, tall, suave, immaculate, but the veiled threat in his black eyes unmistakable. Emil Heink, huge, florid, pale-eyed, coldly menacing. Iko Satsuma, small man, alert, his bright-eyed, yellow face completely inscrutable. The breathing masks that covered the lower part of their faces made their expressions oddly sinister.
They were not openly hostile; they seemed merely tense, anxious.
“My orders are to forward no private communications,” I said.
Heink’s face flushed red; the Chilean stiffened; the expression of the little Japanese did not change.
“We can make it worth your while, Senor,” Castelar said quickly. “The message is very important. One thousand pesos, gold, to send it at once. Bueno?”
“I’m glad to know the value you set on my honor.”
The German pushed forward angrily, pulling a thick package from his pocket.
“Nonsense enough,” he sputtered. “The message at once must go to earth. Here is reward for you sufficient!”
He ripped open the package, and pulled from it a sheaf of stiff, crackling bills. I saw, to my astonishment, that the denomination of each was one hundred thousand dollars. Each of them represented more actual money than I had ever seen before. And he began dealing them to me like cards!
“One million! Is that enough? Two millions? Five?”
I was staggered. I trembled, and felt sweat coming out on my body.
With a fierce, angry movement, I pushed the money back at him.
Then I saw the deadly little ultra-wave projector in Satsuma’s yellow hand, an ominous bluish glow flickering about the point of the tube.
“You will dispatch the message at once,” he said in his dead, unaccented English. His face was still an unreadable mask.
“You don’t dare use that!” I shot at him.
A pencil of blue hissed at me, for answer. A hot needle of pain seared across my shoulder; smoke of burned flesh and fabric burst from me. I still wear the mark of Satsuma’s ray.
Nausea and weakness flowed over me in a red wave, put out my anger. I reeled, grasped at a table, and searched my brain for some ruse that would give me time to recover from the first shock of the ray.
“You win,” I said.
I took the message and turned to the instrument, while the three watched like hawks. I set the dials, began clicking the code letters out upon the keys.
Heink was too shrewd for me. Abruptly he sprang upon me, seized my seared shoulder in a painful grasp, pointing a thick, accusing finger at the xenon tube.
“We are not fools. Your tube is dead; you send nothing!”
I nodded, and handed the paper back again.
Satsuma lifted his projector.
“I won’t send it,” I said. “And it won’t particularly help matters to kill me—no one else can run the set.”
A smile came upon the yellow mask of Satsuma’s face, a smile that was dreadful. His dead voice whispered, “Before I am done, you will send it—gladly.”
Then Joan screamed at the door of the shed.
Castelar crumpled up the paper, thrust it in his mouth.
Satsuma started toward Joan, then wheeled on me with murder in his bright black eyes. I caught him on the jaw with a fortunate punch; he fell backward, and the little projector clattered from his hand.
Heink was lumbering toward the door, where Joan stood staring, white faced, wide-eyed, terrified. I ran after him.
The two men who had been on guard outside the main valve of the Princess of Peace, attracted by Joan’s cry, arrived just as we reached the door. Heink turned back at sight of them, and ran to join Castelar, who already had the Japanese on his feet.
The three of them ran out through the back of the shed, and across the red slag toward the low, glistening hills of crimson lava. They should have been followed, of course, at once. But Dr. Eldred was away at the monuments. And my demand that they be arrested resulted only in confusion, which I better understood in the light of later events.
