Rebels of the Red Planet by Charles L. Fontenay
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REBELS OF THE RED PLANET
by
CHARLES L. FONTENAY
_Charles L. Fontenay has also written_:
TWICE UPON A TIME (D-266)
Copyright (C), 1961, by Ace Books, Inc.All Rights Reserved
Printed in U.S.A.ACE BOOKS, INC.23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
MARS FOR THE MARTIANS!
Dark Kensington had been dead for twenty-five years. It was a fact; everyone knew it. Then suddenly he reappeared, youthful, brilliant, ready to take over the Phoenix, the rebel group that worked to overthrow the tyranny that gripped the settlers on Mars.
The Phoenix had been destroyed not once, not twice, but three times! But this time the resurrected Dark had new plans, plans which involved dangerous experiments in mutation and psionics.
And now the rebels realized they were in double jeopardy. Not only from the government's desperate hatred of their movement, but also from the growing possibility that the new breed of mutated monsters would get out of hand and bring terrors never before known to man.
CHARLES L. FONTENAY writes: "I was born in Brazil of a father who was by birth English and by parentage German and French, and of a mother who was by birth American and by parentage American and Scottish. This mess of internationalism caused me some trouble in the army during World War II as the government couldn't decide whether I was American, British, or Brazilian; and both as an enlisted man and an officer I dealt in secret work which required citizenship by birth. On three occasions I had to dig into the lawbooks. Finally they gave up and admitted I was an American citizen....
"I was raised on a West Tennessee farm and distinguished myself in school principally by being the youngest, smallest (and consequently the fastest-running) child in my classes ... Newspaper work has been my career since 1936. I have worked for three newspapers, including _The Nashville Tennessean_ for which I am now rewrite man, and before the war for the Associated Press."
Mr. Fontenay is married, lives in Madison, Tenn., and has had one other novel published by Ace Books.
* * * * *
1
It is a sea, though they call it sand.
They call it sand because it is still and red and dense with grains.They call it sand because the thin wind whips it, and whirls its dustyskim away to the tight horizons of Mars.
But only a sea could so brood with the memory of aeons. Only a sea,lying so silent beneath the high skies, could hint the mystery of lifestill behind its barren veil.
To practical, rational man, it is the Xanthe Desert. Whatever else hemight unwittingly be, S. Nuwell Eli considered himself a practical,rational man, and it was across the bumpy sands of the Xanthe Desertthat he guided his groundcar westward with that somewhat cautiousproficiency that mistrusts its own mastery of the machine. Maya CaraNome, his colleague in this mission to which he had addressed himself,was a silent companion.
Nuwell's liquid brown eyes, insistent upon their visual clarity, saw thered sand as the blowing surface of unliving solidity. Only clarity wasadmitted to Nuwell, and the only living clarity was man and beast andvegetation, spotted in the dome cities and dome farms of the lowlands.He and Maya scurried, transiting sparks of the only life, insecure andhastening in the absence of the net of roads which eventually would bindthe Martian surface to human reality from the toeholds of the domecities.
In that opposite world which was the other side of the groundcar's seat,Maya Cara Nome's opaque black eyes struggled against the surface. Theystruggled not from any rational motivation but from long stubbornness,from habit, as a fly kicks six-legged and constant against the surfacetension of a trapping pool.
Formally, Maya was allied to Newell's clarity and solidity, and shecould express this alliance with complete logic if called on. But behindthe casually blowing sand she sensed a depth. The shimmering atmosphere,hostile to man, which sealed the red desert was a lens that distortedand concealed by its intervention. The groundcar was a mechanical bug,an alienness with which timorous man had allied himself; allied with itagainst reality, she and Nuwell were hastened by it through reality,unseeing, toward the goal of a more comfortable unreality.
The groundcar bumped and slithered, and an orange dust-cloud boiled upfrom its broad tires and wafted away across the sculpted sand. Thedesert stretched away, silent and empty, to the distant horizon; thegroundcar the only humming disturbance of its silence and emptiness. Thesteel-blue sky shimmered above, a lens capping the red surface.
The groundcar rolled westward, slashing toward its goal from the distantlowland of Solis Lacus. Far away, two men, machineless, plodded thissame Xanthe Desert toward the same goal; but they plodded southward,approaching on a different radius.
They were naked. In a thin atmosphere without sufficient oxygen tosupport animal life or even the higher forms of terrestrial plant life,they wore no marsuits, no helmets, no oxygen tanks.
The man who walked in front was tall, erect, powerfully muscled. Hisfeatures and short-clipped hair were coarse, but self-assuredintelligence shone in his smoky eyes. He moved across the loose sand,barefoot, with easy grace.
The--man?--that shambled behind him was as tall, but appeared shorterand even more muscular because his shoulders and head were hunchedforward. His even coarser face was characterized by vacuously slackmouth and blue eyes empty of any expression except an occasional brieffrown of puzzlement.
Toward a focal point: from the east, two people; from the north, twopeople. If in the efficient self-assurance of Adam Hennessey could beparalleled a variant harmony with the insistent surfaceness of S. NuwellEli, does any coincidental parallelism exist between Brute Hennessey andMaya Cara Nome?
Puzzlement was the climate of Brute's mind. This surface film of thingsthrough which he ploughed his way, the swarming currents below thesurface--all were chaos. He grasped vaguely at comprehension withoutachieving, the effective coalescence of electric ideas always fallingshort before reaching consciousness.
The two men plodded, naked, through the loose sand. Above them in theMars-blue dome of day, the weak sun turned downward, warning of itseventual departure.
A two-passengered groundcar and two men, widely apart, and yet bound forthe same destination....
The destination was a lone, sprawling building in the desert. It couldhave been a huge warehouse, or a fortress, of black, almost windowlessMartian stone. The only outstanding feature of its virtually featurelesshulk was a tower which struck upward from its northern side.
As the summer afternoon progressed, Dr. G. O. T. Hennessey paced thewindy summit of the tower, peered frequently into the desert northbeneath a sunshading hand, and waggled his goat beard in annoyance underhis transparent marshelmet.
Had the helmet speaker been on or the air less thin, one might havedetermined that Goat Hennessey was utilizing some choice profanity,directed at those two absent personages whose names were, respectively,Adam and Brute.
The airlock to the tower elevator opened and a small creature--achild?--emerged onto the roof. Distorted, humpbacked andbarrel-chested, it scuttled on reed-thin legs to Goat's side. It wore nomarsuit.
"Father!" screeched this apparition, its thin voice curiously muffled bythe tenuous air. "Petway fell in the laundry vat!"
"For the love of space!" muttered Goat in exasperation. "Is there waterin it?"
When the newcomer gave no sign of hearing, Goat realized his helmetspeaker was off. He switched it on.
"Is there water in the vat?" he repeated.
"Yes, sir.
"Well, go fish him out before he soaks up all the water. The soap willmake him sick."
The messenger turned, almost tripping over its own broad feet, and wentback through the airlock. Goat returned to his northward vigil.
Miles away, Nuwell slowed the groundcar as it approached the lip of thatprecipitous slope bordering the short canal which connects Juventae Fonswith the Arorae Sinus Lowland. He consulted a rough chart, and turnedthe groundcar southward. A drive of about a kilometer brought them to awide descending ledge down which they were able to drive into the canal.
Here, on the flat lowland surface, the canal sage grew thick, agray-green expanse stretching unbroken to the distant cliff that was theother side of the canal. Occasionally above its smoothness thrust thegiant barrel of a canal cactus.
Nuwell headed the groundcar straight across the canal, for the chartshowed that the nearest upward ledge on the other side was convenientlyalmost opposite. The big wheels bent and crushed the canal sage, leavinga double trail.
The canal sage brought with it the comforting feeling of surface lifeonce more. This feeling, for no reason that he could have determinedconsciously, released Nuwell's tongue.
"Maya," he said, in a voice that betrayed determination behind itsmildness, "I don't see any real reason for waiting. When we've clearedup this matter at Ultra Vires and get back to Mars City, I think weshould get married."
She glanced at his handsome profile and smiled affectionately.
"I'm complimented by your impatience, Nuwell," she said. "But there is agood reason for waiting, for me. When we're married, I want to be yourwife, completely. I want to keep your home and mother your children.Don't you understand that?"
"That's what I want, too," he said. "That's my idea of what marriage is.But, Maya, if you insist on finishing this government assignment, thatcould be a long time off."
"I know, and I don't like it any better than you do, darling," saidMaya. "But it's cost the Earth government a great deal of trouble andmoney to send me here, and you know how long it would take for them toget a replacement to Mars for me. I don't feel that I can let themdown, and I don't think it would be much of a beginning to our marriagefor me to be running around ferreting out rebels during the first monthsof it."
"That's another thing I don't like, Maya," said Nuwell. "It's dangerous,and I don't want anything to happen to you."
"It's your work, too, and it's not absolutely safe for you, either. I'llbe sharing it with you when we're married, and for you it will go on fora long time. I have a specific mission here, to locate the rebelheadquarters, and as soon as I've done that I'll be more than happy tobecome just a contented housewife and leave the rest of it to you."
Nuwell shrugged, a little disconsolately, and turned his attention tothe task of negotiating the groundcar up the ascending slope.
She was a strange creature, this little Maya of his. She had been bornon Mars and, orphaned by some unknown disaster, had been cared forduring her first years by the mysterious, grotesque native Martians.When they took her at last to one of the dome cities, she was sent toEarth for rearing. And now she was back on Mars as an undercover agentof the Earth government, seeking to ferret out the rebels known to beengaging in widespread forbidden activities.
Often he did not understand her, but he wanted her, nevertheless.
Nuwell steered the groundcar slowly up the slope, over rubble and ruts,avoiding the largest rocks. At last they reached the top, and thegroundcar arrowed out over the desert again, picking up speed.
Far to the left and ahead of them there was another dust-cloud driftingup, one that was not of the thin wind, but nearly stationary. Nuwellfound the binoculars in the storage compartment and handed them to Maya.
"What's that over there?" he wondered. "Another groundcar? Take a look,Maya."
Maya trained the glasses in the direction indicated, through thegroundcar's transparent dome. It was difficult to get them focused, forthe groundcar swayed and jolted, but at last she was able to make briefidentification.
"They're Martians, Nuwell," she said. "Can we drive over that way?"
"You've seen Martians before," he said.
"But I'd like to speak with them," she said. "I talk their language, youknow."
"Yes, I do know, darling, but that's utterly foolish. They're onlyanimals, after all, and we have to get to Ultra Vires before night, ifwe can."
He kept the groundcar on its course.
Maya lapsed into disgruntled silence. Nuwell stole a sidelong glanceat her, his breath catching slightly at the curve of the petite,perfectly feminine form beneath the loose Martian tunic and baggytrousers. He reached over and patted her hand.
But Maya was offended. She kept her black head turned away from him,looking out of the groundcar dome across the desert.
At their destination, Goat Hennessey peered eagerly into the distance,searching.
This time, his watery blue eyes picked up two tiny figures on thehorizon. He watched them as they approached, finally detailingthemselves into two naked, pink creatures of manshape and only slightlymore than mansize.
"They made it," he muttered. "Both of them. Good!"
He turned and entered the airlock. As soon as its air reachedterrestrial density and composition, he removed his marshelmet.
Goat rode the elevator to the ground level, left it and hurried down acorridor, reaching the outside airlock in time to admit the two figures.
Adam entered first, easily confident, carrying his head like a king.Brute shambled behind him.
"Everything go all right?" asked Goat, his voice quavering in hisanxiety.
"Fine, father," said Adam, smiling to reveal savage, even teeth.
"Nothing unusual happen?"
"Nothing at all, sir."
"You forget, Adam?" mouthed Brute eagerly. "You forget you fall?"
Adam spun on him ferociously, raising a heavy hand in threat. Brute didnot cringe.
"I forget nothing!" snarled Adam. "You crazy Brute, I say it isnothing!"
"But, Adam--"
"I say it is nothing!" howled Adam and sprang for him.
"Stop it!" snapped Goat, like the crack of a whip, and they froze in themoment of their grappling. Sheepishly, they parted and stood side byside before him.
"I'll listen to details after supper," said Goat. "The children arehungry, and so am I."