Sleepers Of Mars

Externally, there was nothing to distinguish the next morning from its predecessors. The Sun rose as it had risen for centuries into a featureless, cloudless sky, and shone down upon the unshaded sands. But to the Earthmen, high in their rooms in Ailiko, it had a character of its own, for it was the last day of their exile. True that it would take twelve weeks or more to cross the space which lay between them and home, but the homeward journey, once fairly begun, could no longer be considered exile. They would spend only one more night in the deserted city.

Gordonov was first into the living-room. He switched on the visi-screen, which he had left trained to the position of the Tovaritch, and as it cleared the sight raised his spirits still higher and banished the last trace of the doubts which had troubled him in the night.

The great rocket had already been raised to the vertical and poised on her four stabilising fins. A metal scaffolding was being erected beside it to enable the machines to reach the refuelling ports. From the open airlock leading to the living-quarters a rope ladder hung down the shining side to the ground, 120 feet below.

Gordonov called the others in. Their eyes lit up at the sight. A delighted grin spread over Vinski’s face.

‘Now, at last, I can really believe that we’re going to get away,’ he said.

‘You’d begun to doubt it?’ said the doctor.

‘Hadn’t we all? This place seemed to take away my hope and faith in anything. The sight of the old rocket up on end again makes me feel a new man. What’s wrong with you?’ he added, catching sight of Zhatkin. ‘Cheer up, you gloomy Tartar, we’re as good as on our way now.’

‘Are we? I don’t feel that we are. I’m still afraid of this place.’

‘Oh, all right, go on! Be a skeleton at the feast if you must, only don’t rattle your bones.’

But Zhatkin’s misgivings did not damp the cheerfulness of the meal with which they began the day. The sense of the deserted city outside no longer depressed their spirits, and they were full of plans. Platavinov to collect specimen instruments, a few books and pieces of minor apparatus from the hospital; Vinski to shoot off the remainder of his films; Gordonov make a last desperate attempt at understanding some of the machines.

Only Zhatkin put forward no plan for the day. He sat, indifferent, scarcely listening to them. At the end of the meal he asked:

‘What about Yauadin? Where’s he?’

‘Still sleeping, I suppose,’ said Platavinov. But the Kirghizian shook his head.

‘He’s not. I looked.’

Vinski slipped from the room. He returned in a moment.

‘Zhatkin’s right. He’s gone! And his rug’s quite cold. He must have been gone some hours.’

‘Why didn’t you say so before?’ the doctor demanded.

Zhatkin shrugged his shoulders. ‘I forgot; but it wouldn’t have made any difference.’

Platavinov grunted. It was true that it would have made no difference if he had heard of it half an hour earlier, but he was irritated that Zhatkin and not himself had been the one to make the discovery.

‘Anyway, he can’t have gone far. He’ll probably turn up for some food soon.’

Zhatkin seemed determined to make himself unpopular.

‘It’s perfectly obvious where he’s gone,’ he said, with irritating certainty.

‘And where’s that?’

‘Why, back to where he came from. To the vaults under the hospital, of course.’

Gordonov got up and went to the cupboard where they kept the space-suits. There were only three there; the one he himself had been using had gone.

Vinski rose. ‘We’d better go after him. The poor devil will go crazy alone in that place. After all, we owe him something for what we’ve done to him. We might even take him back to Earth, if there’s no other way of dealing with him. Get another suit out of the stores and come along to the hospital, Gordonov.’

All four made their way through the underground passage together. At the hospital lock, Platavinov pushed over the opening lever, but the door remained closed.

‘That’s odd,’ he said. ‘It’s never failed before.’ He tried again, but the door still refused to move.

‘Better try the ground-level entrance,’ Vinski suggested.

They went back a little and gained the surface by way of the nearest empty building. The main entrance-lock of the hospital faced them as they emerged. Again Platavinov pulled over a lever which should have admitted them, but like the other, the door failed to respond.

‘He’s jigered the works somehow,’ said Gordonov. ‘Seems as if he didn’t want us.’

Vinski agreed. ‘And I don’t see that there’s much we can do about it,’ he added.

‘That’s all very well,’ protested Platavinov, looking round from a further assault on the door. ‘But if I can’t get in, I can’t set hold of those instruments and specimens. There must be other ways into the place.’