Sleepers Of Mars

Gordonov’s gaze never shifted for an instant from the small mirror. At any moment now she might start. There was the possibility of a few seconds, perhaps as much as a minute’s discrepancy between Zhatkin’s calculations and theirs. His fingers were on the starting knob, ready to twist it at the sight of the first flush of flame from the other rocket.

The rest waited anxiously, watching his right hand. The seconds crawled. Then came the moment.

Fire poured in a sudden flash between the other’s flanges; it streaked upwards into the purplish Martian day. The Gloria Mundi had gone like a meteor.

On the instant Gordonov turned the knob. The Tovaritch trembled and leapt. Weight fell on each man inside like a physical blow, sudden, breathtaking, and then was gone. The sky outside the window wheeled giddily. Eight hammocks swung across as one. There was a shock which set each bobbing and swinging on its springs. Alternately the men were crushed upon them, or held to them only by their straps.

Outside, sand and sky churned round in a whirl as the rocket swung and rolled. It was all over in the few nightmare seconds before Gordonov had the presence of mind to switch off.

The explosive bucking ceased at once. For a moment or two the rocket swayed, then slowly and quite deliberately the living-room began to go round and round. Only the eight hammocks on their universal swingings remained steady as lockers and panels and walls fled round them. Then, with a final, jolting lurch, the Tovaritch came to rest.

Gordonov lay sweating and rocking gently in his hammock.

‘It’s a pity,’ he said, with remarkable restraint, ‘that I couldn’t have a look at those firing tubes.’

‘We must have shot about the desert like a Chinese cracker. What happened?’ asked Vinski.

Gordonov shrugged. ‘At a guess I’d say that the stern tubes on one side fired, and the bunch on the other side didn’t—or only half of ’em did. Only a guess, though.’

‘Well, we’re lucky,’ put in Zhatkin. ‘At least we didn’t blow up.’

‘If you call it luck to be faced with spending the remainder of our lives—and not a very long remainder, at that—on Mars. I’m not sure that blowing up wouldn’t have been more satisfactory and less uncomfortable in the long run.’

Vinski released himself from his hammock-straps and made his way to the unshuttered window.

‘Here come those damned machines again. Hundreds of ’em,’ he said.

‘What’s it doing?’ asked Gordonov.

‘Signalling,’ said Vinski, at the window. ‘It looks as if it wants to come in. It’s holding some kind of tin box.’

‘Well, let’s have it in,’ Zhatkin advised. ‘If it can fit itself into the airlock, that is. We can’t stay here for ever. If the things mean to get us, they’ll do it sooner or later; and if they don’t, it’s about time we got on speaking terms with them.’

The others nodded.

It was twenty-four hours since the mishap to the Tovaritch. The knowledge that it was now impossible for them to get away had given a very different aspect to their imprisonment. Before, it had been only a matter of disappointment in that it prevented them from learning more of Mars; but now they knew that, unless some outside power should help them, they were faced with living just as long as the food, air and water in the ship could sustain them—-no longer.

Vinski agreed. Through the window he signed to the machine to go to the airlock, and crossed the room to pull the lever which released the bolts on the outer door. Half a minute later the machine entered with a clatter of its metal feet on the side of the rocket.

The Tovaritch’s crew inspected it with nervous apprehension. It was the first time that they had been able to examine one of the mechanical monsters at close quarters, but they learned little new. The hard, silvery metal might have been any one of many alloys, and externally there was no clue to the nature of the machinery contained in the coffinshaped body-case. Whatever it was, it was so efficient that at a yard’s distance it was impossible to distinguish any hum or sound of transmission.

The machine, however, had come neither to exhibit itself nor to indulge in an exchange of courtesies. Without waste of time, it advanced to the table and set down there the box it was carrying. Five sides of the cube were of metal, but that which faced the men was of pearly, smoky-grey glass. While one tentacle did something at the back of the box, the other reached towards a folding stool and placed it in front of the table. Then both tentacles curled back to rest by their owner’s sides.

An exclamation from Vinski drew the attention of the rest from the machine to the box on the table. The grey screen had cleared, and on it appeared the life-sized head of a man, depicted with the utmost reality of which two dimensions are capable.