Marooned on Mars Read online

  Steele answered. “One of the torches is missing—along with a few other tools we’ve lost here and there, but not really thought much about. But a torch is something that doesn’t get lost—and we’re sunk without it.”

  Chuck was amazed at how depressed the group seemed after his hike. He stared from one tired, glum face to another, and back to the desperation on Vance’s.

  “Okay,” the captain said finally. “I know nobody stole it—there’d be no reason. I know the men who have been doing the welding aren’t the type to hide it to keep from working—none of you is. And I know it isn’t lost. Where does that leave us?”

  Rothman shrugged. “Minus one welding torch, two pairs of pliers, one spade, one sheet of aluminum, four cans of corned beef…”

  The men stood up and began moving wearily out to their work. Vance put his head between his hands, shaking it back and forth. The welding torch was as necessary as he thought, of course. But there was nothing he could do, about it.

  “We’ve got an air leak,” he announced, as-calmly as he could. “Not the ripped seam. That was welded tight yesterday, and the leak is in the wrong section. We spent half the day going around with the smoke candles—and there is hardly a spot on the hull that doesn’t have some leak; popped rivets, unwelded welding, and everything else. Our pressure has been dropping. We can make it up with Martian air—but we can’t go out into space until its all sound. We need that torch more than we ever did. But I guess you’ll have to take the little electric torch. Chuck, and go around, using it on all the small places we’ve marked with smoke and chalk.”

  Sokolsky touched him on the shoulder. “Maybe I know what happened to the torch. We aren’t the only life on this planet. Miles. There’s a native brand of thief around.” He began a carefully toned-down version of the incidents of the gun and knife, stressing his magpie theory. Whatever the creatures saw being used, they wanted. And they were clever.

  “Store everything inside, and keep it sealed” he suggested. “You can at least prevent anything else being lost.”

  Vance shook his head. “Better yet, set a trap. If we can find where they took that torch, we can get it back. I’ll bait the trap tonight, and put Ginger to watch over it. It’s worth losing a few days’ work for.”

  Chuck went off to his welding, amazed at how thoroughly the crash had opened the ship. There were some of the larger patches that could not be handled with the small electric welder, but he moved along as fast as he could, testing each job with the smoke candle. It would be at least two days of hard work, if he was lucky enough to do it in that time.

  By the time night came around, most of the benefits of the hike had worn off. He watched Vance place Ginger outside the ship with a couple of shiny wrenches that had been carefully used during the day, but which weren’t essential. The man had slept most of the afternoon, and was now in good shape for the watch.

  Vance made his announcement at the table again. “We’re laying off most of the welding, except what we have to do. We’re going to start unloading the ship—everything that’s portable has to come out, and we’ll even move the hydroponics and the fuel. With it lightened—and I figure we can get down to around five tons of weight here—we’ll undermine the rear, and set winches to work on the rest of it. It’s going to be a job getting leverage, but if we sink the rear fairly well, we can make it. The front’s a lot lighter, unloaded than the rear, and that win help.”

  A groan went up, though not in protest. It was the job they had all dreaded, but one which had to be done. The ship had no chance of taking off and continuing, except with her nose up. But while unloading wouldn’t prove too difficult, reloading up through the entrance would be nearly impossible.

  Vance’s point was that as long as there was any chance of recovering the welder, it was possible. They could strip part of the hull away, and reweld it later. If the welder turned up, they would have saved time by doing work where everyone could be used; if it didn’t, there was no loss.

  Chuck went to bed without much thought to that His work with the little torch would go on. After that, he’d probably have to get out and dig with the others, but he’d worry about that when he came to it.

  He wondered once how Ginger was doing. There was more envy in his thoughts than anything else. Ginger had the softest job in the place, right now. . In the morning, Ginger reported in disgust that nothing at all had happened. He’d thought something was staring at him once, but it had probably been pure imagination. The tools were still there, untouched. And should he keep guard again that night?

  Vance nodded, concerned with other problems. Ginger fished into his pouch and drew out a .45 automatic. ‘“This yours, Captain? I found it fifty feet from me this morning, and figured maybe it slipped out of your pouch last night”

  “Thanks. I wondered what happened to it.” Vance picked it up without a muscle of his face moving. “Sokolsky, Chuck, stick around.”

  When they were alone, Sokolsky grinned. ‘They don’t like that brand of monkey wrench. Miles. Or else they’ve got a cockeyed sense of humor. Bringing back the automatic was a nice touch.”

  “Sure.” Vance opened the gun, and looked at the empty chamber and magazine. “They kept the bullets!”

  He turned it over in his hands, and shoved the magazine back in. “Intelligent—but why not keep the gun and use it for a weapon?”

  “Intelligent,” Sokolsky admitted with a grimace. “The evidence is convincing. And interesting. Suppose you refill that and let me have it. I’d like to stand watch with Ginger tonight—and I’d better if we’re going to start moving the contents of the ship out. At that, it might be wiser to move out the fuel and the unused hydroponic first. They’re bulky, and shouldn’t be of much interest. The rest of the stuff— well, we can worry about that when we see how tonight turns out.”

  Vance nodded. He lifted his eyebrows when Sokolsky began to put on his space suit to go out to work with the others, and nodded again. Obviously, he’d expected Sokolsky to use the watch as an excuse not to work a full day.

  There was more tension that day than ever. The work was grueling, and difficult. The tanks were small enough to jockey through the air lock since experience had proved that bigger tanks of corrosive fluid failed too often under acceleration. But the inter-connections and valves made them a mess to handle, and they insisted on dripping. The outer coating of the suits gave the men protection enough, but they had to be careful in handling to see that nothing else was damaged. In addition, some of the story behind the missing tools had leaked out somehow, and they were worried about an inimical native race of some intelligence.

  Chuck came across them as he moved about, finishing the spot welding and repair work, helmets touching. It kept their talk private, where everything on the radio could be tapped by finding the right setting, even when supposedly on a private channel.

  Sokolsky was looking worried too, for the first time since he’d started considering the life on the planet. But he grinned at Chuck, and made light of the sleep he’d be losing. He seemed capable of almost any degree of endurance, though Chuck would have guessed that he would be the first man on the expedition to fold up.

  It wasn’t a cheerful supper. Somehow, the tanks had been unloaded onto the sand—both fuel tanks and unused hydroponic tanks. It represented a grim day’s work, and one that promised even worse efforts when they had to be put back.

  Sokolsky and Ginger slipped out. This time, the bait was one that had proven itself before—everything except the welding torch that had attracted the Martian beasts was spread out in a convenient circle. Ginger and Sokolsky were dug into the sand, beneath the ship, where they could see without being seen.

  Nothing came of it. There were no visitors. Sokolsky caught Chuck on the way to bed for a few hours before another day and night’s duties. “Eyes all over, Chuck—but nobody was taking the bait They Just sat there, about five hundred feet away.”

  Chuck nodded and went on down to the tanks, wh
ere he would try to find some way of doubling up on the plants to use the smallest number of hydroponic tanks while they were arranging to tilt the ship. He threw out some of the weedy growth that was used only to replenish the air, but could do little else.

  With that as finished as it could be, they began digging— the worst work from Chuck’s point of view. He tried to envision the big circle they must dig to a depth of better than ten feet as only a group of smaller chunks to bitten from the soil, but it didn’t work. It came out as a group of larger backaches.

  The worst part of it all was the general feeling of hopelessness. They were already behind schedule and falling farther behind with each day. Vance couldn’t give up, but the others were beginning to do so.

  He looked out before turning in to see that the bait was again waiting, with the two men on guard as before, but this time even more carefully hidden. They’d worked it out so that Sokolsky would use the gun, while Ginger would keep his radio on general call, ready to yell at the first sight of the beasts.

  It was barely time to retire, though, and Chuck was restless. He snapped down his helmet and went through the air lock, intending to spell Sokolsky for a few hours and let the man get a decent night’s sleep.

  Then he hesitated. For a moment, he stood in the lock, debating and half-listening for something. Finally, he turned back and climbed into his hammock, falling asleep at once.

  Sokolsky and Ginger were not at breakfast as the men came in. Vance cursed, and looked out quickly through one of the windows in the control room. His fingers trembled as he pointed to the place where the “bait” had been left.

  Most of it was still there. But the welding torch was gone.

  When they got into their suits and outside, they found both Sokolsky and Ginger sleeping soundly, quite unaware of the loss.

  Vance’s shout over the radio brought them out of it Ginger woke up groggily, but the doctor sat up promptly, smiling easily. Chuck noticed that a ray of sunlight bad been falling directly where his face had been—and remembered Sokolsky’s boast of always waking when the sunlight touched him.

  Ginger went on yawning, until a startled look came over his face, while Vance hesitated. The doctor, quicker than the cook, swung toward the pile they had used for bait.

  He nodded. “Okay, Miles, I’ve got it coming. I don’t have an excuse. You can enforce your military laws about sleeping when on guard duty.”

  “It’s my own fault—I had no right keeping you up without sleep,” Vance answered, and his voice was more puzzled than angry. “Ginger, I’ll speak to you later. You’ve had sleep enough and more. Go in and finish breakfast for the men—and then get out there and dig. What happened, Doc?”

  Sokolsky shook his head. “Nothing. I was sitting here when I saw Chuck come out. I figured he was going to come over, but he went back in. I’d been a bit groggy before, but that waked me up—or I thought it did. I remember seeing the lock close—and that’s all.”

  “Maybe you noticed Ginger falling asleep, and it hit you—sympathetic reaction after all the sleep you’ve missed?”

  The doctor shook his head unbelievingly. He was obviously completely baffled. Chuck could make no sense of it either. He could understand that the doctor might fall asleep, but the man wasn’t the type to keep on sleeping when on duty and with the sun shining fully on him. Something had drugged him—and yet a man couldn’t be drugged in an airtight suit…

  “The blowers!” It seemed too obvious now. ‘They must be drugging the guard. We get used to thinking that a man in a suit is safe from anything—but we’re breathing outside air, compressed, now.”

  Sokolsky looked sick at the obviousness of it. “I feel logy,” he admitted. “Not too bad, but not as sharp as I should feel after a full night’s sleep. Well, that’s the answer to it, then. Put oxygen tanks back on the guard’s suit, and we can go back to normal.”

  He stood up, stretching. “What’s the schedule—more digging?”

  Vance nodded, considering it. There was a mixture of doubt and hope on his face. “Yeah, we’re still digging. And we might as well get at it. All right. I’ll put Dick Steele on the job as guard tonight with oxygen bottles instead of the blowers. But I’m not going to risk another welder. They’ll have to take some other bait.”

  The hole was growing, slowly. The fine sand drifted back almost as fast as they dug it out, and there couldn’t be enough shoring provided to do much good. Chuck grimaced at the stuff as he scooped it out. Beside him, Rothman was frowning heavily.

  “I quit,” the pilot announced suddenly. At Vance’s’ look, he shook his head. “I mean it. Miles. I can’t see any sense in digging this out when one good blast from the number one tube would do more than we can do in five days!”

  As usual, it was the obvious which had escaped them. Fifteen minutes later, they stood looking down into a hole that was better than the ten feet in depth Vance had needed. Its sides sloped, as the soft sand ran back into it. But Vance was happy for the first time since they had crashed down on the planet. He admitted that it put him back on schedule, or nearly so.

  They took it easy the rest of the day, digging out directly under the tail, where the blast hadn’t reached. But by night, they were ready to begin the job of attaching the motor winches and pulling the big ship upright. To Chuck and Sokolsky, he also admitted that it made him a lot happier about wasting Steele’s work for a day in sleeping. The big man, knowing all of the story that could be pieced together to warn him, was already out in a new hiding place, watching the bait.

  They turned in early, feeling almost pleased to be members of the Eros crew again. Even Ginger was forgiven—or made to understand that it was no longer his fault.

  It was two o’clock in the morning when they were awakened by the speakers, shouting in Dick Steele’s big voice.

  The man came storming in a minute later, throwing back his helmet. “I fell asleep—couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, but I came to with a sick feeling and saw something streaking away. They’ve cut through the tent-doth seal on the underside, and you’d better get down and fix it—you’re losing air again.”

  It wasn’t quite true; they hadn’t cut through, but had carefully lifted the cloth from the seal around the edges and slipped in—against the air pressure, which must have taken considerable doing. Then they’d left the same way, resealing it somewhat. The loss of air wasn’t too bad.

  But the loss of the third welding torch was a major catastrophe.

  CHAPTER 14

  Welcome Mat

  Everyone knew all the details now, and nobody had an explanation. Drugs wouldn’t affect a man in a completely airtight suit, yet Dick had passed out while seemingly wide-awake, and fully aware of what was going on. To make matters worse, he was a hypnotic immune. Chuck had thought of the cricket-like chirping he had heard near the ruins, and had wondered whether it might not account for his sleeping then, and for his indecision at the air lock when Sokolsky was on guard.

  But a certified hypnotic immune couldn’t be hypnotized—it was a rare thing, but it had been proved.

  Chuck had long since passed out of his depths on this—but he wasn’t alone. There were no theories—the welder was gone, and that was that. There was only one left which was capable of mending the big bottom opening.

  That morning they were served minimum rations—the first sign that Vance was giving up hope, and expecting to have to stay on until he could find favorable conditions—or until the expedition died.

  Nobody commented on it. Chuck got up slowly, leaving half his food behind, and went out, dragging the last welder behind him. Before, the threat to the men’s lives had been a questionable one, and the matter of food and air might not have mattered. Now, it was almost certain that they would have to stay on indefinitely.

  That meant that he would be shortening their lives by one month for each seven months that passed. It was as simple and direct as that. It wouldn’t do any good to fool himself any longer.

>   He was working at top speed, drawing the edges of the seam together and welding them tight, but his movements were purely mechanical. Yet hardly a minute passed without his looking over his shoulder to make sure some Martian monster wasn’t creeping up on him for this last tool.

  He stopped while the winches were installed, and moved inside to complete the work. He was still welding when the ship began to slip backward and to tilt upward. The deeper hole dug by the blasts of the rocket had made the job easier in every way. The ship rose to an angle of forty-five degrees, and he could feel the inch-by-inch drag of the winches pulling it back, and farther back.

  Then he was finished with the seam, and the ship was again reasonably airtight. There was a month’s strengthening and reworking of the big girders needed before she would be space-worthy, but there were no holes left for the Martians.

  Carefully, while the ship inched back, he stowed the welder away. Then he grabbed onto the nearest supports and hung on.

  It had reached the critical level, and began swinging. By rights, there should have been winches on both sides to keep it stable—but it had been impossible. The two on the ship were both needed to drag it back at all.

  The ship rose to upright position, and swung over beyond that, to rock back again. It bobbed like a child’s round-bottomed toy. And finally it found itself a position it liked, almost exactly upright, and came to rest.

  Chuck let go the supports and staggered down toward the air lock. His stomach was jumping, but he held it down. He’d been wanting to be a man when his age was holding him back from going; he’d wanted to be a man when the ship came crashing down to its unhappy landing. Now he knew he was a man—and it didn’t make him either better or worse—only a little harder and tougher.

  He slipped down the ladder to the ground while Vance came running up, protesting that he should have given a warning. He grinned. “It wasn’t much more than a little jouncing around—and it was the only way we could get both jobs done when they had to be done.”