Chapter 20

The sand had been blowing for forty minutes. It was a flying avalanche, a flailing mace. Even inside the tractors it set up an almost intolerable roaring in the eardrums, and when it struck the wind-guards head on the battered vehicles shook. For five or six seconds they would rumble on and then come to a jolting halt. Often they would start up again almost immediately but equally often they would remain stalled for several minutes, and at times there were more stalled tractors than moving ones across the entire line of advance.

The pelting never ceased, never let up even for a moment. Minute after minute the sand came sweeping down in red fury, tons upon tons of it, in great circular waves from high overhead and in jet velocity flurries close to the ground. In that assault of billions upon billions of spinning particles the brightly colored lichens which covered the Martian plains were uprooted, lifted high in the air, and carried for dozens of miles, flying carpets so small they scarcely could have supported the tiniest of elves.

For three hours the sandstorm continued to rage in fury, and then, abruptly, the wind died down, the last flurry subsided, and the colonists got under way again. And just for a change a few of them descended from the tractors and advanced on foot, keeping a little ahead of the swaying vehicles.

Dr. Drever, a tall, stooped man with graying temples but surprisingly youthful eyes accelerated his stride a little and fell in with the scarecrow geologist who was walking at Corriston’s side.

“We can’t be far from the ship now,” he said. “I wish there was some way I could send Freddy back. If I thought you could spare a tractor and one man to accompany him...”

“Freddy will be all right,” Corriston said. “You don’t know what it means to a kid like Freddy to ride through a sandstorm in the company of grownups. He had to prove something to himself, and I think he’s done it.”

The stillness was almost unnatural now, and Corriston could see that most of the men were becoming uneasy about it. The desert seemed too bright and far too quiet. It was one of those mysterious, brooding silences that are a menace to start with. You think of unsuspected pitfalls, hidden traps. Imagination leaps ahead of reality and leaves an insidious kind of demoralization in its wake.

“I’m not surprised that all the animal life on Mars went underground,” the scarecrow geologist said, and it seemed a strange thing for him to have mentioned at that moment, when the stillness was so absolute and the thoughts of everyone should have been on the ship, which had to be very near now.

“Yes, and what a vicious, horrible kind of animal life it is,” Drever said, as if he too welcomed the opportunity to talk irrelevantly, perhaps to relieve his inner tension.

“They’re a very primitive form of life, really,” the geologist said. “They look like large gray snakes, but they’re actually more like worms. Worms with sucker disks instead of mouths. When once they’ve’ attached themselves it’s almost impossible to dislodge them. You’ve seen marine worms on Earth often enough, I’m sure. They come in all shapes, sizes and colors, but there are one or two species that look quite a bit like lamprenes in miniature. Lamprenes are usually about three feet in length. But some of the very old ones grow to eight feet or longer. Their natural prey is a small running lizard--the galaka--as you know.”

“All right,” Corriston said, a little of his raw-nerve exasperation returning. “Now I suppose you’re going to tell us exactly how they kill their prey.”

“I don’t have to tell you how they kill men,” Macklin said. “You know as much about that as I do. You’ve been on Mars before. You’ve seen at least a few of the victims. You know exactly how they come up under a man when he’s asleep, puncture his clothes and attach themselves. He doesn’t just get nipped; the lamprene can seldom be pulled off that quickly. And when two or three of them attack you, it can be pretty horrible. They’re more than just vampires; they sting. The poison is as deadly as aconite. It works a little slower, but almost immediately the victim starts to degenerate, his nerves first, and, then...”

“All right, now I’ve heard an expert confirm it. I’d be grateful if you’ll just shut up.”

“Lieutenant, I told you--”

“Never mind, Doctor. I’m asking him to shut up.”

In silence they continued on, the tension between them increasing almost intolerably, their nerves becoming more and more frayed. And then, finally, it seemed to them that they could see the ship, and the great cliff wall surrounding it through the slight haziness left by the sandstorm and the vaguer haziness which distance imposes, could see the tumbled, flat slabs of rock that radiated out from it in all directions across the desert.

But it was hard to be sure it was really the ship. It was perhaps only one of the many desert mirages which were far more common on Mars than they were on Earth. A man who has once looked at the bright, scarred face of a cliff wall in the Martian sunlight will remember it even in his dreams and no mirages are really necessary. He is certain to see it a second and a third time, like an after-image so indelibly imprinted on the retina of the human eye that its recurrence becomes inevitable.

And yet, the running man could not have been a mirage. He was much nearer than the ship appeared to be, and he was falling and getting up and falling again in so frenzied a way that his movements bore the unmistakable stamp of reality.