The captain of the Martian Maid stared avidly at
the torn derelict floating against the velvet void.
Here was treasure beyond his wildest dreams! How
could he know his dreams should have been nightmares?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1949.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Gold! A magic word, even today, isn't it? Lust and gold ... they gohand in hand. Like the horsemen of the Apocalypse. And, of course,there's another word needed to make up the trilogy. You don't getany thing for nothing. So add this: Cost. Or you might call it pain,sorrow, agony. Call it what you like. It's what you pay for greattreasure....
These things were true when fabled Jason sailed the Argo beyond Colchisseeking the Fleece. They were true when men sailed the southern oceansin wooden ships. And the conquest of space hasn't changed us a bit.We're still a greedy lot....
I'm a queer one to be saying these things, but then, who has moreright? Look at me. My hair is gray and my face ... my face is a mask.The flesh hangs on my bones like a yellow cloth on a rickety frame. Iam old, old. And I wait here on my hospital cot—wait for the weight ofyears I never lived to drag me under and let me forget the awful thingsmy eyes have seen.
I'm poor, too, or else I wouldn't be here in this place of dying forold spacemen. I haven't a dime except for the pittance the HolcombFoundation calls a spaceman's pension. Yet I had millions in my hands.Treasure beyond your wildest dreams! Cursed treasure....
You smile. You are thinking that I'm just an old man, beachedearthside, spinning tall tales to impress the youngsters. Maybe,thinking about the kind of spacemen my generation produced, you havethe idea that if ever we'd so much as laid a hand on anything of valueout in space we'd not let go until Hell froze over! Well, you'reright about that. We didn't seek the spaceways for the advancement ofcivilization or any of that Foundation bushwah, you can be certain ofthat. We did it for us ... for Number One. That's the kind of men wewere, and we were proud of it. We hung onto what we found because therisks were high and we were entitled to keep what we could out there.But there are strange things in the sky. Things that don't respond toall of our neat little Laws and Theories. There are things that are nopart of the world of men, thick with danger—and horror.
If you doubt that—and I can see you do—just look at me. I supposeyou've never heard of the Martian Maid, and so you don't know the storyof what happened to her crew or her skipper. I can give you this muchof an answer. I was her skipper. And her crew? They ride high in thesky ... dust by this time. And all because they were men, and men aregreedy and hasty and full of an unreasoning, unthinking love for gold.They ride a golden ship that they paid for with all the years of theirlives. It's all theirs now. Bought and paid for.
It wasn't too long ago that I lifted the Maid off Solis Lacus onthat last flight. Not many of you will remember her class of ship,so many advances have been made in the last few years. The Maid wastwo hundred feet from tip to tail, and as sleek a spacer as ever cameout of the Foundation Yards. Chemical fueled, she was nothing at alllike the spherical hyperdrives we see today. She was armed, too. TheFoundation still thought of space as a possible stamping ground foralien creatures though no evidence of any extra-terrestrial life hadever been found ... then.
My crew was a rough bunch, like all those early crews. I remember themso well