The Guardians of Space Keep Constant Vigil.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Comet December 40.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He, Sam Conway, was back from Mars now. Back from red, ferric desertsno Earthly boot had ever touched before. Back from bitter coldand aching dryness. Back from dazzling yellow hazes of dust andsuspended ice crystals. No more need to wear oxygen armor in a thin,ozone-tainted atmosphere now. Back from solitude, and the endlessfight to keep alive out there. Back from the enigma of Martiancivilization's extinction, uncounted ages ago.... Back, back, back....
Home, now! From the window Sam Conway could see a row of maples, orangeand golden in the autumn warmth. Kids were playing football in thestreet. Sam's oxy-hydrogen rocket ship, blued and battered and burnt,was suspended for all time from massive girders in the SmithsonianInstitution. But even that was far away from Bryton, here. It shouldhave been finished, now—the adventure. Sam Conway should have relaxed.Even Ellen Varney was beside him now. That should have helped. It did,a little. Yet only for moments at a time.
Those twenty months of exploration on another world, had become likea phantom in Sam's thoughts. Faded, distant, contrasting; yet starklyvivid too. Every hour had been a struggle. Extracting food substancesfrom the tissues and juices of strange plants. Roasting nativepotassium chlorate in a small sun-furnace to extract oxygen from it,and compressing the precious gas into steel flasks. All this had beennecessary, the dying Martian atmosphere contained only a low percentageof oxygen.
It had been a strange hand-to-mouth existence out there—a kind ofgame in which a fellow tried always to keep one small jump ahead ofDeath.
Hauling a crude little metal wagon, in which his supplies were packed,across the sand for miles and miles at a time, until his brain hadreeled. Sleeping in a tiny airtight tent, when afield from hisrocket.... Sam had never expected to survive those experiences. Buthe had, somehow; and it had done something to his soul—hardened it,and maybe killed part of it; and maybe beautified another part. Forin spite of everything, those vast, ghostly solitudes of Mars werebeautiful—
And there was more. Climbing the steep wall of an ancient artificialgorge not far from the south polar cap; gripping at odd prickly vinesto keep from falling into the hardy thickets below, where tough-shelledworms crawled sluggishly, he had found something in a small,sand-drifted cell that was part of a ruin. Something that meant power.
What kind of power? All kinds, perhaps. Scientific learning greaterthan that of Earth. Power like that of gold and jewels, but farexceeding it. Power to wreck and to create, power to destroy worlds.Power, maybe, to sway minds. Sam still could not guess how far it mightextend, or how deep—
No the adventure was not over, yet. It was just beginning. It wasn'tjust nostalgia that tied the consciousness of Sam Conway to a planet,millions of miles away, whose people had perished in a strange travailages ago—a catastrophe whose marks lay in fused, glassy ruins, and inmachines melted and rusted beyond recognition.
Sam had that secret of power hidden away now in a little aluminum boxthat had once contained concentrated food rations. And having thatsecret—though it thrilled him—still made him wish nervously that healso had eyes in the back of his head....
Ellen Varney's slim fingers tightened on his arm.
"Sam!" she said almost sharply. "You're dreaming again. What is it?"
...