Reade’s voice was flat and final. “If I had any doubts, I wouldn’t have them after that. Every word you say is just making it worse. Leave while you still can, Andy.”
Andrew gave up. “All right. I’ll start back now, if you insist.”
“I do.” Reade turned away and hurried back toward the crew, and Andrew went into the tent and started packing rations in his blanket-roll for the march. The pack was clumsy, but not a tenth as heavy as the load he’d packed on the way up here. He jerked the straps angrily tight, hoisted the roll to his shoulder, and went out.
Reade was waiting for him. He had Andrew’s pistol.
“You’ll need this.” He gave it to him; hauled out his notebook and stabbed a finger at the sketchy map he had drawn on their way over the mountains. “You’ve got your compass? Okay, look; this is the place where our route crossed the mailcar track from Mount Denver to the South Encampment. If you camp there for a few hours, you can hitch a ride on the mail-car—there’s one every other day—into Mount Denver. When you get there, look up Montray. He’s getting the expedition together back there.” Reade tore the leaf from his notebook, scribbling the address on the back. Andrew lifted an eyebrow; he knew Reade had planned the expedition
in two sections, to prevent the possibility that they, trap would vanish without even a search-party sent after them.
“He won’t have things ready, of course, but tell him to hurry it up, and give him all the help you can. Tell him what we’re up against.”
“You mean what you’re up against. Are you sure you can trust me to run your errands in Mount Denver?”
“Don’t be so grim about it,” Reade said gently. “I know you want to stay, but I’m only doing my duty the way I see it. I have to think of everybody, not just you—or myself.” He gripped Andrew’s shoulder. “If things turn out all right, you can come back when they’re all under control. Good luck, Andy.”
“And if they don’t?” Andrew asked, but Reade had turned away.
It had been a rough day. Andrew sat with his back against a boulder, watching the sun drop swiftly toward the reddish range of rock he had climbed that afternoon. Around him the night wind was beginning to build up, but he had found a sheltered spot between two boulders; and in his heated sleeping-bag, could spend a comfortable night even at sixty-below temperatures.
He thought ahead while he chewed the tasteless Mar-beef—Reade had outfitted the expedition with Space Service surplus—and swallowed hot coffee made from ice painstakingly scraped from the rocks. It had taken Reade, and five men, four days to cross the ridge. Travelling light, Andrew hoped to do it in three. The distance was less than thirty miles by air, but the only practicable trail wound in and out over ninety miles, mostly perpendicular. If a bad sandstorm built up, he might not make it at all, but anyone who spent more than one season on Mars took that kind of risk for granted.
The sun dropped, and all at once the sky was ablaze with stars. Andrew swallowed the last of his coffee, looking up to pick out the Heavenly Twins on the horizon—the topaz glimmer of Venus, the blue star-sapphire that was Earth. Andrew had lived on Earth for a few years in his teens, and hated it; the thick moist air, the dragging feel of too much gravity. The close-packed cities nauseated him with their smell of smoke and grease and human sweat. Mars air was thin and cold and scentless. His parents had hated Mars the same way he had hated Earth—they were biologists in the Xenozoology division, long since transferred to Venus. He had never felt quite at home anywhere, except for the few days he had spent at Xanadu. Now he was being kicked out of that too.
Suddenly, he swore. The hell with it, sitting here, feeling sorry for himself! He’d have a long day tomorrow, and a rough climb. As he unrolled his sleeping-bag, waiting for the blankets to warm, he wondered; how old was Xanadu?
Did it matter? Surely, if men could throw a bridge between the planets, they could build a bridge across the greater gap of time that separated them from these who had once lived on Mars. And if any man could do that, Andy admitted ungrudgingly, that man was John Reade. He pulled off his boots, anchored them carefully with his pack, weighted the whole thing down with rock, and crawled into the sack.
In the comforting warmth, relaxing, a new thought crossed his mind.
Whatever it was that had happened to him at Xanadu, he wasn’t quite sure. The bump had confused him. But certainly something had happened. He did not seriously consider Reade’s warning. He knew, as Reade could not be expected to know, that he had not suffered from a hallucination; had not been touched by the fringes of insanity. But he had certainly undergone a very strange experience. Whether it
had been subjective or objective, lie did not know; but he intended to find out.
How? He tried to remember a little desultory reading he had once done about telepathy. Although he had spoken glibly to Reade about ‘opening his mind,’ he really had not the faintest idea of what he had meant by the phrase. He grinned in the dark.
“Well, whoever and whatever you are,” he said aloud, “I’m all ready and waiting. If you can figure out a way to communicate with me, come right ahead.”
And the alien came.
“I am Kamellin,” it said.
I am Kamellin..
That was all Andrew could think. It was all his tortured brain could encompass. His head hurt, and the dragging sense of some actual, tangible force seemed to pull and twist at him. I AM KAMELLIN . . . KAMELLIN . . . KAMELLIN . . . it was like a tide that sucked at him, crowding out his own thoughts, dragging him under and drowning him. Andrew panicked; he fought it, thrashing in sudden frenzy, feeling arms and legs hit the sides of the sleeping-bag, the blankets twisted around him like an enemy’s grappling hands.
Then the surge relaxed and he lay still, his breath loud in the darkness, and with fumbling fingers untangling the blankets. The sweat of fear was cold on his face, but the panic was gone.
For the force had not been hostile. It had only been— eager. Pathetically eager; eager as a friendly puppy is eager, as a friendly dog may jump up and knock a man down.
“Kamellin,” Andrew said the alien word aloud, thinking that the name was not particularly outlandish. He hoped the words would focus his thoughts sufficiently for the alien to understand.
“Kamellin, come ahead, okay, but this time take it easy,
take it slow and easy. Understand?” Guardedly, he relaxed, hoping he would be able to take it if some unusual force were thrust at him; He could understand now why men had gone insane. If this—Kamellin—had hit him like that the first time-even now, when he understood and partly expected what was happening, it was an overwhelming flood, flowing through his mind like water running into a bottle. He lay helpless, sweating. The stars were gone, blanked out, and the howling wind was quiet—or was it that he no longer saw or heard? He hung alone in a universe of emptiness, and then, to his disembodied consciousness, came the beginning of— what? Not speech. Not even a mental picture. It was simply contact, and quite indescribable. And it said, approximately;
Greetings. At last. At last it has happened and we are both sane. I am Kamellin.
The wind was howling again, the stars a million flame-bright flares in the sky. Huddled in his blankets, Andrew felt the dark intruder in his brain ebb and flow with faint pressure as, their thoughts raced in swift question and answer. He whispered his own question aloud; otherwise Kamellin’s thoughts flowed into his and intermingled with them until he found himself speaking Kamellin’s thoughts.
“What are you? Was I right, then? Are you Martians discarnate intelligences?”
Not discarnate, we have always had bodies, or rather—