“About fifteen feet. The ramp’s about eleven feet wide.”
Montray’s brow ridged. “These busses are supposed to cross drifts up to eighty feet We’ll chance it. Though if I take an army sandbus in there, and get it stuck in a drift, we might as well pack for space.”
Andrew felt grim as they piled back into the bus. Montray displaced the driver and took the controls himself. He gave the mail} rocket high power; the bus shot forward, its quickly-extruded glider units sliding lightly, without traction, over the drifted sand. It skidded a little as Montray gunned it for the turn;, the chassis hit the drift like a ton of lead. Swearing prayerfully, Montray slammed on the auxiliary rockets, and it roared—whined—sprayed up sand like a miniature sirocco, then, mercifully, the traction lessened, the gliders began to function, and the sandbus skied lightly across the drift and down the surface of the monster ramp, into the canyon.
It seemed hours, but actually it was less than four minutes before the glider units scraped rock and Montray shut off the power and called two men to help him wind up the retractors . . . The gliders could be shot out at a moment’s notice, because on Mars when they were needed, they were needed fast, but retracting them again was a long, slow business. He craned his neck over the windbreak, looking up at the towering walls, leaning at a dizzy angle over them. He whistled sharply. “This is no natural formation!”
“I told you it wasn’t,” Andrew said.
The man from Dupont scowled. “Almost anything can be a natural formation, in rock,” he contradicted. “You say you discovered this pass, Slayton?”
Andrew caught Montray’s eye and said meekly, “Yes, sir.”
The sandbus cruised easily along the canyon floor, and up the great ramp at the other end; Montray drove stubbornly, his chin thrust out. Once he said, “Well, at least the Double Ridge—isn’t a barricade any more,” and once he muttered, “You could have discovered this by accident—delirious—and then rationalized it. . . .”
The Martian night was hanging, ready to fall, when the squat towers of the city reared up, fat and brown, against the horizon. From that distance they could see nothing of Reade’s camp except a thin trail of smoke, clear against the purplish twilight. Vague unease stirred Andrew’s mind and for the first time in hours, Kamellin’s thoughts flickered dimly alive in the corridors of his brain.
I am fearful. There is trouble.
Montray shouted, and Andrew jerked up his head in dismay, then leaped headlong from the still-moving sandbus. He ran across the sand. Reade’s tent lay in a smoking ruin on the red sand. His throat tight with dread, Andrew knelt and gently turned up the heavy form that lay, unmoving, beside the charred ruin.
Fat Kater had lost more than his shirt.
Montray finally stood up and beckoned three of the roughnecks. “Better bury him here,” he said heavily, “and see if there’s anything left unburned.”
One of the men had turned aside and was noisily getting rid of everything he’d eaten for a week. Andrew felt like doing the same, but Montray’s hand was heavy on his shoulder.
“Easy,” he said. “No, I don’t suspect you. He hasn’t been dead more than an hour. Reade sent you away before it started, evidently.” He gave commands; “No one else seems to have died in the fire. Spread out, two arid two, and look for Reade’s men.” He glanced at the sun, hovering too close to the horizon; half an hour of sunlight, and Phobos would give light for another couple of hours—he said grimly, “After that, we get back to the bus and get out of here, fast. We can come back tomorrow, but we’re not going to wander around here by Deimos-light.” He unholstered his pistol.
Don’t, said the eerie mentor in Andrew’s brain, no weapons.
Andrew said urgently, “Colonel, have the roughnecks turn in their pistols! Kingslander’s men killed each other pretty much like this!”
“And suppose someone meets a banshee? And Reade’s men all have pistols, and if they’re wandering around, raving mad—”
The next hour was nightmarish, dark phantoms moving shoulder to shoulder across the rock-needled ground; muttered words, far away the distant screams of a banshee somewhere. Once the crack of a pistol cut the night; it developed—after the roughnecks had all come running in, and half a dozen random shots had been fired, fortunately wounding no one—that one man had mistaken a rock-spire for a banshee. Montray cursed the man and sent him back to the sandbus with blistered ears. The sun dropped out of sight. Phobos, a vast purple balloon, sketched the towers of the city in faint shadows on the sand. The wind wailed and flung sand at the crags.
An abrupt shout of masculine hysteria cut the darkness; Montray jumped, stumbled and swore. “If this is another false alarm—”
It wasn’t. Somebody flashed an electric torch on the sand; Mike Fairbanks, a bullet hole cleanly through his temple, lay on the sand that was only a little redder than his blood.
That left Hansen, Webber—and John Reade.
I can find them: let me find them! Before something worse happens—
“Sir, I think I can find the others. I told you about Kamellin. This proves—”
“Proves nothing,” grunted Montray. “But go ahead.” Andrew felt coldly certain that inside the pocket of his leathers, Montray’s finger was crooked around a trigger trained on his heart. Tense and terrified, Andrew let Kamellin lead him. How did he know that this was not an elaborate trap for the Earthmen? For Kamellin led them straight beneath the walls of the city and to an open door—an open door, and three expeditions had blasted without success!
One of my people has taken over one of your men. He must have found the hidden door. If only he is still sane, we have a bare chance. ...
“Stop there,” Montray ordered curtly.
“Stop there,” echoed a harsh wild voice, and the disheveled figure of John Reade, hatless, his jacket charred, appeared in the doorway. “Andrew!” His distorted shout broke into a sobbing gasp of relief, and he pitched headlong into Andrew’s arms. “Andy, thank God you’re here! They—shot me—”
Andrew eased him gently to the ground. Montray bent over the old man, urging, “Tell us what happened, John.” “Shot in the side—Andy you were right—something got
Spade first, then Kater fired the tent—Spade rushed him, shot Mike Fairbanks—then—then, Andy, it got me, it sneaked inside me, inside my head when I wasn’t looking, inside my head—”
His” head lolled on Andrew’s shoulder.
Montray let go his wrist with a futile gesture. “He’s hurt pretty bad. Delirious.”
“His head’s as clear as mine. He’s fainted, that’s all,” Andrew protested. “If we bring him around, he can tell us—”
“He’ll be in no shape to answer questions,” said the scientist from Dupont, very definitely, “not for a long time. Montray, round up the men; we’ve got to get out of here in a hurry—”
“Look out!” shouted somebody. A pistol shot crashed and the scream of an injured man raised wild echoes. Andrew felt his heart suck and turn over; then he suddenly sank into blindness and felt himself leap to his feet and run toward the voices. Kamellin had taken over!
Spade Hansen, tottering on his feet, stumbled toward them. His shirt hung raggedly in charred fragments. Through some alien set of senses, like seeing double, Andrew sensed the presence of another, one of Kamellin’s kind.
If I can get through to him—”
Montray cocked, levelled his pistol.
“Hansen!”