Valley of Dreams Read online

trying toexplain it to him. By the time he understood (if he does yet) we werepast Cimmerium and over that Xanthus desert, and then we crossed thecanal with the mud city and the barrel-shaped citizens and the placewhere Tweel had shot the dream-beast. And nothing would do for Pierrehere but that we put down so he could practice his biology on theremains. So we did.

  "The thing was still there. No sign of decay; couldn't be, of course,without bacterial forms of life, and Leroy says that Mars is as sterileas an operating table."

  "_Comme le coeur d'une fileuse_," corrected the little biologist, whowas beginning to regain a trace of his usual energy. "Like an old maid'sheart!"

  "However," resumed Jarvis, "about a hundred of the little grey-greenbiopods had fastened onto the thing and were growing and branching.Leroy found a stick and knocked 'em off, and each branch broke away andbecame a biopod crawling around with the others. So he poked around atthe creature, while I looked away from it; even dead, that rope-armeddevil gave me the creeps. And then came the surprise; the thing was partplant!"

  "_C'est vrai!_" confirmed the biologist. "It's true!"

  "It was a big cousin of the biopods," continued Jarvis. "Leroy was quiteexcited; he figures that all Martian life is of that sort--neither plantnor animal. Life here never differentiated, he says; everything has bothnatures in it, even the barrel-creatures--even Tweel! I think he'sright, especially when I recall how Tweel rested, sticking his beak inthe ground and staying that way all night. I never saw him eat or drink,either; perhaps his beak was more in the nature of a root, and he gothis nourishment that way."

  "Sounds nutty to me," observed Harrison.

  "Well," continued Jarvis, "we broke up a few of the other growths andthey acted the same way--the pieces crawled around, only much slowerthan the biopods, and then stuck themselves in the ground. Then Leroyhad to catch a sample of the walking grass, and we were ready to leavewhen a parade of the barrel-creatures rushed by with their push-carts.They hadn't forgotten me, either; they all drummed out, 'We arev-r-r-iends--ouch!' just as they had before. Leroy wanted to shoot oneand cut it up, but I remembered the battle Tweel and I had had withthem, and vetoed the idea. But he did hit on a possible explanation asto what they did with all the rubbish they gathered."

  "Made mud-pies, I guess," grunted the captain.

  "More or less," agreed Jarvis. "They use it for food, Leroy thinks. Ifthey're part vegetable, you see, that's what they'd want--soil withorganic remains in it to make it fertile. That's why they ground up sandand biopods and other growths all together. See?"

  "Dimly," countered Harrison. "How about the suicides?"

  "Leroy had a hunch there, too. The suicides jump into the grinder whenthe mixture has too much sand and gravel; they throw themselves in toadjust the proportions."

  "Rats!" said Harrison disgustedly. "Why couldn't they bring in someextra branches from outside?"

  "Because suicide is easier. You've got to remember that these creaturescan't be judged by earthly standards; they probably don't feel pain, andthey haven't got what we'd call individuality. Any intelligence theyhave is the property of the whole community--like an ant-heap. That'sit! Ants are willing to die for their ant-hill; so are these creatures."

  "So are men," observed the captain, "if it comes to that."

  "Yes, but men aren't exactly eager. It takes some emotion likepatriotism to work 'em to the point of dying for their country; thesethings do it all in the day's work." He paused.

  "Well, we took some pictures of the dream-beast and thebarrel-creatures, and then we started along. We sailed over Xanthus,keeping as close to the meridian of the _Ares_ as we could, and prettysoon we crossed the trail of the pyramid-builder. So we circled back tolet Leroy take a look at it, and when we found it, we landed. The thinghad completed just two rows of bricks since Tweel and I left it, andthere it was, breathing in silicon and breathing out bricks as if it hadeternity to do it in--which it has. Leroy wanted to dissect it with aBoland explosive bullet, but I thought that anything that had lived forten million years was entitled to the respect due old age, so I talkedhim out of it. He peeped into the hole on top of it and nearly gotbeaned by the arm coming up with a brick, and then he chipped off a fewpieces of it, which didn't disturb the creature a bit. He found theplace I'd chipped, tried to see if there was any sign of healing, anddecided he could tell better in two or three thousand years. So we tooka few shots of it and sailed on.

  "Mid afternoon we located the wreck of my rocket. Not a thing disturbed;we picked up my films and tried to decide what next. I wanted to findTweel if possible; I figured from the fact of his pointing south that helived somewhere near Thyle. We plotted our route and judged that thedesert we were in now was Thyle II; Thyle I should be east of us. So, ona hunch, we decided to have a look at Thyle I, and away we buzzed."

  "_Der_ motors?" queried Putz, breaking his long silence.

  "For a wonder, we had no trouble, Karl. Your blast worked perfectly. Sowe hummed along, pretty high to get a wider view, I'd say about fiftythousand feet. Thyle II spread out like an orange carpet, and after awhile we came to the grey branch of the Mare Chronium that bounded it.That was narrow; we crossed it in half an hour, and there was ThyleI--same orange-hued desert as its mate. We veered south, toward the MareAustrale, and followed the edge of the desert. And toward sunset wespotted it."

  "Shpotted?" echoed Putz. "Vot vas shpotted?"

  "The desert was spotted--with buildings! Not one of the mud cities ofthe canals, although a canal went through it. From the map we figuredthe canal was a continuation of the one Schiaparelli called Ascanius.

  "We were probably too high to be visible to any inhabitants of the city,but also too high for a good look at it, even with the glasses. However,it was nearly sunset, anyway, so we didn't plan on dropping in. Wecircled the place; the canal went out into the Mare Australe, and there,glittering in the south, was the melting polar ice-cap! The canaldrained it; we could distinguish the sparkle of water in it. Off to thesoutheast, just at the edge of the Mare Australe, was a valley--thefirst irregularity I'd seen on Mars except the cliffs that boundedXanthus and Thyle II. We flew over the valley--" Jarvis paused suddenlyand shuddered; Leroy, whose color had begun to return, seemed to pale.The chemist resumed, "Well, the valley looked all right--then! Just agray waste, probably full of crawlers like the others.

  "We circled back over the city; say, I want to tell you that placewas--well, gigantic! It was colossal; at first I thought the size wasdue to that illusion I spoke of--you know, the nearness of thehorizon--but it wasn't that. We sailed right over it, and you've neverseen anything like it!

  "But the sun dropped out of sight right then. I knew we were pretty farsouth--latitude 60--but I didn't know just how much night we'd have."

  Harrison glanced at a Schiaparelli chart. "About 60--eh?" he said."Close to what corresponds to the Antarctic circle. You'd have aboutfour hours of night at this season. Three months from now you'd havenone at all."

  "Three months!" echoed Jarvis, surprised. Then he grinned. "Right! Iforget the seasons here are twice as long as ours. Well, we sailed outinto the desert about twenty miles, which put the city below the horizonin case we overslept, and there we spent the night.

  "You're right about the length of it. We had about four hours ofdarkness which left us fairly rested. We ate breakfast, called ourlocation to you, and started over to have a look at the city.

  "We sailed toward it from the east and it loomed up ahead of us like arange of mountains. Lord, what a city! Not that New York mightn't havehigher buildings, or Chicago cover more ground, but for sheer mass,those structures were in a class by themselves. Gargantuan!

  "There was a queer look about the place, though. You know how aterrestrial city sprawls out, a nimbus of suburbs, a ring of residentialsections, factory districts, parks, highways. There was none of thathere; the city rose out of the desert as abruptly as a cliff. Only a fewlittle sand mounds marked the division, and then the walls of thosegigantic structures.
r />   "The architecture was strange, too. There were lots of devices that areimpossible back home, such as set-backs in reverse, so that a buildingwith a small base could spread out as it rose. That would be a valuabletrick in New York, where land is almost priceless, but to do it, you'dhave to transfer Martian gravitation there!

  "Well, since you can't very well land a rocket in a city street, we putdown right next to the canal side of the city, took our small camerasand revolvers, and started for a gap in the wall of masonry. We weren'tten feet from the rocket