The Best of Argosy #6 - Minions of Mars Read online

  The door clanged shut and the sound of retreating footsteps mingled with the nasal serenade.

  Chapter 2: Footprints in Time

  IN THE course of the world’s history there have been many methods of propulsion through water. Fish have used fins and tails almost since time began. Squid-like creatures utilize rocket propulsion, by swelling a muscle-lined bladder with water and then squeezing it out again. Man’s earliest attempts involved the use of both hands and feet in swimming. A more advanced effort consisted of lying prone on a short log and paddling with the hands. Then some inspired genius hit upon the idea of hollowing out the log and paddling with shaped paddles.

  From this crude beginning the evolution of boats probably has paralleled very closely the cultural advance of the race. For with the improvement in boats came an interchange of ideas between groups far removed from each other. Thus it was that when man had attained his highest cultural status during the waning years of the twentieth century, travel over and through water had also reached its peak of efficiency.

  But when the peoples of the world decided to war upon one another, as these boats were the ultimate in transportation, so was this war the ultimate in destruction. Thus it was that with the end of the war man found himself cast back almost to the point when he was propelling a dugout with a paddle.

  That was the last war for many a year; it was so completely destructive, so devastating, that when it had at last burnt itself out, man had sunk to such low estate that he could think of nothing to fight about except the immediate necessities of life.

  But ships, ever the measuring-rod of man’s progress, had again started their slow evolution toward the ultimate perfection they must some day regain. And the culture of man was keeping step.

  The first morning rays of a golden sun caught the upper portion of a huge, sagging square-sail, and touched it with fire. A man from the tenth century would have found the ship to have some familiar characteristics, but only a person living in the eightieth century would have recognized it for what it was. A vessel of the north-country sea-rovers — peopled by yellow-haired giants who would rather do battle than eat — and who had prodigious appetites.

  The ship was becalmed, and this was a vessel which need never be becalmed. Its sides were lined with a single row of long oars, now cocked at an angle, so that the blades were well out of the water. The rigging of the sail, which was far more scientific and manageable than any used by tenth-century Vikings, allowed it to make use of the slightest current of air, and in any direction except straight ahead.

  APATHY reigned among the voyagers on this ship. No definite course of action had been decided upon. A difference of opinion existed concerning whether they should return to their home port or continue the fruitless search that had occupied them for the past day and night. There was the urge to keep searching but in each was the knowledge that it was futile. For no man could swim in the open sea for a day and a night.

  Leaning against a short section of rail, and gazing with tragic eyes out over the waves, stood a young woman, beautiful even in her grief. The yellow-haired Norsemen, sprawled wearily about on the deck, glanced occasionally at her, and then quickly looked elsewhere. It was her man who had been lost, but they were able to feel her grief almost as acutely as she. For the lost man was Mark, the Axe-thrower, favored of Thor, and the personal hero of every man on board.

  Nona’s lovely body reflected the weariness she endured as she left the rail and made for her cabin. But hers was only a fatigue of mind, manifesting itself in a body that was really tireless. Her blood was charged with the same cell-renewing element that made Mark the perfect physical machine that he was. But so grueling had been the waiting and hoping that she imagined fatigue where no fatigue could be. Wearily she slumped into a soft chair. Hope had fled, and there remained only a numbing, tearless grief.

  Then abruptly she sprang to her feet, one hand stifling an involuntary scream. Across the room, squatting in a corner, was a creature that would have raised terror in the stoutest of humans.

  Superficially the thing was an enormous spider, fully two feet across the body. Superficially, insofar as it possessed eight legs attached to its bulbous cephalothorax. But different, in that it had six tentacles, three on a side, on its upper surface.

  Each of these members was about three feet long and was divided at the end into two flexible prehensile fingers. And different also, by reason of the segmented, chitinous armor which covered the body. But, spider or no spider, the thing was a witch’s fancy, the hideous product of a creator gone mad. Nona thought perhaps she ought to scream anyway. So she did.

  “Calm yourself, girl,” came a voice from the general direction of the creature. “It’s only me... Omega. I just wanted to see how a human would react to the sight of one of the former inhabitants of the moon. This was my original body, you know. I assume you’re not exactly in favor of it?”

  Nona slumped again into the chair. “Oh, it’s you,” she said irritably. “Don’t you know this isn’t any time for your silly tricks?” She winced at the sight of him.

  “And whatever that thing is you’re wearing, please destroy it.”

  “It was destroyed more than five hundred centuries ago,” said the voice. “You know that. You might call this thing an astral projection — it’s been dead so long. But really it’s only a figment of your imagination.”

  “It’s certainly no figment of my imagination, you celestial prankster. No self-respecting girl would ever work up a thing like that.”

  “You certainly did imagine it,” Omega snapped pettishly. “I made you. And I’m not very pleased at the way you react to my natural body. I considered it quite handsome at one time. But then, I might have felt the same way about yours when I was young. But I’ve seen so many forms of life in the last five hundred centuries that they all seem natural to me now...”

  While he talked, Omega caused the vision of the spider-like creature to vanish, and in its stead Nona saw the bent figure of an aged, bearded man. At the sight of this senile being she closed her eyes and relaxed. Then she burst our crying. Omega cocked a sympathetic eye at her. He hated weepy women, but if Nona had stooped to tears, there was a reason. “Nona, what’s wrong?” he queried, gently.

  “Mark...” She choked as she tried to tell him. “He’s... he’s dead!”

  “Dead! What’s he mean, the young loafer? He knows he can’t die — it would upset all my plans. I’ll show him! Where’s the body? I’ll bring him back...”

  He stopped short as Nona, still sobbing, waved an arm toward the two portholes at the side of the cabin. Through them he could see the sunlit waves of the North Sea. Then, surprisingly, he chuckled.

  “Fell overboard, eh?” He chuckled again, Nona looked at him in astonishment. “That’s all right then. Now start at the beginning and tell me what happened.”

  NONA’S eyes widened in sudden hope, for Omega was something close to omnipotent to her, and if he said that Mark might not be dead...

  Abruptly she broke into speech, nearly incoherent at first, but getting clearer as hope calmed her nerves. She told of the storm which had come up during their trip to Stadtland, on the coast of Norway; of how the wind had driven the ship toward the south and west, far off its course.

  Mark had made her keep to the cabin, and when he was lost she had known nothing of it until the storm had abated. Sven, the captain, had broken the news to her in the morning, and since then the ship had been searching, fruitlessly.

  “Well, what are you worrying about?” demanded Omega, his wrinkled face beaming with an impish grin.

  “He... Can’t he drown?”

  “Of course not. Drowning is suffocation, And how can a man who doesn’t need air suffocate?”

  “But Mark and I both breathe. And if I try to stop, my lungs go to work as soon as I stop thinking about it. I suppose it’s the same with him.”

  “Of course,” Omega agreed. “But that is only because there is a nerve center in you
r brain which controls such involuntary actions. The fluid which I injected into your veins didn’t stop that from working, but it did remove the necessity of having a constant supply of oxygen. Therefore Mark’s respiration would continue normally, but it wouldn’t matter to him whether he was breathing air or water, or strawberry jam. He doesn’t require oxygen for the function of his body.

  “I told you once that your body and Mark’s are burning the power from the radioactive element in your blood. You need no other fuel to keep you alive. No food and consequently no oxygen to support the combustion of that food. All you require is water, and Mark is getting plenty of that. Yes, indeed, I imagine he’s getting enough water to last him a lifetime.” He grinned happily.

  “But it is sea water,” objected Nona. “Wouldn’t that...”

  “No — it wouldn’t,” Omega said, impatiently. “I can’t explain the exact nature of your present body chemistry. You couldn’t understand it. But you know very well that you have lived without eating since I gave you that injection several months ago. So you should be willing to take my word that sea water is as safe for Mark as spring water.”

  Nona was smiling quietly now. Where another woman might have let herself go into hysterics from reaction, Nona’s temperament forbade such a weakness. Normally calm and placid, she was busily telling herself that she had known it all the time. That Mark couldn’t be dead. Only the grueling hours of constant searching could have made her temporarily lose hope. But even so she wanted to hear more assurance from Omega.

  “It’s October,” she pointed out. “Cold and exhaustion...”

  “Nonsense! Mark can’t become exhausted. Not for several thousand years to come, anyhow. Radioactivity supplies his energy, more than he can use by muscular activity. He could swim the Atlantic without tiring! And as for cold...” Here Omega hesitated. “Take a look in that mirror.” He leered at her unnervingly.

  Nona obediently crossed the cabin to a highly ornamented full-length mirror, Her reflection showed a beautifully formed body, which womanlike, she briefly admired, even lifting a hand to tuck away a stray, ebon curl. She noted, too, the trimness of her attire. A short jacket of satiny material, which came as low as her lower ribs; then an expanse of tanned skin, beneath which was a loose-fitting pair of shorts of the same shiny cloth. But that was what all the women wore in the summer. The only difference was in the colors and —

  “I see it’s dawned on you,” said Omega. “The temperature is somewhere near freezing. Even the tough lads out on the deck are better clothed than you.”

  “You mean that our blood protects Mark and me from cold?”

  “Of course. You would have noticed it sooner or later, if I hadn’t told you. Radioactivity doesn’t depend on temperature, and as a result your sensory nerves aren’t giving you any warning of discomfort because of the low temperature. Your chemistry operates with equal efficiency over a wide range of heat fluctuation.”

  “Then Mark is safe. But where is he?”

  “How should I know? Suppose you go on deck and tell Sven to point the ship toward Norway. Tell him you’ve had a vision or something, and that you know that Mark is alive and will rejoin you, later. He worships Mark, and that will be a kindness. You can say that Thor himself has revealed that he has given Mark a mission to fulfill, and that he will return when he finishes.

  “Sven will believe that a lot quicker than an explanation of the real facts. And in the meantime I shall go and find your missing husband. And keep your chin up. I dare say it’s a very lovely one, although being a spider I wouldn’t know.”

  There was a twinkle in Omega’s aged eyes, to match the impish grin, when he abruptly vanished.

  NONA sat still for a moment, smiling toward the place which Omega had just quitted. Then she opened the cabin door and stepped out. A moment later a flock of sea gulls which had been perched in the rigging, took sudden wing, startled by the wild shouts of joy that were rising from the deck.

  Yet if Omega had returned and told them of the thing he had just discovered, those shouts might have turned to groans. Omega, a disembodied intelligence of the first order, had been perfectly confident that he could touch Mark’s mind at once.

  Such a mental feat was a problem of simple accomplishment to one of his intellect. Fifty thousand years of projecting his mind to the far ends of the universe, had given him a mind power not surpassed anywhere. His over-active curiosity concerning the myriad of life-forms that infest the endless number of worlds in a dozen galaxies, kept him always alert and always a dynamo of mental energy. And yet he couldn’t contact Mark!

  The mind-pattern that was Mark, had temporarily ceased to exist. For that mind pattern was not complete without all its memories. If a disembodied intelligence can shudder, Omega came very close to it. For in that instant, the thought came to him that the only answer could be that he was dead, after all.

  And Omega had become very attached to Mark.

  In Mark and Nona he had pictured the means of populating the earth with a type of human far superior to the product that nature had blindly created. He had chosen them as Adam and Eve for this race of the future because of the dominating good in their characters. And now, it seemed, Mark had ceased to be.

  But in the instant that this thought came into existence, Omega’s brilliant mind rejected it. There could be another reason for his failure to contact the mindpattern that he knew as Mark.

  Since their last intercourse, Mark might have changed. His ideas, his fundamental philosophy of life might have altered for some reason, and thus created a mindpattern that was unrecognizable. Omega rejected this also.

  Only one alternative remained. Mark had been washed overboard. It was likely that he had received a sharp blow on the head as he went over. If this had happened, then it was possible that the blow could have damaged his brain. And the mindpattern had changed as a consequence.

  BUT this complicated things dreadfully. Concussion could cause a partial or even complete loss of memory. Fracture might do either, and in addition might result in irreparable damage to the brain tissue. Mark may have changed only to the extent of losing some of his memories, or he may have been reduced to a hopeless idiot. Either way Omega must find him. For he alone possessed the knowledge to restore him.

  Not knowing the extent of the pattern change, Omega would have to mentally visualize a pattern containing Mark’s present dominant characteristics. Then he would have to make contact with any being possessing that pattern. There was every chance that no living being would respond to such an imagined mindpattern. And if one did, it would probably be the wrong man.

  Yet it was the only way. He might have to project a million of them before he hit upon the proper one. But with an energy that was definitely not human, he set about the task.

  For two days he labored mightily at his problem. He visualized patterns of the most simple structures, then advanced to others containing some of the memories that he knew were Mark’s. Nothing resulted.

  Exasperated, he went back again to the more simple patterns, thinking he might have failed to imagine some little detail. Then ahead again to more complicated ones.

  Omega knew all about Mark. He had delved into the innermost recesses of Mark’s memory until the mind and character of Mark were as familiar as his own. Each pattern he was forming contained more memories than the last. He had reached the point in the memory chain where Mark had met Nona, when he suddenly realized that he couldn’t hope to succeed by the present method.

  There was one pesky thing he had forgotten. And that was that Mark, wherever he was, now had some new memories of which he knew nothing. Since the time he had fallen overboard Mark had been experiencing things that Omega couldn’t know about. This, of course, wouldn’t make any difference ordinarily. Omega could always contact a familiar mind-pattern, even though years of time had passed and new experiences had partially changed its former structure. But that was because the new memories were only a small portion of the total mem
ories of the pattern. In the present case the new memories would constitute almost, the entire pattern.

  But there was another way. And though Omega cringed mentally at the thought of trying it, he knew very well it was the only course he could take. The method lay in an ability he had discovered shortly after he and the other members of his dying race had cast off their bodies and had taken residence in the imperishable brain containers which now rested on a dead and airless moon. He, differing from his compatriots, hadn’t been satisfied to stay there, whiling away the ages in abstract thought. His ego had ventured away from the brain which had given it birth, and he had gone forth to explore the universe.

  He could think himself instantly to the far corners of the universe. He could construct and inhabit any sort of body he wished. And he had full control and use of the vast stores of energy which are everywhere in space.

  And then, almost accidentally, Omega had discovered that he could travel about in time, as well.

  He had tried it, gingerly at first, and found that there were decided limitations. He could observe past happenings but could take no part in them. He couldn’t take a body and mingle with the beings he was interested in, because he hadn’t really been there when the things had happened. Nor could he force himself backward in time beyond the date of his own birth.

  That fact had handicapped him, for he was young then, and therefore, couldn’t go back very far into the history of any race he might be studying. But as far as it went, the ability had its uses.

  But he had come to grief when he had tried to clear up a hazy point in the past of his own race. The event which he had wanted to watch had taken place within his own lifetime, and, in fact, was connected with some of his own past operations. The trouble came when he had run across his own former body in the course of his study.