Second Variety and Other Stories (63 page)

"Transmitter working," a crew member said.

Mason got to his feet and lumbered awkwardly over to the transmitter. "I'll tell Davidson what
we've found." He bent over the microphone.

Young looked across at Halloway. "Well, I guess we're stuck. How long will our supplies carry
us?"

Young looked across at Halloway. "Well, I guess we're stuck. How long will our supplies carry
us?"

"And then --" Young snapped his fingers. "Like the Martians." He squinted at the long corroded
wall of a ruined house. "I wonder what they were like."

"A semantics team is probing the ruins. Maybe they'll turn up something."

Beyond the ruined city stretched out what had once been an industrial area. Fields of twisted
installations, towers and pipes and machinery. Sand-covered and partly rusted. The surface of the land
was pocked with great gaping sores. Yawning pits where scoops had once dredged. Entrances of
underground mines. Mars was honeycombed. Termite-ridden. A whole race had burrowed and dug in
trying to stay alive. The Martians had sucked Mars dry, then fled it.

"A graveyard," Young said. "Well, they got what they deserved."

"You blame them? What should they have done? Perished a few thousand years sooner and left
their planet in better shape?"

"They could have left us something," Young said stubbornly. "Maybe we can dig up their bones
and boil them. I'd like to get my hands on one of them long enough to --"

A pair of crewmen came hurrying across the sand. "Look at these!" They carried armloads of
metal tubes, glittering cylinders heaped up in piles. "Look what we found buried!"

Halloway roused himself. "What is it?"

"Records. Written documents. Get these to the semantics team!" Carmichael spilled his armload
at Halloway's feet. "And this isn't all. We found something else -- installations."

"Installations? What kind?"

"Rocket launchers. Old towers, rusty as hell. There are fields of them on the other side of the
town." Carmichael wiped perspiration from his red face. "They didn't die, Halloway. They took off. They
used up this place, then left."

Doctor Judde and Young pored over the gleaming tubes. "It's coming," Judde murmured,
absorbed in the shifting pattern undulating across the scanner.

"Can you make anything out?" Halloway asked tensely.

"They left, all right. Took off. The whole lot of them."

Young turned to Halloway. "What do you think of that? So they didn't die out."

"Can't you tell where they went?"

Judde shook his head. "Some planet their scout ships located. Ideal climate and temperature." He
pushed the scanner aside. "In their last period the whole Martian civilization was oriented around this
escape planet. Big project, moving a society lock, stock and barrel. It took them three or four hundred
years to get everything of value off Mars and on its way to the other planet."

"How did the operation come out?"

"Not so good. The planet was beautiful. But they had to adapt. Apparently they didn't anticipate
all the problems arising from colonization on a strange planet." Judde indicated a cylinder. "The colonies
deteriorated rapidly. Couldn't keep the traditions and techniques going. The society broke apart. Then
came war, barbarism."

"Then their migration was a failure." Halloway pondered. "Maybe it can't be done. Maybe it's
impossible."

"Not a failure," Judde corrected. "They lived, at least. This place was no good any more. Better
to live as savages on a strange world than stay here and die. So they say, on these cylinders."

"Come along," Young said to Halloway. The two men stepped outside the semantics hut. It was
night. The sky was littered with glowing stars. The two moons had risen. They glimmered coldly, two
dead eyes in the chilly sky.

"This place won't do," Young stated. "We can't migrate here. That's settled."

Halloway eyed him. "What's on your mind?"

"This was the last of the nine planets. We tested every one of them." Young's face was alive with
emotion. "None of them will support life. All of them are lethal or useless, like this rubbish heap. The
whole damn solar system is out."

whole damn solar system is out."

"We'll have to leave the solar system."

"And go where? How?"

Young pointed toward the Martian ruins, to the city and the rusted, bent rows of towers.
"Where they went. They found a place to go. An untouched world outside the solar system. And they
developed some kind of outer-space drive to get them there."

"You mean --"

"Follow them. This solar system is dead. But outside, someplace in some other system, they
found an escape world. And they were able to get there."

"We'd have to fight with them if we land on their planet. They won't want to share it."

Young spat angrily on the sand. "Their colonies deteriorated. Remember? Broke down into
barbarism. We can handle them. We've got everything in the way of war weapons -- weapons that can
wipe a planet clean."

"We don't want to do that."

"What do we want to do? Tell Davidson we're stuck on Terra? Let the human race turn into
underground moles? Blind crawling things..."

"If we follow the Martians we'll be competing for their world. They found it; the damn thing
belongs to them, not us. And maybe we can't work out their drive. Maybe the schematics are lost."

Judde emerged from the semantics hut. "I've some more information. The whole story is here.
Details on the escape planet. Fauna and flora. Studies of its gravity, air density, mineral possessions, soil
layer, climate, temperature -- everything."

"How about their drive?"

"Breakdown on that, too. Everything." Judde was shaking with excitement. "I have an idea. Let's
get the designs team on these drive schematics and see if they can duplicate it. If they can, we could
follow the Martians. We could sort of share their planet with them."

"See?" Young said to Halloway. "Davidson will say the same thing. It's obvious."

Halloway turned and walked off.

"What's wrong with him?" Judde asked.

"Nothing. He'll get over it." Young scratched out a quick message on a piece of paper. "Have this
transmitted to Davidson back on Terra."

Judde peered at the message. He whistled. "You're telling him about the Martian migration. And
about the escape planet?"

"We want to get started. It'll take a long time to get things under way."

"Will Halloway come around?"

"He'll come around," Young said. "Don't worry about him."

Halloway gazed up at the towers. The leaning, sagging towers from which the Martian transports
had been launched thousands of years before.

Nothing stirred. No sign of life. The whole dried-up planet was dead.

Halloway wandered among the towers. The beam from his helmet cut a white path in front of
him. Ruins, heaps of rusting metal. Bales of wire and building material. Parts of uncompleted equipment.
Half-buried construction sections sticking up from the sand.

He came to a raised platform and mounted the ladder cautiously. He found himself in an
observation mount, surrounded by the remains of dials and meters. A telescopic sight stuck up, rusted in
place, frozen tight.

"Hey," a voice came from below. "Who's up there?"

"Halloway."

"God, you scared me." Carmichael slid his blast rifle away and climbed the ladder. "What are you
doing?"

"Looking around."

Carmichael appeared beside him, puffing and red-faced. "Interesting, these towers. This was an
automatic sighting station. Fixed the take-off for supply transports. The population was already gone."
Carmichael slapped at the ruined control board. "These supply ships continued to take off, loaded by
machines and dispatched by machines, after all the Martians were gone."

Carmichael appeared beside him, puffing and red-faced. "Interesting, these towers. This was an
automatic sighting station. Fixed the take-off for supply transports. The population was already gone."
Carmichael slapped at the ruined control board. "These supply ships continued to take off, loaded by
machines and dispatched by machines, after all the Martians were gone."

"Sure was. The minerals team says there's not a damn thing left here. Nothing but dead sand and
rock and debris. Even the water's no good. They took everything of value."

"Judde says their escape world is pretty nice."

"Virgin." Carmichael smacked his fat lips. "Never touched. Trees and meadows and blue oceans.
He showed me a scanner translation of a cylinder."

"Too bad we don't have a place like that to go. A virgin world for ourselves."

Carmichael was bent over the telescope. "This here sighted for them. When the escape planet
swam into view a relay delivered a trigger charge to the control tower. The tower launched the ships.
When the ships were gone a new flock came up into position." Carmichael began to polish the encrusted
lenses of the telescope, wiping the accumulated rust and debris away. "Maybe we'll see their planet."

In the ancient lenses a vague luminous globe was swimming. Halloway could make it out,
obscured by the filth of centuries, hidden behind a curtain of metallic particles and dirt.

Carmichael was down on his hands and knees, working with the focus mechanism. "See
anything?" he demanded.

Halloway nodded. "Yeah."

Carmichael pushed him away. "Let me look." He squinted into the lens. "Aw, for God's sake!"

"What's wrong? Can't you see it?"

"I see it," Carmichael said, getting down on his hands and knees again. "The thing must have
slipped. Or the time shift is too great. But this is supposed to adjust automatically. Of course, the gear
box has been frozen for --"

"What's wrong?" Halloway demanded.

"That's Earth. Don't you recognize it?"

"Earth!"

Carmichael sneered with disgust. "This fool thing must be busted. I wanted to get a look at their
dream planet. That's just old Terra, where we came from. All my work trying to fix this wreck up, and
what do we see?"

"Earth!" Halloway murmured.

He had just finished telling Young about the telescope.

"I can't believe it," Young said. "But the description fitted Earth thousands of years ago..."

"How long ago did they take off?" Halloway asked.

"About six hundred thousand years ago," Judde said.

"And their colonies descended into barbarism on the new planet."

The four men were silent. They looked at each other, tight-lipped.

"We've destroyed two worlds," Halloway said at last. "Not one. Mars first. We finished up here,
then we moved to Terra. And we destroyed Terra as systematically as we did Mars."

"A closed circle," Mason said. "We're back where we started. Back to reap the crop our
ancestors sowed. They left Mars this way. Useless. And now we're back here poking around the ruins
like ghouls."

"Shut up," Young snapped. He paced angrily back and forth. "I can't believe it."

"We're Martians. Descendants of the original stock that left here. We're back from the colonies.
Back home." Mason's voice rose hysterically. "We're home again, where we belong!"

Judde pushed aside the scanner and got to his feet. "No doubt about it. I checked their analysis
with our own archeological records. It fits. Their escape world was Terra, six hundred thousand years
ago."

"What'll we tell Davidson?" Mason demanded. He giggled wildly. "We've found a perfect place.

A word untouched by human hands. Still in the original cellophane wrapper."

A word untouched by human hands. Still in the original cellophane wrapper."

Above them, the cold sky glittered. In the bleak light the barren plains of Mars stretched out, mile
after mile of empty, wasted ruin.

"At that," Halloway said. "You know what it reminds me of?"

"A picnic site."

"Broken bottles and tin cans and wadded up plates. After the picnickers have left. Only, the
picnickers are back. They're back -- and they have to live in the mess they made."

"What'll we tell Davidson?" Mason demanded.

"I've already called him," Young said wearily. "I told him there was a planet, out of the solar
system. Someplace we could go. The Martians had a drive."

"A drive." Judde pondered. "Those towers." His lips twisted. "Maybe they did have an outer
space drive. Maybe it's worth going on with the translation."

They looked at each other.

"Tell Davidson we're going on," Halloway ordered. "We'll keep on until we find it. We're not
staying on this God-forsaken junkyard." His gray eyes glowed. "We'll find it, yet. A virgin world. A world
that's unspoiled."

"Unspoiled," Young echoed. "Nobody there ahead of us."

"We'll be the first," Judde muttered avidly.

"It's wrong!" Mason shouted. "Two are enough! Let's not destroy a third world!"

Nobody listened to him. Judde and Young and Halloway gazed up, faces eager, hands clenching
and unclenching. As if they were already there. As if they were already holding onto the new world,
clutching it with all their strength. Tearing it apart, atom by atom...

"My husband," said Mary Ellis, "although he is a very prompt man, and hasn't been late to work
in twenty-five years, is actually still some place around the house." She sipped at her faintly scented
hormone and carbohydrate drink. "As a matter of fact, he won't be leaving for another ten minutes."

"Incredible," said Dorothy Lawrence, who had finished her drink, and now basked in the
dermalmist spray that descended over her virtually unclad body from an automatic jet above the couch.
"What they won't think of next!"