BEYOND THE WORLDS WE KNOW
by Lin Carter
PART I
1. A Call for Help
The dusky purple sky of Mars was suddenly split asunder by an arc of dazzling white fire, which split the dark firmament from zenith to nadir. This streak of atomic flame sped towards a range of low, worn, incredibly ancient mountains in the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet, and the trim little speedster whose rocket drive was the cause of that fiery wake settled down to rest on the top of one of these eminences—Mount Mern, in the Ygnarth region of the Drylands of Cotaspar.
The airlock slid open and two men in protective suits, their faces shielded by airmasks, emerged into view. One was obviously an Earthling, tall, rangy, long-legged, with a fiery thatch of red hair and mischievous green eyes that sparkled with irrepressible humor in a handsome, tanned, clean-shaved face. The other was a Venusian, from his lithe and limber, almost boneless grace of movement, bald hairless pate, slanted albino-pink eyes, and dead-white skin.
The two trudged across the plateau, space-boots squealing and crunching in the thin layer of rock dust that overlay the age-old stone, flogged on by icy gusts of gaspingly thin but breathable air. They approached a domelike structure of dark, gloomy basalt. It was ages older than the Great Pyramid of Cheops, that massive dome; aeons more ancient than the very cornerstone of Babylon. For Mars was ... old ... and the lurking remnants of her once-glorious civilization which she still nurtured at her shrivelled breast had origins so anterior in time as to dwell in the shadowlands of myth ...
The bitterly cold, desiccated wind drove a swirl of talcum-fine rock dust rattling against the faceplate of his airmask, and Phath, the Venusian, started irritably and muttered a curse to his Swamp Country god. He was used to the dank climate of his muddy world, with its fetid bogs and clinging mists and bubbling fens, and this bone-dry, withered old dustball of a world ran against his grain.
"Cursed if I can see why we had to travel all the way to this miserable excuse for a planet, when the old crackpot could have told us what his trouble was on the televisor," grumbled Phath, wiping his faceplate clear.
His redheaded companion shrugged carelessly. "Dr. Zoar will have his own reasons, and they’ll be good ones," observed the space-adventurer known only as 'Star Pirate.' "Just be patient, and we’ll soon know. Besides, if we hadn’t come, we'd be missing out on the swell Martian brandy the Doc usually serves us, not to mention those fried canal-mushroom filets—"
Phath muttered something disparaging on the question of Martian cuisine, but then the great door loomed up before them. The massive slab of wood wherefrom it had been anciently fabricated was so old that it had become petrified into stone over the ages, and it bore the bronze sigil of twin interlaced crescents that denoted the structure as a monastery dedicated to the Moon Gods. That had been long ago, and within the memory of living men the old edifice had served the reclusive savant and master-scientist, Zoar, as his hermitage and laboratory.
It was Zoar himself, and not one of his robot servitors, who answered the door. He was squat, diminutive, little more than a dwarf, with a bald, wrinkled skull and an ugly, froglike face, which wore a scowl that seemed permanently grafted upon his leathery, green-skinned face. It amused his warped sense of humor to assume the dusty dark-red robes and scuffing sandals of the long-extinct Moon Priests who had once haunted the drafty, echoing halls of what was now his sanctuary.
"Ah, it’s you at last, my boy!" he croaked, peering up into Star’s grinning face. Then his tones turned surly and his expression sour as he spied Phath lurking in the background.
"Brought your web-footed flunky along with you, eh?" he demanded with a sneer. "I thought the air rather savored of swamp-slime when I opened the door—"
Phath flushed—as much as his chalk-white skin could flush—and his pink eyes narrowed to dangerous slits, one hand fondling the worn butt of his proton-needle in its leathern holster slung at his lean hip. "Why, you lice-ridden old sand-rat, I’ve half a mind to feed you a pint or two of your own desert-dust—!"
"If you actually had half a mind," snarled the savant with a savage smirk, "then you’d only be a cretin, not the perambulating two-legged amoeba you are now!"
"Is that so, you crawling sandlizard," Phath spat venomously. "Well, scuttle into your nearest sewer-hole, ’cause I’ve a needler here just aching to broil one more slithering bit of Martian vermin!"
"Boys, boys!" sighed Star, but he knew it was no use. The two had a feud going for many years, and both obviously enjoyed it too much to be mollified by any words of his. Philosophically, he sat down on a stone bench to wait out the exchange of vituperation.
No Martian does any sort of business until after the guest-feast, but in the case of Dr. Zoar, a bachelor who tended for himself, the custom was observed only cursorily.
So swallowing their impatience to discover what had impelled him to call for their help, Star and the Venusian sat down to a repast of pale gold Drylands wine, succulent native fruits which savored of cinnamon, a pungent native cheese, broiled sandcat sausages, and that delight of gourmets the System over which Star had mentioned earlier, juicy slices of canal-pod mushrooms sizzled in small coppery skillets, ripe with spicy sauce.
Over a mellow, ancient Martian brandy with a heart of liquid golden fire, they talked, the meal concluded.
"You called for our help, but nothing seems to be wrong here on Mount Mern—"
"Your assistance, rather than help," the old scientist corrected him sharply. "I have an undertaking in mind, an expedition, for which I require the strength, agility, courage and fighting skills of yourself and—urn!—this mud-dweller you call your sidekick."
Then, before Phath could rise to the bait and begin to spar once more with words, the old Martian savant unfolded before the two adventurers an astounding tale.
2. A Brand New World
"You recall when you were on your way to Mercury a while back, on that nasty Fire Troll business," said Zoar, "I told you of my observations with the gravitometer—my own small invention," he added with a self-deprecating little cough which fooled no one. "I believe I told you then that I had discovered the cause of those mysterious perturbations in the orbit of the planet Pluto which have baffled every astronomer since the immortal Tombaugh discovered the ninth world from the sun . . . and that my calculations proved the long-suspected existence of a tenth world from the sun, that elusive will-o’-the-wisp, the legendary planet 'Persephone.' "
"Why, sure, Doc, I remember you said something—"
"Since then," continued Dr. Zoar, serenely riding over Star Pirate's interjection as if he had not even heard it, "since then, I have completed my calculations to a nicety. Once I had managed to pinpoint the periodicity of the perturbations in the orbit of Pluto (no mean feat in itself, I assure you, lad!), I had to prove it with hard mathematics. I employed three droneships, widely spaced, to take further readings and thus obtained a fix on the mystery planet. Once I had taken the parallax, it was child's play to feed the computer with the math and derive the precise location of this new world in space. As soon as the computer has finished its purely routine calculations, we will have the entire orbit of the tenth world—Persephone, if you will—charted to a degree of exactitude that should satisfy those jealous scoffers"—here the Martian savant was apparently referring to his fellow scientists— "but one last proof is needed, before I will be completely satisfied ."