David smiled but made no answer. He entered Into the welcome warmth of the car and quickly, in a race to outrun the fleet night, adjusted the viewers for projection and inserted a film in each. Direct viewing would have been quicker, more preferable, but even in the warm interior of the sand-car his nosepiece was still a necessity, and the bulbous transparent covering of his eyes made direct viewing impossible.
Slowly the sand-car lurched forward through the night, repeating almost exactly the route of Griswold's subsection on the day of the checkup.
"I don't get it," said Bigman. He had been muttering under his breath uselessly for fifteen minutes and now he had to repeat his louder statement twice before the brooding David would respond.
"Don't get what?"
"What you're doing. Where you're going. I figure this is my business because I'm going to stay with you from here on. I've been thinking today, Mr. St- Williams, thinking a lot. Mr. Makian's been in a kind of biting temper for months now, and he wasn't a bad joe at all before that. Hermes came in at that time, with a new shuffle for all hands. And Schoolboy Benson gets his licks in all of a sudden. Before it all started he was nobody, and now he's real pally with the big shots. Then, to top it off, you're here, with the Council of Science ready to put up anything you want. It's something big, I know, and I want to be in on it"
"Do you?" said David. "Did you see the maps I was viewing?"
"Sure. Just old maps of Mars. I've seen them a million times."
"How about the ones with the crosshatched areas? Do you know what those areas stood for?"
"Any farmboy can tell you that. There are supposed to be caverns underneath, except that I don't believe it. My point is this. How in Space can anyone tell there are holes two miles underneath the ground if no one's been down there to see? Tell me that."
David did not bother to describe the science of seismography to Bigman. Instead, he said, "Ever hear of Martians?" Bigman began, "Sure. What kind of a question____________________ " and then the sand-car screeched and trembled as the little fellow's hands moved convulsively on the wheels. "You mean real Martians? Mars Martians; not people Martians Eke us? Martians living here before people came?"
His thin laugh rattled piercingly inside the car and when he caught his breath again (it is difficult to laugh and breathe at the same time with a nosepiece on), he said, "You've been talking to that guy Benson."
David remained gravely unruffled at the other's glee. "Why do you say that, Bigman?"
"We once caught him reading some kind of book about it, and we ribbed the pants off him. Jumping Asteroids, he got sore. He called us all ignorant peasants, and I looked up the word in the dictionary and told the boys what it meant. There was talk of mayhem for a while, and he got shoved around sort of by accident, if you know what I mean, for a while after that. He never mentioned anything about Martians to ms after that; wouldn't have had the nerve. I guess, though, he figured you were an Earthman and would fall for that kind of comet gas."
"Are you sure it's comet gas?"
"Sure. What else can it be? People have been on Mars for hundreds and hundreds of years. No one's ever seen Martians."
"Suppose they're down in the caverns two miles underneath."
"No one's seen the caverns either. Besides, how would the Martians get there in the first place? People have been over every inch of Mars and there sure aren't staircases going down anywhere. Or elevators, either."
"Are you certain? I saw one the other day."
"What?" Bigman looked back over his shoulder. He said, "Kidding me?"
"It wasn't a staircase, but it was a hole. And it was at least two miles deep."
"Oh, you mean the fissure. Nuts, that doesn't mean anything. Mars if full of fissures."
"Exactly, Bigman. And I've got detailed maps of the fissures on Mars too. Right here. There's a funny thing about them which, as nearly as I can tell from the geography you brought me, hasn't been noticed before. Not a single fissure crosses a single cavern."
"What does that prove?"
"It makes sense. If you were building airtight caverns, would you want a hole in the roof? And there's another coincidence. Each fissure cuts close to a cavern, but without ever touching, as though the Martians used them as points of entrance into the caverns they were building."
The sand-car stopped suddenly. In the dim light of the viewers, which were still focused on two maps projected simultaneously upon the flat white surface of the built-in screens, Bigman's face blinked somberly at David in the back seat.
He said, "Wait a minute. Wait a jumping minute. Where are we going?"
"To the fissure, Bigman, About two miles past the place where Griswold went over. That's where it gets nearest the cavern under the Makian farms."
"And once we get there?"
David said calmly, "Once we get there, why, I'll climb down into it."
9. Into the Fissure
"Are you serious?" asked Bigman.
"Quite serious," said David.
"You mean"-he tried to smile-"there really are Martians?"
"Would you believe me if I said there were?"
"No. He came to a sudden decision. "But that doesn't matter. I said I wanted to be in this, and I don't back out." Once again the car moved forward.
The feeble dawn of the Martian heavens was beginning to light the grim landscape when the car approached the fissure. It had been creeping for half an hour previous, its powerful headlights probing the darkness, lest, as Bigman had put it, they find the fissure a little too quickly.
David climbed out of the car and approached the giant crack. No light penetrated it as yet. It was a black and ominous hole in the ground, stretching out of sight in either direction, with the opposing lip a featureless gray prominence. He pointed his flash downward and the beam of light faded into nothing.
Bigman came up behind him. "Are you sure this is the right place?"
David looked about him. "According to the maps, this is the closest approach to a cavern. How far are we from the nearest farm section?"
"Two miles easy."
The Earthman nodded. Farmboys were unlikely to touch this spot except possibly during checkup.
He said, "No use waiting then."
Bigman said, "How are you going to do it, anyway?"
David had already lifted the box which Bigman had obtained in Wingrad City out of the car. He tore it open and took out the contents. "Ever see one of these?" he asked.
Bigman shook his head. He twiddled a piece of It between gloved thumb and forefinger. It consisted of a pair of long ropes with a silky sheen connected at twelve-inch intervals by crosspieces.
"It's a rope ladder, I suppose," he said.
"Yes," said David, "but not rope. This is spun silicone, lighter than magnesium, stronger than steel, and barely affected by any temperatures we're likely to meet on Mars. Mostly, it's used on the Moon, where the gravity is really, low and the mountains really high. On Mars, there's not much use for it because it's a rather flat world. In fact, it was a stroke of luck that the Council could locate one in the city."
"What good will this do you?" Bigman was running the length of it through his hands until the ladder ended in a thick bulb of metal.
"Careful," said David. "If the safety catch isn't on, you can damage yourself pretty badly.".
He took it gently out of Bigman's hand, encircled the metal bulb with his own strong hands, and twisted each hand In opposing directions. There was a sharp little click, but when he released his hold, the bulb seemed unchanged.
"Now look." The soil of Mars thinned and vanished at the approaches of the fissure, and the cliff edge was naked rock. David bent and, with a light pressure, touched the bulb end of the ladder to the crag, faintly ruddy in the flushing sky of morning. He took his hand away, and it remained there, balanced at an odd angle.