CHAPTER I
“I would give my left eye to have a chance at studying the bones of Kell-Rabin,” I said.
Kenneth Smith grunted.
“You would give more than your left eye,” he grumbled. “Yes, you would give a damn sight more than your left eye, whether you want to or not.”
Ice tinkled in his glass as he drank and then twirled the goblet in his hand.
We were sitting on the terrace of the Terrestrial Club and far in the distance, on the Mount of Athelum, we could see the lights of the Temple of Saldebar, where reposed the famous bones that were worshipped by the entire Martian nation. In the shallow valley at our feet flowed the multi-colored lights of Dantan, the great Martian city, second to the largest on the planet and first in importance in interplanetary trade.
Several miles to the north the huge, revolving beacons of the space port, one of the largest in the universe, flashed, cutting great swaths in the murky night, great pencils of light that could be seen hundreds of miles above the face of the planet, a lamp set in the window to guide home the navigators of icy space.
It was a beautiful and breathtaking scene, but I was not properly impressed. There were others on the terrace, talking and smoking, drinking and enjoying the pure beauty of the scene stretched out before them. Try as hard as I might, however, to keep from doing so, my eyes would stray from the lighted city and the lights of the port to the faint glimmer that came like a feeble candle beam from the Temple of Saldebar, set on the top of the highest, and one of the few remaining mountains of the Red Planet.
I was thinking dangerous thoughts. I knew they were dangerous. It is always dangerous for an outlander to become too interested in the sacred things of an alien race.
“Yes,” continued my friend slowly, “you would give more than a left eye. If you went monkeying around up there you would probably lose both of your eyes, one at a time in the most painful manner possible. Probably they’d put salt in where your eyes had been. Probably you’d lose your tongue too and they’d probably carve you up considerable and try a little fire and some acid. By the time they got ready to kill you, which they would do artistically, you’d be glad for death.”
“I gather,” I retorted, “that it would be dangerous to try for a look at Kell-Rabin’s skeleton, then.”
“Dangerous! Say, it would be plain suicide. You don’t know these Martians as I do. You have studied them and pried into their history, but I have been high-balling around from space port to space port for a dozen years or more and I have come to know them differently. A fine people to trade with and as courteous and polite as you would want, but they have tabus and Kell-Rabin is their biggest. You know that as well as I. They’re a funny people to look at. It takes some time to get acquainted with them, but they aren’t a bad lot. Get their dander up, though, and look out! Why, it isn’t safe to speak the name of Kell-Rabin. I, for one, wouldn’t think of uttering it where a Martian could hear me.”
“We’ll grant all that,” I replied, “but will you stop to consider for an instant what it would mean to me, who have spent my life studying the Martian race, to know what sort of a man or thing this Kell-Rabin may have been. One glimpse of those bones might serve to settle once for all the origin of the present Martian race; it might serve to determine whether or not the race descended along practically the same lines as we of the Earth; it might even open new angles of thought to the entire situation.”
“And,” grumbled Ken, “have you ever stopped to consider that the bones of Kell-Rabin are to the Martians what a bit of wood from the true cross would be to a Christian or a hair from the beard of the Prophet would mean to a Moslem? Did you ever consider that every man with a drop of Martian blood in his veins would fight to the death to protect the relic against foreign hands?”
“You’re too serious about it,” I told him, “I know how much chance I’ll ever have of seeing them.”
“Well,” replied my friend, “someday I may knock off for a while and try my hand at rifling the tomb.”
“If you do,” I said, “let me know. I’ll be anxious to have a look.”
He laughed and rose to his feet. I heard his footsteps go ringing across the floor of the terrace.
I sat in my chair and gazed out at the feeble gleam of the Martian temple, set there on its mountain, towering above the weird landscape of the fourth planet. I thought upon the temple and the bones of Kell-Rabin.
In the mighty temple of Saldebar, the revered skeleton has lain for ages, from time that had long since been forgotten. Through all of recorded Martian history, a history many thousands of years older than that of the Earth, the bones had lain there, guarded by the priests and worshipped by an entire planet. In the mass of legend and religion that had become attached to the Most Holy Relic, the true identity of Kell-Rabin had been lost. The only persons who might have any idea of what that mythical thing had been were the priests and perhaps even they did not know.
“Quit thinking about it,” I told myself fiercely, but I could not.
Exactly three weeks later I was served with deportation papers because I had attempted, in a perfectly legitimate manner through the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, to obtain permission to study the Temple of Saldebar under the supervision of the Priestly Council.
I had shown, the deportation papers stated, “an unusual and disconcerting curiosity in the Martian religion.” The papers also specifically stated that I was not to return to Mars under the pain of death.
It was a terrible blow to me. For years I had worked on Mars. I was recognized as one of the greatest living authorities on modern Martian civilization and in the course of my work, I had gathered a great deal of information concerning the ancient history of the planet.
I had Martian friends in high offices, but I found they were no longer my friends when I attempted to approach them, hoping they might intercede with a word in my favor. All but one absolutely refused to see me and that one openly insulted me, with a dirty smirk on his face as he did it, almost as if he was glad misfortune had fallen my way.
The Earth ambassador shook his head when I talked with him.
“There’s nothing I can do for you, Mr. Ashby,” he said. “I regret deeply my inability. You know the Martians, however. No one should know them better than you. You have committed a mistake. To them it was the greatest breach of faith possible. There is nothing I can do.”
As I stood upon the deck of the liner, whirling rapidly away from the planet I had devoted my life to, I silently, and unconsciously, shook a fist at its receding bulk.
“Someday—sometime—,” I muttered, but that was merely to soothe my tortured pride. I never really meant to do anything.
I saw the familiar, sun-tanned face of Kenneth Smith in the visor of the visaphone.
“Well,” he said, “I have them!”
“Have what, Ken?” I asked.
“I have,” he said slowly, “the bones of Kell-Rabin!”
My heart seemed to rise up in my throat and choke me. My face must have gone the shade of cold ashes and my mouth was suddenly so dust-dry that I could not speak.
A great fear, mingled with an equally great elation, rose in me and seemed to overwhelm me. I stared, open mouthed, gasping, into the visor. My hand trembled and I think that my entire body shook like a leaf in a gale.
“You look as if you had seen a ghost,” jeered Ken on the other end of the connection.
I gulped and attempted to speak. At last I succeeded. My voice was hardly more than a whisper.