It flashed again as Chuck bent down and inserted the tiny flag into the ground. “I claim this planet as a trusteeship of the United States under the laws and regulations of Earth.”
It was a historic moment, and a very solemn ceremony, but he felt a little foolish. It would make more sense for Vance to claim it. Anyhow, there would be no one to jump their claim.
Then it hit him, for the first time. This was Mars! This was the world that held life that never developed on Earth. He cut on his light suddenly, staring at the ground around him. It was nothing but arid, barren sandy waste, useless for anything that he could imagine. Even with the outer temperature far below the freezing point of water, there was no trace of frost on the ground.
He started to turn back to the ship in disgust and fatigue, but Lew had wandered on a few steps farther; he moved after the other mechanically. If there had been one little green shoot, it would have been all he asked. But the Sahara was paradise compared to this.
He tried shouting at Lew, but the air was too thin to carry more than a high-pitched squeak for a few feet.
Lew stooped over and held out something. It was a short object, perhaps two inches long, that looked like a piece of string. Chuck took it listlessly—and then straightened. It wasn’t mineral, certainly—it could only be a part of some plant, unless he could believe the impossibility of its being a piece of paper twine; it even had the twists that twine had.’
Under his helmet light it showed no real details. He tried to crumble it in his hands, but it was too hard for that, though it bent a little. Then he noticed that there were several small hairlike strands sticking out from it. It must have been the root of a plant once.
He stared about the landscape, while Lew’s voice muttered beside him, high-pitched and far away. It wasn’t until the other tapped his helmet he realized his radio hadn’t been turned on for several minutes, though he couldn’t remember turning it off. He must have been disgusted, if he’d cut himself off without thinking. His finger quickly flicked the switch in his glove.
“…plant,” Lew was saying. “Hey, Chuck. What do you make of it?”
“It must have been a plant once,” Chuck admitted.
There was a sudden shout in their ears, and Sokolsky*s voice came rattling in, a torrent of sound. “Wait boys, wait for me. Don’t lose it. It may be the only evidence of plant life; maybe we’re surrounded by plants, but maybe this was ten million years ago, preserved by the dryness. Hang onto it, I’m coming with you!”
He was coming too—bursting out of the little entrance, his helmet on, but the snaps only half-fastened. His hands were working on them, while he came bounding toward the boys in frenzied leaps. “I heard your description. Lew, it must be a plant, let’s see it Ah!”
Sokolsky was all biologist now. He crooned over the little rootlet, caressing it in gentle hands. From a string around his neck, he produced one of the little forty-power microscopes and began examining it more closely.
“Well?” Chuck asked, finally.
Sokolsky looked up, and there was reverence on his face. “Cells. Real cells—mummified, of course. But this is what was once alive. Are there more? Where was it?”
Lew pointed ahead a few steps, and Sokolsky bounded forward, his light bobbing on the surface. He didn’t stop, but went running on until his figure began to vanish over a rise in the sand and into a hollow beyond.
A sudden shriek sounded in their headphones, followed by silence.
They leaped after him, while all the visions of bug-eyed monsters that were ever imagined on alien planets ran through Chuck’s mind. And their first sight of him did nothing to make them feel better. Sokolsky was stretched out flat on the ground, motionless.
Lew yelled at him, and they went rushing forward. But the doctor came to his feet calmly, holding something else out
It was curled up into a tight ball, with a hard, waxy surface exposed, but beginning to open in the light And there was no question about it The bright green color was the familiar hue of plant life. .
“There’s more—millions more—and dozens of lands,” Sokolsky said. His voice sounded ecstatic, but hushed. “We landed in a little barren spot but look…”
They followed his gaze, and he hadn’t exaggerated. AH the vegetation seemed to be balled up into a compact form, probably to avoid any loss of heat during the freezing night. Some of it was largely buried in the sandy ground. But unfamiliar as it was in form, there was at least an acre of ground covered thickly with green objects.
“See,” Sokolsky pointed out to them, “the surface is hard, like glass. The plant secretes some kind of wax that keeps it from drying out And notice how thick the leaves are—they must store water and air—very little as we know it, but a lot for Mars. This will give us a whole new science of life—comparative evolution!”
Chuck found one of the tiny cabbage-like things, and pulled it up. At least forty feet of thin root came up before it finally broke off. He looked at it, and noticed that this one also was opening slowly in the glare of his light “Do they all move like that. Doc?”
‘They have to—they need every bit of light, but they can’t stay open when the sun goes down. A lot of Earth plants open and close too—but these have to be better at it. Look at that beautiful root—it probably goes down to some tiny bit of moisture we wouldn’t even believe was around!”
Vance’s voice cut through their admiration of the tiny plant “Break it up, boys. It’s time to come back now.”
“Ten minutes more,’” Sokolsky asked. “There’s one more thing I have to see. Captain!”
“Five, then. No more,” Vance agreed. “You can get all the plants you want later.”
Sokolsky turned the plant over carefully. “Ten minutes, and I’ll find you a Martian city,” he suggested quickly.
‘Take ten minutes and you’d better produce a city.” Vance’s voice was sick with irritation, as if one more trouble would snap the tight control and break his mask of agreeableness.
Sokolsky chuckled. “Thanks, Captain.”
“He means it,” Lew said. “We’d better get back.”
The little man shook the red hair inside his helmet, and chuckled again. “I know. And if you’ll point your lights over there you’ll see the city. You’ve got ten minutes to look at it—and I’ve got to find out whether these plants show signs of being male and female.”
A joke was a joke. Chuck thought, and started to turn back to the ship. Then his lights swept over the horizon, and his eyes jerked back.
It did look like a city—not a highly advanced one, but like some of the pictures of European ruins he had seen, built of stones that had since crumbled until only bits remained.
Unconsciously, he started forward with Lew at his side. The ruins were probably only natural stones eroded by the winds, but he couldn’t stay away.
They were up to it in a few minutes.
It was a city of stone, laid out with streets, and with square, low stone walls outlining what had been houses. Even doors were plain enough—now empty openings. Just inside the doorway of one, a stone bench could be seen—and near it, set into the wall, a seven-pointed star of another color.
Chuck could almost imagine humans sitting on the bench and gazing at the star. But it would have had to be very long ago. Here, with no rainfall, it would surely take at least a million years to weather the stones down to the wrecks these bad become.
“Five minutes are up,” Vance called.
“Captain, there is a city!” Chuck stooped suddenly to pick up a broken piece of what looked like porcelain, glazed, and with a tiny design running in a perfect arc of a circle around its edge. “There are ruins here.”