“I don’t care if you’ve found native Martians smoking peace pipes. The five minutes are up. If you don’t start back, I’m sending Dick out to get you.”
Chuck started to throw the shard of porcelain down, but Lew halted him. “Take it easy, Chuck. He’s got to get us back, and anything we find is second to that. Let’s collect our biologist.”
They had no trouble. Sokolsky was already heading back to the ship, smiling to himself. He nodded, holding out three of the tiny cabbage-like plants.
“I’ve found the answer,” he told them. “At least, as much as I can for tonight. There are three sexes among the plants. One produces something like pollen, another a different kind of pollen, and the third seems to be equipped to incubate the seed. I don’t care if we cant return—Just get the radar working so I can call Earth.”
Then he sighed, and his face settled into practical lines again. “I hope we don’t find infections here that attack the men, though. I’ll have to keep a careful check on all the cuts we got from the crash.”
“There was a city there,” Chuck told him, trying to puzzle out the new man the doctor had become. “Real houses, though they’re as old as the hills.”
Sokolsky nodded. “I thought so. But I had my luck with the plants, so I left the city for you. There’s enough here for all of us. And—you know, boys, it’s been two years since I lost my head over anything. I’m glad I did.”
Steele was reaching for his helmet as they came through the air lock and his face was shocked and worried. He made no comment, but jerked a thumb and preceded them along the passage toward the mess hall.
Inside, the others were already assembled with Vance at the head of the table. He looked up, and his hand went down to his lap, to come up with a big .45 automatic.
Chuck laid the shard on the table, pretending not to see the gun. “There were ruins, sir—really. This came from them.”
There was a sudden stir among the others as they bent forward, but Vance’s free hand picked the shard up and set it aside.
“Very well,” he said, in a voice that seemed ready to break into brittle pieces. “There were ruins. We’ll overlook your disobedience this time. But from now on, there can be no exception to the rules and orders. I’m proclaiming absolute, military rule—enforceable by the death penalty, if needs be.”
He sat back, his hand caressing the gun, while, stunned silence fell over the others.
CHAPTER 10
Marooned on Mars
Chuck’s eyes turned from one to another, looking for some explanation. Their bruised faces were blank, and their scratched and dirt-covered hands remained motionless. As one, they sat waiting for Vance to go on, to laugh at his own joke.
But he didn’t laugh. He waited with them, until he was sure that he’d have to speak first Then his hand reached out slowly for the porcelain shard. “Maybe this is important,” he said slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe Sokolsky’s three-sexed plants are more important than we are. And maybe we’re dead, and this is a hell of our own imagining. I don’t pretend to know the answers. I’m not pretending to know anything.
“But while you’ve been learning something, I’ve been hearing it all. That’s why military law is necessary.”
He tossed the automatic out onto the middle of the table. “I don’t feel like a leader. If someone else is better, select him; or select me, if you must. But whoever leads from now on will have to keep that as a symbol that his word is final. We can’t waste time on argument or divided authority. We can’t have men staying ten minutes for any reason when they’re ordered to return in five. There’s the gun—I want everyone who’s willing to accept the responsibility to put his hand on it, and we’ll take a vote on who it will be.”
He waited again, but no hands moved. Finally he reached out and put his own hand on the automatic again; there was no other offer. Vance sighed, and pulled it back to him.
“Very well. Tomorrow well go and look at the ruins. We need one day without any duties, even if it makes us feel guilty to shirk what we consider our dudes. And from there on, nobody can leave the ship without my permission. You’ll remove the radios from your suits when indoors, and you’ll call me before doing anything on your own, unless ifs work you’ve been assigned.
“You see—it’s worse than we thought. You know about the broken girder, the ripped seam, the damaged goods. Some of you even realize we have the nearly impossible job of getting the ship—more than ten tons of it here—back on its fins. Most of you haven’t asked how we’ll straighten out the bent frame before we weld it, but it’s obvious we’ll have to do it by digging sand out from below some parts and jacking up others; probably cutting and rewelding.
“I’ve been figuring out the time. Four of us will have to do at least one hundred days’ work here; part of the work can’t be done, except by those four, so the three remaining will have work for perhaps half the time. Rothman, Steele, Chuck and I know how to handle welders— and that means we have full-time jobs. We’re figuring on one hundred days’ work at twenty hours a day—-and we have to be done in less than ninety days.
“Otherwise, we’re marooned here—and we can’t live until another chance comes for us to go back to Earth. That’s all.”
He waited for an argument. Chuck looked at the others, and nodded slowly. Silently they agreed, one by one.
Vance smiled suddenly, a weak, dead smile. He broke open the automatic and tossed the empty cartridge clip onto the table. “Good. If you’ll accept the idea, you obviously won’t need the threat that I used to drive home the seriousness of this. Go to bed, and well look at the ruins tomorrow.”
He stood up slowly, took three steps forward, and collapsed onto the floor. Sokolsky was at his side at once.
“Strain, fatigue, and loss of blood,” the doctor told them. “He didn’t tell you he cut an artery in his arm in the landing. Hell be all right with a little rest.”
Chuck followed Steele out toward the little bunk room. He was slowly figuring out the fact that Vance had deliberately made one-man rule seem as unpleasant as he could so that they would object to it at once, if they wanted to, and that the captain now felt sure of their obedience. But he hadn’t figured some other things out.
“What are our chances, Dick?” he asked. “Honestly.”
Dick dropped slowly onto his hammock, and closed his eyes. His voice was almost as tired as that of Vance. “About one in a million. Chuck. Probably less. We’re marooned. We might as well face it. But we don’t have to take it without fighting back. Go to sleep.”
Chuck barely beard the last words, because he was already following them. A whole Martian city, restored to life, wouldn’t have changed his actions.
Breakfast was a hodgepodge affair—Ginger was following the orders not to do any work that day without knowing whether he was doing right or wrong, but determined to try. Everyone woke up when they could sleep no longer and stumbled out into the mess hall, where Ginger’s sign said: “Help Yourself.” Chuck was fairly early. He found-a can of protein-vitamin-mineral concentrate and sprinkled it onto some starchy substance in a bowl, figuring it would be a balanced meal. Surprisingly, the combination tasted good, and several others followed his example, though some simply made a quick salad out of vegetables from the gardens.
Vance came tottering in, weak, but obviously back to his normal self. He grinned weakly at them. “Sorry I went West Point drama school on you, boys. Must have been out of my mind. But I still mean it. What’s fit to eat in here?”