He bent forward trying to step up the count he was using to keep himself going. Beside him, Lew matched his work scoop for scoop.
That night they finished with the sand, although it took them until two in the morning. Vance pointed out that a single storm would undo half their work unless they did finish, and they went on. Every man grumbled, and most of them protested. But all of them worked.
Chuck unbent his back and beaded for the air lock. Then his glance fell on Vance, conferring with Rothman and Steele, who had been turning the huge jacks that were raising the middle section. Vance reached for one of the levers, counting. Chuck took it out of the captain’s hands. The man was swaying as he moved.
Vance didn’t protest “You’re ‘right, kid. I’m being a fool. If I collapse, I’m a liability on everyone’s hands. Five inches more, Dick, then I’m going to bed.”
Dick stared after him, shaking his head. The three men exchanged brief, weary glances, and bent to the levers. The ship moved up, a slow fraction of an inch at a time. And at last that was finished. The Eros was still a wreck, but she rested levelly on the jacks and the sand, ready for repairs.
Chuck had expected it to take over a week, and it had been done in four days. But he knew they could never keep it up. And even if they did, they would barely make their deadline.
He sighed slowly, dropped down onto the sand, and fell asleep. Some eddy of semi consciousness told him that was picking him up, undressing him, and putting him to bed. But he didn’t have energy enough to protest.
Vance was up as usual the next morning. “Easier work today—we’re all about shot. We’ll take a ten-hour day, welding the girders back together. The three non-welders will go back to supplies and separate what’s good from the rest. They can carry the damaged stuff outside and get rid of it We don’t need extra weight.”
He grinned at them, daring them to claim he wasn’t being kind to them. But no one said anything, though there were plenty of unvoiced opinions.
It took them one week to get the Eros back in sound condition, as far as her frame was concerned. It was fine progress. But the lifting of the middle section had revealed a series of gashes and separated seams that would require at least five days of welding that had not been on the original schedule. The holes were calked temporarily with the last of the tent cloth and some of the paint that wouldn’t stay long.
Vance gave no sign that it had upset his plans. He went over the group, one man at a time as they sat at supper, pointing out weakness and indicating strengths. He was a living balance sheet, and there could be no complaint of lack of justice in his statements. He went over his own work, as coolly and honestly as that of the others.
Then he put down his pencil. “Vacations are just as important as work. I learned that a long time ago. Chuck, you and Sokolsky have tomorrow off; I’d suggest that you explore a bit—you’ll get more rest than just sitting around. Report in the next morning. Next week, I’ll pick two others, and they’ll be the men who have been the steadiest. But even if I think you’ve been slacking, you still get a vacation—you just go to the bottom of the list.”
For the first time there was a brief, mutter of approval, and answering smiles as Vance got up from the table.
He turned back to them. “Thanks for that. I needed a vacation from ugly looks too. Go to bed,”
They laughed weakly as he walked out Steele grinned after him. “You know, I’ll bet we work harder next week. But I’m out for that vacation.”
They got up in a body and turned toward their hammocks. There was no delay nowadays when it came time to bed down. Only Sokolsky lingered, motioning to Chuck to stay.
“Can you hike?” he asked. “Now, I mean.”
Chuck frowned, but nodded. The redhead bobbed up and down in excitement. “I can’t. Chuck. But I’m going to, just the same. Vance told me ahead of time, and I’ve got everything ready—spare batteries, suits, extra food packed into the helmets where we can reach it, and water. I’m going to find out what those canals are once and for all. You can come along or stay. I’m leaving now.”
Chuck cursed himself again and started to cut his automatic nod of agreement off. Then he hesitated. If they ever got back to Earth without the answer to the riddle, there’d be no living it down. It was one of the chief reasons for the expedition. He chuckled in spite of himself. He was learning to be more honest, apparently—it was his own chief reason, and it didn’t matter about Earth.
“Let’s go,” he agreed.
Vance was coming down from the control room as they dressed and stopped for a brief wish of good luck. He handed Sokolsky the automatic. “There are shells in it this time. And you might take this compass. It seems to point roughly north.”
Then he turned toward his sleeping hammock, and they went down the passage toward the entrance.
The night was typical of Mars—cold air that showed the stars as slightly nickering sparks, low horizon, and a pinprick in the sky that was Phobos, the nearer hunk of rock that served as a moon here. It was only ten miles in diameter, but less than six thousand miles away, and just visible. Deimos hadn’t been spotted by any of the men.
Sokolsky headed north, skirting the ruins of the city. He walked briskly, setting a pace that Chuck found hard to match. “Tragedy,” he said, pointing toward the rums. “Stark tragedy. I’ve come out here nights, sometimes, studying this. There was a rude civilization here once. But no fire and no metals. Did you notice that?”
“No. How do you know?”
“Because I’ve looked for even one bit of metal. But of course they couldn’t have metal without fire—oh, maybe a bit of copper, if they were lucky, but nothing else; and here on Mars that would be hard to find. I’ve looked for some place where they lighted a fire. Rocks crack under heat. There were no fireplaces, no chimneys. The floors show no fire cracks. I’ve even tested the glaze on that pottery. It’s good clay, but it was sun-baked—must have had some way of concentrating more sunlight on it, but it isn’t fired; and the glaze is a kind of lacquer. They didn’t have enough air to keep a fire going, even when they built this place. Know why they fell?”
Chuck shook his head, and Sokolsky went on happily. “They didn’t have power. The winds here won’t do any real work; they had no running streams for water power. No coal—it was never wet enough for a Carboniferous age. No plants big enough to make a fire, even if they could have forced in oxygen enough. Nothing except their muscles. And civilization has to have power—each step up takes more. As soon as they learned about nice things and began to want them, they were licked—they could get them only by laying waste to what should have been saved for the future. And the future starved to death. Tragedy.”
It sounded as reasonable as anything Chuck could find to explain the disappearance—if the Martians had disappeared. But there was no way of knowing. He had seen no sign of writing; if they had a literature, it must have been on something that rotted away ages ago.
He wondered if sometime one of the Martians might come across the space ship and marvel at the race who had built this and then vanished, and try to explain it by some fantastic idea.
Again, the thought picked at his mind that if such ever happened, it would be because he had stowed away, robbing six other men of a part of their chances to return. Nobody had mentioned it, and it seemed completely forgotten. But he couldn’t hide it from himself. He had no right to the power he was using to compress and moisten the air so that he could breathe it, or to the food he had eaten. He had no right to be on Mars.