It was an uncanny experience for Ryker, watching himself perform acts uncontrolled by his conscious will. It was weird, but it was not frightening. The drug induced in him a dreamy, languid euphoria in which no strong emotion was possible.
His hands worked machinelike for hours over the piece of hard crystal, shaping it to the precise dimensions his mind remembered with such photographic clarity. And all the while his mind looked on bemused, drifting in a rosy haze of dreams, uncaring.
A second and, later, a third injection of the drug were required. Ryker neither knew nor cared what they were doing to him. In the gentle euphoria of the drug he floated into improbably gorgeous dreams. These, then, were the phynol dreams he had heard of. Men became easily addicted to the stuff, he dimly knew, but he cared not at all, drifting through a fairyland of his own creation.
After five hours, the replica was completed. Ryker’s body had toiled without rest like a robot, and, if he had not been insulated from reality by the phynol, he would have been fearfully aware that the muscles of his hands and wrists and arms were aching with an agonized exhaustion.
But he knew nothing, floating through sunset clouds.
“Sleep, now, F’yagh,” crooned Dmu Dran.
Obediently, Ryker’s mind submerged in waves of darkness which lapped up about him, soothing his weary hands. Every muscle relaxed utterly. He would sleep for hours now, and awaken weary and stiff, but unharmed.
“We could kill him now, lord,” suggested Houm. “He is a burden to us, and so long as he is alive, a danger to our plans.”
“We could indeed, fat one,” murmured the desert prince negligently. “What think you, priest?”
Dmu Dran sat hunched on a stool, cradling the precious oval talisman in his lap, fondling it with trembling hands like fleshless claws. He lifted dull eyes to his master at this query.
“Kill him for what purpose, lord?” whispered the priest in a dry croaking voice, for he too was weary, and for all the hours that the mindless hands of Ryker had toiled over the stone, Dmu Dran had not for one instant relaxed his vigilance.
“He affords no threat to us,” the priest said. “Surely, you have warriors enough to watch over him. And we may have need for the Accursed One later.”
“What need is that?” asked Houm. “We have the stone. We have everything we require, with it.”
Dmu Dran looked at him sleepily.
“And what if the stone does not work, when we employ it?” he asked tonelessly. “What if the hands of Ryker slipped—or wearied—or cut a shade too deep, or too shallow? If we slay the creature now, we cannot use his mind again, should we need it. Better to keep him alive for the time, until the door is unlocked and Zhiam lies open before us.”
Zarouk stood up. “I think the priest is right,” he said curtly. “We may have to search the mind of Ryker again, and deeper than before. Perhaps the stone does not quite fit, and is not shaped quite properly. Then we can search his memories again—and many times, if needful. Let him live. Xinga, return this offal to its place.”
The burly lieutenant touched his palm to the smooth flesh above his heart. Then, stooping, he picked up the unconscious Earthling and tossed him over one broad shoulder like a sack of meal and bore him from the tent.
It was daylight when Ryker awoke. He lay on the floor of one of the wains, which creaked along over the desert dunes. The old savant was there beside him, his fine brow furrowed with care, his gentle eyes worried.
“So, how are you feeling?”
“Like death warmed over, Doc,” grunted Ryker, trying to sit up. His tongue felt like burnt leather, and tasted like it, too. His brain was dull, his thoughts sluggish, and he had a headache of champion proportions. But that was as nothing compared to the stiff lameness of his hands and arms. He flexed his fingers, wincing.
“A little massage, maybe,” the old man suggested. He began to rub the stiffness from Ryker’s aching arms, > kneading the weary muscles with surprisingly strong fingers. Later, he gave the big man some powder in a drink of wine that relaxed him and soothed his headache.
After a time, Ryker dozed off. He had not been entirely certain he would ever awaken after cutting the replica of the Keystone for the conspirators. Since they had let him live afterwards, he assumed they still had some use for him. So he slept easy, without fears.
When he awoke again it was midday according to the ehrono on his wrist. But not like any Martian noon he had ever witnessed before, the dim, weak sun riding low on I he horizon to the south, the zenith of heaven black as midnight. They were a lot closer to the pole, he knew, and the wind was cold and dry with an edge that bit into his bones like the blade of a razor.
He shuddered, pulling his cloak of orthava furs about him more closely.
Herzog was huddled over his notebook, scribbling, scribbling, and peering nearsightedly at the page.
“Where are we, do you know, Doc?” he muttered.
The old man looked up, and grinned. He had a beautiful smile, despite his ugly face. It was the gentle, open, wondering smile of a little child, naive and vulnerable.
“Awake again, is it? Feeling better now, I hope?”
“Yeah. Where are we?”
“Smack in the middle of the Umbra, my boy. Exactly on the line—north latitude fifty-five degrees, one minute, if I read the stars right, and I think I do. Those hills up ahead to the north are Copais Palus, the border of Ce-cropia. I never in all my days have been this close to the pole, how about you?”
Ryker shook his head, and it turned into a shiver that shook him from head to foot.
“Me, neither,” he growled. “And any closer than this, I got a feeling I don’t want to get. Say, is there anything to eat?”
They soon made camp for the night, the drovers maneuvering the beasts, drawing the wagons into a huge half circle. There was no particular reason for this, since no dangerous predators were believed to be able to survive this far into the frostlands. But Houm did not believe in taking unnecessary chances, and since this was the way caravans were always arranged in formation for the night, save in a town, he saw no reason to change the customary way of doing things.
Besides, it was not entirely impossible that the Lost Nation had scouts or sentries watching the outskirts of Zhiam. Surely, if Valarda and her accomplices had reached Zhiam by now, as they undoubtedly had, the devil warriors would be warned of the possible approach of enemies. A night attack was far from impossible. So Zarouk bade Xinga post guards about the perimeter and commanded that they should be on the alert for anything.
They ate that night under the weird banner of the aurora. Flickering, wavering banners of ghostly fire glowed against the gloom of the north. The desert men mumbled half-forgotten prayers, signing themselves with holy signs that were supposed to keep the devils away, and that night each man had a pan of green fire near him as he slept.
Doc Herzog, however, was enthralled. He had known that Mars was presumed to have its own equivalent of Earth’s famous “northern lights,” but had never before seen them for himself, having only heard the tales the travelers told. Long after Ryker turned in, the old savant still sat up, staring at the sky and making notes.
14. The Sphinx of Mars
The next day they came at last within sight of their goal. It was clearly visible a long way off, like a mountain. But this was no mountain. Perhaps, once, long ago, it had been an immense outcropping of pure mineral, thrust up from the bowels of the planet by the action of geological forces. Or—again, just possibly—it had been an enormous meteorite, or a small asteroid, drawn down to the surface of Mars by gravitational forces.