The Dope on Mars Read online

shortand unscientific word and went to sleep.

  There's a Martian guarding the entrance to our cave. I don't know whatthey intend to do with us. Feed us, I hope. So far, they've just left ushere, and we're out of rations.

  Kroger tried talking to the guard once, but he (or it) made a whistlingkind of sound and flashed a mouthful of teeth. Kroger says the teeth arein multiple rows, like a tiger shark's. I'd rather he hadn't told me.

  * * * * *

  _June 23, 1961, I think_

  We're either in a docket or a zoo. I can't tell which. There's a rathersquare platform surrounded on all four sides by running water, maybetwenty feet across, and we're on it. Martians keep coming to the faredge of the water and looking at us and whistling at each other. Alittle Martian came near the edge of the water and a larger Martianwhistled like crazy and dragged it away.

  "Water must be dangerous to them," said Kroger.

  "We shoulda brought water pistols," Jones muttered.

  Pat said maybe we can swim to safety. Kroger told Pat he was crazy, thatthe little island we're on here underground is bordered by a fast riverthat goes into the planet. We'd end up drowned in some grotto in theheart of the planet, says Kroger.

  "What the hell," says Pat, "it's better than starving."

  It is not.

  * * * * *

  _June 24, 1961, probably_

  I'm hungry. So is everybody else. Right now I could eat a dinner raw, ina centrifuge, and keep it down. A Martian threw a stone at Jones today,and Jones threw one back at him and broke off a couple of scales. TheMartian whistled furiously and went away. When the crowd thinned out,same as it did yesterday (must be some sort of sleeping cycle here),Kroger talked Lloyd into swimming across the river and getting the redscales. Lloyd started at the upstream part of the current, and was abouta hundred yards below this underground island before he made the farside. Sure is a swift current.

  But he got the scales, walked very far upstream of us, and swam backwith them. The stream sides are steep, like in a fjord, and we had tolift him out of the swirling cold water, with the scales gripped in hisfist. Or what was left of the scales. They had melted down in the waterand left his hand all sticky.

  Kroger took the gummy things, studied them in the uncertain light, thentasted them and grinned.

  The Martians are made of sugar.

  * * * * *

  Later, same day. Kroger said that the Martian metabolism must be likeTerran (Earth-type) metabolism, only with no pancreas to make insulin.They store their energy on the _outside_ of their bodies, in the form ofscales. He's watched them more closely and seen that they have longrubbery tubes for tongues, and that they now and then suck up water fromthe stream while they're watching us, being careful not to get theirlips (all sugar, of course) wet. He guesses that their "blood" must bealmost pure water, and that it washes away (from the inside, of course)the sugar they need for energy.

  I asked him where the sugar came from, and he said probably their bodiesisolated carbon from something (he thought it might be the moss) andcombined it with the hydrogen and oxygen in the water (even _I_ knew theformula for water) to make sugar, a common carbohydrate.

  Like plants, on Earth, he said. Except, instead of using special cellson leaves to form carbohydrates with the help of sunpower, as Earthplants do in photosynthesis (Kroger spelled that word for me), they usedthe _shape_ of the scales like prisms, to isolate the spectra (anotherKroger word) necessary to form the sugar.

  "I don't get it," I said politely, when he'd finished his spiel.

  "Simple," he said, as though he were addressing me by name. "They have atwofold reason to fear water. One: by complete solvency in that medium,they lose all energy and die. Two: even partial sprinkling alters theshape of the scales, and they are unable to use sunpower to form moresugar, and still die, if a bit slower."

  "Oh," I said, taking it down verbatim. "So now what do we do?"

  "We remove our boots," said Kroger, sitting on the ground and doing so,"and then we cross this stream, fill the boots with water, and _spray_our way to freedom."

  "Which tunnel do we take?" asked Pat, his eyes aglow at the thought ofescape.

  Kroger shrugged. "We'll have to chance taking any that seem to slopeupward. In any event, we can always follow it back and start again."

  "I dunno," said Jones. "Remember those _teeth_ of theirs. They must befor biting something more substantial than moss, Kroger."

  "We'll risk it," said Pat. "It's better to go down fighting than to dieof starvation."

  The hell it is.

  * * * * *

  _June 24, 1961, for sure_

  The Martians have coal mines. _That's_ what they use those teeth for. Wepassed through one and surprised a lot of them chewing gritty hunks ofanthracite out of the walls. They came running at us, whistling withthose tubelike tongues, and drooling dry coal dust, but Pat swung one ofhis boots in an arc that splashed all over the ground in front of them,and they turned tail (literally) and clattered off down another tunnel,sounding like a locomotive whistle gone berserk.

  We made the surface in another hour, back in the canal, and were luckyenough to find our own trail to follow toward the place above which thejeep still waited.

  Jones got the rifles out of the stream (the Martians had probablythought they were beyond recovery there) and we found the jeep. It wasnearly buried in sand, but we got it cleaned off and running, and gotback to the ship quickly. First thing we did on arriving was to breakout the stores and have a celebration feast just outside the door of theship.

  It was pork again, and I got sick.

  * * * * *

  _June 25, 1961_

  We're going back. Pat says that a week is all we were allowed to stayand that it's urgent to return and tell what we've learned about Mars(we know there are Martians, and they're made of sugar).

  "Why," I said, "can't we just tell it on the radio?"

  "Because," said Pat, "if we tell them now, by the time we get back we'llbe yesterday's news. This way we may be lucky and get a parade."

  "Maybe even money," said Kroger, whose mind wasn't always on science.

  "But they'll ask why we didn't radio the info, sir," said Jonesuneasily.

  "The radio," said Pat, nodding to Lloyd, "was unfortunately brokenshortly after landing."

  Lloyd blinked, then nodded back and walked around the rocket. I heard acrunching sound and the shattering of glass, not unlike the noise madewhen one drives a rifle butt through a radio.

  Well, it's time for takeoff.

  * * * * *

  This time it wasn't so bad. I thought I was getting my space-legs, butPat says there's less gravity on Mars, so escape velocity didn't have tobe so fast, hence a smoother (relatively) trip on our shock-absorbingbunks.

  Lloyd wants to play chess again. I'll be careful not to win this time.However, if I don't win, maybe this time _I'll_ be the one to quit.

  Kroger is busy in his cramped lab space trying to classify the littlemoss he was able to gather, and Jones and Pat are up front watching thewhite specks revolve on that black velvet again.

  Guess I'll take a nap.

  * * * * *

  _June 26, 1961_

  Hell's bells. Kroger says there are two baby Martians loose on boardship. Pat told him he was nuts, but there are certain signs he's right.Like the missing charcoal in the air-filtration-and-reclaiming (AFAR)system. And the water gauges are going down. But the clincher is thosetwo sugar crystals Lloyd had grabbed up when we were in that zoo.They're gone.

  Pat has declared a state of emergency. Quick thinking, that's P
at.Lloyd, before he remembered and turned scarlet, suggested we radio Earthfor instructions. We can't.

  Here we are, somewhere in a void headed for Earth, with enough air andwater left for maybe three days--if the Martians don't take any more.

  Kroger is thrilled that he is learning something, maybe, about Martianreproductive processes. When he told Pat, Pat put it to a vote whetheror not to jettison Kroger through the airlock. However, it was decidedthat responsibility was pretty well divided. Lloyd had gotten thecrystals, Kroger had only studied them, and Jones had brought themaboard.

  So Kroger stays, but meanwhile the air is getting worse. Pat suggestedKroger put us all into a state of suspended animation till landing time,eight months away. Kroger said, "How?"

  * * * * *

  _June 27, 1961_

  Air is foul and I'm very thirsty. Kroger says that at least--when theMartians get bigger--they'll have to show themselves. Pat says what dowe do _then_? We can't afford the water we need to melt them down.Besides, the melted crystals might _all_ turn into little Martians.

  Jones says he'll go down spitting.

  Pat says why not dismantle interior of rocket to find out where they'reholing up? Fine idea.

  How do you dismantle riveted metal plates?

  * * * * *

  _June 28, 1961_

  The AFAR system is no more and the water gauges are still dropping.Kroger suggests baking bread, then slicing it, then toasting it till itturns to carbon, and we can use the carbon in the AFAR system.

  We'll have to try it, I guess.

  * * * * *

  The Martians ate the bread. Jones came forward to tell us the loaveswere cooling, and when he got back they were gone. However, he did finda few of the red crystals on the galley deck (floor). They're good-sizedcrystals, too. Which means so are the Martians.

  Kroger says the Martians must be intelligent, otherwise they couldn'thave guessed at the carbohydrates present in the bread after a lifelongdiet of anthracite. Pat says let's jettison Kroger.

  This time the vote went against Kroger, but he got a last-minutereprieve by suggesting the crystals be pulverized and mixed withsulphuric acid. He says this'll produce carbon.

  I certainly hope so.

  So does Kroger.

  * * * * *

  Brief reprieve for us. The acid-sugar combination not only producescarbon but water vapor, and the gauge has gone up a notch. That meansthat we have a quart of water in the tanks for drinking. However, theair's a bit better, and we voted to let Kroger stay inside the rocket.

  Meantime, we have to catch those Martians.

  * * * * *

  _June 29, 1961_

  Worse and worse. Lloyd caught one of the Martians in the firing chamber.We had to flood the chamber with acid to subdue the creature, whichcarbonized nicely. So now we have plenty of air and water again, butbesides having another Martian still on the loose, we now don't haveenough acid left in the fuel tanks to make a landing.

  Pat says at least our vector will carry us to Earth and we can die onour home planet, which is better than perishing in space.

  The hell it is.

  * * * * *

  _March 3, 1962_

  Earth in sight. The other Martian is still with us. He's where we can'tget at him without blow-torches, but he can't get at the carbon in theAFAR system, either, which is a help. However, his tail is prehensile,and now and then it snakes out through an air duct and yanks food rightoff the table from under our noses.

  Kroger says watch out. _We_ are made of carbohydrates, too. I'd rathernot have known.

  * * * * *

  _March 4, 1962_

  Earth fills the screen in the control room. Pat says if we're lucky, hemight be able to use the bit of fuel we have left to set us in adescending spiral into one of the oceans. The rocket is tighter than asubmarine, he insists, and it will float till we're rescued, if theplates don't crack under the impact.

  We all agreed to try it. Not that we thought it had a good chance ofworking, but none of us had a better idea.

  * * * * *

  I guess you know the rest of the story, about how that destroyer spottedus and got us and my diary aboard, and towed the rocket to SanFrancisco. News of the "captured Martian" leaked out, and we all becamenine-day wonders until the dismantling of the rocket.

  Kroger says he must have dissolved in the water, and wonders what _that_would do. There are about a thousand of those crystal-scales on aMartian.

  So last week we found out, when those red-scaled things began clamberingout of the sea on every coastal region on Earth. Kroger tried to explainto me about salinity osmosis and hydrostatic pressure and crystallinelife, but in no time at all he lost me.

  The point is, bullets won't stop these things, and wherever a crystalfalls, a new Martian springs up in a few weeks. It looks like the fiveof us have abetted an invasion from Mars.

  Needless to say, we're no longer heroes.

  I haven't heard from Pat or Lloyd for a week. Jones was picked upattacking a candy factory yesterday, and Kroger and I were allowed tosign on for the flight to Venus scheduled within the next fewdays--because of our experience.

  Kroger says there's only enough fuel for a one-way trip. I don't care.I've always wanted to travel with the President.

  --JACK SHARKEY

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from _Galaxy Magazine_ June 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.