New Folks' Home: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 6) (8 page)

Kent felt icy fingers on his spine. He stared down into the deep blue of Mad-Man’s and strained his eyeballs, trying to pierce the veil that hid the bottom. But that was useless. If one wanted to find out what was down there, he’d have to travel down those steeply sloping walls, would have to take his courage in hand and essay what other men had tried and gone crazy for their pains.

“We can’t use the car,” he said suddenly and was surprised at his words.

Kent walked backward from the edge of the pit. What was happening to them? Why this calm acceptance of the fact they were going to go down into Mad-Man’s? They didn’t have to go. It wasn’t too late yet to turn around and travel back the way they came. With only one car now, and many miles to travel, they would have to take it slow and easy, but they could make it. It was the sensible thing to do, held none of the rash foolhardiness involved in a descent into those blue depths before them.

He heard Charley’s words, as if from a great distance.

“Sure, we’ll have to walk. But we ought to be able to make it. Maybe we’ll find air down there, air dense enough to breathe and not plumb full of ozone. Maybe there’ll be some water, too.”

“Charley,” Kent shouted, “you don’t know what you’re saying! We can’t—”

He stopped in mid-sentence and listened. Even as he talked, he had heard that first weird note from up the canal, a sound that he had heard many times before, the far-away rumble of running hoofs, the grating clash of stonelike body on stonelike body.

“The Eaters!” he shouted. “The Eaters are migrating.”

He glanced swiftly about him. There was no way of escape. The walls of the canal had narrowed and closed in, rising sheer from the floor on either side of them, only a few miles away. There was no point of vantage where they could make a stand and hold off the horde that was thundering toward them. And even if there were, they had but little power left for their guns. In the long trek down the canal they had been forced to shoot time after time to protect their lives, and their energy supply for the weapons was running low.

“Let’s get back to the car!” screamed Ann. She started to run. Kent sprinted after her, grabbed her and pulled her around.

“We’d never make it,” he yelled at her. “Hear those hoofs! They’re stampeding! They’ll be here in a minute!”

Charley was yelling at them, pointing down into Mad-Man’s. Kent nodded, agreeing. It was the only way to go. The only way left open for them. There was no place to hide, no place to stand and fight. Flight was the only answer—and flight took them straight into the jaws of Mad-Man’s Canal.

Charley bellowed at them, his bright blue eyes gleaming with excitement. “Maybe we got a chance. If we can reach the shadows.”

They plunged down, going at a run, fighting to keep their balance. Soft, crumbly rock shifted and broke under the impact of their steel-shod feet. A shower of rubble accompanied them, chuckling and clinking down the slope. The sun blinked out and they plunged into the deep shadows, fought to reduce their speed, slowed to a walk.

Kent looked back. Above him, on the level of the canal floor, he saw a fighting mass of Eaters, indescribable confusion there on the rim of the skyline, as the great silica-armored beasts fought against plunging into Mad-Man’s. Those in front were rearing, shoving, striking savagely, battling against being shoved over the edge as those behind plowed into them. Some of them had toppled onto the slope, were sliding and clawing, striving to regain their feet. Others were doggedly crawling back up the slope.

The three below watched the struggle above them.

“Even them cussed Eaters are afraid to go into Mad-Man’s,” said Charley.

They were surrounded by Ghosts. Hundreds of them, wavering and floating, appearing and disappearing. In the blue shadows of the sunken world they seemed like wind-blown flames that rocked back and forth, flickering, glimmering, guttering. Assuming all kinds of forms, forms beautiful in their intricacy of design, forms angularly flat and ugly, gruesome and obscene and terrible.

And always there was that terrible sense of watching—of ghostly eyes watching and waiting—of hidden laughter and ghoulish design.

“Damn them,” said Kent. He stubbed his toe and stumbled, righted himself.

“Damn them,” he said again.

The air had become denser, with little ozone now. Half an hour before they had shut off their oxygen supply and snapped open the visors of their helmets. Still thin, pitifully thin by Earthly standards, the air was breathable and they needed to save what little oxygen might remain within their tanks.

Ann stumbled and fell against Kent. He steadied her until she regained her feet. He saw her shiver.

“If they only wouldn’t watch us,” she whispered to him. “They’ll drive me mad. Watching us—no indication of friendliness or unfriendliness, no emotion at all. Just watching. If only they would go away—do something even!” Her whisper broke on a hysterical note.

Kent didn’t answer. What was there to say? He felt a savage wave of anger at the Ghosts. If a man could only do something about them. You could shoot and kill the Eaters and the Hounds. But guns and hands meant nothing to these ghostly forms, these dancing, flickering things that seemed to have no being.

Charley, plodding ahead down the slope, suddenly stopped.

“There’s something just ahead,” he said. “I saw it move.”

Kent moved up beside him and held his rifle ready. They stared into the blue shadows. “What did it look like?” Kent asked.

“Can’t say, lad,” Charley told him. “Just got a glimpse of it.”

They waited. A rock loosened below them and they could hear it clatter down the slope.

“Funny lookin’ jigger,” Charley said.

Something was coming up the slope toward them, something that made a slithering sound as it came, and to their nostrils came a faint odor, a suggestion of a stench that made the hair crawl on the back of Kent’s neck.

The thing emerged from the gloom ahead and froze the three with horror as it came. A thing that was infinitely more horrible in form than any reptilian monster that had ever crawled through the primal ooze of the new-spawned Earth, a thing that seemed to personify all the hate and evil that had ever, through long milleniums, lived and found its being on the aged planet Mars. A grisly death-head leered at them and drooling jaws opened, displaying fangs that dripped with loathsomeness.

Kent brought his rifle up as Ann’s shriek rang in his ears, but Charley reached out and wrenched the weapon from his hand.

His voice came, cool and calm.

“It’s no time to be shootin’, lad,” he said. “There’s another one over there, just to our right and I think I see a couple more out just beyond.”

“Give me that gun!” yelled Kent, but as he lunged to jerk it from Charley’s grasp he saw, out of the tail of his eye, a dozen more of the things squatting just within the shadows.

“We better not rile them, son,” said Charley softly. “They’re a hell’s brood and that’s for sure.”

He handed the rifle back to Kent and started backing up the slope, slow step by slow step.

Together the three of them backed slowly away, guns held at ready. In front of them, between them and the squatting monstrosities, a single Ghost suddenly materialized. A Ghost that did not waver but held straight and true, like a candle flame burning in the stillness of the night. Another Ghost appeared beside the first, and suddenly there were several more. The Ghosts floated slowly down the slope toward the death-head things, and as they moved they took on a deeper color, more substantiality, until they burned a deep and steady blue, solid columns of flame against the lighter blue of the eternal shadow.

Staring, scarcely believing, the three saw the gaping ghouls that had crept up the slope, turn and shuffle swiftly back, back into the mystery of the lower reaches of Mad-Man’s.

Kent laughed nervously. “Saved by a Ghost,” he said.

“Why, maybe they aren’t so bad after all,” said Ann and her voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “I wonder why they did it?”

“And how they did it,” said Kent.

“Principally,” said Charley, “why they did it. I never heard of any Ghost ever takin’ any interest in a man, and I have trod these canals for twenty Martian years.”

Kent expelled his breath. “And now,” he said, “for Lord’s sake, let’s turn back. We won’t find any hermit here. No man could live out a week here unless he had some specially trained Ghosts to guard him all the time. There isn’t any use of going on and asking for trouble.”

Charley looked at Ann. “It’s your expedition, ma’am,” he said.

She looked from one to the other and there was fear upon her face.

“I guess you’re right,” she said. “No one could live here. We won’t find anyone here. I guess it must just have been a myth, after all.” Her shoulders seemed to sag.

“We’ll go on if you say the word,” said Charley.

“Hell, yes,” declared Kent, “but we’re crazy to do it. I understand now why men came out of here stark crazy. A few more things like these we just seen and I’ll be nuts myself.”

“Look!” cried Ann. “Look at the Ghosts. They are trying to tell us something!”

It was true. The Ghosts, still flaming with their deep-blue color, had formed into a semicircle before them. One of them floated forward. His color flowed and changed until he took on a human form. His right hand pointed at them and then waved down the slope. They stared incredulously as the motion was repeated.

“Why,” said Ann, “I do believe he’s trying to tell us to go on.”

“Dim my sight,” shrieked Charley, “if that ain’t what the critter is tryin’ to tell us.”

The other Ghosts spread out, encircled the three. The one with the manlike form floated down the slope, beckoning. The others closed in, as if to urge them forward.

“I guess,” said Kent, “we go whether we want to or not.”

Guarded by the circle of Ghosts they went down the slope. From outside the circle came strange and terrible noises, yammerings and hissings and other sounds that hinted at shambling obscenities, strange and terrible life forms which lived and fought and died here in the lower reaches of Mad-Man’s.

The shadows deepened almost to darkness. The air became denser. The temperature rose swiftly.

They seemed to be walking on level ground.

“Maybe we’ve reached the bottom,” suggested Kent.

The circle of Ghosts parted, spread out and the three stood by themselves. A wall of rock rose abruptly before them, and from a cave in its side streamed light, light originating in a half-dozen radium bulbs. A short distance to one side squatted a shadowy shape.

“A rocket ship!” exclaimed Kent.

The figure of a man, outlined against the light, appeared in the mouth of the cave.

“The hermit,” cried Charley. “Harry, the Hermit. Blast my hindsight, if it ain’t old Harry, himself.”

Kent heard the girl’s voice, beside him. “I was right! I was right! I knew he had to be here somewhere!”

The man walked toward them. He was a huge man, his shoulders square and his face was fringed in a golden-yellow beard. His jovial voice thundered a welcome to them.

At the sound of that voice Ann cried out, a cry that was half gladness, half disbelief. She took a slow step forward and then suddenly she was running toward the hermit.

She flung herself at him. “Uncle Howard!” she cried. “Uncle Howard!”

He flung his brawny arms around the space-armored girl, lifted her off the ground and set her down.

Ann turned to them. “This is my uncle, Howard Carter,” she said. “You’ve heard of him. His best friends call him Mad-Man Carter, because of the things he does. But you aren’t mad, really, are you, uncle?”

“Just at times,” Carter boomed.

“He’s always going off on expeditions,” said the girl. “Always turning up in unexpected places. But he’s a scientist for all of that, a really good scientist.”

“I’ve heard of you, Dr. Carter,” said Kent. “I’m glad to find you down here.”

“You might have found worse,” said Carter.

“Dim my sights,” said Charley. “A human being living at the bottom of Mad-Man’s!”

“Come on in,” invited Carter. “I’ll have you a cup of hot coffee in a minute.”

Kent stretched out his legs, glad to get out of his spacesuit. He glanced around the room. It was huge and appeared to be a large cave chamber. Perhaps the cliffs that rimmed in Mad-Man’s were honeycombed with caves and labyrinths, an ideal place in which to set up camp.

But this was something more than a camp. The room was well furnished, but its furnishings were a mad hodge-podge. Tables and chairs and heating grids, laboratory equipment and queer-appearing machines. One machine, standing in one corner, kept up an incessant chattering and clucking. In another corner, a mighty ball hung suspended in mid-air, halfway between the ceiling and the floor, and within it glowed a blaze of incandescence which it was impossible to gaze directly upon. Piled haphazardly about the room were bales and boxes of supplies.

Kent waved his hand at a pile of boxes. “Looks like you’re planning on staying here for a while, Dr. Carter,” he said.

The man with the fearsome yellow beard lifted a coffee pot off the stove and chuckled. His chuckle thundered in the room. “I may have to stay quite a while longer,” he said, “although I doubt it. My work here is just about done.” He poured steaming coffee into the cups. “Draw up your chairs,” he invited.

He took his place at the end of the small table. “I imagine you are hungry,” he said. “It’s tiring work coming down into Mad-Man’s. Almost five miles.”

Charley lifted his cup to his mouth, drank deeply, wiped his whiskers carefully. “It’s quite a little walk, I’ll admit,” he said. “For twenty Martian years I’ve trapped the canals and I never saw the like of it. What made it, Doc?”

Dr. Carter looked puzzled. “Oh,” he said, “you mean what made Mad-Man’s.”

Charley nodded.

“I really don’t know,” said Carter. “I’ve been too busy on other things since I came here to try to find out. It’s a unique depression in the surface of the planet, but as to why or how it came to be, I don’t know. Although I could find out for you in a minute if you want to know. Funny I never thought of finding out for myself.”