Rainbow Mars (10 page)

It was not a time to worry about staying together.

Her voice was clear, almost calm. “Too much weight on the tree. They overloaded it.”

“Are you all right?”

“Decelerating. I lost it for a moment there, Hanny. Look out overhead, there's a lot of futz falling at us.”

He looked up at men falling silent in vacuum.

A sky ship dropped past him, slowed and rose again.

His hand scrabbled at his back. He must have dropped the blaster, but he was instinctively reaching for the needle gun, and he found that.

The vessel was alongside him. It might have been a dirigible balloon with wooden decking along the top. Men swarmed out of an interior well, anchored themselves, and hurled something. It unfurled as it came: a net.

Svetz twisted the throttle
off
and dropped under the net. They pulled it back and prepared to throw again.

Something ripped the vessel wide open. For an instant Svetz could see into a tank running bow to stern, filled with gas glowing by the light of a vermilion laser. Then the glowing gas puffed out and the vessel dropped away.

Wind sang a reedy melody, pulled at his helmet, set up a tremor in his flight stick.

Martian vehicles dropped past him. Nobody seemed to be firing at Svetz. Some fired at each other. None tried to match the lifting power of Svetz's flight stick.

And then one did. A sky yacht was floating down toward him.

He shifted laterally. So did the yacht, matching his lift. It was brick shaped, covered with masts and nets with no regard for streamlining.

“Miya, a flying yacht tried to net me, and now I've got another,” he said. He looked for a target. He could glimpse men, but they were under hatches, firing through slits.

Miya said, “I'm clear. I can get to you, but not fast. I'm already in the atmosphere.”

They must have recognized his needle gun as a weapon. The ship rose above him. A net flew. He dodged. They pulled it back and threw again. He dodged.

Air sang past him. He could feel heat on his shoes, the backs of his legs, his forearms.

The sky yacht's crew tired of trying to net him. He saw puffs of flame from covered slits, and tiny metal missiles whacked the back of his flight stick. The brush discharge sputtered blue lightning and he fell.

Nothing had hit
him.
He was falling with a dead stick between his legs, but he wasn't dead yet. He twisted every control. The stick only sputtered puffs of lightning. He kicked it away from him.

The sky yacht was falling alongside him. The net came down again, and this time, rocket pack or not, Svetz didn't dodge. The net swept him in, and the flight stick too, and pulled him toward a wooden deck.

Svetz fished out the flight stick and threw it overside.

The deck knocked the wind out of him. He felt it surge under him, the yacht pulling upward. “They've got me,” he said.

19

In one respect at least the Martians are a happy people; they have no lawyers.

—“A Princess of Mars,” by Edgar Rice Burroughs

 

“Describe the vessel,” Miya instructed.

“Seventeen meters by seven, fitted out like a boat, no keel, no aerodynamic surfaces. Two long tanks with a narrow cabin between. I'm not guessing about that; I saw a tank ripped open on another craft. There are firing points forward, kinetic energy weapons, a motor aft and a deck across the whole top. I'm lying on the deck.” And he looked up at a row of silver masks.

They wound the net around Svetz to immobilize him. Svetz said, “They look like men, what I can see. Except … one.”

“Don't leave me hanging.”

“It's just watching. Squatting with its knees
way
higher than its head. Bubble helmet isn't quite big enough for its ears. It's wearing just the helmet. It's covered with white … feathers! Bird ancestry.”

“Hanny, it wouldn't be related to anything from Earth.”

The crew fished his needle gun out and gathered 'round to study that. One crewman fired at something as it fell past. When he saw no result, he fired a crystal into a wooden post. It left a tiny streak of white powder. He was not impressed. He kept the needle gun.

Several crew picked Svetz up and turned him for inspection.

They reached through the net and opened buckles until they had freed the rocket pack and could slide it off his back. They must have recognized the bell-shapes as rocket nozzles. They were careful with it, bracing it against the deck before they tried to fire it. They couldn't make it work.

They'd find the safety override soon enough.

Svetz spoke while they were playing with the rocket pack. “Miya, they're built like basketball players. Their pressure suits are not quite skintights. They're quilted and painted in camouflage, all reds, and they wear bracelets and toques over the suits. They're wearing silver masks. The masks are pictures of human faces, like death masks. Little windows for eyes. Gems in some of the masks. I won't be able to use my translator until we've got air.
Talk
to me, Miya.”

“I'm here, Hanny.”

“The decks are wood. The fittings are wood. There's some metal, maybe iron and gold, but I'm surrounded by literally tonnes of wood!”

“Enjoy. I've found seeds.”

“Tell me.”

She had flown over the city. “Graceful towers that go up and up. Those slender arched bridges. Streets wind high up between the towers with no support but a few arches thin as an afterthought. Everything looks fragile. They build like they've forgotten gravity, Hanny. The tree's been dropping all kinds of heavy stuff; it'll knock down half the city before the day's over. Nobody was going to notice me in all that.

“I came down east of the city. I found thousands of craters all in a line, all sizes—stuff that fell off the tree over the years—except that a lot of little craters were just the same size, two meters across. I dug seeds out of the centers of those. They look like big yellow apples.”

“Mission accomplished.”

“Yes! But, Hanny, I still can't get Zeera. I can't even get readings from the Orbiter.”

He'd been hoping for better news. The time machine couldn't reach Mars. The Orbiter was to carry them back to Earth orbit. Without the Orbiter…? “Don't kill anyone from now on, all right, Miya? Without the Orbiter, what we are is immigrants.”

“Hanny, the blaster is the only weapon I've got. How do I rescue you without killing anyone?” She sounded brittle.

“They haven't hurt me yet. When we get air I'll try to talk my way out.”

Miya said, “I'm looking over the … you called them roots, but I don't think so, Hanny. They're anchors. Some of them have fallen over. They all fell eastward. The ones still standing are already sprouting black fuzz at their torn ends. I think I know what's going on here.”

“Yes. Yes. Futz, Miya, that's awesome. Should we be looking for two kinds of seeds?”

“I think so. Hanny, are you glad you came?”

“Let's wait on that.”

“These flying yachts keep nosing around. I can dodge them, but there are too many now, and they're shooting at each other, and I just think I'll get out of town. Any idea where you're likely to land?”

“I'll ask the captain when we get some air. Maybe you'd better check in with Zeera.”

“That would take days. I'll hide and wait. Keep in touch.”

*   *   *

There were big holes in the city, big enough to see from a hundred klicks high: fallen towers and fallen anchor trees, and fires spreading unchecked. Open water glittered where a fallen tree had blocked a canal. These trees had seemed mere roots when the main trunk was in place. Now they seemed immense, bigger than any building.

The ship had fallen far. Svetz could feel an honest wind blowing now, and hear the rumble of a motor. The vessel didn't hover long over the city. It chugged toward where a vertical thread hung from the sky.

“Miya. We're following the skyhook tree. That's west, isn't it?”
Freed of the mass of its anchor trees, the tree rises. The orbit expands. Moving west-to-east with the planet's rotation, the tree lags and falls behind.
“There's nothing west of us but desert.”

“I'll follow. Keep me posted.”

His captors took off their helmets and sucked air like they'd never tasted it before. Martian suit recyclers didn't seem to be as good as Space Bureau's. Their features were narrow and their heads were long, with pointed chins, but they seemed quite human. One crewman reached down and fumbled around Svetz's head until he found how to open his bubble.

Svetz couldn't move his entangled hands. “I'm going to faint now,” he said.

The man didn't understand, of course. He spoke a few words. Svetz said, “My translator must hear you speak before it can help us.”

The man spoke at length.

Svetz talked with the Martian, and breathed whenever he remembered. The Martian taught Svetz one word at a time.
Eyes. Fingers. Grasp. Breathe. Fall. Matth from Noblegas,
the Martian who was teaching him,
Sailor middle rank. Svetz,
himself.
Skyrunner,
this dirigible yacht beneath them. The orbiting space elevator still drifting ahead of
Skyrunner,
with its far end sprouting silver flowers, was the
Hangtree.
Aft was
Hangtree City.…

The air was pre-Industrial, and thin.
Breathe!
But there wasn't enough carbon dioxide in his blood.
Breathe
 …

He revived because they'd closed his helmet and Miya was shouting in his ear. “Hanny! Answer!”

“I've been unconscious.” His arms were still bound. His translator had a pickup outside the helmet. It must have heard whatever was said, storing the sounds without understanding. “I'm having one of those days,” Svetz said.

Miya said, “Ride it out.”

Matth was answering too. The translator hiccuped and said, “Why do Svetz throw the—?”

Svetz guessed, and bellowed his answer to get it through the bubble. “Why did I throw the flight stick?”

“Yes. Buy your life with it?”

“You hurt my flight stick. I thought it would hurt us. I bought all our lives.”

Another Martian shouted, “Matth? I tried to net it.” He displayed a net with a black hole burned through it. “The flare would have killed many of us.”

Matth nodded. “Svetz, did you make that happen?”

“No!”

Miya: “I'm turning down the volume.”

Matth said, “You are slave to the ship now. Your life you must give for the safety of
Skyrunner.
” There was no question in his voice, and no doubt. Did Martians become slaves that easily? It would explain why he had been rescued, not killed.

“Why did you sleep?” Matth asked.

“You opened my helmet and left me with not enough breath.”

Matth made an intuitive leap. “You come from where the air is different. Another world! Earth?”

“Yes.”

“From
Earth?
”

Svetz was growing hoarse. “Matth, free my hands! I can make my voice loud.”

“With your
hands?
” Matth considered. “Swear not to attack us or
Skyrunner.
”

“I swear.”

“Swear for your friends.”

He couldn't really vouch for Miya, and Zeera had a bloodthirsty streak. He said it anyway. “I swear.”

Matth freed him. Svetz stood up. He twiddled the volume control and asked, “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” said Matth and Miya.

“Good.”

The deck surged with little gusts of wind, just enough to throw his balance off. Lower gravity seemed to make it worse. There were handholds all about him and a rope along the deck's rim. Svetz wobbled forward, handhold to handhold, seeking a better view.

He said, “I see other sky ships.”

Matth said, “Those are enemies.”

Svetz lowered his helmet over his head and zoomed. “The closest is bigger than
Skyrunner.
The next two are about our size, and one of them has big crabs all over the deck.”

“They are part of the—” Something wasn't translated.

“The ships further back are too slow. They won't catch us. Some of them look like the lens of an eye. I can't tell how big they are. I count fifteen total.”

“You have good eyes.”

“You said the crabs are part of … something?”

“Several kinds of men gathered to make Hangtree City. The”—the translator hesitated—“Allied Peoples. There is a prophecy, Svetz. The world will dry and die. We hoped to use the Hangtree to lift ourselves to space.”

“When did the Hangtree come?”

“When Lord Pfee was a child. Lord Pfee?”

A Martian answered from a higher platform. “Matth, I have a vessel to fight!”

Matth went to join him. The two spoke. Presently Lord Pfee bellowed a string of orders, then came with Matth to join Svetz. Lord Pfee asked, “Can you see great distances?”

“Yes. What do you want to know?”

“Tell me what you see?”

“Ahead, nothing but desert.” Svetz zoomed his view. “Some right-angle patterns just at the horizon, right by a few degrees. Might be foundations for a city. Behind us, two ships our size and one twice as long and more flat, all at about our altitude. They're pacing each other now, and they're all closer than they were.”

“The markings?”

“Where would I look for them? Never mind, I see what you mean. It's a hand, fingers spread, painted across the bow. All three ships.”

“Flags?”

Miya misread his hesitation. “Brightly painted cloth on a mast or pole.”

Svetz knew that! “I see them. They're flapping, I can't read them at all. Blue on the big one, the same pattern on a little one, and the other one is yellow and red.” Svetz looked up. The banner flapping above him was yellow and black. “None like yours. One of the lens shapes is catching up.”