The Martian War (15 page)

My cabin’s former inhabitant had been rousted out to bunk with another sailor. Despite the captain’s instructions, the disgruntled clod wanted back into his little room, insisting that he had left keepsakes there. But I found absolutely nothing, and I was sure the man wanted to accuse me of stealing. Besides, I had begun to let the sick Martian loose from its lion’s cage so that it could move about the metal-walled chamber. I had no intention of letting this oaf see it.

The red-headed man had a squarish, stupid face that looked as if it had been pummeled into a barely human mold; his ears were swollen, his nose crooked, most assuredly damaged in street brawls. The crewman glared at me in front of the door to the cargo room, but I am accustomed to dealing with brutes and fools.

Taking the initiative, I pushed him away from the cabin with enough force to surprise him, then I promptly brandished a metal pipe (which I used when I needed to encourage the Martian back into its cage). “If I batter your nose into a pulp, perhaps the ship’s doctor could set it properly this time, and you won’t look like such an ugly gargoyle.”

The man had obviously expected me to be a meek tourist to be bullied into submission. But when he saw that I was deadly serious and would not be intimidated, he slunk away, growling empty threats.

I slammed the cabin door and secured the lock, knowing that I must now be on my guard against this uneducated brute. If the Martian had come to Earth in search of intelligent life, I was glad it had first encountered men such as myself, rather than stupid apes like that one.

I did not tell Lowell about the threats. Although he wanted to be credited with great discoveries, he was willing to go only so far. At heart, Percival Lowell was a man of high society, raised in Boston to appreciate cigars, brandy, and gourmet foods. While I stayed in my dim room devoted to our work, Lowell secured a grand cabin for himself on the sun deck. He enjoyed all the amenities he’d missed in the primitive Sahara. He bathed, had his clothes laundered and pressed, and dined each evening at the captain’s table.

Naturally, I was invited to join him. But how could I leave my Martian, whose health was clearly fading, its mysterious illness gaining a stronger hold? How could I dine on beefsteak and souffle, while the most vital biological discovery in history lay plaintively weak below decks?

I offered the Martian everything I could imagine it might eat. I attempted to interest the creature with vegetables or fresh meat, sugar water, even unpalatable chemical compounds from my research kit, but the Martian refused every form of nourishment that I could imagine.

In my dissection of its desiccated comrade, I had found no obvious stomach, gut, or intestines, and I wondered if it might draw sustenance through photosynthesis in the manner of a plant. Making sure no one could see, I moved the creature to an outer cabin for a few hours, where a wide sunbeam shone through the salt-speckled porthole. But still the listless beast showed no response, and I returned him to the cargo chamber.

Recalling all of my experiments grafting the healthy organs of one species of animal onto the weaker set of another … I considered the possibilities. If only I could
graft some human organs onto the Martian—a strong set of lungs, or even a heart, as I had done in my vivisections— then perhaps this superior being could live after all. But I did not have access to such biological resources. I could do only what I was able.

I was growing extremely concerned. How could I ever replace this live specimen if I, through my own negligence, allowed it to perish?

As a doctor, I was certain—judging by the increasing rubbery grayness of its skin and the rising and falling temperature of its body, which I acquired through the awkward use of a thermometer—that the Martian was suffering from some sort of Earthly
germ.

Coming from a different planet, Martian life could be at risk from fevers and other morbidities to which humans had long since become accustomed. Our atmosphere was thicker, the gravity heavier, the moisture in the air higher than the red deserts of Mars. Such a creature had never been meant to survive here. This lone explorer would die here unless I could perform some drastic miracle.

In desperation, I gave it a radical series of injections, a course of strong drugs, stimulants, and vitamins. The Martian recovered some of its strength and vigor. In fact, its improvement was so dramatic and remarkable that I realized my own exhaustion and stress. When had I last eaten?

Thus, I finally decided to take Lowell up on his invitation. I went into the sunlight at last, leaving the Martian secured in its room. I wanted a bath and a change of clothes, a shave, and a good meal among civilized company. But what I most desired was to talk privately to Percival Lowell.

I need not recount in detail the mundane dinner conversation with the captain and all the vapid travelers, who had little intelligence and much money. After the meal, feeling clean and refreshed, my belly well satisfied and my chest warmed by a particularly mellow Bordeaux, I took Lowell down to see his prize specimen. When we returned, however, we came upon quite a shock.

The metal door to the isolated cargo chamber was ajar, forced open. I instantly had a sense of foreboding. “Damnation! Someone has broken in.”

We rushed into the room, only to find it ransacked. My medical equipment lay strewn about, my doctor’s bags, vials of serum and chemicals scattered. Worst of all, the Martian was gone. The lion’s cage stood empty, the barred door hanging open.

“Blast! The brute is loose!” Lowell’s expression showed annoyance rather than panic. “We must track it down. The thing can’t have gone far on the ship.”

I ran out of the cabin and into the lower passageways. “We will certainly hear a commotion if any other passengers see it.”

But I didn’t think the Martian would go near crowds of people. It would slink and hide belowdecks, maybe make its way to the engine room. I remembered the strange rotating camera construction it had built at its crashed cylinder and therefore we knew that it had a substantial mechanical aptitude.

Lowell and I hurried through the shadowy passageways. The tunnels were hot and dank, smelling of metal, bilge, and grease. The shielded gas lamps provided insufficient
illumination. The Martian would have a thousand places to hide.

“The creature is frightened—doesn’t know where to turn. When we find it, we’ll have to corner it.”

“Yes, Moreau, and a cornered animal is extremely dangerous.”

We considered splitting up, but realized that if we came upon the alien specimen—if it was indeed energetic enough to have launched its impetuous escape attempt—one man would be unable to subdue it.

We opened doors, looking into unoccupied cabins and storerooms. The ship’s engines throbbed, and we could feel a swaying motion from the restless seas around us. My senses were highly attuned. I knew the Martian was intelligent and its tentacle appendages sufficiently nimble that it could have picked the lock of its cage. But someone else had broken into the rooms.

A bloodcurdling scream echoed along the passageway, a shriek of pain and terror that suddenly broke off with a hollow, wooden-sounding snap.

“It came from just around that corner,” Lowell said.

Wasting no thought on caution, we raced pell-mell to the cabin where our Martian had gone to ground. Anyone else would have frozen with terror upon seeing the monstrous Martian, its lamp-like eyes, its writhing tentacles. But when we saw what the creature was
doing,
even the two of us were shocked and revolted. Lowell turned away, but I could only stare, trying to understand.

The Martian had attacked the oafish redhead whose quarters I had taken over. I guessed that by the time the
crewman broke open my sealed cabin door, the Martian must already have let itself out of the cage. If I’d been the one to return, no doubt the creature would have fallen upon me.

The crewman had paid a high price for his vengeful curiosity. Like a predatory spider chasing a fat beetle, the Martian had pursued the man, overtaken him, and brought him down with powerful tentacles. While the hapless man screamed and struggled, the Martian wrapped one of its snake-like appendages around his throat and snapped his neck. Blood still dribbled from the redhead’s lips, and his dull-witted eyes were glazed in death.

Lowell had never seen a dead man before, certainly never a cruelly murdered victim with fresh bloodstains all around. But the most horrific aspect of the tableau was what the Martian was
doing.

It’s saucer-like eyes looked at us warily, like a wolf guarding its kill. Its multiple tentacles moved in a dizzying flow. It had seized hypodermic syringes from my medical kit, and I realized that the crewman had not ransacked my laboratory after all—it was the Martian itself.

Like an industrial harvesting machine, the Martian plunged hypodermic needles into the dead crewman, filling each syringe barrel with fresh blood, and then curled back around to inject the harvested life fluid into its own veins.

“It’s … feeding.” I allowed myself to feel intellectual interest once the initial unpleasantness had worn off. “Fresh blood, like a vampire.”

Did human blood contain the proper proteins and nutrients the Martian required to stay alive? It seemed an impossible evolutionary adaptation. Knowing the physiology of the Martian, I saw no natural apparatus on its physical form that was adapted to drawing or ingesting blood. I saw no signs that it was a blood drinker. Was it possible that the creature had traveled so high on the evolutionary ladder that it depended upon artificial apparatus to survive? Had it become utterly dependent upon tools, even in order to derive nourishment? It seemed unlikely to me, but the Martian civilization had clearly advanced far beyond anything on Earth.

I could see by the unnatural pallor in the crewman’s corpse that he had already been mostly exsanguinated. I couldn’t say I felt sorry for him. With a flash, I understood the reason for the desiccated condition of the other white corpses inside the crashed cylinder, the pale drones left as shriveled husks … even the other superior Martian, bled dry.
This creature had fed on them.
A terrible necessity to ensure that the mission succeeded?

“Good Lord, this is horrible!” Lowell reeled with growing horror and revulsion, then staggered to the wall, whereupon he retched up most of his fine dinner and the Bordeaux.

So, now I knew our specimen had murdered more than once. Had it been an honorable decision of survival among the two remaining superior Martians, or had this creature killed its companion just to drink its blood?

As these thoughts raced through my mind, Lowell recovered and turned with revulsion and anger. He raised his metal bludgeon and brought it down swiftly upon the Martian’s brain sac. He struck again, sideways, scattering the hypodermic needles across the floor. Half-stunned, the Martian scuttled away from the crewman’s body, but Lowell struck it a third blow.

I interposed myself between him and the Martian. “Don’t hurt it. We have just made a substantial discovery about its very nature. Think, man! It must have been desperate, starving.” I sneered at the dead redhead on the floor. “And this was probably the most valuable thing that cretin has ever done in his life. I doubt he’ll be missed.”

“It was murder, Moreau!”

“Is it murder when one species kills another? When a hunter shoots a gorilla in Africa, when a farmer butchers a cow? These Martians may be as superior to us as we are to our domesticated animals. It is an accident and understandable, but we must make certain it does not happen again.”

Together, threatening with our clubs, we drove the sluggish Martian back down the corridor. I wondered if it moved slowly because it had gorged itself, or if Lowell’s blows had injured it. Despite its feeding, I could see the marks of sickness still upon it.

We urged the Martian forward. It seemed to know where we were going and, as if chastened, it moved along willingly. I wondered if it was simply biding its time and building further schemes in its great brain.

When we had the creature safely secured in its iron cage, I added a second lock this time. Then I looked at Lowell. His hair was mussed, his eyes reddened and wild. Fortunately, I am adept at cleaning up after experiments that have gone wrong; the rest of the world has never needed to know the details of failed attempts.

“Lowell, you must go speak with the captain,” I said, command firm in my voice. “Smooth this over.”

He did not usually respond well to sharp orders, but
in this situation he was completely lost. “Yes. Yes, I must explain to the captain—”

I cut him off. “What you must
explain
is that this loutish crewman was bothering you in the afterdeck where you had gone to smoke a cigar. This man asked you for money, and when you refused, he tried to rob you. He attempted to land a crippling blow, but you were easily able to subdue him. After all, you lived in the Orient for many years and studied mysterious techniques used by the warriors of Japan. But he came at you again, and out of instinct you threw him.”

“Yes,” Lowell said, nodding, not entirely following the story I had fabricated. “I have studied what the Japanese call
judo
and
tae kwon do.”

“Yes, use those words. And to your horror, the bully was flung over the rail and landed in the steamer’s wake.”

Lowell blinked at me, astonished. “But how could I say that? It’s absurd.”

“Would you prefer to say that a rampaging monster from another planet killed him and then drank most of his blood? Believe me, I know how the superstitious and fearful commoners think. It will be a mob.”

I could not help but remember how I had been driven from place to place, whether by ignorant people or by educated men such as Thomas Huxley. I knew precisely what would happen when the crew learned about their fallen mate. “Do it now, Lowell, or all is lost. No one will doubt you. And now I must go fetch the corpse before anyone else finds it.”

Finally I got him to repeat the story to my satisfaction, and I sent him off, looking dazed—which was good, for it
would make his words all the more believable. Then I raced back to where the dead crewman lay crumpled.