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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #68409 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/68409)
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Martian Shore, by Charles L.
-Fontenay
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: The Martian Shore
-
-Author: Charles L. Fontenay
-
-Illustrator: EMSH
-
-Release Date: June 26, 2022 [eBook #68409]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
-             Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARTIAN SHORE ***
-
-
-
-
-
-                           The Martian Shore
-
-                        By CHARLES L. FONTENAY
-
-                        _Shaan made the longest
-                      crawl in history--to avoid
-                       crawling before tyrants!_
-
-           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
-                 Infinity Science Fiction, April 1957.
-         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
-         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
-
-
-The lone figure trudged across the Hellas Desert toward Alpheus Canal.
-He moved fast in the low gravity of Mars, but the canal was miles away
-and the afternoon was far gone.
-
-Robbo Shaan turned his marsuit temperature unit down a degree. He still
-perspired freely, but he didn't dare turn it any lower. Only a green
-Earthand would ignore any survival factor when stranded on the Martian
-desert.
-
-Shaan had no map, no compass. But he remembered there was a private
-dome in the middle of the canal, just about due east from him. He
-didn't have enough oxygen to reach it. They had seen to that. But he'd
-try till he died.
-
-The brand itched on his forehead, and scalded in the sweat that
-poured down from his close-cropped blond hair. With his marshelmet on,
-there was no way to scratch it. It throbbed.
-
-Even if he reached the dome, or any dome, that brand guaranteed that he
-would be shot on sight.
-
-Soldiers of the Imperial Government of Mars had dropped the jetcopter
-to the sand hours before, and turned Robbo Shaan out to die. He had
-stood on the red sand and watched the 'copter with the four-winged
-eagles painted on its sides, as it rose and fled away from him in the
-direction of Mars City.
-
-He smiled grimly. The Imperial Constitution did not permit the
-Government to kill a man outright, no matter what his crime. This was
-the way they did it instead.
-
-Robbo Shaan's crime was simple. He believed in the old democratic
-form of government the Martian dome-cities had had after the Martian
-people won their freedom from the Earth corporations in the Charax
-Uprising--and had recently lost. Shaan had talked democracy, and under
-the new Imperial Government that was treason.
-
-There was no appeal from his sentence. If he lived--and how could he
-live without food or oxygen?--he was an outcast. It was a peculiar
-legal contradiction; the government was prohibited from executing him
-outright, but, once he had been branded, it was the duty of every loyal
-citizen to shoot him dead on sight.
-
-Shaan checked his oxygen dial. There was only about an hour's supply
-left. He couldn't cut his use of it down.
-
-Instinctively, his hand dropped to his belt, but the vial of suspensene
-he'd carried so long was not there. They wouldn't leave him that.
-Suspensene was a drug that would put a man in suspended animation for
-twenty-four hours. It was used in such emergencies when oxygen ran low,
-to preserve life until rescue came.
-
-What good would it have done him, anyhow? There would be no rescue for
-him. The radio equipment had been removed from his marshelmet. Even if
-it hadn't, no one would help a branded man.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-He saw the green expanse of the canal when he was still far away from
-it. It was a thin line that broadened as he approached, panting,
-getting the best he could from his weary legs with long, floating leaps.
-
-He reached the edge of the cliff. The canal was a hundred feet below
-him, too far to jump, even on Mars. He walked a mile southward along
-the rim, seeking a downward ledge.
-
-There was no ledge. But Shaan found a roughness of projecting rocks,
-where the cliff was not entirely perpendicular. He scrambled down.
-
-He jumped down the last twenty feet. He landed with a muffled crunch of
-broken branches in the canal sage that stretched in unbroken gray-green
-expanse from the base of the cliff, as far as the eye could see.
-
-He got to his feet. The canal sage was uniformly knee-high. It was so
-close-packed that the tops formed an apparently solid carpet on the
-canal bottom.
-
-He checked his oxygen dial. Only fifteen minutes' supply left. Even if
-he were on course, the private dome was at least twenty miles away.
-
-He was in the shadow of the cliff here. The small sun of Mars was low
-in the west. Above him, the brightest stars already shone in the dark
-blue sky.
-
-The cold of night was beginning to descend. There was frost on the
-leaves of the canal sage. He switched his marsuit temperature control
-from "cool" to "heat," but left it low. His body temperature would keep
-him warm enough as long as he was moving.
-
-Fifteen minutes and then death. Shaan shrugged. He started walking,
-straight away from the cliff toward the distant sunlight that still
-touched the canal sage to the east.
-
-His passage through the plants left a path behind him, a path that
-slowly closed again as though the canal sage moved deliberately to heal
-the break.
-
-His only hope in that fifteen minutes was to find a giant canal cactus.
-All Martian plants, the botanists had decided, kept their oxygen supply
-in their hollow interiors. A full-grown canal cactus was forty feet
-tall and twenty feet across. If he could break his way into one, it was
-big enough to supply him with both oxygen and water.
-
-But there was no canal cactus in sight, and he could have seen one
-miles away above this flat expanse of knee-high sage.
-
-He moved along stubbornly, the canal sage dragging at his feet. He
-watched the needle of the oxygen dial sink slowly toward the "empty"
-mark.
-
-The needle hit zero. Shaan stopped. He shook the perspiration from his
-eyes and looked around him, straining for distance.
-
-No friendly cactus reared anywhere above the gray-green sea of sage.
-No flash of sunlight revealed a distant dome. There was only the
-frost-rimed expanse of leaves stretching away, the dark cliff rising
-behind him and the cold, star-studded sky overhead.
-
-Shaan felt that he was suffocating. Was the residue of oxygen in his
-marsuit really depleting that fast, or was it the frantic rebellion of
-his mind against inevitable death?
-
-A great anger swept over him, and with it a bitter defiance. He fumbled
-at the winged nuts that locked his marshelmet in place. He loosened
-them, freed them, and dropped them in his pocket.
-
-With a wrench, he unsealed the helmet and lifted it from his head. He
-lifted his naked face to the thin air of Mars.
-
-Dizziness swept over him and, with it, nausea. The stars spun in the
-blue-black sky, and went out for him.
-
-He toppled forward, the useless helmet falling from his hands. His
-unconscious body crashed through the frosty foliage of the canal sage
-to the turf beneath.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Shaan opened his eyes. At once, he was amazed. He had not expected to
-open them again, ever. It was impossible that he should.
-
-He was cold. The cold of death? No. He wouldn't be feeling that.
-
-He was in utter blackness, with a fragrant, woodsy aroma in his
-nostrils. He was lying flat on his stomach, on a surface that was not
-soft, but springy.
-
-Had he been rescued? Was he in a hospital somewhere? In a dome?
-
-He moved his fingers. They clutched chill, moldy sod.
-
-But he was breathing. The air was sweet and keen, like the air of a
-terrestrial mountain top. He was alive.
-
-He pulled his knees under him slowly and sat up. His bare head struck
-a flimsy, rustling barrier and thrust through. The air rushed from his
-lungs and he gasped in the thin, icy-cold Martian air. He had a single
-glimpse of jewelled stars in a velvet sky before he threw himself prone
-beneath the foliage again.
-
-He lay there, recovering his breath. Slowly, realization came to him.
-
-He was under the canopy formed by the foliage of myriads of canal sage
-plants. The leaves formed a tightly packed roof 18 inches above the
-ground. Perhaps the plants did store oxygen in their hollow stems. But
-they trapped it beneath the solid cover of their foliage, too, forming
-a thin layer of breathable atmosphere along the surface of the canal.
-
-Shaan laughed, a harsh, dry laugh. For years people had been crunching
-around through the canal sage, harvesting it sometimes for fuel and
-other purposes. All that time they had not realized they were wading
-through a layer of breathable oxygen at their very ankles.
-
-The foliage trapped the daytime heat, too. That was why Shaan was only
-cold, instead of nearly frozen.
-
-Carefully, he got to hands and knees and began to crawl. At once, he
-ran into a tangle of plant stems. He could make no headway. He subsided
-and lay down again, thinking it over.
-
-He was hungry and thirsty. Canal sage was better cooked, but it was
-edible raw. All he had to do was reach out his hands and cram the thick
-leaves in his mouth, being careful not to denude too much of the canopy
-above him.
-
-After a while, he was well fed. The leaves had partially assuaged his
-thirst, too.
-
-As long as he stayed below the canal sage foliage, he could live. He
-had air, food and water. The roof of plants kept out the night cold.
-But he could not get to his feet. If he wanted to reach the dome, he
-would have to crawl twenty miles on hands and knees, without the sun
-and stars to guide him through the tangled stems.
-
-At least he was alive. That was more than he had expected. He went to
-sleep.
-
-When he awoke, he was lying on his back and the canal sage foliage
-was a sheet of golden green above his face. It was daytime. No shaft
-of sunlight broke through the leaves, but they were a pulsing foam of
-translucence.
-
-The sun itself was a brighter spot in the roof of light.
-
-The stems of the canal sage plants were not nearly as close together
-as they had seemed in the darkness. Most of them were at least a foot
-and a half apart. There were no leaves on the plants below their bushy,
-flattened tops, and the ground below them was a springy mattress of
-decaying leaves and twigs. He could move through it, though it would be
-hard on his hands and knees.
-
-The sun would show him his directions, if he knew what time it was.
-He had no watch--they didn't waste expensive items like that on men
-condemned to die in the desert. He thrust his head momentarily above
-the foliage and located the cliffs in the west. It was morning,
-apparently about 0800.
-
-He had some difficulty rigging a harness, but at last he managed to
-attach the marshelmet to his belt. He might need it again.
-
-He ate again and began crawling eastward. The plant stems were not hard
-to thrust aside with his shoulders when they could be seen.
-
-But crawling was a lot harder than walking. After a while he realized
-that his marsuit heating unit was still on. He turned it off. He
-wouldn't need it again until--or unless--he reached a dome.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Twenty miles is a long way to crawl, even on Mars. At the end of two
-days, he had not found the dome he sought, and his palms and knees were
-raw.
-
-He had learned to push his head into the foliage so he could still
-breathe a little, for a short time, and thrust his eyes above the canal
-sage to survey the terrain around him. He did this periodically, but
-there was no dome to be seen.
-
-As the shadow of the distant cliff, now dim in the blue haze, crept
-across the canal sage toward him on the second day of his odyssey, he
-saw the rounded top of a canal cactus reared above the sage. It was
-about two miles away. He ducked beneath the leaves and crawled.
-
-When darkness caught him, he forced himself to interrupt his quest.
-Trying to crawl at night, with nothing to indicate direction, might
-just take him farther from his objective.
-
-Early the next morning, he reached the base of the cactus, a solid wall
-of olive green across the limited horizon of his nether world.
-
-He had no knife, nothing at all with a cutting edge. He didn't want to
-break his marshelmet, even if he could. He began to crawl around the
-foot of the giant plant, almost hopelessly seeking an opening.
-
-Surprisingly, he found one, but it was small. It was about eight inches
-in diameter, and it looked as though it had been gnawed.
-
-Shaan propped his chin on his hands and considered. During the two days
-he had moved beneath the canal sage foliage, he had seen no sign of
-animal life.
-
-Except for the Martian natives, intelligent creatures who did not
-breathe but assimilated oxygen from plants and soil and stored it
-compressed in their tissues, no animal life had been found on Mars. The
-Martians, with bodies of almost human size, walked on long, stilt-like
-legs and were strict vegetarians. Reports by occasional canal settlers
-that they had found traces of animal life--without seeing the
-animals--were discounted.
-
-But this hole in the canal cactus looked like it had been made by an
-animal.
-
-The stems of the canal sage were not large, but they were stiff and
-woody. Shaan found a dead stalk lying on the ground, broke it to a
-jagged point and started to work on the edges of the hole.
-
-It took him most of the day, but near nightfall he had enlarged the
-opening until it would admit him. He crawled into the hollow cactus.
-
-It was darker inside than outside, but not completely dark. He was in a
-giant, ovoid room lit by a dim green twilight.
-
-It was good to stand up straight again, even though the floor curved
-downward from his entranceway. The occasional drip of water sounded in
-his ears. Moving forward slowly, he was able to distinguish a small,
-shallow pool in the low center of the cactus' hull. Since the shell of
-the big plant curved downward from the entrance, the pool must have
-been several feet below ground level.
-
-Shaan had not tasted free water since he had emptied his canteen on the
-desert and thrown it away four days before. He dropped to his knees,
-unmindful of their rawness, and drank greedily. The water was fresh and
-cool, with some of the taste of the cactus plant in it.
-
-It grew dark fast. As Shaan lay relaxed on the floor of his new haven,
-he heard a scurrying and a squeaking in the darkness. Then there came a
-muted splashing near him.
-
-Shaan held his breath. He had no idea of the size or capabilities of
-the creatures which had joined him in the cactus. But if they were
-aware of his presence they had no fear of him. Nor did they molest him.
-
-He saw them for a few moments early the next morning. They were furry,
-squirrel-like creatures without tails, that ran on their two hind
-legs and held hand-like paws against their chests. They stared at him
-with big bright eyes, about half a dozen of them, before they ran out
-through the hole he had enlarged.
-
-Living in the cactus was more satisfactory than living outside. Shaan
-made it his headquarters. He slept in it at night, amid the furry
-animals, which accepted his presence without question, merely avoiding
-any close approach.
-
-By day, he crawled out in search of the dome. He did it systematically,
-going in a different direction each day. He tried sixteen directions
-without success.
-
-A day just wasn't long enough. The second two-day trip he made, going
-out one day, sleeping out and returning the second day, he saw the sun
-flash off a faraway plastic dome at midafternoon.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Shaan pushed his face through the leaves and stared across a
-hundred-foot cleared space at the dome. The canal sage was very
-efficient. When the space had been cleared for the dome, the sage
-foliage had grown down to the ground level around the bare circle to
-prevent the life-giving oxygen under it from dissipating.
-
-The transparent hemisphere glistened dully in the sunlight. It covered
-about an acre of ground. Near one side was the small home of a canal
-settler. Under the protective dome terrestrial vegetables grew and
-terrestrial animals lived.
-
-Long ago Shaan had jettisoned his oxygen cylinders to save weight, but
-they would have done him no good had he kept them. His marshelmet,
-however, would hold enough air for him to cross the cleared area to the
-dome. He pulled it on, under the leaves.
-
-Then he remembered something and took it off again. He smeared dirt
-over the brand on his forehead, hoping he was concealing it. He put the
-helmet back on.
-
-Getting to his feet, he ran across the clearing and through the open
-outer door of the airlock. He shut it behind him and, waiting a few
-minutes, took off the helmet. There was air in the airlock.
-
-He had done this without fear or reflection. On a planet like Mars,
-only a thin line of oxygen stood between life and death. The outer door
-to every airlock on every dome stood open unless the inner door was
-opened, and oxygen automatically filled the airlock when the outer door
-was closed. It was a custom which could save lives.
-
-The inner airlock door was a different proposition. No one liked to be
-caught unawares by visitors. It was locked.
-
-Shaan knew the closing of the outer airlock door had set off an alarm
-inside the dome. He waited. He could see the house and the gardens, a
-little distorted, through the transparent plastic of the inner door.
-
-After a few moments, a figure emerged from the house and approached
-the airlock. When the figure got closer, it became a young woman in
-the shorts and blouse customarily worn inside the domes. She held a
-heat-gun in her hand.
-
-"Who is it?" she asked through the communicator.
-
-"I'm Robbo Shaan," he answered. "I'm a government mail pilot. My plane
-went down on the desert."
-
-"Why didn't you wait for rescue?"
-
-"Radio went out before I crashed. Helmet radio, too. I'll have to call
-for help from here."
-
-"You can wait in the airlock. I'll radio Mars City."
-
-"I'm hungry," he said, "and thirsty."
-
-That was an appeal that could not be ignored.
-
-"I'll let you in," she said after a moment's hesitation. "But I have a
-gun."
-
-"I don't," he answered, spreading his hands and turning so she could
-see all around his belt.
-
-The inner airlock door opened, and Shaan entered the dome. The smell of
-the air brought memories of his boyhood on Earth.
-
-The girl stood away from him, holding the heat-gun on him steadily. She
-had brown eyes and red-gold hair that tumbled to her shoulders. Shaan
-judged her to be about seventeen years old.
-
-Shaan smiled at her through his blond beard, and she lowered the muzzle
-of the gun. He could move now, but they probably were being watched
-from the house. And any minute she might discover the brand on his
-dirty face.
-
-"Where's your father?" he asked. "Or your husband?"
-
-"Where are your oxygen tanks?" she countered, the gun coming up again.
-
-"Ran out of oxygen," he replied. "They're in the sage just outside the
-dome. I got here just in time. The straps broke on them and I'd been
-carrying them in my arms for six hours."
-
-Apparently the answer satisfied her.
-
-"I'm Lori MkDowl," she said. "My father hasn't come in from the mine
-yet. Come on up to the house."
-
-Now? No. They probably were still being watched from the house. He
-walked across the lawn of Earth grass with her.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-It was a small plastic-brick house like any Martian house. As they
-entered the parlor, a long-legged girl of about fifteen left an open
-front window, a heat-gun dangling in her hand.
-
-"Is he harmless, Lori?" she asked.
-
-"I think so," said Lori. "Mr. Shaan, this is my sister, Vali."
-
-Vali MkDowl laid her heat-gun on a table and held out a hand to Shaan
-in frank welcome. Her hair was black and her deep blue eyes held more
-curiosity and less reserve than those of her sister.
-
-Lori had laid her gun aside, too. His task would be made easier, Shaan
-thought, by the fact that these teen-aged sisters probably didn't see a
-young man oftener than once a year and were lonesome.
-
-"I'd like to talk to your mother, girls," said Shaan, more to confirm a
-suspicion than anything else.
-
-"Mother's dead," said Vali. "We live here alone with father."
-
-"But we can take care of ourselves, Mr. Shaan," warned Lori, her hand
-near her gun.
-
-"I'm sure you can. Do you mind if I clean up a little?"
-
-"Bathroom's across the hall," said Lori. "I'll fix supper."
-
-The marsuits were hanging in the hall: Lori's, Vali's and an extra one
-that looked like it was big enough for Shaan. He stripped off his own
-worn and dirty one, emerging in brown coveralls, and went into the
-bathroom.
-
-While he washed, his nebulous plan of action crystalized. First he must
-gain possession of the heat-guns in the house and cripple the dome
-radio. It would be dangerous, maintaining constant watch over three
-hostile people, but he could live here indefinitely while evolving a
-permanent plan of existence.
-
-He found gauze and adhesive tape in the bathroom cabinet and put a
-bandage over the flaming brand on his forehead. He walked out into the
-parlor.
-
-"I called Mars City and told them to send a rescue 'copter," said Vali,
-gesturing toward the radio in the corner. "Say, what happened to your
-head?"
-
-"Banged it on the corner of the cabinet," said Shaan. "What did Mars
-City say?"
-
-"Haven't got a reply yet. Should hear from them in a minute."
-
-He hadn't expected the radio message to be sent until the girls'
-father arrived. This changed his plans. Now he'd have to appropriate a
-marsuit and supplies and flee in the dome's groundcar. What then, he
-didn't know. There could be no refuge for condemned democrats anywhere
-on Mars.
-
-Vali's gun was strapped to her side now. Lori evidently had taken her
-own weapon into the kitchen with her. Lori was taking no chances, and
-not letting her sister take any.
-
-"I left my watch in the bathroom," said Shaan and went back into the
-hall. Quickly, he appropriated the hypodermics of suspensene from the
-pockets of two of the marsuits, and stepped back into the parlor.
-
-"Here comes Mars City now," said Vali, donning the earphones.
-
-He stepped up behind her as she turned to fiddle with the dials. His
-left hand clasped over her mouth, while with his right he plunged
-the needle into the fleshy part of her upper arm. Dropping the empty
-hypodermic vial, he caught her wrist as she reached for her gun.
-
-In a moment, Vali went limp. She would remain in suspended animation
-for approximately twenty-four hours.
-
-The other hypodermic syringe in his hand, Shaan moved through the
-dining room toward the kitchen.
-
-"Has father come in yet, Vali?" called Lori.
-
-"She's still talking to Mars City," said Shaan, entering the kitchen.
-
-Lori was standing at the stove, her back to him. He reached her in a
-single floating stride. Her shorts-clad rump presented the best target,
-and he jabbed the needle into it.
-
-She straightened with a yelp, and he snatched the heat-gun from her
-holster at the same time. Whirling on him, she grappled with him, but
-he held the gun above his head, out of her reach, until she collapsed
-in his arms.
-
-He laid the heat-guns together on the radio table and carried the girls
-into a bedroom across the hall. He stretched the still figures side by
-side on a bed and pulled a sheet up to their chins.
-
-He would have to ambush their father and get the groundcar. He stepped
-back into the hall, closing the door behind him.
-
-"You're covered with a heat-gun, Robbo Shaan," said a man's voice from
-the front door.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The red-headed man, still in his marsuit but unhelmeted, stood just
-inside the front door pointing the gun at Shaan. There was death in his
-eyes.
-
-"I suppose you're MkDowl," said Shaan carefully. It had to be. Of
-course, MkDowl's marshelmet radio would have been tuned to the dome
-channel and he'd have heard what Mars City was telling Vali.
-
-"What have you done to my girls?" demanded MkDowl ominously. "Tell me,
-before I kill you."
-
-"I've been trying to help them," said Shaan calmly. "I believe it's
-something they ate for lunch, just before I got here. They're pretty
-sick. I put them to bed."
-
-Alarm appeared on MkDowl's face. Turning his back on the man, Shaan
-went back into the bedroom. Gun in hand, MkDowl followed him hastily.
-
-"Lori! Vali!" cried MkDowl at the sight of his unconscious daughters.
-Anxiously, he brushed past Shaan.
-
-Shaan hit him behind the head with the edge of his palm as he passed.
-MkDowl pitched forward, and Shaan leaped to catch the gun that arced
-from his hand. When MkDowl sat up, dazed, a moment later, Shaan had him
-covered.
-
-"Your girls are under suspensene," said Shaan. "I'm not going to hurt
-any of you. I just want a marsuit and your groundcar."
-
-He motioned with the heat-gun and followed MkDowl out of the bedroom.
-Shaan appropriated the two guns from the radio table, then made MkDowl
-stand by the living room window, in his line of sight from the marsuit
-racks in the hall.
-
-"You'll never get away, you damn traitor," snapped MkDowl.
-
-"I can make a good try," retorted Shaan pleasantly. He checked the
-supplies of the largest marsuit with one hand, holding the gun on
-MkDowl with the other. "A groundcar can't outrun planes, but I think I
-can make the cactus forests of the Hadriacum Lowlands before they spot
-me. They won't find me there."
-
-"You'll never get out of this dome. I can find a way to stop you before
-you can get that groundcar through the airlock."
-
-"We'll see," said Shaan, turning from the rack with the hypo from the
-third marsuit. "Why are you so bitter against a man you don't know?"
-
-"You're a traitor," said MkDowl defiantly.
-
-"I just said I believe in a democratic form of government. It hasn't
-been long since we were all democrats on Mars."
-
-"The democratic government was corrupt. You won't find many friends."
-
-Shaan knew that was true--both statements. There was no longer any
-organized democratic movement on Mars. He was completely alone. There
-was no place for him to go anywhere.
-
-He moved toward MkDowl, with the hypo in his hand. MkDowl watched him
-closely, not moving. It was when Shaan shifted the gun to his left hand
-and the hypo to his right that MkDowl moved.
-
-Shaan had been prepared for a desperate attack. But MkDowl leaped
-head-first out the window, in a single swift motion.
-
-Shaan went after him. MkDowl disappeared around the corner of the house
-as Shaan jumped through the window.
-
-Shaan regretted it, but he would have to blast MkDowl. Even if he could
-get away, MkDowl would tell the soldiers which way he had gone.
-
-As Shaan turned the corner of the house, MkDowl was climbing into
-the groundcar. Shaan let go with the heat beam, but the groundcar's
-metal and windshield were strong enough to resist it at that distance.
-MkDowl's head disappeared beneath the dashboard.
-
-With a sputter of smoke, the groundcar's engine started. MkDowl had to
-have the engine running for power to use the groundcar's swivel-mounted
-heat-gun. Shaan saw the muzzle of the weapon begin to swing slowly
-toward him.
-
-As MkDowl's head came in view in the windshield to aim, Shaan's own
-beam penetrated the glass at full power. Hair aflame, MkDowl slumped
-forward over the wheel.
-
-MkDowl's body evidently hit the forward drive lever, for the groundcar
-suddenly plunged toward Shaan, wheels spinning. Shaan ducked behind the
-house and ran for the front door.
-
-As Shaan reached the door, the groundcar caromed off the edge of the
-house. Without slackening speed, it plunged across the yard and plowed
-through the side of the dome near the airlock. The plastic hemisphere
-began to collapse with a whistle of escaping air.
-
-In desperate haste, Shaan got into the marsuit in the hall. He switched
-on its oxygen supply. He opened a cabinet beside the marsuit rack and
-got a map of Mars, shoving it into a breast pocket of the suit.
-
-Shaan started for the front door. Then he stopped.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Could he depend on the soldiers finding the two girls when they
-arrived? Could he even know for sure that soldiers were coming? Mars
-City might have instructed Vali just to shoot him down. If the girls
-awoke from suspended animation in the thin Martian air, their simulated
-death would become real.
-
-Shaan went back into the bedroom. He took Lori under one arm, Vali
-under the other. They were easy to carry in Martian gravity.
-
-The plastic of the dome had settled, clinging. He had to burn his way
-through the diaphragm of it that barred the door.
-
-Carrying the girls, he walked across the wrinkled plastic to the
-ground. Half a mile away, the groundcar had overturned in the canal
-sage. Fed by the oxygen from beneath the plants, it was burning slowly.
-
-Shaan laid the girls on the ground in the cleared area around what was
-left of the dome. They could be seen easily here by anyone approaching
-by air.
-
-What next? He pulled the map from his pocket and opened it.
-
-It was easy to see why he had remembered MkDowl Dome would be here.
-It was the only dome in Alpheus Canal. There were no others anywhere
-within walking distance--or in crawling distance, when his oxygen
-supply failed. There was Charax, about 1,800 miles southeast. Mars
-City was about the same distance north, and Hesperidum about the same
-distance northeast.
-
-The nearest dome of any kind was a private dome, Kling's Dome, on
-Peneus Canal at least 250 miles away.
-
-He had been just as well off before he ever came to MkDowl's Dome. But
-now MkDowl was dead and his two daughters were homeless.
-
-His marshelmet radio buzzed.
-
-"MkDowl Dome, we're nearing you," said a faint voice. "Should land in
-half an hour. Light beacon and give us a radio beam."
-
-The radio antenna and the beacon had gone down with the dome. Without
-these, would the government 'copters ever find MkDowl's Dome in the
-night?
-
-The sun dropped behind the far cliffs and the red twilight of Mars
-deepened suddenly into darkness. Shaan was safe from discovery for the
-night now, but the girls might not be rescued in time.
-
-He picked them up from the ground and started off in the general
-direction of the cactus that had been his temporary home before. He
-plodded through the canal sage, the girls a dead weight under his arms.
-
-Twice the government 'copters plaintively demanded directional help.
-After the second time, he switched off the helmet radio.
-
-He was doomed to death if he were discovered. Nowhere on Mars did he
-have a friend. Even the unconscious girls he carried would hate him
-now.
-
-And what was to become of them? MkDowl's Dome would not be rebuilt by
-another tenant. If he gave up his marsuit to one of them, that would be
-only one, and the marsuit radio would not reach Kling's Dome. At least
-one, probably both, were stranded with him.
-
-Not for them would he give up his own life to stay near MkDowl's Dome
-and call the 'copters in.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Shaan was a democrat and by virtue of that was engaged in a war without
-quarter against almost everyone else on Mars. He was a lone relic of a
-defeated army, and he had been driven to the wall. He could surrender
-to death, or he could fight for survival.
-
-Many men before him, and many living creatures before man appeared on
-Earth, had faced that situation in one form or another, he thought.
-Some had succumbed. Others had lived.
-
-The ancestors of man himself had faced it and lived, when they were
-driven by voracious creatures of the sea into the shallows and at
-last to the inhospitable land. Now he was driven to a shore more
-inhospitable than any on Earth, oxygen-poor, water-poor: the Martian
-shore.
-
-Many years ago his ancestors had learned to crawl instead of swim.
-He and his descendants--the descendants of Lori and Vali--could learn
-to crawl instead of walk. Those who crawled could survive and evolve,
-without domes, without marsuits, without any man-made equipment.
-
-He reached the base of a giant cactus. He was sure it was not the one
-he had inhabited before, but now he had a knife.
-
-In the distant night sky, he heard the drone of 'copter motors.
-
-Shaan laid the girls down at his feet and dropped prone at the foot of
-the cactus. When the leaves of the canal sage had closed slowly above
-them, he took off his marshelmet.
-
-"Man is man because he thinks, not because he walks erect," Shaan
-murmured to the unconscious girls. "Would your fate be better if you
-birthed children who had to live in a plastic dome?"
-
-Shaan was a democrat. Rightly or wrongly, he was convinced that the
-Imperial Government bore within it the seeds of dissatisfaction and
-strife, eventually a war of rebellion that would crumble the domes and
-leave all the people of Mars to gasp away their lives.
-
-Let them destroy themselves. Men would still live on Mars, without the
-domes.
-
-With the handle of his knife, he smashed the marshelmet.
-
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-<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Martian Shore, by Charles L. Fontenay</p>
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
-at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
-are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
-country where you are located before using this eBook.
-</div>
-
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Martian Shore</p>
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Charles L. Fontenay</p>
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Illustrator: EMSH</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 26, 2022 [eBook #68409]</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
-  <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net</p>
-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARTIAN SHORE ***</div>
-
-<div class="titlepage">
-
-<h1>The Martian Shore</h1>
-
-<h2>By CHARLES L. FONTENAY</h2>
-
-<p><i>Shaan made the longest<br />
-crawl in history&mdash;to avoid<br />
-crawling before tyrants!</i></p>
-
-<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br />
-Infinity Science Fiction, April 1957.<br />
-Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br />
-the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-  <img src="images/illus.jpg" alt=""/>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p>The lone figure trudged across the Hellas Desert toward Alpheus Canal.
-He moved fast in the low gravity of Mars, but the canal was miles away
-and the afternoon was far gone.</p>
-
-<p>Robbo Shaan turned his marsuit temperature unit down a degree. He still
-perspired freely, but he didn't dare turn it any lower. Only a green
-Earthand would ignore any survival factor when stranded on the Martian
-desert.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan had no map, no compass. But he remembered there was a private
-dome in the middle of the canal, just about due east from him. He
-didn't have enough oxygen to reach it. They had seen to that. But he'd
-try till he died.</p>
-
-<p>The brand itched on his forehead, and scalded in the sweat that
-poured down from his close-cropped blond hair. With his marshelmet on,
-there was no way to scratch it. It throbbed.</p>
-
-<p>Even if he reached the dome, or any dome, that brand guaranteed that he
-would be shot on sight.</p>
-
-<p>Soldiers of the Imperial Government of Mars had dropped the jetcopter
-to the sand hours before, and turned Robbo Shaan out to die. He had
-stood on the red sand and watched the 'copter with the four-winged
-eagles painted on its sides, as it rose and fled away from him in the
-direction of Mars City.</p>
-
-<p>He smiled grimly. The Imperial Constitution did not permit the
-Government to kill a man outright, no matter what his crime. This was
-the way they did it instead.</p>
-
-<p>Robbo Shaan's crime was simple. He believed in the old democratic
-form of government the Martian dome-cities had had after the Martian
-people won their freedom from the Earth corporations in the Charax
-Uprising&mdash;and had recently lost. Shaan had talked democracy, and under
-the new Imperial Government that was treason.</p>
-
-<p>There was no appeal from his sentence. If he lived&mdash;and how could he
-live without food or oxygen?&mdash;he was an outcast. It was a peculiar
-legal contradiction; the government was prohibited from executing him
-outright, but, once he had been branded, it was the duty of every loyal
-citizen to shoot him dead on sight.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan checked his oxygen dial. There was only about an hour's supply
-left. He couldn't cut his use of it down.</p>
-
-<p>Instinctively, his hand dropped to his belt, but the vial of suspensene
-he'd carried so long was not there. They wouldn't leave him that.
-Suspensene was a drug that would put a man in suspended animation for
-twenty-four hours. It was used in such emergencies when oxygen ran low,
-to preserve life until rescue came.</p>
-
-<p>What good would it have done him, anyhow? There would be no rescue for
-him. The radio equipment had been removed from his marshelmet. Even if
-it hadn't, no one would help a branded man.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>He saw the green expanse of the canal when he was still far away from
-it. It was a thin line that broadened as he approached, panting,
-getting the best he could from his weary legs with long, floating leaps.</p>
-
-<p>He reached the edge of the cliff. The canal was a hundred feet below
-him, too far to jump, even on Mars. He walked a mile southward along
-the rim, seeking a downward ledge.</p>
-
-<p>There was no ledge. But Shaan found a roughness of projecting rocks,
-where the cliff was not entirely perpendicular. He scrambled down.</p>
-
-<p>He jumped down the last twenty feet. He landed with a muffled crunch of
-broken branches in the canal sage that stretched in unbroken gray-green
-expanse from the base of the cliff, as far as the eye could see.</p>
-
-<p>He got to his feet. The canal sage was uniformly knee-high. It was so
-close-packed that the tops formed an apparently solid carpet on the
-canal bottom.</p>
-
-<p>He checked his oxygen dial. Only fifteen minutes' supply left. Even if
-he were on course, the private dome was at least twenty miles away.</p>
-
-<p>He was in the shadow of the cliff here. The small sun of Mars was low
-in the west. Above him, the brightest stars already shone in the dark
-blue sky.</p>
-
-<p>The cold of night was beginning to descend. There was frost on the
-leaves of the canal sage. He switched his marsuit temperature control
-from "cool" to "heat," but left it low. His body temperature would keep
-him warm enough as long as he was moving.</p>
-
-<p>Fifteen minutes and then death. Shaan shrugged. He started walking,
-straight away from the cliff toward the distant sunlight that still
-touched the canal sage to the east.</p>
-
-<p>His passage through the plants left a path behind him, a path that
-slowly closed again as though the canal sage moved deliberately to heal
-the break.</p>
-
-<p>His only hope in that fifteen minutes was to find a giant canal cactus.
-All Martian plants, the botanists had decided, kept their oxygen supply
-in their hollow interiors. A full-grown canal cactus was forty feet
-tall and twenty feet across. If he could break his way into one, it was
-big enough to supply him with both oxygen and water.</p>
-
-<p>But there was no canal cactus in sight, and he could have seen one
-miles away above this flat expanse of knee-high sage.</p>
-
-<p>He moved along stubbornly, the canal sage dragging at his feet. He
-watched the needle of the oxygen dial sink slowly toward the "empty"
-mark.</p>
-
-<p>The needle hit zero. Shaan stopped. He shook the perspiration from his
-eyes and looked around him, straining for distance.</p>
-
-<p>No friendly cactus reared anywhere above the gray-green sea of sage.
-No flash of sunlight revealed a distant dome. There was only the
-frost-rimed expanse of leaves stretching away, the dark cliff rising
-behind him and the cold, star-studded sky overhead.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan felt that he was suffocating. Was the residue of oxygen in his
-marsuit really depleting that fast, or was it the frantic rebellion of
-his mind against inevitable death?</p>
-
-<p>A great anger swept over him, and with it a bitter defiance. He fumbled
-at the winged nuts that locked his marshelmet in place. He loosened
-them, freed them, and dropped them in his pocket.</p>
-
-<p>With a wrench, he unsealed the helmet and lifted it from his head. He
-lifted his naked face to the thin air of Mars.</p>
-
-<p>Dizziness swept over him and, with it, nausea. The stars spun in the
-blue-black sky, and went out for him.</p>
-
-<p>He toppled forward, the useless helmet falling from his hands. His
-unconscious body crashed through the frosty foliage of the canal sage
-to the turf beneath.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Shaan opened his eyes. At once, he was amazed. He had not expected to
-open them again, ever. It was impossible that he should.</p>
-
-<p>He was cold. The cold of death? No. He wouldn't be feeling that.</p>
-
-<p>He was in utter blackness, with a fragrant, woodsy aroma in his
-nostrils. He was lying flat on his stomach, on a surface that was not
-soft, but springy.</p>
-
-<p>Had he been rescued? Was he in a hospital somewhere? In a dome?</p>
-
-<p>He moved his fingers. They clutched chill, moldy sod.</p>
-
-<p>But he was breathing. The air was sweet and keen, like the air of a
-terrestrial mountain top. He was alive.</p>
-
-<p>He pulled his knees under him slowly and sat up. His bare head struck
-a flimsy, rustling barrier and thrust through. The air rushed from his
-lungs and he gasped in the thin, icy-cold Martian air. He had a single
-glimpse of jewelled stars in a velvet sky before he threw himself prone
-beneath the foliage again.</p>
-
-<p>He lay there, recovering his breath. Slowly, realization came to him.</p>
-
-<p>He was under the canopy formed by the foliage of myriads of canal sage
-plants. The leaves formed a tightly packed roof 18 inches above the
-ground. Perhaps the plants did store oxygen in their hollow stems. But
-they trapped it beneath the solid cover of their foliage, too, forming
-a thin layer of breathable atmosphere along the surface of the canal.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan laughed, a harsh, dry laugh. For years people had been crunching
-around through the canal sage, harvesting it sometimes for fuel and
-other purposes. All that time they had not realized they were wading
-through a layer of breathable oxygen at their very ankles.</p>
-
-<p>The foliage trapped the daytime heat, too. That was why Shaan was only
-cold, instead of nearly frozen.</p>
-
-<p>Carefully, he got to hands and knees and began to crawl. At once, he
-ran into a tangle of plant stems. He could make no headway. He subsided
-and lay down again, thinking it over.</p>
-
-<p>He was hungry and thirsty. Canal sage was better cooked, but it was
-edible raw. All he had to do was reach out his hands and cram the thick
-leaves in his mouth, being careful not to denude too much of the canopy
-above him.</p>
-
-<p>After a while, he was well fed. The leaves had partially assuaged his
-thirst, too.</p>
-
-<p>As long as he stayed below the canal sage foliage, he could live. He
-had air, food and water. The roof of plants kept out the night cold.
-But he could not get to his feet. If he wanted to reach the dome, he
-would have to crawl twenty miles on hands and knees, without the sun
-and stars to guide him through the tangled stems.</p>
-
-<p>At least he was alive. That was more than he had expected. He went to
-sleep.</p>
-
-<p>When he awoke, he was lying on his back and the canal sage foliage
-was a sheet of golden green above his face. It was daytime. No shaft
-of sunlight broke through the leaves, but they were a pulsing foam of
-translucence.</p>
-
-<p>The sun itself was a brighter spot in the roof of light.</p>
-
-<p>The stems of the canal sage plants were not nearly as close together
-as they had seemed in the darkness. Most of them were at least a foot
-and a half apart. There were no leaves on the plants below their bushy,
-flattened tops, and the ground below them was a springy mattress of
-decaying leaves and twigs. He could move through it, though it would be
-hard on his hands and knees.</p>
-
-<p>The sun would show him his directions, if he knew what time it was.
-He had no watch&mdash;they didn't waste expensive items like that on men
-condemned to die in the desert. He thrust his head momentarily above
-the foliage and located the cliffs in the west. It was morning,
-apparently about 0800.</p>
-
-<p>He had some difficulty rigging a harness, but at last he managed to
-attach the marshelmet to his belt. He might need it again.</p>
-
-<p>He ate again and began crawling eastward. The plant stems were not hard
-to thrust aside with his shoulders when they could be seen.</p>
-
-<p>But crawling was a lot harder than walking. After a while he realized
-that his marsuit heating unit was still on. He turned it off. He
-wouldn't need it again until&mdash;or unless&mdash;he reached a dome.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Twenty miles is a long way to crawl, even on Mars. At the end of two
-days, he had not found the dome he sought, and his palms and knees were
-raw.</p>
-
-<p>He had learned to push his head into the foliage so he could still
-breathe a little, for a short time, and thrust his eyes above the canal
-sage to survey the terrain around him. He did this periodically, but
-there was no dome to be seen.</p>
-
-<p>As the shadow of the distant cliff, now dim in the blue haze, crept
-across the canal sage toward him on the second day of his odyssey, he
-saw the rounded top of a canal cactus reared above the sage. It was
-about two miles away. He ducked beneath the leaves and crawled.</p>
-
-<p>When darkness caught him, he forced himself to interrupt his quest.
-Trying to crawl at night, with nothing to indicate direction, might
-just take him farther from his objective.</p>
-
-<p>Early the next morning, he reached the base of the cactus, a solid wall
-of olive green across the limited horizon of his nether world.</p>
-
-<p>He had no knife, nothing at all with a cutting edge. He didn't want to
-break his marshelmet, even if he could. He began to crawl around the
-foot of the giant plant, almost hopelessly seeking an opening.</p>
-
-<p>Surprisingly, he found one, but it was small. It was about eight inches
-in diameter, and it looked as though it had been gnawed.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan propped his chin on his hands and considered. During the two days
-he had moved beneath the canal sage foliage, he had seen no sign of
-animal life.</p>
-
-<p>Except for the Martian natives, intelligent creatures who did not
-breathe but assimilated oxygen from plants and soil and stored it
-compressed in their tissues, no animal life had been found on Mars. The
-Martians, with bodies of almost human size, walked on long, stilt-like
-legs and were strict vegetarians. Reports by occasional canal settlers
-that they had found traces of animal life&mdash;without seeing the
-animals&mdash;were discounted.</p>
-
-<p>But this hole in the canal cactus looked like it had been made by an
-animal.</p>
-
-<p>The stems of the canal sage were not large, but they were stiff and
-woody. Shaan found a dead stalk lying on the ground, broke it to a
-jagged point and started to work on the edges of the hole.</p>
-
-<p>It took him most of the day, but near nightfall he had enlarged the
-opening until it would admit him. He crawled into the hollow cactus.</p>
-
-<p>It was darker inside than outside, but not completely dark. He was in a
-giant, ovoid room lit by a dim green twilight.</p>
-
-<p>It was good to stand up straight again, even though the floor curved
-downward from his entranceway. The occasional drip of water sounded in
-his ears. Moving forward slowly, he was able to distinguish a small,
-shallow pool in the low center of the cactus' hull. Since the shell of
-the big plant curved downward from the entrance, the pool must have
-been several feet below ground level.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan had not tasted free water since he had emptied his canteen on the
-desert and thrown it away four days before. He dropped to his knees,
-unmindful of their rawness, and drank greedily. The water was fresh and
-cool, with some of the taste of the cactus plant in it.</p>
-
-<p>It grew dark fast. As Shaan lay relaxed on the floor of his new haven,
-he heard a scurrying and a squeaking in the darkness. Then there came a
-muted splashing near him.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan held his breath. He had no idea of the size or capabilities of
-the creatures which had joined him in the cactus. But if they were
-aware of his presence they had no fear of him. Nor did they molest him.</p>
-
-<p>He saw them for a few moments early the next morning. They were furry,
-squirrel-like creatures without tails, that ran on their two hind
-legs and held hand-like paws against their chests. They stared at him
-with big bright eyes, about half a dozen of them, before they ran out
-through the hole he had enlarged.</p>
-
-<p>Living in the cactus was more satisfactory than living outside. Shaan
-made it his headquarters. He slept in it at night, amid the furry
-animals, which accepted his presence without question, merely avoiding
-any close approach.</p>
-
-<p>By day, he crawled out in search of the dome. He did it systematically,
-going in a different direction each day. He tried sixteen directions
-without success.</p>
-
-<p>A day just wasn't long enough. The second two-day trip he made, going
-out one day, sleeping out and returning the second day, he saw the sun
-flash off a faraway plastic dome at midafternoon.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Shaan pushed his face through the leaves and stared across a
-hundred-foot cleared space at the dome. The canal sage was very
-efficient. When the space had been cleared for the dome, the sage
-foliage had grown down to the ground level around the bare circle to
-prevent the life-giving oxygen under it from dissipating.</p>
-
-<p>The transparent hemisphere glistened dully in the sunlight. It covered
-about an acre of ground. Near one side was the small home of a canal
-settler. Under the protective dome terrestrial vegetables grew and
-terrestrial animals lived.</p>
-
-<p>Long ago Shaan had jettisoned his oxygen cylinders to save weight, but
-they would have done him no good had he kept them. His marshelmet,
-however, would hold enough air for him to cross the cleared area to the
-dome. He pulled it on, under the leaves.</p>
-
-<p>Then he remembered something and took it off again. He smeared dirt
-over the brand on his forehead, hoping he was concealing it. He put the
-helmet back on.</p>
-
-<p>Getting to his feet, he ran across the clearing and through the open
-outer door of the airlock. He shut it behind him and, waiting a few
-minutes, took off the helmet. There was air in the airlock.</p>
-
-<p>He had done this without fear or reflection. On a planet like Mars,
-only a thin line of oxygen stood between life and death. The outer door
-to every airlock on every dome stood open unless the inner door was
-opened, and oxygen automatically filled the airlock when the outer door
-was closed. It was a custom which could save lives.</p>
-
-<p>The inner airlock door was a different proposition. No one liked to be
-caught unawares by visitors. It was locked.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan knew the closing of the outer airlock door had set off an alarm
-inside the dome. He waited. He could see the house and the gardens, a
-little distorted, through the transparent plastic of the inner door.</p>
-
-<p>After a few moments, a figure emerged from the house and approached
-the airlock. When the figure got closer, it became a young woman in
-the shorts and blouse customarily worn inside the domes. She held a
-heat-gun in her hand.</p>
-
-<p>"Who is it?" she asked through the communicator.</p>
-
-<p>"I'm Robbo Shaan," he answered. "I'm a government mail pilot. My plane
-went down on the desert."</p>
-
-<p>"Why didn't you wait for rescue?"</p>
-
-<p>"Radio went out before I crashed. Helmet radio, too. I'll have to call
-for help from here."</p>
-
-<p>"You can wait in the airlock. I'll radio Mars City."</p>
-
-<p>"I'm hungry," he said, "and thirsty."</p>
-
-<p>That was an appeal that could not be ignored.</p>
-
-<p>"I'll let you in," she said after a moment's hesitation. "But I have a
-gun."</p>
-
-<p>"I don't," he answered, spreading his hands and turning so she could
-see all around his belt.</p>
-
-<p>The inner airlock door opened, and Shaan entered the dome. The smell of
-the air brought memories of his boyhood on Earth.</p>
-
-<p>The girl stood away from him, holding the heat-gun on him steadily. She
-had brown eyes and red-gold hair that tumbled to her shoulders. Shaan
-judged her to be about seventeen years old.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan smiled at her through his blond beard, and she lowered the muzzle
-of the gun. He could move now, but they probably were being watched
-from the house. And any minute she might discover the brand on his
-dirty face.</p>
-
-<p>"Where's your father?" he asked. "Or your husband?"</p>
-
-<p>"Where are your oxygen tanks?" she countered, the gun coming up again.</p>
-
-<p>"Ran out of oxygen," he replied. "They're in the sage just outside the
-dome. I got here just in time. The straps broke on them and I'd been
-carrying them in my arms for six hours."</p>
-
-<p>Apparently the answer satisfied her.</p>
-
-<p>"I'm Lori MkDowl," she said. "My father hasn't come in from the mine
-yet. Come on up to the house."</p>
-
-<p>Now? No. They probably were still being watched from the house. He
-walked across the lawn of Earth grass with her.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>It was a small plastic-brick house like any Martian house. As they
-entered the parlor, a long-legged girl of about fifteen left an open
-front window, a heat-gun dangling in her hand.</p>
-
-<p>"Is he harmless, Lori?" she asked.</p>
-
-<p>"I think so," said Lori. "Mr. Shaan, this is my sister, Vali."</p>
-
-<p>Vali MkDowl laid her heat-gun on a table and held out a hand to Shaan
-in frank welcome. Her hair was black and her deep blue eyes held more
-curiosity and less reserve than those of her sister.</p>
-
-<p>Lori had laid her gun aside, too. His task would be made easier, Shaan
-thought, by the fact that these teen-aged sisters probably didn't see a
-young man oftener than once a year and were lonesome.</p>
-
-<p>"I'd like to talk to your mother, girls," said Shaan, more to confirm a
-suspicion than anything else.</p>
-
-<p>"Mother's dead," said Vali. "We live here alone with father."</p>
-
-<p>"But we can take care of ourselves, Mr. Shaan," warned Lori, her hand
-near her gun.</p>
-
-<p>"I'm sure you can. Do you mind if I clean up a little?"</p>
-
-<p>"Bathroom's across the hall," said Lori. "I'll fix supper."</p>
-
-<p>The marsuits were hanging in the hall: Lori's, Vali's and an extra one
-that looked like it was big enough for Shaan. He stripped off his own
-worn and dirty one, emerging in brown coveralls, and went into the
-bathroom.</p>
-
-<p>While he washed, his nebulous plan of action crystalized. First he must
-gain possession of the heat-guns in the house and cripple the dome
-radio. It would be dangerous, maintaining constant watch over three
-hostile people, but he could live here indefinitely while evolving a
-permanent plan of existence.</p>
-
-<p>He found gauze and adhesive tape in the bathroom cabinet and put a
-bandage over the flaming brand on his forehead. He walked out into the
-parlor.</p>
-
-<p>"I called Mars City and told them to send a rescue 'copter," said Vali,
-gesturing toward the radio in the corner. "Say, what happened to your
-head?"</p>
-
-<p>"Banged it on the corner of the cabinet," said Shaan. "What did Mars
-City say?"</p>
-
-<p>"Haven't got a reply yet. Should hear from them in a minute."</p>
-
-<p>He hadn't expected the radio message to be sent until the girls'
-father arrived. This changed his plans. Now he'd have to appropriate a
-marsuit and supplies and flee in the dome's groundcar. What then, he
-didn't know. There could be no refuge for condemned democrats anywhere
-on Mars.</p>
-
-<p>Vali's gun was strapped to her side now. Lori evidently had taken her
-own weapon into the kitchen with her. Lori was taking no chances, and
-not letting her sister take any.</p>
-
-<p>"I left my watch in the bathroom," said Shaan and went back into the
-hall. Quickly, he appropriated the hypodermics of suspensene from the
-pockets of two of the marsuits, and stepped back into the parlor.</p>
-
-<p>"Here comes Mars City now," said Vali, donning the earphones.</p>
-
-<p>He stepped up behind her as she turned to fiddle with the dials. His
-left hand clasped over her mouth, while with his right he plunged
-the needle into the fleshy part of her upper arm. Dropping the empty
-hypodermic vial, he caught her wrist as she reached for her gun.</p>
-
-<p>In a moment, Vali went limp. She would remain in suspended animation
-for approximately twenty-four hours.</p>
-
-<p>The other hypodermic syringe in his hand, Shaan moved through the
-dining room toward the kitchen.</p>
-
-<p>"Has father come in yet, Vali?" called Lori.</p>
-
-<p>"She's still talking to Mars City," said Shaan, entering the kitchen.</p>
-
-<p>Lori was standing at the stove, her back to him. He reached her in a
-single floating stride. Her shorts-clad rump presented the best target,
-and he jabbed the needle into it.</p>
-
-<p>She straightened with a yelp, and he snatched the heat-gun from her
-holster at the same time. Whirling on him, she grappled with him, but
-he held the gun above his head, out of her reach, until she collapsed
-in his arms.</p>
-
-<p>He laid the heat-guns together on the radio table and carried the girls
-into a bedroom across the hall. He stretched the still figures side by
-side on a bed and pulled a sheet up to their chins.</p>
-
-<p>He would have to ambush their father and get the groundcar. He stepped
-back into the hall, closing the door behind him.</p>
-
-<p>"You're covered with a heat-gun, Robbo Shaan," said a man's voice from
-the front door.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The red-headed man, still in his marsuit but unhelmeted, stood just
-inside the front door pointing the gun at Shaan. There was death in his
-eyes.</p>
-
-<p>"I suppose you're MkDowl," said Shaan carefully. It had to be. Of
-course, MkDowl's marshelmet radio would have been tuned to the dome
-channel and he'd have heard what Mars City was telling Vali.</p>
-
-<p>"What have you done to my girls?" demanded MkDowl ominously. "Tell me,
-before I kill you."</p>
-
-<p>"I've been trying to help them," said Shaan calmly. "I believe it's
-something they ate for lunch, just before I got here. They're pretty
-sick. I put them to bed."</p>
-
-<p>Alarm appeared on MkDowl's face. Turning his back on the man, Shaan
-went back into the bedroom. Gun in hand, MkDowl followed him hastily.</p>
-
-<p>"Lori! Vali!" cried MkDowl at the sight of his unconscious daughters.
-Anxiously, he brushed past Shaan.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan hit him behind the head with the edge of his palm as he passed.
-MkDowl pitched forward, and Shaan leaped to catch the gun that arced
-from his hand. When MkDowl sat up, dazed, a moment later, Shaan had him
-covered.</p>
-
-<p>"Your girls are under suspensene," said Shaan. "I'm not going to hurt
-any of you. I just want a marsuit and your groundcar."</p>
-
-<p>He motioned with the heat-gun and followed MkDowl out of the bedroom.
-Shaan appropriated the two guns from the radio table, then made MkDowl
-stand by the living room window, in his line of sight from the marsuit
-racks in the hall.</p>
-
-<p>"You'll never get away, you damn traitor," snapped MkDowl.</p>
-
-<p>"I can make a good try," retorted Shaan pleasantly. He checked the
-supplies of the largest marsuit with one hand, holding the gun on
-MkDowl with the other. "A groundcar can't outrun planes, but I think I
-can make the cactus forests of the Hadriacum Lowlands before they spot
-me. They won't find me there."</p>
-
-<p>"You'll never get out of this dome. I can find a way to stop you before
-you can get that groundcar through the airlock."</p>
-
-<p>"We'll see," said Shaan, turning from the rack with the hypo from the
-third marsuit. "Why are you so bitter against a man you don't know?"</p>
-
-<p>"You're a traitor," said MkDowl defiantly.</p>
-
-<p>"I just said I believe in a democratic form of government. It hasn't
-been long since we were all democrats on Mars."</p>
-
-<p>"The democratic government was corrupt. You won't find many friends."</p>
-
-<p>Shaan knew that was true&mdash;both statements. There was no longer any
-organized democratic movement on Mars. He was completely alone. There
-was no place for him to go anywhere.</p>
-
-<p>He moved toward MkDowl, with the hypo in his hand. MkDowl watched him
-closely, not moving. It was when Shaan shifted the gun to his left hand
-and the hypo to his right that MkDowl moved.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan had been prepared for a desperate attack. But MkDowl leaped
-head-first out the window, in a single swift motion.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan went after him. MkDowl disappeared around the corner of the house
-as Shaan jumped through the window.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan regretted it, but he would have to blast MkDowl. Even if he could
-get away, MkDowl would tell the soldiers which way he had gone.</p>
-
-<p>As Shaan turned the corner of the house, MkDowl was climbing into
-the groundcar. Shaan let go with the heat beam, but the groundcar's
-metal and windshield were strong enough to resist it at that distance.
-MkDowl's head disappeared beneath the dashboard.</p>
-
-<p>With a sputter of smoke, the groundcar's engine started. MkDowl had to
-have the engine running for power to use the groundcar's swivel-mounted
-heat-gun. Shaan saw the muzzle of the weapon begin to swing slowly
-toward him.</p>
-
-<p>As MkDowl's head came in view in the windshield to aim, Shaan's own
-beam penetrated the glass at full power. Hair aflame, MkDowl slumped
-forward over the wheel.</p>
-
-<p>MkDowl's body evidently hit the forward drive lever, for the groundcar
-suddenly plunged toward Shaan, wheels spinning. Shaan ducked behind the
-house and ran for the front door.</p>
-
-<p>As Shaan reached the door, the groundcar caromed off the edge of the
-house. Without slackening speed, it plunged across the yard and plowed
-through the side of the dome near the airlock. The plastic hemisphere
-began to collapse with a whistle of escaping air.</p>
-
-<p>In desperate haste, Shaan got into the marsuit in the hall. He switched
-on its oxygen supply. He opened a cabinet beside the marsuit rack and
-got a map of Mars, shoving it into a breast pocket of the suit.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan started for the front door. Then he stopped.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Could he depend on the soldiers finding the two girls when they
-arrived? Could he even know for sure that soldiers were coming? Mars
-City might have instructed Vali just to shoot him down. If the girls
-awoke from suspended animation in the thin Martian air, their simulated
-death would become real.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan went back into the bedroom. He took Lori under one arm, Vali
-under the other. They were easy to carry in Martian gravity.</p>
-
-<p>The plastic of the dome had settled, clinging. He had to burn his way
-through the diaphragm of it that barred the door.</p>
-
-<p>Carrying the girls, he walked across the wrinkled plastic to the
-ground. Half a mile away, the groundcar had overturned in the canal
-sage. Fed by the oxygen from beneath the plants, it was burning slowly.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan laid the girls on the ground in the cleared area around what was
-left of the dome. They could be seen easily here by anyone approaching
-by air.</p>
-
-<p>What next? He pulled the map from his pocket and opened it.</p>
-
-<p>It was easy to see why he had remembered MkDowl Dome would be here.
-It was the only dome in Alpheus Canal. There were no others anywhere
-within walking distance&mdash;or in crawling distance, when his oxygen
-supply failed. There was Charax, about 1,800 miles southeast. Mars
-City was about the same distance north, and Hesperidum about the same
-distance northeast.</p>
-
-<p>The nearest dome of any kind was a private dome, Kling's Dome, on
-Peneus Canal at least 250 miles away.</p>
-
-<p>He had been just as well off before he ever came to MkDowl's Dome. But
-now MkDowl was dead and his two daughters were homeless.</p>
-
-<p>His marshelmet radio buzzed.</p>
-
-<p>"MkDowl Dome, we're nearing you," said a faint voice. "Should land in
-half an hour. Light beacon and give us a radio beam."</p>
-
-<p>The radio antenna and the beacon had gone down with the dome. Without
-these, would the government 'copters ever find MkDowl's Dome in the
-night?</p>
-
-<p>The sun dropped behind the far cliffs and the red twilight of Mars
-deepened suddenly into darkness. Shaan was safe from discovery for the
-night now, but the girls might not be rescued in time.</p>
-
-<p>He picked them up from the ground and started off in the general
-direction of the cactus that had been his temporary home before. He
-plodded through the canal sage, the girls a dead weight under his arms.</p>
-
-<p>Twice the government 'copters plaintively demanded directional help.
-After the second time, he switched off the helmet radio.</p>
-
-<p>He was doomed to death if he were discovered. Nowhere on Mars did he
-have a friend. Even the unconscious girls he carried would hate him
-now.</p>
-
-<p>And what was to become of them? MkDowl's Dome would not be rebuilt by
-another tenant. If he gave up his marsuit to one of them, that would be
-only one, and the marsuit radio would not reach Kling's Dome. At least
-one, probably both, were stranded with him.</p>
-
-<p>Not for them would he give up his own life to stay near MkDowl's Dome
-and call the 'copters in.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Shaan was a democrat and by virtue of that was engaged in a war without
-quarter against almost everyone else on Mars. He was a lone relic of a
-defeated army, and he had been driven to the wall. He could surrender
-to death, or he could fight for survival.</p>
-
-<p>Many men before him, and many living creatures before man appeared on
-Earth, had faced that situation in one form or another, he thought.
-Some had succumbed. Others had lived.</p>
-
-<p>The ancestors of man himself had faced it and lived, when they were
-driven by voracious creatures of the sea into the shallows and at
-last to the inhospitable land. Now he was driven to a shore more
-inhospitable than any on Earth, oxygen-poor, water-poor: the Martian
-shore.</p>
-
-<p>Many years ago his ancestors had learned to crawl instead of swim.
-He and his descendants&mdash;the descendants of Lori and Vali&mdash;could learn
-to crawl instead of walk. Those who crawled could survive and evolve,
-without domes, without marsuits, without any man-made equipment.</p>
-
-<p>He reached the base of a giant cactus. He was sure it was not the one
-he had inhabited before, but now he had a knife.</p>
-
-<p>In the distant night sky, he heard the drone of 'copter motors.</p>
-
-<p>Shaan laid the girls down at his feet and dropped prone at the foot of
-the cactus. When the leaves of the canal sage had closed slowly above
-them, he took off his marshelmet.</p>
-
-<p>"Man is man because he thinks, not because he walks erect," Shaan
-murmured to the unconscious girls. "Would your fate be better if you
-birthed children who had to live in a plastic dome?"</p>
-
-<p>Shaan was a democrat. Rightly or wrongly, he was convinced that the
-Imperial Government bore within it the seeds of dissatisfaction and
-strife, eventually a war of rebellion that would crumble the domes and
-leave all the people of Mars to gasp away their lives.</p>
-
-<p>Let them destroy themselves. Men would still live on Mars, without the
-domes.</p>
-
-<p>With the handle of his knife, he smashed the marshelmet.</p>
-
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