Robert Silverberg - Lost Race of Mars

Jim lifted his head slowly. The yellow cloud was more than a mile away already, and retreating rapidly. The sled was covered three feet deep with sand. The plastic windshield was pitted and cracked by the force of the trillions of tiny grains that had struck it.

“Whew!” he exclaimed., “Another five minutes and we would have been up to our ears in the stuff.” The helmet of his breathing-suit was scratched and scarred, but it was made of an unbreakable plastic.

He and Sally shoveled the sand away from them with both hands. Mitten, unharmed, crept out from between them and began to whimper softly. Sally put him down near the sled.

“Oh, oh,” Jim said, as he cleared the sand away from the dashboard. “Now we’re really in for it! Look!”

He pointed. The dashboard was ruined. The impact of the storm had smashed most of the dials. The compass was shattered. So was the clock, their only means of knowing the time.

“How will we find our way back?” Sally asked.

“We can’t. Not by ourselves. The storm must of flung us a couple of miles. I don’t recognize this place. It certainly isn’t where we stopped. We weren’t any place near those cliffs over there, for instance. Well, now we’ll have to radio the colony and have them come rescue us.

Boy, are we going to be in hot water!” He started to finger the chest controls on his suit. By switching a button he could generate a long-distance SOS signal. A rescue party could be sent out. But it would be a waste of the colony’s time and man power, and Jim knew they were certain to be very angry about having to come all the way out here for a couple of Earth brats.

Suddenly Sally yelled, “Jim! Mitten’s running away!”

Jim turned. The Mars kitten, which had been sitting in the sand near the sled, had abruptly bolted. Thanks to the kitten’s dark color, it was easy to see him against the orange sand. He was more than a hundred yards away, streaking at an incredible speed toward the nearby row of low hills.

Quickly, Jim and Sally sprang back into the sled. It would make things even worse if this already disastrous trip saw them losing their pet.

The sandstorm had not damaged the engine, and Jim started it in short order. Midden was far ahead of them, now. Jim opened the speed wide, but it was impossible to overtake the fleeing Mars kitten.

“Can’t you go faster?” Sally asked.

“I’m near the limit now. Look at that kitten run!”

The gap began to close, but now they were very close to the cliff, and Mitten had nearly reached it. Jim urged the sled on. Suddenly, Mitten reached the base of the cliff and vanished.

“Where did he go?” Jim asked.

“Into a hole in the ground. I saw him!”

A moment later they pulled up near the place where Mitten has disappeared. There was a hole only a few feet across at the base of the cliff. It looked just like the mouth of the Old Martian cave Jim and Sally had visited.

Leaping from the sled, Jim ran toward the hole, Sally right behind. He peered in, calling,

“Mitten! Mitten!”

His flashlight was attached to the belt of his suit. Unclipping it, he turned it on and shined it into the hole. He saw a row of steps leading diagonally down. And, standing at the bottom of the steps, holding Mitten affectionately in his arms, was a small, gray-skinned, two-legged creature with a large head.

Jim realized with a shock that he was shining his flashlight beam on a living Old Martian.

Jim was so surprised he nearly dropped his flashlight. Behind him, Sally gasped softly. She had seen it, too. It was not just a prank of imagination.

A soft, feathery voice said, “Come down. There’s no need to be afraid of us.”

“You speak English?” Jim asked.

“We speak the language of the mind,” the Martian replied in the same soft voice. “Mental telepathy knows no language. I am in direct contact with your minds. Please come down. We will not harm you.”

Jim glanced at Sally, who nodded slowly. They began to descend the row of tiny steps. Jim’s legs felt weak and wobbly. He and Sally were too stunned to have much to say.

When they reached the floor of the cave, they saw that they towered over the Old Martian.

The alien being was no more than two and a half or three feet high. He looked like a little gnome. His gray skin was dry and leathery, and him arms and legs were thin and fragile. His head was a large hairless globe that seemed on the verge of toppling right off his thin neck.

Two enormous eyes, a tiny nose, and a slit of a mouth made up the Martian’s face. His head was completely round. His head was completely round, without any chin. He had no ears—not surprising if he communicated by telepathy.

Mitten wiggled in his arms, but the Martian calmed the little animal, and said, “You have our thanks for taking care of the animal for us.”

“He belongs to you?”

“These animals have been pets of our kind since the dim past. A short while ago three of the wandered from our cave and became lost. Now one has returned.”

Jim and sally became aware that eyes were watching them from the darkness. As their own eyesight became accustomed to the dimness in the cave, they discovered that more than a dozen Old Martians had appeared and were studying them curiously. They were all short and big-eyed, and it was hard to tell one from the other.

The Martian who was holding Mitten put him down. The Mars kitten immediately ran to Jim and Sally and began rubbing himself against their feet and legs.

“He is fond of you,” the telepathic voice of the Martian observed. “You have been kind to him.

That is why you are permitted to visit our dwelling place. You are the first of your people to be allowed to find us. Come—would you like to see how we live?”

Jim and Sally nodded breathlessly. It was like stumbling into fairyland to have come upon this wonderful place. The little people led Jim and Sally deeper into their cave. The roof of the passageway was only a few inches above the top of Jim’s helmet, and he kept automatically ducking for fear he would collide with the ceiling.

The general layout of the cave was very much like that of the ancient one that Jim and Sally had visited. But the chambers, branching off the main passageway, had little beds in them made of plan fibers, and there was other furniture in the rooms as well. There were many wall paintings, some of them quite new and bright. One of them showed the colony dome rising from the desert, and so obviously had been painted recently.

A shelf ran along the top of every wall, and growing on this shelf was a grayish plant of a kind that did not live on the surface of Mars. The broad, flat leaves of the plant gave off a faint yellowish glow, and it was this glow that provided what dim light there was in the cave.

Jim and Sally soon learned that not only was illumination supplied by the plants, but that air and water came from vegetation also. They were shown short whitish plants with think, dropping leaves. “These plants absorb the carbon dioxide we breathe out, and give off oxygen for us. Only because of these plants can we live,” their guide explained. “One, in the past, there was enough air on Mars to allow us to live on the surface. But that was many hundreds of thousands of years ago. Not we must live in small caves and breathe the air given off by these plants. We can exist for a little while above ground, but not for long.”

They moved on to another chamber of the cave, where a different plant was growing. A great many rope-like stems grew from the center stem, and at the end of each was a swollen pod about the size of Sally’s fist. The Old Martian knelt, picked up one of the stems, and pinched the pod from its end. Drops of water ran out. The little being held the pod to his thin mouth and squeezed it.