The Holes Around Mars Page 3

down to fit together, and it all ends upwith a round hole in the soft rock."

  "Probably neither stone," I told Janus, "would be homogenous. The softerparts would abrade faster in the soft stone. The end result wouldn't bea perfect circle."

  Janus's face fell.

  "Now," I said, "would anyone care to define this term 'perfect circle'we're throwing around so blithely? Because such holes as Janus describesare often pretty damned round."

  Randolph said, "Well...."

  "It is settled, then," Gonzales said, a little sarcastically. "Yourdiscussion, gentlemen, has established that the long, horizontal holeswe have found were caused by glacial action."

  "Oh, no," Janus argued seriously. "I once read that Mars never had anyglaciers."

  All of us shuddered.

  * * * * *

  Half an hour later, we spotted more holes, about a mile down the'canal,' still on a line, marching along the desert, through cacti,rocks, hills, even through one edge of the low vegetation of the 'canal'for thirty feet or so. It was the damnedest thing to bend down and lookstraight through all that curling, twisting growth ... a round tunnelfrom either end.

  We followed the holes for about a mile, to the rim of an enormoussaucerlike valley that sank gradually before us until, miles away, itwas thousands of feet deep. We stared out across it, wondering about theother side.

  Allenby said determinedly, "We'll burrow to the _bottom_ of these holes,once and for all. Back to the ship, men!"

  We hiked back, climbed in and took off.

  At an altitude of fifty feet, Burton lined the nose of the ship on themost recent line of holes and we flew out over the valley.

  On the other side was a range of hefty hills. The holes went throughthem. Straight through. We would approach one hill--Burton wouldmanipulate the front viewscreen until we spotted the hole--we would passover the hill and spot the other end of the hole in the rear screen.

  One hole was two hundred and eighty miles long.

  Four hours later, we were halfway around Mars.

  Randolph was sitting by a side port, chin on one hand, his eyesunbelieving. "All around the planet," he kept repeating. "All around theplanet...."

  "Halfway at least," Allenby mused. "And we can assume that it continuesin a straight line, through anything and everything that gets in itsway...." He gazed out the front port at the uneven blue-green haze of a'canal' off to our left. "For the love of Heaven, why?"

  Then Allenby fell down. We all did.

  Burton had suddenly slapped at the control board, and the ship brakedand sank like a plugged duck. At the last second, Burton propped up thenose with a short burst, the ten-foot wheels hit desert sand and in fivehundred yards we had jounced to a stop.

  Allenby got up from the floor. "Why did you do that?" he asked Burtonpolitely, nursing a bruised elbow.

  Burton's nose was almost touching the front port. "Look!" he said, andpointed.

  About two miles away, the Martian village looked like a handful ofyellow marbles flung on the desert.

  * * * * *

  We checked our guns. We put on our oxygen-masks. We checked our gunsagain. We got out of the ship and made damned sure the airlock waslocked.

  An hour later, we crawled inch by painstaking inch up a high sand duneand poked our heads over the top.

  The Martians were runts--the tallest of them less than five feettall--and skinny as a pencil. Dried-up and brown, they wore loinclothsof woven fiber.

  They stood among the dusty-looking inverted-bowl buildings of theirvillage, and every one of them was looking straight up at us withunblinking brown eyes.

  The six safeties of our six guns clicked off like a rattle of dice. TheMartians stood there and gawped.

  "Probably a highly developed sense of hearing in this thin atmosphere,"Allenby murmured. "Heard us coming."

  "They thought that landing of Burton's was an earthquake," Randolphgrumbled sourly.

  "Marsquake," corrected Janus. One look at the village's scrawnyoccupants seemed to have convinced him that his life was in no danger.

  Holding the Martians covered, we examined the village from atop thethirty-foot dune.

  The domelike buildings were constructed of something that looked likeadobe. No windows--probably built with sandstorms in mind. The doorswere about halfway up the sloping sides, and from each door a stone rampwound down around the house to the ground--again with sandstorms inmind, no doubt, so drifting dunes wouldn't block the entrances.

  The center of the village was a wide street, a long sandy area somethirty feet wide. On either side of it, the houses were scattered atrandom, as if each Martian had simply hunted for a comfortable place tosit and then built a house around it.

  "Look," whispered Randolph.

  One Martian had stepped from a group situated on the far side of thestreet from us. He started to cross the street, his round brown eyes onus, his small bare feet plodding sand, and we saw that in addition to aloincloth he wore jewelry--a hammered metal ring, a bracelet on oneskinny ankle. The Sun caught a copperish gleam on his bald narrow head,and we saw a band of metal there, just above where his eyebrows shouldhave been.

  "The super-chief," Allenby murmured. "Oh, _shaman_ me!"

  As the bejeweled Martian approached the center of the street, he glancedbriefly at the ground at his feet. Then he raised his head, stepped withdignity across the exact center of the street and came on toward us,passing the dusty-looking buildings of his realm and the dusty-lookinggroups of his subjects.

  He reached the slope of the dune we lay on, paused--and raised smallhands over his head, palms toward us.

  "I think," Allenby said, "that an anthropologist would give odds on thatgesture meaning peace."

  He stood up, holstered his gun--without buttoning the flap--and raisedhis own hands over his head. We all did.

  * * * * *

  The Martian language consisted of squeaks.

  We made friendly noises, the chief squeaked and pretty soon we were thecenter of a group of wide-eyed Martians, none of whom made a sound.Evidently no one dared peep while the chief spoke--very likely the mostarticulate Martians simply squeaked themselves into the job. Allenby,of course, said they just _squeaked by_.

  He was going through the business of drawing concentric circles in thesand, pointing at the third orbit away from the Sun and thumping hischest. The crowd around us kept growing as more Martians emerged fromthe dome buildings to see what was going on. Down the winding ramps ofthe buildings on our side of the wide, sandy street they came--and fromthe buildings on the other side of the street, plodding through thesand, blinking brown eyes at us, not making a sound.

  Allenby pointed at the third orbit and thumped his chest. The chiefsqueaked and thumped his own chest and pointed at the copperish bandaround his head. Then he pointed at Allenby.

  "I seem to have conveyed to him," Allenby said dryly, "the fact that I'mchief of our party. Well, let's try again."

  He started over on the orbits. He didn't seem to be getting anyplace, sothe rest of us watched the Martians instead. A last handful wasstraggling across the wide street.

  "Curious," said Gonzales. "Note what happens when they reach the centerof the street."

  Each Martian, upon reaching the center of the street, glanced at hisfeet--just for a moment--without even breaking stride. And then came on.

  "What can they be looking at?" Gonzales wondered.

  "The chief did it too," Burton mused. "Remember when he first cametoward us?"

  We all stared intently at the middle of the street. We saw absolutelynothing but sand.

  The Martians milled around us and watched Allenby and his orbits. AMartian child appeared from between two buildings across the street. Onsix-inch legs, it started across, got halfway, glanced downward--andcame on.

  "I don't get it," Burton said. "What in hell are they _looking_ at?"

  The child reached the crowd and
squeaked a thin, high note.

  A number of things happened at once.

  * * * * *

  Several members of the group around us glanced down, and along the edgeof the crowd nearest the center of the street there was a mild stir asindividuals drifted off to either side. Quite casually--nothing at allurgent about it. They just moved concertedly to get farther away fromthe center of the street, not taking their interested gaze off us forone second in the process.

  Even the chief glanced up from Allenby's concentric circles at thechild's squeak. And Randolph, who had been fidgeting uncomfortably andpaying very little attention to our conversation, decided that he mustanswer Nature's call. He moved off into the dunes surrounding thevillage. Or rather, he started to move.

  The moment he