Dale K. Robinson
The twin moons raced across the sky, nearer Phobos leaving tiny Deimos far behind. The Project Brimstone lander cast a long shadow in the early morning sun. Colonel Mark King stared out across the Martian landscape, red sands stretching to the distant mountains. As he turned to follow the horizon, the marvelous sight of the ancient city greeted him. It was little more than crumbling ruins, nearly buried under wind-swept sands. He wondered about the long dead inhabitants of that place. What had they looked like? Where had they gone?
The rumbling sounds of the MarsRover broke his train of thought. "Let's go, Colonel. Let's not make the Martians wait any longer," joked Mars Mission Specialist Janet Blaine. The MarsRover stopped before the lander's personnel entrance.
King climbed aboard the eight-wheeled tractor, where Blaine and two other Mars explorers waited. The cabin was enclosed, with a tiny air lock to allow the crew to work inside without pressure suits. Once inside, King removed his helmet. Janet grinned and pressed the accelerator as King fastened his seat belt.
"Okay, boys and girls, next stop Lowell City!" she announced.
"Lowell City?" King looked at her quizzically.
"We've got to call it something," she replied.
"I'm sure it once had a name of it's own. It doesn't seem quite right to give it an Earth name." King settled back in his seat. "It just doesn't seem right," he repeated to himself.
The MarsRover stopped outside the city. A great stone jetty extended into what was once a harbor. Crumbling buildings lined the sand-choked harbor. Video cameras recorded it all. Colonel King's explorers would go carefully to avoid destroying artifacts, carefully documenting and recording everything. This city was the first evidence that intelligent extra-terrestrial life had existed in the universe. From here, three of the explorers would go on foot, while the fourth remained with the MarsRover. The crew had drawn straws to determine who would remain behind.
Mission Specialist Jorge Bacon would remain behind, while King, Blaine, and Mission Specialist Ann Wilson took the first tentative steps into an alien city. The trio donned their helmets and gathered their gear. One by one, they exited the tractor and began the climb up the dunes toward the city. The team was quiet, introspective, carefully plodding through loose sand.
"How long do you think this has been here?" asked Wilson.
"Long before you or I were born, Ann. But maybe not as old as the colonel," laughed Blaine. King was ten years older than Blaine. And Wilson, the youngest crew member among the twelve person Brimstone project, was the same age as King's daughter.
King ignored the remark. He reached the top of the dune and found himself standing on the stone jetty. The stone was swept clean by the Martian winds. He turned to survey the harbor.
There was a flash of light and he blinked to regain his sight. As his vision cleared, he blinked again. A great sailing ship with un-Earthly lines glided through the harbor on placid waters. Farther out to sea, he could see other great ships plying the waters of the alien sea. He turned and saw the marvelous city, no longer buried and choked in sand, but clean and bright and gleaming in the bright sunlight. He blinked hard, tried to bring a gloved hand to his eyes and met the helmet instead.
He opened his eyes and the vision was gone. The city lay dead, covered in sand, buildings crumbling. The harbor was again choked with sand, the seas long evaporated into space.
He said nothing. The pressure suit hid his discomfort from his companions, although he noted the suit fan was running at higher than normal speed to vent excess heat and moisture from the suit. He blinked as a bead of sweat rolled down his face.
"Magnificent, isn't it?" Blaine said at his side. Wilson joined them and together they started down a wide avenue that led straight from the jetty and into the heart of the ancient city.
King lay in his bunk aboard the lander, trying to sleep. The day had been too eventful; there had been too much to do and see. And the vision upon the jetty still disturbed him. What had happened? Had he seen the city as it once was? Was it just imagination? Or had he really been pulled back in time a half a million years?
He awoke with a start to find himself on the Martian surface without his pressure suit, totally naked except for a harness of some sort. He started to gasp for air, but found he could breath without trouble. He surveyed his surroundings, looking for the lander, wondering how he came to be there naked and outside the protection of his spacecraft.
The lander was not in sight, but the city was. Not as he had seen it in his vision, not bright and clean and bustling with life, but dead and cold, drifted with sand. But there was still a difference about it, as if it were not so cold and dead as it had been when he and his crew had walked its avenues. He started toward it; it was the only shelter available to a naked man on this alien world.
As he started down the Avenue of Quays (How did he know the street's name?) he heard a scream and broke into a run toward the sound. As he neared the courtyard from which the scream had come, he heard unholy, bestial sounds and the sounds of combat.
He entered the courtyard to find a scene unlike anything he'd ever imagined. A half dozen fierce creatures, nearly fifteen feet tall, white and nearly hairless faced an equally hideous foe with olive green skin, enormous tusks and four arms. The white creatures had ape -- like features and like their foe, they had four arms. The green creature wielded an edged weapon, a huge sword; the ape -- like creatures fought with clubs. Their fierceness was evident -- two of their green opponents lay sprawled at their feet, while the sword of their foes had accounted for four of the apes.
King instinctively drew his own sword, which was suspended from the harness he wore. As he approached the tableau, he tested the feel of the weapon in his hand. He had been a fencing champion at the Air Force Academy, but this was not sport; this was life and death!
Moving closer, he saw that the green creature appeared to be defending more than its own life. Pressed against the wall behind the green man, King spied a woman, all but naked. But it was the beauty in that oval face that he knew he'd never forget.
He leapt in to attack the apes from behind. A mighty swing of his sword severed an ape's arm as it brought its club to bear. The creature howled in pain and turned to face his new foe.
The creature clutched the bloody stump with one mighty hand to stanch the flow of blood. But it still had another set of arms and yet another club. King could smell its fetid breath and see the rage of pain in its close set eyes. It was fully fifteen feet tall and heavily muscled. It charged King with the club.
King leapt aside, parrying the blow with his sword. A quick thrust brought a scream of rage from the creature's throat. The ape turned to swing his club, but King had leapt again. If that mighty club connected, King's head would be crushed! King whirled, bringing his sword down upon the ape's head, cleaving the skull. The ape took another step toward him and collapsed, dead.
King selected another opponent and pressed hard against the creature, forcing it to give ground. Bleeding from dozens of wounds, the beast roared in rage, turned and ran.
The green man had dispatched one of the foes, but still faced three of the hideous white apes. As King entered the fray once more, the green man doubled his efforts. The apes, deciding retreat preferable to death, roared their disappointment at being denied a meal and followed their companion back into the shadows of the dead city.
King watched them go, then turned to face the green man. The creature was nearly twice King's height and had four powerful arms. The face was oval, with wide set protruding eyes. Two large fighting tusks protruded from the mouth, ending just below the eyes. Like King, the creature was naked, except for a harness covered with ornaments. Although the green man's features were repulsive, King felt no fear, no repugnance. This giant creature was a friend; he knew it instinctively. And somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knew this man's name.
"You were a most welcome sight to these Thark eyes, my friend!" rumbled the creature.
"Bak Mardos!" The name came to King's lips unbidden. How did he know that? And how did he know the language of the green man?
"How did you come to Aaanthor, Mark King?"
"I -- I'm not certain. My mind is quite hazy right now."
The woman stepped out from behind the Thark's broad back. She was as naked as King and her green companion, clad in a harness and a silken cape. Her skin was the color of copper.
"I am at your service, Princess," King said, bowing. "Colonel Mark King, late of the United Earth Space Service," he added by way of introduction.
"Your words are strange, ColonelMarkKing." She said his name as if it were but one word. "But your assistance is most welcome. I am Denara, Princess of Raxar. I had hired the services of Bak Mardos and his Thark companions to escort me to Helium. Along the way, our fliers were attacked by ships from Gathol. Our companion ship was destroyed in the battle, and while my flier escaped, it was heavily damaged. We drifted for many days before our ship came to ground near here."
"Do you have a flier near here, my friend?" asked the green giant.
"I -- I don't know how I came to be here, Bak Mardos."
"No matter, my friend. We must find shelter for the night against the white apes. And tomorrow, we must begin the trek to Helium."
The Thark led the princess to an ancient building, King bringing up the rear. Bak Mardos selected a building with but one entrance that could be easily defended and they ate a meal of rations that the green man produced from somewhere. Night came quickly and the princess huddled in her cape and slept. The Thark stood guard while King tried to sleep, although sleep was long in coming to his befuddled mind.
He awoke in a sweat and with a start, unsure of where he was. He became aware of the bunk under him, the hum of the lander's air conditioning and power generator systems. The dream had been so real.
He glanced at his watch; he'd slept nearly six hours but felt like he'd not rested at all. His throat was dry. He pushed the bunk's privacy curtain open and slipped out, careful to make no noise. There were still three hours of the rest cycle left and, except for a skeleton watch, the crew was asleep. He padded to the tiny galley where he quenched his thirst with a juice. He climbed the central staircase to the upper deck, where a two person watch kept an eye on the lander's systems and monitored communications.
"How's it going, Mitch?" he asked the slim, dark, young woman seated at the communications console.
"Great, Colonel! You should see the TV reports from Earth! People are going nuts over the video we've sent back." Mitchell Williams was an irrepressible young communications specialist.
"I'll bet!" he replied. "How about you, Doc?" Doctor Jim Mason was taking his turn on watch also. Mason was the medical specialist among the crew.
"I'm hanging in there, sir. About ready for my turn on the surface, though!"
King smiled. He knew that those who had stayed behind while the first group explored were eager to have their chance to see an alien world up close.
"What do our friends upstairs have to say?" King asked. Orbiting overhead, a crew maintained the Brimstone mothership that would carry the explorers back to Earth. King felt sorry for them. As important as their jobs were, they would not get to set foot on Mars this trip.
"They sent us some images a while ago that I think you'd like to look at," Mitch told him. "Looks like they found the remains of another city, about 2500 miles from here. Take a peek." Her fingers flew over the computer touchpad and an image appeared on a screen over her head.
King looked with interest.
"There," she said, pointing. "Here, you can make out a wall, and here, it looks like the remains of a tower. There's another, here, about 75 miles away."
"We've been studying this planet for more than a hundred years; sent the first probes more than fifty years ago and have been mapping and photographing the surface from orbit ever since. We've landed a half dozen robot explorers, too, but this is the first time we've ever seen evidence of life here. Why now?" King mused.
"The folks at NASA think that the dunes have been covering then and that recent shifts in the weather patterns have finally exposed them," Doc said. "Personally, I think it's the difference between having unmanned probes and real, live, humans doing the exploring."
"Maybe you're right, Doc. This planet seems to raise more mysteries, more questions, every day, and fewer answers." King crumpled the juice cup and tossed it into the recycler. "I've got a couple more hours of sack time left; think I'll try to catch a little more sleep. See you two in the morning."
King descended to the crew quarters and climbed back in his cubicle. He lay back, trying to sleep once more.
He awoke to Bak Mardos' gentle shaking. "It is time for your watch, my friend." King roused from a light sleep. It was the dream again. Or was it a dream? Was he being transported through time and space?
King took his place at the doorway, alert, but confused. What was happening to him? Was this real and the lander a dream? He stared out at the night sky, picking out the blue star that was -- Jasoom - Earth.
His watch was uneventful. As the sun rose and the Martian night quickly gave way to day, he roused his companions. The white apes would soon be stirring, searching for food. It was time to quit the city. Helium was a long way across the planet.
The odd trio plodded across the barren landscape, a naked whiteman, a red princess and a green warrior with four arms. King kept moving, even while he wondered if this excursion was a dream. Food and water, though meager, had been salvaged from Denara's crashed flyer. With rationing, it could last them several days. Their chief fear was to be discovered by the green horde of the Torquasians as they passed through their territory. At best, it would mean enslavement; at worst it would mean death.
Search parties from Helium would certainly be searching for the princess, but farther north and west. Raxar was a poor nation far to the north and embroiled in a war with Gathol. Search parties for their missing princess would be a luxury the Raxarians could not afford. Rescue would not be likely; they would have to rely upon themselves for survival. He smiled a grim smile -- many would give up under the circumstances, he knew. "But we still live!" he thought. When Denara turned to give him an odd look, he realized he'd said it aloud.
The day wore on and the trio decided to stop for the night at a rocky outcropping that could be easily defended. Denara collapsed, exhausted and was soon asleep. Bak Mardos insisted on taking the first watch and King gratefully accepted. He too was soon asleep.
King awoke to the insistent beeping of his comm unit. He was disoriented at first, but quickly realized he was in his quarters aboard the Brimstone vehicle.
"King here," he said, ending the annoying comm signal. He sat up and a book fell from his bunk to the floor. His mind was fuzzy -- the dream -- was it really a dream? -- seemed so real.
"It's time, Colonel," said the disembodied voice.
"I'll be right there." King swung his feet to the floor, using caution in the light gravity. He retrieved the fallen book and tucked it into a pocket of his flightsuit.
A few moments later, he stepped into the control room and paused, taken aback at the sight before him. Recovering, he said "Prepare for descent. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Barsoom!" "Barsoom?" asked Mission Specialist Ann Wilson.
"Barsoom, Ms. Wilson! Welcome to Barsoom!" He pulled the book from his pocket and tossed it to the young woman.
"Llana of Gathol, by Edgar Rice Burroughs? Is this new?" she asked.
He smiled. "It's an old friend."
"Reverse lateral thrusters, 90 second burn!" he ordered. "Forward thrusters, two minute burn!"
"Commencing descent, Colonel."
Mars rose up to meet the lander. King wondered if Bak Mardos and Denara would be waiting for him in the dusty ruins of Aaanthor. He smiled. Of course they would -- in his dreams.
© 1999 Crestview, Florida