Marion Zimmer Bradley Super Pack. Marion Zimmer Bradley
can’t you, Slayton?”
Andrew said quietly, “I’m going back with you, Colonel Montray. And you won’t need gas equipment. I did make contact with one of the old Martians.”
Montray sighed and reached for the telephone. “You can tell Dr. Cranston all about it, over at the hospital.”
“I knew you’d think I was crazy,” Andrew said in resignation, “but I can show you a pass that will take you through the Double Ridge in three hours, not three days—less, if you have a sand-car.”
The Colonel’s hand was actually on the telephone, but he didn’t pick it up. He leaned back and looked at Andrew curiously. “You discovered this pass?”
“Well, yes and no, sir.” He told his story quickly, skipping over the parts about Kamellin, concentrating on the fact of the roadway. Montray heard him out in silence, then picked up the telephone, but he didn’t call the hospital. Instead he called an employment bureau in the poorer part of Mount Denver. While he waited for the connection he looked uncertainly at Andrew and muttered, “I’d have to go out there in a few weeks anyhow. They said, if Reade got well started, he could use Army equipment—” he broke off and spoke into the clicking phone.
“Montray here for the Geographic. I want twenty roughnecks for desert work. Have them here in two hours.” He held down the contact button, dialed again, this time to call Dupont, Mars Limited, and requisition a first-class staff chemist, top priority. The third call, while Andrew waited— admiring, yet resenting the smoothness with which Montray could pull strings, was to the Martian Geographic Society headquarters; then he heaved himself up out of his chair and said, “So that’s that. I’ll buy your story, Slayton. You go down—” he scrawled on a pink form, “and commandeer an Army sand-bus that will hold twenty roughnecks and equipment. If you’ve told the truth, the Reade expedition is already a success and the Army will take over. And if you haven’t—” he made a curt gesture of dismissal, and Andrew knew that if anything went wrong, he’d be better off in the psycho ward than anywhere Montray could get at him.
When Army wheels started to go round, they ran smoothly. Within five hours they were out of Mount Denver with an ease and speed which made Andrew—accustomed to the penny-pinching of Martian Geographic—gape in amazement. He wondered if this much string-pulling could have saved Kingslander. Crammed in the front seat of the sand-bus, between Montray and the Dupont chemist, Andrew reflected gloomily on the military mind and its effect on Reade. What would Reade say when he saw Andrew back again?
The wind was rising. A sandstorm on Mars makes the worst earthly wind look like a breeze to fly kites; the Army driver swore helplessly as he tried to see through the blinding sand, and the roughnecks huddled under a tarpaulin, coarse bandanas over their eyes, swearing in seven languages. The chemist braced his kit on his knees—he’d refused to trust it to the baggage-bins slung under the chassis next to the turbines—and pulled his dustkerchief over his eyes as the hurricane wind buffeted the sand-bus. Montray shouted above the roar, “Doesn’t that road of yours come out somewhere along here?”
Shielding his eyes, Andrew peered over the low windbreak and crouched again, wiping sand from his face. “Half a mile more.”
Montray tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Here.”
The bus roared to a stop and the wind, unchallenged by the turbine noise, took over in their ears.
Montray gripped his wrist. “Crawl back under the canvas and we’ll look at the map.”
Heads low, they crawled in among the roughnecks; Montray flashed a pocket light on the “map”, which was no more than a rough aerial photo taken by a low flier over the ridge. At one edge were a group of black dots which might or might not have been Xanadu, and the ridge itself was a confusing series of blobs; Andrew rubbed a gritty finger over the photo.
“Look, this is the route we followed; Reade’s Pass, we named it. Kingslander went this way; a thousand feet lower, but too much loose rock. The canyon is about here—that dark line could be it.”
“Funny the flier who took the picture didn’t see it.” Montray raised his voice. “All out—let’s march!”
“In’a dees’ weather?” protested a gloomy voice, touching off a chorus of protest. Montray was_ inflexible. “Reade might be in bad trouble. Packs, everybody.”
Grumbling, the roughnecks tumbled out and adjusted packs and dust-bandanas. Montray waved the map-photo at Andrew; “Want this?”
“I can find my way without it.”
A straggling disorderly line, they began, Andrew leading, He felt strong and confident. In his mind Kamellin lay dormant and that pleased him too; he needed every scrap of his mind to fight the screaming torment of the wind. It sifted its way through his bandana and ate into his skin, though he had greased his face heavily with lanolin before leaving the barracks. It worked, a gritty nuisance, through his jacket and his gloves. But it was his own kind of weather; Mars weather. It suited him, even though he swore as loud as anyone else.
Montray swore too, and spat grit from his throat.
“Where is this canyon of yours?”
A little break in the hillocky terrain led northward, then the trail angled sharply, turned into the lee of a bleak canyon wall. “Around there.” Andrew fell back, letting Montray lead, while he gave a hand to the old man from DuPont.
Montray’s angry grip jerked at his elbow; Andrew’s bandana slid down and sailed away on the storm, and the chemist stumbled and fell to his knees. Andrew bent and helped the old fellow to his feet before he thrust his head around to Montray and demanded, “What the hell is the big idea?”
“That’s what I’m asking you!” Montray’s furious voice shouted the storm down. Andrew half fell around the turn, hauled by Montray’s grip; then gulped, swallowing sand, while the wind bit unheeded at his naked cheeks. For there was now no trail through the ridge. Only a steep slope of rock lay before them, blank and bare, every crevice filled to the brim with deep-drifted sand.
Andrew turned to Montray, his jaw dropping. “I don’t understand this at all, sir,” he” gulped, and went toward the edge. There was no sign of ramp or steps.
“I do.” Montray bit his words off and spat them at Andrew. “You’re coming back to Mount Denver—under arrest!”
“Sir, I came through here yesterday! There was a wide track, a ramp, about eleven feet wide, and at one side there were steps, deep steps—” he moved toward the edge, seeking signs of the vanished trailway. Montray’s grip on his arm did not loosen. “Yeah, and a big lake full of pink lemonade down at the bottom. Okay, back to the bus.”
The roughnecks crowded behind ‘them, close to the deep-deep-drifted sand near the spires of rock Andrew had sighted as landmarks on either side of the canyon. One of them stepped past Montray, glaring at the mountain of sand.
“All the way out here for a looney!” he said in disgust.
He took another step—then suddenly started sinking-stumbled, flailed and went up to his waist in the loose-piled dust.
“Careful—get back—” Andrew yelled. “You’ll go in over your heads!” The words came without volition.
The man in the sand stopped in mid-yell, and his kicking arms stopped throwing up dust. He looked thoughtfully up at the other roughnecks. “Colonel”, he said slowly, “I don’t think Slayton’s so crazy. I’m standing on a step, and there’s another one under my knee. Here, dig me out.” He began to brush sand away with his two hands. “Big steps—”
Andrew let out a yell of exultation, bending to haul the man free. “That’s IT,” he shouted. “The sandstorm last night just blew a big drift into the mouth of the canyon, that’s all! If we could get through this drift, the rest lies between rock walls and around the next angle, the sand can’t blow!”
Montray pulled binoculars from his pocket