Hermit of Mars

Clifford D. Simak

Copyright 1939

The sun plunged over the western rim of Skeleton Canal and instantly it was night. There was no twilight. Twilight was an impossible thing in the atmosphere of Mars, and the Martian night clamped down with frigid breath, and the stars danced out in the near-black sky, twinkling, dazzling stars that jigged a weird rigadoon in space.

Despite five years in the wilderness stretches of the Red Planet, Kent Clark still was fascinated by this sudden change from day to night. One minute sunlight - next minute starlight, the stars blazing out as if they were electric lights and someone had snapped the switch. Stars that were larger and more brilliant and gave more light than the stars seen from the planet Earth. Stars that seemed to swim in the swiftly cooling atmosphere. By midnight the atmosphere would be cooled to almost its minimum temperature, and then the stars would grow still and even more brilliant, like hard diamonds shining in the blackness of the sky, but they would be picturesque, showing their own natural colours, blue and white and red.

Outside the tiny quartz igloo the night wind keened among the pinnacles and buttresses and wind-eroded formations of the canal. On the wings of the wind, almost indistinguishable from the wind's own moaning, came the mournful howling of the Hounds, the great gaunt, shaggy beasts that haunted the deep canals and preyed on all living things except the Eaters.

Charley Wallace, squatting on the floor of the igloo, was scraping the last trace of flesh from the pelt of a Martian beaver. Kent watched the deft twist of his wrist, the flashing of knife blade in the single tiny radium bulb which illuminated the igloo's interior.

Charley was an old-timer. Long ago the sudden going and comings of Martian daylight and night had ceased to hold definite wonder for him. For 20 Martian years he had followed the trail of the Martian beaver, going father and farther afield, penetrating deeper and deeper into the mazes of the even farther canals that spread like a network over the face of the planet.

His face was like old leather, wrinkled and brown above the white sweep of his long white beard. His body was pure steel and whang-hide. He knew all the turns and tricks, all the trails and paths. He was one of the old-time canal-men.

The heater grids glowed redly, utilising the power stored in the seleno cells during the hours of daylight by the great sun-mirrors set outside the igloo. The atmosphere condensers chuckled softly. The electrolysis plant, used for the manufacture of water, squatted in its corner, silent now.

Charley carefully laid the pelt across his knees, stroked the deep brown fur with a wrinkled hand.

"Six of 'em," he said. His old eyes, blue as the sheen of ice, sparkled as he looked at Kent. "We'll make a haul this time, boy," he said. "Best huntin' I've seen in five years or more."

Kent nodded. "Sure will," he agreed.

The hunting had been good. Out only a month now and they had six pelts, more than many trappers and hunters were able to get during an entire year. The pelts would bring 1,000 apiece -perhaps more - back at the Red Rock trading post. Most valuable fur in the entire Solar System, they would sell at three times that amount back in the London or New York fur marts. A wrap of them would cost a cool 100,000.

Deep, rich, heavy fur. Kent shivered as he thought about it. The fur had to be heavy. Otherwise the beaver would never be able to exist. At night, the temperature plunged to 40 and 50 below, Centigrade, seldom reached above 20 below at high noon. Mars was cold! Here on the equator the temperature varied little, unlike the poles, where it might rise to 20 above during the summer when, for ten long months, the Sun never set, dropped to 100 or more below in the winter, when the Sun was unseen for equally as long.

He leaned back in his chair and gazed out through the quartz walls of the igloo. Far down the slope of the canal wall he saw the flickering lights of the Ghosts, those tenuous, wraith-like forms whose origin, true nature, and purpose were still the bone of bitter scientific contention.

The starlight threw strange lights and shadows on the twisted terrain of the canal. The naturally weird surface formations became a nightmare of strange, awe-impelling shapes, like pages snatched from the portfolio of a mad artist.

A black shape crossed a lighted ravine, slunk into the shadows.

"A Hound," said Kent.

Charley cursed in his whiskers.

"If them lopers keep hangin' around," he prophesied savagely, "we'll have some of their pelts to take out to Red Rock."

"They're mighty gun-shy," declared Kent. "Can't get near one of them."

"Yeah," said Charley, "but just try goin' out without a gun and see what happens. 'Most as bad as the Eaters. Only difference is that the Hounds would just as soon eat a man, an' the Eater would rather eat a man. They sure hanker after human flesh."

Another of the black shapes, slinking low, belly close to the ground, crossed the ravine.

"Another one," said Kent.

Something else was moving in the ravine, a figure that glinted in the starlight.

Kent leaned forward, choking back a cry. Then he was on his feet.

"A man," he shouted. "There's a man out there!"

Charley's chair overturned as he leaped up and stared through the quartz.

The space-armoured figure was toiling up the slope that led to the igloo. In one hand the man carried a short blast rifle, and as they watched, the two trappers saw him halt and wheel about, the rifle levelled, ready for action, to stare back at the shadows into which the two Hounds had disappeared only a moment before.

A slight movement to the left and behind the man outside caught Kent's eye and spurred him into action,

He leaped across the igloo and jerked from its rack his quartz-treated space suit, started clambering into it.

"What's the trouble?" demanded Charley. "What the hell you doin'?"

"There's an Eater out there," shouted Kent. "I saw it just a minute ago."

He snapped down the helmet and reached for his rifle as Charley spun open the inner air-lock port. Swiftly Kent leaped through, heard the inner port being screwed shut as he swung open the outer door.

Cold bit through the suit and into his very bones as he stepped out into the Martian night. With a swift flip he turned on the chemical heat units and felt a glow of warmth sweep over him.

The man in the ravine below was trudging up the path toward the igloo.

Kent shouted at him.

"Come on! Fast as you can!"

The man halted at the shout, stared upward.

"Come on!" screamed Kent.

The spacesuit moved forward.

Kent, racing down the ravine, saw the silica-armoured brute that lurched out of the shadows and sped toward the unsuspecting visitor.

Kent's rifle came to his shoulder.

The sights lined on the ugly head of the Eater. His finger depressed the firing mechanism and the gun spat a tight column of destructive blue fire. The blast crumpled the Eater in mid-leap, flung him off his stride and to one side. But it did not kill him. His unlovely body, gleaming like a reddish mirror in the starlight, clawed upon its feet, stood swinging the gigantic head from side to side.

A shrill scream sounded in Kent's helmet phones, but he was too busy getting the sights of the weapon lined on the Eater again to pay it any attention.

Again the rifle spat and purred, the blue blast-flame impinging squarely on the silica-armoured head. Bright sparks flew from the beast's head and then suddenly the head seemed to dissolve, melting down into a gob of blackened matter that glowed redly in places. The Eater slowly toppled sidewise and skidded ponderously down the slope to come to rest against the crimson boulder.

Kent signalled to the visitor.

"Come on," he shouted. "Quick about it! There may be more!"

Swiftly the man in the space suit came up the slope toward Kent.

"Thanks," he said as he drew abreast of the trapper.

"Get going, fellow," said Kent tersely.

"It isn't safe to be out here at night."

He fell in behind the visitor as they hurried toward the open port of the airlock.

The visitor lifted the helmet and laid it on the table and in the dim light of the radium bulb Kent saw the face of a woman.

He stood silent, staring. A visit by a man to their igloo in this out-of-the way spot would have been unusual enough; that a woman should drop in on them seemed almost incredible.

"A woman," said Charley. "Dim my sights, it's a woman."

"Yes, I'm a woman," said the visitor, and her tone, while it held a hidden hint of culture, was sharp as a whip. It reminded one of the bite of the wind outside. Her eyebrows were naturally high arched, giving her an air of eternal question and now she fastened that questioning gaze on the old trapper.

"You are Charley Wallace, aren't you?" she asked.

Charley shifted from one foot to another, uncomfortable under that level stare. "That's me," he admitted, "but you have the advantage of me, ma'am."

She hesitated, as if uncertain what he meant and then she laughed, a laugh that seemed to come from deep in her throat, full and musical. "I'm Ann Smith," she said.

She watched them, eyes flickering from one to the other, but in them she saw no faintest hint of recognition, no start of surprise at the name.

"They told me at Red Rock I'd find you somewhere in Skeleton Canal," she explained.

"You was a-lookin' for us?" asked Charley.

She nodded. "They told me you knew every foot of this country."

Charley squared his shoulders, pawed at his beard. His eyes gleamed brightly. Here was talk he understood. "I know it as well as anyone," he admitted.

She wriggled her shoulders free of the spacesuit, let it slide, crumpling to the floor, and stepped out of it. Kent stored his own suit on the rack and, picking the girl's suit off the floor, placed it beside his own.

"Yes, ma'am," said Charley, "I've roamed these canals for over twenty Martian years and I know 'em as good as most. I wouldn't be afraid of gettin' lost."

Kent studied their visitor. She was dressed in trim sports attire, faultless in fashion, hinting of expensive shops. Her light brown, almost blond hair, was smartly coiffed.

"But why were you lookin' for us?" asked Charley.

"I was hoping you would do something for me," she told him.

"Now," Charley replied, "I'd be glad to do something for you. Anything I can do."

Kent, watching her face, thought he saw a flicker of anxiety flit across her features. But she did not hesitate. There was no faltering of words as she spoke.

"You know the way to Mad-Man's Canal?"

If she had slapped Charley across the face with her gloved hand the expression on his face could not have been more awe-struck and dumfounded.

He started to speak, stuttered, was silent.

"You can't mean," said Kent, softly, "that you want us to go into Mad-Man's Canal?"

She whirled on him and it was as if he were an enemy. Her defences were up. "That's exactly what I mean," she said and again there was that wind-like lash in her voice. "But I don't want you to go alone. I'll go with you."

She walked slowly to one of the two chairs in the igloo, dropped into it, crossed her knees, swung one booted foot impatiently.

In the silence Kent could hear the chuckling of the atmosphere condensers, the faint sputter of the heating grids.

"Ma'am," said Charley, "you sure must be jokin'. You don't really mean you want to go into Mad-Man's?"

She faced him with a level stare. "But I do," she declared. "I never was more serious in my life. There's someone there I have to see."

"Lady," protested the old trapper, "someone's been spoofin' you. There ain't nobody over in Mad-Man's. You couldn't find a canal-man in his right mind who'd go near the place."

"There is," she told him. "And probably you'll laugh at this, too, but I happen to know it to be the truth. The man I want to see is Harry, the Hermit."

Kent guffawed softly, little more than a chuckle under his breath. But she heard and came up out of the chair.

"You're laughing," she said and the words were an accusation.

"Sit down," said Kent, "and let me tell you something. Something that no canal-man could admit, but something that every one of them know is the truth."

Slowly she sat down in the chair. Kent sat easily on the edge of the table.

"There isn't any such a person as Harry, the Hermit," he said. "It's just a myth. Just one of those stories that have grown up among the canal-men. Wild tales that they think up when they sit alone in the desolation of the Martian wilderness. Just figments of imagination they concoct to pass away the time. And then, when they go out with their furs, they tell these stories over the drinks at the trading posts and those they tell them to, tell them to the others - and so the tale is started. It goes from mouth to mouth. It gains strength as it goes, and each man improves upon it just a little, until in a year or two it is a full-blown legend. Something that the canal-men almost believe themselves, but know all the time is just a wild canal-tale."

"But I know," protested Ann. "I know there is such a man. I have to see him. I know he lives in Mad-Man's Canal."

"Listen," snapped Kent and the quiet casualness was gone from his words. "Harry, the Hermit, is everywhere. Go a few hundred miles from here and men will tell you he lives here in Skeleton Canal. Or he is down in the Big Eater system or he's up north in the Icy Hills. He is just an imaginary person, I tell you. Like the Paul Bunyan of the old lumberjacks back on Earth. Like Pecos Pete of the old American south-west. Like the fairies of the old Irish stories. Some trapper thought him up one lonely night and another trapper improved on him and a fellow dealing a stud poker hand in some little town improved a little more until today he is almost a real personage. Maybe he is real - real as a symbol of a certain group of men - but for all practical purposes, he is just a story, a fabrication of imagination."

The girl, he saw, was angry. She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a flat case. Her hands trembled as she opened it and took out, a cigarette. She closed the case and tapped the cigarette against her thumbnail. A pencil of metal, pulled from the case, flared into flame.

She thrust the white cylinder between her lips and Kent reached down and took it away.

"Not here," he said and smiled.

She flared at him. "Why not?" she asked.

"Atmosphere," he said. "Neither Charley nor I smoke. Can't afford to. The condensers are small. We don't have too much current to run them. Two persons is the capacity of this igloo. Everything has to be figured down to scratch in this business. We need all the air we get, without fouling it with tobacco smoke." He handed her the cigarette.

In silence she put it back in the case, returned the case to her pocket. "Sorry," she said. "I didn't know."

"Sorry I had to stop you," Kent told her.

She rose. "Perhaps I had better go," she said.

Charley's jaw went slack. "Go where?" he asked.

"My canal car," she said. "I left it about a mile from here. Went past your place before I saw the light."

"But you can't spend the night in a car," protested Kent. "I'm afraid you'll have to stay here."

"Sure," urged Charley, "we can't let you go. Sleeping in a car is no picnic."

"We're harmless," Kent assured her.

She flushed. "I wasn't thinking of that," she said. "But you said two persons was the capacity of the igloo."

"It is," Kent agreed, "but we can manage. We'll cut down the heater current a little and step up the condensers. It may get a little chilly, but we can manage with air."

He turned to Charley. "How about a pot of coffee," he suggested.

Charley grinned, waggled his chin whiskers like a frolicsome billy goat. "I was just thinkin' about that myself," he said.

Ann set down the coffee cup and looked at them. "You see," she explained, "it's not just something I want to do myself. Not just some foolish whim of mine. It's something I've got to do. Something that may help someone else - someone who is very dear to me. I won't be able to sleep or eat or live, if I fail at least to try. You have to understand that I simply must go to Mad-Man's Canal and try to find Harry, the Hermit."

"But there ain't no Harry, the Hermit," protested Charley. He wiped the coffee off his beard and sighed. "Goodness knows, I wished there was, since you're so set on findin' him."

"But even if there isn't," said Ann, "I'd at least have to go and look. I couldn't go through life wondering if you might have been mistaken. Wondering if I should have given up so easily. If I go and try to find him and fail - why, then I've done e\'2rything I can, everything I could have expected myself to do. But if I don't I'll always wonder . . . there'll always be that doubt to torment me."

She looked from one face to the other. "You surely understand," she pleaded.

Charley regarded her steadily, his blue eyes shining. "This thing kind of means a lot to you, don't it?" he said.

She nodded.

Kent's voice broke the spell. "You don't know what you're doing," he said. "You flew down from Landing City to Red Rock in a nice comfortable rocket ship, and now because you covered the-hundred miles between here and Red Rock in a canal car, you think you're an old-timer."

He stared back at her hurt eyes.

"Well, you aren't," he declared.

"Now, lad," said Charley, "you needn't get so rough."

"Rough!" said Kent. "I'm not getting rough. I'm just telling her a few of the things she has to know. She came across the desert in the car and everything went swell. Now she thinks it's just as easy to travel the canals."

"No, I don't," she flared at him, but he went on mercilessly.

"The canal country is dangerous. There's all sorts of chances for crack-ups. There are all sorts of dangers. Every discomfort you can imagine. Crack your car against a boulder - and you peel off the quartz. Then the ozone gets in its work. It eats through the metal. Put a crack in your suit and the same thing happens. This atmosphere is poisonous to metal. So full of ozone that if you breathe much of it, it starts to work on your lung tissues. Not so much danger of that up on the plateau, where the air is thinner, but down here where there's more air, there's more ozone and it works just that much faster."

She tried to stop him, but he waved her into silence and went on:

"There are the Eaters. Hundreds of them. All with an insane appetite for human bones. They love the phosphate. Everyone of them figuring how to get through a car or a spacesuit and at the food inside. You've never seen more than a couple of Eaters together at a time. But Charley and I have seen them by the thousands - great herds of them on their periodic migrations up and down the canyons. They've kept us penned in our igloo for days while they milled around outside, trying to reach us. And the Hounds, too, although they aren't so dangerous. And in the deeper places you find swarms of Ghosts. Funny things, the Ghosts. No physical harm from them. Maybe they don't even exist. Nobody knows what they are. But they are apt to drive you mad. Just looking at them, knowing they are watching all the time."

Impressive silence fell.

Charley wagged his beard.

"No place for a woman," he declared. "The canal ain't."

"I don't care," said Ann. "You're trying to frighten me, and I won't be frightened. I have to go to Mad-Man's Canal."

"Listen, lady," said Charley, "pick any other place - any other place at all - and I will take you there. But don't ask me to go into Mad-Man's."

"Why not?" she cried. "Why are you so afraid of Mad-Man's?"

She tried to find the answer in their faces but there was none.

Charley spoke slowly, apparently trying to choose his words with care. "Because," he said, "Mad-Man's is the deepest canal in this whole country. Far as I know, no man has ever been to the bottom of it and come out alive. Some have gone down part way and came back - mad and frothin' at the mouth, their eyes all glazed, babblin' crazy things. That's why they call it Mad-Man's."

"Now listen to me," and Ann. "I came all this way and I'm not turning back. If you won't take me, I'll go alone. I'll make it somehow - only you could make it so much easier for me. You know all the trails. You could get me there quicker. I'm prepared to pay you for it - pay you well."

"Lady," said Charley slowly, "we ain't guides. You couldn't give us money enough to make us go where we didn't want to go."

She pounded one small clenched fist on the table. "But I want to pay you," she said. "I'll insist on it."

Charley made a motion of his hand, as if sweeping her words. "Not one cent," he said. "You can't buy our services. But we might do it anyhow. Just because I like your spunk."

She gasped. "You would?" she asked.

Neither one of them replied.

"Just take me to Mad-Man's," she pleaded. "I won't ask you to take me down into the canal. Just point out the best way and then wait for me. I'll make it myself. All I want to know is how to get there."

Charley lifted the coffee pot, filled the cups again.

"Ma'm," he said, "I reckon we can go where you can go. I reckon we ain't allowin' you to go down into Mad-Man's all by yourself."

Dawn roared over the canal rim and flooded the land with sudden light and life. The blanket plants unfolded their broad furry leaves, spreading them in the sunshine. The traveller plants, lightly anchored to boulder and outcropping, scurried frantically for places in the Sun. The canal suddenly became a mad flurry of plant life as the travellers, true plants but forced by environment to acquire the power of locomotion, quit the eastern wall, where they had travelled during the preceding day to keep pace with the sunlight, and rushed pell-mell for the western slope.

Kent tumbled out of the canal-car, rifle gripped in his hand. He blinked at the pale Sun that hung over the canal rim. His eyes swept the castellated horizon that closed in about them, took in the old familiar terrain typical of the Martian canals.

The canal was red - blood red shading to softest pink with the purple of early-morning shadow still hugging the eastern rim. A riot of red - the rusted bones of a dead planet. Tons of oxygen locked in those ramparts of bright red stone. Oxygen enough to make Mars livable - but locked forever in red oxide or iron.

Chimney and dome formations rose in tangled confusion with weathered pyramids and slender needles. A wild scene. Wild and lonesome and forbidding.

Kent swept the western horizon with his eyes. It was 30 miles or more to the rim, but in the thin atmosphere he could see with almost telescopic clearness the details of the scarp where the plateau broke and the land swung down in wild gyrations, frozen in red rock, to the floor of the canal where he stood.

Under the eastern rim, where the purple shadows still clung, flickered the watch-fires of the Ghosts, dim shapes from that distance. He shook his fist at them. Damn the Ghosts!

The slinking form of a Hound skulked down a ravine and disappeared. A beaver scuttled along a winding trail and popped into a burrow.

Slowly the night cold was rising from the land, dissipated by the rising Sun. The temperature would rise now until mid-afternoon, when it would stand at 15 or 20 below zero, Centigrade.

From a tangled confusion of red boulders leaped a silica-armoured Eater. Like an avenging rocket it bore down on Kent. Almost wearily the trapper lifted his rifle, blasted the Eater with one fierce burst of blue energy.

Kent cursed under his breath.

"Can't waste power," he muttered. "Energy almost gone." ,

He tucked the rifle under his arm and glared at the tumbled Eater. The huge beast, falling in mid-leap, had ploughed a deep furrow in the hard red soil.

Kent walked around the bulk of the car, stood looking at the uptilted second car that lay wedged between the huge boulders.

Charley climbed out through the open air lock and walked toward his partner. Inside his helmet he shook his head. "No good," he said. "She'll never run again."

Kent said nothing and Charley went on: "Whole side staved in. All of the quartz knocked off. Ozone's already got in its work. Plates softening."

"I suppose the mechanism is shot, too," said Kent.

"All shot to hell," said Charley.

They stood side by side, staring mournfully at the shattered machine.

"She was a good car, too," Charley pronounced, sadly.

"This," declared Kent, "is what comes of escorting a crazy dame all over the country."

Charley dismissed the matter. "I'm going to walk down the canal a ways. See what the going is like from here on," he told Kent.

"Be careful," the younger man warned him. "There's Eaters around. I just shot one."

The old man moved rapidly down the canal floor, picking his way between the scattered boulders and jagged outcroppings. In a moment he was out of sight. Kent walked around the corner of the undamaged car, saw Ann Smith just as she stepped from the airlock.

"Good morning," she said.

He did not return the greeting. "Our car is a wreck," he said. "We'll have to use yours from here on. It'll be a little cramped."

"A wreck?" she asked.

"Sure," he said. "That crash last night. When the bank caved under the treads, it smashed the quartz, let the ozone at the plates."

She frowned. "I'm sorry about that," she said. "Of course, it's my fault. You wouldn't be here if it weren't for me."

Kent was merciless. "I hope," he sighed, "that this proves to you travel in the canals is no pleasure jaunt."

She looked about them, shivered at the desolation.

"The Ghosts are the worst," she said. "Watching, always watching -"

Before them, not more than a hundred feet away, one of the Ghosts appeared, apparently writhing up out of a pile of jumbled rocks. It twisted and reared upward, tenuous, unguessable, now one shape, now another. For a moment it seemed to be a benign old grandfather, with long sweeping beard, and then it turned into something that was utterly and unnamably obscene and then, as suddenly as it had come, it disappeared.

Ann shuddered. "Always watching," she said again. "Waiting around corners. Ready to rise up and mock you."

"They get on your nerves," Kent agreed, "but there's no reason to be afraid of them. They couldn't touch you. They may be nothing more than mirage - figments of the imagination, like your Harry, the Hermit."

She swung about to face him. "How far are we from Mad-Man's?" she demanded.

Kent shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe a few miles, maybe a hundred. We should be near, though."

From down the canal came Charley's halloo. "Mad-Man's" he shouted back to them. "Mad-Man's! Come and look at it!"

Mad-Man's Canal was a continuation of the canal the three had been travelling - but it was utterly different.

Suddenly the canal floor broke, dipped down sharply and plummeted into a deep blue pit of shadows. For miles the great depression extended, and on all sides the ground sloped steeply into the seemingly bottomless depths of the canyon.

"What is it, Charley?" asked Kent, and Charley waggled his beard behind the space-helmet.

"Can't say, lad," he declared, "but it sure is an awe-inspirin' sight. For twenty Martian years I've tramped these canals and I never seen the like of it."

"A volcanic crater?" suggested Ann.

"Maybe," agreed Charley, "but it don't look exactly like that either. Something happened here, though. Floor fell out of the bottom of the canal or somethin'."

"You can't see the bottom," said Ann. "Looks like a blue haze down there. Not exactly like shadows. More like fog or water."

"Ain't water," declared Charley. "You can bet your bottom dollar on that. If anyone ever found that much water on Mars they'd stake out a claim and make a fortune."

"Did you ever know anyone who tried to go down there, Charley?" asked Kent. "Ever talk to anyone who tried it?"

"No, lad, I never did. But I heard tell of some who tried. And they never were the same again. Somethin' happened to them down there. Somethin' that turned their minds."

Kent felt icy fingers on his spine. He stared down into the deep blue of Mad-Man's and strained his eyeballs, trying to pierce the veil that hid the bottom. But that was useless. If one wanted to find out what was down there, he'd have to travel down those steeply sloping walls, would have to take his courage in hand and essay what other men had tried and gone crazy for their pains.

"We can't use the car," he said suddenly and was surprised at his words.

Kent walked backward from the edge of the pit. What was happening to them? Why this calm acceptance of the fact they were going to go down into Mad-Man's? They didn't have to go. It wasn't too late yet to turn around and travel back the way they came. With only one car now, and many miles to travel, they would have to take it slow and easy, but they could make it. It was the sensible thing to do, held none of the rash foolhardiness involved in a descent into those blue depths before them.

He heard Charley's words, as if from a great distance.

"Sure, we'll have to walk. But we ought to be able to make it. Maybe we'll find air down there, air dense enough to breathe and not plumb full of ozone. Maybe there'll be some water, too."

"Charley," Kent shouted, "you don't know what you're saying! We can't —"

He stopped in mid-sentence and listened. Even as he talked, he had heard that first weird note from up the canal, a sound that he had heard many times before, the faraway rumble of running hoofs, the grating clash of stonelike body on stonelike body.

"The Eaters!" he shouted. "The Eaters are migrating."

He glanced swiftly about him. There was no way of escape. The walls of the canal had narrowed and closed in, rising sheer from the floor on either side of them, only a few miles away. There was no point of vantage where they could make a stand and hold off the horde that was thundering toward them. And even if there were, they had but little power left for their guns. In the long trek down the canal they had been forced to shoot time after time to protect their lives, and their energy supply for the weapons was running low.

"Let's get back to the car!" screamed Ann. She started to run. Kent sprinted after her, grabbed her and pulled her around.

"We'd never make it," he yelled at her. "Hear those hoofs! They're stampeding! They'll be here in a minute!"

Charley was yelling at them, pointing down into Mad-Man's. Kent nodded, agreeing. It was the only way to go. The only way left open for them. There was no place to hide, no place to stand and fight. Flight was the only answer - and flight took them straight into the jaws of Mad-Man's Canal.

Charley bellowed at them, his bright blue eyes gleaming with excitement. "Maybe we got a chance. If we can reach the shadows."

They plunged down, going at a run, fighting to keep their balance. Soft, crumbly rock shifted and broke under the impact of their steel-shod feet. A shower of rubble accompanied them, chuckling and clinking down the slope. The sun blinked out and they plunged into the deep shadows, fought to reduce their speed, slowed to a walk.

Kent looked back. Above him, on the level of the canal floor, he saw a fighting mass of Eaters, indescribable confusion there on the rim of the skyline, as the great silica-armoured beasts fought against plunging into Mad-Man's. Those in front were rearing, shoving, striking savagely, battling against being shoved over the edge as those behind ploughed into them. Some of them had toppled onto the slope, were sliding and clawing, striving to regain their feet. Others were doggedly crawling back up the slope.

The three below watched the struggle above them.

"Even them cussed Eaters are afraid to go into Mad-Man's," said Charley.

They were surrounded by Ghosts. Hundreds of them, wavering and floating, appearing and disappearing. In the blue shadows of the sunken world they seemed like wind-blown flames that rocked back and forth, flickering, glimmering, guttering. Assuming all kinds of forms, forms beautiful in their intricacy of design, forms angularly flat and ugly, gruesome and obscene and terrible.

And always there was that terrible sense of watching - of ghostly eyes watching and waiting - of hidden laughter and ghoulish design.

"Damn them," said Kent. He stubbed his toe and stumbled, righted himself.

"Damn them," he said again.

The air had become denser, with little ozone now. Half an hour before they had shut off their oxygen supply and snapped open the visors of their helmets. Still thin, pitifully by Earthly standards, the air was breathable and they needed to save what little oxygen might remain within their tanks.

Ann stumbled and fell against Kent. He steadied her until she regained her feet. He saw her shiver.

"If they only wouldn't watch us," she whispered to him. "They'll drive me mad. Watching us - no indication of friendliness or unfriendliness, no emotion at all. Just watching. If only they would go away - do something even!" Her whisper broke on a hysterical note.

Kent didn't answer. What was there to say? He felt a savage wave of anger at the Ghosts. If a man could only do something about them. You could shoot and kill the Eaters and the Hounds. But guns and hands meant nothing to these ghostly forms, these dancing, flickering things that seemed to have no being.

Charley, plodding ahead down the slope, suddenly stopped.

"There's something just ahead," he said. "I saw it move."

Kent moved up beside him and held his rifle ready. They stared into the blue shadows. "What did it look like?" Kent asked.

"Can't say, lad," Charley told him. "Just got a glimpse of it."

They waited. A rock loosened below them and they could hear it clatter down the slope.

"Funny lookin' jigger," Charley said.

Something was coming up the slope toward them, something that made a slithering sound as it came, and to their nostrils came a faint odour, a suggestion of stench that made the hair crawl on the back of Kent's neck.

The thing emerged from the gloom ahead and froze the three with horror as it came. A thing that was infinitely more horrible in form than any reptilian monster that had ever crawled through the primal ooze of the new-spawned Earth, a thing that seemed to personify all the hate and evil that had ever, through long milleniums, lived and found its being on the aged planet Mars. A grisly death-head leered at them and drooling jaws opened, displaying fangs that dripped with loathsomeness.

Kent brought his rifle up as Ann's shriek rang in his ears, but Charley reached out and wrenched the weapon from his hand.

His voice came, cool and calm.

"It's no time to be shootin', lad," he said. "There's another one over there, just to our right and I think I see a couple more out just beyond."

"Give me that gun!" yelled Kent, but as he lunged to jerk it from Charley's grasp he saw, out of the tail of his eye, a dozen more of the things squatting just within the shadows.

"We better not rile them, son," said Charley softly. "They're a hell's brood and that's for sure."

He handed the rifle back to Kent and started backing up the slope, slow step by slow step.

Together the three of them backed slowly away, guns held at ready. In front of them, between them and the squatting monstrosities, a single Ghost suddenly materialised. A Ghost that did not waver but held straight and true, like a candle flame burning in the stillness of the night. Another Ghost appeared beside the first, and suddenly there were several more. The Ghosts floated slowly down the slope toward the death-head things, and as they moved they took on a deeper colour, more substantiality, until they burned a deep and steady blue, solid columns of flame against the lighter blue of the eternal shadow.

Staring, scarcely believing, the three saw the gaping ghouls that had crept up the slope, turn and shuffle swiftly back, back into the mystery of the lower reaches of Mad-Man's.

Kent laughed nervously. "Saved by a Ghost," he said.

"Why, maybe they aren't so bad after all," said Ann and her voice was scarcely more than a whisper. "I wonder why they did it?"

"And how they did it," said Kent.

"Principally," said Charley, "why they did it. I never heard of any Ghost ever takin' any interest in a man, and I have trod these canals for twenty Martian years."

Kent expelled his breath. "And now," he said, "for Lord's sake, let's turn back. We won't find any hermit here. No man could live out a week here unless he had some specially trained Ghosts to guard him all the time. There isn't any use of going on and asking for trouble."

Charley looked at Ann. "It's your expedition, ma'am," he said.

She looked from one to the other and there was fear upon her face.

"I guess you're right," she said. "No one could live here. We won't find anyone here. I guess it must just have been a myth, after all." Her shoulders seemed to sag.

"We'll go on if you say the word," said Charley.

"Hell, yes," declared Kent, "but we're crazy to do it. I understand now why men came out of here stark crazy. A few more things like these we just seen and I'll be nuts myself."

"Look!" cried Ann. "Look at the Ghosts. They are trying to tell us something!"

It was true. The Ghosts, still flaming with their deep-blue colour, had formed into a semicircle before them. One of them floated forward. His colour flowed and changed until he took on a human form. His right hand pointed at them and then waved down the slope. They stared incredulously as the motion was repeated.

"Why," said Ann, "I do believe he's trying to tell us to go on."

"Dim my sight," shrieked Charley, "if that ain't what the critter is tryin' to tell us."

The other Ghosts spread out, encircled the three. The one with the manlike form floated down the slope, beckoning. The others closed in, as if to urge them forward.

"I guess," said Kent, "we go whether we want to or not."

Guarded by the circle of Ghosts they went down the slope. From outside the circle came strange and terrible noises, yammerings and hissings and other sounds that hinted at shambling obscenities, strange and terrible life forms which lived and fought and .died here in the lower reaches of Mad-Man's.

The shadows deepened almost to darkness. The air became denser. The temperature rose swiftly.

They seemed to be walking on level ground.

"Maybe we've reached the bottom," suggested Kent.

The circle of Ghosts parted, spread out and the three stood by themselves. A wall of rock rose abruptly before them, and from a cave in its side streamed light, light originating in a half-dozen radium bulbs. A short distance to one side squatted a shadowy shape.

"A rocket ship!" exclaimed Kent.

The figure of a man, outlined against the light, appeared in the mouth of the cave.

"The hermit!" cried Charley. "Harry, the Hermit. Blast my hindsight, if it ain't old Harry, himself!"

Kent heard the girl's voice, beside him. "I was right! I was right! I knew he had to be here somewhere!"

The man walked toward them. He was a huge man, his shoulders square and his face was fringed in a golden-yellow beard. His jovial voice thundered a welcome to them.

At the sound of that voice Ann cried out, a cry that was half gladness, half disbelief. She took a slow step forward and then suddenly she was running toward the hermit.

She flung herself at him. "Uncle Howard!" she cried. "Uncle Howard!"

He flung his brawny arms around the space-armoured girl, lifted her off the ground and set her down.

Ann turned to them. "This is my uncle, Howard Carter," she said. "You've heard of him. His best friends call him Mad-Man Carter, because of the things he does. But you aren't mad, really, are you, Uncle?"

"Just at times," Carter boomed.

"He's always going off on expeditions," said the girl. "Always turning up in unexpected places. But he's a scientist for all of that, a really good scientist."

"I've heard of you, Dr Carter," said Kent, "I'm glad to find you down here."

"You might have found worse," said Carter.

"Dim my sights," said Charley. "A human being living at the bottom of Mad-Man's!"

"Come on in," invited Carter. "I'll have you a cup of hot coffee in a minute."

Kent stretched out his legs, glad to get out of his spacesuit. He glanced around the room. It was huge and appeared to be a large cave chamber. Perhaps the cliffs that rimmed in Mad-Man's were honeycombed with caves and labyrinths, an ideal place in which to set up camp.

But this was something more than a camp. The room was well furnished, but its furnishings were a mad hodge-podge. Tables and chairs and heating grids, laboratory equipment and queer-appearing machines. One machine, standing in one corner, kept up an incessant chattering and clucking. In another corner, a mighty ball hung suspended in mid-air, halfway between the ceiling and the floor, and within it glowed a blaze of incandescence which it was impossible to gaze directly upon. Piled haphazardly about the room were bales and boxes of supplies.

Kent waved his hand at a pile of boxes. "Looks like you're planning on staying here for a while, Dr Carter," he said.

The man with the fearsome yellow beard lifted a coffee pot off the stove and chuckled. His chuckle thundered in the room. "I may have to stay quite a while longer," he said, "although I doubt it. My work here is just about done." He poured steaming coffee into the cups. "Draw up your chairs," he invited.

He took his place at the end of the small table. "It's tiring work coming down into Mad-Man's. Almost five miles."

Charley lifted his cup to his mouth, drank deeply, wiped his whiskers carefully. "It's quite a little walk, I'll admit," he said. "For twenty Martian years I've trapped the canals and I never saw the like of it. What made it, Doc?"

Dr Carter looked puzzled. "Oh," he said, "you mean what made Mad-Man's."

Charley nodded.

"I really don't know," said Carter. "I've been too busy on other things since I came here to try to find out. It's a unique depression in the surface of the planet, but as to why or how it came to be, I don't know. Although I could find out for you in a minute if you want to know. Funny I never thought of finding out for myself."

He glanced around the table and his eyes came to rest on Ann. "But there's something I do want to know," he said, "and that is how this precious niece of mine ferreted me out."

"But, Uncle Howard," protested Ann, "I didn't ferret you out. I wasn't looking for you at all. I didn't even know you were anywhere around. I thought you were off on one of your crazy expeditions again."

Charley choked on a mouthful of food. "What's that?" he asked. "You weren't hunting for him?" He jerked his thumb at Dr Carter.

Ann shook her head. "No," she said. "I was looking for Harry, the Hermit."

"Gripes," exploded Charley, "I thought we had found him. I thought your uncle here was the hermit. I thought you knew all along."

Dr Howard Carter's fork clattered on his plate. "Now wait a minute," he roared. "What's all this talk about hermits?"

He eyed Ann sternly. "You didn't tell these men I was a hermit, did you."

"Hell," said Kent, "let's just admit there's no such a person as Harry, the Hermit. He's just a myth. I've told you so all along."

Ann explained. "It was this way. I was looking for Harry, the Hermit. Jim Bradley, the famous explorer, told me that if Harry, the Hermit, really existed, Mad-Man's was the place to look for him. He said Mad-Man's was the only place where a man could live for any length of time in any comfort. And he said he had reason to believe someone was living in Mad-Man's. So I started out to look."

"But," demanded her uncle, "why did you want to find this hermit? Just curiosity?"

Ann shook her head. "No, not curiosity," she said. "You see, Uncle, it's Dad. He's got into trouble again —"

"Trouble?" snapped Carter. "Some more of his fool experiments, I suppose. What is it this time? Perpetual motion?"

"Not perpetual motion," said the girl. "This time he was successful. Too successful. He built a machine that had something to do with space-time, with the interdimensions. He tried to travel to another dimension. That was a month ago."

"And he isn't back yet?" suggested Carter.

The girl glanced at him. "How did you know?" she demanded.

"Because I warned him that is what would happen if he went monkeying around with extra-dimensions."

"But what had the hermit to do with all this?" asked Kent.

"Bradley told me he thought that the Hermit really was Prof Belmont. You know, the great physicist. He disappeared a couple of years ago and has never been heard of since. Bradley thought he might be down here, conducting some sort of experiments. That might have given rise to the hermit legend."

Charley chuckled. "I heard stories about Harry, the Hermit, ten years ago," he said. "I judge, ma'am, from what you say, that they're just getting out to civilisation. Nobody gave rise to those stories, they just grew."

Carter had shoved his plate to one side. Now he leaned forward, resting his arms on the tabletop. "Belmont did come here," he said. "But he's dead. The things out there killed him."

"Killed him!" Ann's face suddenly was white. "Are you sure of that?"

Carter nodded.

"He was the only man who could have helped Dad," the girl said tensely. "He was the only man who could have understood -"

"The Ghosts told me," said Carter. "There's no mistake. Belmont is dead."

Charley set down his coffee cup and stared at Carter. "You been talkin' with them Ghosts, mister?" he asked.

Carter nodded.

"Dim my sights," said Charley. "Who'd've thought them things could talk."

But Carter paid no attention. "Ann," he said, "maybe I can do something for you. Perhaps not myself. But the Ghosts can."

"The Ghosts?" asked Ann.

"Certainly, the Ghosts. What would anyone come here to study if not the Ghosts? There are thousands of them in Mad-Man's. That's what Belmont came here to do. When he didn't come back, and no one was able to locate him, I came out here secretly. I thought maybe he found something he didn't want the rest of the world to know, so I didn't leave any tracks for anyone else to follow."

"But how could the Ghosts help anyone?" asked Kent. "Apparently they are an entirely different order of being. They would have nothing in common with mankind. No sympathies."

Carter's beard jutted fiercely. "The Ghosts," he said, "are beings offeree. Instead of protoplasm, they are constructed of definite force fields. They live independently of everything which we know as essential to life. And yet they are life. And intelligent life, at that. They are the true, dominant being of Mars. At one time they weren't as they are now. They are a product of evolution. The Eaters evolved by taking on silica armour. The Hounds and beavers met conditions by learning to do with little food and even less water, grew heavy fur to protect them against the cold. It's all a matter of evolution.

"The Ghosts could solve many of the problems of the human race, could make the race godlike overnight. That is - if they wanted to. But they don't want to. They have no capacity for pity, no yearning to become benefactors. They are just indifferent. They watch the pitiful struggle of the human race here on Mars, and if they feel anything at all, it is a smug sort of humour. They don't pity us or hate us. They just don't care."

"But you," said Ann, "you made friends with them."

"Not friends," said her uncle. "We just had an understanding, an agreement. The Ghosts lack a sense of co-operation and responsibility. They have no sense for leadership. They are true individuals, but they know that these very lacks have stood in the way of progress. Their knowledge, great as it is, has lain dormant for thousands of years. They realise that under intelligent leadership they can go ahead and increase that knowledge, become a race of purely intellectual beings, the match of anything in the System, perhaps in the galaxy."

He paused for a moment, drummed his fingers on the table.

"I'm furnishing them that leadership," he declared.

"But what about Dad?" asked Ann. "You and he never could get along, you hated one another, I know, but you can help him. You will help him, won't you?"

The scientist rose from the table, strode to the chattering, clucking machine at the other side of the room. "My communicator," he said. "A machine which enables me to talk with the Ghosts. Based on the radio, tuning in on the frequencies of the Ghosts' thought-waves. Through this machine comes every scrap of information which the Ghosts wish to relay to me. The thoughts were recorded on spools of fine wire. All I have to do to learn whatever has been transmitted over the machine is to put on a thought-translation helmet, run the spools of wire through it, and the thoughts impinge on my brain. I hear nothing, feel nothing - but I know. The thoughts of the Ghosts are impressed into my brain, become my thoughts."

Charley waggled his beard, excitement and wonder written on his features. "Then you know everything that's going on all over Mars," he said. "The Ghosts are everywhere, see everything."

"I know everything they think is important enough for me to know," Carter declared. "They can find out anything I might want to know."

"How do you talk to them?" asked Kent.

"Same process," said the scientist. "A helmet that broadcasts my thoughts to them."

He picked up a helmet and set it on his head. "I'm going to find out about your father," he told Ann.

"But he isn't in this space-time," objected Ann. "He's somewhere else."

Carter smiled. "The Ghosts know all about him," he said. "A few weeks ago they told me about a man lost outside of our space-time frame. It must have been your father. I didn't know."

He looked squarely at the girl. "Please believe me, Ann. If I had known who it was I would have done something."

The girl nodded, her eyes bright.

Silence fell upon the room. Finally Carter lifted the helmet from his head, set it back on the metal bench.

"Did you - did the Ghosts know anything about it?" asked the girl.

Her uncle nodded. "Ann," he said, "your father will be returned. No mortal man could get him back into his normal dimensions, but the Ghosts can. They have ways of doing things. Warping of world lines and twisting of inter-dimensional co-ordinates."

"You really mean that?" Ann asked. "This isn't just another of your practical jokes?"

The golden beard grinned broadly and then sobered. "Child," he said, "I don't joke about things like this. They are too important."

He looked about the room, as if expecting something, someone.

"Your father will be here any moment now," he declared.

"Here!" exclaimed Ann. "Here, in this room —"

Her voice broke off suddenly. The room had suddenly filled with Ghosts, and in their midst stood a man, a man with stooped shoulders and heavy-lensed glasses and lines of puzzlement upon his face. Like a puff of wind the Ghosts were gone and the man stood alone.

Ann flew at him. "Father," she cried. "You're back again, Father."

She went into his arms and the man, looking over her shoulder, suddenly saw the man with the beard.

"Yes, Ann," he said, "I am back again."

His face hardened as Carter took a step toward them.

"You here," he snapped. "I might have known. Where there's anything afoot you're always around."

Laughter gurgled in the throat of the bearded giant. "So you went adventuring in the dimensions, did you?" he asked, mockery in his voice. "You always wanted to do that, John. The great John Smith, only man to ever go outside the four dimensional continuum."

His laughter seemed to rock the room.

"I suppose you got me out," said Smith, "so you could gloat over me."

The men stood, eyes locked, and Kent sensed between them an antagonism that was almost past understanding.

"I won't thank you for it," said Smith.

"Why, John, I never expected you to," chortled Carter. "I knew you'd hate me for it. I didn't do it for you. I did it for your little girl. She came from Landing City across hundreds of miles of deserts and canals to help you. She came down into Mad-Man's. She's the one I did it for. For her and the two brave men who came with her."

For the first time, apparently, Smith noticed Kent and Charley.

"I do thank you," he said, "for whatever you have done."

"Shucks," said Charley, "it wasn't nothin'. Nothin' at all. I always wanted to see Mad-Man's. Nobody ever came down here and came out sane. Most of them came down didn't come out at all."

"If it hadn't been for my Ghosts neither would you," Carter reminded him.

"Father," pleaded Ann, "you mustn't be like this. Uncle brought you back. He was the only man who could have. If it hadn't been for him, you would still be out in the extra-dimension."

"What was it like, John?" asked Carter. "Dark and nothing to see?"

"As a matter of fact," said Smith, "that is exactly what it was."

"That's what you thought," jeered Carter. "Because you had no sense of perception to see or hear or make any contacts or associations in that world. Did you actually think your pitiful little human sense would serve you in a place like that?"

"What do you know about it?" snarled Smith.

"The Ghosts," said Carter. "You must not forget. The Ghosts tell me everything."

Carter looked around the room. "And now," he said, "I fear · that you must go." He looked at Ann. "I did what you wanted me to do, didn't I?"

She nodded. "You are turning us out?" she asked.

"Call it that if you wish," said Carter. "I have work to do. A great deal of work to do. One of the reasons I came to Mad-Man's was to be alone."

"Now look here, mister," said Carter bluntly. "It's a long pull up Mad-Man's. A longer pull back to our igloo. You aren't turning us out without a chance to rest, are you?"

"He's crazy," said Smith. "He's always been crazy. He's sane only half of the time. Don't pay any attention to him."

Carter paid Smith no attention. He addressed Charley. "You won't have to walk back," he said. "My rocket ship is out there. Take it." He chuckled. "You needn't bother bringing it back. I'll give it to you."

"But, uncle," cried Ann. "What about yourself?"

"Don't worry about me," Carter told her. "I won't need it. The Ghosts can take me any place I want to go upon a moment's notice. I've outgrown your silly rocket ships. I've outgrown a lot of things."

He swept his arm about the room, pointed at the globe of brilliant fire that hung suspended between floor and ceiling.

"Pure energy," he said. "In there atoms are being created.

Millions of horsepower are being generated. An efficient, continual source of power. Enclosed in a sphere of force waves, the only thing that would stand the pressure and temperature inside the sphere."

He ceased speaking, looking around.

"That's only one of the things I've learned," he said. "Only one of the things. The Ghosts are my teachers, but given time I will be their master."

There was a wild light of fanaticism in his eyes.

"Why, man," said Kent, "you will be hailed as the greatest scientist the world has ever known."

The man's eyes seemed to flame. "No, I won't," he said, "because I'm not going to tell the world. Why should I tell the world? What has mankind ever done for me?" His laughter bellowed and reverberated in the domed room. "Find out for yourselves," he shouted. "Go and find out for yourselves. It will take you a million years."

His voice calmed. "The Ghosts are almost immortal," he said. "Not quite - almost. Before I am through with this, I will be immortal. There is a way. I almost have it now. I will become a Ghost - a super-Ghost - a creature of pure force. And when that happens the Ghosts and I will forsake this worn-out world. We will go out into the void and build a new world, a perfect world. We will live through all eternity and watch and laugh at the foolish strugglings of little people. Little people like mankind."

The four of them stared at him.

"You don't mean this, Howard," protested Smith. "You can't mean it."

The wild light was gone from Carter's eyes. His voice boomed with mockery. "You don't think so, John?" he asked.

He reached into his shirt front, pulled out something that shone in the light of the radium bulbs. It was a key, attached to a string hung around his neck. He pulled the loop over his head, handed the key to Kent.

"The key to the rocket ship," he said. "The fuel tanks are nearly full. You fly her at a 30-degree angle out of here to miss the cliffs."

Kent took the key, turned it awkwardly in his hands.

Carter bowed ceremoniously to them, still with that old trace of mockery. "I hope you have a fine trip," he said.

Slowly they turned away, heading for the door.

Carter called after them.

"And you might tell anyone you see not to try to come into Mad-Man's. Tell them something unpleasant might happen."

Charley turned around. "Mister," he said, "I think you're batty as a bed-bug."

"Charley," declared Carter, "you aren't the first one to say that to me. And maybe . . . well, sometimes, I think, maybe you are right."

The sturdy rocket ship blasted its way across the red deserts. Far below, the criss-crossing of the canals, more deeply red, were etched like fiery lines.

"Lad," said Charley to Kent, "there's another story to tell the boys. Another yarn about Harry, the Hermit."

"They won't believe it," Kent declared. "They'll listen and then go out and retell it and make it a little better. And someone else will make it better yet. All we can do, Charley, is to give rise to another, an even greater, Harry, the Hermit."

Ann, sitting beside her father, smiled at them. "Just a couple of myth-makers," she said.

Charley studied the terrain beneath them, combed his beard. "You know," he said, "I still think that bird back there was off his nut. He'll try makin' himself into a Ghost - and just be an ordinary Earth kind of ghost. The kind that just ain't."

A Ghost suddenly materialised, shimmered faintly in the rocket cabin.

And for the first time known to man, perhaps for the first time in all history, the Ghost spoke, spoke with a voice they all recognised, the voice of the man back in Mad-Man's, that voice with its old mockery.

"So you think so, do you?" said the Ghost.

Then he faded from their view.