CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

ENDLESS DAYS

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

And as things have been, they remain.

—Arthur Hugh Clough

Alex Smith, 3 Bi-January, Mars Year i

Marin County, California, Planet Earth

The arrival of a second fighting-machine drove us back into the storeroom, for we feared that two Martian striders might spot us more easily. Within a few days, however, we realized that a creature operating in the bright sunshine couldn’t possibly penetrate our dark hole, and we became increasingly bold.

Still, any hint of movement outside drove us immediately back into the storage nook. As bad as things were, the attraction of our local entertainment center was for us irresistible. I remember how, in spite of our ongoing peril, we still competed every morning for the privilege of watching the aliens. We’d race across the kitchen at first light, trying not to make any noise, while silently pushing back and forth at each other, within just a few feet of instant death if we were exposed.

Of course, we were totally incompatible. Our danger and isolation only emphasized this fact. I hated Lesley’s helplessness and cowardice and rigid stupidity. Her endless protests drove me at times almost to the point of screaming. She was like a spoiled child: if something didn’t go her way, she’d weep silently for hours, lamenting her fate and crying out under her breath to her God to save her sorry soul.

She also ate too much, despite her slender frame. I told her that our only chance of survival was to remain hidden until the Martians left, however long that took, and that we needed to conserve our stores. She paid me no mind. She ate and drank whatever she wanted whenever she wished, without any consideration for me. She slept very little. She nagged me constantly. I think she must have been more than a bit crazy.

As time passed, I became increasingly irritated with her attitude, until I finally had to use threats to keep her in line. That stopped her whining for a few days. But she was one of those folks who was only concerned with herself and her own place in the universe, a place justified in her thinking by her personal relationship with God. You just can’t reason with someone like that.

We fought our mini-conflict in a dark, dim contest of whispers, snatched food, and grasping hands—while just outside our prison, the pitiless sunlight of that terrible winter illuminated the strange, ongoing drama of the Martians puttering about in their pit.

When I looked again through the hole, I saw that the aliens had been reinforced by three striders. These had brought with them some odd devices arrayed in an orderly fashion around the ship. The second handling-machine was now complete, and was servicing one of the new constructions. The latter had a body like a large gasoline can, above which oscillated a pear-shaped basin from which a stream of white powder was flowing into a container below.

This was the “ore-processor,” as I called it. With two of its “hands” the handling-machine was digging out lumps of clay and flinging them into the receptacle at the top of the new device, while another arm periodically opened a door and removed rusty, blackened pieces of residue from inside the machine. A third device transported the powder from the basin along a channel towards some mechanism hidden from me by a mound of blue dust. This unseen third machine generated a little thread of green smoke that rose vertically into the air.

The handling-machine, with almost a musical clinking, extended a tentacle like an articulated telescope, something that up till now had just been a blunt knob on its body, until the far end was hidden behind the mound of clay. Then it lifted a bar of white aluminum into sight, new and untarnished and brightly shining, and deposited it beside a growing stack of other ingots by the side of the pit. Between sunrise and sunset this dexterous little creature (for it seemed almost alive) ground out and baked more than a hundred such bars from the crude ore, and the mound of residue rose steadily until it slopped over the rim of the pit.

The contrast between the swift, complex movements of these machines and the inert, panting clumsiness of their masters never ceased to amaze me, and for days I had to tell myself repeatedly that the latter were the living, breathing, directing half of these symbiotic creatures.

The minister was on duty when the first humans were brought in. I was sitting just below her on the kitchen floor, listening for any tidbits, when she suddenly leapt backwards, almost losing her balance (which would have been a disaster). She slid down the rubbish heap next to me, gesticulating and moaning incomprehensibly. For a moment I almost panicked. She just kept jabbing her finger at the peephole. Curiosity finally got the better of me, and I gingerly stepped across her body and crawled forward to our makeshift observation post.

At first I couldn’t see any reason for Lesley’s frantic behavior. Twilight had fallen by then, and I could just make out a few stars twinkling faintly above—but the pit itself was partially illuminated by the flickering green fire that always gleamed while the aluminum bars were being forged. The mingling of emerald light with the shifting, rusty black shadows was strangely seductive. Over and through the pit flew hordes of bats, oblivious to the sight and sound of the Martians, picking out bugs attracted by the light. I once saw one of the furry critters snatched out of the air; but after trying to suck the life out of the ugly little beast, the Martian flung it away in evident disgust. Bat juice apparently didn’t taste very good to the aliens (actually, it didn’t sound good to me either!).

I couldn’t see the Martians, because the mound of blue-green residue had risen to a point where it blocked my sight; there was a fighting-machine standing on one rim, its legs partially retracted. Then, amidst the clamor of the machinery I suddenly heard the almost inaudible murmur of human voices, and I nearly shouted out a response before my sense got the better of me.

I watched the strider intently, satisfying myself that the hood did indeed contain a Martian. The green glow reflected the oily gleam of its skin and the brightness of its dark eyes. I could also see some kind of fluid sloshing around in the cab, maybe to provide a resting place for the creature or some kind of nourishment. Then I heard someone scream. A long tentacle reached over the shoulder of the machine to the little cage that it bore on its back. It lifted something high overhead, a black, vague outline struggling and writhing against the backdrop of the starlit sky.

Then I realized—all of a sudden—that it was a man!

He was visible for just a second: a stout, ruddy, middle-aged individual, still well dressed. A few days earlier he might have been someone important. His eyes were bulging in fear. The green-gold light gleamed sickly on his forehead. Then he was pulled behind the mound, and after a moment of profound silence, a terrible shrieking began, followed by a sustained, even cheerful hooting noise from the Martians (“Oh-leh!”).

I slid down the rubbish pile, struggled to my feet, and bolted into the storeroom. The minister was crouching silently on the floor there with her arms over her head; she looked at me in horror.

That night we stayed in the anteroom, unable to sleep, trying to balance our fear with the terrible fascination of the Martians. I felt we ought to do something, and tried to think of a way of escaping our predicament, but with no luck. The only way out was through the pit—period!—and we couldn’t risk trying to sneak past the ever-vigilant aliens.

The next day, however, I reconsidered our situation. Reverend Lesley had never been very rational, and was even less so now, being reduced to occasional whimpers at the implication of what we’d seen. For all intents and purposes she’d regressed to the level of a beast.

Our one chance depended on the Martians eventually abandoning the pit when they’d finished with whatever it was they were doing. I knew that this had happened at some of their secondary camps, because I’d seen the evidence myself in Novato. If they remained awhile, they might ease their guard eventually, thus affording us some possibility of actually getting away.

I also thought about trying to dig ourselves out through the rubble in the other direction, but this seemed to me so difficult with the poor tools that we had at our disposal that I immediately dismissed the notion. For one thing, I’d have to do all the digging myself, since I couldn’t rely on the minister for support; for another, it appeared from what I could tell that both floors of the structure had collapsed onto the foundation. Removing the debris would require considerable time and effort, and might well generate a great deal of noise in the process.

It was on the third day, if my memory is correct, that I saw the boy killed. This was the only time that I actually observed the Martians feeding. One of them held the teen down while another extended its, well, for want of a better word, “proboscis,” and then they took turns, three or four of them, draining away the victim’s vital fluids. His body gradually turned white as I watched. They sucked him completely dry, every drop, and then stripped away the remaining flesh, feeding it into another one of their machines, evidently to be used for some kind of fuel. (Jarmann believes that the aliens were able to reprocess human flesh into manipulable hydrocarbons for use as lubricants and such.) The skeletal remains were dumped on the growing trash heap of Martian civilization.

After that, I avoided the peephole for the better part of a day. I went into the storeroom, removed its door, and managed to pry up a couple of floorboards without making a racket. I spent several hours working with my makeshift shovel as quietly as possible; but when the hole was only a couple of feet deep, the loose earth collapsed around it rather noisily. I dared not continue. Then I lay down on the floor for a long time. After that I abandoned any idea of digging my way out.

I also entertained very little hope of being freed by other humans. But on the fourth or fifth evening I once more heard the sound of heavy guns pounding in the distance. Some of our boys had survived!—or perhaps reinforcements had been sent from elsewhere in the state.

It was very late and the moon was shining brightly. The Martians had taken away the excavating-machine and ore-processor, and, save for a strider that still stood sentinel at the far side of the pit, and a handling-machine that was buried out of sight immediately beneath my vantage point, the place now seemed deserted. The pit was dark except for a pale glow emanating from the handler and the sickly light of the moon; the silence was interrupted only by the occasional clicking of the handling-machine as it measured the marigolds.

That night had a serenity to it that belied our peril, and I felt a sense of peace for the first time in many days, I don’t know why. Then I heard a dog howling in the distance, and that familiar sound made me sit up and take notice. Immediately thereafter I distinctly perceived a booming noise like the sound of great guns in play. I counted six reports, and after a long interval, six more.

And that was all.