It stood there, made of shimmering metal, glinting in the pale sunlight.
"Bugs," said Jimmy, at Scott's elbow.
"What do you mean, bugs?" asked Scott.
"Bugs in the air," said Jimmy. "Flying bugs."
Scott saw them then. Things that looked like streaks of light in the
feeble sunshine. Swarms of them hovered about the great building and
others darted busily about.
"Bees," suggested Jimmy.
But Scott shook his head. They weren't bees. They glinted and flashed
when the sun's light struck them and they seemed more mechanical than
life-like.
"Where are the Martians?" Jimmy demanded.
"I don't know, Jimmy," declared Scott. "Damned if I do."
He had envisioned the first Earthmen reaching Mars as receiving
thunderous ovation, a mighty welcome from the Martians. But there
weren't any Martians. Nothing stirred except the shining bugs and the
lilies that nodded in a thin, cold breeze.
There was no sound, no movement. Like a quiet summer afternoon back on
Earth, with a veil of quietness drawn over the flaming desert and the
shimmering building.
He took another step, walking toward the great building. The sand
grated protestingly beneath his boot-heels.
Slowly he approached the building, alert, watching, ready for some
evidence that he and Jimmy had been seen. But no sign came. The bugs
droned overhead, the lilies nodded sleepily. That was all.
Scott looked at the thermometer strapped to the wrist of his oxygen
suit. The needle registered 10 above, Centigrade. Warm enough, but
the suits were necessary, for the air was far too thin for human
consumption.
Deep shadow lay at the base of the building and as he neared it, Scott
made out something that gleamed whitely in the shadow. Something that
struck a chord of remembrance in his brain, something he had seen back
on Earth.
As he hurried forward he saw it was a cross. A white cross thrust into
the sand.
With a cry he broke into a run.
Before the cross he dropped to his knees and read the crudely carved
inscription on the wood. Just two words. The name of a man, carven with
a jack-knife:
HARRY DECKER
Harry Decker! Scott felt his brain swimming crazily.
Harry Decker here! Harry Decker under the red sand of Mars! But that
couldn't be. Harry Decker's name couldn't be here. It was back on
Earth, graven on that scroll of bronze. Graven there directly beneath
the name of Hugh Nixon.
He staggered to his feet and stood swaying for a moment.
From somewhere far away he heard a shout and swinging around, ran
toward the corner of the building.
Rounding it, he stopped in amazement.
There, in the shelter of the building, lay a rusted space ship and
running across the sand toward him was a space-suited figure, a figure
that yelled as it ran and carried a bag over its shoulder, the bag
bouncing at every leap.
"Hugh!" yelled Scott.
And the grotesque figure bellowed back.
"Scott, you old devil! I knew you'd do it! I knew it was you the minute
I heard the rocket blasts!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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