_If Frank Belknap Long is not one of the deans of science fiction writers, there can certainly be no dispute that he is high on the faculty board. His pen is indefatigable, it seems, and his characters come alive as with few other writers. We're sure you'll like this new suspenseful tale of his. _ the man the martians made _by . .. Frank Belknap Long_ No mortal had ever seen the Martians, but they had heard their whisperings--without knowing the terrible secret they kept hidden. There was death in the camp. I knew when I awoke that it had come to stand with us in the night andwas waiting now for the day to break and flood the desert with light. There was a prickling at the base of my scalp and I was drenched withcold sweat. I had an impulse to leap up and go stumbling about in the darkness. ButI disciplined myself. I crossed my arms and waited for the sky to growbright. Daybreak on Mars is like nothing you've ever dreamed about. You wake upin the morning, and there it is--bright and clear and shining. You pinchyourself, you sit up straight, but it doesn't vanish. Then you stare at your hands with the big callouses. You reach for amirror to take a look at your face. That's not so good. That's whereugliness enters the picture. You look around and you see Ralph. You seeHarry. You see the women. On Earth a woman may not look her glamorous best in the harsh light ofearly dawn, but if she's really beautiful she doesn't look too bad. OnMars even the most beautiful woman looks angry on arising, too wearyand tormented by human shortcomings to take a prefabricated metal shackand turn it into a real home for a man. You have to make allowances for a lot of things on Mars. You have tostart right off by accepting hardship and privation as your daily lot. You have to get accustomed to living in construction camps in thedesert, with the red dust making you feel all hollow and dried upinside. Making you feel like a drum, a shriveled pea pod, a salted fishhung up to dry. Dust inside of you, rattling around, canal water seepagerotting the soles of your boots. So you wake up and you stare. The night before you'd collected driftwoodand stacked it by the fire. The driftwood has disappeared. Someone hasstolen your very precious driftwood. The Martians? Guess again. You get up and you walk straight up to Ralph with your shoulderssquared. You say, "Ralph, why in hell did you have to steal mydriftwood?" In your mind you say that. You say it to Dick, you say it to Harry. Butwhat you really say is, "Larsen was here again last night!" You say, I put a fish on to boil and Larsen ate it. I had a nice deck ofcards, all shiny and new, and Larsen marked them up. It wasn't mecheating. It was Larsen hoping I'd win so that he could waylay me in thedesert and get all of the money away from me. You have a girl. There aren't too many girls in the camps with laughterand light and fire in them. But there are a few, and if you're lucky youtake a fancy to one particular girl--her full red lips and her spun goldhair. All of a sudden she disappears. Somebody runs off with her. It'sLarsen. In every man there is a slumbering giant. When life roars about you on aworld that's rugged and new you've got to go on respecting the lads whohave thrown in their lot with you, even when their impulses are as harshas the glint of sunlight on a desert-polished tombstone. You think of a name--Larsen. You start from scratch and you build Larsenup until you have a clear picture of him in your mind. You build him upuntil he's a great shouting, brawling, golden man like Paul Bunyon. Even a wicked legend can seem golden on Mars. Larsen wasn't just myslumbering giant--or Dick's, or Harry's. He was the slumbering giant inall of us, and that's what made him so tremendous. Anything gigantic hasbeauty and power and drive to it. Alone we couldn't do anything with Larsen's gusto, so when some greatact of wickedness was done with gusto how could it be us? Here comesLarsen! He'll shoulder all the guilt, but he won't feel guilty becausehe's the first man in Eden, the child who never grew up, the laughingboy, Hercules balancing the world on his shoulders and looking for awoman with long shining tresses and eyes like the stars of heaven tobend to his will. If such a woman came to life in Hercules' arms would you like the job ofstopping him from sending the world crashing? Would you care to try? Don't you see? Larsen was closer to us than breathing and as necessaryas food and drink and our dreams of a brighter tomorrow. Don't think wedidn't hate him at times. Don't think we didn't curse and revile him. You may glorify a legend from here to eternity, but the luster neverremains completely untarnished. Larsen wouldn't have seemed completely real to us if we hadn't given himmuscles that could tire and eyes that could blink shut in weariness. Larsen had to sleep, just as we did. He'd disappear for days. We'd wink and say, "Larsen's getting a good long rest this time. Buthe'll be back with something new up his sleeve, don't you worry!" We could joke about it, sure. When Larsen stole or cheated we couldpretend we were playing a game with loaded dice--not really a deadlygame, but a game full of sound and fury with a great rousing outburst ofmerriment at the end of it. But there are deadlier games by far. I lay motionless, my arms lockedacross my chest, sweating from every pore. I stared at Harry. We'd beenworking all night digging a well, and in a few days water would bebubbling up sweet and cool and we wouldn't have to go to the canal tofill our cooking utensils. Harry was blinking and stirring and I couldtell just by looking at him that he was uneasy too. I looked beyond himat the circle of shacks. Most of us were sleeping in the open, but there were a few youngsters inthe shacks and women too worn out with drudgery to care much whetherthey slept in smothering darkness or under the clear cold light of thestars. I got slowly to my knees, scooped up a handful of sand, and let itdribble slowly through my fingers. Harry looked straight at me and hiseyes widened in alarm. It must have been the look on my face. He aroseand crossed to where I was sitting, his mouth twitching slightly. Therewas nothing very reassuring about Harry. Life had not been kind to himand he had resigned himself to accepting the slings and arrows ofoutrageous fortune without protest. He had one of those emaciated, almost skull-like faces which terrify children, and make women want tocry. "You don't look well, Tom, " he said. "You've been driving yourself toohard. " I looked away quickly. I had to tell him, but anything terrifying coulddemoralize Harry and make him throw his arm before his face in blindpanic. But I couldn't keep it locked up inside me an instant longer. "Sit down, Harry, " I whispered. "I want to talk to you. No sense inwaking the others. " "Oh, " he said. He squatted beside me on the sand, his eyes searching my face. "What isit, Tom?" "I heard a scream, " I said. "It was pretty awful. Somebody has beenhurt--bad. It woke me up, and that takes some doing. " Harry nodded. "You sleep like a log, " he said. "I just lay still and listened, " I said, "with my eyes wide open. Something moved out from the well--a two-legged something. It didn'tmake a sound. It was big, Harry, and it seemed to melt into the shadows. I don't know what kept me from leaping up and going after it. It hadsomething to do with the way I felt. All frozen up inside. " Harry appeared to understand. He nodded, his eyes darting toward thewell. "How long ago was that?" "Ten--fifteen minutes. " "You just waited for me to wake up?" "That's right, " I said. "There was something about the scream that mademe want to put off finding out. Two's company--and when you're alonewith something like that it's best to talk it over before you act. " I could see that Harry was pleased. Unnerved too, and horribly shaken. But he was pleased that I had turned to him as a friend I could trust. When you can't depend on life for anything else it's good to know youhave a friend. I brushed sand from my trousers and got up. "Come on, " I said. "We'lltake a look. " It was an ordeal for him. His face twitched and his eyes wavered. Heknew I hadn't lied about the scream. If a single scream could unnerve methat much it had to be bad. We walked to the well in complete silence. There were shadowseverywhere, chill and forbidding. Almost like people they seemed, whispering together, huddling close in ominous gossipy silence, aware ofwhat we would find. It was a sixty-foot walk from the fire to the well. A walk in the sun--awalk in the bright hot sun of Mars, with utter horror perhaps at the endof it. The horror was there. Harry made a little choking noise deep in histhroat, and my heart started pounding like a bass drum. II The man on the sand had no top to his head. His skull had been crushedand flattened so hideously that he seemed like a wooden figure restingthere--an anatomical dummy with its skull-case lifted off. We looked around for the skull-case, hoping we'd find it, hoping we'dmade a mistake and stumbled by accident into an open-air dissectinglaboratory and were looking at ghastly props made of plastic andglittering metal instead of bone and muscle and flesh. But the man on the sand had a name. We'd known him for weeks and talkedto him. He wasn't a medical dummy, but a corpse. His limbs werehideously convulsed, his eyes wide and staring. The sand beneath hishead was clotted with dried blood. We looked for the weapon which hadcrushed his skull but couldn't find it. We looked for the weapon before we saw the footprints in the sand. Bigthey were--incredibly large and massive. A man with a size-twelve shoemight have left such prints if the leather had become a little soggy andspread out around the soles. "The poor guy, " Harry whispered. I knew how he felt. We had all liked Ned. A harmless little guy with agreat love of solitude, a guy who hadn't a malicious hair in his head. Ahappy little guy who liked to sing and dance in the light of ahigh-leaping fire. He had a banjo and was good at music making. Whocould have hated Ned with a rage so primitive and savage? I looked atHarry and saw that he was wondering the same thing. Harry looked pretty bad, about ready to cave in. He was leaning againstthe well, a tormented fury in his eyes. "The murderous bastard, " he muttered. "I'd like to get him by the throatand choke the breath out of him. Who'd want to do a thing like that toNed. " "I can't figure it either, " I said. Then I remembered. I don't think Molly Egan really could have loved Ned. The curious thing about it was that Ned didn't even need the kind oflove she could have given him. He was a self-sufficient little guydespite his frailness and didn't really need a woman to look after him. But Molly must have seen something pathetic in him. Molly was a beautiful woman in her own right, and there wasn't a man inthe camp who hadn't envied Ned. It was puzzling, but it could haveexplained why Ned was lying slumped on the sand with a bashed-in skull. It could have explained why someone had hated him enough to kill him. Without lifting a finger Ned had won Molly's love. That could make someother guy as mad as a caged hyena--the wrong sort of other guy. Even asmall man could have shattered Ned's skull, but the prints on the sandwere big. How many men in the camp wore size-twelve shoes? That was the sixty-fourdollar question, and it hung in the shimmering air between Harry andmyself like an unspoken challenge. We could almost see the curve of thebig question mark suspended in the dazzle. I thought awhile, looking at Harry. Then I took a long, deep breath andsaid, "We'd better talk it over with Bill Seaton first. If it getsaround too fast those footprints will be trampled flat. And if tempersstart rising anything could happen. " Harry nodded. Bill was the kind of guy you could depend on in anemergency. Cool, poised, efficient, with an air of authority thatcommanded respect. He could be pigheaded at times, but his sense ofjustice was as keen as a whip. Harry and I walked very quietly across a stretch of tumbled sand andhalted at the door to Bill's shack. Bill was a bachelor and we knewthere'd be no woman inside to put her foot down and tell him he'd be afool to act as a lawman. Or would there be? We had to chance it. Law-enforcement is a thankless job whether on Earth or on Mars. That'swhy it attracts the worst--and the best. If you're a power-drunk sadistyou'll take the job just for the pleasure it gives you. But if you'rereally interested in keeping violence within bounds so that fairlydecent lads get a fighting chance to build for the future, you'll takethe job with no thought of reward beyond the simple satisfaction oflending a helping hand. Bill Seaton was such a man, even if he did enjoy the limelight and likedto be in a position of command. "Come on, Harry, " I said. "We may as well wake him up and get it overwith. " We went into the shack. Bill was sleeping on the floor with his longlegs drawn up. His mouth was open and he was snoring lustily. I couldn'thelp thinking how much he looked like an overgrown grasshopper. But thatwas just a first impression springing from overwrought nerves. I bent down and shook Bill awake. I grabbed his arm and shook him untilhis jaw snapped shut and he shot up straight, suddenly galvanized. Instantly the grotesque aspect fell from him. Dignity came upon him andenveloped him like a cloak. "Ned, you say? The poor little cuss! So help me--if I get my hands onthe rat who did it I'll roast him over a slow fire!" He got up, staggered to an equipment locker, and took out a sun helmetand a pair of shorts. He dressed quickly, swearing constantly andstaring out the door at the bright dawn glow as if he wanted to sendboth of his fists crashing into the first suspicious guy to cross hispath. "We can't have those footprints trampled, " he muttered. "There are a lotof dumb bastards here who don't know the first thing about keepingpointers intact. Those prints may be the only thing we'll have to goon. " "Just the three of us can handle it, Bill, " I said. "When you decidewhat should be done we can wake the others. " Bill nodded. "Keeping it quiet is the important thing. We'll carry himback here. When we break the news I want that body out of sight. " Harry and Bill and I--we took another walk in the sun. I looked atHarry, and the greenish tinge which had crept into his face gave me ajolt. He's taking this pretty hard, I thought. If I hadn't known him sowell I might have jumped to an ugly conclusion. But I just couldn'timagine Harry quarreling with Ned over Molly. How was I taking it myself? I raised my hand and looked at it. There wasno tremor. Nerves steady, brain clear. No pleasure in enforcing thelaw--pass that buck to Bill. But there was a gruesome job ahead, and Iwas standing up to it as well as could be expected. Ever try lifting a corpse? The corpse of a stranger is easier to liftthan the corpse of a man you've known and liked. Harry and I lifted himtogether. Between us the dead weight didn't seem too intolerable--not atfirst. But it quickly became a terrible, heavy limpness that dragged atour arms like some soggy log dredged up from the dark waters of thecanal. We carried him into the shack and eased him down on the floor. His headfell back and his eyes lolled. Death is always shameful. It strips away all human reticences and makesa mockery of human dignity and man's rebellion against the cruelty offate. For a moment we stood staring down at all that was left of Ned. I lookedat Bill. "How many men in the camp wear number-twelve shoes?" "We'll find out soon enough. " All this time we hadn't mentioned Larsen. Not one word about Larsen, notone spoken word. Cheating, yes. Lying, and treacherous disloyalty, andviciousness, and spite. Fights around the campfires at midnight, battered faces and broken wrists and a cursing that never ceased. Allthat we could blame on Larsen. But a harmless little guy lying dead by awell in a spreading pool of blood--that was an outrage that stopped usdead in our legend-making tracks. There is something in the human mind which recoils from too outrageous adeception. How wonderful it would have been to say, "Larsen was hereagain last night. He found a little guy who had never harmed anyonestanding by a well in the moonlight. Just for sheer delight he decidedto kill the little guy right then and there. " Just to add luster to thelegend, just to send a thrill of excitement about the camp. No, that would have been the lie colossal which no sane man could havequite believed. Something happened then to further unnerve us. The most disturbing sound you can hear on Mars is the whispering. Usually it begins as a barely audible murmur and swells in volume withevery shift of the wind. But now it started off high pitched andinsistent and did not stop. It was the whispering of a dying race. The Martians are as elusive aselves and all the pitiless logic of science had failed to draw themforth into the sunlight to stand before men in uncompromising arroganceas peers of the human race. That failure was a tragedy in itself. If man's supremacy is to bechallenged at all let it be by a creature of flesh-and-blood, abig-brained biped who must kill to live. Better that by far than aghostly flickering in the deepening dusk, a whispering and a flappingand a long-drawn sighing prophesying death. Oh, the Martians were real enough. A flitting vampire bat is real, or astinging ray in the depths of a blue lagoon. But who could point to aMartian and say, "I have seen you plain, in broad daylight. I havelooked into your owlish eyes and watched you go flitting over the sandon your thin, stalklike legs? I know there is nothing mysterious aboutyou. You are like a water insect skimming the surface of a pond in afamiliar meadow on Earth. You are quick and alert, but no match for aman. You are no more than an interesting insect. " Who could say that, when there were ruins buried deep beneath the sandto give the lie to any such idea. First the ruins, and then the Martiansthemselves, always elusive, gnomelike, goblinlike, flitting away intothe dissolving dusk. You're a comparative archaeologist and you're on Mars with the firstbatch of rugged youngsters to come tumbling out of a spaceship withstardust in their eyes. You see those youngsters digging wells andsweating in the desert. You see the prefabricated housing units go up, the tangle of machinery, the camp sites growing lusty with midnightbrawls and skull-cracking escapades. You see the towns in the desert, the law-enforcement committees, the camp followers, the reform fanatics. You're a sober-minded scholar, so you start digging in the ruins. Youbring up odd-looking cylinders, rolls of threaded film, instruments ofscience so complex they make you giddy. You wonder about the Martians--what they were like when they were ayoung and proud race. If you're an archaeologist you wonder. But Billand I--we were youngsters still. Oh, sure, we were in our thirties, butwho would have suspected that? Bill looked twenty-seven and I hadn't agray hair in my head. III Bill nodded at Harry. "You'd better stay here. Tom and I will be askingsome pointed questions, and our first move will depend on the answers weget. Don't let anyone come snooping around this shack. If anyone stickshis head in and starts to turn ugly, warn him just once--then shoot tokill. " He handed Harry a gun. Harry nodded grimly and settled himself on the floor close to Ned. Forthe first time since I'd known him, Harry looked completely sure ofhimself. As we emerged from the shack the whispering was so loud the entire camphad been placed on the alert. There would be no need for us to go intoshack after shack, watching surprise and shock come into their eyes. A dozen or more men were between Bill's shack and the well. They werestaring grimly at the dawn, as if they could already see blood on thesky, spilling over on the sand and spreading out in a sinister pool attheir feet. A mirage-like pool mirroring their own hidden forebodings, mirroring a knotted rope and the straining shoulders of men too vengefulto know the meaning of restraint. Jim Kenny stood apart and alone, about forty feet from the well, staringstraight at us. His shirt was open at the throat, exposing a patch ofhairy chest, and his big hands were wedged deeply into his belt. Hestood about six feet three, very powerful, and with large feet. I nudged Bill's arm. "What do you think?" I asked. Kenny did seem a likely suspect. Molly had caught his eye right from thestart, and he had lost no time in pursuing her. A guy like Kenny wouldhave felt that losing out to a man of his own breed would have been aterrible blow to his pride. But just imagine Kenny losing out to alittle guy like Ned. It would have infuriated him and glazed his eyeswith a red film of hate. Bill answered my question slowly, his eyes on Kenny's cropped head. "Ithink we'd better take a look at his shoes, " he said. We edged up slowly, taking care not to disturb the others, pretending wewere sauntering toward the well on a before-breakfast stroll. It was then that Molly came out of her shack. She stood blinking for aninstant in the dawn glare, her unbound hair falling in a tumbled darkmass to her shoulders, her eyes still drowsy with sleep. She worerust-colored slippers and a form-fitted yellow robe, belted in at thewaist. Molly wasn't beautiful exactly. But there was something pulse-stirringabout her and it was easy to understand how a man like Kenny might findher difficult to resist. Bill slanted a glance at Kenny, then shrugged and looked straight atMolly. He turned to me, his voice almost a whisper, "She's got to betold, Tom. You do it. She likes you a lot. " I'd been wondering about that myself--just how much she liked me. It washard to be sure. Bill saw my hesitation, and frowned. "You can tell if she's covering up. Her reaction may give us a lead. " Molly looked startled when she saw me approaching without the mask Iusually wore when I waltzed her around and grinned and ruffled her hairand told her that she was the cutest kid imaginable and would make someman--not me--a fine wife. That made telling her all the harder. The hardest part was at theend--when she stared at me dry-eyed and threw her arms around me as if Iwas the last support left to her on Earth. For a moment I almost forgot we were not on Earth. On Earth I might havebeen able to comfort her in a completely sane way. But on Mars when awoman comes into your arms your emotions can turn molten in a matter ofseconds. "Steady, " I whispered. "We're just good friends, remember?" "I'd be willing to forget, Tom, " she said. "You've had a terrible shock, " I whispered. "You really loved thatlittle guy--more than you know. It's natural enough that you should feela certain warmth toward me. I just happened to be here--so you kissedme. " "No, Tom. It isn't that way at all--" I might have let myself go a little then if Kenny hadn't seen us. Hestood very still for an instant, staring at Molly. Then his eyesnarrowed and he walked slowly toward us, his hands still wedged in hisbelt. I looked quickly at Molly, and saw that her features had hardened. Therewas a look of dark suspicion in her eyes. Bill had been watching Kenny, too, waiting for him to move. He measured footsteps with Kenny, advancing in the same direction from a different angle at a pace socalculated that they seemed to meet by accident directly in front of us. Bill didn't draw but his hand never left his hip. His voice came clearand sharp and edged with cold insistence. "Know anything about it, Kenny?" Strain seemed to tighten Kenny's face, but there was no panic in hiseyes, no actual glint of fear. "What made you think I'd know?" he asked. Bill didn't say a word. He just started staring at Kenny's shoes. Hestood back a bit and continued to stare as if something vitallyimportant had escaped him and taken refuge beneath the soggy leatheraround Kenny's feet. "What size shoes do you wear, Jim?" he asked. Kenny must have suspected that the question was charged with as muchexplosive risk as a detonating wire set to go off at the faintest jar. His eyes grew shrewd and mocking. "So the guy who did it left prints in the sand?" he said. "Prints madeby big shoes?" "That's right, " Bill said. "You have a very active mind. " Kenny laughed then, the mockery deepening in his stare. "Well, " he said, "suppose we have a look at those prints, and if it will ease your mindI'll take off my shoes and you can try them out for size. " Kenny and Bill and I walked slowly from Molly's shack to the well in thehot and blazing glare, and the whispering went right on, getting underour skin in a tormenting sort of way. Kenny still wore that disturbing grin. He looked at the prints andgrunted. "Yeah, " he said, "they sure are big. Biggest prints I've everseen. " He sat down and started unlacing his shoes. First the right shoe, thenthe left. He pulled off both shoes and handed them to Bill. "Fit them in, " he said. "Measure them for size. Measure _me_ for size, and to hell with you!" Bill made a careful check. There were eight prints, and he fitted theshoes painstakingly into each of them. There was space to spare at eachtry. It cleared Kenny completely. He wasn't a killer--this time. We mighthave roused the camp to a lynching fury and Kenny would have died for acrime another man had committed. I shut my eyes and saw Larsen swingingfrom a roof top, a black hood over his face. I saw Molly standing in thesunlight by my side, her face a stony mask. I opened my eyes and there was Kenny, grinning contemptuously at us. He'd called our bluff and won out. Now the shoe was on the other foot. A cold chill ran up my spine. It was Kenny who was doing the staringnow, and he was looking directly at my shoes. He stood back a bit andcontinued to stare. He was dramatizing his sudden triumph in a way thatturned my blood to ice. Then I saw that Bill was staring too--straight at the shoes of a man hehad known for three years and grown to like and trust. But underlyingthe warmth and friendliness in Bill was a granite-like integrity whichnothing could shake. It was Bill who spoke first. "I guess you'd better take them off, Tom, "he said. "We may as well be thorough about this. " Sure, I was big. I grew up fast as a kid and at eighteen I weighed twohundred and thirty pounds, all lean flesh. If shoes ran large I couldsometimes cram my feet into size twelves, but I felt much morecomfortable in a size or two larger than that. What made it worse, Molly liked me. I was involved with her, but no oneknew how much. No one knew whether we'd quarreled or not, or howinsanely jealous I could be. No one knew whether Molly had onlypretended to like Ned while carrying a torch for me, and how dangerouslycomplex the situation might have become all along the line. I stood very still, listening. The whispering was so loud now it drownedout the sighing of the wind. I looked down at my shoes. They were cakedwith mud and soggy and discolored. Day after day I'd trudge back andforth from the canal to the shacks in the blazing sunlight withoutgiving my feet a thought until the ache in them had become intolerable, rest an absolute necessity. There was only one thing to do--call Kenny's bluff so fast he wouldn'thave time to hurl another accusation at me. I handed Bill both of my shoes. He looked at me and nodded. I waited, listening to the whispering rise and fall, watching him stoop and fitthe shoes into the prints on the sand. He straightened suddenly. His face was expressionless, but I could seethat he was waging a terrible inward struggle with himself. "Your shoes come pretty close to filling out those prints, Tom, " hesaid. "I can't be sure--but a wax impression test should pretty wellclear this up. " He gripped my arm and nodded toward the shacks. "Betterstick close to me. " Kenny took a slow step backward, his jaw tightening, his eyes searchingBill's face. "Wax impression test, hell!" he said. "You've got yourmurderer. I'm going to see he gets what's coming to him--right now!" Bill shook his head. "I'll do this my way, " he said. Kenny glared at him, then laughed harshly. "You won't have a chance, " hesaid. "The boys won't stand for it. I'm going to spread the word around, and you'd better not try to stop me. " That did it. I'd been holding myself in, but I had a sudden, overpowering urge to send my fist crashing into Kenny's face, to sendhim crashing to the sand. I started for him, but he jumped back andstarted shouting. I can't remember exactly what he shouted. But he said just enough to puta noose around my neck. Every man and woman between the shacks and thewell swung about to stare at me. I saw shock and rage flare in the eyesof men who usually had steady nerves. They were not calm now--not one ofthem. IV It all happened so fast I was caught off balance. In the harsh Martiansunlight human emotions can be as unstable as a wind-lashed dune. A crazy thought flashed through my mind: Will Molly believe this too?Will she join these madmen in their wild thirst for vengeance? My needfor her was suddenly overwhelming. Just seeing her face would havehelped, but now more men had emerged from the shacks and I couldn't seebeyond them. They were heading straight for me and I knew that even Billwould be powerless to stop them. You can't argue with an avalanche. It was rolling straight toward me, gathering momentum as it came--not one man or a dozen, but a solid wallof human hate and unreason. Bill stood his ground. He had drawn his gun, and he started shoutingthat the prints couldn't have been made by my shoes. I chalked that upto his credit and resolved never to forget it. I knew I'd have to make a dash for it. I ran as fast as I could, keepingmy eyes on the glimmer of sunlight on rising dunes, and deep hollowswhich a carefully placed bullet could have quickly changed into a burialmound. A sudden crackling burst of gunfire ripped through the air. Directly inmy path the sand geysered up as the bullets ripped and tore at it. Somebody wasn't a good marksman, or had let blind rage unnerve him andspoil his aim. A lot of somebodies--for the firing increased and becamealmost continuous for an instant, a dull crackling which drowned out thewhispering and the sighing of the wind. Then abruptly all sound ceased. Utter stillness descended on thedesert--an unnatural, terrifying stillness, as if nature herself hadstopped breathing and was waiting for someone to scream. I must have been mad to turn. A weaving target has a chance, but atarget standing motionless is a sitting duck and his life hangs by ahair. But still I turned. Something was happening between the well and the shacks which halted thepursuit dead in its tracks. One of the shacks was wrapped in dartingtongues of flame, and a woman was screaming, and a man close to her wasgrappling with something huge and misshapen which loomed starkly againstthe dawn glow. A human shape? I could not be sure. It seemed monstrous, with a bulgebetween its shoulders which gave a grotesque and distorted aspect to theshadow which its weaving bulk cast upon the sand. I could see the shadowclearly across three hundred feet of sand. It lengthened and shortened, as if an octopus-like ferocity had given it the power to distort itselfat will, lengthening its tentacles and then whipping them back again. But it was not an octopus. It had legs and arms, and it was crushing theman in a grip of steel. I could see that now. I stared as the otherswere staring, their backs turned to me, their blind hatred for meblotted out by that greater horror. I suddenly realized that the shape was human. It had the head andshoulders of a man, and a torso that could twist with muscular purpose, and massive hands that could maul and maim. It threw the hapless manfrom it with a sudden convulsive contraction of its entire bulk. I hadnever seen a human being move in quite that way, but even as itsviolence flared its manlike aspect became more pronounced. A frightful thing happened then. The woman screamed and rushed towardthe brutish maniac with her fingers splayed. The swaying figure bent, grabbed her about the waist, and lifted her high into the air. I thoughtfor a moment he was about to crush her as he had crushed the man. But Iwas wrong. She was hurled to the sand, but with a violence so brutalthat she went instantly limp. Then the brutal madman turned, and I saw his face. If ever monstrouscruelty and malign cunning looked out of a human countenance it lookedout of the eyes that stared in my direction, remorseless in their hate. I could not tear my gaze from his face. The hate in it could be sensed, even across a blinding haze of sunlight that blotted out the sharpcontours of physical things. But more than hate could be sensed. Therewas something tremendous about that face, as if the evil which hadravaged it had left the searing brand of Lucifer himself! For an instant the madman stood motionless, his ghastly brutalityunchallenged. Then Jeff Winters started for it. Jeff had come to Marsalone and grown more solitary with every passing day. He was a brooding, ingrown man, secretive and sullen, with a streak of wildness which heusually managed to control. He went for the madman like a giganticterrier pup, shaggy and ferocious and contemptuous of death. The big figure turned quickly, raised his arm, and brought his closedfist down on Jeff's skull. Jeff collapsed like a shattered plaster cast. His body seemed to break and splinter, and he sprawled forward on thesand. He did not get up. Frank Anders had guns on both hips, and he drew them fast. No one knewwhat kind of man Anders was. He hardly ever complained or made aspectacle of himself. A little guy with sandy hair and cold blue eyes, he had an accuracy of aim that did his talking for him. His guns suddenly roared. For an instant the air between his hands andthe maniac was a crackling wall of flame. The brute swayed a little butdid not turn aside. He went straight for Anders with both arms spreadwide. He caught Anders about the waist, lifted him up, and slammed his bodydown against the sand. A sickness came over me as I stared. The madmanbashed Anders' head against the ground again and again. Then suddenlythe big arms relaxed and Anders sagged limply to the ground. For an instant the madman swayed slowly back and forth, like ablood-stained marionette on a wire. Then he moved forward with aterrible, shambling gait, his head lowered, a dark, misshapen shadowseeming to lengthen before him on the sand like a spindle of flame. The clearing was abruptly tumultuous with sound. The fury which had beenunleashed against me turned upon the monster and became a closed circleof deadly, intent purpose hemming him in--and he was caught in acrossfire that hurled him backwards to the sand. He jumped up and lunged straight for the well. What happened then waslike the awakening stages of some horrible dream. The madman shambledpast the well, the air at his back a crackling sheet of flame. Thebarrage behind him was continuous and merciless. The men were organizednow, standing together in a solid wall, firing with deadly accuracy anda grim purpose which transcended fear. The madman went clumping on past me and climbed a dune with hisshoulders held straight. With a sunset glare deepening about him, hewent striding over the dune and out of sight. * * * * * I turned and stared back at the camp. The pursuit had passed the welland was headed for me. But no one paid the slightest attention to me. Twelve men passed me, walking three abreast. Bill came along in theirwake, his eyes stony hard. He reached out as he passed me, gripping myshoulder, giving me a foot-of-the-gallows kind of smile. "We know now who killed Ned, " he whispered. "We know, fella. Take iteasy, relax. " My head was throbbing, but I could see the big prints from where Istood--the prints of a murderer betrayed by his insatiable urge to slay. I saw Kenny pass, and he gave me a contemptuous grin. He had done hisbest to destroy me, but there was no longer any hate left in me. I took a slow step forward--and fell flat on my face. .. . I woke up with my head in Molly's lap. She was looking down into myface, sobbing in a funny sort of way and running her fingers through myhair. She looked startled when she saw that I was wide awake. She blinkedfuriously and started fumbling at her waist for a handkerchief. "I must have passed out cold, " I said. "It's quite a strain to be at thereceiving end of a lynching bee. And what I saw afterwards wasn'texactly pleasant. " "Darling, " she whispered, "don't move, don't say a word. You're going tobe all right. " "You bet I am!" I said. "Right now I feel great. " My arm went around her shoulder, and I drew her head down until herbreath was warm on my face. I kissed her hair and lips and eyes for afull minute in utter recklessness. When I released her her eyes were shining, and she was laughing a littleand crying too. "You've changed your mind, " she said. "You believe menow, don't you?" "Don't talk, " I said. "Don't say another word. I just want to look atyou. " "It was you right from the start, " she said. "Not Ned--or anyone else. " "I was a blind fool, " I said. "You never gave me a second glance. " "One glance was enough, " I whispered. "But when I saw how it seemed tobe between you and Ned--" "I was never in love with him. It was just--" "Never mind, don't say it, " I said. "It's over and done with. " I stopped, remembering. Her eyes grew wide and startled, and I could seethat she was remembering too. "What happened?" I asked. "Did they catch that vicious rat?" She brushed back her hair, the sunlight suddenly harsh on her face. "Hefell into the canal. The bullets brought him down, and he collapsed onthe bank. " Her hand tightened on my wrist. "Bill told me. He tried to swim, but thecurrent carried him under. He went down and never came up. " "I'm glad, " I said. "Did anyone in the camp ever see him before?" Molly shook her head. "Bill said he was a drifter--a dangerous maniacwho must have been crazed by the sun. " "I see, " I said. I reached out and drew her into my arms again, and we rested for amoment stretched out side by side on the sand. "It's funny, " I said after a while. "What is?" "You know what they say about the whispering. Sometimes when you listenintently you seem to hear words deep in your mind. As if the Martianshad telepathic powers. " "Perhaps they have, " she said. I glanced sideways at her. "Remember, " I said. "There were cities onMars when our ancestors were hairy apes. The Martian civilization wasflourishing and great fifty million years before the pyramids arose as amonument to human solidarity and worth. A bad monument, built by slavelabor. But at least it was a start. " "Now you're being poetic, Tom, " she said. "Perhaps I am. The Martians must have had their pyramids too. And at thepyramid stage they must have had their Larsens, to shoulder all theguilt. To them we may still be in the pyramid stage. Suppose--" "Suppose what?" "Suppose they wanted to warn us, to give us a lesson we couldn't forget. How can we say with certainty that a dying race couldn't still make useof certain techniques that are far beyond us. " "I'm afraid I don't understand, " she said, puzzled. "Someday, " I said, "our own science will take a tiny fragment of humantissue from the body of a dead man, put it into an incubating machine, and a new man will arise again from that tiny shred of flesh. A man whocan walk and live and breathe again, and love again, and die again afteranother full lifetime. "Perhaps the Martian science was once as great as that. And the Martiansmight still remember a few of the techniques. Perhaps from our humanbrains, from our buried memories and desires, they could filch the keyand bring to horrible life a thing so monstrous and so terrible--" Her hand went suddenly cold in mine. "Tom, you can't honestly think--" "No, " I said. "It's nonsense, of course. Forget it. " I didn't tell her what the whispering had seemed to say, deep in mymind. _We've brought you Larsen! You wanted Larsen, and we've made him foryou! His flesh and his mind--his cruel strength and his wicked heart!Here he comes, here he is! Larsen, Larsen, Larsen!_ Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from _Fantastic Universe_ January 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.