+--------------------------------------------------------------+| || Transcriber's Note: || || This etext of Valley of Dreams by Stanley G. Weinbaum was || produced from "A Martian Odyssey and Others" published in || 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that || the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. || |+--------------------------------------------------------------+

 * * * * *

VALLEY OF DREAMS

Captain Harrison of the _Ares_ expedition turned away from the littletelescope in the bow of the rocket. "Two weeks more, at the most, " heremarked. "Mars only retrogrades for seventy days in all, relative tothe earth, and we've got to be homeward bound during that period, orwait a year and a half for old Mother Earth to go around the sun andcatch up with us again. How'd you like to spend a winter here?"

Dick Jarvis, chemist of the party, shivered as he looked up from hisnotebook. "I'd just as soon spend it in a liquid air tank!" he averred. "These eighty-below zero summer nights are plenty for me. "

"Well, " mused the captain, "the first successful Martian expeditionought to be home long before then. "

"Successful if we get home, " corrected Jarvis. "I don't trust thesecranky rockets--not since the auxiliary dumped me in the middle of Thylelast week. Walking back from a rocket ride is a new sensation to me. "

"Which reminds me, " returned Harrison, "that we've got to recover yourfilms. They're important if we're to pull this trip out of the red. Remember how the public mobbed the first moon pictures? Our shots oughtto pack 'em to the doors. And the broadcast rights, too; we might show aprofit for the Academy. "

"What interests me, " countered Jarvis, "is a personal profit. A book, for instance; exploration books are always popular. _MartianDeserts_--how's that for a title?"

"Lousy!" grunted the captain. "Sounds like a cook-book for desserts. You'd have to call it 'Love Life of a Martian, ' or something like that. "

Jarvis chuckled. "Anyway, " he said, "if we once get back home, I'm goingto grab what profit there is, and never, never, get any farther from theearth than a good stratosphere plane'll take me. I've learned toappreciate the planet after plowing over this dried-up pill we're onnow. "

"I'll lay you odds you'll be back here year after next, " grinned theCaptain. "You'll want to visit your pal--that trick ostrich. "

"Tweel?" The other's tone sobered. "I wish I hadn't lost him, at that. He was a good scout. I'd never have survived the dream-beast but forhim. And that battle with the push-cart things--I never even had achance to thank him. "

"A pair of lunatics, you two, " observed Harrison. He squinted throughthe port at the gray gloom of the Mare Cimmerium. "There comes the sun. "He paused. "Listen, Dick--you and Leroy take the other auxiliary rocketand go out and salvage those films. "

Jarvis stared. "Me and Leroy?" he echoed ungrammatically. "Why not meand Putz? An engineer would have some chance of getting us there andback if the rocket goes bad on us. "

The captain nodded toward the stern, whence issued at that moment amedley of blows and guttural expletives. "Putz is going over the insidesof the _Ares_, " he announced. "He'll have his hands full until we leave, because I want every bolt inspected. It's too late for repairs once wecast off. "

"And if Leroy and I crack up? That's our last auxiliary. "

"Pick up another ostrich and walk back, " suggested Harrison gruffly. Then he smiled. "If you have trouble, we'll hunt you out in the _Ares_, "he finished. "Those films are important. " He turned. "Leroy!"

The dapper little biologist appeared, his face questioning. 

"You and Jarvis are off to salvage the auxiliary, " the Captain said. "Everything's ready and you'd better start now. Call back at half-hourintervals; I'll be listening. "

Leroy's eyes glistened. "Perhaps we land for specimens--no?" he queried. 

"Land if you want to. This golf ball seems safe enough. "

"Except for the dream-beast, " muttered Jarvis with a faint shudder. Hefrowned suddenly. "Say, as long as we're going that way, suppose I havea look for Tweel's home! He must live off there somewhere, and he's themost important thing we've seen on Mars. "

Harrison hesitated. "If I thought you could keep out of trouble, " hemuttered. "All right, " he decided. "Have a look. There's food and wateraboard the auxiliary; you can take a couple of days. But keep in touchwith me, you saps!"

Jarvis and Leroy went through the airlock out to the grey plain. Thethin air, still scarcely warmed by the rising sun, bit flesh and lunglike needles, and they gasped with a sense of suffocation. They droppedto a sitting posture, waiting for their bodies, trained by months inacclimatization chambers back on earth, to accommodate themselves to thetenuous air. Leroy's face, as always, turned a smothered blue, andJarvis heard his own breath rasping and rattling in his throat. But infive minutes, the discomfort passed; they rose and entered the littleauxiliary rocket that rested beside the black hull of the _Ares_. 

The under-jets roared out their fiery atomic blast; dirt and bits ofshattered biopods spun away in a cloud as the rocket rose. Harrisonwatched the projectile trail its flaming way into the south, then turnedback to his work. 

It was four days before he saw the rocket again. Just at evening, as thesun dropped behind the horizon with the suddenness of a candle fallinginto the sea, the auxiliary flashed out of the southern heavens, easinggently down on the flaming wings of the under-jets. Jarvis and Leroyemerged, passed through the swiftly gathering dusk, and faced him in thelight of the _Ares_. He surveyed the two; Jarvis was tattered andscratched, but apparently in better condition than Leroy, whosedapperness was completely lost. The little biologist was pale as thenearer moon that glowed outside; one arm was bandaged in thermo-skin andhis clothes hung in veritable rags. But it was his eyes that struckHarrison most strangely; to one who lived these many weary days with thediminutive Frenchman, there was something queer about them. They werefrightened, plainly enough, and that was odd, since Leroy was no cowardor he'd never have been one of the four chosen by the Academy for thefirst Martian expedition. But the fear in his eyes was moreunderstandable than that other expression, that queer fixity of gazelike one in a trance, or like a person in an ecstasy. "Like a chap who'sseen Heaven and Hell together, " Harrison expressed it to himself. He wasyet to discover how right he was. 

He assumed a gruffness as the weary pair sat down. "You're a finelooking couple!" he growled. "I should've known better than to let youwander off alone. " He paused. "Is your arm all right, Leroy? Need anytreatment?"

Jarvis answered. "It's all right--just gashed. No danger of infectionhere, I guess; Leroy says there aren't any microbes on Mars. "

"Well, " exploded the Captain, "Let's hear it, then! Your radio reportssounded screwy. 'Escaped from Paradise!' Huh!"

"I didn't want to give details on the radio, " said Jarvis soberly. "You'd have thought we'd gone loony. "

"I think so, anyway. "

"_Moi aussi!_" muttered Leroy. "I too!"

"Shall I begin at the beginning?" queried the chemist. "Our earlyreports were pretty nearly complete. " He stared at Putz, who had come insilently, his face and hands blackened with carbon, and seated himselfbeside Harrison. 

"At the beginning, " the Captain decided. 

"Well, " began Jarvis, "we got started all right, and flew due southalong the meridian of the _Ares_, same course I'd followed last week. Iwas getting used to this narrow horizon, so I didn't feel so much likebeing cooped under a big bowl, but one does keep overestimatingdistances. Something four miles away looks eight when you're used toterrestrial curvature, and that makes you guess its size just four timestoo large. A little hill looks like a mountain until you're almost overit. "

"I know that, " grunted Harrison. 

"Yes, but Leroy didn't, and I spent our first couple of hours trying toexplain it to him. By the time he understood (if he does yet) we werepast Cimmerium and over that Xanthus desert, and then we crossed thecanal with the mud city and the barrel-shaped citizens and the placewhere Tweel had shot the dream-beast. And nothing would do for Pierrehere but that we put down so he could practice his biology on theremains. So we did. 

"The thing was still there. No sign of decay; couldn't be, of course, without bacterial forms of life, and Leroy says that Mars is as sterileas an operating table. "

"_Comme le coeur d'une fileuse_, " corrected the little biologist, whowas beginning to regain a trace of his usual energy. "Like an old maid'sheart!"

"However, " resumed Jarvis, "about a hundred of the little grey-greenbiopods had fastened onto the thing and were growing and branching. Leroy found a stick and knocked 'em off, and each branch broke away andbecame a biopod crawling around with the others. So he poked around atthe creature, while I looked away from it; even dead, that rope-armeddevil gave me the creeps. And then came the surprise; the thing was partplant!"

"_C'est vrai!_" confirmed the biologist. "It's true!"

"It was a big cousin of the biopods, " continued Jarvis. "Leroy was quiteexcited; he figures that all Martian life is of that sort--neither plantnor animal. Life here never differentiated, he says; everything has bothnatures in it, even the barrel-creatures--even Tweel! I think he'sright, especially when I recall how Tweel rested, sticking his beak inthe ground and staying that way all night. I never saw him eat or drink, either; perhaps his beak was more in the nature of a root, and he gothis nourishment that way. "

"Sounds nutty to me, " observed Harrison. 

"Well, " continued Jarvis, "we broke up a few of the other growths andthey acted the same way--the pieces crawled around, only much slowerthan the biopods, and then stuck themselves in the ground. Then Leroyhad to catch a sample of the walking grass, and we were ready to leavewhen a parade of the barrel-creatures rushed by with their push-carts. They hadn't forgotten me, either; they all drummed out, 'We arev-r-r-iends--ouch!' just as they had before. Leroy wanted to shoot oneand cut it up, but I remembered the battle Tweel and I had had withthem, and vetoed the idea. But he did hit on a possible explanation asto what they did with all the rubbish they gathered. "

"Made mud-pies, I guess, " grunted the captain. 

"More or less, " agreed Jarvis. "They use it for food, Leroy thinks. Ifthey're part vegetable, you see, that's what they'd want--soil withorganic remains in it to make it fertile. That's why they ground up sandand biopods and other growths all together. See?"

"Dimly, " countered Harrison. "How about the suicides?"

"Leroy had a hunch there, too. The suicides jump into the grinder whenthe mixture has too much sand and gravel; they throw themselves in toadjust the proportions. "

"Rats!" said Harrison disgustedly. "Why couldn't they bring in someextra branches from outside?"

"Because suicide is easier. You've got to remember that these creaturescan't be judged by earthly standards; they probably don't feel pain, andthey haven't got what we'd call individuality. Any intelligence theyhave is the property of the whole community--like an ant-heap. That'sit! Ants are willing to die for their ant-hill; so are these creatures. "

"So are men, " observed the captain, "if it comes to that. "

"Yes, but men aren't exactly eager. It takes some emotion likepatriotism to work 'em to the point of dying for their country; thesethings do it all in the day's work. " He paused. 

"Well, we took some pictures of the dream-beast and thebarrel-creatures, and then we started along. We sailed over Xanthus, keeping as close to the meridian of the _Ares_ as we could, and prettysoon we crossed the trail of the pyramid-builder. So we circled back tolet Leroy take a look at it, and when we found it, we landed. The thinghad completed just two rows of bricks since Tweel and I left it, andthere it was, breathing in silicon and breathing out bricks as if it hadeternity to do it in--which it has. Leroy wanted to dissect it with aBoland explosive bullet, but I thought that anything that had lived forten million years was entitled to the respect due old age, so I talkedhim out of it. He peeped into the hole on top of it and nearly gotbeaned by the arm coming up with a brick, and then he chipped off a fewpieces of it, which didn't disturb the creature a bit. He found theplace I'd chipped, tried to see if there was any sign of healing, anddecided he could tell better in two or three thousand years. So we tooka few shots of it and sailed on. 

"Mid afternoon we located the wreck of my rocket. Not a thing disturbed;we picked up my films and tried to decide what next. I wanted to findTweel if possible; I figured from the fact of his pointing south that helived somewhere near Thyle. We plotted our route and judged that thedesert we were in now was Thyle II; Thyle I should be east of us. So, ona hunch, we decided to have a look at Thyle I, and away we buzzed. "

"_Der_ motors?" queried Putz, breaking his long silence. 

"For a wonder, we had no trouble, Karl. Your blast worked perfectly. Sowe hummed along, pretty high to get a wider view, I'd say about fiftythousand feet. Thyle II spread out like an orange carpet, and after awhile we came to the grey branch of the Mare Chronium that bounded it. That was narrow; we crossed it in half an hour, and there was ThyleI--same orange-hued desert as its mate. We veered south, toward the MareAustrale, and followed the edge of the desert. And toward sunset wespotted it. "

"Shpotted?" echoed Putz. "Vot vas shpotted?"

"The desert was spotted--with buildings! Not one of the mud cities ofthe canals, although a canal went through it. From the map we figuredthe canal was a continuation of the one Schiaparelli called Ascanius. 

"We were probably too high to be visible to any inhabitants of the city, but also too high for a good look at it, even with the glasses. However, it was nearly sunset, anyway, so we didn't plan on dropping in. Wecircled the place; the canal went out into the Mare Australe, and there, glittering in the south, was the melting polar ice-cap! The canaldrained it; we could distinguish the sparkle of water in it. Off to thesoutheast, just at the edge of the Mare Australe, was a valley--thefirst irregularity I'd seen on Mars except the cliffs that boundedXanthus and Thyle II. We flew over the valley--" Jarvis paused suddenlyand shuddered; Leroy, whose color had begun to return, seemed to pale. The chemist resumed, "Well, the valley looked all right--then! Just agray waste, probably full of crawlers like the others. 

"We circled back over the city; say, I want to tell you that placewas--well, gigantic! It was colossal; at first I thought the size wasdue to that illusion I spoke of--you know, the nearness of thehorizon--but it wasn't that. We sailed right over it, and you've neverseen anything like it!

"But the sun dropped out of sight right then. I knew we were pretty farsouth--latitude 60--but I didn't know just how much night we'd have. "

Harrison glanced at a Schiaparelli chart. "About 60--eh?" he said. "Close to what corresponds to the Antarctic circle. You'd have aboutfour hours of night at this season. Three months from now you'd havenone at all. "

"Three months!" echoed Jarvis, surprised. Then he grinned. "Right! Iforget the seasons here are twice as long as ours. Well, we sailed outinto the desert about twenty miles, which put the city below the horizonin case we overslept, and there we spent the night. 

"You're right about the length of it. We had about four hours ofdarkness which left us fairly rested. We ate breakfast, called ourlocation to you, and started over to have a look at the city. 

"We sailed toward it from the east and it loomed up ahead of us like arange of mountains. Lord, what a city! Not that New York mightn't havehigher buildings, or Chicago cover more ground, but for sheer mass, those structures were in a class by themselves. Gargantuan!

"There was a queer look about the place, though. You know how aterrestrial city sprawls out, a nimbus of suburbs, a ring of residentialsections, factory districts, parks, highways. There was none of thathere; the city rose out of the desert as abruptly as a cliff. Only a fewlittle sand mounds marked the division, and then the walls of thosegigantic structures. 

"The architecture was strange, too. There were lots of devices that areimpossible back home, such as set-backs in reverse, so that a buildingwith a small base could spread out as it rose. That would be a valuabletrick in New York, where land is almost priceless, but to do it, you'dhave to transfer Martian gravitation there!

"Well, since you can't very well land a rocket in a city street, we putdown right next to the canal side of the city, took our small camerasand revolvers, and started for a gap in the wall of masonry. We weren'tten feet from the rocket when we both saw the explanation for a lot ofthe queerness. 

"The city was in ruin! Abandoned, deserted, dead as Babylon! Or atleast, so it looked to us then, with its empty streets which, if theyhad been paved, were now deep under sand. "

"A ruin, eh?" commented Harrison. "How old?"

"How could we tell?" countered Jarvis. "The next expedition to this golfball ought to carry an archeologist--and a philologist, too, as wefound out later. But it's a devil of a job to estimate the age ofanything here; things weather so slowly that most of the buildings mighthave been put up yesterday. No rainfall, no earthquakes, no vegetationis here to spread cracks with its roots--nothing. The only aging factorshere are the erosion of the wind--and that's negligible in thisatmosphere--and the cracks caused by changing temperature. And one otheragent--meteorites. They must crash down occasionally on the city, judging from the thinness of the air, and the fact that we've seen fourstrike ground right here near the _Ares_. "

"Seven, " corrected the captain. "Three dropped while you were gone. "

"Well, damage by meteorites must be slow, anyway. Big ones would be asrare here as on earth, because big ones get through in spite of theatmosphere, and those buildings could sustain a lot of little ones. Myguess at the city's age--and it may be wrong by a big percentage--wouldbe fifteen thousand years. Even that's thousands of years older than anyhuman civilization; fifteen thousand years ago was the Late Stone Age inthe history of mankind. 

"So Leroy and I crept up to those tremendous buildings feeling likepygmies, sort of awe-struck, and talking in whispers. I tell you, it wasghostly walking down that dead and deserted street, and every time wepassed through a shadow, we shivered, and not just because shadows arecold on Mars. We felt like intruders, as if the great race that hadbuilt the place might resent our presence even across a hundred andfifty centuries. The place was as quiet as a grave, but we keptimagining things and peeping down the dark lanes between buildings andlooking over our shoulders. Most of the structures were windowless, butwhen we did see an opening in those vast walls, we couldn't look away, expecting to see some horror peering out of it. 

"Then we passed an edifice with an open arch; the doors were there, butblocked open by sand. I got up nerve enough to take a look inside, andthen, of course, we discovered we'd forgotten to take our flashes. Butwe eased a few feet into the darkness and the passage debouched into acolossal hall. Far above us a little crack let in a pallid ray ofdaylight, not nearly enough to light the place; I couldn't even see ifthe hall rose clear to the distant roof. But I know the place wasenormous; I said something to Leroy and a million thin echoes cameslipping back to us out of the darkness. And after that, we began tohear other sounds--slithering rustling noises, and whispers, and soundslike suppressed breathing--and something black and silent passed betweenus and that far-away crevice of light. 

"Then we saw three little greenish spots of luminosity in the dusk toour left. We stood staring at them, and suddenly they all shifted atonce. Leroy yelled '_Ce sont des yeux!_' and they were! They were eyes!

"Well, we stood frozen for a moment, while Leroy's yell reverberatedback and forth between the distant walls, and the echoes repeated thewords in queer, thin voices. There were mumblings and mutterings andwhisperings and sounds like strange soft laughter, and then thethree-eyed thing moved again. Then we broke for the door!

"We felt better out in the sunlight; we looked at each other sheepishly, but neither of us suggested another look at the buildings inside--thoughwe _did_ see the place later, and that was queer, too--but you'll hearabout it when I come to it. We just loosened our revolvers and crept onalong that ghostly street. 

"The street curved and twisted and subdivided. I kept careful note ofour directions, since we couldn't risk getting lost in that giganticmaze. Without our thermo-skin bags, night would finish us, even if whatlurked in the ruins didn't. By and by, I noticed that we were veeringback toward the canal, the buildings ended and there were only a fewdozen ragged stone huts which looked as though they might have beenbuilt of debris from the city. I was just beginning to feel a bitdisappointed at finding no trace of Tweel's people here when we roundeda corner and there he was!

"I yelled 'Tweel!' but he just stared, and then I realized that hewasn't Tweel, but another Martian of his sort. Tweel's featheryappendages were more orange hued and he stood several inches taller thanthis one. Leroy was sputtering in excitement, and the Martian kept hisvicious beak directed at us, so I stepped forward as peace-maker. I said'Tweel?' very questioningly, but there was no result. I tried it a dozentimes, and we finally had to give it up; we couldn't connect. 

"Leroy and I walked toward the huts, and the Martian followed us. Twicehe was joined by others, and each time I tried yelling 'Tweel' at thembut they just stared at us. So we ambled on with the three trailing us, and then it suddenly occurred to me that my Martian accent might be atfault. I faced the group and tried trilling it out the way Tweel himselfdid: 'T-r-r-rwee-r-rl!' Like that. 

"And that worked! One of them spun his head around a full ninetydegrees, and screeched 'T-r-r-rweee-r-rl!' and a moment later, like anarrow from a bow, Tweel came sailing over the nearer huts to land on hisbeak in front of me!

"Man, we were glad to see each other! Tweel set up a twittering andchirping like a farm in summer and went sailing up and coming down onhis beak, and I would have grabbed his hands, only he wouldn't keepstill long enough. 

"The other Martians and Leroy just stared, and after a while, Tweelstopped bouncing, and there we were. We couldn't talk to each other anymore than we could before, so after I'd said 'Tweel' a couple of timesand he'd said 'Tick, ' we were more or less helpless. However, it wasonly mid-morning, and it seemed important to learn all we could aboutTweel and the city, so I suggested that he guide us around the place ifhe weren't busy. I put over the idea by pointing back at the buildingsand then at him and us. 

"Well, apparently he wasn't too busy, for he set off with us, leadingthe way with one of his hundred and fifty-foot nosedives that set Leroygasping. When we caught up, he said something like 'one, one, two--two, two, four--no, no--yes, yes--rock--no breet!' That didn't seem to meananything; perhaps he was just letting Leroy know that he could speakEnglish, or perhaps he was merely running over his vocabulary to refreshhis memory. 

"Anyway, he showed us around. He had a light of sorts in his blackpouch, good enough for small rooms, but simply lost in some of thecolossal caverns we went through. Nine out of ten buildings meantabsolutely nothing to us--just vast empty chambers, full of shadows andrustlings and echoes. I couldn't imagine their use; they didn't seemsuitable for living quarters, or even for commercial purposes--trade andso forth; they might have been all right as power-houses, but what couldhave been the purpose of a whole city full? And where were the remainsof the machinery?

"The place was a mystery. Sometimes Tweel would show us through a hallthat would have housed an ocean-liner, and he'd seem to swell withpride--and we couldn't make a damn thing of it! As a display ofarchitectural power, the city was colossal; as anything else it was justnutty!

"But we did see one thing that registered. We came to that same buildingLeroy and I had entered earlier--the one with the three eyes in it. Well, we were a little shaky about going in there, but Tweel twitteredand trilled and kept saying, 'Yes, yes, yes!' so we followed him, staring nervously about for the thing that had watched us. However, thathall was just like the others, full of murmurs and slithering noises andshadowy things slipping away into corners. If the three-eyed creaturewere still there, it must have slunk away with the others. 

"Tweel led us along the wall; his light showed a series of littlealcoves, and in the first of these we ran into a puzzling thing--a veryweird thing. As the light flashed into the alcove, I saw first just anempty space, and then, squatting on the floor, I saw--it! A littlecreature about as big as a large rat, it was, gray and huddled andevidently startled by our appearance. It had the queerest, most devilishlittle face!--pointed ears or horns and satanic eyes that seemed tosparkle with a sort of fiendish intelligence. 

"Tweel saw it, too, and let out a screech of anger, and the creaturerose on two pencil-thin legs and scuttled off with a half-terrified, half defiant squeak. It darted past us into the darkness too quicklyeven for Tweel, and as it ran, something waved on its body like thefluttering of a cape. Tweel screeched angrily at it and set up a shrillhullabaloo that sounded like genuine rage. 

"But the thing was gone, and then I noticed the weirdest of imaginabledetails. Where it had squatted on the floor was--a book! It had beenhunched over a book!

"I took a step forward; sure enough, there was some sort of inscriptionon the pages--wavy white lines like a seismograph record on black sheetslike the material of Tweel's pouch. Tweel fumed and whistled in wrath, picked up the volume and slammed it into place on a shelf full ofothers. Leroy and I stared dumbfounded at each other. 

"Had the little thing with the fiendish face been reading? Or was itsimply eating the pages, getting physical nourishment rather thanmental? Or had the whole thing been accidental?

"If the creature were some rat-like pest that destroyed books, Tweel'srage was understandable, but why should he try to prevent an intelligentbeing, even though of an alien race, from _reading_--if it _was_ reading? Idon't know; I did notice that the book was entirely undamaged, nor did Isee a damaged book among any that we handled. But I have an odd hunchthat if we knew the secret of the little cape-clothed imp, we'd know themystery of the vast abandoned city and of the decay of Martian culture. 

"Well, Tweel quieted down after a while and led us completely aroundthat tremendous hall. It had been a library, I think; at least, therewere thousands upon thousands of those queer black-paged volumes printedin wavy lines of white. There were pictures, too, in some; and some ofthese showed Tweel's people. That's a point, of course; it indicatedthat his race built the city and printed the books. I don't think thegreatest philologist on earth will ever translate one line of thoserecords; they were made by minds too different from ours. 

"Tweel could read them, naturally. He twittered off a few lines, andthen I took a few of the books, with his permission; he said 'no, no!'to some and 'yes, yes!' to others. Perhaps he kept back the ones hispeople needed, or perhaps he let me take the ones he thought we'dunderstand most easily. I don't know; the books are outside there in therocket. 

"Then he held that dim torch of his toward the walls, and they werepictured. Lord, what pictures! They stretched up and up into theblackness of the roof, mysterious and gigantic. I couldn't make much ofthe first wall; it seemed to be a portrayal of a great assembly ofTweel's people. Perhaps it was meant to symbolize Society or Government. But the next wall was more obvious; it showed creatures at work on acolossal machine of some sort, and that would be Industry or Science. The back wall had corroded away in part, from what we could see, Isuspected the scene was meant to portray Art, but it was on the fourthwall that we got a shock that nearly dazed us. 

"I think the symbol was Exploration or Discovery. This wall was a littleplainer, because the moving beam of daylight from that crack lit up thehigher surface and Tweel's torch illuminated the lower. We made out agiant seated figure, one of the beaked Martians like Tweel, but withevery limb suggesting heaviness, weariness. The arms dropped inertly onthe chair, the thin neck bent and the beak rested on the body, as if thecreature could scarcely bear its own weight. And before it was a queerkneeling figure, and at sight of it, Leroy and I almost reeled againsteach other. It was, apparently, a man!"

"A man!" bellowed Harrison. "A man you say?"

"I said apparently, " retorted Jarvis. "The artist had exaggerated thenose almost to the length of Tweel's beak, but the figure had blackshoulder-length hair, and instead of the Martian four, there were _five_fingers on its outstretched hand! It was kneeling as if in worship ofthe Martian, and on the ground was what looked like a pottery bowl fullof some food as an offering. Well! Leroy and I thought we'd gonescrewy!"

"And Putz and I think so, too!" roared the captain. 

"Maybe we all have, " replied Jarvis, with a faint grin at the pale faceof the little Frenchman, who returned it in silence. "Anyway, " hecontinued, "Tweel was squeaking and pointing at the figure, and saying'Tick! Tick!' so he recognized the resemblance--and never mind anycracks about my nose!" he warned the captain. "It was Leroy who made theimportant comment; he looked at the Martian and said 'Thoth! The godThoth!'"

"_Oui!_" confirmed the biologist. "_Comme l'Egypte!_"

"Yeah, " said Jarvis. "Like the Egyptian ibis-headed god--the one withthe beak. Well, no sooner did Tweel hear the name Thoth than he set up aclamor of twittering and squeaking. He pointed at himself and said'Thoth! Thoth!' and then waved his arm all around and repeated it. Ofcourse he often did queer things, but we both thought we understood whathe meant. He was trying to tell us that his race called themselvesThoth. Do you see what I'm getting at?"

"I see, all right, " said Harrison. "You think the Martians paid a visitto the earth, and the Egyptians remembered it in their mythology. Well, you're off, then; there wasn't any Egyptian civilization fifteenthousand years ago. "

"Wrong!" grinned Jarvis. "It's too bad we _haven't_ an archeologistwith us, but Leroy tells me that there was a stone-age culture in Egyptthen, the pre-dynastic civilization. "

"Well, even so, what of it?"

"Plenty! Everything in that picture proves my point. The attitude of theMartian, heavy and weary--that's the unnatural strain of terrestrialgravitation. The name Thoth; Leroy tells me Thoth was the Egyptian godof philosophy and the inventor of _writing_! Get that? They must havepicked up the idea from watching the Martian take notes. It's too muchfor coincidence that Thoth should be beaked and ibis-headed, and thatthe beaked Martians call themselves Thoth. "

"Well, I'll be hanged! But what about the nose on the Egyptian? Do youmean to tell me that stone-age Egyptians had longer noses than ordinarymen?"

"Of course not! It's just that the Martians very naturally cast theirpaintings in Martianized form. Don't human beings tend to relateeverything to themselves? That's why dugongs and manatees started themermaid myths--sailors thought they saw human features on the beasts. Sothe Martian artist, drawing either from descriptions or imperfectphotographs, naturally exaggerated the size of the human nose to adegree that looked normal to him. Or anyway, that's my theory. "

"Well, it'll do as a theory, " grunted Harrison. "What I want to hear iswhy you two got back here looking like a couple of year-before-lastbird's nests. "

Jarvis shuddered again, and cast another glance at Leroy. The littlebiologist was recovering some of his accustomed poise, but he returnedthe glance with an echo of the chemist's shudder. 

"We'll get to that, " resumed the latter. "Meanwhile I'll stick to Tweeland his people. We spent the better part of three days with them, as youknow. I can't give every detail, but I'll summarize the important factsand give our conclusions, which may not be worth an inflated franc. It'shard to judge this dried-up world by earthly standards. 

"We took pictures of everything possible; I even tried to photographthat gigantic mural in the library, but unless Tweel's lamp wasunusually rich in actinic rays, I don't suppose it'll show. And that's apity, since it's undoubtedly the most interesting object we've found onMars, at least from a human viewpoint. 

"Tweel was a very courteous host. He took us to all the points ofinterest--even the new water-works. "

Putz's eyes brightened at the word. "Vater-vorks?" he echoed. "For vot?"

"For the canal, naturally. They have to build up a head of water todrive it through; that's obvious. " He looked at the captain. "You toldme yourself that to drive water from the polar caps of Mars to theequator was equivalent to forcing it up a twenty-mile hill, because Marsis flattened at the poles and bulges at the equator just like theearth. "

"That's true, " agreed Harrison. 

"Well, " resumed Jarvis, "this city was one of the relay stations toboost the flow. Their power plant was the only one of the giantbuildings that seemed to serve any useful purpose, and that was worthseeing. I wish you'd seen it, Karl; you'll have to make what you canfrom our pictures. It's a sun-power plant!"

Harrison and Putz stared. "Sun-power!" grunted the captain. "That'sprimitive!" And the engineer added an emphatic "_Ja!_" of agreement. 

"Not as primitive as all that, " corrected Jarvis. "The sunlight focusedon a queer cylinder in the center of a big concave mirror, and they drewan electric current from it. The juice worked the pumps. "

"A t'ermocouple!" ejaculated Putz. 

"That sounds reasonable; you can judge by the pictures. But thepower-plant had some queer things about it. The queerest was that themachinery was tended, not by Tweel's people, but by some of thebarrel-shaped creatures like the ones in Xanthus!" He gazed around atthe faces of his auditors; there was no comment. 

"Get it?" he resumed. At their silence, he proceeded, "I see you don't. Leroy figured it out, but whether rightly or wrongly, I don't know. Hethinks that the barrels and Tweel's race have a reciprocal arrangementlike--well, like bees and flowers on earth. The flowers give honey forthe bees; the bees carry the pollen for the flowers. See? The barrelstend the works and Tweel's people build the canal system. The Xanthuscity must have been a boosting station; that explains the mysteriousmachines I saw. And Leroy believes further that it isn't an intelligentarrangement--not on the part of the barrels, at least--but that it's beendone for so many thousands of generations that it's becomeinstinctive--a tropism--just like the actions of ants and bees. Thecreatures have been bred to it!"

"Nuts!" observed Harrison. "Let's hear you explain the reason for thatbig empty city, then. "

"Sure. Tweel's civilization is decadent, that's the reason. It's a dyingrace, and out of all the millions that must once have lived there, Tweel's couple of hundred companions are the remnant. They're anoutpost, left to tend the source of the water at the polar cap; probablythere are still a few respectable cities left somewhere on the canalsystem, most likely near the tropics. It's the last gasp of a race--anda race that reached a higher peak of culture than Man!"

"Huh?" said Harrison. "Then why are they dying? Lack of water?"

"I don't think so, " responded the chemist. "If my guess at the city'sage is right, fifteen thousand years wouldn't make enough difference inthe water supply--nor a hundred thousand, for that matter. It'ssomething else, though the water's doubtless a factor. "

"_Das wasser_, " cut in Putz. "Vere goes dot?"

"Even a chemist knows that!" scoffed Jarvis. "At least on earth. HereI'm not so sure, but on earth, every time there's a lightning flash, itelectrolyzes some water vapor into hydrogen and oxygen, and then thehydrogen escapes into space, because terrestrial gravitation won't holdit permanently. And every time there's an earthquake, some water is lostto the interior. Slow--but damned certain. " He turned to Harrison. "Right, Cap?"

"Right, " conceded the captain. "But here, of course--no earthquakes, nothunderstorms--the loss must be very slow. Then why is the race dying?"

"The sun-power plant answers that, " countered Jarvis. "Lack of fuel!Lack of power! No oil left, no coal left--if Mars ever had aCarboniferous Age--and no water-power--just the driblets of energy theycan get from the sun. That's why they're dying. "

"With the limitless energy of the atom?" exploded Harrison. 

"They don't know about atomic energy. Probably never did. Must have usedsome other principle in their space-ship. "

"Then, " snapped the captain, "what makes you rate their intelligenceabove the human? We've finally cracked open the atom!"

"Sure we have. We had a clue, didn't we? Radium and uranium. Do youthink we'd ever have learned how without those elements? We'd never evenhave suspected that atomic energy existed!"

"Well? Haven't they--?"

"No, they haven't. You've told me yourself that Mars has only 73 percentof the earth's density. Even a chemist can see that that means a lack ofheavy metals--no osmium, no uranium, no radium. They didn't have theclue. "

"Even so, that doesn't prove they're more advanced than we are. If theywere _more_ advanced, they'd have discovered it anyway. "

"Maybe, " conceded Jarvis. "I'm not claiming that we don't surpass themin some ways. But in others, they're far ahead of us. "

"In what, for instance?"

"Well--socially, for one thing. "

"Huh? How do you mean?"

Jarvis glanced in turn at each of the three that faced him. Hehesitated. "I wonder how you chaps will take this, " he muttered. "Naturally, everybody likes his own system best. " He frowned. "Lookhere--on the earth we have three types of society, haven't we? Andthere's a member of each type right here. Putz lives under adictatorship--an autocracy. Leroy's a citizen of the Sixth Commune inFrance. Harrison and I are Americans, members of a democracy. There youare--autocracy, democracy, communism--the three types of terrestrialsocieties. Tweel's people have a different system from any of us. "

"Different? What is it?"

"The one no earthly nation has tried. Anarchy!"

"Anarchy!" the captain and Putz burst out together. 

"That's right. "

"But--" Harrison was sputtering. "What do you mean--they're ahead of us?Anarchy! Bah!"

"All right--bah!" retorted Jarvis. "I'm not saying it would work for us, or for any race of men. But it works for them. "

"But--anarchy!" The captain was indignant. 

"Well, when you come right down to it, " argued Jarvis defensively, "anarchy is the ideal form of government, if it works. Emerson said thatthe best government was that which governs least, and so did WendellPhillips, and I think George Washington. And you can't have any form ofgovernment which governs less than anarchy, which is no government atall!"

The captain was sputtering. "But--it's unnatural! Even savage tribeshave their chiefs! Even a pack of wolves has its leader!"

"Well, " retorted Jarvis defiantly, "that only proves that government isa primitive device, doesn't it? With a perfect race you wouldn't need itat all; government is a confession of weakness, isn't it? It's aconfession that part of the people won't cooperate with the rest andthat you need laws to restrain those individuals which a psychologistcalls anti-social. If there were no anti-social persons--criminals andsuch--you wouldn't need laws or police, would you?"

"But government! You'd need government! How about publicworks--wars--taxes?"

"No wars on Mars, in spite of being named after the War God. No point inwars here; the population is too thin and too scattered, and besides, ittakes the help of every single community to keep the canal systemfunctioning. No taxes because, apparently, all individuals cooperate inbuilding public works. No competition to cause trouble, because anybodycan help himself to anything. As I said, with a perfect race governmentis entirely unnecessary. "

"And do you consider the Martians a perfect race?" asked the captaingrimly. 

"Not at all! But they've existed so much longer than man that they'reevolved, socially at least, to the point where they don't needgovernment. They work together, that's all. " Jarvis paused. "Queer, isn't it--as if Mother Nature were carrying on two experiments, one athome and one on Mars. On earth it's trial of an emotional, highlycompetitive race in a world of plenty; here it's the trial of a quiet, friendly race on a desert, unproductive, and inhospitable world. Everything here makes for cooperation. Why, there isn't even the factorthat causes so much trouble at home--sex!"

"Huh?"

"Yeah: Tweel's people reproduce just like the barrels in the mud cities;two individuals grow a third one between them. Another proof of Leroy'stheory that Martian life is neither animal nor vegetable. Besides, Tweelwas a good enough host to let him poke down his beak and twiddle hisfeathers, and the examination convinced Leroy. "

"_Oui_, " confirmed the biologist. "It is true. "

"But anarchy!" grumbled Harrison disgustedly. "It would show up on adizzy, half-dead pill like Mars!"

"It'll be a good many centuries before you'll have to worry about it onearth, " grinned Jarvis. He resumed his narrative. 

"Well, we wandered through that sepulchral city, taking pictures ofeverything. And then--" Jarvis paused and shuddered--"then I took anotion to have a look at that valley we'd spotted from the rocket. Idon't know why. But when we tried to steer Tweel in that direction, heset up such a squawking and screeching that I thought he'd gone batty. "

"If possible!" jeered Harrison. 

"So we started over there without him; he kept wailing and screaming, 'No-no-no! Tick!' but that made us the more curious. He sailed over ourheads and stuck on his beak, and went through a dozen other antics, butwe ploughed on, and finally he gave up and trudged disconsolately alongwith us. 

"The valley wasn't more than a mile southeast of the city. Tweel couldhave covered the distance in twenty jumps, but he lagged and loiteredand kept pointing back at the city and wailing 'No--no--no!' Then he'dsail up into the air and zip down on his beak directly in front of us, and we'd have to walk around him. I'd seen him do lots of crazy thingsbefore, of course; I was used to them, but it was as plain as print thathe didn't want us to see that valley. "

"Why?" queried Harrison. 

"You asked why we came back like tramps, " said Jarvis with a faintshudder. "You'll learn. We plugged along up a low rocky hill thatbounded it, and as we neared the top, Tweel said, 'No breet', Tick! Nobreet'!' Well, those were the words he used to describe the siliconmonster; they were also the words he had used to tell me that the imageof Fancy Long, the one that had almost lured me to the dream-beast, wasn't real. I remembered that, but it meant nothing to me--then!

"Right after that, Tweel said, 'You one-one-two, he one-one-two, ' andthen I began to see. That was the phrase he had used to explain thedream-beast to tell me that what I thought, the creature thought--totell me how the thing lured its victims by their own desires. So Iwarned Leroy; it seemed to me that even the dream-beast couldn't bedangerous if we were warned and expecting it. Well, I was wrong!

"As we reached the crest, Tweel spun his head completely around, so hisfeet were forward but his eyes looked backward, as if he feared to gazeinto the valley. Leroy and I stared out over it, just a gray waste likethis around us, with the gleam of the south polar cap far beyond itssouthern rim. That's what it was one second; the next it was--Paradise!"

"What?" exclaimed the captain. 

Jarvis turned to Leroy. "Can you describe it?" he asked. 

The biologist waved helpless hands, "_C'est impossible!_" he whispered. "_Il me rend muet!_"

"It strikes me dumb, too, " muttered Jarvis. "I don't know how to tellit; I'm a chemist, not a poet. Paradise is as good a word as I can thinkof, and that's not at all right. It was Paradise and Hell in one!"

"Will you talk sense?" growled Harrison. 

"As much of it as makes sense. I tell you, one moment we were looking ata grey valley covered with blobby plants, and the next--Lord! You can'timagine that next moment! How would you like to see all your dreams madereal? Every desire you'd ever had gratified? Everything you'd everwanted there for the taking?"

"I'd like it fine!" said the captain. 

"You're welcome, then!--not only your noble desires, remember! Everygood impulse, yes--but also every nasty little wish, every viciousthought, everything you'd ever desired, good or bad! The dream-beastsare marvelous salesmen, but they lack the moral sense!"

"The dream-beasts?"

"Yes. It was a valley of them. Hundreds, I suppose, maybe thousands. Enough, at any rate, to spread out a complete picture of your desires, even all the forgotten ones that must have been drawn out of thesubconscious. A Paradise--of sorts! I saw a dozen Fancy Longs, in everycostume I'd ever admired on her, and some I must have imagined. I sawevery beautiful woman I've ever known, and all of them pleading for myattention. I saw every lovely place I'd ever wanted to be, all packedqueerly into that little valley. And I saw--other things. " He shook hishead soberly. "It wasn't all exactly pretty. Lord! How much of the beastis left in us! I suppose if every man alive could have one look at thatweird valley, and could see just once what nastiness is hidden inhim--well, the world might gain by it. I thanked heaven afterwards thatLeroy--and even Tweel--saw their own pictures and not mine!"

Jarvis paused again, then resumed, "I turned dizzy with a sort ofecstasy. I closed my eyes--and with eyes closed, I still saw the wholething! That beautiful, evil, devilish panorama was in my mind, not myeyes. That's how those fiends work--through the mind. I knew it was thedream-beasts; I didn't need Tweel's wail of 'No breet'! No breet'!'But--_I couldn't keep away!_ I knew it was death beckoning, but it wasworth it for one moment with the vision. "

"Which particular vision?" asked Harrison dryly. 

Jarvis flushed. "No matter, " he said. "But beside me I heard Leroy's cryof 'Yvonne! Yvonne!' and I knew he was trapped like myself. I fought forsanity; I kept telling myself to stop, and all the time I was rushingheadlong into the snare!

"Then something tripped me. Tweel! He had come leaping from behind; as Icrashed down I saw him flash over me straight toward--toward what I'dbeen running to, with his vicious beak pointed right at her heart!"

"Oh!" nodded the captain. "_Her_ heart!"

"Never mind that. When I scrambled up, that particular image was gone, and Tweel was in a twist of black ropey arms, just as when I first sawhim. He'd missed a vital point in the beast's anatomy, but was jabbingaway desperately with his beak. 

"Somehow, the spell had lifted, or partially lifted. I wasn't five feetfrom Tweel, and it took a terrific struggle, but I managed to raise myrevolver and put a Boland shell into the beast. Out came a spurt ofhorrible black corruption, drenching Tweel and me--and I guess thesickening smell of it helped to destroy the illusion of that valley ofbeauty. Anyway, we managed to get Leroy away from the devil that hadhim, and the three of us staggered to the ridge and over. I had presenceof mind enough to raise my camera over the crest and take a shot of thevalley, but I'll bet it shows nothing but gray waste and writhinghorrors. What we saw was with our minds, not our eyes. "

Jarvis paused and shuddered. "The brute half poisoned Leroy, " hecontinued. "We dragged ourselves back to the auxiliary, called you, anddid what we could to treat ourselves. Leroy took a long dose of thecognac that we had with us; we didn't dare try anything of Tweel'sbecause his metabolism is so different from ours that what cured himmight kill us. But the cognac seemed to work, and so, after I'd done oneother thing I wanted to do, we came back here--and that's all. "

"All, is it?" queried Harrison. "So you've solved all the mysteries ofMars, eh?"

"Not by a damned sight!" retorted Jarvis. "Plenty of unansweredquestions are left. "

"_Ja!_" snapped Putz. "Der evaporation--dot iss shtopped how?"

"In the canals? I wondered about that, too; in those thousands of miles, and against this low air-pressure, you'd think they'd lose a lot. Butthe answer's simple; they float a skin of oil on the water. "

Putz nodded, but Harrison cut in. "Here's a puzzler. With only coal andoil--just combustion or electric power--where'd they get the energy tobuild a planet-wide canal system, thousands and thousands of miles of'em? Think of the job we had cutting the Panama Canal to sea level, andthen answer that!"

"Easy!" grinned Jarvis. "Martian gravity and Martian air--that's theanswer. Figure it out: First, the dirt they dug only weighed a third itsearth-weight. Second, a steam engine here expands against ten pounds persquare inch less air pressure than on earth. Third, they could build theengine three times as large here with no greater internal weight. Andfourth, the whole planet's nearly level. Right, Putz?"

The engineer nodded. "_Ja!_ Der shteam--engine--it iss _sieben-undzwanzig_--twenty-seven times so effective here. "

"Well, there _does_ go the last mystery then, " mused Harrison. 

"Yeah?" queried Jarvis sardonically. "You answer these, then. What wasthe nature of that vast empty city? Why do the Martians _need_ canals, since we never saw them eat or drink? Did they really visit the earthbefore the dawn of history, and, if not atomic energy, what poweredtheir ship? Since Tweel's race seems to need little or no water, arethey merely operating the canals for some higher creature that does?_Are_ there other intelligences on Mars? If not, what was thedemon-faced imp we saw with the book? There are a few mysteries foryou!"

"I know one or two more!" growled Harrison, glaring suddenly at littleLeroy. "You and your visions! 'Yvonne!' eh? Your wife's name is Marie, isn't it?"

The little biologist turned crimson. "_Oui_, " he admitted unhappily. Heturned pleading eyes on the captain. "Please, " he said. "In Paris _toutle monde_--everybody he think differently of those things--no?" Hetwisted uncomfortably. "Please, you will not tell Marie, _n'est-cepas_?"

Harrison chuckled. "None of my business, " he said. "One more question, Jarvis. What was the one other thing you did before returning here?"

Jarvis looked diffident. "Oh--that. " He hesitated. "Well I sort of feltwe owed Tweel a lot, so after some trouble, we coaxed him into therocket and sailed him out to the wreck of the first one, over on ThyleII. Then, " he finished apologetically, "I showed him the atomic blast, got it working--and gave it to him!"

"You _what_?" roared the Captain. "You turned something as powerful asthat over to an alien race--maybe some day as an enemy race?"

"Yes, I did, " said Jarvis. "Look here, " he argued defensively. "Thislousy, dried-up pill of a desert called Mars'll never support much humanpopulation. The Sahara desert is just as good a field for imperialism, and a lot closer to home. So we'll never find Tweel's race enemies. Theonly value we'll find here is commercial trade with the Martians. Thenwhy shouldn't I give Tweel a chance for survival? With atomic energy, they can run their canal system a hundred per cent instead of only oneout of five, as Putz's observations showed. They can repopulate thoseghostly cities; they can resume their arts and industries; they cantrade with the nations of the earth--and I'll bet they can teach us afew things, " he paused, "if they can figure out the atomic blast, andI'll lay odds they can. They're no fools, Tweel and his ostrich-facedMartians!"