Protector

“Don’t count your money yet.” Nick started across the dust pond toward the dome. Luke was light on his shoulders, and his own body was light here; but together they were top-heavy. “If I start falling I’ll try to fall sideways. That dust won’t hurt either of us.”

“Don’t fall.”

“The UN fleet will probably be coming here too. To get the boats.”

“They’re days behind us. Come on.”

“The path’s slippery. Dust all over it.”

The boats, three of them, were lined along the west side. Each had four seats and a pair of fans at the stern, below the dust line, caged for protection against submerged rocks. The boats were so flat that any ocean ripple would have sunk them; but in the heavy dust they rode high.

Nick settled his burden not too gently into one of the seats. “See if she’ll start, Luke. I’m going to the dome for fuel.”

“It’ll be hydrazine, with compressed martian air as oxidizer.”

“I’ll just look for something labeled Fuel.”

Luke was able to start the compressor, but the motor wouldn’t fire. Probably drained the tanks, he decided, and turned everything off. He found a bubble dome collapsed in the back. After making sure it was meant to be worked manually, he wrestled it into place and sealed it down, holding himself in place with a seat belt to get leverage. His long arms and wide hands had never lost an arm wrestling match. The edges of the bubble would probably leak, he decided, but not seriously. He found the inspection hatch that hid an air converter for changing the nitric oxides outside into breathable nitrogen and oxygen.

Nick returned with a green tank balanced on one shoulder. He fueled the boat through an injector nozzle. Luke tried the starter again. It worked. The boat tried to take off without Nick. Luke found the neutral setting, then reverse. Nick waited while he backed up.

“How do I get through the bubble?”

“I guess you don’t.” Luke collapsed the bubble, unsealed one side for Nick, then sealed it after him. The bubble began to fill, slowly. “Best keep our suits on,” said Luke. “It may be an hour before we can breathe in here.”

“You can collapse it then. We’ve got to got provisions from the ship.”

It was two hours before they raised the bubble and started for the opening in the ring wall.

The dark sandstone cliffs that framed the opening were sharp and clear, clearly dynamite-blasted, as artificial as the glassy path between dome and ring wall. Nick was settled comfortably in one of the passenger chairs, his feet propped on another, his eyes on the screen of the dismounted deep-radar.

“Seems deep enough now,” he said.

“Then I’ll open her up,” said Luke. The fans spun; the stern dipped far down, then righted. They skunmed across the dust at ten knots, leaving two straight, shallow, regular swells as a wake.

The deep-radar screen registered a density pattern in three dimensions. It showed a smooth bottom, regular swells and dips from which millions of years had eliminated all sharp lines and points. There was little volcanic activity on Mars.

Thle desert was as flat as a mirror. Rounded dun rocks poked through its surface, incongruous, Daliesque. Craters sat on the dust like badly made clay ash trays. Some were a few inches across. Some were so large that they had to be seen from orbit. The horizon was straight and close and razor sharp, glowing yellow below and artery red above. Nick turned his head to watch the crater recede.

His eyes widened, then squinted. Something?

“Damn’t. Hold itl” he shouted. “Turn around! Turn hard left!”

“Back toward the crater?”

“Yes!”

Luke cut the power in one motor. The boat turned its prow to the left but continued to skid sideways across the dust. Then the right fan bit in, and the boat curved around.

“I see it,” said Luke.

It was little more than a dot at that distance, but it showed clearly against the calm monochrome sea around it. And it moved. It jerked, it paused to rest, it jerked again, rolling sideways. It was several hundred yards from the crater wall.

As they approached, it grew clearer. It was cylindrical, the shape of a short caterpillar, and translucent; and soft, for they saw it bend as it moved. It was trying to reach the opening in the ring wall.

Luke throttled down. The dustboat slowed and settled deeper. As they pulled alongside Luke saw that Nick had armed himself with a signal gun.

“It’s him,” said Nick. He sounded awed. He leaned over the side, gun at the ready.

The caterpillar was a transparent, inflated sack. Inside was something that rolled over and over, slowly, painfully, trying to get closer to the side of the boat. It was as clearly alien as anything created in the days of flat television.

It was humanoid, as much so as a stick-figure drawing is humanoid. It was all knobs. Elbows, knees, shoulders, cheekbones, they stuck out like marbles or grapefruit or bowling balls. The bald head swelled and rose behind like hydrocephalus.

It stopped trying to roll when it bumped against the boat.

“It looks helpless enough,” Nick said dubiously.

“Well, here goes our air again.” Luke deflated the bubble. The two men reached over the side, picked up the pressurized sack and dropped it in the bottom of the boat. The alien’s expression did not change, and probably could not. That face looked hard. But it did a strange thing. With thumb and forefinger of a hand like a score of black walnuts strung together, it made a circle.

Nick said, “It must have learned that from Bre

“Look at the bones, Nick. The bones correspond to a human skeleton.”

“Its arms are too long for human. And its back slopes more.”

“Yah. Well, we can’t take him back to the ship, and we can’t talk to him the way he is now. Well have to wait out here while the bubble inflates.”

“We seem to spend most of our time waiting,” said Luke.

Nick nodded. His fingers drummed against the back of a chair. For twenty minutes the boat’s small converter had been straining to fill the bubble, using and changing the thin, poisonous mixture outside.

But the alien hadn’t moved at all. Luke had been watching. The alien lay in its inflated bag in the bottom of the boat, and it waited. Its human eyes watched them from inside pits of tough, leathery wrinkles. Just so, with just such patience, might a dead man wait for Judgment Day.

“At least we have it at a disadvantage,” said Nick. “It won’t be kidnapping us.”

“I think he must be insane.”

“Insane? Its motives may be a little strange—”

“Look at the evidence. He came plowing into the System in a ship just adequate to get him here. His air tank was on its last gasp. There was no evidence of failsafe devices anywhere aboard. He made no attempt to contact anyone, as far as we can tell. He killed or kidnapped Bre

“You keep saying him. It’s an it. Think of it as an it and you’ll be ready for it to act peculiar.”

“That’s a cop-out. The universe is rational. In order to survive, this thing has to be rational too, he, she, or it.”

“Another couple of minutes and we can—”

The alien moved. Its hand slashed down the length of the sack. Instantly Nick raised the signal gun. Instantly… but the alien reached through a long gap in the sack and took the gun out of Nick’s hand before Nick could react. There was no sign of haste. It placed the gun in the back of the boat and sat up.