The Old Martians Part 3

We reached the road. C.I. had been prepared. There was a car to take her back to the hotel, a stationwagon for Herb who was now very submissive and somewhat dazed, and a third car for me and my precious cargo.

Ten minutes later I was in the Science Building bas.e.m.e.nt, laying the thing on a wooden table, very gently. It seemed solid, each integral part of its form being of a different metal.

None of the men watching me lay it down discounted the danger it contained. They knew too much about how shape and dimension can affect the electronic properties of metal. They knew the thing probably didn't contain an erg of power of its own, but probably triggered and directed the release of cosmic energies as yet unknown to them.

They stared at it. One of them reached out to touch it, then slowly drew his finger back.

I could see the decision crystallizing in their minds behind their serious eyes. This thing would go with the other strange and incomprehensible machines locked in vaults in a concrete building far out on the Martian desert away from the tourist trails of this dead planet. It would remain there until the day when human science advanced far enough to understand it.

"What about the wall in the dome?" I asked.

"They roped it off. They're afraid of it."

"Did you convince his wife he's insane?" one of the science staff asked.

I nodded. "I used the same old line. Told her there were dozens like him, and the law of averages made it certain at least one of them would find something."

He nodded, grinned without humor. "How we love to lie."

I turned away. There was a bitter taste in my mouth from all the lies I'd told--all the bilge.

But I knew the truth, too. I was as sure of that as I was of anything.

It wasn't insanity, of course. And it wasn't reincarnation. It seemed to be, because the mind has a habit of _possessing_ for its very own anything that enters it.

The truth of the matter was that somehow, in some incomprehensible way, the Martians were still with us. They hated us and they knew how to use our weak ones.

The old Martians--and their science.

I took a last look at the weapon lying on the table, then left the room and climbed the stairs to the first floor. I walked down the silent, empty hall to the exit and out into the night.

I let my eyes roam the blackness of the lifeless Martian desert. With an effort I pulled them away and fixed them on the warmth, the human warmth, beckoning from the hotel.

I started walking toward that bit of comfort, and as I walked the eternal question that haunted all of us in C.I. hovered in the background of my thoughts.

Would we be able to _contain_ the Martians until we understood the terrible machines they had left as a deadly heritage?

Tonight we almost hadn't....

I thought of Steve.