The City Outside the World

11. The Lost Nation

After the men had tired of using the whips on him, they left him hanging there in the chains all night without water. He was half unconscious most of the time; the rest of the time he was a little mad, and would have raved if his longue were not black and swollen from thirst.

With dawn they relented and cut him down, and let the F’yagh who was their other captive tend to his cold wounds and lacerated back. Through a blood-dimmed haze Ryker caught glimpses of this man, a white man, an Earthsider, whom he had never seen before and whose name he knew not.

Nor cared. What mattered was that the Earthman gave him water. Cool, sweet, blessed water—more wondrous than any wine, more precious than rubies. He drank, and drank, and fell into a doze. And woke to find the man working over him.

He opened the older wounds and cleaned the pus out of them and soothed them with creamy ointments filled with drugs that numbed the pain and drained the poison and held death at bay. Then he shot Ryker full of antibacterials and fever fighters and fed him hot, delicious broth until he fell asleep again. This time it was a wholesome sleep from which, when he woke, he woke refreshed and strengthened and—sane.

Zarouk’s men called him the Dok-i-Tar, which was the nearest they could bend their tongues around “doctor.” The People have no word in their language for a savant, a scientist, a man who devotes his life to the gathering of knowledge with a selfless fervor that is almost religious. Such a man, Ryker soon learned, was Eli Herzog, an Israeli by nationality, a Martian by exile, a scientist and philosopher by nature.

He was an old man with a tall brow and a big nose and not much hair. What there was of it was thin and white and silky. His eyes were watery, gentle, wise, filled with humor and wistful dreams, but without illusions.

They were exactly the eyes of another Jewish savant, a man named Einstein, in the famous portrait by Roether which Ryker had seen once, years ago, in the great museum on Luna.

Like that other great mind, Herzog loved humanity as he loved knowledge, but he had no delusions about the sanctity of either. He had been exiled to Mars twenty years before, for so-called political “crimes” back on Earth— during “The Troubles” merely to express an opinion that differed from the official line was defined as criminal.

On Earth, then, Doc Herzog had been a criminal. Here, he was more like a saint. He fell in love with the People and with their ancient ways and traditions. He loved them for their pride and their poverty, their grimly cherished honor, and their refusal to yield one inch before the overwhelming might of Earth and all her millions and her machines.

He had devoted all the remainder of his life to the study of their civilization. Science had changed much by this j century. Back in the 1900s, an astrophysicist was an astrophysicist, an archaeologist was an archaeologist, and seldom the twain did meet. Today, things were different, and Herzog knew as much about both topics as he knew about Martian literature and myth, or comparative anthropology, or nine-dimensional geometric theory, or null-state mathematics—which was plenty. He was a Synthesis!, with a dozen or thirteen doctorates in as many different fields. Since he was a doctor thirteen times over, Ryker decided to call him simply “Doc,” and they left it at that.

Zarouk had picked him up several months ago down in Chryse, hunting for petroglyphs. Since Dok-i-Tars of his sort have great powers of healing, and Zarouk had a lieutenant who had been badly mauled by a sandcat, his men captured the old F’yagh. Herzog had an M.D. tucked away among those thirteen doctorates, so it was no great feat for him to bring the man back to health. But Zarouk thought it was a marvel, and kept the old Dok-i-Tar around as a sort of good-luck talisman.

Doc Herzog didn’t care. All of this planet was one vast laboratory to his way of thinking, and it didn’t matter very much which part of it he was in.

Indeed, as a member of Zarouk’s retinue, he had been introduced to many discoveries he might otherwise never have found.

“Such as?” grunted Ryker, wincing as the doctor massaged the stiffness from his scarred shoulders.

“Why, this very city, my boy! Always a myth I have thought it. And here I am, big as life! You don’t know where you are, do you?”

“Beats me,” said Ryker. “Just one of the Dead Cities, that’s all I know.”

“Oh, more than that, my boy—much more! The inscriptions have never been defaced, I, even, can read them.” His eyes grew wistful, dreaming, and his dry croak of a voice softened to a reverent, hushed whisper. “Khuu, the Last Encampment. Here is the place the Lost Nation fled to, after wars; here was it they rested for a century, more, maybe, before going on to the end of their road.”

A cold tingle traveled the length of Ryker’s spine. Hardened though he was, he felt his hackles lift. This was a place whispered about in the myths of Mars, and those myths were older than the very mountains of the Earth.

“Khuu!” he repeated. “Cripes, Doc—I always thought that was just one of their legends, like, you know —like Lost Illinios, and Yhoom, and the Valley Where Life Began, and all the rest of it! D’you mean it’s really true, and we’re really here?”

“Oh, it’s true enough, and here we are,” Doc said softly. “Here, where the Lost Nation camped awhile, before vanishing from the knowledge of men forever. Now drink this, and shut up for a bit.”

Ryker downed the fluid, and napped for a while, as his wounds healed and his body mended. But he had plenty to chew on. He had lived and moved among the People long enough to have heard of the Lost Nation, and it troubled him—but why, he could not have said.

Once, long ago, at the beginnings of history, there had been ten nations sharing this planet between them. Apart, yet together; different, yet the same; and united in their worship of the Timeless Ones, and in their loyalty to the Jammad Tengru, as the holy emperor was called.

Then one nation had fallen from the ancient ways, turned aside to worship a new god, forgetting the old faith and severing the old alliance. The Jammad Tengru who had ruled all of Mars in that distant age had declared them anathema-—had, in effect, excommunicated them. And nine nations rode to war, to holy war, to jehad, against the rebels.

Broken by the war, but not defeated, the tenth nation had fled into the north, paused to lick their wounds in the northernmost of the old cities, and then—

History was silent on their doom. Even the myths hinted little. And to this day, no man could say what had become of the outlaw nation. Even its name and totem were forgotten in the mists of the remote past.

All memory of this event had been erased from monuments and chronicles. The People themselves had tried to forget that it had ever happened. But mysteries die hard, and live long on the lips of men.

And this was the story of the Lost Nation.

And now Ryker thought he knew the secret of the riddle, and the solution of the oldest mystery known to man.

Zhaggua!

The word meant “devil.”

Might it not also mean “devil-worshipper”?

Far into the north the Lost Nation had fled in the beginning of time. Somewhere in the hoarfrosted desert-lands near the pole it had vanished from the knowledge of men.

And north was the road Valarda and her accomplices had been taking. Were they living descendants of the Lost Nation? Zarouk, perhaps, did not call them devils for nothing. Why had they come down out of their hidden realm? For the black stone seal he had taken from an ancient tomb? And why had they gone back into the north, having thieved it from him?

Were they … going home?

Nothing could live in the frigid realms around the pole, Ryker knew. In ancient days, perhaps it had been warm and fertile, as once the polar regions of Earth had been, as scientists had known for centuries from oil deposits found in northern Greenland and the fossilized remains of prehistoric forests unearthed in Canada.

Once, aeons ago, perhaps the Martian Arctic had been ice and snow, too—frozen water. But no longer was this true. It had not been true for endless ages.

The ice-fields around the pole are composed of frozen carbon dioxide—“dry ice”—and nothing that lives and breathes could dwell in that bleak, dry, burning hell of incredible cold.

Unless it lived—underground.

There were vast caverns beneath the crust of Mars, Ryker knew, and labyrinthine systems of subterranean tunnels, extending for hundreds of miles. There dwelt the giant albino rodents, called orthave, which the People hunt for furs.

At least, this was true of the Southlands with which Ryker was more familiar. But might it not be true as well, here in the north?

Who could say?

Ryker had a grim hunch that before long he would be finding out.

If they let him live long enough, that is.

The next day the raiders broke camp and began the long trek north. Houm’s caravan went with them. By now Ryker had put two and two together, coming up with four.

Houm was an agent of Zarouk, as Goro the Juhagir was. Houm’s trading expedition was a fake. The wains contained food supplies and weapons, nothing more. Houm had lurked here and there in the country north of Yeolarn, awaiting word that the devil worshippers had either been taken or had eluded capture.

If they escaped, they would be heading north. And Yhakhah was the jumping-off-point for the north. So, when apprised of Valarda’s escape, Houm had ridden hard for the oasis town, to be there ready and waiting. The trap had functioned perfectly.

And Goro was Zarouk’s spy. Probably he had been in Yeolarn when Valarda danced and the mob tried to stone her. Very likely, Goro had taken no part in that mob, but had merely watched and waited from a place of safety and concealment. And when it became obvious that the three zhaggua and their Earthling dupe had fled the city, he had somehow conveyed word of this both to Zarouk in the south, and Houm in the north. Then he had made rendezvous with the prince his master, and together they had ridden hard for the Lost City, where, according to a prearranged plan, Houm and his fake caravan were loitering.

Goro was needed, for only he had actually seen the three devil worshippers, and only he could identify them for certain. Once he and Zarouk had seen Valarda dance, the search was over. And that very night, just before dawn, the trap had closed, and the hawks had seized their prey.

It would have gone beautifully, save for the maverick behavior of Ryker. But in the end, all things even out. And now, even though Valarda and Melandron and Kiki had escaped, it was known where they were headed.

North.

Beyond the dust desert of Meroe.

Across the narrow isthmus that connects the twin continental land masses of Casius and Boreosyrtis.

And into the shadow haunted, the trackless, the unmapped, the mysterious boreal desert called Umbra.

Umbra—the Shadowed Land.

They had named it uncannily well, had the old Earthling astronomers and mapmakers. For that dim arctic realm has been under the shadow of an ancient curse and an age-old mystery since Mars was young and warm and burgeoning with life.

Into the Umbra the Lost Nation had ridden, long ago.

Somewhere in the Umbra they had vanished from human ken, in the morning of time.

And there, in that bleak arctic waste, pockmarked with ancient craters, where the dry dust drifted under a cold, whispering wind, rose the timeless enigma of the Ptera-ton, the Sphinx of Mars.

Did it mark the entrance to an underground world?

12. The Keystone

They crossed the desert, retracing the flight of Ryker and the others, and ascended to the top of the plateau, their beasts scrambling awkwardly up the steps of the eroded rock strata.

That night they camped on top of the narrow isthmus that once, perhaps, had linked two small continents, and against whose ancient and crumbling ramparts the long vanished oceans of Mars had once broken in flying foam.

Ryker wasn’t sure why they had let him live, or why they bothered to bring him along, but he didn’t much care. Revenge filled his heart like cold, heavy lead, and at least when Zarouk caught up with the three devil worshippers, Ryker would be in at the kill.

He shared wine that night with Zarouk, and fat Houm, and the little priest. Oddly, the desert prince seemed no longer to bear him any ill will. The red, terrible ordeal at the whipping post, perhaps, had satisfied Zarouk’s hunger for revenge against the F’yagh who had spoiled his fun, captured and humiliated him.

For the moment, anyway, he seemed satisfied. But Ryker wasn’t so sure. Men like Zarouk seldom forget a grudge. There would be a final reckoning later on, he thought. Right now, probably Zarouk kept him alive because he thought he might have a use for him.

When Xinga, the chief of the caravan guards, whom Ryker now understood to be one of Zarouk’s chieftains, came to fetch him to the tent of the prince for wine, Ryker went without a word. He could not be more completely in Zarouk’s power than he was already, so what the hell.

The wine was cold and sour and strong, and Ryker savored it, listening to the conversation.

Zarouk asked what he knew of Valarda’s ultimate destination, and Ryker told him—truthfully enough—that he knew nothing at all. Oddly, Zarouk seemed to believe him. So Ryker tried a question of his own, testing this new spirit of acceptance.

“Was it your men who hunted me out of the New City, and herded me into Yeolarn?” he asked. And he was surprised at the reply.

Zarouk burst out laughing, a harsh bark of laughter, true enough, but there was genuine humor in it.

“Poor dupe, it was the boy all the time—didn’t you know?” he grinned.

Ryker blinked,

“The boy? What boy?”

“Valarda’s imp, what’s his name—”

“Kiki, d’you mean?”

The desert prince nodded.

“Didn’t you even guess that? The little devil—why do you think the woman brought him along?”

Ryker didn’t know, and said as much.

Dmu Dran spoke now, his voice a thin whisper.

“The creature is a quaraph,” he said. And the nape-hairs at the back of Ryker’s neck stirred as to a chill wind.

A quaraph! Ryker shook himself numbly: the naked imp was a telepath—a Sensitive! The telepathic gene was more common among Martians than Earthsiders, he had heard, but still rare enough.

And now he began to understand how they had played him like a fish on a hook.

No one had hunted him out of the New City and through the winding ways of old Yeolarn. They had merely made him believe that it was so. Or Kiki had, anyway.

For a person who can read the thoughts passing through your mind finds it easy enough to insert thoughts into that mind. A telepath gifted and skillful enough can even convince your senses that they see or hear or taste or even smell things that are not really there.

They had played him for a sucker, all right.

He drank the wine moodily.

“Why me?” he asked at last.

The hunched little priest spoke up again.

“The stone seal you found in the old tomb, F’yagh,” he whispered between thin lips. “We know that it is somehow precious to the accursed zhaggua, although we do not know how or why. ‘The Keystone,’ the old texts name it. Its magic opens the door that leads to their hidden domain. Long ago it was stolen from them, and they want it back.”

“How did they know I had the thing?” grunted Ryker.

The priest stared at him with eyes as cold as a serpent’s.

“Long ago there was one among the zhaggua who rebelled from their evil ways, and who thieved the Keystone from its secret place. By it he came again into this world of ours, he and his followers. But we of the hualatha, we priests of the Timeless Ones, knew him for what he truly was from his eyes of evil golden flame, and slew him and all who followed him. We buried that one in unhallowed ground, together with all that he had carried with him out of Black Zhiam. My brothers of the hualatha in that long-ago time knew naught of the nature of the Keystone, and buried him with it, you see.”

“No, I don’t see,” the Earthling said. “But keep talking.”

“The Door to Zhiam was thus left open, and could not be sealed again unless it was done with the Keystone. The zhaggua, the devil worshippers, they knew it was in the outside world, but not where, for although there exists a strange affinity between their quaraphs and the substance whereof the Keystone is wrought, the holy signs cut like sigils upon the doors of that man’s tomb kept them from detecting the place where it was hidden.”

Ryker nodded slowly: it was all beginning to make sense, at last.

“Go on,” he said.

But Zarouk took up the tale.

Toying absently with his winecup, he said, “The moment you broke into the tomb and thus destroyed the magic of the priests, the Sensitives among the devil-men in Black Zhiam knew of it. In time their emissaries ventured out into the world of men once again, to search for you, and to rob you of the stone. They could come and go freely from Zhiam, as Dmu Dran has said, because the way was left open.”

“And until the stone was theirs, and they could close the door again,” said fat Houm softly, “they would not be safe from the vengeance of men, no, not even in far Zhiam.”

“What is this Zhiam?” Ryker inquired.

The priest, the prince and the merchant exchanged a glance, then shrugged.

“No reason why you should not know,” said Zarouk. ‘ ‘It is the name of their land. We neither know where it is, nor how it has been kept hidden all this while. But we shall find it.”

Ryker studied him curiously.

“Listen, Zarouk, there’s something about all this that doesn’t quite fit,” he said.

“Ask, then,” shrugged the desert prince.

“You don’t strike me as particularly devout,” said Ryker. “Why are you so interested in all of this? What’s in it for you? There’ s got to be something more than meets the eye in all this, something beyond just religion.”

Zarouk grinned, then threw back his head and laughed, he slapped Ryker’s shoulder, shaking his head.

“Earthling, may the Timeless Ones forgive me, but I like you—F’yagh or no F’yaghl We are alike, you and I, though we were born on different worlds. Of course, you know there is more here than just holy matters. Tell him, Houm.”

The merchant fingered his small beard, eyes clever and sly.

“Treasure, Ryker. And more than gold, much more: power. Power enough to break the hold of the accursed F‘yagha on this world, and drive them hence. Power enough to topple the Nine Princes, and weld their hordes into one empire, under one throne—with a warlord to lead them such as this planet has not seen in thrice ten thousand years!”

Ryker grinned without humor. This was talk he could understand. These were motives he knew and believed in.

“And on that throne … Zarouk the Hawk?” he guessed.

The eyes of the desert prince flashed proud fires. Then he smiled cunningly, yet approvingly.

“I told you that this man was for us,” he said purringly. “I sensed it in my blood. In my bones! Yes, Ryker, power. Power enough to take this world apart, and put it back together again—for us. Houm is in it for the wealth, being Houm; and Dmu Dran is in it for the extermination of an ancient heresy, being what he is. And I mean to rule this world, someday … then, ah, then! Those who scorned me, and derided me, and named me outlaw and renegade, and cast me out, and hunted me, and made war upon me: well, there will come a reckoning, Ryker. And it will be sweet, that reckoning!”

His purring voice was sleek as silk. But the rasp of steel was in the sound of it, and Ryker grinned a little, showing his teeth. It would not be comfortable to be Zarouk’s enemy, when the day of his power dawned.

“The power of their magic, aye, accursed and devil-bought though it may be,” the prince continued softly. “Once, with strange weapons of power, they broke the nations, though it was nine against one. They would have conquered, too, but something went wrong. We know not what, but they retreated into the north, into Zhiam. They still possess those weapons. And with them the Hawk of the Desert shall not spare the Nine Nations, as once the devil-people of Zhiam spared them! Oh, no! With that unholy magic I shall shatter the world to bits, and mold my empire from the fragments. And you, Ryker, there is a place in all of this for you. You can share in the glory of my triumph. Wealth, Ryker, and women! Everything you want, everything that you have ever desired. I will give it all to you, and a place near the throne, as well.”

“I thought we’d be getting around to me sooner or later,” Ryker grunted. “I knew you hadn’t kept me alive just because you like my face. Well, let’s get down to it. What use do you have for me?”

“The stone, Ryker, the black seal. The Keystone. They will have used it to lock the Door to Zhiam behind them. We need you for that.”

Ryker stared at the hawk-faced prince.

“But … I don’t have it!” he burst out. “They took it from me, there when we camped that night, when they took my guns!”

“I know,” smiled Zarouk. “But the secret of the Key stone lies within your brain, Ryker. The mind never forgets, the priests tell us. Everything the eyes have seen, are preserved in the memories of the mind—flawless, perfect, to the last detail.”

“The stone whereof the Key was fashioned is the same Mack crystal stuff whereof the zhaggua made Pteraton,” said Houm. “We believe the power of the Keystone resides in the substance of that stone, and in the exact proportions of the design and the inscription.”

“And we mean to have it from you, F’yagh,” said the gaunt priest. “Willingly, we hope, for that will make it easier. But willingly or not, we mean to have it. If we have to tear it from your mind with hot red pain, F’yagh—”

“But, surely, it will not come to that,” said Zarouk, soothingly. “Ryker is a man of sense: a man like unto us, my brothers! He wants from life the good things gold can buy, is it not so? And there will be much gold, Ryker, when the very world is ours … gold enough to drown a man in, Ryker … and women, Ryker, women like tawny cats … women as smooth as silk, as warm as satin. …”

Despite himself, the throb of desire stirred Ryker’s pulse, but he was thinking of only one woman. And Zarouk smiled, guessing the direction of his thoughts.

“Aye, Ryker, you can even have Valarda if you want her,” he smiled. “After I am done with her, of course.”

13. Into the Shadowed Land

With dawn the next day, Zarouk’s outlaws broke camp and continued across the isthmus to its northern edge. Here they were only a league or less from the maximum southernmost edge of the polar cap, and the cliff wall on this side of the plateau was deeply eroded by the extremes of heat and cold.

They descended the cliffs, and entered into the desert-land of Umbra.

In truth, this was the Shadowed Land. The dim, cool sun of Mars lay very low on the southern horizon, and the cliffs of the ancient plateau cast long shadows into the north, bathing the parched dust of the desert in purple gloom and filling the innumerable impact craters, large and small, with lakes of shadow.

Nowhere did they discern the slightest signs of life. Even the reptiles that make the Southlands dangerous could not exist here, within only a few degrees of the pole. Nor could the hardy lichens, the rubbery pod-vines, the weird blue vegetation of Mars that, by comparison, grew thick and lush in the southern latitudes, cling to life in this empty and desolate dry hell of burning cold.

How, then, could the devil worshippers of the Lost Nation live here? Even in the deepest crater, valley or ravine, the dry burning chill penetrated. It was a mystery.

But, then, the land of legend they called Zhiam had always been that—a mystery.

Ryker had been left alone to think things over. They let him ride alone, with desert hawks behind him, but his hands were not bound. It was safe enough: in this dry hell, there was no place to go.

He wanted revenge on Valarda for her treachery, her betrayal, yes. As for her people, he cared nothing. Why, after all, should he? For him it had always been a matter of taking care of himself first of all. It was simply a question of survival.

Besides, what did he owe to this unknown people he had never met, never seen? Let them fend for themselves, defend themselves, it was nothing to him what became of them.

The only members of their race he had ever known had lied to him, tricked him, robbed him, and left him bound and helpless, to die. Let Zarouk’s hawks swoop down upon them, to rend and slash and tear, to burn and rape and pillage! It was nothing to him.

Why, then, did he feel uneasy—obscurely troubled— unsatisfied at heart?

Well, for one thing, he knew he could not trust Zarouk to keep his bargain. Even if Ryker helped him recreate the lost Keystone, there would be no gold or women for Ryker, once Zarouk had from him the service he wanted. There would be a swift knife in the back, and a lonely grave under the shadowy skies.

But in the whirl of battle, the turmoil and confusion of the attack which Zarouk had planned against Black Zhiam, might there not be opportunities aplenty for Ryker to elude his watchers, and get away?

He hoped so. Because it was probably his only chance at living a while longer.

That night he agreed to cooperate with Zarouk in recreating the lost Keystone.

It was the hunched, gaunt priest, the fanatical Dmu Dran, who unlocked his memories, while Houm and Zarouk and burly Xinga watched with fascination.

A drug called phynol was used. This Zarouk’s raiders had thieved from a CA interrogation team. It was a derivative of nitrobarb, chemically allied to sodium pentothal, but very much more effective. All Ryker knew was that he became sleepier and sleepier, finally sinking into a trance state in which his volition was suspended and his unconscious rose to the fore. His conscious mind watched on while, at Dmu Dran’s bidding, Ryker’s hands took up a chunk of black crystal and began to carve.

It was an uncanny experience for Ryker, watching himself perform acts uncontrolled by his conscious will. It was weird, but it was not frightening. The drug induced in him a dreamy, languid euphoria in which no strong emotion was possible.

His hands worked machinelike for hours over the piece of hard crystal, shaping it to the precise dimensions his mind remembered with such photographic clarity. And all the while his mind looked on bemused, drifting in a rosy haze of dreams, uncaring.

A second and, later, a third injection of the drug were required. Ryker neither knew nor cared what they were doing to him. In the gentle euphoria of the drug he floated into improbably gorgeous dreams. These, then, were the phynol dreams he had heard of. Men became easily addicted to the stuff, he dimly knew, but he cared not at all, drifting through a fairyland of his own creation.

After five hours, the replica was completed. Ryker’s body had toiled without rest like a robot, and, if he had not been insulated from reality by the phynol, he would have been fearfully aware that the muscles of his hands and wrists and arms were aching with an agonized exhaustion.

But he knew nothing, floating through sunset clouds.

“Sleep, now, F’yagh,” crooned Dmu Dran.

Obediently, Ryker’s mind submerged in waves of darkness which lapped up about him, soothing his weary hands. Every muscle relaxed utterly. He would sleep for hours now, and awaken weary and stiff, but unharmed.

“We could kill him now, lord,” suggested Houm. “He is a burden to us, and so long as he is alive, a danger to our plans.”

“We could indeed, fat one,” murmured the desert prince negligently. “What think you, priest?”

Dmu Dran sat hunched on a stool, cradling the precious oval talisman in his lap, fondling it with trembling hands like fleshless claws. He lifted dull eyes to his master at this query.

“Kill him for what purpose, lord?” whispered the priest in a dry croaking voice, for he too was weary, and for all the hours that the mindless hands of Ryker had toiled over the stone, Dmu Dran had not for one instant relaxed his vigilance.

“He affords no threat to us,” the priest said. “Surely, you have warriors enough to watch over him. And we may have need for the Accursed One later.”

“What need is that?” asked Houm. “We have the stone. We have everything we require, with it.”

Dmu Dran looked at him sleepily.

“And what if the stone does not work, when we employ it?” he asked tonelessly. “What if the hands of Ryker slipped—or wearied—or cut a shade too deep, or too shallow? If we slay the creature now, we cannot use his mind again, should we need it. Better to keep him alive for the time, until the door is unlocked and Zhiam lies open before us.”

Zarouk stood up. “I think the priest is right,” he said curtly. “We may have to search the mind of Ryker again, and deeper than before. Perhaps the stone does not quite fit, and is not shaped quite properly. Then we can search his memories again—and many times, if needful. Let him live. Xinga, return this offal to its place.”

The burly lieutenant touched his palm to the smooth flesh above his heart. Then, stooping, he picked up the unconscious Earthling and tossed him over one broad shoulder like a sack of meal and bore him from the tent.

It was daylight when Ryker awoke. He lay on the floor of one of the wains, which creaked along over the desert dunes. The old savant was there beside him, his fine brow furrowed with care, his gentle eyes worried.

“So, how are you feeling?”

“Like death warmed over, Doc,” grunted Ryker, trying to sit up. His tongue felt like burnt leather, and tasted like it, too. His brain was dull, his thoughts sluggish, and he had a headache of champion proportions. But that was as nothing compared to the stiff lameness of his hands and arms. He flexed his fingers, wincing.

“A little massage, maybe,” the old man suggested. He began to rub the stiffness from Ryker’s aching arms, > kneading the weary muscles with surprisingly strong fingers. Later, he gave the big man some powder in a drink of wine that relaxed him and soothed his headache.

After a time, Ryker dozed off. He had not been entirely certain he would ever awaken after cutting the replica of the Keystone for the conspirators. Since they had let him live afterwards, he assumed they still had some use for him. So he slept easy, without fears.

When he awoke again it was midday according to the ehrono on his wrist. But not like any Martian noon he had ever witnessed before, the dim, weak sun riding low on I he horizon to the south, the zenith of heaven black as midnight. They were a lot closer to the pole, he knew, and the wind was cold and dry with an edge that bit into his bones like the blade of a razor.

He shuddered, pulling his cloak of orthava furs about him more closely.

Herzog was huddled over his notebook, scribbling, scribbling, and peering nearsightedly at the page.

“Where are we, do you know, Doc?” he muttered.

The old man looked up, and grinned. He had a beautiful smile, despite his ugly face. It was the gentle, open, wondering smile of a little child, naive and vulnerable.

“Awake again, is it? Feeling better now, I hope?”

“Yeah. Where are we?”

“Smack in the middle of the Umbra, my boy. Exactly on the line—north latitude fifty-five degrees, one minute, if I read the stars right, and I think I do. Those hills up ahead to the north are Copais Palus, the border of Ce-cropia. I never in all my days have been this close to the pole, how about you?”

Ryker shook his head, and it turned into a shiver that shook him from head to foot.

“Me, neither,” he growled. “And any closer than this, I got a feeling I don’t want to get. Say, is there anything to eat?”

They soon made camp for the night, the drovers maneuvering the beasts, drawing the wagons into a huge half circle. There was no particular reason for this, since no dangerous predators were believed to be able to survive this far into the frostlands. But Houm did not believe in taking unnecessary chances, and since this was the way caravans were always arranged in formation for the night, save in a town, he saw no reason to change the customary way of doing things.

Besides, it was not entirely impossible that the Lost Nation had scouts or sentries watching the outskirts of Zhiam. Surely, if Valarda and her accomplices had reached Zhiam by now, as they undoubtedly had, the devil warriors would be warned of the possible approach of enemies. A night attack was far from impossible. So Zarouk bade Xinga post guards about the perimeter and commanded that they should be on the alert for anything.

They ate that night under the weird banner of the aurora. Flickering, wavering banners of ghostly fire glowed against the gloom of the north. The desert men mumbled half-forgotten prayers, signing themselves with holy signs that were supposed to keep the devils away, and that night each man had a pan of green fire near him as he slept.

Doc Herzog, however, was enthralled. He had known that Mars was presumed to have its own equivalent of Earth’s famous “northern lights,” but had never before seen them for himself, having only heard the tales the travelers told. Long after Ryker turned in, the old savant still sat up, staring at the sky and making notes.

14. The Sphinx of Mars

The next day they came at last within sight of their goal. It was clearly visible a long way off, like a mountain. But this was no mountain. Perhaps, once, long ago, it had been an immense outcropping of pure mineral, thrust up from the bowels of the planet by the action of geological forces. Or—again, just possibly—it had been an enormous meteorite, or a small asteroid, drawn down to the surface of Mars by gravitational forces.

Whatever it once had been, it was now like nothing that any of them had ever seen.

The explorers and scientists who had come here after Christoffsen had seen it first from the air. Foil-winged skimmers, as the flimsy aircraft are called, are the only craft that can sustain themselves aloft in the thin atmosphere of Mars. With them, Exploration Teams One through Seven had circumnavigated Mars, photomapping the terrain with continuously operating cameras. Later, specialists had constructed a mosaic from these band segments. Then it had been discovered.

The Sphinx of Mars, the stereovision newscasters had named it back Earthside. No other name was conceivable for the stone enigma. Like that other Sphinx—aeons younger, and not very much larger, and only a little less mysterious—the Sphinx of Mars, too, crouches amidst the waste, hewn anciently into the likeness of a gigantic beast.

But, where the Sphinx of Egypt resembles a human headed lion, its elder sister near the north pole of Mars is shaped like a crouching insect-thing.

The Pteraton (as it is most accurately named) is a creature from the mythology of the Martians, and could never have been copied from life. The twelve-legged insect, with its four, folded dragonfly wings, fanged mandibles, pear-shaped casque of a head, and three domed compound eyes, is an impossible beast drawn from fancy. Flying insects, in any case, never existed on Mars, as the fossil record demonstrates, and no true insect ever had twelve legs and triplex eyes.

No, the stone enigma of the Pteraton is a beast of fable, even as the woman-headed Sphinx has its origins in fable. Outside of body lice, and the foot-long roachlike subterranean scavengers called xunga, who infest certain of the Southland caverns, insects are unknown on Mars. So any vague, distorted resemblance the stone monster bears to a cross between ant, dragonfly, spider and grasshopper— improbably and monstrously rolled into one—is a testimony to the inventive imagination of the mythographers of prehistoric Mars.

The thing cast an eerie pall upon their spirits, however.

The stone whereof it had been carved was a black crystalloid like jet, also in a way like quartz, and hard as basalt. It glittered weirdly in the dying light, and the geometrical facets of its three hemispheric eyes caught and held the sun-dazzle. It seemed to stare at them with fathomless eyes, its ugly, bony jaws fixed in a grin of menace.

It was uncanny. Ryker had seen depth photos of the Pteraton many times. But the reality was awesome, even intimidating, while the pictures had only been quaint and curious.

The beasts did not like it here, he noticed.

Generally, slidars are either restive and quarrelsome, or phlegmatic and stolid. Now, in the presence of that mountainous sculptured monster that loomed up before them like some black, alien god from the depths of time, they shied, clawed at the ground, uttering that ear-piercing squeal that is the loper’s equivalent of a stallion’s nervous whinny.

“Here we make camp,” said Zarouk, swinging down from the saddle.

Their food supplies were running low, for the desert trip had been somewhat lengthier than they had presumed it might be. While some of the men put up tents and others drew the wains into position, Xinga dispatched certain of his warriors into the waste to scavenge.

Martian warriors live off the land, and a first-class scrounger is a prized member of any war party. Even a pack of desert marauders like Zarouk’s band could not carry sufficient stores with them on their forays, and were forced to hunt for food.

But there was no food to be had here in the Umbra, where nothing lived or could live.

“We’d best be to it, then, and swiftly,” muttered Raith, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the crouching stone beast. The whites of his eyes showed, and he licked bearded lips uneasily. Raith was as superstitious as any other ignorant barbarian, but braver and tougher than many. Even he, Ryker noticed, kept glancing quickly at the mountainous black crystal, as if at any moment he expected it to … move.

“Yeah,” Ryker nodded. “If we don’t get to Zhiam soon, we’ll starve here. Unless we run out of wine or water first, that is.”

The warrior swore under his breath, and tugged the thongs. Together, without speaking further, they raised the tent on its collapsable poles. Then Raith strode off, shoulders hunched against the cold, unwinking gaze of the crouching monster.

Ryker looked after him, thoughtfully. He knew Raith better than any of the other desert men, for a bond of unacknowledged comradeship had grown between them from the moment he had ended the hazing by knocking Raith down.

Like many another strong man, Raith admired a man stronger than he. Neither said anything much about it, but they were as close to being friends as a F’yagh and a warrior of the People can become.

And Ryker knew Raith well, liked him, trusted him in certain ways, and respected him more than a little. He was a good man, and better than most in Zarouk’s band.

And if Raith—even Raith—was this jumpy, this edgy, so early on, then Zarouk was going to be in trouble before long, Ryker realized. At the thought he showed his white teeth in a hard grin that had little humor in it.

Zarouk had to find Zhiam soon. If he didn’t pull off a miracle, his own men would mutiny on him.

The notion pleased Ryker. He chuckled over it all the way back to where his steed crouched restive and nervous, waiting to be unsaddled.

Zarouk and his men circled the stone monument, looking for an entrance of some sort. With spear butts they tested the sides of the statue, listening for the echo that would reveal that here, at least, the monument was hollow.

Cracks or pits in the surface, where regular or aligned, they tried to pry open with the points of their knife blades, searching for a secret door.

Here and there, at intervals around the circuit of the stone monster, they dug pits, thinking that the entrance might be buried in the dust.

They found nothing at all.

Under the fires of sunset, and, later, under the incredibly lavish brilliance of the stars, and the uncanny witch-fires of the quivering aurora, they searched on.

Ryker and the scientist watched them for a while.

He had shared with Doc his idea that Zhiam might be situated in an enormous cavern under the Sphinx. Herzog did not seem to take his theory with any particular seriousness.

“Why under the Sphinx, of all places?”

“I dunno,” Ryker muttered. “Cause that’s where Zarouk’s been heading, all this while. Seems he thinks the monument marks the entrance to Zhiam. Well, there’s nothing around here for kilometers, except rock and dust. So it must be underground, if there’s any such place as Zhiam.”

Doc mused, tilting his head on one side, looking down at the ground. He kicked against a rock absently, then knelt and fingered a handful of soil. Then, shaking his head, he got to his feet again, dusting off his hands.

“Sandstone,” he muttered to himself. “Shale. Not going to be finding any caves in this stuff, my boy! Down south, why, sure. Igneous rock, volcanic origin. Pocket of gas trapped when the liquid stuff began to cool—”

“Yeah? What about erosion—underground rivers— that sort of thing,” argued Ryker.

“Don’t know any underground rivers on Mars,” said Herzog positively. “Erosion, is it? The kind of stuff this ground has under it, you could erode forever, my boy, and any cavern you made would just crumble and fall in. Forget about underground caverns! If Zhiam is supposed to be here, and isn’t here, then it’s—somewhere else.”

“But where?”

Doc would voice no opinion on that.

From his circumambulatory expedition, Zarouk came back looking wrathful. He strode into his tent without speaking, leaving Dmu Dran, who had accompanied him, standing outside. The men who had dug and probed and tapped went to their squads, looking tired and disgruntled.

Grumblings were heard from the men. They little liked camping in this ominous spot, under the shadow of the gigantic crouching stone monster. And they didn’t like Zarouk’s failure to find the Door.

There was going to be trouble.

At meat, Zarouk was in a vile temper, snapping at Dmu Dran, insulting Houm, and thrashing one of his servants who spilled half a cup of wine.

The scroungers had come limping back into camp, weary and surly and bad tempered. They had found nothing—neither water nor food of any kind. Luckily, it was the six-month-long summer of Mars, or carbon dioxide hoarfrost would have been ankle deep everywhere, fraying tempers even more, and making any trip more painful and difficult.

With no chance of replenishing their larder, the raiders were forced to sharply cut back on their meals to prolong the life of their supplies. Strong men get hungry after hard days of riding, and they get thirsty, too. They aren’t happy when the meals get meager and the drink gets scarce.

Tempers flared, and quarreling was common.

Zarouk would have to have some good luck, soon. Very soon. That miracle he was going to have to come up with was needed badly already. Time was running out.

He surprised them all—and himself, as well—by producing it the very next day.

They had been probing and poking and tapping away at the insect idol again, for dreary hours. Then, suddenly, a wild, savage yell rang out. Men froze where they were, (heir blood running cold, mouths suddenly dry.

Then they started to gather from all over the camp. Ryker came thumping up, to find men transfixed with amazement and delight around the front of the Sphinx.

Four of its twelve multiple-jointed limbs were folded before it, like the outstretched paws of the Egyptian Sphinx.

The frontal curve of its thorax was a sheer, smooth surface of black crystal.

Now, in that wall of glistening jet, a doorway yawned.

15. Black Labyrinth

Ryker never found out which of the desert men it was who had found the secret catch—a simple thing, a loose square of stone which, when pressed, swung counterweights within the thorax of the Sphinx, causing a massive slab of black crystal to sink into the ground. Nor did it really matter.

What mattered was that the way was open. And, wherever and whatever Zhiam truly was, this must be the entrance to that lost realm of legend. For what other reason would the entrance into the hollow monument have been so carefully concealed, unless it led down to Zhiam?

Zarouk was exultant, and fat Houm ebullient. The desert hawk barked orders. Men scurried to arm themselves, while Dmu Dran scuttled away to procure the precious Keystone replica from its place of safety.

This was, quite obviously, the first of at least two such doors. And the second door, it seemed, was locked in such a manner that only the stone seal could open it. Although how you employ a palm-sized scarab-shaped piece of stone in lieu of a key remained to be seen.

The prince wasn’t worrying about that, obviously. It was sufficient to take one thing at a time.

Doc Herzog was ecstatic. Only a handful of scholars or scientists had studied the Pteraton as yet, the Colonial Administration’s budget for archaeological research being skimpy at best. They had taken extensive depth photos, measured the monument, secured samples of the black crystalling rock from which it had been carved, and that was about the extent of their research thus far. The possibility that the huge idol was hollow and contained chambers or passages, perhaps filled with records or inscriptions, was a tantalizing theory.

But—until now—only that: a theory. Now he was an eye-witness to the discovery of the proof of that theory.

Within an hour and a half, Zarouk’s force was ready to enter the capacious interior of the stone enigma.

About twenty-five warriors and drovers were commanded to remain outside. It was their task to guard and keep open Zarouk’s escape route, should retreat be necessary. They would guard the camp, tend to the beasts, and protect the wagons and other gear.

One hundred and fifty warriors, heavily armed, followed their Prince through the secret portal into the interior of the Sphinx. With them went Ryker and the old Israeli scientist. The advance guard was led by Xinga, with Zarouk commanding the main body. Raith was left behind in charge of the camp guard, with Goro to keep an eye on him.

Ryker wondered if he would ever see him again.

They filed through the portal into complete darkness. Torches of woven plant fibre, soaked in the fire chemical, lit their way. Ryker found himself in a narrow, low-roofed corridor, walled and floored with slabs of black crystal.

The air here was musty and stale. Obviously, the monument was virtually air tight, and had been sealed for a very long period. The men gasped for breath, and the chemical torches burn feebly.

The corridor ran for a length, turned at right angles to itself, then doubled back.

The silence was stifling. Thousands of tons of solid rock drank in every sound, muffling even the echoes of boot leather scraping across the dusty floor as men walked carefully, testing every foot of the way before them, alert for concealed deadfalls or mantraps.

The curious acoustical effect fascinated the old savant, but everybody else found it uncomfortable. In the ghastly green light of the torches, men’s features looked weirdly distorted, all rolling eyeballs, open mouths, cheeks greasy with sweat. They resembled a legion of the dead, on their way to hell.

After a time, the second corridor ended at the head of a long flight of stone steps, which descended into unknown depths of velvety blackness.

“Look!” the old Israeli said, pointing. “We must be underneath the monument by now, for, see, the steps are cut out of the sandstone of the plain.”

Ryker held his torch high, peering into blackness. Doc was right, he saw. A thin, faint breeze blew up from unguessable depths below, smelling sour and dusty. He stifled a sneeze.

The warriors were descending the stone steps now, muttering and clutching each other, fearful of falling. Ryker and Herzog stood backed against the wall, waiting their turn to descend.

Doc rubbed the flat of his hands over the wall, mumbling to himself.

“No inscriptions,” he was saying. “That’s funny. I think there should be inscriptions. …”

Then it was their turn. Holding the old man’s arm in case his foot should slip, lifting his torch high before him to light the way, Ryker began to climb down the stairs.

There was no telling how far down into the depths of the planet the sandstone stair might descend. It seemed to go on forever.

And they had no way of guessing what they might find at the bottom, either. But it began to look as if Ryker had had the right idea, after all. Zhiam must be an immense cavern-world, hollowed out beneath the crust of Mars, whether this was geologically impossible, as Doc claimed, or not. What else could it possibly be?

At the bottom of the stairs, space widened out into an enormous square chamber, hewn from the solid rock, and braced and supported by girderlike pillars and arches of metal.

It was a peculiar color, this metal, richly blue-green, as if enameled in an amalgam of jade and malachite. But Ryker had seen its like before. The alloy was unique to Mars, strong and light and unrusting. “Martium,” the first explorers had named it, and the metal was widely used for construction, and even exported to Earth as a novelty.

Set into one wall facing the bottom steps of the stone stair, was an immense circular portal of the same gleaming, jewel-toned metal. The shape of this door, if door is what it was, was odd. It was perfectly circular, with the bottom curve of the circle touching, as it were, the stone floor.

There were no hinges, no handles, and no keyhole. The huge metal disk seemed imbedded in the sandstone of the wall, fixed and immobile. But it must be a door of some kind, for what else could it be?

Doc cried out, pointing.

Carved in the sandstone above the door in a half circle, was an inscription!

Dmu Dran had been puzzling over it, but seemed unable to make out its meaning, for all his knowledge of the antique lore. Zarouk turned to Herzog, impatiently.

“Can you read that writing, old man?” he demanded. Doc peered at it thoughtfully, his eyes bright, head held a little to one side.

Then, slowly—reverently—he nodded.

“It is in the oldest known form of the Hieratic script,” he whispered. “Even older than that, maybe. I can make it out well enough, I guess. But no one in the world speaks this dialect, or has, for millions and millions of years.”

“Read it, then! Xinga—hold the torches steady.”

The old scientist peered at the inscription, moving his lips silently. Then he spoke aloud.

“Dja-ih az Mhu-a Zhiam-aZar. “

“Which means?” demanded Zarouk hoarsely.

” ‘This is the Door to … Outside-the-World,’ ” said the old man.

” ‘Outside-the-World,’ ” breathed Dmu Dran faintly, a strange expression on his gaunt skull face, one that mingled unholy loathing with unholy rapture.

“What does it mean, Outside-the-World?” asked the desert prince.

“I don’t know,” admitted Doc. “I honestly don’t know.”

Zarouk turned to stare at the strange portal. He rapped it gingerly with the end of the handle of his torch. It made a muffled, thudding sound.

“It doesn’t sound hollow, lord,” whispered Houm, hesitantly. “How does it open, then?”

“I don’t know, fool,” snapped Zarouk, eyes glittering with wild fires in the glare of the torches. “But this is the thing we came to find, nonetheless. This is the Door to Zhiam—and we have the key to it!”

The fat merchant opened his mouth to ask another question, but remained silent when he saw the look on Zarouk’s face. He was taut and quivering, and in this mood it was not wise to incur his wrath.

“So that’s what ‘Zhiam’ means, eh?” muttered Ryker to Doc. “All this time, I been thinkin’ it was a name, not a word—”

“Yes,” the old man murmured. “The dialect is so ancient the words don’t sound like the language as spoken today. I knew it meant ‘Outside,’ sure. But I thought that was, well, you know … a reference to the fact that the land the Lost Nation got to was outside the areas of Mars the Nine Clans ruled. But now … now, I’m beginning to wonder. …”

“How’s that?”

“I mean, look, my boy, what I said about no caverns being possible in this sort of soil still goes. Why, we couldn’t even be standing down here in this big room, if it wasn’t for all those metal girders bracing the walls and roof.”

“But, hell, Doc!” grunted Ryker bewilderedly. “Where else could the door lead, otherwise?”

“I … don’t know. I hardly dare try to guess! But remember one thing, my boy—the Old Race were masters of a strange science beyond even our present level of knowledge. You’ve seen the so-called ‘thought-records’ they left, we got ‘em in museums today. Recorded thought-waves, imperishably stamped in pure metal! No idea how they did it. And other things as well—fragments of machinery with no moving parts, just geometrically-shaped pieces of crystal somehow impregnated with electromagnetic energy—‘course they don’t work anymore, the machines. But we couldn’t duplicate ‘em if we tried.”

“So—‘Outside-the World’?”

“Don’t even try to guess,” whispered Doc. ” ‘Cause we’re about the find out—”

He pointed. Ryker turned to look.

The priest had taken out the replica of the Keystone which Ryker had carved under the drug-induced trance.

Now, as Zarouk and the warriors shrank back, mumbling half-forgotten boyhood prayers, Dmu Dran stepped forward.

He pressed the Keystone against the very center of the huge disk of blue-green alloy.

He pressed the rounded side against the metal first.

Nothing at all happened.

Then he reversed the Keystone with trembling hands, and set the flat side against it, the side with the odd, geometrical symbolic inscription cut into the slick stone.

He tried the stone first horizontal, then with the larger, more rounded end pointing directly up.

A shiver of awe ran through the thronged warriors.

Then they cried out!

The panel melted away into a spangled, glittering mist.

Motes of quivering indigo and emerald dust swirled queerly, revealing a round, circular opening cut into the dry stone.

The motes swam in a weaving, spiral motion, like the Brownian motion of dust suspended in a liquid.

Through the opening in the wall fell a weird golden light.

A wind blew upon their faces, heady, perfumed, and— strangest of all on this desert world—moist!

The Door to Outside was open.