Guns of Mars 73
A Martian action-adventure by The Legend Chuck Dixon
CHAPTER 22.1
Taking advantage of the remaining daylight streaming in through the openings in the rock walls, the bounty man made his way around the terrace level.
He felt a slick surface under the thick layer of dust beneath his feet. Brushing some it aside revealed squares of decorative tile that covered the floor of the shelf ringing the pool below. His eyes adjusted to the gloom until he could make out man-made openings in the walls that ran around the interior of the terrace. The frames had been carved with figures and scrollwork as well as motifs of fruit and leaves. Clever artifices that were remnants of a time before whatever catastrophe fell upon this place.
What he could see of the interior of the chambers beyond the openings only compounded the mysteries. Debris covered the floors. Furniture, wooden frames long ago surrendering to rot, lay in heaps. Piles of broken crockery lay in drifts in every corner. More books, that turned into dry flinders at the touch, crowded the shelves that remained upright. Shreds of draperies hung in the still air, all color gone leaving them a lifeless gray.
It was time alone that had turned once fine furnishings to useless trash. He could see no sign of vermin of any kind. This was unusual. Even in a place as inhospitable as this there should be insects, reptiles, and other pests residing among the remains.
There was little of use in the chambers except for some wood with which he might build a fire. There were some sealed amphoras of oil that retained some viscosity. He spun a bit of moldering material at the end of what was once a chair leg of hard ebon wood and dipped it in the oil. By the light of this torch, he was able to further explore the warren of dwellings carved in the living rock.
As the torch began to gutter, he made his way back to the trace. By the time he did so he noted that the natural light coming through the apertures was dimmed now. The sun was setting and he still wished to see the deeper recesses where the terrace level rounded the back of the chamber. As he moved along the shelf he discerned a faint glow at the rear of the cavern. It was an unwavering source of light that he quickly determined was sunlight. It proved to be an opening out into what was a bowl-shaped depression open to the sky. This would be the crater of the once-active volcano that had created the isolated mound.
Above him the setting sun left behind a dome of violet in which the stars were beginning to appear. The eastern rim of the bowl was touched by the last light of the setting sun, a necklace of gold that shrunk as dusk set in. He could see in the failing light that the sloped interior crater had once been fashioned into terraces. Perhaps for the growing of food.
He walked with caution to the edge of the shelf to peer down into the bottom of the crater. It was blanketed end to end with wavering shapes. It looked like the tops of a forest moving in the wind. Or what he imagined a forest might look like. Trees were a thing long extinct. He had only read of them in old books and seen illustrations and old mosaics in his youth. It was difficult to imagine a verdant woodland could have survived in this bleak isolation.
The branches of the trees swayed back and forth as though stirred by evening zephyrs. Only there was no wind. The branches below seemed to shift independent of any outside agency. Lying on his belly now, he raised his telescopticon to his eye to scan the crater floor. His mouth went dry at the sight that filled the lens.
What he had first imagined were trees was something far more sinister. He watched in dread fascination as the movement of the beings below became rhythmic, cadenced. What he thought were trees now moved with purpose over the crater’s floor. They moved with determination, marching in unison toward an opening in the near wall of the crater.
Fascii.
The plantmen of Barsoom.
Barely sentient abominations that towered above men. Though vegetable by genus, they were capable of movement. In short spurts they could move as swift as any predator. And they were indeed predators. They subsisted primarily on the minerals in the soil but were equally inclined to drain the blood from any living creature unfortunate enough to encounter them.
Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.
