The Old Martians.

by Roger Phillips Graham.

[Sidenote: _They opened the ruins to tourists at a dollar a head but they reckoned without The OLD MARTIANS_]

The man with the pith helmet had his back toward me. Hunched forward, he was screaming at the girl in the lens of his camera. "Don't just stand there, Dotty! Move! Do something! Back up toward that column with inscriptions on it...."

The girl was tall and longlegged with ideal body proportions, her features and skin coloring a perfect norm-blend with no throwback elements. Right now she seemed confused and half-frightened as she tried to comply with the directions of the man with the movie camera. She smiled artificially, turned her head to look at the fragment of a wall behind her, reached out with a finger and started tracing the lines of an almost obliterated inscription in its stone surface.

The camera stopped whirring. Its owner straightened and grumbled, "That's all."

Now the girl was allowed to go back to her worrying. Swiftly she surveyed the crowd, but didn't find the person she was looking for. She started moving toward one of the arches that led deeper into the ruins.

I followed her slowly.

She pa.s.sed through the arch, stopped, and turned her head toward the right, her eyes on something out of sight. She'd found him, but she saw me at the same time and her worry deepened.

When she moved back into the crowd, I strolled casually through the archway.

There was a vaguely defined pa.s.sageway, the roof over it gone for half a million years, of course. And twenty feet away, oblivious of his surroundings except for what was directly in front of him, was my man.

His height and build were somewhat less than the norm. But it was his profile that drew my attention. A remarkable throwback; a throwback of a distinct type.

In fact, he might well have served as the model in the types textbooks labeled British. The resemblance was subtle. Only one trained to differentiate would ever have noticed it.

I let my attention take in his whole figure. His elbows had a habit of making fluttery movements when his exploring hands paused so that a strange birdlike impression was given. Also an air of ungainliness in the lines of the lean body, rather than the feline smoothness and grace of the norm-blend. It was so in keeping with his features that it served to strengthen the psycho diagnosis.

A throwback to an era ten thousand years in the past, and therefore, as the textbooks say, p.r.o.ne to mental instability. It was no wonder that the girl called Dotty had had the air of being perpetually worried!

She appeared now, from the far side of the ruin and approached the man.

He sensed rather than saw her and straightened up, every line of him etched with excitement.

"Dotty!" he said. "I've found it. I've found the proof. I've been here before, thousands of years ago when this wasn't a ruins. I _remember_."

The girl's manner reflected weariness, "Please, Herb. You've got to forget all about it. You'll talk too much!"

His shoulders stiffened. "Don't worry. I won't talk until I have proof to convince even them. Somewhere around here something lies buried.

Something I will be able to remember. They will dig where the rocks haven't been touched for five thousand centuries and find what I say is there."

Dotty was shaking her head. "No, Herb, If it were on Earth I might half believe you. But not here on Mars. These--these people weren't even humanoid!"

"_Neither was I_," Herb whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

I sighed regretfully. I'd seen too many cases like this one. I'd grown to dread them. But it was a job and a man had to eat.

The guide began herding the tourists back to the bus. I mingled with the crowd, and when Dotty and Herb climbed aboard I managed to stick close to them.

"Where'd you two go to?" the man in the pith helmet called from where he was sitting. "Stick close to me. I put a new roll in the camera. At the next place I want to get some shots of both of you together."

"All right, George," Dotty said obediently.

She and Herb were forced to find separate seats. They would do no talking, so I faced around and studied the three alternately. The man in the pith helmet, George, was a normal blend; totally unconcerned about his reactions on others so long as he could pursue his hobby.

The bus detoured a roped-off area in the center of the ancient city, the part considered too dangerous because of cave-in possibilities, and made its way out to the northern edge of ruins to the part that resembled the ancient cemeteries on Earth. The only major difference was that there were no remains under the evenly s.p.a.ced stones. There was some doubt that it had been a cemetery. But the guide announced it as one. And that announcement as the bus came to a stop had a p.r.o.nounced effect on Herb.

He began his fluttery elbow movements again and looked around at Dotty with a triumphant smile. I moved up quickly to keep him in earshot.

He protested when George insisted on taking camera shots, then gave in and cooperated in order to get it over with.

Finally George snapped his camera shut. Herb mumbled something to Dotty that I didn't catch, and started down one of the lanes between rows of stones as though headed for a definite goal.

I couldn't very well follow after they left the main group. It would have been obvious. Instead, I veered off to one side, gambling that when they reached their destination I would be able to read their lips.

I got well away from stragglers and took out my mirroscope, pointing if off in the distance and swinging the objective lens around until it centered on them. I was lucky. They were facing in my direction.

"It isn't a cemetery," Herb was saying with emphatic motions of his hands. "It was a parking area, and this stone was where I parked my airsled. I can remember it as though it were yesterday."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _If this was a cemetery, the old Martians should have been here. But there were no voices--no bones._]

I had to admire the man's subconscious. It was a remarkably shrewd guess. The experts wouldn't play along with it, but they would probably never be able to prove him wrong on that count. But Dotty was arguing with him. "How can you prove it was a parking area?" Her eyes roamed over the large field with its regularly s.p.a.ced stones. "It certainly looks impractical for a parking lot."

"Just the same, that's what it was. I wish I had a shovel here. I seem to remember burying something near my stone. If I could find that it would prove I really remember."

"Why don't you forget it?" Dotty pleaded. "After all, even if it were true, what does it matter _now_?"

"It matters to me. Ever since we arrived here I've seen familiar things.

Too familiar to be coincidence. I never felt this way before. I always considered reincarnation as ancient superst.i.tious belief, just like everyone else. But not any more. I _know_. I lived here when all this was new."

"But can't you just be satisfied to feel that you did and let it go at that?" Dotty asked. "I'm afraid of what they would do to you if they found out what you're thinking."

"Hah!" Herb snorted. "I have a feeling that before we leave Mars I'll be able to prove it to them. Somewhere in this city is something that only I know exists. It's hidden under stones that haven't been disturbed since man first set foot on the planet. It isn't entirely clear yet, but it will come--it will come. Then I'll make them listen. They'll dig, and they'll find what I say is there. You wait and see."

"They'll lock you up, darling," Dotty said. "They won't believe you."

The guide was calling everyone back to the bus. I watched Herb scowl fiercely at the stone marker that he believed to have been his, open his mouth to say something, then turn away so that his lips were out of sight. Regretfully I put the mirroscope away and went back to the bus.

I knew where we were going next, and I was uneasy about it. Herb and Dotty managed to sit together and I got a place right behind them where I could eavesdrop. But they sat in silence.

The bus had left the ancient city behind, to head out over the desert toward one of the few structures on Mars which had withstood the ravages of time without crumbling. An immense dome of solid concrete reinforced with pure copper rods harder than steel. The Martians had known what Earth civilization didn't learn until around the year three thousand: that copper can't be tempered, but pure copper becomes tempered of itself in a thousand years.

That immense dome was a honeycomb of pa.s.sageways and rooms, some of which were not open to tourists. It would be a natural for Herb.