Queen Of The Martian Catacombs
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Gaunt giant and passionate beauty, they dragged
their thirst-crazed way across the endless
crimson sands in a terrible test of endurance.
For one of them knew where cool life-giving
water lapped old stones smooth—a place of
secret horror that it was death to reveal!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1949.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
For hours the hard-pressed beast had fled across the Martian desertwith its dark rider. Now it was spent. It faltered and broke stride,and when the rider cursed and dug his heels into the scaly sides, thebrute only turned its head and hissed at him. It stumbled on a few morepaces into the lee of a sandhill, and there it stopped, crouching downin the dust.
The man dismounted. The creature's eyes burned like green lamps in thelight of the little moons, and he knew that it was no use trying tourge it on. He looked back, the way he had come.
In the distance there were four black shadows grouped together in thebarren emptiness. They were running fast. In a few minutes they wouldbe upon him.
He stood still, thinking what he should do next. Ahead, far ahead, wasa low ridge, and beyond the ridge lay Valkis and safety, but he couldnever make it now. Off to his right, a lonely tor stood up out of theblowing sand. There were tumbled rocks at its foot.
"They tried to run me down in the open," he thought. "But here, by theNine Hells, they'll have to work for it!"
He moved then, running toward the tor with a lightness and speedincredible in anything but an animal or a savage. He was of Earthstock, built tall, and more massive than he looked by reason of hisleanness. The desert wind was bitter cold, but he did not seem tonotice it, though he wore only a ragged shirt of Venusian spider silk,open to the waist. His skin was almost as dark as his black hair,burned indelibly by years of exposure to some terrible sun. His eyeswere startlingly light in colour, reflecting back the pale glow of themoons.
With the practised ease of a lizard he slid in among the loose andtreacherous rocks. Finding a vantage point, where his back wasprotected by the tor itself, he crouched down.
After that he did not move, except to draw his gun. There was somethingeerie about his utter stillness, a quality of patience as unhuman asthe patience of the rock that sheltered him.
The four black shadows came closer, resolved themselves into mountedmen.
They found the beast, where it lay panting, and stopped. The line ofthe man's footprints, already blurred by the wind but still plainenough, showed where he had gone.
The leader motioned. The others dismounted. Working with the swiftprecision of soldiers, they removed equipment from their saddle-packsand began to assemble it.
The man crouching under the tor saw the thing that took shape. It was aBanning shocker, and he knew that he was not going to fight his way outof this trap. His pursuers were out of range of his own weapon. Theywould remain so. The Banning, with its powerful electric beam, wouldtake him—dead or senseless, as they wished.
He thrust the useless gun back into his belt. He knew who thesemen were, and what they wanted with him. They were officers of theEarth Police Control, bringing him a gift—twenty years in the Lunacell-blocks.
Twenty years in the grey catacombs, buried in the silence and theeternal dark.
He recognized the inevitabl