Marooned on a world within a world, aided
by a slim girl and an old warrior, Patrolman
Sisko Rolf was fighting his greatest
battle—to bring life to dying Mars.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"The outlaw ships are attacking!" Old Garmon Nash's harsh voice snappedlike a thunderclap in the cramped rocket flyer's cabin. "Five or six ofthem. Cut the searchlights!"
Sisko Rolf's stocky body was a blur of motion as he cut the rocketjets, doused the twin searchlights, and switched over to the audiobeams that served so well on the surface when blind flying was inorder. But here in the cavern world, thirty-seventh in the linkedseries of vast caves that underlie the waterless wastes of Mars, thereflected waves of sound were of little value. Distances were far toocramped—disaster might loom but a few hundred feet away.
"Trapped us neatly," Rolf said through clenched teeth. "Tolled intotheir underground hideout by that water-runner we tried to capture. Wecan't escape, that's certain. They know these caverns better than....We'll down some of them, though."
"Right!" That was old Garmon Nash, his fellow patrolman aboard thePlanet Patrol ship as he swung the deadly slimness of his rocketblast's barrel around to center on the fiery jets that betrayed theapproaching outlaw flyers.
Three times he fired the gun, the rocket projectiles blasting off withtheir invisible preliminary jets of gas, and three times an enemy craftflared up into an intolerable torch of flame before they realized thepatrol ship had fired upon them. Then a barrage of enemy rocket shellsexploded into life above and before them.
Rolf swung the lax controls over hard as the bursts of fire revealed alooming barrier of stone dead ahead, and then he felt the tough skinof the flyer crumple inward. The cabin seemed to telescope about him.In a slow sort of wonder Rolf felt the scrape of rock against metal,and then the screeching of air through the myriad rents in the cabin'smeralloy walls grew to a mad whining wail.
Down plunged the battered ship, downward ever downward. Somehow Rolffound the strength to wrap his fingers around the control levers andsnap on a quick burst from the landing rockets. Their mad speed checkedmomentarily, but the nose of the vertically plunging ship dissolvedinto an inferno of flame.
The ship struck; split open like a rotten squash, and Rolf felt himselfbeing flung far outward through thick blackness. For an eternity itseemed he hung in the darkness before something smashed the breath andfeeling from his nerveless body. With a last glimmer of sanity he knewthat he lay crushed against a rocky wall.
Much later Rolf groaned with the pain of bruised muscles and tried torise. To his amazement he could move all his limbs. Carefully he cameto his knees and so to his feet. Not a bone was broken, unless thesharp breathlessness that strained at his chest meant cracked ribs.
There was light in the narrow pit in which he found himself, light andheat from the yet-glowing debris of the rocket flyer. The outlaws hadblasted the crashed ship, his practiced eyes told him, and Garmon Nashmust have died in the wreckage. He was alone in the waterless trap of adeep crevice.
In the fading glow of the super-heated metal the vertical walls abovemocked him. There could be no ascent from this natural prison-pit, andeven if there were he could never hope to reach the surface forty milesand more overhead. The floors of the thirty-seven caves through whichthey had so carefully jetted were a splintere