To The End of Time and Other Stories by Robert Moore Williams

Author:Robert Moore Williams [Williams, Robert Moore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi Collection
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1960-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

WHEN THE SPOILERS CAME

I

To stay alive five years on Mars, you have to have a nose for trouble. You have to be able to smell it before it happens, to catch the oderiferous tang of it in the dry wind blowing across the red deserts, to sense it in the shifting shadows of the sunset. Otherwise you may not stay alive on Mars for five months let alone five years. Or for five days, if you happen to be in the wrong place.

Boyd Larkin had lived seven years on Mars, in the wrongest of all wrong places on the red planet, the city of Sudal. No other earth trader ever even ventured here. In view of the peculiarity of the Martian customs, few traders found it wise to attempt to operate on Mars at all.

The City of Sudal was noted for several reasons. In a way, it was the holy city of Mars. Here also were to be found a few lingering relics of the vast scientific achievement this race had once known and had forgotten in the hard struggle for life across the centuries. Here also was a ruler by the name of Malovar, who, within the framework of Martian law and custom, was an utter despot. The reputation of Malovar alone was sufficient to keep most traders away from Sudal.

This, in itself, was enough to bring Boyd Larkin here.

He stood in the door of this store—it had once been the wing of a temple—just before the hour of sunset. A vague uneasiness was in him, a presentiment of trouble. His eyes went over the city, searching for the stimulus that had aroused the feeling in him. The peaked roofs of the buildings of the city glinted peacefully in the rays of the setting sun. Peaked roofs here on this world of no-rain always struck him as odd but he knew these roofs were relics of the far-gone centuries when rain had fallen plentifully on Mars.

Beyond the city lay the desert with its fretwork of canals and its pathetic patches of green growth, pathetic because where once grain had grown as far as the eye could reach now only a few patches were under cultivation. It was not the failure of the soil or of the water that made the desert bare. This soil would still grow lush vegetation. But the grains, though lush, would be worthless, incapable of supporting life. The minerals has been virtually exhausted from the top soil of Mars.

Without minerals, the grain did not support life.

The breeze that came in from the red deserts was soft and peaceful, with no trace of danger in it, no howl of a devil dog from the desert’s brim, no chirm of a winged horde of locusts coming to devour the crops.

Where, then, was the source of his feeling of danger.

Had Malovar begun to doubt him? Was the Martian ruler considering what action he might take at the next time of the testing? At the thought, a slight shudder

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